Anyone who freely chooses to immigrate anywhere as an adult will face questions about why they came; I have certainly faced the question more than a few times since I arrived in Germany, and probably will for a good while yet. Among my own reasons is a desire to learn something of what makes Germany…well, German, as opposed to French or English or American. And while I have formed some provisional opinions, first I would like to explore what a few Germans think of Germany. In particular, we’ll discuss a pair of songs which give a German’s-eye view of what Germany is.
Appropriately enough, both songs are called Deutschland, which is Germany’s endonym. An endonym is a fancy way of saying what a culture or a country calls itself in its own language, which is often different than its exonym(s), the name(s) that outsiders have for it. Germany is famous among the handful of nerds who care about such things for having a simply ridiculous number of exonyms — here is a short video on many of them, if you’re interested.
But anyway, where were we? Oh, right, the songs! I think they’re an interesting look into what some Germans think of their country. They’re of different genres, tones, scopes, and generations, but they’re both insightful and informative.
Today we will explore Deutschland by the band Die Prinzen, published at the end of August 2001, according to Wikipedia. The song starts with some low-key classical notes — possibly an introduction to the national anthem — muffled by a bit of static, with the video dominated by a shiny rendition of the German flag. Before long, that classical tune breaks off into an upbeat poppy rhythm kept in time by percussive grunting, while the video zooms out to reveal the German “flag” is really just a bucket with a German tricolour scheme. (Wikipedia says Die Prinzen is an acapella group, which is why the grunting is so damned catchy, though the video shows a man on guitar and another on drums.)
Here is a stanza-by-stanza rendition and translation of the lyrics (as heard and interpreted by me):
Deutsch (in Rythmus gegrunzt)
—
German (grunted in rhythm)
—
Natürlich hat ein Deutscher „Wetten, dass..?“ erfunden
(vielen Dank für die schönen Stunden)
Wir sind die freundlichsten Kunden auf dieser Welt
Wir sind bescheiden; wir haben Geld
Die allerbesten in jedem Sport
Die Steuern hier sind Weltrekord
Bereisen Sie Deutschland und bleiben Sie hier
Auf dieser Art von Besuchern warten wir
Es kann jeder hier wohnen, dem es gefällt
Wir sind das freundlichste Volk auf dieser Welt
—
Of course a German invented „Wetten, dass..?”1
(thanks a lot for the wonderful time!)
We’re the most polite2 customers in the world
We’re humble; we’ve got money
The best of all time in every sport
The taxes here are world-record
Travel to Germany and stay here
We are waiting for these kinds of visitors
Anyone who pleases can live here
We’re the friendliest people in the world
—
Deutsch (in Rythmus gegrunzt)
—
German (grunted in rhythm)
—
Nur eine Kleinigkeit ist hier verkehrt
Und zwar dass Schumacher keinen Mercedes fährt (Mercedes fährt…)
—
Just one piddling little thing is messed up here
And that is that Schumacher3 doesn’t drive a Mercedes (drive a Mercedes…)
—
(Refrain)
Das alles ist Deutschland; das alles sind wir
Es gibt uns nirgendwo anders — nur hier, nur hier
Das alles ist Deutschland; das sind alles wir
Wir leben und wir sterben hier
—
(Chorus)
All of this is Germany; this is who we are
We don’t exist anywhere else — just here, just here
All of this is Germany; this is who we are
Here is where we live and die
—
Deutsch (in Rythmus gegrunzt)
—
German (grunted in rhythm)
—
Es bilden sich viele was auf Deutschland ein
Und Mancher findet es geil ein Arschloch zu sein
Es gibt Manchen, der sich gern über Kanaken beschwert
Und zum Ficken jedes Jahr, nach Thailand fährt
Wir lieben unsere Autos mehr als unsere Frauen
Denn deutschen Autos können wir vertrauen
Gott hat die Erde nur einmal geküsst
Genau an dieser Stelle wo jetzt Deutschland ist
Wir sind überall die besten, natürlich auch im Bett
Und zu Hunden und Katzen — besonders nett
—
Many take pride in Germany
And some find it really cool4 to be an asshole
There are some people who bitch about foreigners
And who go to Thailand every year to fuck
We love our cars more than our women
Because we can trust German cars
God kissed the Earth precisely once
Exactly on the spot where Germany is now
We’re the best everywhere, of course in bed as well
And especially nice to dogs and cats
—
(Refrain nochmal)
—
(Chorus again)
—
Wir sind besonders gut im auf die Fresse hauen
Auch im Feuerlegen kann man uns vertrauen
Wir stehen auf Ordnung und Sauberkeit
Wir sind jederzeit für ‘nen Krieg bereit
Schönen Grüß an die Welt; seht es endlich ein
Wir können stolz auf Deutschland...
