The Auschwitz Bookkeeper

I'm just about to fly off to Warsaw to lead a 2 week holocaust study trip. Therefore sorry for this very rushed flow of consciousness written on my iPhone! I just wanted to react to the Oscar Gröning "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz" case though as it's something I feel very strongly about:

Lots of people are apparently pointing out 1) he has "repented", 2) he came forward voluntarily to challenge holocaust deniers, 3) some are calling this "vengeance" rather than justice; 4) and of course he's extremely old.

They're missing a set of points.

1) and 2) These are relevant in law only to mitigation in sentencing, not to establishing culpability. What matters was whether he committed a crime then, or not. His subsequent behaviour might be admirable (I indeed think it is and he comes across as a good, decent person now) but that doesn't affect his involvement at that time. The court found he broke the law. 

He was facing 3-12 years and was sentenced to 4, ie right at the bottom end of the scale. The court therefore correctly applied the mitigating factors to reduce his sentence. End of debate. Christian bullshit about repentance and forgiveness of sins has no place in this legal discussion. He can take that nonsense up with "God" if he believes in one.

3) criminal law broadly has three  purposes: a) individual prevention of reoffending and rehabilitation, b) societal deterrence, and c) retribution. It's clear he won't be doing this again, so the first point here is irrelevant. In terms of societal deterrence however it sends out a message that even after 70 years those involved in genocide will be punished. Therefore this is good. Finally retribution (or "vengeance") is a relevant element of criminal law. It must not be the only motivating factor, but it does provide valid and necessary comfort to victims and it provides a sense of justice being done more widely. Again therefore this is good. 

4) I remember reading about a friendly Gestapo policeman in Cologne who helped an 89 year old German Jewish woman to her round up point by giving her a lift on the back of his  bicycle. She was deported to a ghetto in Poland where her life expectancy would have been days. Gröning's age now is utterly irrelevant to what he was part of back then, at least in terms of culpability (it might be relevant to sentencing). Old people and babies were murdered. He's had 70 long years of freedom and happiness that was denied to millions.

Another interesting point is the small cog in big wheel discussion. He didn't put people in gas chambers, but without the administration the camp could not have operated. As a book keeper, his exact job was to record the currency stolen from the murdered victims.  In his own words he witnessed the gas chambers and believed that the Jewish children murdered in them represented a danger to Germany because of "their blood". He chose this "cushy SS office job" voluntarily. The court found that the whole site was involved in mass murder, and therefore anyone involved was complicit in it. That's absolutely correct. 

Last of all it is never, ever, our place to forgive. We just literally do not have the standing as the wrong was not done to us. Only survivors can do that, or not, on a personal basis for the wrongs committed against them, and not against the other millions affected.  Our job as a society is to keep the memory alive and for our courts to deal with all these issues in a way set out by law. I therefore really welcome this. He will be accorded dignity and care in prison in Germany, which reflects the civilised society it has now become. The victims had no such fortune.

Holocaust Tourism

Welcome to Theresienstadt.  150,000 people were imprisoned here, including tens of thousands of children.  Roughly 90,000 prisoners went on to their deaths by cattle car in the Treblinka and Auschwitz murder factories.  33,000 starved painfully to death, died of illness or were murdered in individual acts of brutality by the SS.  The Nazi concentration camp and ghetto are also known by their Czech name, Terezín.

Souvenirs

Could we interest you in a souvenir fridge magnet?  We have a number of designs.  The German "Bier Stein" magnet with the Star of David on it is a classy reminder of your visit.  It's actually the Star from the garden of remembrance: look you can see the stones under it that Jewish visitors have left as a sign of respect.  Or, the one with the cycle sign showing "this way to Terezín" might look nice in your kitchen back at home.  They're a bargain: £1.60!  You could buy one as gifts for your friends and family.

Theresienstadt Souvenirs

I wish it were all a bad, tasteless, unthinkable joke.  But it's not.  I'm just back from there and Auschwitz with a group of students on a holocaust education tour.  As you enter the car park at Theresienstadt you are greeted by a sign with SOUVENIRS in large letters and an advertisement for the crystal shops.  Only after that sign has greeted you, do you see the one directing visitors to the Jewish ghetto (left) or the small fortress with the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign on it (right).  The souvenir shop has a two metre sign announcing it sells Bohemia Glass, Souvenirs, Jewellery, Playing Cards and Militaria.  "Militaria" at a place where the SS killed thousands of civilians.

Playing cards at Theresienstadt

I've long been unsettled by the weight of tourists descending on the camps.  The backpackers' bible "Let's Go" apparently used to tell people that if they had time for only two things in Munich, they should make it out to Dachau, and the Hofbräuhaus.  There we have the Munich Experience in a nut-shell: a concentration camp and a tacky tourist beer hall.  It's become a tick-box item: a must for any visitor on a tour of Europe to visit the nearest convenient Nazi killing site. 

I wonder about the motivations of those who come: is it genuine remembrance, is it a spiritual pilgrimage, is it to learn, is just to say you've been, or is to satisfy a ghoulish curiosity.  I'm sure for many it's a combination of all those things, though I doubt many would own up honestly to the latter two.  I fear for most the visit is a bit like Disney in reverse: you're not going to be thrilled and made happy; you're going to be upset.  I guess it shows that you are a sensitive being, who cares.  Then in the evening, it's back to the beer. 

Learning

In terms of the didactic value, I'm well aware that people learn in different ways.  There's absolutely nothing in the museum at any of these sites that you couldn't learn by watching a TV documentary, looking on the internet, reading a book, or visiting one of the excellent exhibitions at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Holocaust Museum in DC, the Jüdisches Museum in Berlin, or our own superb Imperial War Museum in London.  I think it's fair to assume that if anyone is bothering to go out to a camp, they're familiar with the background.  It's not that likely they'll come away saying "Wow, the Germans murdered 6 million Jews.  I just didn't know that!"

