Photo German Tiger II tanks (enlarged):
Wikipedia
By
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1975-102-14A / Hamann / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC
BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5419006
87 Gentle lesson
The German way
On our visit to Germany, our hostess, my
mother’s sister (my Tante) Elsa, served delicious Leberwurst
(liverwurst). I cut a circle and spread it out across my bread.
Tante Elsa firmly remonstrated, “In Deutchland
drueckt man nicht die Wurst.“ (In Germany one does not
press the sausage.) To the postwar Germans this generous serving
was an affirmation of sufficiency—affluence, compared to what
they had endured.
My aunt was asking me to conform to local
practice. It was polite for her to teach me manners. In German
culture, that was not only acceptable; it was required. We had a
duty to clue in others to our way of doing things—roughly, to
correct others.
That played out equally following our
return to America. After I had introduced a girl to my parents,
they privately told me that I had to tell her to stand up
straight and quit slouching. They said, “If you don’t do that,
you don’t love her.” She was a nice person, but at that stage of
acquaintance, I wasn’t concerned with loving her to that
extent.
Overboard
This mindset carried over to diabolical
extremes in the Hitler Youth—the Brown Shirts. They were
programmed idealists intent on their duty to spread German order
through the world. Principles of constancy and honor morphed into
arrogance and conquest.
This brought widely felt repercussions. A
Swiss citizen told me that during or shortly after the war he had
been on a train outside of Germany. He was being bitterly shunned
by the other passengers because of the German accent in his
English. When it came out in conversation that he was Swiss, they
apologized to him saying, “Why didn’t you tell us? You’re all
right!”
Possibly cultural insensitivity works in
many different directions.
However
We Germans have punctilious insistence on
doing things right. We value truth over feelings. We are always
willing to knuckle down and work harder, including facing the
truth. I have heard that other descendants of Germans suffer
emotionally when their American classes study the holocaust.
Perhaps I don’t suffer the shared guilt because my parents left
Germany because of the abusive policies. They and I are the very
first to denounce Hitler’s excesses.
Is it politically incorrect to find fault
with German ascendancy? If so, let’s do away with political
correctness. As a German American I insist on being brutally
frank and honest to make sure we purge this terror forever. That
is a very German position to take, owning the past in order to
make corrections. Germans are almost Spartan in our willingness
to make people stronger. However, let us now consider best ways
to encourage improvement.
Bridging: shared collective guilt
Sometimes things don’t turn out as we
intended. My parents sacrificed so that I could be born outside
Hitler’s influence. I landed in a country with its own national
guilt. As I expect to be shunned for German association with
racism, I expect to be shunned for American use of slavery,
nuclear weapons, torture, and capital punishment. Again, I do
away with denial and superficial political correctness. Our
redemption from the past is to face it and make corrections.
The American way
My son came back from the Marines with a
slogan that shows how Americans are equally strong in facing
responsibility: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” This
blog is about how we help each other. If you are hard on me, you
are helping me bear my burden so that I can improve my life. Your
role is to keep the burden bearable; mine is to use it for growth
(resistance training, articles 15 and 31).
Together with that toughness, Americans
are especially good at caring for people’s feelings. While we
Americans are mindful of shortcomings in ourselves and others, we
constructively approach issues with kindness. Typically, our
American objective is not to prevail but to help. We improve each
other and the world using positive orientation and encouragement.
My parents supported this country faithfully and although they
had felt persecution, I never directly suffered any disadvantage
for being German American.
I frequently praise the honesty and
stability I found in Switzerland, a country with four official
languages and many local dialects. Successful pluralism has
emerged over more than six centuries of sharing a crowded space.
There were some battles. When George Washington’s army attacked
on Christmas morning, they were copying a battle strategy that
had been used between two Swiss cities. However, over time there
emerged a strong confederation intent on peaceful coexistence.
America is far short of six hundred years, but it is blessed with
the cultural diversity that will teach us what we need to learn.
Despite internal battles, we are learning adaptability. We have
the potential of peace.
The sensitivity
Caring for each other’s feelings brings
happiness. It requires us to examine ourselves to come to right
perspective. We can learn this perspective from a superlative
demonstration that appeared decades ago in the Dennis the Menace
comic strip. Dennis is being reprimanded for bad table manners.
His frustrated parents ask, "what would you say if
we behaved like that?" His response is classic:
"Nothing, 'cause I'm polite!"
Being For Others Blog copyright © 2020 Kent Busse
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