Isolated and shot down

We (as in 'vee Chermans') have had better days, or so the current main page at the Guardian would suggest.

A message, as it were, from the belly of the beast.

Otherwise known as London.

Thrill of victory

Mainz 05 (which has not been playing so well this season), today, beat Bayern München (which, otherwise, has).

Nice...

Es kann so viel passieren*

I'm far from being either very knowledgeable or very obsessive about football, but I am (for better or worse) susceptible to a benign strain of Lokalpatriotismus, i.e., a tendency to develop a deeply felt attachment to where I live. (By 'benign' I mean that this comes without the usually accompanying animosities against neighbouring towns or regions.)

In any case, that's all by way of explaining my pleasure at yesterday's 2-1 victory by local football club Mainz 05 over Bayern Munich (followed here on the radio; match details in German or English).

This has enabled Mainz's remarkable unbeaten record so far this season, catapulting them to the top of the 1. Bundesliga, to which they are relatively recent arrivals.

As I pointed out before the current season began, compared to other teams in the league, Mainz is a small club with relatively few resources; beating Bayern (in Munich no less) is an event in the national football context.

(Mainz, as ever, even showed its generosity, giving away an own-goal to the hosts shortly before half-time.)

Anyway, in a nicely harmonic convergence, we had tickets last night to see one of our favourite German musicians, Funny van Dannen, who was playing down the road and across the river in Wiesbaden.

And van Dannen was one of the writers of a song made famous (well, at least in these parts) by Die Toten Hosen: the anti-Bayern anthem titled....well, 'Bayern' (lyrics).

Herr van Dannen didn't play this one, though he did play a number of other favourites, such as 'Saufen', 'Vaterland', 'Herzscheiße' and 'Posex und Poesie'.

And a very fine time was had by all.

Like our current economic Aufschwung, there's no telling how long Mainz's football carnival will last.

But still, it's been fun while it's lasted.

*Title translation: 'So many things can happen'

Moral victory

From a comment on the likely membership of the bottom half of the upcoming Bundesliga season in Der Spiegel (my translation):

The real winner of the German championship last season was Mainz, because no other team exceeded their financial potential as much as the one led by Thomas Tuchel. The former second league team had less financial clout than any of the other clubs but ended up in ninth place. That was not only unbelievable but also the greatest success in the club's history.

Just saying, like.

Wir sind nicht nur ein Karnevalsverein!

(Un)just desserts?

A front-page commentary from the current issue of Die Zeit refers to Joseph de Maistre's famous comment that 'every nation gets the government it deserves'.

This would be a rather cruel observation about Germany at the moment, where word has been making the rounds that the Conservative-Liberal coalition in power since late last year is doomed; however, the paper notes with some satisfaction, there is another side to this coin: 'every nation also has the national football team that it deserves'.

This, naturally, would go down rather better here, as -- despite having to settle for third place -- the German team played some surprisingly inspiring football.

Of course, this would be less pleasant, if true, for, say, England and France.

But I'm wondering whether this whole connection between national character and style of play actually holds up.

Just consider the top three teams -- Spain, the Netherlands and Germany -- who played, respectively, with almost inhuman efficiency, brutal thuggishness(*) and exuberant joie de vivre.

None of these, it seems to me, corresponds very well at all with their respective national stereotypes. (Certainly not with regard to Germany, where, say, a relaxed, graceful and easy-going Lebensfreude -- while not unheard of -- is not exactly overabundant. We have our virtues: this is not one of them.)

Which, to turn this back to Die Zeit's politics-football comparison, is, perhaps, comforting: maybe, after all, we don't deserve the government we have.

Nor, one might say at the moment, the trains we have.

But that is another issue altogether.


(*I'm referring here to the final: How does one sing 'everybody was kung-fu fighting' in Dutch?)

Zum Weinen

Scheiße.

Clearly, Spain was a better team.

Good enough to make German children cry.

So, I hope they're happy with themselves.

Still, we can take comfort in those areas where we're still ahead of Spain.

Like, maybe...well...our bond rating.

And we have one eerily psychic octopus.

Whose life, I fear, may now be in danger.

Bad luck, Jungs: well done in getting much further than expected, and thanks for so many fine moments.

Now: let's take third place! (When our Ringo Starr look-alike will again be on the pitch.)

Random associationism

Ringo Starr is 70 today. Happy birthday, Richard! Who'd have thought that you'd outlast (almost) them all?



But maybe it's the power of the doppelgänger? There is, first of all, our cultural materialist friend Terry Eagleton:



But closer to home, there is of course our own bomber Müller, who sadly misses today's match.

Philipp Lahm: centre of the Internet universe

Thanks to Geoff, I'm now aware of the statistics function that Blogger has integrated into all its blogs.

It's only been operating for the last few days, but it seems that the World Cup is having an impact on our traffic, humble as it is (click for a larger view):

What is it about Philipp Lahm that's setting the world on fire?

Is it the eyebrows?

Oh yeah: 4-0 against Argentina!

I had not expected that.