"Fallen Leaves" at the Jüdisches Museum Berlin

For some actually being there, and seeing the place, might have an effect that the other methods of learning don't.  If we're really honest though, that has to concern a very few people.  Let's consider what there actually is to see.  In most of the camps (I've taken groups to 10 different ones myself, over the years, from Westerbork to Treblinka) there's a big empty space, sometimes huge memorials, and a visitor centre/museum.  The wooden buildings were long since pulled down, and the extermination camp gas chambers were almost all destroyed by the Germans at the end of the War.  In Dachau or Buchenwald the barbed wire has been nicely replaced with fresh supplies, and the watch towers are always kept newly painted.  At Birkenau everything is covered in grass, where before there was mud.  At Bergen-Belsen everything is gone: the place is turned over to nature and there are mounds where the dead lie.

Giant Menorah at Mauthausen

I'm not sure what the few iconic "sights" that remain at the camps actually teach anyone.  We're all so familiar from photographs with the train lines with the watch tower behind it at Birkenau, or the Arbeit Macht Frei signs at Auschwitz, that I wonder if it makes the slightest difference to anyone, in terms of actual learning, to see them in real life.

The same goes for the piles of shoes, spectacles or mounds of hair.  Yes, you're aware that these things each belonged to an individual, whose life was so brutally cut short.  But you already knew that.  I fail to see what viewing some of them in a room actually adds to understanding.  The picture below is powerful enough.  It is undeniably poignant and needs to be seen.  However, you are viewing it on the Internet, or can see it in any book.  You don't need to go to Auschwitz to get any better comprehension of the vastness, or of the personal nature, of the crime.

Shoes

We can't imagine what the camps looked like in 1942 or 1944: the piles of dead bodies, the selections, the crippling hunger, the illness, the human excrement, the desperation and the cruelty.   We wouldn't want to see them as they were, so what does visiting the santitised version actually add to our knowledge of the time, and the personal lessons we can learn from the period?

Dignity and Respect

These places are both killing places and cemeteries.  At Dachau this summer I watched a teenage boy standing in the centre of the Appelplatz where prisoners were forced to stand for hours in baking heat or freezing cold to break their spirits.  He was taking selfies.  It took him a long time to get the lighting and reflection right.  I do hope he got the right balance of "cute" and "upset" for his Instagram.  Perhaps a mournful tear was involved.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is the largest Jewish cemetery in the world, followed closely by Treblinka, where at least 800,000 were murdered.  I know two Auschwitz survivors personally, both of whom lost close family there.  Even disregarding the behaviour of idiots such as the guy above, I find it hard to see how the dignity of those who died can be preserved with the sheer weight of people coming out to some of the camps.  I stood at the exit of Auschwitz I last week, watching group after group of teenagers came out, plenty of them laughing and goofing around.  It didn't use to be like this: you had to really "want" to go to any of the camps in Poland.  Nowadays there are cheap flights, easy access and all the commercial operators described below.

Auschwitz as a whole is simply sinking under the weight of all the visitors.  This was a weekday, off-season, in October.  The guide told me that sixteen tour buses just from Norway were booked in the following day alone.  1.33 million visitors came last year, which was a 12% increase on 2012.  1.4 million are expected this year.  That's nearing 4000 on average (roughly 100 tour buses) per day, with more coming on a busy peak season day.  Auschwitz-Birkenau is apparently now Poland's single biggest "visitor attraction".  

March in, collect headphones, do tour, back on bus. Repeat.

There is very little opportunity to afford the victims any form of personal respect or dignity, or to have individual reflection, when you are being shoved around in groups at the site with a set of headphones on.  Groups stand close to each other, jostling shoulder to shoulder, as the guides provide their often robotic commentary (I understand why they don't hardly ever show human emotion: working in this environment a strong detachment is a necessary defence mechanism).

Unlike somewhere like Pearl Harbor, there's no attempt to limit tour numbers: everyone just piles on in to hear the stories of atrocities, individual cases of murder, or to file inside the one remaining gas chamber.  No one is sure whether the scratch marks in the walls are original or not.  I wonder whether a system of regulation, i.e. a limited number of places being available on any day at any camp, wouldn't be a very sensible solution.

Buses arrive every couple of minutes to the death camp

The only opportunity you have to breathe is at the vast terrain of Auschwitz II (Birkenau), but most of the commercial tours allow you only 15 minutes there.  That might explain why few bother to go all the way down to the location of the actual gas chambers and cemeteries.  Or, perhaps, it's simply they agree with the girl I overheard who wanted a golf cart because it's just a bit too far to walk.

Commercialisation

Visits to the camps can be lucrative businesses it seems.  In Cracow you can hardly go anywhere without seeing posters for operators offering "all inclusive" trips out to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Given entry to the camp is free, that is a little puzzling.  The museum does charge a fee for its guides, but it's only £55 total for a group of 30, for the full 3.5 hour tour.  That works out at £1.80 a head.  The "excursions" from Cracow are charged out at £25 upwards, with transport provided on a 50 seater coach.  Trips to Auschwitz-Birkenau appear alongside fun tours of the Old Town and the Wieliczka Salt Mines.  It's a must for any stag or hen party in town - and again, would that were some tasteless joke.

In Germany the camps are, at least, apparently far more mindful of the acute criticism they would attract if items such as the Terezín fridge magnets were permitted to be sold in the concentration camp car parks.  For some unfathomable reason, the town of Oświęcim (present day Auschwitz) has  no such qualms about allowing a huge pizza, burger and other fast food complex to be built and exist directly opposite the main entrance to the camp car park.

