Germany beyond the Reich

CULTURAL STUDIES: Germania: A Personal History of Germans Ancient and ModernBy Simon Winder Picador, 454pp. £18.99

ON THE eve of the first World War, a group of eminent British intellectuals published a remarkable open letter: it lauded Germany as a “highly civilised” country with a “culture that has contributed greatly to Western civilisation, racially allied to ourselves and with moral ideas largely resembling our own”. Two days before German troops invaded Belgium, the letter called for British neutrality, arguing that war against Germany would be a “crime against civilisation”.

Only a few years earlier, the leading British tabloid, the Daily Mail, released a booklet with a similarly surprising content: under the programmatic title Our German Cousinsit offered the average Englishman a "flying tour" through the history and culture of modern Germany, emphasising "the intimate friendships which unite so many English and German families"; and recommending the Kaiserreich, home to Britain's "German cousins", as a holiday destination with much to offer.

A century later, one would be hard-pressed to find similar praise for Germany in a tabloid anywhere in the English-speaking world. Two world wars, the Nazi dictatorship, and the horrors of the Holocaust have left a bitter legacy of suspicion, and ended the feelings of cultural proximity and admiration that once characterised attitudes towards Germany in the West.

As Simon Winder explains in his beautifully written and insightful book, Germania: A Personal History of Germans Ancient and Modern, August 1914 marked a major caesura in Britain's perceptions of Germany. Previously considered the most modern and technically innovative European society, with an unrivalled cultural scene, Germany was suddenly portrayed as the embodiment of evil.

The Germans themselves were seen as inherently militaristic, their previously admired philosophers and musicians held responsible for nurturing delusions of grandeur; the language of Goethe and Schiller reduced to the screaming voices of non-commissioned officers.

Such wartime stereotypes have proven to be extraordinarily resilient. Sixty-five years after Hitler’s death in the bunker, Germany remains a Dead Zone for tourists from English-speaking countries, with the possible exception of the Munich Oktoberfest, where, year after year, tens of thousands of English, Irish, Australian, and American tourists congregate in search of a “genuinely German” experience with traditional Bavarian costumes, oompah bands, and copious amounts of beer.

Winder’s wonderfully perceptive book attempts to counter these oddly outdated perceptions of Germany and its inhabitants by recovering elements of German culture that are deeply buried in the rubble of the Third Reich. The book tells, in 15 chronologically ordered chapters, the story of the Germans – starting from their notional origins in ancient times to Hitler’s seizure of power – interwoven with anecdotes and observations collected during Winder’s 20 years of travelling through Germany.

The title of the book takes its cue from Tacitus's Germania, that classic account of the German tribes in the first century. But this is where the parallels end. Tacitus's Germaniawas written as a criticism of contemporary Roman society, which he contrasted unfavourably with the "authentic" Barbarian hordes of the North, and it took nearly 14 centuries to be rediscovered and cherished, primarily, for all the wrong reasons, by German nationalists in search of the "origins" of their nation. Winder's book is different and it is unlikely to find its way into the libraries of German nationalists. In terms of structure and tone, this book owes far greater debts to Heinrich Heine's verse-epic, Germany: A Winter's Tale, a satirical journey through the German lands. Just like Heine, Winder cleverly interweaves personal travel experiences with wider critical reflections on German history and culture.

Winder’s journey begins in the gloomy woods of the Teutoburg Forest where German nationalists of the 19th century located the origins of the nation: it was here, they claimed, in the crushing defeat of Varus’s armies at the hands of insurgents under the command of Arminius that the German nation, untainted by “decadent” Roman civilisation, was born. Through a characteristic romantic-nationalist invention of tradition, Arminius became “Hermann the German”, just as Spartacus involuntarily became a hero of 20th-century Communism.

As Winder ploughs through German forests and mountains, we learn about romantic writers such as ETA Hoffmann and the Brothers Grimm, and their folk-myth worlds, which were inspired by these landscapes. Winder’s journey continues through the Middle Ages, with visits to medieval Nuremberg, home of Dürer, and the Wartburg in Thuringia where Martin Luther translated the Bible and started a revolution. As he walks through a modern German landscape which holds innumerable traces of the Middle Ages, Winder reflects on Charlemagne’s Empire, Emperor Barbarossa, and the Teutonic Knights, who founded such great cities as Danzig, Riga and Reval that have long ceased to be part of Germany.

Even though Winder’s story ends in 1933, this is not an attempt to white-wash German history and Hitler looms large in the book. Almost every book chapter ends with a reference to the Nazis in order to show how they hijacked and perverted older German traditions. Quite appropriately, the book ends in the Munich Hofbräuhaus, once no more than a popular beer-hall before it became the venue of many Hitler speeches in the lead-up to the Third Reich.

It would be naive to think that Winder’s book will change the way the general public in Britain views Germany and its inhabitants, or that it will prompt a new generation of Englishmen to give up their annual holidays on the Spanish Riviera for a hiking trip in the Black Forest. The author himself displays no such missionary zeal and the book benefits from that. It can only be hoped that it will be read by many and that it will be recognised for what it is: a witty, thought-provoking account of Germany’s various histories, cultures, and oddities.

Robert Gerwarth teaches Modern European History at UCD and is director of UCD's Centre for War Studies (warstudies.ie). His publications include The Bismarck Myth, as well as Twisted Paths: Europe 1914-1945, and Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain, all published by Oxford University Press