For now, a word about the title. Yes, I could have gone with something like Beer and Ambivalence, but I thought "Not Mentioning the War..." was more to the point. For many Americans, the immediate mental associations surrounding "Germany" are: 1) The Holocaust of European Jewry and the Nazis' simultaneous mass-murder of everyone ranging from socialists, to Roma people, to gay men and lesbians, to Jehovah's Witnesses; 1a) World War II; and 2) The Berlin Wall. Pleasant! As an American, and therefore a citizen of one of the "good guys" aka Allies, historical collective memory of that period is one of unspeakable atrocities ending with victory and the liberation of Europe. For Germans, of course, collective memory and consciousness of that era is far more complicated, which can make many children of the "victors" feel uneasy.*
The blog title derives from something an English person, who had been living in Germany for a year, said to me while I was there in June:
"As a Brit or American, at first you really just feel like you should avoid mentioning 'the War' (cue ominous music/thunder) to Germans, even though it is probably the first thing you ever learned about Germany. But, really, the people in Germany who feel most awkward mentioning 'the War' are the Americans and Brits, not the Germans."German society has been fundamentally reshaped by the horrors of the Nazi era - but the eventual end result has been openness and honesty about the past, and an equal commitment to opposing the types of thought and action that made it possible. So, as the English dude put it, "children of the Allies" needn't fear mentioning the war to Germans, but should be aware that there is so much more to Germany than its past. American tourists often miss out on the latter by focusing on so-called Holocaust tourism, lederhosen, medieval villages, and Oktoberfest. With this blog, I hope to communicate some of the things that I think make today's Germany cool and interesting, as well as many of the cultural quirks and other minutiae that strike me along the way.
In other words, while it is totally ok to mention the War to Germans, there is a lot more to mention about Germany than just that! I doubt it will figure very much (or at all) in my everyday life in Hamburg, so I probably won't mention it very often here (unless for highly inappropriate comic effect).
I will also state up front that I'm sure this blog will be updated on a... random schedule. Taking a look at my past record, I can't imagine being any better about posting when I've got the work of a full PhD on my plate. Forgive me in advance.
*[Side note - I believe: As humans, the Nazi era is one we all have a duty to learn from and internalize as part of our collective memories. It was a horror perpetrated by humans, not simply by Germans. In any case, most Germans alive today were children or not yet born at the time, so bear no more responsibility for it than anyone else. We all have a responsibility to learn from it, however. Smug complacency on the part of Americans due to the fluke of where they were born is both immature and irresponsible. Americans could stand to be a little more pacifist!]
