Lunchtime
White asparagus with ham (photo by abnehmen.net)
Many Germans take a true lunch break. Not the American-style, “Grab a bite and keep working,” or “Let’s have a business meeting with food,” but one whole hour with truly no work. Most days I eat lunch with a group of colleagues at the main cafeteria of the university, whose 50,000 students don’t show up every day for lunch all at the same time (fortunately). There’s a rotating selection of four main dishes, including everything from American chicken nuggets (which get the supposedly English name “Crossies”) to Bavarian dishes like white asparagus with ham or pork filet with dumplings. These are displayed on a monitor as you enter the cafeteria so that you can choose which line to get in, but food terms are not my strong point, so I can usually only recognize about a third of each descriptive compound word, which probably averages about 20 letters long. Thanks to a little icon, I always know at least what kind of meat I’m getting, but I may be a bit fuzzy on the details of whether it’s baked, fried, or hovering in a soup. There’s no meal plan; rather, students, faculty, and university-associated guests who choose the cafeteria all pay for their university-subsidized food by weight or by set quantity using a pre-loaded cash card. My colleagues always spot one another or me if someone doesn’t have a cafeteria card or runs out of pre-loaded cash. Then we find a spot big enough for the group (which can be a bit tough on the busier days of the semester), wait for the others to find us, and chow down.
I got a little carried away about the food system, but this post isn’t actually about the food. It’s about the conversations we have, which, as much as any other regular event in my day or week, constitute my German Culture 101 course. Sometimes the conversation is about the subjects we research, but often it has nothing to do with work. Here’s where I learn how holidays are celebrated, what’s going on in the political landscape, or the latest happenings from the show “Tatort,” a German police mystery series that has been aired continuously since 1970. We talk—and we laugh. Forget the stereotype of Germans as serious. One of the many reasons I long to learn German better is to be able to laugh with my colleagues over lunch or coffee. Yes, our lunchtime conversations are typically in German, which means I do a lot more listening than talking (a good thing, for sure!). By the end of lunchtime, it’s a battle to keep trying to dissect the fast German sentences flying by instead of cruising off to la-la land.
One day recently, a colleague and I happened to be the only ones around the office at lunchtime, so he and I enjoyed a great one-on-one conversation, this time in English. That chat really put into perspective a lot of the cultural comments and political atmosphere we’ve observed here. So here’s the first installment of “Things I Learn at Lunchtime.” (You never know, there could be more later.)
Holidays and Wars
It started off with exchanging notes about holidays, which can get a little thick around the beginning of May, between Labor Day (May 1), Father’s Day (May 5 this year), and Mother’s Day (May 8 this year). May 1st used to be the festival known as “May Day” (see Wikipedia on May Day in Germany and Walpurgis Night), which still has some traditional remnants in Bavarian villages, where there are Maypoles that one must “guard” (i.e., stand around and drink beer) so that they aren’t stolen by neighboring villages. But May 1 became International Workers Day or “Labor Day” in many places in Europe, and has remained such in Germany despite the fact that it was the Nazis who officially instituted it here. When I mentioned that I saw big celebrations for May 1st when I lived in Ukraine, my colleague took me off guard by asking about the celebration of May 9 (Victory in Europe Day).
East German postage stamp of Hans and Sophie Scholl, the siblings who led the White Rose resistance effort (image source)
World War II is not an everyday topic of conversation here. On the one hand, many people don’t want their culture or their nation to be defined by the war or the Holocaust. Many want to distance themselves from the American stereotype that sees everything German through a Nazi-era lens. (How many movies, novels, and history books could I cite here?) Notwithstanding the presence of very small neo-Nazi groups, Germans have so radically transformed their nation in the last 70 years that the spirit behind the words “never again” (associated with Holocaust remembrance) seem to be woven into the fabric of the society. With this in mind, we don’t usually broach the subject with our German friends. On the other hand, the war does seem an omnipresent background to so many ideas and institutions. When I checked an old book out of the library a while back and flipped to the title, I noticed a stamp that had been crossed out. When I recognized it as a Nazi seal, the realization came over me that, of course, the Nazis had taken over the entire university in the years leading up to the war. Outside the building where I work is a memorial to the society of the “White Rose," a group that resisted Hitler within the university.
