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Reporting Live from the City of Peace and Human Rights Unlike Susan Boettcher, I _have_ been living for the past month in a city where several World Cup matches are scheduled. The Nuremberg soccer stadium is about seven minutes away by car, and on a balmy summer night, I can almost hear the roar of the crowd from my balcony. The stadium stands, by the way, directly on the former Nazi Party rally grounds, and when I faintly hear those shouts of "Heil! Heil!" that Susan mentions, only a triumph of the will allows me to resist making a glib comment to my neighbors. From what I've seen and read over the past few weeks, Nuremberg--the self-styled 'city of peace and human rights'--is no different from anywhere else in Germany when it comes to flag displays. But does all of this really represent some sort of radical break with the postwar past, as some have suggested? And if so, what does it all mean? In the first place, I distinctly remember having seen a great deal of flag waving in Berlin during the final matches of the 1990 World Cup in Italy. When I recently pointed this out to my German brother-in- law, an avid soccer fan but tepid nationalist, he admitted, somewhat abashedly, that this was true, but that it had _come over_ (_'rueberschwappte_) from Italy. In the interest of domestic harmony, I refrained from asking him whether he also blames the Austrians for Hitler. Many Germans, like many Americans, simply like flags. While conducting archival research, I once came across a police report from 1946 which noted that local residents in Brandenburg were greatly perturbed about the lack of _Beflaggung_ outside local shops. One would have thought they would have had other concerns at the time. So what does all of this flag waving mean today? Is it merely _soccer fever_ (and, let's not forget, blatant commercialization)? Undoubtedly: after all, the World Cup _is_ taking place here in Germany. Is it a sign of _normal_ patriotism? The fact that radio talk shows and newspaper articles are beating the theme to death hardly suggests that Germans have achieved a _normal_ relationship to even harmless displays of patriotism. But _is_ it all merely harmless? The fact that many Germans are now hanging flags from their windows and attaching flags to their cars does not mean, of course, that they're planning to march again to Moscow or Paris anytime soon. But it does have meaning, and I'd like to draw a parallel to nonconformist behavior in the GDR to make my point. Much of the behavior I have studied was largely economic in nature and not at all political, at least ostensibly. But given the notorious difficulty of neatly separating the 'political' from the 'social' or 'economic' in a society as deeply politicized as the East German one, any form of 'resistance' or nonconformity ran the risk of assuming political overtones--regardless of intent and no matter how ambiguous. It could be argued, moreover, that all nonconformist behavior was perforce 'political' because most East Germans knew that it would or could be interpreted as such by those in positions of authority. What does this have to do with what's going on now in Germany during the World Cup? Flag waving is laden with symbolism everywhere, but that symbolism obviously has a different meaning depending on the country in question. Most Germans who wave flags during the World Cup are hardly rabid nationalists. But most know--and if they don't, they should--that flag waving in this country, because of its past, has very special meaning (just as it does in the United States, for obviously quite different reasons, since the culture wars of the 1960s). Even if it is not their intent, those Germans who wave flags here during the World Cup not only run the risk of having their behavior interpreted as crudely nationalist: it could be argued--to return to the East German analogy--that such behavior is perforce crudely nationalist because those who wave flags know how it will or can be interpreted by others at home and especially abroad. Andrew I. Port Department of History Wayne State University
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