Meet the Germans | Rory's Berlin Blog | Goethe-Institut

    In a sunny corner of Berlin our eight-year-old son Maus is building a sandcastle.  Behind him, beyond the O2 World stadium, ICE trains slide away towards hundreds of destinations across Europe.  Over a thousand express, regional and rapid transit trains fan out from the fourteen platforms of the Hauptbahnhof, Europe’s largest and most magnificent modern station.  Railways did for Germany what sea lanes did for Britain; the web of lines galvanising trade and putting its capital at the centre of its world.



    I’m thinking about links today as Maus builds his sandcastle.  Around him a dozen other children – speaking half-a-dozen different languages – are packing and shaping sand to make their individual towers.  Here’s a medieval fortress topped by jagged crenulations.  Next to it is a graceful mosque.  Beside them are a Maori-faced turret and a fairy-tale palace, as well as sculpted snakes, elephants and cats.  This vast sandpit on the Friedrichshainer Spreeufer is the site of Sandsation, Berlin’s annual sand sculpture festival.  For the 10th year running adult sculptors have come here from around the world to built ephemeral monuments in the sand.  Beach loungers line the riverbank.  Palm trees sway in the breeze.  Open-air salsa parties swing into the night.  It’s a crazy idea, like finding a bit of Bondi in Berlin, but no greater a cultural shock than any of the many international events in this city.  

    Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, or because I grew up basking in Sixties idealism, but I’ve always been excited by the multicultural mélange.  The dissolution of old enmities, the breaking down of borders, the building of bridges between peoples, moves me like little else.

    At home in our apartment for example I’ve set on a window ledge some of our black-and-white family photographs: my father on the bridge of a Royal Navy corvette during the Second World War, my godmother in the uniform of Hitler’s Landarmee, Mrs. Cat’s Scottish grandfather standing in a Royal Flying Corps flying suit next to his Sopwith Camel and her German grandfather in a Luftwaffe uniform.  Sixty years ago these people were mortal enemies.  Now in this city which for a brief moment in modern history was the hub of intolerance, members of the same family try to learn from history.

    The newsagent around the corner from our apartment is owned by a Jewish family.  I was in there yesterday, chatting to the owner, who asked me about my background.  ‘I’m a quarter Scottish, a quarter Irish, half English – and wholly Canadian,’ I told him.
    He looked over his glasses and replied, ‘A long time ago those distinctions used to matter.  They don’t any longer.  Today we are all citizens of the world.’
    It’s not difficult to see where he’s coming from, and I want to be first in the queue when they hand outside the world citizen passports, but I don’t believe that multiculturalism necessitates a denial of origins.  As Canada has learnt, it’s by embracing our differences that life and society is enriched and enlivened.



    In the midst of these pondering at the Sandsation, as I write these words, I realise that I am watching a barefoot boy, playing in the sand near to Maus.  He’s not building a tower or palace, instead he’s running his hand over the sand, clearing winding lanes between the towers, linking Buddhas and towers, snakes and medieval castles, building bridges in the sand.

    Last year I proposed the establishment of a national Cuddle-a-German Day (Deutscher Kuscheltag).  Once every twelve months, in every city and town in this land, from Bremen to Munich, Aurich to Zwickau, I suggested that Germans should be permitted to approach strangers, catch their eye, smile and then share a brief and disarming embrace.



    The motivation for my proposal was the impression that many Germans suppress their innocent, individual impulses, imposing collective discipline on others, sapping joy out of life.  To back me up I quoted Goethe who once wrote, ‘Germany is nothing, but every individual German is much, and yet the Germans imagine the reverse to be true’.