So, getting back to our lunchtime conversation, when I was asked about May 9th, I mentioned the celebrations that take place every year in Ukraine, but thought that perhaps I had also gained enough trust to gently ask about feelings here on that day. This turned into a discussion of German national pride. In my culture, national pride is usually considered a good thing. Yes, it can be taken too far, but to not be proud of one’s country carries connotations of suspicion and cowardliness. But on this day, I learned that, for many Germans, national pride is something to be feared. It was, after all, a weapon at one time—a dangerous rallying cry.
The Flag and German Football
Football jersey of the DDR (East Germany) with hammer and compass emblem (eBay auction photo -- this item sold for $95.65)
Not least among the symbols of national pride is one’s flag. In the U.S., I see the flag everywhere—in front of public buildings of all kinds, on t-shirts and license plates, in yards and on front porches. But in Germany, until 2006, my colleague told me, displaying the flag was rare. I thought about where I’ve seen the German flag in the city. Almost every day, I bike through downtown, yet I can only think of one public square and perhaps two government buildings were the flag is displayed. My lunchmate explained to me that the main university building flies it, but only on official holidays (or at half-mast for commemorations). I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen it hanging in a window. Just below our apartment window are a bunch of garden plots, some of which have flagpoles. One can see the flag of Bavaria and the flag of Munich, but not the German flag. My colleague explained that in the years following German reunification, if you wanted to go jogging, you might wear sportswear from East Germany (GDR) with the hammer and compass emblem, but not that of West Germany or the reunited Germany. For many years people have felt that to fly the German flag, outside an official context, is to display national pride, and national pride can be dangerous.
A sea of German flags at a 2006 World Cup match (Photo by Arne Müseler, CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
The other sign of national pride is, of course, the football (soccer) team, and it was when Germany hosted the World Cup that the reticence about flag-flying began to change. As the New York Times reported,
“Indeed, the chief indicator of the national mood is that almost overnight, once the World Cup began and all those people from other countries arrived with flags and T-shirts in their national colors, it became almost mandatory, certainly desirable, to respond in kind. Children were shown on television the other day standing under black, red and gold umbrellas; grown-ups are painting their faces in the national colors, either their whole faces or showing a discreet removable tattoo on one cheek. Even underwear is being printed with the colors of Germany. The display of the flag is topic No. 2 in this country these days — No. 1 is the World Cup itself — talked about in editorials and on talk radio, with people calling in to say that, finally, they feel proud to be German.”
(See also this report from the Guardian on the 2006 World Cup Final.)
The German national team’s 2014 World Cup victory in Brazil only reinforced these feelings. Yet still, my colleague says, Germans in the university hesitate to identify themselves as fans of the German team. One might root for Brazil because of their style of play or England because of their football history, but to support the German team is a form of nationalism.
For European football fans, the second-largest championship, the Euro 2016, begins on June 10 in neighboring France. Germany is ranked third after France and Spain. What’s the prognosis for German national pride this year? As a preview of what may be to come, check out these two commercials by Lufthansa and Mercedes, both of which overtly support the German team, but in very different ways. (While you’re at it, see if I’m right in observing that neither of them shows a single German flag anywhere.)
Lufthansa lightheartedly plays off the England-Germany rivalry, referring to Germany’s four World Cup wins versus England’s one.
Mercedes airs a much more diplomatic message to France, not without tones of solidarity regarding the tragic attacks that occurred November 13 last year, during a Germany-France match in Paris. (More from this ad series.)
We’ll have to wait and see how the story of national pride plays out in German football this time. For viewers outside Germany, it may help to remember that German fans may be torn this year between supporting their national team and taking sides in debates over the ongoing refugee situation and the political backlash that has resulted from it. (See, for example, “German Court Orders Beer Hall to Host Anti-Immigrant Party Event” and “German Coalition Partner Dips Below 20 Percent for First Time in 24 Years.”)
Banner photo: World Cup Finals, Stuttgart, Germany by Félix Ozeray