No fireworks for the German soul
Oct. 4th, 2006 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
olorielSooo, yesterday was once again our glorious national holiday, Unification Day. Now when you hear national holiday, you'll doubtlessly think of feasts and fireworks and some patriotic displays of joy, right?
Right.
Wrong.
Unification Day is a day like any other day - aside from the fact that we don't have to work - except for the politicians who have the sad job of telling a disinterested people how important a day it is. It certainly isn't hugely celebrated. It was when it was new, of course, back when the Wall fell and expluribus duis was made unum, but that was 16 years ago, and we have grown used to it and celebrate no more (ignoring the fact that other nations have managed to celebrate their national holidays even though their causes lay back in, say, the 18th century).
I'm not a fan of patriotism unless in small doses and on special occasions. Then again, one might think that a national holiday is properly special. Now most Germans have been having difficulties with patriotism since 1945 (when, I agree, it would have been absolutely improper to be patriotic) and generally only manage to be patriotic without feeling guilty when there's a football world championship. At any rate, it's kind of sad that a national holiday goes mostly ignored, especially when it's the rarest kind: Not the glorification of one single person; not the victory of a war; not the memory of a bloody revolution - but the remembrance of a peaceful agreement that few had believed possible and the unification of a country that many had expected to remain sundered perhaps forever. I mean, that should be something worth celebrating without feeling guilty, right?
The only Unification Day that got a really enjoyable celebration that I actually experienced - I was in grade 2 when the unification happened, and in grade 3 when it was remembered, and being far from Berlin didn't see much about the big celebrations back then, not even on TV - was in 2000.
In 2000, Germany hosted the EXPO, the world exposition. As Unification Day generally marks the beginning of the fall vacations (so the holiday gets even more lost, stuck somewhere between two full weeks of free days - for students, at least), I didn't have school that weekend, and somehow, my parents and my godfather and his family had decided to use the long weekend for visiting the EXPO.
It was my second visit to the EXPO, the first having been in August with my class, and I loved it immensely both times. But that's not the point now. The point is that I was there on October 3rd. Now of course, it being the world exposition, the national holiday was dutifully "celebrated" - with pompous speeches and the visit of chancellor Schröder and wife #4 - which I didn't care for much. In fact, we rather tried to escape the pompousness and the holiday.
It caught up with us in one of the huge collective pavillions, namely, the Southern Pacific complex (basically, a big hall where all those little islands of the "Pigs on an Atholl" kind had their little stalls and huts and stuff), where we had believed to be fairly safe.
But no.
Every evening, the representatives of one of those nice little islands - Tuvalu, or maybe Vanuatu; something with Ts and Us and Vs, at any rate - made a traditional fire show. And the impressively muscled, dark-skinned Polynesian had apparently heard that it was the German national holiday, and declared that he'd light the fire and do his show in celebration of Unification Day.
Silence.
He looked around in confusion. "It is the German national holiday, right?"
Well, yes.
"Then why are you all unhappy?"
Good question.
To make a long story short, the fire show was funny and brilliant, and somehow touching; and he made everybody watching clap and cheer and smile, and asked us to sing Happy Birthday for Germany in the end, and we did. It was completely uncontrived and artless and all the more loveable for that. And somehow it was very touching how this Tuvaluan or Vanuatuan or whatever he was was so eager on seeing us celebrate - how he managed to make us celebrate - what our dutiful politicians hadn't managed: Very simple, with a song and a kava toast and a few torches and a small fire.
And because I am too young to remember much about the actual Unification Day aside from my confusion ("The Wall is gone, oh God, the Wall is gone!" - "... wall? Gone? Huh?", because, although I knew about the GDR, I didn't know about the Wall, and the only wall I could think of was that around the lower part of our schoolyard, which made no sense at all), that was the best Unification Day I ever had.
... and that is that.
Right.
Wrong.
Unification Day is a day like any other day - aside from the fact that we don't have to work - except for the politicians who have the sad job of telling a disinterested people how important a day it is. It certainly isn't hugely celebrated. It was when it was new, of course, back when the Wall fell and ex
I'm not a fan of patriotism unless in small doses and on special occasions. Then again, one might think that a national holiday is properly special. Now most Germans have been having difficulties with patriotism since 1945 (when, I agree, it would have been absolutely improper to be patriotic) and generally only manage to be patriotic without feeling guilty when there's a football world championship. At any rate, it's kind of sad that a national holiday goes mostly ignored, especially when it's the rarest kind: Not the glorification of one single person; not the victory of a war; not the memory of a bloody revolution - but the remembrance of a peaceful agreement that few had believed possible and the unification of a country that many had expected to remain sundered perhaps forever. I mean, that should be something worth celebrating without feeling guilty, right?
The only Unification Day that got a really enjoyable celebration that I actually experienced - I was in grade 2 when the unification happened, and in grade 3 when it was remembered, and being far from Berlin didn't see much about the big celebrations back then, not even on TV - was in 2000.