The bus on the right is in Auschwitz I car park

Wait for it... why there's even a set of amusement machines inside.  After all, we all need to have a go on a pin-ball machine, having heard how painful and terrifying a death it was being crammed into a dark gas chamber, breathing rat poison into their lungs for 20 minutes, until they collapsed down dead upon the bodies of their elderly parents or children.  This is well under 100 metres from the entrance to Auschwitz I camp.  Just across from here there's a souvenir shop.  A set of 20 postcards of the camp is only £3.00 and you can buy lots of other stuff from around Poland too!

This commercialisation is grotesque.  It leaves me feeling sick writing about it.  Oświęcim and Terezín are towns where the inhabitants were expelled from their homes at gunpoint by the Germans, when the camps were built.  It is their right to come back and to bring their families up here, work here, and make their living here.  That could be done without the municipal authorities permitting fast food restaurants or tacky gift shops in such sensitive locations, so close to the sites.

Personal Irony

I'm aware of the enormous irony of this post, given the fact that I personally lead students on tours of the camps and have done so now for 20 years.  Every year, however, I become more and more uneasy with the fact that the camps are becoming tourist sites.

It is enormously and critically important that this chapter is never forgotten, which is ultimately I suppose why I keep on coming.  I can see the "positive" argument for so many people wanting to come here.  It's better I guess than the opposite, which would be no one caring and no one being interested in the subject at all.

Some visitors may get something profound out of their visit: if only one person in a hundred reflects on the nature of their own prejudices as a result of coming to a camp and does something about it, then that is a good thing.  I still can't get away from the feeling, though, that the vast bulk of visitors will learn little here that they didn't know before, or that I couldn't communicate without an actual visit.

More importantly, the sheer volume of them is utterly destroying the dignity of a place that means so much still to survivors, their descendants, and the family members of the victims.  I'm part of that and I'm very troubled by it.

Closing the Camps

One aspect of the ongoing crime that the 3rd Reich committed when it perpetrated the holocaust was the fact that it built many of the camps on foreign soil.  The Germans came to Poland, for example, created killing centres, murdered millions, and then left.  The Poles are now stuck with this in their country, and the obligation to keep up the buildings in all likelihood for eternity.  I don't envy them that at all.

For the first time in my life, for all the reasons above, I find myself having sympathy with the view others have expressed that when the last survivor dies, thought should be given to closing the camps and letting them go back to nature.  The chapter must clearly never be forgotten, but it can be kept open very effectively through museums, lessons, documentaries and books. 

May their souls rest in peace

All photos are my own.

Germany's Jews - 75 years after Reichskristallnacht

I was walking through an U-Bahn station in Berlin last week and I saw a copy of "Jüdische Allgemeine" (you can translate it as "Jewish Weekly" if you like) on a completely regular subway newsstand.  It's a far cry from the situation almost exactly 75 years ago in Germany, when on 9 November 1938 the state organised pogrom known as Reichskristallnacht took place.  I don't think too many people are aware of the position (or even existence!) of the Jewish community in Germany today.  The combination of this anniversary and my seeing that paper have therefore prompted this post.

Winding the Clock Back

Let's wind the clock back, a little bit further than Reichskristallnacht, and go back 80 years, to 1933.  The German Jewish community stood at 505,000 at the time of the June 1933 census, a few months after the Nazis had come into power.

It's often not realised quite how small a percentage of the entire German population that the Jews made up: just 0.75%.  That's not vastly different to the percentage of Jews in the UK today, which at 292,000 is estimated to be around 0.47% of the general population.  In both cases, these are really small numbers and it's worth reflecting on that.  The Nazis were obsessed with the "Jewish Question" and the influence of this tiny group of people on German society.

The German Jewish population in the years leading up to 1933 was small, then, but it was also highly integrated, generally secure and confident.  It had been in Germany for 1600 years: the country has one of the longest and richest Jewish traditions and history in Europe.  The traditional language of many European Jews was Yiddish: a High German dialect.  Many American Jews of course still carry German surnames: the Morgensterns, Silberbergs and Rosenthals came from Germany, via Poland or Russia, and on to the US.

There's no doubt that when most people think of the words German and Jewish they inevitably start at the end, with the unique and murderous catastrophe of the holocaust.  If you want a different perspective, I can highly recommend Amos Elon's "The Pity of it All" which beautifully describes the 150 year history of the Jews in Germany from 1743 to 1933.  Elon writes about a period of successful integration and individual achievement that produced a genuine Golden Age that peaked shortly before the coming to power of the Nazis.  He does not see what came next as inevitable by any means, and rejects the view that the German anti-Semitism which began with Martin Luther's vicious Jew-hating tracts had to end up in Auschwitz.  He convincingly sets out how the fate of Germany's Jews was uncertain until the end.  It could have gone differently.

Reichskristallnacht

Jews rapidly left Germany as the Nazis' grip on power intensified.  The boycotts, racial laws and increased persecution led to a flood of people leaving.  Over 300,000 left during the 30s, which meant that "only" around 36% of Germany's original Jewish population was eventually murdered in the holocaust.  Other countries, such as the Netherlands, who were not able to flee in the same way because by then the War had started, suffered up to 90% murder rates of their Jewish populations.

A major impetus for German Jews' leaving the country was the pogrom of 9 November 1938.  It's that anniversary that is approaching: 75 years ago.   In August 1938 Germany had announced that all residence permits of foreigners would be cancelled.  These included a sizeable number of Polish born Jews, who were faced with going back to Poland.  Germany forcibly expelled 12,000 of them on 28 October 1938 and shipped them off to the border in one night.  At the border, 8000 were refused entry to Poland.  They were made to live in temporary camps in the bitter cold and rain in no-man's land.

