(Jonny Goldstein doing his Evard Munch impersonation at the Reichstag)
I just got back from a brief trip to Germany to visit a relative. Look, I’m Jewish, so it’s no shock that the German brand does not resonate totally positively for me. I had a kind of multi-pronged discomfort with brand Germany that I have never felt for any other brand, not even Nestle, Union Carbide, or Exxon.
Let’s take it one step at a time.
Trains:
Just being on a German train creeped me out. Made me think about relatives of mine who might have been transported on German trains to concentration camps. Of course this is reinforced by documentary and fictional TV, film, and print works I have absorbed during my life. I have soaked up way more Germany hate than your average US citizen. You should have seen the Third Reich Reenactment day at my Jewish Summer Camp. I’m serious.
The German Language:
schnell.wav
(This is a Jonny Goldstein original recording, based on war comics I used to read)
There’s no escaping it, evil Nazi Germans when portrayed on movies and TV tend to speak…German. And most of the Germans I have seen on TV and in Film are evil Nazis. Thus, I have developed an association between the German language and evil Nazis. I know that this is not fair. I in fact have German speaking relatives who I love dearly. But the negative brand association came about before they came into the family, and it sticks.
German Accented English:
German accented English screams Nazi to me, even when the person speaking it is not torturing someone with medical tools, as above.
Dates:
From a positive brand engagement perspective, you don’t want to remind me of dates between 1933 and 1945. When I went by a building that had the construction date 1935 on it in a German town, it rubbed me the wrong way.
I had the pleasure of drinking a few beers with Chris Abraham and John Brownlee in Berlin. I was a little low on Euros, so they picked up the tab. Thanks fellas! Very fun, smart, guys. I got the impression that they really like Berlin, and there is a lot to like. Berlin has got that nice combination of decadence, good pastries, and affordability. Here’s some a video of Chris talking about why he likes Berlin:
Hey, I enjoyed Berlin too. But it also gave me the willies.
I took a bike tour of Berlin with Fat Tire Bike Tours. We checked out various historical and cultural landmarks, Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall, and inescapably, various Nazi era sites. We rode our bikes over the site of Hitler’s bunker, and swung by the Reichstag.
There was a funny looking stone sculpture outside the Reichstag that looks like a Flintstone Era bike rack. When we mentioned it to our guide in an attempt to lighten the mood of our bike tour, it turned out that each stone memorialized an individual parliament member murdered by the Nazis. Argggh.
Germany sunk some positive hooks into me too.
1) The trains may have creeped me out, but they were clean, frequent, and, yes, on time
2) Great pastries
3) Great hot beverages (spiced wine, coffee, hot chocolate)
4) Lack of beggars and homeless people
5) Friendly enough
6) Great beer
7) Pretty buildings
I left the country with mixed feelings. The current incarnation of Germany in many ways is less screwed up than the USA. There’s universal access to health care, they have lots of bike paths, and they have uniformly superior baked goods.
They also have a very disturbing history which includes murdering and incinerating my relatives. I doubt I will ever reconcile these crosscurrents, but I know I will be back, both to visit my living relatives who reside there, and to keep picking at this scab.
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10 responses so far ↓
Jonny Goldstein Was Poor But Sexy in Berlin < Chris Abraham // Dec 5, 2008 at 6:43 pm
[…] I was lucky enough to be a part of Jonny’s German Par-Tay. His take on Berlin? “Hey, I enjoyed Berlin too. But it also gave me the willies.” Fair enough. We spent a night carousing in Berlin with John Brownlee at The Bird over many beers. Was a good time had by all. And, as Jonny always says, jonnygoldstein.com! Related Postslinks for 2008-11-28My First Article for AdAge Global Idea Networklinks for 2008-11-29links for 2008-12-01links for 2008-11-26Hungry, Hungry Ghost’s Last Show EverDo Lotteries Offer Hope or Prey on the Poor?Firebrand Television For the LadiesKim Cattrall’s Too Sexy for this Car, Too Sexy by FarMy Single Speed Has New Fenders These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
Mongo // Dec 5, 2008 at 8:07 pm
The other cool thing about Germany is that they have a nationalized composting program.
