The rift in US-German relations sparks a bit of worry but a lot more humor
For German comedians (and there are a few, you know), the rift in German-American relations has been a godsend. Topic #1, all week long. Harald Schmidt, who hosts a late night talk show he freely admits is a rip-off of David Letterman's format, spent the opening segment one night putting together a "care package" for the US. He stuffed it with American goods Germans have enjoyed over the years -- a hamburger, an "I [heart] NY" sticker and so on -- and a letter.
"Dear American people," he dictated in English to a sidekick on the air. "Sorry!" A round of laughter and applause, followed by the biggest laugh for the line, "Our friendship is as deep as the throat of Monica Lewinsky." Ba-da-boom.
On Fritz, a Berlin radio station, DJs sardonically worried out loud that if the Americans leave, taking their military and their McDonald's, their Britney Spears and Hollywood movies with them, Germans would be left behind in an utter cultural vacuum. And in reaction to a recent snarky quote from the White House, the faux infotainment program Freitag Nacht News joked, "It's time to return the favor the Americans granted us in 1945. We should 'liberate' them from their 'dictatorship'."
And so on. But the Germans wouldn't be Germans if there weren't some serious hand-wringing going on as well, from this week's cover package in Der Spiegel to the editorial and even front pages of the papers. If Chancellor Schröder's insistence that Germany would not be participating in a war on Iraq sticks, will this lead not only to sparks between Berlin and Washington but also to complete political isolation? British PM Tony Blair's warm mid-week reception of Schröder suggests not.
If not politically, how about economically? Schröder's challenger in the recent election, Edmund Stoiber, argued that Germany's export-driven economy would falter, and sure enough, the pro-US British Daily Telegraph reports on signs of a "boycott" of German products brewing in the States. The examples and the quotes the story builds on, however, seem pretty spotty.
Unless these lone cancellations of orders for BMWs and bottles of Riesling snowball into something to be taken seriously, we'll continue to be treated to a most unusual spectacle: The Germans are being singled out for criticism and enjoying it.
The Guardian has seemed fascinated with the implications of the US-German rift all week long. Two pieces stand out: Martin Kettle wonders why Al Gore can get away with what ex-Justice Minister Däubler-Gmelin couldn't; and Hywel Williams argues that Schröder's "opposition to the American imperial adventurism has brought into focus a strong German identity -- one which serves peace not war."
Germany has shaken off its guilt and accepted its destiny: to be a force for good outside its own frontiers
Hywel Williams
The Guardian
How should we deal with Germany? The German question is and always will be the story of Europe itself, for the continent's largest single nation is also its heart and its destiny. Finding an answer has been the diplomatic preoccupation and the political fear driving other Europeans ever since the Hohenstaufen dynasty broke out of Swabia and established an imperial style in the 12th century. Europe's history is just one long knock-on Teutonic effect.
It was outsiders - whether impressed or terrified - who framed the German question's terms. But Germans themselves, from Goethe to Grass, have formulated their own interrogation. There's an anxiety that haunts the national soul and asks: what does it mean to be a good German? The country has always luxuriated in exploration of national identity - a game which the newly introspective English now play as well.
At least the general election has thrown up one answer. Goodness here means turning Berlin into a rock on the Bushite path to Baghdad. Gerhard Schröder's victory re-states the German question as a common and positive European one. His opposition to the American imperial adventurism has brought into focus a strong German identity - one which serves peace not war.
To the German problem of the 20th century's first half, the century's second half threw up another difficulty. The militarism yielded to the disabling guilt of the defeated. De-militarised and then Nato-fied, Germany's western half went for the gold of an economic miracle - and a quiet democratic dullness. Pacifism became a dominant strand - and this itself built on an old German tradition of quietism in politics. Obedience was owed to the powers that be - meanwhile it was best to lead a quiet life. Order was all. It's the argument used by Luther when he urged the German princes to put down the peasant's revolt as ruthlessly as possible.
Even to Germans themselves the idea that Germany could be a force for good outside her own frontiers seemed suspect. This was a country that - hanging its head in shame - punched way below its weight. Its stance was that of a self-confessed Frankenstein's monster, which had to ask for its own chains lest it lash out. This view of Germany's need for self-imposed tutelage was very much that of Helmut Kohl and it worked as one element of that Franco-German motor which was the EU's rationale.
