<susan.boettcher@mail.utexas.edu>
Subject: MfG 8: Boettcher on the World Cup from Wolfenbüttel
Date: Friday, June 23, 2006

[Ed. note: with this message, we revive the "Message from Germany"
genre. Readers are invited to respond on this topic, or to contact
the editors with ideas for their own observational accounts.]

The World Cup from Wolfenbüttel

You'd think spending the summer in a town where no World Cup match is
scheduled would guarantee early modernists a respite from the soccer-
craziness that's possessed the rest of Germany. Not so. On the
Schloßplatz--across the street from the reading room of the Herzog
August Bibliothek--a local bar has erected a fence, a large-screen TV
with a sunscreen, a bar, and a Dönerbude. Obviously, the stunning re-
appropriation of public space is standard fare in Germany; the
library reading room used to be the attic of the armory of the Dukes
of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. The former ducal stable is also nearby
and one imagines the Schloßplatz was formerly the site of equestrian,
military and sovereign display, not bread and circuses. In Summer
2006, beginning at 3:30 p.m., the noise from loudspeakers blares.
Library users thus participate in every goal--whether they want to or
not. But not every day--mostly on the days Germany plays. Italy
matches have also gotten some attention from the local minority (as I
said to a visiting friend last month: where do you want to eat? the
choices are Italian, Italian, Italian, Italian, or Italian) and the
Eiscafé has put up its own TV, but crowds only turn out for the
Germany games. Indeed, you have to be a certain age to get into the
Biergarten, but plenty of people lurk around the margins of the space
during those matches, probably not to catch a glimpse of the game,
but to participate in the commotion. At half time and after the
games, everyone, young and old, participates in a steady
Personencorso of the Altstadt. And they are all smiling. (Lower
Saxons smiling at strangers on the street? It's enough to make one a
little nervous).

To enhance my surprise, all through the week I'm seeing things I've
never seen before. I've been here for every summer soccer event since
1995 (with the exception of World Cup 1998); I sang "O, wie ist das
schön" at the top of my lungs with the crowds in Göttingen that
danced around the Gänseliesel after Germany beat the Czech Republic
via "golden goal" in 1996 European Championship; witnessed Oliver
Kahn's disappointing performance in the final against Brazil from
Erfurt in 2002 (where there was no dancing or crying the streets--
probably because of the recent school shooting incident) and anger in
the press about Germany's early departure from the 2004 Europe
tournament. None of these events appeared especially to move the
people living in the apartments around me, let alone my over-educated
friends. Everyone watched TV, but there was no broader resonance.

This summer, it's different. Bildungsbürger are openly engaged. On
the street, we have the obligatory faction of people with Rot-Schwarz-
Gold on their cheeks and Dr. Seuss hats, funny wigs and annoying
airhorns. But what I'm seeing lots of, which I have never seen
before, are flags. All of the bars have flags displayed. Flags are
hanging flat from windows in the Altstadt. Teenagers are wearing them
as sarongs. Someone gave me a key chain in the flag colors as a
promotional item a few weeks ago in Hannover main station. This
morning on my walk to the library I saw a big black BMW with a flag
in the form of a huge sticker that covered the entire hood of the
car. And I'd never thought I'd see this, but the parking lot I see
from my office window reveals that numerous drivers have attached
SMALL GERMAN FAN FLAGS TO THEIR PRECIOUS CARS. Some of them have TWO!
One on each side! I'd be tempted to think this was just clever
marketing, but I've been listening for a decade now to the most
important driving tips for getting the absolute best gas mileage.
Creating unnecessary wind resistance is not on the list, especially
of people who tell me they wash their cars before the trip to
guarantee the best result (thus simultaneously conforming to the
German cultural attitude about the importance of the pristine car, a
rule that these flags also transgress).

Of course, I'm not the only person to notice this. The press has
picked it up with comments on the "new" patriotism.
Deutschlandradio's afternoon call-in show has been occupied for the
last week with questions about how people should feel about
patriotism. Experts have been speculating about whether soccer has
replaced religion in the German consciousness; right now I'm
listening to a radio program about the performative, ritual qualities
of soccer games (with the obligatory echoes of people shouting "Heil!
Heil!" in the background). Everyone on the radio wants to feel good
about this; finally people can enjoy a "normal" patriotism. On the
other hand, it was only a month ago, when I arrived, that people were
debating Uwe-Karsten Heye's assertion that dark-skinned foreign
visitors should avoid certain "no go areas" and were stunned by the
racist attack on Giyasettin Sayan, a Berlin parliamentarian of
Kurdish background. We're not hearing about that anymore now; the
only slightly dark tone in the whole picture is the official WM-Song
by Herbert Groenemeyer, "Zeit, dass sich was dreht." Some of the
lines sound like a threatening version of lines from Rilke ("Wer sich
jetzt nicht regt, wird ewig warten"--the active version of "wer jetzt
kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr"--which is also true since the
governing coalition ended the Eigenheimzulage at the end of last
year), and it's sung in the minor key he uses when he wants to say
something serious. Given the obvious intertextuality of the line,
it's hard to know what he's commenting on: is it the World Cup or the
ongoing Reformstau?

So I'm trying to re-order the information that I've absorbed over the
years about contemporary German patriotism: My first German teacher,
Annelise Duncan, may she rest in peace, an emigrant, telling us in
Fall 1989 in a tone I had difficulty interpreting that West Germans
were not patriotic like Americans; the shock and later amusement of
my new German friends in Fall 1995, when I asked about the modern
words of the German national anthem so I could sing along at
appropriate moments (a good friend finally dictated them to me about
four years later--I'm still not exactly sure what "Unterpfand" means,
but that doesn't separate me from most of the people singing); a
story a good friend told me about how in the 1970s and 1980s, at
international matches, fans shouted "Bun-des-re-pub-lik" and not
"Deutschland"--well, it was the Cold War. I think of Germans as
people so suspicious of public advertisement of their personal
allegiances that they won't even wear university t-shirts, yet now
Karstadt on the other margin of the Schloßplatz is filled, not simply
with official fan jerseys, which one could always buy, but ordinary t-
shirts covered with "Deutschland" and the national colors--and I see
people wearing them.  We've been hearing the "Deutschlandlied" so
often out of its customary contexts that the Gewerkschaft für
Erziehung und Wissenschaft has renewed calls for the creation of a
new German national anthem--but if callers to Deutschlandradio's
afternoon show are any indication, most people are attached (for
better or for worse, for a whole variety of reasons) to the old one.

I don't know what to think. Was my old understanding of German
patriotism based in my own cultural prejudices and the stereotype of
the German I've developed and carried with me over the years? The
sort of everyday behavior I've observed in Germany for over a decade
now is clearly changing. Is it the sign of clever marketing? an
"acceptable" patriotism? nationalism on the rise? or just football
fever?

What are other readers in Germany seeing?

Susan R. Boettcher, Department of History, University of Texas

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