The ugly German
The ugly German is a German- hostile cliché, the origin of which is traced back to the propaganda during the First World War .
First World War
The destruction of the city of Leuven during the German occupation of Belgium was widely reported and scandalized by the British press. It was claimed that the German soldiers would chop off Belgian children's hands, rape nurses, commit massacres of civilians and crucify Allied prisoners. In The Times was of German " Huns " is mentioned. This formulation came from the memory of the " Huns speech " of Kaiser Wilhelm II , in which he urged the German soldiers, like the Huns, to brutally suppress the Boxer Rebellion . Names like “cattle” or “beast” were also common.
Second World War
The German crimes during National Socialism, in particular the attempt to exterminate the Jewish people industrially, the systematic mass killings in Eastern Europe and the brutal military subjugation of the peoples of continental Europe, reinforced the image of the "ugly German" that emerged during World War I. Also the hateful and demagogic public appearances of well-known figures of National Socialism such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, in which regularly against British, Jews, Americans, French, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma, Africans and others in the broadest sense of the NS regime as "anti-social elements “Perceived sections of the population were rushed, both during the Nazi era and especially after the end of the war, in the course of increasing historical awareness, contributed to an appropriate external perception of Germany. The fact that the Nazi hate propaganda had apparently fallen on fertile ground in the German people's soul reinforced these impressions and led to a generalization and collectivization of the image, which remained alive throughout the post-war period up to the 1990s.
1990s
When there were xenophobic riots in the 1990s, including a. When asylum seekers' homes were set on fire, there was public talk of "ugly Germans" again for the first time.
Tax dispute between Switzerland and Germany
According to the press, during the tax dispute between Germany and Switzerland in 2009, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück redefined the image of the ugly German by comparing Switzerland with Indians and the Germans with the cavalry, which the Indians are deceived by terrified.
Greece crisis
In the wake of the Greek sovereign debt crisis , the term has experienced a certain reprint in the international and national media since June 2015. The subject of criticism is Germany's approach, which many perceive as uncompromising and exaggerated, to impose an austerity policy on the states of southern Europe that, in the eyes of the critics, maneuvers their economies into a recessive downward spiral. This goes hand in hand with vehement and hateful reactions from southern European citizens, especially Greece, who see German politicians such as Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble in the tradition of well-known Nazi personalities. Meanwhile, in the heated European discourse, the term Fourth Reich is used , which aims at the perceived or real New German hegemony over Europe.
Sea rescue
The editor-in-chief of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , Eric Gujer, declared in a column in 2019 that "the ugly German" no longer wears a steel helmet, but teaches the world morally, as in the dispute over the sea rescue of African refugees.
Others
From 1980 to 1982 the journalist Otto Köhler portrayed in his concrete column "The ugly German" a. a. Uwe Barschel , Hans Henning von Beust , Reinhard Höhn , Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Werner Staak .
literature
- Rolf Breitenstein: The ugly German? We in the mirror of the world. Munich 1968.
- Anna Stiepel: The "ugly German". Continuity and change in the external media discourse about the Germans since the Second World War. Frankfurt am Main 2011.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Peer Steinbrück as an ugly German. In: Der Tagesspiegel. Retrieved October 7, 2017 .
- ↑ The image of the "ugly German" is back , Stefan Ulrich, Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 18, 2015
- ^ The ugly German , Eric Gujer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 5, 2013
- ↑ "The other view": The ugly German no longer wears a steel helmet - he teaches the world morally , Eric Gujer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, July 5, 2019