Reunification changed everything. On the right the critique now is of Germany's economic strains - its problems with pensions and restrictive labour laws. But, culturally speaking, Germany has reawakened with a healthy political structure. And it has reclaimed the German liberal tradition in a way that is assertive and purposeful rather than quietist. Germany is now the real challenger to the Blair picture of Europeans as America's dependent cousins.
The Mitterand-Kohl partnership was a powerful driving force - and one that saw Britain on the European margins. It was an alliance of two flawed giants who had lived with war. But the Chirac-Schröder relationship has nothing of the same warmth or intensity of purpose. Schröder is strikingly free of war guilt, while Chirac's readiness to play the American game shows his readiness to embrace the dominant force of the moment.
Mr Blair will have his war. But those who are sickened by his shallow ease with mass destruction should enrol in Schröder's army. And, in doing, so we can hark back as well as look forward.
"How dreadful the state of Paris is! Surely that Sodom and Gomorrah as Papa called it deserves to be crushed": Queen Victoria's letter to her daughter Vicky, crown princess of Prussia, may not have been in the best of taste as Paris lay crushed by the Prussian army in 1870-1. But it is a reminder of how - until the 20th-century deflection of the current - it was a sense of German affinities that ruled English hearts and minds. France was the country with a tradition of military takeover and political instability, while Prussia was an English-Victorian mirror: Protestant, cultured, industrious. Liberals in particular admired the Bismarckian settlement for its example of an activist state at work with its welfare reforms. It was an admiration that survived the 1871 unification - and the arrival in united Germany of the Catholic south.
Mr Blair will use all his black arts of persuasion to bring Schröder on board. But Schröder has all the look about him of a landesvater - a politician whose fatherland has found a leader. That slim majority was gained by a kind of magic as he worked the issue of the German flood. And he has became the spokesman for a common European order, one which is now threatened by the Blair-Bush axis. The German question of old has now been replaced by the American question - one unstable empire has displaced another. Mr Blair finds his leader across the ocean; the rest of us will look beyond the Rhine.
Gruß
Happy End
For German comedians (and there are a few, you know), the rift in German-American relations has been a godsend. Topic #1, all week long. Harald Schmidt, who hosts a late night talk show he freely admits is a rip-off of David Letterman's format, spent the opening segment one night putting together a "care package" for the US. He stuffed it with American goods Germans have enjoyed over the years -- a hamburger, an "I [heart] NY" sticker and so on -- and a letter.
"Dear American people," he dictated in English to a sidekick on the air. "Sorry!" A round of laughter and applause, followed by the biggest laugh for the line, "Our friendship is as deep as the throat of Monica Lewinsky." Ba-da-boom.
On Fritz, a Berlin radio station, DJs sardonically worried out loud that if the Americans leave, taking their military and their McDonald's, their Britney Spears and Hollywood movies with them, Germans would be left behind in an utter cultural vacuum. And in reaction to a recent snarky quote from the White House, the faux infotainment program Freitag Nacht News joked, "It's time to return the favor the Americans granted us in 1945. We should 'liberate' them from their 'dictatorship'."
And so on. But the Germans wouldn't be Germans if there weren't some serious hand-wringing going on as well, from this week's cover package in Der Spiegel to the editorial and even front pages of the papers. If Chancellor Schröder's insistence that Germany would not be participating in a war on Iraq sticks, will this lead not only to sparks between Berlin and Washington but also to complete political isolation? British PM Tony Blair's warm mid-week reception of Schröder suggests not.
If not politically, how about economically? Schröder's challenger in the recent election, Edmund Stoiber, argued that Germany's export-driven economy would falter, and sure enough, the pro-US British Daily Telegraph reports on signs of a "boycott" of German products brewing in the States. The examples and the quotes the story builds on, however, seem pretty spotty.
Unless these lone cancellations of orders for BMWs and bottles of Riesling snowball into something to be taken seriously, we'll continue to be treated to a most unusual spectacle: The Germans are being singled out for criticism and enjoying it.
