How Western Is Germany? Russia Crisis Spurs Identity Conflict

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/conflict-with-russia-raises-buried-questions-of-german-identity-a-963014.html



Many Germans feel a special bond to Russia. This makes the Ukraine crisis particularly dangerous for Berlin because it raises important questions about the very nature of German identity. Are we as deeply rooted in the West as most believe?

How Western Is Germany? Russia Crisis Spurs Identity Conflict
An Essay By Christiane Hoffmann
April 09, 2014 – 06:26 PM



The only reason my German grandfather survived as a Russian prisoner of war was that he had a beautiful singing voice. He had been drafted into the Volkssturm militia in 1944, during the final phase of the war in which the Nazi party recruited most able-bodied males into the armed forces, regardless of their age. The Russians captured him during the Siege of Breslau and he was taken to a labor camp, where he was forced to work as a logger.

There was barely anything to eat and he said the men died like flies. Every now and then, the camp cook would serve my grandfather an extra portion of the water gruel or an additional bit of bread because he had such a nice voice. At night, when he would sing his songs by the fire, the Russians would sit there as well, passing round the vodka bottle, and his voice would literally bring tears to their eyes -- or at least that's the version of events passed down in the family.

Right up to this day, Germans and Russians maintain a special relationship. There is no other country and no other people with which Germans' relations are as emotional and as contradictory. The connection reaches deep into German family history, shaped by two world wars and the 40-year existence of East Germany. German families still share stories of cruel, but also kindhearted and soulful Russians. We disdain the Russians' primitiveness, while treasuring their culture and the Russian soul.

'Tug-of-War' of Emotions

Our relationship to the Russians is as ambivalent as our perception of their character. "When it comes to the relations between the Germans and Russians, there is a tug-of-war between profound affection and total aversion," says German novelist Ingo Schulze, author of the critically acclaimed "Simple Stories," a novel that deals with East German identity and German reunification. Russians are sometimes perceived as Ivan the Terrible, as foreign entities, as Asians. Russians scare us, but we also see them as hospitable people. They have an enormous territory, a deep soul and culture -- their country is the country of Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy.

[exboyfil]

1. Well maybe they can conspire to cut up Poland again