    My campaign started after a visit to my local Lidl to buy a jar of gherkins.  As I planned to be in and out of the supermarket in a minute, I didn’t take a shopping cart.  But when I reached the till the teller admonished me.  ‘You don’t have a cart,’ she observed.
    ‘I only need these pickles, and I have a bag,’ I replied, showing her my eco-friendly Oxford Book Festival canvas shopping bag.  ‘This bag works in England.’
    ‘Next time you must have a trolley,’ said the teller, taking my money, moving on.  But then the woman behind me in the queue started clicking her tongue.  In complete earnestness she ticked me off, saying, ‘Young man, you have no trolley.’
    ‘Perhaps you should call the police,’ I suggested, trying to stir a modicum of humour into her soul.
    ‘We are simply informing you of the correct procedure,’ chipped in the teller, the two of them ganging up on me.
        I left it at that but what worried me was the Lidl ladies never questioned that collective rules – however dotty – should take precedence over individual spontaneity.  I had to use a trolley and no concession was to be made for not having one.

    The incident made me ask why many Germans embrace conformity – or rather run scared of independent thought and action?   Why create antagonism – either within ourselves or through conflict with another – and squash our sense of fun through the suppression of simple, spontaneous decisions?  The answer seemed to be obvious: the Germans weren’t get enough cuddles.  Hence my call for a Hug-a-German Day.

    This being Germany the rules for the Deutscher Kuscheltag needed to be clear.  First, the person embraced must be a stranger; second, the embrace must be spontaneous; third, participants must be sincere and sober (i.e. this isn't a drunken I'm-not-responsible-for-my-actions Karneval); fourth, there’s no going back to his/her place afterwards.  These cuddles are not to be premeditated or used to further either ones love life or career.  They exist solely for themselves, for the moment, to put a smile on someone’s face.  For example: A likes the look of B, A embraces B, B’s sense of self-esteem increases on learning that he/she is liked; B now feels confident enough to embrace C, and so on.  And best of all, on Deutscher Kuscheltag if you don’t agree with the rules you are permitted – nay, encouraged -- to change them.

    Today I’d like to report that – although an official announcement of the Kuscheltag has been delayed (Frau Merkel has been preoccupied with saving the Euro, and avoiding the grateful embrace of Greek Prime Minister Papandreou) – the campaign has been a resounding success.  Up and down the land German strangers have been embracing each other ... at least they were until Spain knocked die Mannschaft national team into third position at the World Cup.

    So let’s keep up the good work and all embrace a German today.  I’m playing my part by going back to Lidl – with a smile on my lips and without a shopping trolley.  Together we can make the world a happier place, all because of a pickle.

    Over the last week I’ve learnt most of my neighbours’ secrets.  I’ve discovered how Frau Schmidt likes to be kissed (‘Not like that,’ she whispered to her new boyfriend last night).  I know what the Rollmann twins spread on their brötchen every morning.  I learnt that Herr Kunst, the building’s fortysomething bachelor, wears a corset.  I’ve even discerned the sort of web surfing that preoccupies Herr Goldmann in the small hours.



    I haven’t filled a recently-vacated post with the KGB.  Nor am I confessing to a secret life as a peeping Tom.  The simple truth is that the record-breaking heat wave has caused Germans to throw open their windows and bare all, exposing many shocking (and usually tubby) home truths.

    Our building – like most blocks in Germany – is constructed around a central courtyard or hof.  All the apartments have a number of rooms facing into it, usually bedrooms and bathrooms.  Those private chambers, which usually preserve personal confidences, now broadcast them willy-nilly to all and sundry.  Whispered words, the sound of private acts and the intimate uncorking of bottles of massage oil are amplified by the open windows and shared with dozens of curious neighbours. The newly-wed Meyers do not sound as blissfully happy as they appeared.  Herr Schröder plays a most unusual game with his dog.  Frau Schmidt has the most arresting tattoo.  

    Mrs. Cat and I have done our best to keep our intimacies to ourselves, although she is unsettled by the ready smile now offered to her by Herr Fink (his bedroom looks directly into our shower).   But given the sauna-like heat, and a total absence of air conditioning, it is impossible to keep the windows closed.   

    The German Weather Service (DWD) has forecast temperatures of up to 40 degrees this week.  As the highest temperature ever recorded in Germany was 40.2 °C. (in Karlsruhe in August 2003), it seems likely that a new record will be set this summer.  My sister – who plans to visit in August with her husband and children – now says she’s only coming if the weather cools down.  On the other hand a French resident-cum-sun-goddess, used to escaping to the Riviera or Seychelles to maintain her nut-brown tan,  rejoices in Germany’s unglaublich weather.  ‘But the poor Germans, they are not a people made for the sun,’ she told me yesterday.  ‘Every day I see more and more sweaty pinky ladies in the street.’