The Guardian has seemed fascinated with the implications of the US-German rift all week long. Two pieces stand out: Martin Kettle wonders why Al Gore can get away with what ex-Justice Minister Däubler-Gmelin couldn't; and Hywel Williams argues that Schröder's "opposition to the American imperial adventurism has brought into focus a strong German identity -- one which serves peace not war."
Enlist in Schröder's army
Germany has shaken off its guilt and accepted its destiny: to be a force for good outside its own frontiers
Hywel Williams
The Guardian
How should we deal with Germany? The German question is and always will be the story of Europe itself, for the continent's largest single nation is also its heart and its destiny. Finding an answer has been the diplomatic preoccupation and the political fear driving other Europeans ever since the Hohenstaufen dynasty broke out of Swabia and established an imperial style in the 12th century. Europe's history is just one long knock-on Teutonic effect.
It was outsiders - whether impressed or terrified - who framed the German question's terms. But Germans themselves, from Goethe to Grass, have formulated their own interrogation. There's an anxiety that haunts the national soul and asks: what does it mean to be a good German? The country has always luxuriated in exploration of national identity - a game which the newly introspective English now play as well.
At least the general election has thrown up one answer. Goodness here means turning Berlin into a rock on the Bushite path to Baghdad. Gerhard Schröder's victory re-states the German question as a common and positive European one. His opposition to the American imperial adventurism has brought into focus a strong German identity - one which serves peace not war.
To the German problem of the 20th century's first half, the century's second half threw up another difficulty. The militarism yielded to the disabling guilt of the defeated. De-militarised and then Nato-fied, Germany's western half went for the gold of an economic miracle - and a quiet democratic dullness. Pacifism became a dominant strand - and this itself built on an old German tradition of quietism in politics. Obedience was owed to the powers that be - meanwhile it was best to lead a quiet life. Order was all. It's the argument used by Luther when he urged the German princes to put down the peasant's revolt as ruthlessly as possible.
Even to Germans themselves the idea that Germany could be a force for good outside her own frontiers seemed suspect. This was a country that - hanging its head in shame - punched way below its weight. Its stance was that of a self-confessed Frankenstein's monster, which had to ask for its own chains lest it lash out. This view of Germany's need for self-imposed tutelage was very much that of Helmut Kohl and it worked as one element of that Franco-German motor which was the EU's rationale.
Reunification changed everything. On the right the critique now is of Germany's economic strains - its problems with pensions and restrictive labour laws. But, culturally speaking, Germany has reawakened with a healthy political structure. And it has reclaimed the German liberal tradition in a way that is assertive and purposeful rather than quietist. Germany is now the real challenger to the Blair picture of Europeans as America's dependent cousins.
The Mitterand-Kohl partnership was a powerful driving force - and one that saw Britain on the European margins. It was an alliance of two flawed giants who had lived with war. But the Chirac-Schröder relationship has nothing of the same warmth or intensity of purpose. Schröder is strikingly free of war guilt, while Chirac's readiness to play the American game shows his readiness to embrace the dominant force of the moment.
Mr Blair will have his war. But those who are sickened by his shallow ease with mass destruction should enrol in Schröder's army. And, in doing, so we can hark back as well as look forward.
"How dreadful the state of Paris is! Surely that Sodom and Gomorrah as Papa called it deserves to be crushed": Queen Victoria's letter to her daughter Vicky, crown princess of Prussia, may not have been in the best of taste as Paris lay crushed by the Prussian army in 1870-1. But it is a reminder of how - until the 20th-century deflection of the current - it was a sense of German affinities that ruled English hearts and minds. France was the country with a tradition of military takeover and political instability, while Prussia was an English-Victorian mirror: Protestant, cultured, industrious. Liberals in particular admired the Bismarckian settlement for its example of an activist state at work with its welfare reforms. It was an admiration that survived the 1871 unification - and the arrival in united Germany of the Catholic south.
Mr Blair will use all his black arts of persuasion to bring Schröder on board. But Schröder has all the look about him of a landesvater - a politician whose fatherland has found a leader. That slim majority was gained by a kind of magic as he worked the issue of the German flood. And he has became the spokesman for a common European order, one which is now threatened by the Blair-Bush axis. The German question of old has now been replaced by the American question - one unstable empire has displaced another. Mr Blair finds his leader across the ocean; the rest of us will look beyond the Rhine.
Gruß
Happy End
