This is a repost from my previous blog. I wrote this blog when I came back from Germany in January 2009. It’s one of my favourite blogs and thus I am sharing in this blog as well.
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German history and culture has inspired and intrigued me since I was little. I would talk about Germany all the time to anyone who would listen or pretend to listen, memorize the dates of every major event in German history, and only buy German products as much as I could. Then came adulthood and I became less conspicuously obsessed with Germany. However, the influence of that obsession shaped much of my personality and many of my life decisions and it’s only now that I have truly begun to realize it. My obsession with German cars is what got me into engineering. My admiration for German efficiency is what inspired me to become good at time management. My fascination with German organizational excellence is what motivated me to be organized with all my activities. I could go on forever.
Interestingly, my love for Germany did not spawn from reading books or watching documentaries or meeting Germans. It all started in the 1994 soccer world cup in which I was impressed by how organized the German soccer team was. They were never the most skilled, flashy, or exciting. However, they were very organized, and played really well together as a single unit. To me, that was much more impressive than individual brilliance. Juergen Klinsmann became my favourite soccer player and I remember hoping he’d one day beat Gerd Muller’s and Pele’s records for most goals scored in a soccer career.
As time went by, I began to love everything German. Boris Becker became my favourite tennis player. I’d drool over every Mercedes and BMW I would see on the streets. (At that time, I did not know much about Audi’s. Today, I drive an Audi and I will happily strip in -30 degrees weather for an Audi). For the longest time, I thought Bon Jovi was German and used to listen to him just because of that. Claudia Schiffer became the hottest woman in the world in my eyes. I would only buy stationary that was made in Germany. I even came up with a German version of my name: Akhmann Badztrudder. I would immerse myself in history books, and remember rooting for Germany in World War I while reading even though I knew they lost the war. I’d flip through pages hoping something would change, history would be rewritten, and Germany would prevail in World War I. I still remember cringing when Bismarck resigned as Chancellor of Germany due to disagreements with Wilhelm II. Now that I am older, I realize how stupid that was.
So I guess this was a long time coming, but I finally visited Germany for a week and a half in January as part of a solo EuroTrip. It seemingly felt like going back to my roots, or some of my roots, to a distant heritage I longed to make my own, to a land that bred men who inspired me, to a nation I wished to be a part of. Setting foot in Germany for the first time, I began to love it even more. Talking with and meeting German people broke the stereotypical image I had of stern-looking, antagonistic German people. In my mind, I had images of a Helga, with long, blonde, braided pigtails on either side that were impeccably symmetric, wearing a white, methodically tailored dirndl dress with a fluffy, white blouse and a matching wrinkle-free apron. She would be quiet, keeping a very straight face, one that had not smiled in days. I had images of a Hans, a tall, blonde haired, blue eyed man who walked fast and made no eye contact. What I saw was very different from that. Those images were replaced with truer images of German people. People who were friendly, helpful, and polite. The women were gorgeous. And what I find most impressive and respect-worthy is the strength and resolve with which they deal and live with their dark history: World War II and the atrocities committed by the Nazi, not just against the Jews, but also against homosexuals, communists, and even ordinary Germans.
It’s important to get a few facts straight here and not judge the German population of the 1900s to the 1950s as we were not in their shoes, under the extraordinary circumstances we hope no one would have to live through again. Firstly, Germany did not start World War I. Everyone wanted that war to happen. France wanted to avenge their loss of land in the Franco-Prussian war. Britain was threatened by the unification of Germany and its rapid advances in technology, especially in naval technology. Every major European power already had military plans created for World War I and was spending most of their national budgets on their military years before the war started. There were atrocities committed by both sides. However, at the end of World War I, Germany was asked to take the full blame for World War I, pay back a ridiculous amount of money every year as reparation, and was asked to disarm. They could not build any technology that could be used in battle. BMW started off as an aircraft engine company but was banned from producing aircraft engines and therefore decided to become an auto manufacturer.
