Über alles, but nice

Germany was an empire, a mishmash, a dictatorship, then a shipwreck. For the two decades since reunification, it has at last been a normal country. But it is no sooner normal than it is thrust back on parade. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has emerged from the financial crash of 2008 the unchallenged impresario of the eurozone.

She rescued the currency from disaster last year and salvaged the Greek economy from bankruptcy. She may yet have to do the same for other members of the club. Her country bestrides Europe as it has not done, dare we say it, since the 1940s. This time it does so with a more hesitant leadership and with generosity.

To visit the restored capital of Berlin for the first time in a decade is to see a place transformed. The scars of division have been removed. The wall has gone, as have most traces of the Third Reich. The two greatest traumas of Germany's past have been quietly erased from the Berlin map.

In their place the classical monuments of the Prussian ascendancy are reinstated along the banks of the Spree, like grand old soldiers comforting themselves with their memories.

Beyond is a strange, still bruised city, beset by banal postwar architecture.

Berlin suffers from large building fatigue and cobble-stone starvation. It lacks the boisterous warmth of Munich, the sleek plutocracy of Frankfurt and the bustling commerce of the Rhine. Berliners hate being told how inexpensive their city seems, let alone how empty. It is both. Read full article in the Guardian...

From Berlin

Perfect despite their best efforts

“The German model?” Berlin monthly Cicerorecently noted that Germans are struggling to assume this new role that the crisis has draped on their shoulders. Nicolas Sarkozy never tires of expressing his admiration for the German model, Jean-Claude Trichet has called it “exemplary,” and the BBC has named Germany as “the most popular country in the world.” “The Germans of today are not only as efficient and disciplined as ever but also full of passion, well-liked and even a little glamorous,” notes the Berlin monthly. This is a little much for “the ancient land of poets and thinkers where it doesn’t take a Heinrich Heine to steep the landscape in cultural pessimism,” wrote Cicero. “A lot of Germans, intellectuals, artists and critically engaged citizens are downright shocked: 'What about two-tier health care? Child poverty? The miserable state of education?’” Cicero puts its finger on the Germany of today, “that bunker of lamentations” where reigns an “indestructible love of woefulness and endemic suspicion of self,” and finds it high time to accept “the marvel of what has become of the Germans 60 years on, something they themselves have trouble believing: a democracy that is stable and respected throughout the world”. “German but happy? Interesting thought. Stay tuned...”