And I expect the people currently driving up and down our street with horns blazing and flags waving hadn't either.

Capture the flag, auf Deutsch

Overheard this morning while driving The Wife to the train station: a radio commentary on the World Cup by a German sociologist who could not (my translation) count himself among those fans who 'who sing the national anthem, bellow the German war cry or wave the black-red-gold flag'.

'I can't do that', he continued, 'after Auschwitz'.

I think my eyes nearly popped out of my head, but, fortunately, I somehow managed to maintain control of the car and to listen to the rest of the commentary, on how good it is that many players in the Nationalmannschaft have an 'immigration background' (Migrationshintergrund), i.e., who are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants.

The commentator's identification with the German team, thus, was only possible to the extent that it was not (in the traditional sense) 'German'.

Now, the German neurosis about patriotism is well known -- indeed, almost legendary -- and it is most acute in well-educated, left-liberal circles.

Those are circles to which I, actually, belong; however, I can't share in the over-the-top Angst about 'Nationalismus'. Admittedly, my own Migrationshintergrund was in a culture with a more, shall we say, relaxed attitude toward patriotism; of course, that could be said about every country in the world other than Germany.

I can't help thinking that some of us immigration-backgrounders might be a bit further along than the German intelligentsia in puncto national identity, as another World-Cup-related story made me think last week.

He will not stand for any ridicule. "I will defend the German flag," says Ibrahim Bassal resolutely, hitting the glass counter three times to make his point. Over the past few days he has been through a lot and what he has experienced has only strengthened his resolve. "I won't let anyone get at it," he adds.

Herr Bassal, you see, is proud of the German team's performance, and he has no hesitation about waving the black-red-gold banner:

"We have hung little German flags outside for years," Bassal explains. But this year, he and his cousins decided they would do something different. They placed a special order with a textile company, and soon a giant German flag worth €500 ($616) was hanging on the outside of the building where Bassal's store is located. Measuring 22 meters tall and 5 meters wide (72 feet by 16 feet), the over-sized banner covers five stories. For Bassal, a German with Lebanese roots, the flag is a symbol of cultural integration. "We live in Germany and we also belong to Germany," he explains.

"We live in Germany and we also belong to Germany." A better and more moving statement of successful integration, you might think, is hard to imagine.

But not everyone, you see, is happy.

Over the past few weeks, ever since the start of the football World Cup, the neighborhood has been the scene of what local media are calling the "Neukölln flag fight." Left-wing activists have called on sympathizers to destroy the German flags which can be seen everywhere, arguing that they are a symbol of German nationalism. There has been a rash of thefts of small flags attached to car windows. Some of those who decorated their vehicles with flags say they now only display the flags when they are actually driving their cars.

As for the giant flag, Bassal and his friends, who have all donated money to the cause, have already had to replace their flag twice. Since they adorned the building in black, red and gold, the colors of the German flag, they have become the target of attacks, presumably from members of the radical left-wing scene, and someone even tried to set fire to the flag.

Ah, the ironies of some ethnic Germans -- whether liberal Gutmenschen or left-wing Autonomen -- casting doubt upon (or even seeking to prevent) the same expressions of patriotism that immigrant ethnicities (often condemned by conservatives for insufficient identification with Germany) are engaging in enthusiastically.

Now, I've become German by choice rather than birth, and experience over my nine years in this country has taught me that I'm far more enthusiastic about Germany than most Germans, most of whom (right, left or centre) seem to think their country is in a state of terminal decline or, alternatively, poses a constant potential threat to the world.

Immigration and national identity are never going to be easy issues (they aren't anywhere and never have been), especially in Germany where remnants of the Blut und Boden tradition linger on; however, a less constipated relationship with patriotism might be a very good thing for this country, not least for its immigrants.

Tomorrow, I'll be joining Herr Bassal and his friends in waving the flag and backing our team, regardless of whether their surnames are Özil, Podolski, Gomez or, yes, even Müller.

(Photo source)

See you in the penalty area!

Having followed The Wife's link to a Daily Mail article on the impending Germany-England match, I was struck not only by the stirring words from Herr Battenberg Windsor, but also by the immediate reference to the war.

The Boer War.

Biggest invasion since Boer War: 20,000 England fans arrive in Bloemfontein

Sigh. [Dammit: they've changed it since I commented. I should always, always, always do screenshots on these things.]

It occurred to me among all this martial breast-beating that there is another association that comes to mind when adding the words Germany + England + Football + War: the 'Christmas Truce' from 1914, when, for a brief period soldiers on both sides of the lines put down their arms and shared some kind words, alcohol and, legend has it, an impromptu football match or two.

The football bit isn't in this excerpt from Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), but it's still wonderful.



I know it's too early for Christmas.

And certainly -- in football terms -- for a truce.

Schland!

(PS: I know that some of the soldiers in that excerpt are Scottish rather than English. But not all of them.)