Schwein (in Rythmus gegrunzt)
—
We are particularly good at brawling
You can also trust us to start fires
We stand for order and cleanliness
We are always ready for a war
Friendly greetings to the world; see at last
We can (be) proud of Germany
Pig5 (grunted in rhythm)
—
(Refrain mal 2)
—
(Chorus times 2)
As noted above, the song came out in 2001, and in particular just before September 11th. You know, back when everyone thought capitalism had triumphed for good and all over communism and there wasn’t really anything to worry about any more in world-historical terms; the Euro was going on three years old, Germany had been united for almost ten years, and Europe was thawing out after a chilly few decades as the front line of the Cold War. It was just going to be neoliberal globalism forever until the heat death of the Universe.
In that light, the song is a time capsule for German self-conception in the 90’s. It’s positively dripping with irony, slang, and cultural references both obvious and obscure. I had to look up what Kanake means; apparently it refers to the original inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, in particular New Caledonia, and for reasons one can sadly imagine, Germans of a particular…ähm…worldview use it to refer to foreigners who they feel don’t belong here. Its unironic usage is thus considered quite impolite.
The video is worth seeing, but it mostly functions as a supplement to the lyrics, only once or twice providing insight which could not be easily gleaned from the text. Otherwise it is nothing revolutionary for a music video of the time, showcasing the band singing and playing their instruments intercut with examples of the stereotypes they are singing about, all floating around in simple frames with swipe transitions. Occasionally there is some unexpected colour, such as when the Kanake lyric explained above is accompanied by a small neo-Nazi march, or the Feuerlegen lyric is accompanied by more-sympathetic (or at least less Nazi) protestors clashing with police. Which is all well and good — a song should be able to rest upon the quality of its music and the text of its lyrics in telling a story.
So what sort of Deutschland does this Deutschland present to the world?
One senses immediately that the band thinks rather lowly of anyone who thinks highly of Germany, and not just the neo-Nazis — the humblebraggards; the sports chauvinists; the rich fucks who bitch about their taxes; the two-faced well-heeled jackasses who claim that anyone is welcome in Germany (as long as they have enough money and behave well enough); the sexist pig men who spontaneously orgasm while waxing their cars but leave their wives unsatisfied; the hypocrites who complain about foreigners but who go on sex tours in Southeast Asia; those who treat their house pets better than they treat people; and, of course, anyone so thoughtless as to ever express any kind of pride in their country.
But the song is not completely filled with acid; it is very much a critique from within, with the artists mostly poking fun at more innocuous characteristics typically ascribed to their countrymen. Devotion to order and cleanliness stands alongside a propensity for protests of questionable efficacy and a perhaps-deluded view of Germany’s readiness for war as the final things the song sends up, not without some affection from its singers.
The song also evinces a deep suspicion of any kind of patriotism which might have been slowly creeping back into the German psyche as the End of History bore down on the opening days of the new millennium. In this way it serves as a kind of cultural break, a reminder that even though Germany in 2001 was rich and at peace and had even then become a destination for economic migrants from the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, it was not yet an average human lifetime removed from the Holocaust and the Second World War, nor from the blood-and-soil nationalism which had dragged Europe into that catastrophe.
