Adolph Schalk’s The Germans
Part 2

The Berlin Wall in 1986. Divided Germany may have been the plaything of foreign powers, but it perhaps remained more truly German than the country which goes by that name today. (Image source: Wikipedia)

2,996 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Schalk describes that when he first came to Germany in the 1950s, he flipped on the radio and got not German commentary or classical music, but AFN (Armed Forces Radio) belting out some jazz. It was part of what he describes as the great American inundation. He shifts back to the influence of those Germans who settled in America in the eighteenth century, and their philosophical hopes for America’s revolution. As Goethe said, “Amerika, du hast es besser.” The large-scale German immigration into the United States in the nineteenth century is noted, as are the fears of the existing white Americans of being overwhelmed, as some jested, such as when whiskey would be displaced by lager beer. Certainly German immigration played a major part in the US Civil War, where Germans flocked to the Union cause. In my native Missouri, the German preponderance in St. Louis helped keep the city and state from joining the Confederacy. In the nineteenth century, Americans respected German universities and education (we happily adopted the kindergarten), but the twentieth century wiped out much of this benevolence.

There was also a class preference. The upper class in America favored Britain and France, while the working class liked Germany. Countless Americans who were stationed in Germany have a positive memory of their time there. In the First World War, my grandfather, who had fought on the Western Front in the US Army, was part of the occupation forces in the Rhineland after the Armistice. He always had good memories of the Germans. On the other hand, he couldn’t stand the French.

Of course also one must consider Jewish opinion, which tends to influence the upper classes. Schalk even found out there is an actual day honoring German-Americans, Von Steuben day, which is celebrated in mid-September in memory of the Prussian officer whose simplification of military drills aided the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

In St. Louis, a German-settled city if any, there is a statue honoring Von Steuben, a modest memorial that was moved from the park proper to a gated area by the reception hall, since the P.C. administration had worries honoring a German soldier…even one who helped save America’s ass in the Revolution. Maybe it’s time to dump Oktoberfest and bring back Von Steuben.

In the 1950s, Germany had a great affection for America. I think Schalk overdoes this affection, but there was a readiness to become a willing ally. The tensions over Berlin, from the airlift to the Wall going up in 1961 bonded Germans to America. We were the gallant cowboy, keeping the Soviets at bay.

English became popular, and Schalk notes Germans anxious to absorb new American authors, jazz, and American freedom, from liberty to blue jeans. JFK was idolized by many; the time of Kennedy’s assassination marked a high point of German-American friendship, soon diluted by Vietnam.

Why did things change? Germans put hopes on detente with the Soviet Union. There was always a longing for some kind of rapprochement, especially since Russia held the key to German reunification, which, despite being dismissed by so many experts, remained a deep hope with Germans, as shown by the overwhelming vote for it in 1990 when the Berlin Wall fell. Aside from George Bush, no one in NATO really wanted a reunited Germany. Margaret Thatcher especially was open about her doubts, and Germans were glad to see her go. On the other hand, there was open enthusiasm for Gorbachev — much more so than for Reagan. Signs on German streets read “Gorby” much like later signs would read “Welcome Refugees.”

Certainly, Germans in this period feared the Soviet Union and wanted the material prosperity and freedom of the west, but in many polls, Germans really wanted to be neutral. Sweden was their preferred model. Alas, geography forbid this.

Much of America’s influence was cultural (or, as a Mexican friend of mine sardonically retorted, sub-cultural). German TV was overrun with American shows like Einsatz Im Manhattan (Kojack), and Detectiv Rockford. Hollywood stars easily shoved German actors out of the way. For example, German TV paid an astronomical amount — over 100,000 Deutschmarks — simply to have Sammy Davis, Jr. perform.

The media infiltration of Germany was actually planned. During the early occupation, the Americans implemented a rule where a major percentage of of all German media must be non-German; a subtle way of keeping German nationalism from making a comeback while flooding the German market with American films. But, as Schalk noted, it was, at least according to him, necessary for democracy.

Certainly, in Germany as much of the world, American cultural domination was reflected in the obsession for blue jeans. There were European imitations, but of course Levi’s was what was demanded.

This was true on the other side of the Iron Curtain. I remember GIs who went to Berlin packing their bags with Levi’s, assured of black market prices when they went into East Berlin (under the four-power agreement, western troops had unlimited access into East Berlin).

Meeting Russian troops in the city, GIs had shown me Soviet belt buckles, uniforms and the like traded for jeans. “They fuckin’ love us, man,” one guy smirked to me.

East Germany, always thumping the tub against soulless American imperialist consumerism, offered a thoughtful 1968 novel by Ulrich Plenzdorf, Der Neuen Leidern des Jungen Werther., an updating of Goethe’s famous story of modish youth and obsessive love adapted to East German mores. His Werther, seeking freedom, moves to Berlin, becomes part of the fetishism many had for western life denied them. He gets a pair of jeans, writes a poem in praise of them (“Blue Jeans, Yeah”). He tries to invent a better paint gun but electrocutes himself. Werther’s original suicide had to be ruled out because suicide was ruled unacceptable in East German writing. Suicide was western, a result of its decadence, and anti-socialist.