Straight from the royal horse's mouth

My favourite shitty Britrag cites one Prince Harry doing his bit for an English victory in the historical football clash that will start at 1-6-0-0 today:

I just hope we beat Germany because there has been a bit of a past history between England and Germany, but you know as long as our guys do their best, the country will be hugely proud of them.

Which "bit of a past history" (whatever that may mean anyway) is he referring to, I wonder. The House of Hannover? The House of Coburg Saxe-Gotha? The royal House formerly known as The Battenbergs?

From a monarchist perspective, today's match is merely another family get-together, no matter how plebeian the English players might be.

OK, I think we got the message

44 years of hurt...and with any luck, four more

Quite apart from the sporting relevance of Sunday's England-Germany match, I'm really looking forward to the next few days of commentary from the English tabloid press and from English fans.

Matches involving ze Germans have always tended to bring out their best instincts.

If nothing else, it gives them an opportunity to try out the dimly remembered pidgin German they learned from endless reading and re-reading of black-and-white war comics.

Earlier this month, a Sun article (otherwise full of praise for the German team) responded to Franz Beckenbauer's criticism of England's performance hitherto in the World Cup by referring to him '[putting] the jackboot in'.

Class.

Not that one need be overly sensitive about this stuff, but still: how ridiculous does this verbal goosestepping become when most of those on the German side, with an average age of under 25, would struggle to remember the Cold War let alone the one with Britain's finest hour or two?

With that background in mind, I found this advert from South African telecommunications company MTN as good a comment as any:



As to what might happen a few days hence in Bloemfontein, I have no idea. But I'm cultivating a Teutonic Zweckpessimismus and expecting a Zitterpartie.

But I believe it was an Englander who said, 'Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.'

Schland!



[UPDATE]: An explanation of the above video for non-Germans.

A picture and a thousand words

Oh, yes....



...that pretty much sums it up.

But, still, it was a more dynamic showing (despite the end result) than England.

But all credit to the US for a good show today.

Germans being (musical) Germans

After a long train trip home, I thought a selection of music Made in Germany (tm) might be called for. (Although, these are all a few years old...)

So.



The Notwist, 'One With the Freaks' (i.e., 'Have you ever been all messed up?')



Tomte, 'Schreit den Namen meiner Mutter' (i.e., 'da ist zu viel Krebs in deiner Familie, da ist zu viel Angst in meiner Welt')



Tocotronic, 'Hi Freaks' (i.e. 'dein Gesicht ist eine Welt, deren Umriss mir gefällt')



Erdmöbel, 'In den Schuhen von Audrey Hepburn' (i.e., 'Sie singt stapfend Sachen wie, "If you are feeling fancy free, und ihr Glück endet nie"')



Olli Schulz und der Hund Marie, 'Der Moment' (i.e, 'der Augenblick, in dem du stehenbleibst und nicht mehr wegrennst')



The Robocop Kraus, 'After Laughter Comes Tears', (i.e. La la la la la.)

And, you know, we're going to destroy (in football terms) Serbia tomorrow.

Or not.

I don't know.

But I hope so.

Oh, ja!

What a surprisingly happifying evening (seen in London):

Germany tend to be called "efficient", "robotic" or even "dour". They deserve more glowing praise and it would be a good thing for the World Cup as a whole if some of the other countries were to take note and replicate their commitment to attack.

Weiter so, Jungs!

Birmingham language pledge: Learn German while you drive (into or out of the car park)

German spoken with an English accent is bad enough and I don't like to think what Brum-German might sound like. But according to a report by the BBC, this is exactly what we're going to get - until the good people of Birmingham have sorted out their ticket machines. Which are currently spewing German obscenities at unassuming citizens looking for a place to park their Vauxhalls Opels.

You see, vee haff much moar kanning vays of meking you toalk (Tscherman) than by pleing futbol in bleck shörts.

Winning by losing

The zen of German football is described by Steven Howard in The Sun, where he points out that the team has revealed to us 'the most important quality':

Winning when you are playing badly.

Now that is an approach to life that I can wholeheartedly embrace.

And, now that I think about it, this very same message reminds me of my favourite film.

Why we love Philip Lahm

Via.

See what I mean?


Via.

Safe at home

As a follow up to my brief comments on George Carlin's death, I bring your attention to this wonderful clip (via Norm) in which he examines the linguistic differences between baseball and (American) football.

I think it demonstrates one of the qualities that I was trying to get at in my response to Francis's astute question about what distinguished Carlin from countless other ranters in the media and online.

Although anger and swearing were key parts of Carlin's act, they were not the point at which his talent ended. He was also a subtle observer (and manipulator) of language.

I don't know the rest of the show in which the baseball/football comparisons are made, but I'm wondering: does anyone think they can identify which sport Carlin preferred after watching that?

I have the feeling that partisans of either sport could walk away from that portion of the act and feel confirmed in their prejudices.

(In my experience, the baseball/football divide can sometimes be a very wide one. Declaration of interest: I used to be far more a baseball fan and really had no interest in football. In recent years, however, I have been more open to seeing the merits of football. I am aware of how utterly unimportant this topic is, but I thought I'd mention it...)