BETTER TO MAKE A HERO OF A GARDEN GNOME THAN OF CAPTAIN EURO:

They need a hero: For centuries Germans united around the tale of Hermann, a chieftain who rallied his fellow tribesmen to defeat the Roman army. But this founding national myth, cherished by Romantic poets and Nazi ideologues, was banished from memory in the postwar era. As Hermann-mania returns to a wary Germany 2000 years after his victory, Clay Risen considers the search for national identity in a post-national age. (Clay Risen, October 09. 2009, The National)

Atop a forested hill a few kilometres outside the sleepy west German town of Detmold stands a 19-metre high statue of Hermann, the Germanic chief whose forces annihilated nearly 20,000 Roman legionnaires at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9AD. Gazing toward the French border, the copper statue, wearing a jaunty winged helmet, holds an upraised sword, whose blade bears the inscription “German Unity is my strength, and my strength is Germany’s power”.

The Hermannsdenkmal, or “Hermann Monument”, was unveiled in 1875, in the aftermath of Germany’s crushing defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent unification of the disparate German states into the Second Reich. At the time it was the world’s largest statue; standing on an 18-metre pedestal, it is visible for nearly 50 kilometres. The monument became a symbol for German militant nationalism and a pilgrimage site for the growing cult that celebrated Hermann as a kind of Ur-German, a movement that reached its fever pitch under the Nazis.

After the Second World War the Germans purged their culture of anything remotely tainted by Nazism, and the monument – and Hermann – fell into anonymity. The battle, once known as the Hermannschlacht, or Hermann Battle, was rechristened the Varusschlacht, after the Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus: it is surely one of the only battles in history named after its loser. German schoolchildren, who once read from the countless Romantic Age poems celebrating Hermann, now learnt what a shame it was that the erstwhile hero had prevented Latin culture from reaching northern Germany.

This autumn marks the 2,000th anniversary of the battle, and Germany is witnessing a new-found interest in all things Hermann. But in a twist on Marx’s famous adage about how history repeats itself, the Hermann cult appeared first as tragedy, and second as a 12-million-euro marketing bonanza. What had been a question of shame has become a matter of kitsch: when I went to Detmold to check out the scene, I found a gift shop stocked with garden gnomes in the shape of a cartoonish Germanic warrior; a thick sausage called “Hermannwurst”; and Thusnelda Beer, named after Hermann’s mythical love interest. [...]

Germans are lightening up a bit – witness the flag-waving patriotism during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. But much of their energy is focused on reining in that patriotism, recasting it as something comfortably post-nationalist. A recent essay in the national newspaper Die Zeit boasted that Germany, unlike other countries, had no need to prove itself with national parades and the dangerous pomp and circumstance of state ceremonies – two things, the author wrote, “beloved by tyranny” and dangerous to democracy. “Though it’s something we might wish for, we can also deny it,” he wrote.

But the renewed interest in Hermann makes that an open question. Perhaps, as the Detmold organisers hope, the people rushing to attend the “Year of Hermann” festivities see him as nothing more than a historical curiosity. But it’s also possible that in a country bereft of heroes, Germans are slowly but healthily reaching out to the victor of the Teutoburg Forest as a psychological landmark in a continent where national borders are fast disappearing.

No one does holidays and salutes to heroes like America, and ours is the most durable and vibrant democracy on the books.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 12, 2009 6:38 AM