17 year old Herschel: an unlikely killer

Two of the deportees were Sendel and Riva Grynszpan, whose 17 year old son, Herschel, was living in Paris.  In desperation at their fate, on 7 November Herschel rang the bell of the German embassy to France.  The person who answered the door was an aristocratic career diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, who happened to be under investigation by the Gestapo for his anti-Nazi sympathies.  Herschel shot him repeatedly.  On 9 November he died. 

In response to the assassination, Goebbels sent out his famous message to all local Nazi party leaders from the Altes Rathaus in Munich that "the Führer has decided that... demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered."  The message was clear that local party branches should attack German Jewish targets.  They did so with a passion: over 1000 synagogues were burnt down across the country (many of them ancient, beautiful buildings), 7000 Jewish businesses were attacked, 91 Jews were beaten to death, and 30,000 were rounded up and sent to concentration camps (many temporarily).  The foreign press looked on in horror: the Times wrote of attacks on defenceless, innocent people and the disgrace that had blackened Germany's name.  It was a modern day, organised pogrom without equal.

The location of the former Heidelberg Synagogue

The name "Kristallnacht" refers to the tonnes of smashed glass of the windows of synagogues and Jewish businesses.  Across Germany today, from the largest city to the smallest town you will find plaques marking the location of the destroyed synagogues.  In places like the pretty university town of Heidelberg the synagogue foundation stones have been preserved to preserve the indelible shame of that night.    To add insult to injury, the German Jewish community was fined 1 Billion Reichsmark (£3.5 billion at today's prices, or £17,500 per person) for the clean-up operation.  That night was what many historians regard as the beginning of the holocaust.  The indescribably brutal fate of the six million is well-known. 

Today's German Jewish Community

Immediately after the War, it's a little known fact that many Jews from across Europe took refuge in Germany.  This is perhaps counter-intuitive, but it's because the American and British occupied zones were safe havens where, unlike the hostility and sometimes violence that survivors faced when they returned home, they could pick up the fragments of their lives and plan their futures.

In Kielce, in Poland, for example, 42 Jewish holocaust survivors were stoned to death in a river on 4 July 1946, charged with the abduction of a Christian boy and medieval blood libel allegations.  For the few surviving Polish Jews this was the end of their future in the country, and they moved to the protection of the Allies in Germany, before heading off to new lives in the US or Palestine.

The swell in Jewish numbers in Germany was therefore temporary.  By 1989 the Jewish community of West Germany stood at around 30,000 - about 1/20th the size it had been in 1933.  In East Germany there were only a few hundred: most took the rare opportunity of emigration to Israel in the 1970s when it was offered to them.  Both communities were introspective, private, elderly and tended to be very private.

Then came Reunification in 1990, and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1992.  Germany opened its doors to Jewish immigration from the East once more.  In 2003 the Social Democratic chancellor, Schröder, signed an important and highly symbolic agreement with the German Jewish Central Council that placed Judaism on the same semi-established, elevated status as the Catholic and Lutheran Churches in Germany.  Also in 2003, ten new rabbis were ordained in Berlin: the first since WW2.  In 2006, the new rabbinical seminary in Potsdam ordained three reform rabbis: the first since 1942. 

Russian Jews with Yiddish surnames, whose families had started off in the Rhineland, and who had moved eastwards in the early Middle Ages, started to come "home".  The trickle became a flood.  The renaissance in Jewish life as a result, right across Germany, has been remarkable.  In a mere twenty years the Jewish population has grown around 300% to around 200,000.  There are 120,000 active, practising members of the faith.  Germany's is the fastest growing Jewish population in the world.  There's an annual net emigration from Israel to Germany, mainly because Germany is seen as a much safer place to live.  The irony of that fact is striking. 

Synagogues are opening up across the country, not just in the major urban centres of Berlin and Munich.  Hamelin, of Pied Piper fame, a small, sleepy town in northern central Germany, very close to where I grew up, has just opened the first new reform synagogue to be built in the country since well before the War.  Its Jewish population in 1933 was 153 members.  Now it stands at 200, which is the same level as at its heyday in 1880.  The new synagogue is on the exact location of the one destroyed on 9 November 1938.

The Ohel Jakob "New Main Synagogue" in Munich

The Jewish population of Munich is similarly back up at pre-Third Reich levels.  I visited one of the synagogues there with Harriet, an English Orthodox friend, a few years back.  She was blown away by the number of people attending on an ordinary Thursday night, and her reaction was a quiet and reflective "ultimately they didn't win, did they?"  Remember, this was in Munich, the capital of the Nazi movement: Hitler's favourite city.  I always take people to visit the magnificent New Synagogue there, which was opened on 9 November 2006.  The roof represents the tents used during the biblical flight from Egypt, and also reminds us of the original Temple in Jerusalem.  It is flooded with light inside.

Of course, not all is rosy.  There are xenophobic and anti-Semitic far-right attacks in Germany, as elsewhere in the world.  The difference is that here they automatically grab the world headlines, because people are so sensitive about them.  Attacks on synagogues or Jewish graveyards in France, a worryingly regular occurrence, don't have the same press impact, so don't make the headlines in quite the same way as any in Germany might.

Long May It Continue

Germany now has the third largest Jewish community in Europe again (after France and the UK).  Nothing can replace those who were murdered, or "make good" the harm of those 12 terrible years of the Third Reich.  But the fact that Jews are once again choosing to live in Germany (after all, they really don't have to) because it is considered a good, safe, stable place to bring up their children makes me, as a half-German, enormously proud.

This 9 November I shall, along with millions of others, reflect on the events of 75 years ago and what was to follow.  I shall also think about the present and the future of Jews in Germany, and how positive things once again look.  It is a testament to the efforts of politicians and ordinary people in the Federal Republic that we have reached this point.  Long, long may it continue.

Germany and Cars

It was a German, Karl Benz, who invented the modern car. Germany hasn't forgotten this fact. Virtually from the moment his wife Bertha took it on her famed 65 mile journey (without his knowledge), stopping on the way to buy petrol from a chemist, using her hatpin to clear a blocked fuel pipe, and her garter to insulate a wire, an intimate and passionate love affair with the car began in Germany.

