Refugees and ‘Germanness’

In the past few weeks, I’ve been tempted to say something once unthinkable for my generation: I’m proud to be German.

It’s been almost a month since the waves of refugees began arriving here, and still, thousands of us are flocking to sports halls and makeshift camps to help them. It reminds more than a few of us of Emma Lazarus’s famous lines, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” which greeted many Europeans when, a century ago, they were the newcomers. Old Europe has become New America.

Still, though tempted, I won’t say I’m proud to be German.

There are deep reasons for this reluctance, but they all boil down to one nervous question: Have we, the newly most powerful state in Europe, learned an appropriate language to convey our convictions and values to others — both our European neighbors and the hundreds of thousands of Muslims we are taking in?

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, accuses Berlin of “moral imperialism,” and he is not the only one to hold this view. Although the truth is that it was merely a moral imperative that caused Chancellor Angela Merkel to temporarily open the borders, it is right that the exaltation at our train stations and sports halls will soon subside. The next challenge ahead, to integrate all the newcomers, will be enormous.

“German thoroughness is super, but now German flexibility is needed” — that is the slogan of the hour from Ms. Merkel. And this country may indeed be able to accommodate the influx with speedier housing construction. Yet offering the migrants an emotional home will prove harder. For this a third virtue is needed: an attractive idea of “Germanness.” Unfortunately, we have very little experience in explaining to other people who we are, without sounding angry or chauvinist.

Why? Because ever since the mania of the Nazi era, we Germans have been highly suspicious of collective feelings. Never again do we want to be seduced by an imagined national greatness, or even national identity. The result: We have never found a relaxed, let alone inviting identity.

Concerns like that might sound strange to American ears. This is because the United States has always been a walk-in nation. Sure, immigrants never had it easy there; nativism only changed form over centuries, from the anti-Irish Bowery Boys to the anti-Mexican Donald Trump. But anyone who settles there could at least claim to be American.

Germany offers no easy-access national feeling of this sort. On the contrary, many Germans, namely the liberal-left from the 1960s generation of Joschka Fischer, have long felt so at pains with their nation that they promoted multiculturalism, for the sheer purpose of not having to be left alone with their strange countrymen.

Luckily, those days of self-hatred are over. But still, compared with America’s self-confident image as a highway to freedom, German identity is a scary old building with thick doors, multilayered staircases and deterringly dark cellars.

When an Irish friend living in Berlin said he was considering taking German citizenship, I asked how he planned to deal with the little downside of this affiliation: helping shoulder historic responsibility for the Holocaust. Startled, he said he would have to think anew.

Germany can never be to Europe what America has been to the world. Our borders with nine neighboring states are like a skin, highly sensitive to the multiple reactions our movements may cause. Nevertheless, there are times when we shouldn’t twitch, but should stand firm.

Just as we need to find the right words to transport nonnegotiable ideas like equal rights and equal respect for women, or the separation between state and religion to people from Afghanistan, Eritrea or Syria, we should make clear to Mr. Orban and others what European values mean, in our view: among other things, the right to claim asylum, no matter if you are Muslim or Christian.

No doubt, Europe will be strained by the ongoing influx, both financially and culturally. How, for example, will we deal with a husband who won’t let his wife attend community meetings? How do you react to a schoolgirl who refuses to shake a boy’s hand? How do you make clear to people who grew up in failed states or dictatorships that the government here is not an enemy, but deserves trust? And will we have the guts to separate real refugees from the free-riders, and send them home?

The goal is to do all this in a way that is firm, persuasive, even argumentative, but also respectful and, to the extent that we can be, accommodating.

We might actually discover a little pride in clarifying to many asylum seekers that our most amazing achievement is neither our welfare system nor our national soccer team. Already, Salafist groups are trying to recruit young, shaky immigrants, telling them that Islam is the most fulfilling idea of all. These extremists must be stopped, just like the neo-Nazi gangs who set refugee housing on fire.

Yet, the #refugeeswelcome movement has been glorious, and we shall never forget these precious moments of heartfelt sympathy. But besides our deep hearts, we need our heads, and we need self-confidence. New Germanness, put in one sentence, first and foremost means: You don’t need to be a native; nor should you be naïve.

Jochen Bittner is a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

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