Alice in Germany

“In America there is no need for campaigns to tell us to be proud to be American, we are taught that from birth”.

Kristy and I are discussing the ‘du bist Deutschland’ campaign.

January 26th was the ‘Australia day’ national holiday, when we are told to ‘celebrate what's great about Australia and being Australian’, and it has got me thinking about nationality and identity.

January 26th commemorates the arrival of the ‘first fleet’ from England. With ‘invasion’ connotations and the exclusive focus on the ‘British’ role in the Australian story it is not an un-controversial choice. At any rate in the past it hardly aroused national sentiment. I have heard it said more than once that ‘what we need in Australia is something like the German ‘Unity day’, something that unites the people’ (if only they knew!).

For a long time Australia day was simply another day off work, an opportunity to have few beers around the BBQ. Nobody really knew what it was about and nobody cared. But over the last few years the vibe has shifted. September 11, the war on terror, the Bali bombing, the war on Iraq, etc etc. changed that.

The sense of being under threat saw the re-emergence in Australia of the phenomena of the ‘the other’. Something against which we could, and (dare I say it) were encouraged to, define ourselves. In a country where once it was a source of pride that nobody knew the second verse of the national anthem suddenly people en masse were buying the flag.

In the lead up to Jan 26 politicians and social commentators inevitably jostle to have the last say on what it means to ‘be Australian’. As a migrant country, and by global standards modern Australia is a young society, the definition of what it means to be ‘Australian’ is always a bit hazy and therefore up for grabs. As if by verbalising a definition the country can be made in the image of the loudest speaker.

Polarised opinions predictably exacerbates the debate: our conservative Prime Minister emphasises the need for migrants to ‘integrate’ and embrace ‘our way of life’, while social commentators celebrate ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’.

This year the debate has expanded to how we remember, tell, and teach Australian history. Our spokespeople grapple for ownership of the past and how and what we remember. I guess they understand how a nation tells its stories create the boundaries within which it views itself. We are encouraged to remember the positives and gloss over or ignore negative actions because people were only ‘doing what they thought was right’.

Now I am half a world away and following another campaign to inspire national pride in a country that deals with its history in a very different fashion.

The ‘du bist Deutschland’ campaign hasn’t gone down well with the Germans and something tells me it’s more than the irritating background music. Germans are not overly plagued by patriotism. The last time the country was in the grip of something akin to guilt free national pride culminated in a world war; this seems to have resulted in most Germans viewing any such national enthusiasm with perhaps an unhealthy amount of cynicism.

Bruno felt it ‘was good to see something positive for once’.

“Yea we had a campaign like that in Australia before the Sydney Olympics: ‘I ride in the front seat of a taxi … I believe this is a prawn and not a shrimp…..’ I liked it, it was funny, I felt understood” I reminisce. Pause. “Oh no actually that was an add for bier”.

On occasion I have been surprised at people’s knowledge of Australia. While in Germany I have been called upon to explain such unexplainable facts as: treatment and living conditions of the Australian Aborigines, incarceration of asylum seekers, and why Australians voted to keep the British monarchy as their head of state – ‘the monarchy, after all, are at best a colossal embarrassment to their own country so why are Australians so keen to be part of the party?’

But mostly being an expert on Australia implies knowing that the capital city is not Sydney: ‘it’s Canb… something or other, right?’

So when a lady berates Liana and Kristy for their respective countries involvement in the Iraq war (and they make their respective apologies on behalf of their governments) I can’t help but have a little smile to myself as I glance out the window because in the big wide world being Australian largely means being insignificant.

But to what extent does our culture of origin really influence the people we are?