Bertha Benz: the "mother of the car"

There's no other country I've been to where the car is held in almost spiritual regard as it is there. Let me explain what I mean. In the US or the UK, there are of course people who love cars, who visit motor shows and buy motoring magazines. But for most the car is primarily a means of transport. They can be pretty, exciting, lovely to look at, but ultimately they get you from A to B. It's not at all uncommon to see cars that go unwashed for weeks or that have footwells filled with old sweet wrappers or newspapers.

Dirty Cars: Preserve of the Antisocial.. or Foreigners

Not so in Germany. I once read that when a German sees a dirty car, they assume the owner is either deliberately antisocial...or a foreigner. It never fails to amaze me (I lived there 12 years) how rapidly cars are washed after bad weather. Black cars, which attract the dirt so easily, seem to gleam all year round. This is no small feat given you're prohibited by law to wash your car (or do other public work, such as mowing lawns or putting out laundry) on a Sunday in most parts of the country. Nor may you wash your car at home, because of environmental considerations. They have to be washed at special designated places. 

Factory Visits

The car is put on a special pedestal. Choosing and collecting a new one is a real experience. Most manufacturers have collection programmes: you visit the factory, have a tour where you stay in a hotel the night before, get brainwashed into brand loyalty with amazing marketing films that seem to emphasise the spiritual nature of the marque, get fed, and at the end of it collect your new car in a delivery room. I've done this myself 4 times now: the joy and excitement of everyone there is palpable, and impossible not to get caught up in. 

The fact it works as a marketing exercise is shown by my best friend Dominic accompanying me on one trip to collect my new Mercedes. He's not "into" cars at all. Immediately on his return he ordered one from our local dealer, and we were back out in Bremen 3 months later collecting his new baby. They encourage children to come and have special information tours and workshops for them to get to work early on instilling a love of the brand.

Collecting the new arrival in the Mercedes-Benz "Delivery Room"

These collection centres really are something else. BMW invested an estimated €500 million ($675 million) in the stunning "BMW World" building in Munich. Designed by a leading Austrian architect in the shape of a giant whirlwind, it is simply a glorified showroom and collection centre for customers from around the globe. If you're from the US you can fly here, collect your new car, have a week to drive it in Europe, then it will be shipped back to your local dealer at home for you. If you're from the UK, come and collect it and drive it back through the Chunnel. If you're a visitor to Munich, simply jump in and try out all the cars: they actually encourage you to.

A Modern Day German Cathedral: BMW World

The high-tech VW "glass factory" in the centre of Dresden literally has glass walls so that the public can watch the miracle of car making from outside. I heard the place described as a modern-day German cathedral. The distinction is that people are not here to worship the Almighty, but instead it is a temple to the motor car. 

I once explained all this to the marketing director of Jaguar whom I happened to be sitting with at a dinner. He, a car person, sat there in slightly bemused fascination. The British just don't do things this way. 

For plenty of Germans it's not that much of an exaggeration to say the car is considered an additional member of the family. I remember my 65 year aunt getting very excited about the technical features of my car and the "new car smell" in a way that I've never experienced any British woman of her age doing. She knew what Distronic was for heaven's sake. Do you!?

Cupholders Are Extra
An interesting feature of cars sold in Germany, as opposed to elsewhere, is the lack of specification. A €120,000 top of the range model Mercedes has a sunroof, alarm, sat nav and even a cup-holder (€28) as additional cost optional extras. Each new car is built to order, so it's a cultural feature that people like to create a totally unique vehicle and select the specification to suit their needs. In the UK, and particularly more so in the US, we expect everything to be "thrown in". 

It wasn't so long ago that BMW, Audi and Mercedes didn't even come with air-conditioning, a radio or electric windows as standard in Germany. In the 1980s the S-Class Mercedes had an exterior passenger mirror listed as an extra.

German Car Industry

The German car industry is a huge employer, it's successful, it exports around the world, and it invests masses of money in R&D. The mid-term revision of the E-Class Mercedes cost €1 billion for example. That's not for the design of a brand new model: that's investment in changing the features of an existing car. In France people might buy a French car out of patriotism. In Germany, if they choose a German car, it's because they consider it to be the superior offering. If there's a better option from Japan or elsewhere they will take it. They tend to buy German, however, because they think they're the best available. 

The manufacturers take labour relationships as seriously as they do their design: one of VW's 4 main strategic corporate goals is to have "the happiest workers in the industry". VW does not email or phone any employee, of any level, outside work hours. Free-time is downtime. The philosophy is that happy workers make good cars. 

The Autobahn

The Autobahn is the symbol of the greatness of the car in Germany. Many people wrongly think the Nazis built the system. In fact they were started in the 1920s, but were greatly expanded during the Hitler time. By 1939 a network of freeways crossed the entire country, 20 years before Britain opened its first motorway. 

They remain "freeways" to this day (free of tolls for cars, and free of speed limits unless there is a specific reason to have one on a limited stretch). Most German manufacturers electronically limit their top models to 250kmh (155 mph) because this is considered fast enough for anyone reasonably to want to go. Porsche is the exception, and this is the one place you get to test their full capability legally on a public road.

Nothing says "Germany" like the Autobahn

The Car Isn't Quite King 

All this said, you might think the "Car is King" in Germany. It is very much on one level - emotionally and "spiritually". But unlike America, it is not King in terms of how people always choose to travel around the country. When Henry Ford produced the mass production car, he effectively killed off the growth of the passenger railway network and public transportation system more generally in the US. Everyone bought a car, and without one you're stranded unless you happen to live in NYC for example.

