Also by Matthias Matussek on openDemocracy: My personal VE Day (May 2005)
This article is adapted from one in Spiegel Online (10 August 2005)
These days, it should be easy to leave London. The cosmopolitan and bustling areas of Edgware Road and Notting Hill seem like battlefields, and whenever my family descends into the Tube, a sort of nervousness ensues. Its time to get out, right?
In truth, saying goodbye is hard. I have spent eighteen months in London as a correspondent and have made numerous friends. I also have fallen in love with the city. Above all, I am a journalist and leaving now feels like exiting the theatre in the middle of the dramatic fourth act.
What farces, what triumphs, what tragedies we have had in this past year and a half! The intrigues and wars of succession in Westminster, the sex scandals surrounding ministers, Conservative journalists, and soccer players, Michael Gambon as Falstaff and, of course, the abolition of poverty through a Pink Floyd concert in Hyde Park.
And now, at the very end, this city has hit me where it hurts. There was the golden hour of the Olympics celebrations in Trafalgar Square and then, just a day later, an inferno of terror on three underground trains and a bus. Heaven and hell.
London has changed in these months. The whole nation has changed. Its tone of voice is different: more triumphalist, more defiant, more irritated. And everywhere there is the nagging question of what holds it together. What is Britishness?
Multiculture and mockery
For me, the answer is encapsulated in an afternoon I spent on the lawn of Buckingham Palace five weeks ago surrounded by men in penguin suits and ladies in big hats. Queen Elizabeth II, giving her traditional garden-party, nodded and smiled at her Commonwealth family, worked the reception line, recognising Lords and commoners, those in Indian saris, Anglican vestments and African burnusses. It was the epitome of politesse.
Suddenly the niceties were drowned by police sirens, claxons and helicopters beyond the garden. It was Thursday 21 July, the day of the second terror attack, and London was in a fever. Nobody knew whether there were new fatalities and the hunt for suspects was running at full speed. Yet there on the lawn, hundreds continued to wait in front of the royal marquee, hoping to watch the queen sip tea.
It was a scene full of irony. Despite the frequent allusions to the Blitz spirit of solidarity after the first round of bombs, and the seeming multicultural unity at the queens party, nothing could disguise the ugly fact that it was Britains own children who had initiated the carnage.
And what of the virtues displayed on the lawn? The stoicism, the education, the famous British humour? Long ago, these classic British traits were devalued, not by bombs but by Big Brother, porn, drugs, binge drinking and happy slapping. The island seems to have produced extreme forms of these social ills, though naturally they also exist in France, Germany and elsewhere.
Societies in the globalised world are atomising. Britain, like France and Germany, is indeed multicultural now and many are asking the question: what is it that really binds us? What is Britishness these days? A survey in the Daily Telegraph sought the answer and came up with the rule of law, freedom of speech, parliamentarianism - in fact, a list most developed nations could come up with.
How about economic success? Not convincing. Sure, the country is on a consumer high and the boom is almost as bizarre as the German economic miracle of the 1960s. But I don't consider any of this glue conducive to group spirit, and it is particularly ineffectual for those left out. What else appeared on the list? Apparently the cornerstone of British Britishness is resistance to Nazi Germany. This, too, fails to convince. What meaning does that hold for a Somali immigrant? Or for youths from Leeds?
In truth, these days, Hitler is worth little more than a lame joke. I recently left a restaurant with the author Ian McEwan and his wife and ran into a well-known director. Ian introduced my wife and me as friends from Germany and the Oscar-winning director raised his arm in a Hitler salute and roared with laughter. Certainly, it is ridiculous to reduce Germany (Goethe-Schiller-Beethoven!) to the twelve years of Nazi rule.
In this age of globalised markets, nations function like brand names. They all consider themselves tolerant, proud of their inventors, explorers and martial leaders. But there are differences. You buy hi-fis from the Japanese, cars from the Germans, wine and cheese from the French. Americans are generous, and the Brits have a sense of humour. Such differences are stubborn, persistent and they exist for good reasons. British advertising, for example, is truly funny. The radio comedy Absolute Power is electrifying, Ricky Gervais of The Office fame hilarious. And journalism on the island is true entertainment. There is little as lively as the cultivated hooliganism of daily columnists. With them, I can get into really good scrapes.