    The heat wave hasn’t been welcomed by Deutsche Bahn, the national train operator, or a number of its passengers.  Last weekend an air-conditioner failure on a Cologne-bound ICE express sent temperatures in the carriages soaring to 50 °C.  Nine students and elderly passengers had to be taken to the hospital, where some received IV drips.  Meanwhile in Berlin, scores of dead fish have been spotted floating in the Teltow canal.  Evidentially they died from a lack of oxygen in the water caused by the intense heat.



    For my part, I’m doing my best to enjoy the spectacle – apart from that presented by beer-bellied Herr Goldmann – knowing that all too soon the cool air will return, the windows will be shut and secrets locked back indoors.  But when that day does come, at least I will know a little more about my neighbours.

    ‘Listen to the building,’ the architect David Chipperfield said to me last week.  ‘That’s what we told ourselves throughout the years working on the Neues Museum.  Listen to the building.’



    I’m writing a book about Berlin and its artists, and – in the course of researching the life and work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Germany’s most prominent 19th-century architect – I’d asked for an interview with David Chipperfield.  He has an office in Berlin (as well as London, Milan and Shanghai) and was in town to develop projects as diverse as a vast, commercial development in the centre of town and the restoration of a tiny thatched fisherman’s cottage on the island of Rügen.

    I'd first met him last year when I wangled myself onto his inaugural guided tour of the Neues Museum.  At the time the newly-reconstructed building was empty and, as we walked through the beautiful Vestible and Egyptian Gallery then climbed the great staircase, I was moved by the museum's survival, and its spectacular rebirth.  Created by a revered German architect, devastated by American bombs and Soviet shells, abandoned by the Communists, now restored by a British architect working with brickies from Dresden, computer programmers from California and designers from Munich – the Neues Museum encapsulated man’s ability to build, destroy and preserve things of great beauty.

    ‘The great argument was whether to restore it to like it used to be, or to create something more interesting,’ Chipperfield told me at the time.  He decided to link together original material, war- and weather-damaged sections as well as modern elements.  The result is a truly dynamic and meaningful museum building that can be read like a history book, the fabric of the building telling the story of Berlin.  To my mind he created the most perfect museum for the city.



    Last week I returned to the subject, asking him if – while recreating the museum – he had imagined Schinkel or his student Friedrich August Stüler (architect of the original museum) whispering to him from the grave.  He shook his head.
    ‘I had no sense of them talking to me from the past.  There would be a certain arrogance in suggesting that I did.  For me, the building is the repository of their intelligence.  We credited the building with being clever.  I tried to understand it in a geological sense: what it was originally and what fate had turned it into.'
    ‘Take the example of the central staircase.  The bombing and fire had destroyed it, creating a Piranesian space from cellar to roof.  What to do with it?  One voice said restore it to its original state, recreating one of the greatest rooms in Berlin.  The other voice advocated that we take advantage of the space, creating a radical, powerful piece of modern architecture.  We pursued both concepts for a year.  But we realised that when we listened to the building there was only one solution.  We saw in the configuration of the windows, porch and doors that the historical stairs had measured the room, enabling visitor to experience it, travelling both vertically and horizontally through the space.  Without the stairs one became a passive spectator, a voyeur unengaged with the space.’
    ‘I’m nervous of architecture that places the individual in awe,’ he admitted, craning back his neck as standing before a towering skyscraper.  ‘I believe that buildings should be made for frail human beings.  Architecture is something to be in; both to occupy and to ignore.’