In Germany, the growth in car ownership has been matched by development of and investment in public transport. This might seem like a contradiction in such a car worshipping society, but it isn't. The Germans may love their cars like family members and keep them sparkling clean, but they're not there solely to get around. If a train suits the job better for a particular journey, people go by train. 

Nor is the car the king of the road in built-up areas. Traffic calming measures, strictly enforced 30kmh (16 mph) limits, and encouragement to use the excellent bus networks in German cities are common-place. You're allowed to drive at 250kmh on the Autobahn, but in urban areas you drive very slowly indeed. Pedestrians and bicycles have priority.

"Pedestrians have priority: drive at walking speed"

The car is worshipped by many in Germany, but it's not simply a workhorse, if that makes sense. It's more like a thoroughbred that's well looked after, carefully stabled, and taken out when the circumstances befit it. You can even follow Bertha Benz's route if you wish and see where it all began: since 2008 the "Bertha Benz Memorial Drive" has been signposted and is a major tourist draw. Repairing your car with a hatpin and garter are optional.

Out of Love for the Car

There we have it. VW's motto in German is "Aus Liebe zum Automobil." This translates as "Out of love for the car." It summarises the relationship of many, if not all, Germans to their cars very aptly indeed.

Oktoberfest!

It's that time of year again... September.  So let's talk about the Oktoberfest.  Yep, Oktoberfest is puzzlingly already on its second weekend over there in Munich, the capital of Bavaria.  Here's everything you need to know about it.  Grab a beer and enjoy...

Check out the heels - and the dainty beer mug. On their way to Oktoberfest.

It begins in September

That's the first thing to note about this, the world's biggest party.  A little like May Week, which takes place in Cambridge in June, there at first doesn't seem too much logic to this.  The celebrations date back over 200 years to when Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria married his bride Therese in Munich on 12 October 1810.

Ludwig later became King and abdicated after a toe-sucking scandal with an exotic dancer called Lola Montez (real name Eliza Gilbert from County Sligo in Ireland).  This caused a revolution - but that's another story.  Ludwig I is not to be confused with his slightly odd, castle-building grandson Ludwig II.  He definitely wasn't into sucking women's toes and I like to call him a "Queen amongst Kings"- click on the link if you want to learn about him in another of my posts.

Anyway, back to Ludwig I's wedding.  This is Bavaria and they like a good party.  25% of the world's entire beer production comes from this one southern German state - there are 1600 breweries here.  The average Bavarian drinks 46.5 gallons of beer a year, so they make a good dent in the beer production before they even get round to exporting it.  Beer is actually known as "liquid bread" and is classed as a food-stuff.  It's strictly brewed according to the purity law of 1516.  This says that only water, barley and hops are allowed as ingredients.

Although sometimes much stronger than American, Australian or British stuff, it tends to give you less of a hangover.  Apparently.  Can't stand the stuff personally ;-)

Bier macht stark (beer makes you strong)

So they had a massive piss-up in 1810, and it was so much fun they decided to repeat it the following year.  And again, and again - right up through until today.  Apart from 24 years that were missed because of cholera outbreaks, hyper-inflation or war, it's been held every year.  This year is therefore the 180th Oktoberfest.

It can get cold in Bavaria at this time of year, however, and the story goes that one year it snowed, ruining the fun.  You just try standing round in Lederhosen with snow blowing up your boxers.  No one likes a cold sausage.

Therefore they moved the beginning of the party back to September - it generally lasts 16 days and always ends on the first Sunday of October (subject to some funny rules about the Sunday falling on German Unification Day on 3 October.  Most people are too shit-faced to understand them, so don't worry too much about this aspect).

What is it? It's a HUGE party

As I mentioned it's the world's biggest party.  A huge part of town is set aside for the festivities, though in reality the whole city of 1.4 million is transformed into a massive beer drinking zone.  You need to book early: hotels book up 6 months in advance and they often double their prices.  People come from all over the world to join in.  Around 6 million people come to the Oktoberfest and they drink around 7 million litres of beer.  There are soft drinks on sale too, but pretty much no other alcoholic drinks.  It's ALL about beer.

It's not just about getting drunk though: there are lots of fairground rides and lots of food eating.  Being dangled upside down on a roller coaster when you've got half an ox and several litres of strong Bavarian beer inside you is just what the doctor (didn't) order, I guess.

Levitating Lederhosen and Flying Bavarian Balconies

The beer is expensive, by usual German standards, at around €8.50 a glass.  It's served in 1 litre glasses, and it's strong at 5.8-6.3%.  That's £7.10 for a two-pint glass, so £3.55 a pint.  You will literally see waiters and waitresses carrying 6 or 8 of these things in their arms in one go.  Beer clearly makes you strong!

It's not actually called Oktoberfest

Well it is and it isn't.  That's the official name.  All the locals actually call it "die Wiesn" which means "the meadows" in Bavarian dialect.  Wiesn is derived from the name of the place where all the big beer tents are set up: the Theresienwiese.  It's a 42 hectare (104 acre) site with 14 massive tents that hold literally thousands of people each.

The party is worth an estimated €1.1 billion to the local economy.   Here's a clever little thing: only breweries that produce beer within the city limits of Munich are allowed to take part.  That means 7 of them in total, who would ordinarily have shifted production to cheaper sites outside the city.  They don't, however, because of the value of beer sales and the prestige of taking part in Oktoberfest- thereby keeping employment in town.  The huge copper vats of the breweries can be seen all round the city as a result.