I admired the courage of Anthony Barnett from openDemocracy, who put my controversial VE-day article on the website. I loved the common sense and sharp wit displayed by Minette Marrin in the Sunday Times in response to some of my more critical pieces. Ditto for Miles Kington in the Independent. And there was fair reporting of my views on the British obsession with the Nazis (the war is over!) by Elizabeth Day in the Sunday Telegraph. I also cant forget Steve Crawshaw, who reminded us Germans in an essay for Der Spiegel that we need to show more humour, and Anne McElvoy, the brilliant deputy editor from the Evening Standard whose editing brought the best out of me. Anne and Steve spent years in Germany and know more about the German soul than I do.
Humour and hatemail
My plea now to all my British colleagues? Dont lose your sense of humour in these times of tension! Dont think too hard about what Britishness is and whether you are liked or not. I have a very good reason for saying this. After London landed the 2012 Olympics, I joked that this country had succeeded in everything (Done away with poverty! Won The Champions League! Home to Rachel Weisz!) and that it would now probably become a danger to world peace and attack the German coastal region of Schleswig-Holstein. Not that it would be a shame about Schleswig-Holstein, I added, but it is a matter of principle.
It was a joke. But some media folk treated it as a declaration of war and there were even demands for the recall of my brother, who is the German ambassador in London. The sketch was published on Spiegel Online shortly before the suicide-bomb attacks of 7 July and, needless to say, the debate about it ended that day. Not for the Daily Mail, however. Their battlecry? London is in agony and the Germans are savaging Britain!
I called the writer and asked him why he wrote it. He said: To hurt you guys. Well, mainly he hurt my brother. (The Mail, incidentally, has a twisted relationship with Germany. It deeply resents everything German these days, whereas in the 1930s it held true affection for the Germans and especially the Nazis and the Führer).
Anyway, my brother cringed at the bad publicity. He is a diplomat and I am not. We are in different lines of work. We are two different people. I am a bit more careless, especially with my jokes. Yet he was held accountable for them. Now he no longer comes by for breakfast. I suspect he has barricaded the door with that old cherrywood chest of drawers he has. Instead of dinner invitations I now receive brown embassy envelopes containing the hatemail he has been receiving since my article appeared. Blue, scribbled letters with restless lines, punctuated with slogans in capitals, like GO TO HELL!
Royalty and rationality
One thing that disturbed me about the Daily Telegraph survey on Britishness was the queens poor placing, somewhere in the middle. If there is one thing for which I envy my British friends, it is the queen. I was enchanted on that afternoon in the gardens at Buckingham Palace. What grand historic echoes! With what dignity a vanished world was defended, with little more than arched eyebrows and perfect manners. Oh, how I long to be a subject of this queen! In fact, I would give up all my tasteless jokes and become a loyal subject if she would have me. Perhaps she still has claims to Hanover? If she could take us over, then the danger of war over Schleswig-Holstein would also be forever put to rest!
Until that happens I am sure the Brits and I will continue to have amicable arguments about our nations. I still believe the Iraq war is a catastrophe for combating terrorism. I still dont think you do away with world poverty by hosting a really cool concert in Hyde Park. And I dont for one second think that a British prime minister really wants to save Europe.
In the end, English-German spats and boastings are a wonderful pastime. Certainly, national pride is important, debates about national idiosyncrasies are important, patriotism is important. But beyond that lies the growing awareness that we are all connected and all vulnerable. None of us can solve a problem as multifaceted as terror alone. In that sense, today, we are all British.
The London bombs have shaken everyone, including Muslims. But except for the usual suspects, the British response has been a restrained one rather than a witchhunt. The inheritance of the British empire is, after all, a multiracial family with all its schisms and disagreements, tensions and diversity.
As such, Britons are as shocked by the murder of a young black man in Liverpool as they are over the death of the bombing victims or of the innocent Brazilian mistaken for a terror suspect. What I have experienced here in the past few weeks is, to put it simply, the spectacle, the dignity and the power of democracy. As Joachim Fest has observed: The British have a talent for remaining coolly rational in public.
That is why I can say with particular feeling right now: Great Britain, I will miss you.