Certainly in the east, there was a longing for Western goods. East German kids called the West “Where all the things come from.” Schalk noted that scarce supplies of fruit in the east led to an almost obsessive longing for bananas. When they appeared at the local market, bananas were immediately sold out, and banana pudding was soon on the menu in homes.

When the Berlin Wall came down, many West Berliners went in with armfuls of bananas for presumably banana-deprived East Berliners. Turks simply brought bananas in and sold them.

But was West Germany the most Americanized country in Europe? Gillo Dorfles in his book Kitsch stated the Italians were the most Americanized people in Europe. Fellini’s La Dolce Vita seemed to echo this, where the Un-Werther-like protagonist, Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), is spiritually attached to western drift, glitz, showbiz…the Hollywood Weltenshauung.

West Berlin rated a special chapter, as it was, for all intents, a third Germany. It was the one created by the four-power allied agreements, remaining a relic of 1945. The Berliners discovered a nascent heroism during the 1949 Berlin blockade, and in the fifties kept up the front of defiant, free Berlin. They were nicknamed Die Insulaner…The Islanders. They became a kind of Hollywood all their own. The CIA was all over West Berlin, and used force and coercion many times to get their way. In postwar Europe, CIA agents in Berlin called themselves the Cowboys, while their quieter, more subtle agents in Vienna were nicknamed the Choirboys.

But by the 1970s, the Berlin of Cold War defiance was decaying. There were streets named John Foster Dulles Allee and Lucius Clay Allee, early Cold Warriors barely remembered in America but officially honored by the Berlin community. Berlin had ceased to be heroic. Schalk saw a city where most of its industry had moved westward. The city was subsidized by the Federal Republic with a colony of civil servants ordered to live there. The Bundeswehr couldn’t recruit there, so Berlin became a haven for draft-dodgers and conscientious objectors. There was a large artistic, bohemian, and — for want of a better word — weirdo element that tried to keep the old, crazy Berlin of the Weimar Republic going, the world of the musical Cabaret, but even this seemed lackluster. By the 1970s, the hedonistic freedom of the Weimar era had degenerated into non-stop porno theaters.

More disturbing were the increasing amounts of Turks flowing into the city, especially filling up Kreutzberg. Berlin became the most Turkish city in Germany. Berlin was by then a city that had no purpose, except to offer its neon-sign consumerism to defy East Berlin. East Berlin — drab, functional, and historic — at least had a purpose as the capital of East Germany. West Berlin had nothing. Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, Berlin lived off past glory, always ready for a screen test that never came.

The Allied powers kept it that way. They were interested in maintaining Berlin as an “outpost of freedom” and listening post on Soviet and Warsaw Pact units. . I think it also gave the British and French one last bit of revenge to see a vital German capital humbled. I noted the official music of the US military was always big-band music of the 1940s, and even the Bundeswehr’s Luftwaffe orchestra offered “Der Bigband Ton.” The Freies University in Berlin, founded in 1948 by dissident faculty and students escaping the communist ideology forced on Humboldt University, had by the seventies become a hotbed of radical Leftist protests and fierce riots, matched by equally nasty riots in the barracks between black GIs and the MPs as Black Power swept through the military.

West Berlin’s problem was existential, because Germany itself was unsure of what it was. As one man said, if West Germany was a country without a scene, then Berlin was a scene without a country.

This fragmentation of a cultural center was done on purpose in the Federal Republic. Adenauer despised the Berlin-centered life of the old Reich, and kept the West’s centers of power separate. The financial capital was Frankfurt, Karlsruhe was the center of the justice and court system, and Bonn was the capital, a minor university town with vague memories of being Beethoven’s hometown. Germans called it the Bundesdorf, the Federal Village.

Federal officials did a lot of traveling to each of these three centers. This was almost medieval in its dispersion of power. It was, of course, also to help make West Germany democratic. Whatever West German unity existed would be in NATO and the Common Market, safe, controlled channels.

When Germany united, Berlin got a sudden facelift and jolt, and once again became a world capital. The Allies left, and they aren’t missed.

Schalk felt obliged to discuss race relations in Germany. It was a slender two paragraphs, since there was hardly any race problem because Germany was overwhelmingly white. In the 1970’s, race meant blacks. The U.S. military had the only significant black population, and there had been racial fights like the aforementioned riot in Berlin, but these troubles didn’t spill into the German community. A black civil rights activist found German bars that wouldn’t admit blacks. A woman, having a black family next door, complained to Schalk about “every time I look out the window I see black,” but the racial unity of Germany then was prevalent everywhere. It was the Germany I was stationed in, and yet there were Ur-Merkels who were concerned Germany was “too white,” and it needed a cosmopolitan population to —  you guessed it — fight fascism and spread democracy.

