Ken Early: Germany cannot solve the nation’s problems but they can bring a moment of happiness

“It’s madness that a public broadcaster commissioned such a thing. I was shocked that such questions are asked and people actually answer. It’s racist. I feel we need to wake up ... I hope I never have to read such shitty polls again.”

So the Germany coach Julian Nagelsmann responded last Sunday to questions about a new poll in which 21 per cent of respondents had said they would prefer to see more white players in the German national team.

It turned out the poll related to a new documentary from WDR, a regional subsidiary of the national broadcaster ARD. The film is titled Unity and Justice and Diversity, a reference to the first line of the German national anthem, which begins “Unity and Justice and Freedom…” It’s authored by the journalist Philipp Awounou, who himself comes from what in Germany is called a “Migrationshintergrund” – a migration-background.

One imagines Awounou was mortified to learn that what was intended to be a thoughtful piece about how football has reflected changes in German society over the last 20 or 30 years had prompted such a negative reaction from the national coach even before it was broadcast.

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In the film, which was finally shown on ARD last Wednesday, Awounou has the following exchange with an older man in the Thuringian town of Blankenhain:

Q: “What’s your impression in general?”

A: “That the national team isn’t German any more. When you watch them, how many Germans are playing? It’s a joke.”

Q: “How do you define that, who is a German?”

A: “A German, for me, a real German is, for me … now, I don’t want to offend you… but white.” (The man shrugs apologetically).

Q: “Why? Why can’t I be a real German?”

A: “Because your parents couldn’t be German.”

Q: “My mother is German.”

A: “Okay, that works of course. I have nothing, nothing at all … but, you know, I find on the sports field, if only ... where are all the white Germans? They can play football too!”

WDR explained that the film-makers felt they should acquire hard data to provide some context for this vignette – hence the controversial poll. “We ourselves are dismayed that the results are as they are,” sports editor Karl Valks said, “but they are also an expression of the social situation in today’s Germany.”

Nagelsmann was in part expressing annoyance that once again politics was threatening to intrude on Germany’s preparations. He is keen not to repeat the experience of Qatar 2022, which was ruined by political squabbling. Many in Germany were demanding the team make some kind of statement against Qatari human rights abuses, while Fifa warned they would punish the planned “One Love” armband protest. The players settled for a hand-over-mouth gesture in a team photograph, annoying the Qatari hosts without satisfying the critics back home.

The coach would like to avoid all that this time. Unfortunately for him history is a nightmare from which the German national team is trying to escape.

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ARD screened another film on Wednesday night in which sports presenter Esther Sedlaczek went about looking for signs that Euro 2024 could be a second “Sommermärchen” for Germany.

The “Sommermärchen” – summer fairy-tale – is what Germans call the World Cup they hosted in 2006, when their unfancied team reached the semi-finals amid unprecedented scenes of national celebration.

I remember being among the crowds on Berlin’s Kufürstendamm after Germany beat Poland to qualify for the second round. There was a mysterious spontaneous sudden sense that somehow a shadow had lifted, and decades of pent-up emotion were spilling out. “We can finally wave our flag, we don’t have to be ashamed of being German any more.” The euphoria was wild and a little uncanny.

Of course even if Germany wins this tournament, such a moment is unrepeatable and media efforts to will it back into being are tedious. Spiegel magazine remarked of this second film: “If you drink a schnapps every time Sedlaczek says the word “Sommermärchen,” you’ll already be hammered halfway through the show.”

2006 transformed Germany’s team into a metaphor. Since then no other European national side has been made to carry such symbolic weight.

At the 2010 World Cup another semi-finalist team featuring several players with “Migrationshintergrund” was hailed as a model for Germany’s successful integration of immigrants. The most talented of those players, Mesut Özil, later won the 2010 Bambi Award for Integration.

Awounou’s film shows a clip of the young Özil’s speech as he accepted the award: “Integration means mutual recognition and above all, respect. Through integration something new is created: a more colourful Republic of Germany.”

The team went on to win the next World Cup in Brazil. The day of the final in July 2014, a team of Spiegel writers produced a 4,000-word cover story celebrating their success – and that of the nation.

Germany had just beaten Brazil 7-1, and the Spiegel writers documented a corresponding new national feeling of lightness and self-confidence. “Prosperity makes life easy and lifts the spirits. This prosperity is currently growing as a result of [traditional German virtues] hard work, discipline and obedience. Germany is experiencing a small economic miracle in the summer of 2014… Germans go shopping until their arms get long from the heavy bags. And shopping can make you happy…

“Growth gives Angela Merkel the opportunity to hand out gifts. She is doing so in abundance: unscheduled pension increases, parental allowance, childcare allowance, pension at 63, maternity pension…[Germans] are unconcerned about politics and only get upset in the pub because a railway station is being built or an electricity pylon erected. Germany currently gives the impression that it is so content with everything that it would prefer to freeze the status quo. That’s Biedermeier, but at least it’s a cheerful one… Domestically the Germans are largely satisfied, they are being pampered by the grand coalition and see little reason to argue with each other…”

The piece stands as a grim reminder that if ever you start to feel like maybe you’ve got it all figured out you should wait five minutes before patting yourself on the back.

The contentment of 2014 was quickly shattered by a series of external shocks. In 2015 came the European migration crisis. Faced with a potential humanitarian disaster on Germany’s borders, Angela Merkel decided to welcome 1.2 million asylum seekers over 2015 and 2016 with the confident phrase “Wir schaffen das” – “we can handle it”.

Many Germans responded by voting for the anti-migration populists Alternative für Deutschland. Merkel’s display of Christian charity made her a hate figure for those who style themselves the defenders of Christian civilisation. The AfD, an insignificant entity in 2014, now ranks second in national polls.

In 2022 came the invasion of Ukraine by Germany’s trusted energy supplier Russia. This upended the national economic model, making a succession of German governments look like fools, and has now prompted a controversial rearmament drive, with the Green former foreign minister Joschka Fischer even arguing for the reintroduction of conscription.

In 2023 came the Hamas attack on Israel and the retaliatory Israeli onslaught on Gaza. Germany, whose official postwar identity was built on the imperative “never again”, now finds itself one of the staunchest supporters of an Israeli state that is credibly accused of ongoing war crimes. The contradictions are tearing at what is left of the moral authority of a political establishment many already saw as hopelessly incompetent.

Özil, former poster-boy of the integrated national side, retired from the team amid a massive controversy in 2018, accusing high-ranking officials in the German FA of racism.

Remember his phrase from the Bambi award speech in 2010: “a more colourful German Republic”. The German word for “more colourful” is “banterer.” The AfD, whose party colour is blue, now runs under the slogan “Blau statt Bunt” – “Blue, not Colourful.” Sunday’s European elections will show how much further their message may have spread.

Nobody is kidding themselves any more that the national team can help solve Germany’s problems. Maybe its days as a metaphor are coming to an end. It still at least has the power to provide an ephemeral moment of happiness. Germany could use one of those.