#the REASON he's reading about language is because of his inability to learn a now-extinct dialect

[latefrequencies]

tfw you realize a character you’re writing about would, under the circumstances in which you have them, absolutely develop a niche interest that you share

[readyaiminquire]

The Other Germany.

This is my attempt at a shorter post, giving some insight into a particular phenomenon or experience I’ve come across. While the overall intent is to shed some anthropological light on these questions, it is also more of a quick-fire approach and commentary on how I might read the topic. In this sense, it’s more the opening to a discussion than a fully formed argument. I hope you enjoy!

Almost a year ago I had a discussion over a drink or two with a good friend of mine. The focus, for some reason, had turned to Germany. He maintained that one of the issues with Germany today is their inability to be proud of what Germany, and by extension Germans, had managed to create. Germany as we know it is not what Germany was, but they were collectively saddled with a sense of guilt for their genocidal policies during the 1930s and 1940s. Even worse, he felt, was that Germans saddled this guilt upon themselves - and the great tragedy in the situation remained that they themselves failed to understand that they had changed. There was nothing inherently 'wrong' with them, at least not anymore. They should embrace their contemporary identity, and let go of their crippling guilt.

I didn't really buy this analysis at the time, nor do I now - but at the end of the day it was no more than a discussion in a pub, so it faded from memory as soon as it was over. Until very recently, that is. It was recalled from some memory bank just the other week when one of the leading figures of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam, decided to voice a similar sentiment, albeit with far more tasteless comments accompanying his analysis. In essence, he criticised Germany for taking their history with the Holocaust too seriously, remarking that "the extremity of a trauma can create a paralysis in actually learning the lessons from it." At the end of the day, he argued, the Holocaust was "just another genocide" in history. Hallam’s comments have already been debunked as absurd, incorrect, and displaying a complete misraeding of history, so I won’t dwell on them here - and he has since apologised for them.

What I do want to talk about is the - apparently recurring - feeling that Germany exists under the weight of its own guilt, stopping them from taking certain actions, even in the face of reason. The guilt of what previous generations had done is simply too ingrained in their culture - it cannot be overcome. I think this is a fundamental misreading of the contemporary understanding of German subjectivity (i.e. what it means to be German). This is also an angle that has  been far less discussed. To assist me in painting my particular argument, I turn to Rammstein.

Before we reach Germany however, we must first take a detour to Slovenia - specifically to raccoon-turned-human and sometimes-philosopher-always-entertainer Slavoj Žižek. Žižek makes in interesting point in the film A Pervert's Guide to Ideology with regards to Rammstein and Nazi imagery - this will be our starting point, so I will quote the script in full:

"The German hard rock band Rammstein are often accused of flirting, playing with Nazi militaristic iconography. But if one observes closely their show, one can see very nicely what they are doing, exemplarily in one of their best known songs: "Reise, Reise". The minimal elements of the Nazi ideology enacted by Rammstein are something like pure elements of libidinal investment. Enjoyment has to be, as it were, condensed into some minimal tics, gestures which do not have any precise ideological meaning. What Rammstein does is it liberates these elements from their Nazi articulations. It allows us to enjoy them in their pre-ideological state. The way to fight Nazism is to enjoy these elements, ridiculous as they may appear. This way you undermine Nazism from within."

Let's unpack this for a moment. What Žižek is arguing is that the certain fundamental and base behaviours we intrinsically associate with Nazism - large groups of people, a sense of uniformity, German militarism, certain uses of language and so on - are in fact so base that they only acquire ideological meaning if such meaning is ascribed to them. It then follows that by decoupling these behaviours from their ideological meaning, you undermine the ideology itself by effectively removing how it is articulated. All clear so far?

This process of decoupling meaning from articulation is exactly what Germans have done with ‘Germany’. That's a strange sentence, but bear with me. Earlier this year Rammstein released a new album, and it's first single "Deutschland" has often be read as a industrial metal ode to German history, though one which paints all of its history as dark, bloody, sometimes arcane, but always with the undercurrent that it is not worth romanticising. Though I think this reading is largely correct, I would extend upon it and say that it is love letter to what I'll call ‘Modern Germany’. It is often said that there are two kinds of history: The 'academic' history that investigates the past, and the social history - which is what we remember. In terms of identity and belonging, what matters is what is remembered, not the truth of how things were. We must therefore imagine an 'Old' Germany starting perhaps with the unification in 1871 only to culminate in the crashing and burning of the Third Reich in 1945.

In this sense, Germany's history collapses into a quagmire of sorts best symbolised by the rise and leadership of the NSDAP. Given the consequences faced by Germany post-war - economic strife, denazification, partitioning between East and West etc. -  the unified country that came out in 1990 was very different from the one that crashed and burned in '45. So different, in fact, that they are understood, culturally and conceptually, by Germans as two ontologically separate entities. In other words, ‘Modern Germany’ simply isn't ‘Old Germany’.

The most telling portions of Rammstein's "Deutschland" are probably these:

Deutschland, mein Herz in Flammen

Will dich lieben und verdammen

Deutschland, dein Atem kalt

So jung, und doch so alt

Translating to:

Germany, my heart is in flames

I want to love you and condemn you

Germany, your breath is cold

So young, yet so old

Followed by:

Deutschland, deine Liebe

Ist Fluch und Segen

Deutschland, meine Liebe

Kann ich dir nicht geben

Again, translating to:

Germany, your love

Is a curse and a blessing

Germany, my love

I cannot give you

The rejection of the Old Germany and all that it conceptually stood for, in essence becomes the most patriotic thing that can be done with regards to Modern Germany. In this sense, Modern Germans define themselves in opposition to the ‘old’. It is important here not to read this as a rejection of this history - for it by no means is - but rather as a rejection of what Old Germany stood for, and what pre-1945 Germany means to Germans today. By turning 'loving' Germany on its head and refusing to fall into the same nationalistic hole, you are simultaneously displaying the greatest respect and love for what Germany is today. In this sense a rejection of Germany becomes the highest display of love.

This might read as a contradiction, and to an extent this is sort of the point. It is most certainly why it’s often misread or misunderstood. Anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro has called this process "equivocation". Equivocation is, in essence, the ability to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time because they are internalised as two ontologically different things. Another scholar, Martin Holbraad applies this concept to the Cuban revolutionary project, where he found that levying harsh criticism against the failures of the revolutionary project had become the most revolutionary action one could do - Rather than rejected the revolution, something Holbraad argues few Cubans do, through the process of equivocation, criticism and revolutionary fervour had become two ontologically different thing.

There are, in this sense, two Germanies. Rejecting the past Germany with its roots in ultra-nationalism, racism, white supremacy, and genocide, is the highest profession of love for the modern German state and culture. By rejecting this background you are effectively saying that Germany is no longer this past, and there is no place for this form of nationalistic understanding in their modern society. Though, this equivocation is also what often leads to things being so clearly misread by the outside world. Germany isn't being crushed by its own guilt, instead it is decoupling the ultra-nationalistic articulations from what it means to display any form of patriotic affiliation with Germany today. It is a continued vow to move onwards, not to regress.

And few countries boast the same promise.