This had a deep economic and social impact to the German people. Nonetheless, Germany began to revive its industries and began to produce goods of high quality and low prices. It was exporting its goods to many countries, including the USA. Times of prosperity were here. However, in 1929 the stock market crashed and Germany was hit hardest due to the debt it accumulated to be able to pay back the reparations. Unable to feed their families, Germans had to pick between two ideologies: Nazism or Communism and the Nazi party was seen as the party more likely to help their bottom-line. They attained 24% of the seats against 19% attained by the communist party. The rest is the history we all know. The Nazi party created concentration camps to imprison all their political enemies, thus achieving absolute power. Through the Enabling Act, Hitler was able to strip German civilians of basic rights. 25,000 volumes of books conflicting with the Nazi ideology were burned in public. World War II started and millions of people, including Germans, were tortured and humiliated by the Nazi’s. Throughout this time, many Germans tried to stand up against Hitler but were quickly eliminated. Most Germans, and the entire world, did not even know about the concentration camps until after the Nazi’s were defeated. I went to Daccau, the first and most significant concentration camp, where young Germans, 16-18 years of age, were trained to terrorize prisoners. An unknown number of people died there, and towards the end were cremated as the Nazi’s were running out of space. It was the one of the most unnerving experience I have had. Those were the darkest hours of German history.
German people, not just of today but those that lived through those times are not to blame. They were starving, freezing, and made the best judgement they could, given their extraordinary circumstances at the time. Americans voted George Bush in 2000 AND 2004, not knowing he would do what he has done over the past 8 years. George Bush opened concentration camp (Guantanamo Bay) and passed the Patriot Act stripping civil liberties, strikingly similar to the Nazi’s actions.
The difference between the Germans and the rest of the world is how they have dealt with this dark history. They deal with their history very bravely and openly. Every other country in the world has tortured and killed innocent people but has hid it from its future generations. Every superpower in the world has had concentration camps but the Germans keep them alive as a reminder. As a way to say, “Yea we fucked up. But we won’t fuck up again”. Every high school kid in Germany is required to go to concentration camps at least two times so they can learn from past mistakes and not repeat them.
I went to the book burning memorial, to the Jewish memorial, to Hitler’s bunker’s site, to Nazi ministry buildings, to the Nazi headquarters. I went to the street were Hitler first marched with a band of armed Nazi’s in his failed coup attempt, to the spots were Nazi’s shot prisoners at point blank distance, to the cells where men who stood up against Hitler were imprisoned, to the churches that gave refuge to the Jewish population when it was oppressed. All of these sites are kept alive as reminders to learn from. And this is not just for German people, but for all of us to learn so history doesn’t repeat itself. The German parliament building today, the Reichstag, has a glass dome through which the public can look down and see the parliament as a symbol that the German people will always be watching.
Even after World War II, in which most major cities were bombed and 70% destroyed, the German people had to deal with having their country divided and Germany as we know it today is only 19 years old because the Berlin wall fell and West Germany reunited with East Germany in 1990. Since then, Germany has continued to progress and now is back to being an economic superpower and a leader in environmental sustainability. Out of all the countries I visited in Europe, Germany was the only one with recycle bins. In England and France, I sometimes had to walk for a few blocks to find a regular trash can. And it wasn’t until 2006, when the soccer world cup was hosted in Germany and a brave and young German soccer team was fighting its way to win the world cup, that the German people began to wave their flags publicly. Ironically, the team’s coach was Juergen Klinsmann, my favourite soccer player when I was little.
While I got to see a lot of Berlin and Munich, I feel like there’s still so much more I want to see and learn and I plan to go back to Germany within the next 2 years, to visit cities I haven’t been to, to explore little towns I have never heard of, and to return to Berlin. Berlin! Berlin was, by far, my favourite city in Europe. The architecture was amazing and diverse. Old, historic, restored buildings stood right next to and blended with sleek, modern, glass buildings. Hundreds of memorials were dispersed around the city, each with a strong message and a lesson. I was more impressed by Kurfurstendamm (Berlin’s shopping/entertainment district) than I was with Times Square. Because the city was divided for so long, East Berlin grew much different from West Berlin; East Berlin became more artsy while West Berlin became more modern. Therefore when Berlin was reunited, both parts of the city began to fuse into a new unique Berlin. A large city with entertainment and attractions increasing faster than one can experience, inhabiting a diverse population with people from over 195 distinct countries, and boasting a history that would take a lifetime and more to absorb.
I love Berlin. I think I left my heart in Berlin.
