At 16 years in office, Angela Merkel is the longest-serving German Chancellor since reunification and the second-longest after Otto von Bismarck. Her prudent governance has earned her the respect of many Germans – and mine.
I have some nominal things in common with the famed German leaders. I attended the same university as Bismarck, while I was there, I researched Nazi architecture and wrote a letter to Merkel sharing my term paper with her. Her office replied, with German efficiency, in seven working days, and graciously expressed the Kanzelerin’s best wishes for my studies and future endeavours. I still have that letter.
Naturally, I watched the German army’s tattoo for sending Merkel off in December 2021. It’s a Teutonic tradition dating back to at least the sixteenth century. The farewell party is flanked by soldiers holding lit torches at night accompanied by a marching band. The last time the Wachbataillon held one for a departing German chancellor was in 2005, so it’s not a common sight for anyone living outside Europe.
I wondered if foreign television audiences like myself were reminded of violent events of the past. Perhaps it’s just my unusually intimate knowledge of National Socialist history, the lit torches immediately brought images of the braun Bataillonen (SA stormtroopers) carrying torches to burn Jewish businesses and places of worship during a pogrom. That thought led me down another memory of an interaction I had with a German high school student.
Two Christmases ago, I visited Bremerhaven for the first time as Bremen was one of the few states I had not visited while I was studying in Berlin. As part of my itinerary on the first day, I visited the German Emigration Centre to find out more about the history of the German diaspora. While examining exhibits on the emigration of Jewish-Germans, I overheard a conversation among students.
“Was ist ein pogrom?” The student asked a fellow classmate.
I turned to him and said, “A pogrom is violent action taken against a group, usually Jews,” in less-than-perfect German. “The word came from Russia,” I added.
“Ah-so,” he nodded. “Danke.”
When I set off from my then-home in Geneva for the Christmas markets of Hanseatic Germany, I was not expecting to explain what a pogrom was, in German, to a German high school student. When the student woke up that morning excited to go on a field trip to a museum, he probably didn’t expect to learn about pogroms from some Asian passerby who spoke grammatically incorrect German.
I wondered whether German schools taught enough German history, but I had no doubt that Germany came far enough to distance itself from its militaristic past. Unlike American presidents who return military salutes, sometimes while holding coffee cups, Merkel responds to salutes with a polite nod and a gentle smile. Seems like American presidents have something to learn from Germany and no longer need to return salutes in kind simply because of something Reagan did.
Merkel’s short speech touched upon the challenges of her tenure; the financial crisis, the refugee crisis and now a public health emergency. I was in Germany for two of those three events and found it odd why mainstream Canadian media didn’t report on the foreign response to any of these crises to better inform the Canadian public and politicians of policy alternatives outside of North America.
Sometimes, I think Canadian media is too narrowminded for its own good. If the CBC can’t afford to pay for a foreign correspondent in China, then surely it could come to an arrangement with foreign media outlets to translate their in-depth reports. I occasionally glance at articles from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung, all have excellent reportage on European affairs.
One in ten residents in the Ottawa Valley and hundreds of thousands of people in Southern Ontario claim German ancestry. Any Canadian reporter at least half-proficient in German would be able to pick out good international story ideas from these black-top papers. It’s just a shame that so many Canadians haven’t maintained proficiency in their ethnic languages. So much low-hanging fruit remains unpicked by Canadian media.
I was surprised by the marching band’s song choice, as was German media. Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen, or “you forgot to bring the colour film,” sung by Nina Hagen was the first song, even before Beethoven. Hagen’s song lamented that Michael, a character in the song, forgot to bring colour film to their holiday on the beach. In the song, Hagen describes the colourful scenes that she will no longer be able to review even though she went to an FKK, a nudist beach.
Maybe Merkel picked the song, maybe the marching band picked it for her. In any case, politicians are aware that their legacy is often mired by their mistakes rather than their achievements. Think of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Prince Philip calling Chinese officials wax figures, and John Key with ponytails. She wants Germans to remember the colour during her term of service and remind them to bring colour film with them through dark days ahead beyond the pandemic.