A downer for me is the very strict adherence to rules and norms, which can be a plus to some and in some cases (e.g., it can be good to have strict adherence to the rule of “no killing” but it is hard for a native NY’er to have strict adherence to the rule of “no jaywalking”).
iconjohn // Dec 8, 2008 at 9:55 am
Gotta come clean Jonny and admit that Berlin as a city has held my fasination since I saw the movie Cabaret nearly 40 years ago. I separte the 3rd Reich from the land they ruled much like I separate all the European lands that the Romans conquered. German history goes back centuries.
Many good German people who opposed Hitler but I understand why you may feel this way. Thanks for posting.
jonny goldstein // Dec 8, 2008 at 10:04 am
@iconjohn yeah, I know. German history is a big multilayered cake. Not only did many Germans oppose Hitler, but Germans suffered horribly from Allied bombing and especially the from the devastation wreaked by Soviet troops.
NahumG // Dec 8, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Growing up with many German and East Europeans Jews, I always looked at German as the language of high culture first. The horror stories I’ve heard from survivors (some of whom were immediate family members) and Holywood movies could not erase the cultural aspect of German. My father who lost his parents, sisters, nieces and nephews in Auschwitz and the like had a Volkswagen in 1950! So, did his brother. “The Germans”, they know how to build a car.”
So, no wonder that I feel at home in Germany, at least because of the familiar culture. The only trouble I have is with old people who might have collaborated with the regime in their younger youth. The Germans I know and associate with are most of the times quite nice. Given all of these, I still understand the attitude of many American Jews towards Germany.
My approach is that the Germans who were born after or at the end of WWII have done nothing and do not have a reason to feel guilty for their parents. however, they inherit the state with both its good things (culture, history, means, etc.) and its bad things. They have to make sure though that the bad things are not repeated, that the WWII criminals are brought to justice and not getting a state pension for their “service”, and that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generations of Holocaust survivors are compensated for the inflicted damage (yes, there are some claims that the 2nd and 3rd generations still suffer from mental problems more than the general population).
jonny goldstein // Dec 8, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Nahum.
I knew “Yekkes” in Israel, and they are as German as the Kaiser was! And Jewish too. So obviously “German-ness” is not evil.
You had actual exposure to German people and culture growing up. I had exposure to media (in many forms) about Germany which focused heavily on the Holocaust and the Nazis.
So that was my introduction to German culture, unmixed with actual interaction with actual Germans and actual German culture.
That’s not totally true—I was friends with a German girl in Junior high school, and she was a sweetheart.
But mostly I was absorbing pop culture fodder about diabolical Nazis.
Jimmy Craichead // Dec 9, 2008 at 4:51 pm
And one last thing, Hitler was from Austria. Nice conversation.
David Miller // Jan 4, 2009 at 12:24 pm
The current train of thought (so to speak) for me runs over the current economic crisis and the unlikely rise of Hitler through a number of unfortunate events. Without the economic collapse that hit Germany particularly hard beginning in 1928 maybe all that shit would not have happened.
And today, most of us know that things are going very, very wrong but we will never admit that we could ever end up like Nazi Germany. And this is the fear. If we want a change, a revolution, history has very mixed results but leans heavily to the bad side for revolutionary results.
There is no evidence that we have actually evolved. And Americans are as violent and militant as any culture in history by a long shot. And dare we compare Israeli militancy with Germany’s past? Have we become the enemy? Quite the horror all around. . .
Jonny // Jan 4, 2009 at 12:44 pm
David,
I hear you. A repressive government that controls the media can get people to do some really horrible stuff—as in Rwanda. US citizens are no more immune to manufactured consent then Germans were. Look at the way we were manipulated into invading Iraq.
It’s irresistible to compare Israel’s actions to Germany’s, but I think that any reasonable comparison finds the stories very different. Take for example the kind of routine dissent that takes place in Israel:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052348.html
I think a culture of free speech is the most important safeguard of human rights.
David Miller // Jan 4, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Good link. Looks pretty grim.
I heard an interview with an anti-war Israeli film maker the other day who said that he is strangely supported and fully subsidized by the state. They got rid of supporting anything political outside of the commercial, corporate, capitalist mainline in the U.S. years ago. Grim indeed.
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