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always attractive phenomenon, should always be considered as back–
ground. I must say furthermore that understanding the new German na–
tionalism is quite easy for an East European such as myself.
It
is quite in–
teresting that while mainstream Germany is very similar to the rest of
Western Europe, mainstream bourgeois consumerist Germany is not un–
like Denmark or Poland or Sweden or Switzerland. German nationalism
is a phenomenon of a distressed militant minority, very much like that in
Russia, the Balkans, Hungary. The same psychological and ideological
characteristics can be found in the new German nationalism and the East
European version.
Yet it's interesting that the new German nationalists think they are
rehabilitating German tradition, that it can somehow give back dignity
to the Germans, stop this barrage of self-criticism and masochism, give
back pride to Germany. But by doing this, they don't notice that what
they are doing is not at all traditional. German nationalism on the
whole in the nineteenth century, in the classical mode, wasn't very de–
fensive.
It
was a very aggressive, statist nationalism, in favor of national
unity, of centralization.
It
was characterized, and this is why it was criti–
cized for so long, by a cult of the state, an instititutionalism.
It
glorified
the army, the bureaucracy, the emperor, the government. Indeed this
German humility in the face of state authority was a characteristic of
classical German nationalism, while the new nationalism, the most char–
acteristic proponents of whom are the writer Botho Strauss, the film–
maker Hans Jiirgen Syberberg, the historian Ernst Nolte, and a few
others, is very untraditional.
What do these people say? The two most characteristic statements
are the book by Syberberg about art in Germany, published in 1991, and
the widely-read the essay by Strauss. Their writings tell us: we Germans
are people like you. The first difference is here: The nationalistic
discourse of Syberberg and Strauss is addressed to foreigners abroad, their
symbolic audience. They ask, "Why aren't we allowed to have our
nationalist pride just as you do?" To which my response, a cynical re–
sponse as a foreigner, is, "Get on with it. Be proud. Who is stopping
you?" They plead, "Germany is indeed a terrible place. We don't have
the courage to be proud, we are a decadent lot, we are more
McDonald-ized than the Americans. Weare more Frenchified than the
French. We are not Germans any longer, we don't deserve to be proud,
but still, please, let us be proud." Again, this is a very defensive, self-tor–
turing nationalism, a nationalism of guilt. Syberberg and others are criti–
cizing the guilt they think is imposed by foreigners - Americans, Jews,
French, etc. - on "good Germans," but they themselves exemplify the
false guilt they are trying to criticize.
