so like. what is the modern german national self-conception based on. i feel like the events of the last 150 years are so messy as to be really bad for narrative building. i feel like if i was german the conception might just be “a bunch of crazy stuff happened, but the whole time we were really industrious and good at following rules”
i think the short answer is that the contemporary german national self-conception is a goddamn mess. this is why you get, like, anti-deutsch weirdos and people like merkel saying israeli security is the german staatsräson, and far right goons who criticize having a big holocaust memorial in the capital, but who get really cagey about why they think it’s a problem when you press them on it.
like obviously there is some tendency toward the usual crass expressions of nationalism–discomfort with immigrants, urge to wave the flag, smugness about Our Values and Our Heritage–but for a lot of people not on the far right they’re very awkwardly trying to find a way to express it that feels PC to them, and for the people actually on the far right they’re just trying to minimally differentiate themselves from The Nationals Who Fucked Everything Up For Everybody in the 40s.
food, maybe. there’s a lot of very german food. knödel. spätzle. that sort of thing. maintaining a low debt-to-gdp-ratio, and being willing to fuck up the economy to do it. a certain sense of intrusive smugness.
Soccer is another big one. Every four years for world championship people put the flag everywhere, and the German left is split between praying we lose soon or roaming the streets at night taking down flags. It’s kinda cute, actually.
Personally I’m very pragmatic. Germany is still a thing purely by the grace of the allied forces. We might as well try and make the best of it. I never understood this need most people seem to feel to find some kind of identity in the place they were randomly born in.
There are a lot of scientific and technological advances originating in Germany which could serve as a source of pride, but I never see it. Maybe the only people who care about science and technology just don’t care about nationalism that much.
ALT
ALT