Gordon Welters for The New York Times
Jens John raising a variation of the German flag in his garden in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany. A truck driver, Mr. John has often been without work in the economic downturn.
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: September 10, 2010
BERLIN — As a youth in the 1950s, the film director Volker Schlöndorff tried to hide his German origins by learning to speak unaccented French. This summer, his daughter painted German flags on her cheeks and joined crowds of thousands on the Kurfürstendamm, a historic avenue, waving their black, red and gold banners to celebrate the country’s World Cup victories.
Gordon Welters for The New York Times
The city of Chemnitz has returned to its historic name of after being known as Karl-Marx-Stadt during the Cold War.
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Twenty years after reunification, Germany has come to terms with itself in a way that the postwar generation proclaimed would never be possible and Ms. Schlöndorff’s post-Berlin Wall generation finds completely natural.
The shift is evident on the airwaves, where German songs are staging a comeback against the dominance of American pop, and in best sellers about Goethe and Schiller or in discovering Germany by foot, by car and by train from the Bavarian Alps to the old Hanseatic ports on the Baltic Sea.
In Parliament, politicians have debated ending conscription, threatening the post-Nazi ideal of an army of ordinary citizens, as German soldiers fight in Afghanistan. Despite fears of rising income inequality, Germany’s economic engine is humming and unemployment has fallen significantly in the former East Germany.
And Chancellor Angela Merkel has led a bloc of countries fending off President Obama’s calls for stimulus spending to combat the economic crisis, certain that the world should follow Germany’s example of austerity.
German pride did not die after the country’s defeat in World War II. Instead, like Sleeping Beauty in the Brothers Grimm version of the folk tale, it only fell into a deep slumber. The country has now awakened, ready to celebrate its economic ingenuity, its cultural treasures and the unsullied stretches of its history.
As Germany embarks on this journey of self-discovery, the question is whether it will leave behind a European project which was built in no small measure on the nation’s postwar guilt and on its pocketbook.
“Maybe it’s our time again,” said Catherine Mendle, 25, a school social worker strolling the grounds and halls of the square glass and concrete Chancellery building on a recent afternoon as part of a government open house. A military band played in the background, and Mrs. Merkel signed autographs for curious visitors.
“We have this extreme helper syndrome, to try to make the world love us again, and it’s completely overdone,” Ms. Mendle said. Germany, she said, had been reduced to simple stereotypes — Oktoberfest, auto factories, the Holocaust. Its rich traditions in music and literature, and its enduring emphasis on social welfare and a strong commitment to the environment, deserve more respect abroad and at home, Ms. Mendle said.
When Mr. Grass’s latest book came out in August, it was not the sort of recapitulation of Nazi crimes that made the Nobel Prize-winning writer world famous, but a “declaration of love,” as the subtitle states, to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s collection of German words into an unfinished dictionary.
“There is a lust to explore our contribution to world culture in Germany right now,” said Matthias Matussek, a journalist for the magazine Der Spiegel and author of a book exploring reasons Germans could be proud. His book generated significant controversy when it appeared in 2006 and now would be “just one of dozens on the shelf,” Mr. Matussek said.
In ways large and small Germany is flexing its muscles and reasserting a long-repressed national pride. Dozens of recent interviews across the country, with workers and businessmen, politicians and homemakers, artists and intellectuals, found a country more at ease with itself and its symbols, like its flag and its national anthem — a people still aware of their country’s history, but less willing to let it dictate their actions.
Concerns and Cautions
The change has not been universally welcomed, even in Germany. It has led to unusual scenes, such as antinationalist German leftists twice tearing down a more than 50-foot German flag that Lebanese immigrants had draped down the front of a building in the Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln this summer during the World Cup, when a soccer team full of immigrants’ children captivated the country.
There are fears of emerging (or resurgent) chauvinism, seen recently in broadsides against Muslims by Thilo Sarrazin, who is stepping down from the board of the German central bank, after publishing a divisive best seller saying that Muslim immigrants are draining the social-welfare state and reproducing faster than ethnic Germans.
Diplomats and politicians have voiced rising concern over Germany’s direction in recent years, whether in striking a contentious gas-pipeline deal with Russia or blocking NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine.
The leading philosopher Jürgen Habermas warned recently that Germany had become a “self-absorbed colossus.” The financier George Soros said this summer in a speech in Berlin that the government was “endangering the European Union” with its economic policies.
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