Inside the Löwenbräu Tent at Oktoberfest

There are, of course, copies of Oktoberfest around the world, particularly in the US.  German immigrants brought the tradition with them.  Here in the UK I heard of one in Southsea in Hampshire, which included both the serving of wine AND ferret racing...  *shudder*.  You just can't trust the English with serious stuff like this.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere is just brilliant.  I've been once and I can't describe what a great time I had.  It isn't some testosterone laden lads' drinking fest.  The latest figures show women made up 49% of visitors.  6% of visitors were families with children under 14 years old.  People tend to get very merry, but not obnoxiously drunk.  The whole city seems to stop for the party and people will greet you with smiles and laughter on the street.  It's not at all unusual to bump into a group of sozzled grannies.  It is simply wunderbar. 

A party for everyone in modern day multi-cultural Germany

Inside the tents you have thousands of people drinking, chatting, eating and listening to the cheesy oompah bands, who will often play contemporary pop songs too.  Everyone is out to have a good time and the usual barriers about not talking to strangers don't apply.  It's unique and it's lovely.

Last orders in the tents are at 10.30pm so it's not a late night thing.  Sure, other places are open later, but given the tents start serving beer at 9am (or earlier) there's more than enough time to get merry.

Lederhosen and Dirndl

Thousands of people wear Lederhosen or Dirndl to the Oktoberfest.  These are the traditional peasants' clothes that belong to Southern Germany and particularly Austria (not originally Switzerland).  They had died out for a while after the War, but a little recognised fact is that the gay community of Munich is largely responsible for bringing them back to popularity from the early 90s onwards. 

My pal @FionaLaird looking stunning in her Dirndl

Gays of course tend to be ahead of the curve, and the wearing of Lederhosen and Dirndl is now absolutely huge.  Even the German Press has been commenting on it regarding this year's celebrations.  'Tracht is everywhere".  The clothes have totally lost their slightly dodgy nationalist/ conservative association, and instead are recognised as the incredibly flattering, colourful and fun local dress that they are.

The photo at the beginning of this post shows how Dirndl can be made contemporary by wearing killer heels, instead of the flat shoes that formed part of the original peasant dress.  Or Fiona shows here how good they can look with a pair of slinky boots.

Bavarian Balcony, complete with floral decoration

Together the Lederhosen and Dirndl outfits are called "Tracht" in German.  Dirndl pull in the waist, push up the boobs to create the cleavage of the famous "Bavarian Balcony" (often decorated with flowers, I jest not!), hide the backside, and just look great.  As for Lederhosen, I'll come on to their attraction, and powers of attraction, in a moment...

Tracht tends to be worn on special occasions, but you'll see real life people, particularly younger ones, out in them at any time of year on the streets of Munich, Salzburg or in any number of smaller places.  Lederhosen in particular are often worn for a hike in the mountains.  As Benjamin below noted on a recent trip to Austria, they actually are a thing.

You will even find Tracht on sale in Northern Germany nowadays.  Prince Bismarck, the great 19th century Prussian chancellor and all-round reactionary, grumpy, old bastard apparently jokingly described the Bavarians as "half Austrian and half human" (think about it).  He'd have been spinning in his grave to know that department stores in central Berlin now stock the sexy leather trousers worn only in his time by mountain lads down south.

Despite being (properly) half-Prussian myself, I'm extremely happy to say that I own my own pair of Lederhosen and love wearing them when I'm in Southern Germany or Austria.  I've even worn them in London in fact, a couple of times.

I'm also proud to say that a highlight of my sad, tragic life to date was when a group of Abercrombie & Fitch models with abs you could grate cheese on chased me down a street in Munich last October and asked me for a photo.  Yup, you've got that right - they usually get asked all day long for photos of them - they asked me instead and dragged me back to the store especially for it.

No.. I didn't photoshop myself onto this, as much as it might look like it

Take that Bismarck: the (pulling) power of Lederhosen, you see!

Gay Oktoberfest

Since the 1970s there's been a special part of the celebrations organised by the Munich LGBT community.  It's called Rosa Wiesn - or pink meadows. It's a series of events, including the biggest, "Gay Sunday" in the Bräurosl tent.  I went to one of the events and I've never experienced anything quite like it.

Half of the tent was straight - nice, bourgeois visitors eating Weisswurst for breakfast with a beer.  The other half was utterly trashed by 10.30am.  Gay boys were up on the tables dancing, shirts opened to the waist, in their little Lederhosen, socks rolled down their calves, with their cute checked neckerchiefs on.  Is there a more flattering look for a fit guy than Lederhosen?  No. Actually I hated it.  Hated it, I tell you *cough*.

There were also lesbians with plaited hair in Dirndl (and some of course in Lederhosen!) The atmosphere was so incredibly friendly and electric.  Everywhere people were joining in the singing and I've never been to a gay event so free of attitude.  The fact that there were straight people tucking into breakfast on the other side of the tent (you could draw a line down the tent), who were utterly non-plussed by the drunken boys and girls next door, made it all the more fabulous.

Boys in Lederhosen on the Munich subway. Nightmare.

There we have it.  I've used a combination of my own photos and ones from a recent article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung for this post, so I'd better just credit them for copyright purposes.  If you ever get the chance to visit Oktoberfest, I can't recommend it more highly.  Book early, wear Tracht, and Prost!

Worries and Problems

I've had a bit of a tough week on a personal level.  Typing this is slow and it hurts.  It's nothing by millions of people's standards, but more on that in a bit. 

Viktor Klemperer

First a line or two about Viktor Klemperer. He was a German Jew, a professor at the University of Dresden.  He wrote the only known complete diary of a German Jew through the Third Reich.  In total, his published diaries span 1933 to 1959.  I read them 15 years back and still think often about things I learned from them.  He wrote the wonderful line: "I am German.  The others are un-German".  Here is an article with more about him if you're interested.  The diaries are long, but lucid, superbly observant, and fascinating.