In 2000, Germany hosted the EXPO, the world exposition. As Unification Day generally marks the beginning of the fall vacations (so the holiday gets even more lost, stuck somewhere between two full weeks of free days - for students, at least), I didn't have school that weekend, and somehow, my parents and my godfather and his family had decided to use the long weekend for visiting the EXPO.
It was my second visit to the EXPO, the first having been in August with my class, and I loved it immensely both times. But that's not the point now. The point is that I was there on October 3rd. Now of course, it being the world exposition, the national holiday was dutifully "celebrated" - with pompous speeches and the visit of chancellor Schröder and wife #4 - which I didn't care for much. In fact, we rather tried to escape the pompousness and the holiday.
It caught up with us in one of the huge collective pavillions, namely, the Southern Pacific complex (basically, a big hall where all those little islands of the "Pigs on an Atholl" kind had their little stalls and huts and stuff), where we had believed to be fairly safe.
But no.
Every evening, the representatives of one of those nice little islands - Tuvalu, or maybe Vanuatu; something with Ts and Us and Vs, at any rate - made a traditional fire show. And the impressively muscled, dark-skinned Polynesian had apparently heard that it was the German national holiday, and declared that he'd light the fire and do his show in celebration of Unification Day.
Silence.
He looked around in confusion. "It is the German national holiday, right?"
Well, yes.
"Then why are you all unhappy?"
Good question.
To make a long story short, the fire show was funny and brilliant, and somehow touching; and he made everybody watching clap and cheer and smile, and asked us to sing Happy Birthday for Germany in the end, and we did. It was completely uncontrived and artless and all the more loveable for that. And somehow it was very touching how this Tuvaluan or Vanuatuan or whatever he was was so eager on seeing us celebrate - how he managed to make us celebrate - what our dutiful politicians hadn't managed: Very simple, with a song and a kava toast and a few torches and a small fire.
And because I am too young to remember much about the actual Unification Day aside from my confusion ("The Wall is gone, oh God, the Wall is gone!" - "... wall? Gone? Huh?", because, although I knew about the GDR, I didn't know about the Wall, and the only wall I could think of was that around the lower part of our schoolyard, which made no sense at all), that was the best Unification Day I ever had.
... and that is that.
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Now I feel old!
Date: 2006-10-04 09:39 pm (UTC)Of course (and luckily, I guess!), even as a politically interested and enthusiastic teenager my priorities were not quite those of an adult. I remember being very impressed that Chris de Burgh was one of the musicians who played in Berlin to celebrate that day.
I guess one of these days I need to drag out my old diary and share what I wrote down that day. *cringes* Ich als Zeitzeuge, LOL!
But I wanted to share something else altogether. An American lj friend of mine posted the following comment to my celebratory post (which was not very celebratory this year). I love that comment, so I'm really happy to share it with a German friend:
Re: Now I feel old!
Date: 2006-10-04 09:50 pm (UTC)When I was in Canada back in 2000, the other German exchange students and I were asked whether we could contribute anything to one girl's presentation on the fall of the Berlin Wall. To all our great embarassment, we had all mostly hazy memories as we'd all been 7 or 8 at the time. She took them gratefully anyway, which felt kind of weird. Oh, and we helped her to decorate her paper-maché model of the Wall with authentic graffities. *grins*
I love that comment, so I'm really happy to share it with a German friend...
Awwww! That's so sweet! And funny. *grins*
Well.. I am old ... enough :-)
Date: 2006-10-05 12:27 am (UTC)And thinking of it I still feel goosebumps on my arms.
I remember the days before, the weeks before the opening of the Wall when refugees came to Cologne who left DDR via FDR-embassies. I worked in a bank that time and I remember two young men who came by to open an account. They owned nothing but the clothes on their backs and some money from the state.
Before evening came we had found flats for them and jobs.
I remember one was called Maik - it made me laugh and he said: that's how we had to spell it (Mike).
I remember the tension, I remember the fear, too. There was another "German Holiday" back then. A day to remember a revolution in the DDR that failed. People in 1989 feared that this peaceful revolution with the famous sunday-marches in Leipzig would end in a massacre (like in China a few months before).
And than came the 9th of November and they opened the transit points and people in Berlin could cross the border without written permission from the gouverment for the first time in over 45 years.
I remember well - for the 10th of November is my birthday and that day the headline was: Good Morning, Germany, this is a wonderful day.
Everything after, negotiations, peace treaty, formal unification ... that was nothing compared to that day in November. I still think they should have made 9th of November the Unification day.
But other than that - I thank you for your post, it made me think about it all again and about Germany.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 08:24 am (UTC)That might very well be the best description of how Germans celebrate their national holiday... absolutely lovely!
I must confess that I was surprised to see Germans singing and dancing on the streets during the Soccer WorldCup in Leipzig; Germans, IMHO, are many things - but they're not exactly known for their lovely, open, impromptu celebrations. ;) Being half German, half French myself, I've always viewed the 14th of July as my national holiday to be celebrated, and October 3rd as a very important day to be remembered.
I think Germans still have a lot to learn, after all the things History put them through... and laughing freely, from the heart and without malice or being forced to by entertainers, is one of these things. We'll get there, eventually.
At least, that's what I hope. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 03:21 pm (UTC)