Of the last #30years in #germany - post #berlinwall

30 years after the Wall 

It's been a lifetime since the Wall's been overcome, destroyed, torn down... and still, some things haven't changed... many foreign people living in Germany still don't think they belong: maybe because they never will... why is that? Why is the German sense of identity so precious, and at the same time, so sensitive, so difficult to comprehend and to acquire?... it's always about the identity, about the search for answers to the question "who am I, who are we?": that's what at the core of every unsolvable matter, that struggle to belong to place and/or group that makes one feel proud: in the end, a matter of ego can trigger serious crises.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was not really the start of a reunification - I believe it could be better described as an annexation of East Germany. And the worries West Germans were having about the migration flows from the East are the same that torture many today, in the middle of a neverending refugee crisis. 

The "hospitality culture" - a term known (and overused) in Italy as "cultura dell'accoglienza" - was mostly forced upon a nation that just wished to get over the crimes, tragedies and shame of the Second World War and the Nazi regime as quickly as possible. There was too much guilt to go around. People preferred to go about their business and forget the past (considering that, more than hospitality, there is a general sense of duty and responsibility in terms of WORK, traditionally seen as a panacea and raison d'être). In the 60s and 70s, the arrival of the guest workers from the than poor Southern European countries, but more so the permanent stay of the Turks or Italian literally tore up the social tissue, still pretty damaged.

As for East Germany, the DDR (GDR), it was a communist "wonderland" stuck in a regional anachronism - just like the rest of the Soviet satellite states, where the mere triumph of the socialist doctrine annulled and then deleted the allegiance some of these states had shown to the Nazi regime (e.g. Hungary, Romania).

Those 50 years of communism delayed the impact of multiculturalism East Germany would sense and gradually start to resent in the decades following the fall of the Wall - up to the point of almost no return, represented by the appearance of a political force able to get those right wing "world views" right into the Parliament: I'm referring to the AfD, of course. 

However, ever since the German society has started to come to terms with that hateful Nazi past, many people (not generalizing, of course) have had mixed feelings about it, its consequences and the Jews in general. 

There is a high degree of tolerance in West Germany and Berlin right now, 'multi-kulti' has become the export nickname of the capital, but that doesn't come close to a real acceptance of all immigrants... the differences of all sorts, even when not mentioned, play an essential part in everyday life. 

White Europeans have less trouble "integrating", especially if they speak the language properly, thus earning the respect of their German speaking fellow citizens. 

However, according to the representative of the Jewish community in Berlin (I interviewed some time ago), we can speak of a high percentage of latent antisemitism in Germany. 

Whether it's Germans suffering from the eternal stain of the Holocaust on their identity "coat of arms" or descendants of the Arabic immigrants thinking they're showing their solidarity to Palestinians, Jews are still being discriminated, synagogues are still being threatened - the attack in Halle proves that once again (!); and just as the neo-Nazi from Halle, lots of right wing extremists go not only for Jews, but also for Muslims (they now associate with Islamists on a mission to create a pan Arabic/Islamic culture). 

And still, after so many years of multiculturalism in the capital, how can it be that immigrants of all cultures and religions tend to relate with other immigrants more efficiently than with true blue "Berliner", born and raised in a city that has seen it all in the last 100 years? I guess it's not so easy to learn the lessons history has to offer... and let's say Berlin has gotten too international and too gentrified to still be in need of a national and historical identity, being thus able to remain almost unaffected by the ascension of the right wing ideology. 

But what about the former East Germany? I'm afraid the culture shock has been too great to recover from: the return to a national identity that has actually never been national (except for the Nazi epoch) is in reality the way towards an artificial construct that Germany theoretically represents (something resembling the Oktoberfest pics of blond and beer drinking folks), a country free of immigration, self confident, self sufficient and homogenous, totally separated from the idea of internationality - in other words, a uchrony: what Germany might have been (in the eyes of the AfD) if it hadn't been for the Nazi epoch and the Holocaust. 

That is why the AfD has been so successful: because it revived a certain identitarianism, making people ignore and delete that shameful part of their country's past instead of really coming to terms with it and opening themselves to the world...

Yes, 30 years have passed alright... and apart from some changes in the setting, on the administrative and political level, the mentality of a certain part of the German society hasn't really changed. 

The balkanization goes on, just like in other European  countries, where the Right has become stronger; as for social justice - it has only been put on hold, while the 'Fremdenhass' was diluted by the AfD and added in very small quantities to the daily diet of their electors. 

The question is: how long until the full effect kicks in? The symptoms have already started to manifest themselves... Only time will tell...