    In writing a book about Berlin’s artists I am naturally curious why it has become a city of ideas.
    ‘Berlin is a place of ideas because it’s incomplete,’ suggested Chipperfield.  ‘If a story isn’t finished, there’s much more chance for individuals to be part of the story.  Architecture is central to discourse and debate here because of need for reconstruction (after the fall of the Wall).’  He went on, ‘I think it’s good for Germany to have a fractured, open-ended city as its capital – a multi-cultural, slightly useless city of dreams and fragments.  For their part Berliners were long bemused why the city had become fashionable.  Now they are beginning to accept outsiders’ projections on the city.’



images of Neues Museum by Ute Zscharnt. Portrait by Nick Knight.

    Today I apologised for England.  

    I dropped my son off at school, tucked his scooter under my arm and turned for home.  Then I felt a tap on my shoulder.  Rainer, the father of one of my son’s classmates, wanted to talk.  ‘Can I ask you to explain to me why the British keep calling us Nazis?’ he asked.



    In the lead-up to the England-Germany World Cup match, the British tabloid press gorged itself on a feast of bloated clichés.  ‘Job Done ... Now for the Hun,’ grinded the Daily Star after the defeat of Slovenia.  ‘Germans Wurst at Penalties,’ heaved the Sun.  ‘New Stats prove England are better from the spot.’  The Daily Mirror gnawed on Franz Beckenbauer – the great manager, coach and former player – calling him a ‘Crazy Kaiser’.  Next a player on the English team – who shall remain unnamed – spoke of ‘beating the Germans like in 1945’.  Finally, after the June 27th defeat the Daily Mail wrote, ‘If The Few had defended as badly England we’d all be speaking German now.’

    ‘To call someone a Nazi is a real insult,’ Rainer told me.  ‘Perhaps, if Germany was trying to force the UK to join the euro, such a shocking insult would be appropriate but all they are talking about is a football game.’

    Rainer was offended, hurt and unable to comprehend how – 65 years after the end of hostilities and almost four decades since the accession of the UK into the European Union – many Brits seem to remain obsessed with German militarism and the Second World War.  The historical reason for this is due not so much to Germany losing the last war as Britain losing an empire.  During the First World War Great Britain began to surrender its world power status to the United States, on whose men and resources victory depended.  By 1945 the process was complete and the UK – during Suez, the 1976 economic crisis and the Falklands War – began to come to terms with being little Britain.



    For the most part the hackneyed war clichés are perpetrated by the British tabloids.  It’s hard to understand how any educated, 21st century journalist can dream up the headline, ‘It’s war - we will fight jeering Jerries on the pitches’, as did some misguided soul at the Daily Star.  The tabloid editors consciously choose not to educate their readers but rather to titillate them.  Through their actions these newspapers endorse narrow-mindedness, stifle informed debate, cloud the distinction between fame and celebrity, even inflate the egos (and salaries) of a squad of foul-mouthed athletes whose single World Cup achievement was to beat a country with a population less than that of Greater Manchester (Slovenia).

    The dumbing-down of Britain is even more evident on the small screen.  Over the last decade the majority of programme-makers and viewers have taken the lazy option, choosing the bland over the challenging, the superficial instead of the thoughtful or provoking.  These days only a tiny fraction of people seem to care about quality television, and they tend to be dismissed as elitist dinosaurs.

    Much of the British media has surrendered itself to populism, as reflected by the diminishing standards and demands of viewers, readers, press barons and programme-makers.  On Fleet Street and in Docklands, at Channel Four and TV Centre, populism has been embraced in the name of financial success, cheapening the dreams and ambitions of the once-great nation.

    My great-grandfather was a loyal Scot.  My mother was English.  London is my favourite city in the world.  I am proud to carry a British (and Canadian) passport.  I celebrate Britain’s passionate embrace of ethnic diversity, and the remarkable enriching of its society through half a century’s multiculturalism.  The UK produces some of the world’s finest architects, writers, performers, musicians, chefs and designers (think Apple’s Jonathan Ive who designed the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad).  Its beer and national spirit (i.e. Scotch whisky) are the finest on the planet.  But, outside my son’s school in Berlin, I apologised for the English, for those few powerful, irresponsible editors who seem unable to look beyond their circulation and viewing figures, and disseminate outdated inanities more suited to back issues of The Beano.  They fail the country more even than Fabio Capello’s defeated squad.