German angst and Cup fever
IF U.S. CULTURE is an unusual mix of chauvinism and innocence, then German culture can best be described as an odd combination of sturdiness and self-doubt.
“Selbstzweifel,” one German novelist told me.
“I want you to write down the German word for self-doubt,” he said. “S-E-L-B.... We do think a lot about who we are, that’s what I love about Germans. But then we have serious doubts.”
This week, more than 1 million soccer fans from around the globe will begin to descend upon Germany for the World Cup, the largest sporting event in the world. Yet amid all the pomp and anticipation leading up to the games, the German chattering classes have been biting their nails and worrying about whether their countrymen can live up to the slogan for this year’s soccer championship: “The World Visiting Friends.”
It all started two weeks ago, when former government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye warned nonwhite tourists against visiting places that he labeled “no-go areas.” “There are small and midsized towns in Brandenburg [a state in eastern Germany] and elsewhere where I would advise anyone with a different skin color not to go,” Heye said in an interview on public radio. He added that he feared that nonwhite soccer fans who ventured into those areas “may not leave with their lives.”
Not surprisingly, these remarks provoked an outcry from those who thought Heye was exaggerating the problem, as well as considerable support from others who were grateful for the focus on the problem he was spotlighting: neo-Nazi violence. Newspaper columns and TV talk shows have since debated the subject endlessly. A recent spate of violent street attacks in and around Berlin -- some racially motivated, some not -- has contributed to the fear that something could go terribly wrong in Germany at a moment when the whole world is watching.
This week, Franz Beckenbauer, the president of the World Cup Organizing Committee, even admitted that this year’s slogan was issued as a “big challenge” to Germans. He didn’t specifically bring up the Germans’ 20th century crimes, but he shared this observation: During the last World Cup in Japan and Korea, the hosts were “friendly by nature,” but in Germany, it was necessary “to give friendliness an extra push.”
All this hand-wringing made me curious. I asked my friends what they thought. “It’s all so exaggerated,” one young Berliner told me. “But still, if you go to Marzahan in east Berlin, because of how you look, you should probably take a few friends.”
I know she and others who expressed such concerns were well intentioned, but this brown-skinned American couldn’t help but take their warnings as a challenge. A few days later, I rented a car and drove east to the Polish border and then north to the Baltic Sea in search of neo-Nazis in what was once East Germany.
What I discovered is that on one level at least, the no-go controversy is absurd. Neither the east rim of Berlin nor most of the surrounding state of Brandenburg resemble anything close to a tourist mecca. In fact, the areas with the highest concentration of neo-Nazis are downright ugly, and there are no tourist attractions there of the usual sort. Marzahan, for instance, is an eerie, soulless clump of communist-era apartment blocks where jobless men drink beer in public during working hours. On my way to the Polish border, I passed through dozens of bleak, virtual ghost towns. I don’t imagine that many soccer fans from Asia, Africa or Latin America had plans to visit these places.
I began to wonder whether the controversy over no-go areas was less about activists’ desire to protect nonwhite visitors and more about a German predilection to enjoy and indulge in selbstzweifel. When I got back to Berlin, I paid a visit to Anetta Kahane, head of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an organization founded to fight racism in German society. She said she wasn’t surprised that I didn’t encounter any neo-Nazis. “Your chances of being attacked in the east are 25 times higher than they are in west Berlin,” she said. But most likely, she pointed out, you won’t be attacked at all.
She also chided me when she found out that I had rented an enormous Mercedes-Benz for my expedition. “That’s mit gewald,” she said, using a Yiddish phrase that ironically suggested that my choice of automobile was a provocation.
Either way, no violence was forthcoming, no dirty looks, no nothing. I’m not saying that Germany shouldn’t worry about the recent spike in neo-Nazi activity, and indeed I suspect there will be a few ugly racist demonstrations in the coming month. Still, most Germans, east and west, will pass the test of the World Cup slogan. But no matter what happens, their angst over who and what they are will live on.