The diaries are also unique for several reasons.  They were written without the "benefit of hindsight".  He describes the coming to power of the Nazis alongside his ordinary life.  He doesn't have a clue what is coming next.  When he writes in 1942 about having heard of a work camp in the East called Auschwitz, where "conditions are terrible and life expectancy is short", it offers valuable insight into contemporary levels of knowledge.  There's great debate about how much people of the time knew: here was at least one man with his ear to the ground, a great personal interest, with no contemplation of the industrial evil of the gas chambers.

Professor Viktor Klemperer

In any case, leaving aside the history, Klemperer is a highly-strung, slightly pessimistic worrier.  The political situation is very much in the background of his life at first.  Just like any of us, he has other more mundane concerns.  He worries about the little house he and his wife are building.  After the initial excitement of buying it and driving on the Autobahn, he worries about the cost of running his new Opel car.  He worries about his academic work and job at the university.  Then his worries become very much more immediate: he is dismissed from his position.  He is banned from parks, cinemas, theatres.  The war breaks out.  He and Eva have to give up their beloved cat, and then their home.  They move to a "Jew's House" in Dresden.  Their friends start being "resettled" in the East.  It is terrifying to observe from the eyes of someone at the time.

As the outside situation gets more and more dreadful, a lightness enters Klemperer's writing.  He is alive and is consciously glad to be alive.  He takes each day as it comes, and it is precious.  He is spared right through until 1945 from deportation because his wife is non-Jewish and because he is a WW1 veteran.  Finally as part of a last frenzy of murdering by the Nazis, on 15 February, he is due to be deported.  On 14 February the Allies bomb Dresden (incidentally killing 50 of the 150 remaining Jews of the city).  He tears the yellow star from his jacket, destroys his identity papers, and joins the lines of refugees and lives out the war in hiding.  The second volume of his diaries end with his triumphant return to his little house with his wife, after the war.

In many respects I wish I had never read the third volume of his diaries.  Klemperer has survived the Nazi regime.  He has his home back.  He is reinstated to his job.  He is made a senator in the newly founded German Democratic Republic.  His happiness seems to last a few months, however, before the old worries start again along with the deep personal doubts and insecurity.  Rapidly the "heaviness" in his writing resurfaces.

He is just human, like all of us, but I'd rather have believed that the remaining years of his life were filled with peace, joy and happiness.  Instead, the outside situation was very different, but it was back to square one for him in many respects.  My heart just entirely went out to him.  He was such a wonderful, but ultimately such a fragile man.

Life is Short

Life really is short.  At 42, I'm well aware of how rapidly it speeds up.  A couple of months ago, my best friend from school, Nicholas, dropped dead in his Mum's house.  It seems like yesterday we were inter-railing around Europe together aged 18.

We all have problems and worries.  I often walk past an old churchyard and see dates like 1772-1845 on them.  I imagine all the worries that the person had: how huge and real their personal fights, dramas and problems were to them... and how that is all now gone and forgotten.  No one is around to remember any of the details.

How big is my problem, looked at from here?

I don't want my short life to be filled with worries.  I want the peace, joy and happiness that I wish Klemperer had had.  Of course I still have my concerns and problems, just as everyone does, but I try consciously to put them in perspective.  A few tricks I do are:

• imagine you're on a spaceship and look down on little Peter and his problems.  How do they look in the great scheme of things, with what's going on in the world? 
• sort out what is real and what is being constructed around it in my head.  What has actually happened, and what am I making it mean, adding in drama and making it worse?
• accept that life is part choice, and a lot of chance. When you realise you can't control many things you are released from something very fundamental
• realise that your can't control much of the shit that goes on in life, but you can often control your reaction to it.
• count your blessings.  I try to do this every night to put things in perspective.  I have so many blessings: my health, my wonderful boyfriend, my dog, my work, my Mutti, my friends, my lovely home 
• try to be in the "now".  You might be worried about something that could happen tomorrow, next week or next month - but you will be destroying your enjoyment of now if you constantly think about it. Just consciously try to shut it out and deal with it then.

Of course the above is exactly the same old bollocks you can read in any self-help book.  I guess we know it, but putting it into practice is a different matter.  There's a bit or a lot of Klemperer in us all.  At least however, we can try. 

And I do try, and after years of doing it, I know it's working.  I'm a far happier, less worrying, more "zen" person than I was before I was 30.  I might get caught up in drama (on and off line!) but it dissipates rapidly.  I think that's the key.



The real troubles will blindside you some idle Tuesday

There's one other point that I'm going to steal from the annoying "Wear Sun Screen" song from a few years back.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

How true.  Last Monday I was pottering home from work at 4.40pm, all happy, in my 3-week old shiny new car, in a 30 limit.  I'd spent the evening polishing it the day before.  My 11 year old collie Oscar was in the back.  A car appeared from nowhere in front of me.  He was on my side of the road, overtaking a line of traffic on the crest of a hill.  It was on a bend.  I had one second to brake before the airbags went off. 

 

I'm fine, other than painful whiplash, cuts and a sprained wrist.  I was checked out in A&E and am a month's worth of painkillers.  I've been off work all week.  Oscar was also thoroughly checked out and is 100%.  I've had a rough week: nightmares, shakes, crying.  It's my first collision in 24 years of driving in 30 countries.  There were witnesses and the other car was squarely on my side.  The Police have said they will recommend prosecution.  It could've been so much worse, and all those safety features I paid for (but never expected to use) did their job incredibly well protecting me and Oscar. 

But I have been shaken up.  This blog is an attempt I guess, to "get it all out there", to acknowledge the upset and the problem, and to move on.  People have been lovely to me on and offline, and I am well aware that if I were out on a spaceship, looking down on all the problems on Earth, this doesn't even register.  I'm not about to lose my house, my friends and my life to a murderous regime, let's face it.

If you were one of those people who were kind to me, though, this also my thanks to you.  People can make their own lives better or worse, and can make other people's better or worse too.  I've felt a lot of basic human kindness this week and I appreciate and would like to acknowledge it.