American Views Abroad

 
Denial is a powerful tool to escape from reality. If eight people, in the case of Muegeln Indian citizens, are verbally harassed they don't belong there, then hounded and chased and have to run for their lives after being beaten up by a group of fifty, you would think the townspeople would wake up the next day and ask some serious questions about what went wrong. Reading various media reports indicate this did not happen on any appropriate scale. Instead, the town feels it has been dragged into the mud by the media and politicians. What exactly happened, who provoked whom, isn't the point. Rather it's 50 vs 8. The sheer number involved should have people on alert. Why weren't cell phones immediately used to call the police? Letters to the editors of various newspapers show outrage at politicians demanding more civil courage of ordinary citizens, which came across as out-of-touch and arrogant. Expecting individual citizens to stand up to a mob is unrealistic. Yet, there is no explanation for not calling the police at once these days. No one can argue that whipping out a cell phone and using it would cause any physical harm. Of course, the added dimension that these were Indian citizens being so abused created headlines about the anti-foreign hostility of the mob and possibly the town. The problem, however, is more than just anti-foreign. It's anti-anything-not-us.

Since my husband's mother was born near Jena in the east and he grew up in Hamburg experiencing first hand a divided Germany, he felt a certain personal responsibility to help out once the Wall fell. He reached out to engineers on the other side to help them understand the new playing field, invested in two businesses 'over there' and was eager to venture out and see the more beautiful parts of the Baltic coast as well as the smaller towns inland. Yet, he has never felt at home there or particularly welcomed. The first trip up to Wismar, a town that was then so utterly in ruin and today a success story in how it has been rebuilt, ended up proving to be par for the course. We fled that Sunday in 1990, after a few hours there, because we simply couldn't take the total neglect of everything, including an almost appalling apathy in the people sitting and staring out their open windows, almost faceless. In 1998 we spent some time on Usedom with its pristine beaches near the Polish border. Again and again my husband remarked how he felt more comfortable walking around Cape Cod in the US than in Usedom. From body language to haircuts (the heads of so many men there seemed to be almost bald) to clothes we both felt we stuck out like sore thumbs. There was an unmistakeable impression on our part that we didn't belong there, the beach was not ours to play on. We have had a lot to do near the Mueritz national park and the lake of Mueritz and we both now notice an inner weariness whenever we have to go there. Irregardless of good will in wanting to accomplish something, we keep hitting up against another wall.

Of course all this happened in the more rural, isolated, very empty small hamlets in the north east. Leipzig on the weekend immediately following 9/11 showed us another side. The concert for the victims in the Thomas Church where Bach spent many years was very moving and well attended. Everywhere there people expressed their sympathy and there was an openness and a flair we appreciated. Ditto Dresden a few years later. West Germans are often arrogant when it comes to the Saxon dialogue; however, to foreign ears it sounded open, friendly, and welcoming.

Throwing more money around or appeals to the mob on how their actions ruin Germany's reputation in the world appear hollow. Perhaps the ghosts of the past have to be looked at from a different angle and finally confronted.
- posted by Gloria @ 3:59 PM