[Ed. note: two contributions follow.]

From: "Dr. Henning P. Jürgens" <juergenh@uni-mainz.de>
Re: MfG 8: Boettcher on the World Cup in Wolfenbüttel
Date: Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Dear list members,

as a German and (potentially ignorant) early modernist, I would like
to encourage Andrew Port and Alex Kay to explain, in which respect I
should be aware of the history of flag weaving in Germany, since
Germans "know--and if they don't, they should--that flag waving in
this country, because of its past, [has a] very special meaning".

I agree that there are problematic aspects of the much-discussed "new
German nationalism", but what is the specifically German history in
the use of flags? Carrying a flag when parading and even marching
into a foreign country is a phenomenon much older than Germany (even
with the extended understanding of when German history began shown in
the new DHM exhibition).

I agree that the vast majority of the German soccer supporters
presumably don't know much about the history of the German flag, and
I agree they should. But they are not carrying the Reichskriegsflagge
or swastikas, but the flag of the Hambacher Fest--a flag that was not
popular among the Nazis. If flags in Germany carry a historic burden,
this one stands for a tradition different from the one which has a
"very special meaning".

When watching the game between the Polish and the German team at a
"public viewing area", I saw, among the hundreds of German flags, a
single
Polish one. And I remembered something I learned recently at an
exhibit at Berlin: in 1832 at the Hambacher Schloss, Polish flags
were among the flags from all over Germany, expressing the
"Polenbegeisterung" after the uprising in 1831. This incident can be
remembered as well when we think about the history of flag waving in
Germany.

Henning Jürgens, Mainz



From: Irit Dekel <dekei774@newschool.edu>
Re: MfG 8: Boettcher on the World Cup in Wolfenbüttel
Date: Tuesday, June 27, 2006

What can we do with a flag?

On the way from Berlin to Greifswald in a train ten days ago, a group
of elementary school children were encouraged by their teacher to
sing "the song of the German bee": "now children, because of the
world cup in Germany, we will sing the song of the bee with the three
colors, red,
black and gold". They sing the song which describes what makes the
bee (zoom zoom and honey) few times. At the end, an excited boy screams:
"now let's sing about the Brazilian horse". The teacher replies:
"there are too many colors we'll have to sing, and my ears will fall
off". The children sing a bit more about the German bee and proceeded
to another activity.

I have spent a year in Berlin now, and followed the developments in
flag waving and the celebration of the national German colors in
other soccer related products in the streets; in bars where one
watches the games and in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
and around it
(Brandenburg gate and the fans mile), where I am conducting fieldwork
this year. I think we first have to look at the event and spectacle of
displaying and performing with the German flag in its fullness:  it
is worn as a skirt, as a toga and as a gown, it is used in Mohawk-like
wigs, hanging out of windows and excessively on cars. On the latter,
it is more prevalent to find a car with two or more flags (I saw a
car with 8 parking by the newly signed Hitler's bunker) than just
one. The excessiveness of the flags makes it a spectacle of
uniformity but one
can also look at it as public explorations of the question: what can
be done with the (German) flag? What is one's relationship with the
German
flag? Moreover, and returning to the boy's later rejected suggestion
to sing about the Brazilian horse, the most other celebrated flag and
products (yellow shirts with the green writing: Brazil) is the
Brazilian one. Could we think of this as German Brazilian patriotism
in the same
way we fear the German version? I don't think so. It is rather a
celebration of the carnivalesque, summery side of the soccer games
with some colonial residue of the kind that makes Germans root for
African teams. Rooting for Brazil's victory, I was told in the
beginning of the
games, could not be seen as national or even European betrayal. It is
sexy and safe.

So why couldn't the German children sing about the Brazilian horse?
Before we answer this question we should add in few other questions
that former H-German contributors raised: is singing "Deutschland"
and wrapping oneself with the flag necessarily a sign of nationalism
and patriotism in Germany and elsewhere?  If so, are these celebrated
national symbols here to stay? What will they stand for after the
"WM" (world cup)? We can think of other categories than the binary
division to (1) nationalism or (2) intermezzo in the German identity
related to WWII which would not allow such simple shame-free tri-
color celebrations. If we go back to the exploration of what can we
do with the flag, I think that precisely THIS is what the fans,
knowing what a flag stands for, do. From what I have been hearing
around the Holocaust memorial (the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of
Europe), fans, wrapped in the flag, waving it inside the field of
stelae, keep this exploration inside, visibly so. Workers at the
site, too, talk about the yearning to be a German who say: this (the
Holocaust) was led by our ancestors who were Germans, in Germany.
Instead of shame we want to talk about "it". This "it" is knowledge
and feeling about German history, but also the simple display and
exploration of symbols that correspond with authenticity and play
with it. The flag is one of them. And since the Brazilian horse does
not help us with this as yet to be explored "it", it has to remain,
in Germany and for now, an indeterminable signifier.

Irit Dekel
New School for Social Research

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