Schalk’s period of study, from the immediate postwar period to the mid-70’s, captures when the Federal Republic of Germany was at the top of its game, being the accommodating industrial powerhouse and banker for Europe, dishing out millions for development and a required amount for “reparations.” It was the time when Germans were not allowed to be national except at soccer games, and the only real open national feeling they could openly express was for the Deutsche Mark (The Mark had no political figures…instead were faces from Durer’s paintings, which was a nice touch). Germans were always expected to pay and pay…Jews, the third world, Jews, a clean environment, and, yes, Jews.

German guilt, such as it is, hasn’t changed with reunification, and in fact is embedded in the nation’s structure. The invasion of foreigners into Germany became a flood and it is not allowed for them to put a stop to it or deport these invaders en masse…that would sound like nationalism, and that means Nazism.

What has developed is a national apathy that has rendered the German population helpless onlookers to their own displacement, and has become a phenomena across western Europe.

Schalk’s The Germans is a handy period study of West Germany in its prime, full of anecdotes and impressions when the Federal Republic was not too wrecked nor too guilty; everything was just right.

I’m reminded of Franz Prestel, a German friend I knew at college in 1973 before I joined the army. Franz was from Regensburg, studied at my university, and I met him when I was in Germany, spending a week with him when I visited Wurzburg, where Franz continued his studies in engineering.

Franz explained to me that, while he admired German history and culture, he thought the Federal Republic was really the best period for Germany, where prosperity and political balance had been properly maintained. Franz admitted he admired the efforts of East Germany to rebuild itself, and found their cultural and musical programs very engaging, but, as he laughed, their political messages were all lies.

Franz was thoughtful. He’d served in the Bundeswehr’s Luftwaffe, and we met at a pub to say goodbye to a friend going to serve in the Bundeswehr. In the old days, Germans called up were said to be going to the Prussians. Now they were going to the Federals. I was impressed with the restraint and pleasantness of these young men, such a contradiction to the usual Hollywood image of Germans.

It’s odd to recall how accepted Germany was forty years ago. Some Americans said they planned to retire there, as it was a happier place to live than most of America. A TIME cover of the period proclaimed Germany was perhaps the best country in the world with its blend of social justice, wealth distribution, political responsibility and industrial and technological advancement.

This happy, contented, responsible Germany seemed to come under attack in the nineties

When Jews began a never-ending campaign demanding more reparations, German acknowledgement of guilt, and more restrictive laws on hate speech and anything that even had a whiff of National Socialism.

I’m disturbed by Germany today. It seems the world of Franz has been replaced by a

Society engulfed in a new, Euro-dictatorship. The German economy, the pride of so many Germans, was simply destroyed by the sabotage against the Nordstream pipeline in what was an obvious American effort. The German guilt that was played up then has, since the nineties, exploded in a relentless hammering of German existence. I say post-eighties, because it was in the Clinton years that Jews ramped up the reparations. It seemed every other week there was a new demand by the Jewish community for more money, and Holocaust survivors popped up every week.

Others joined the feeding frenzy. Greece demanded wartime reparations, despite German business spending millions to upgrade the Greek highway system to allow a faster and better flow of EU commerce. As Rick Steves, the TV travel host said, this allowed cooperation and prosperity for both countries. But not enough for the Greeks. They wanted billions in reparations.

Last year, the Poles joined the crowd, also demanding billions in wartime reparations.

There were, to me, disgusting efforts to traumatize Germans, such as an NPR report where, in Berlin, German schoolchildren were forced to take names of Jewish schoolchildren who died during WWII and cherish their memory.

I think of the wave of rapes over Germany by the new “refugees.”

When German reunification occurred in 1991, I was overjoyed, but it seems as if it only opened a new kind of corporate, Euro-tyranny. I noted soon afterwards, Jews flooded back into a newly re-united Berlin, almost all of them from eastern Europe and Russia, this matching a simultaneous surge of oligarchs into Russia where Boris Yeltsin oversaw a new plutocratic class sap Russian wealth into their coffers.

German wealth wasn’t sapped, but a new class of Germans beholden only to the EU state enforced repressive measures, “Green” policies began to retard German industry, and

The continual flooding of foreigners along with ignoring their lawbreaking and obvious inability and interest into becoming one with German culture. Turks, who have always been a large minority that really never acclimatized themselves to European culture, nor ever wanted to, made Youtube videos about how they hate Germans, despise them and their culture…yet keep staying on and taking checks for welfare.

The new American inundation is now culturally accepting the LGBTQ IA community,

A “community” imported into Europe under a strange American compulsion.

As Jakob Dreizin, the YouTube gadfly, reported some months ago, a friend of his was in Germany and showed photos of an LGBTQIA flag, its tutti-frutti colors waving from a German government building above the German flag. As Dreizin joked, “When you fly that flag, it shows you’re under Uncle Sam’s boot.”

This simply isn’t the Germany I knew decades ago. I seem to be watching a country who motto isn’t Deutschland ueber alles, but finis Germaniae.

The Germans is a reminder of a not necessarily better Germany, but a balanced one. The Federal Republic may have been under American control, but there were at least pretenses made, referring to West Germany as an ally and friend. Now, it is simply a vassal. Adolph Schalk faithfully, perhaps obediently, portrayed the Germany of the period.