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Author Topic: German loneliness, Irish .... ?
lagatta
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Babbler # 2534

posted 07 September 2004 09:57 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Though I don't think "love of country" is innate, I found this a fascinating essay, and not only with respect to Germany and the Celtic Fringe: http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1298743,00.html
From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Hinterland
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posted 07 September 2004 10:33 PM      Profile for Hinterland        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I was astonished to discover, when I lived in Germany in the 80's, that this kind of thoughtful reflection had not yet happened, despite the 40-year span between the end of the second world war and that time. I imagine German re-unification brought about a certain closure on the whole period that made people a little less brittle about the Second World War and the Holocaust, but at that time, all I found among Germans were meaningless platitudes about Kollektivschuld, an unseemly arrogance about the Wirtschaftswunder, and of course, too much Ausländer raus graffiti.

I haven't been back to Germany since then, but I've gotten the feeling that with the end of the Cold War, when World attention shifted from the critical East-West division centred in that country, Germany got the chance to become normal again.


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DrConway
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posted 08 September 2004 10:09 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I remember a news report quoting Gerhard Schroeder as saying that he didn't really know what nationalism or patriotism was until he saw a German soccer team win a game, and that wasn't until he was eight years old.

(This would maybe have been 1955, by the way)


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 08 September 2004 10:41 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The famous postwar game was in 1954, so I guess Schröder's childhood memory could be a bit fuzzy. A recent film, The Miracle of Berne, was made about this event and its impact on people's lives in postwar Germany:

http://www.german-cinema.de/archive/film_view.php?film_id=832

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=52&story_id=8570

http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1268617,00.html


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged

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