This attitude was fairly common among the young urbanites of the time. In the generation born after the war, then-West Germany practically tore itself apart as its population came to grips with the magnitude of the crimes to which their parents and grandparents had been accomplice. (See The Baader Meinhof Complex for an exploration of one of the terrorist movements that this coming-to-grips helped inspire during that time period.)
And it must be repeated that, practically uniquely amongst peoples and nations in the history of the world, the Germans of the ‘60’s, ‘70’s, and ‘80’s accepted the guilt of their immediate ancestors’ crimes and took great measures to repair the wounds that they had caused; an exploration of this Vergangenheitsbewältigung, this dealing with the past, deserves its own exploration in some other article. We can take it here as read that the German baby boomers and their eldest children had largely internalised the horrendous consequences of militant nationalism and ethnic supremacy that their own parents and grandparents had unleashed upon the world, and were resolved not to fall prey to those impulses again.
By the turn of the millennium, however, this consciousness was in danger of fading. And though Die Prinzen are hardly members of the Red Army Faction, their song serves as a gentle, even light-hearted reminder that the dark forces which had thrown Germany and the rest of Europe over the brink of catastrophe had not completely disappeared — that the complacent car-humping chauvinism of the overweening middle class was a kind of dangerous soporific that could lull the German people back into right-wing extremism, with all the negative consequences which might follow.
Or perhaps I am simply reading too much into a fluffy pop song from more than twenty years ago. In any case, I believe it shows the Germany of the early 2000’s to be a wealthy country whose citizens were prone to focus on the ephemeral material benefits of their prosperity; where most people were convinced of Germany’s inherent superiority in any given mode of human activity without much good reason; and where a superficial openness to immigration papered over a legacy of genocide and a complicated present of simmering ideological tensions.
These observations remain broadly true today, though many details have naturally changed. Those simmering tensions have not yet begun to boil over, but the vapours are intensifying; we will explore this further in due time.
Next time, though, we’ll discuss the more recent song that calls itself Deutschland. See you on the other end.
Evidently, Wetten, dass..? was an incredibly popular TV show in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria that ran from 1981 to 2014. The title translates roughly to “You wanna bet..?”, and it involved randos claiming to have special or bizarre talents, which “prominent” guests would bet over the veracity of. I have yet to sample an episode, so I cannot vouch for its worthiness.
It may seem weird that I translated freundlich two different ways, but German uses freundlich as “friendly” and “kind”, and more rarely as something like “well-mannered”. There may well be an essay in German conceptions of friendliness and friendship, but suffice it to say that one is expected to be freundlich to many more people than one considers one’s friends. Calling customers “friendly” doesn’t really work in English, though, so I translated it as politeness instead.
Michael Schumacher was a Formula 1 driver who’s quite famous in Germany, and Mercedes-Benz is a German car company, so German chauvinists were wont to fantasise about the two going together. In the final two years of his career, he indeed drove for the Mercedes team, which must have pleased the kind of German that this lyric satirises. There is also a deeper pun in this couplet, since “Verkehr” means “traffic” in general while “verkehrt” means something is turned around, and the next line is about a race car driver.
Geil is a funny word; it’s not really one you’ll encounter in a 101 class or in formal company, but it is ubiquitous in relaxed situations among friends. It’s an adjective, and when someone uses it for themselves or another person (so “Ich bin geil” or “du bist geil”), it means either “horny” or “hot” (you know, in a sexy way). But when it is used for anything else — and trust me, it is used unconsciously a lot — it means something in between “really cool” and “splendiferously awesome”. Here is a song by Deichkind which elaborates on some of the many uses of this surprisingly-functional word.
This is a pun; the original lyric should be “Wir können stolz auf Deutschland sein”, which indeed means “We can be proud of Germany”. But sein (the German for “to be”) rhymes with Schwein, and Schwein is the word for a pig.