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Roger Willemsen 2010
Photo: Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images
Germany is somewhere or nowhere or everywhere: the same glass blocks in the facade, the same house numbers, the same garages and in front of the garages the same wives who stand helplessly in the driveway and watch as her husband comes home, and next door the neighbor comes in his house, and the women stand and ask themselves, Why is this man coming to my house, and that one to her house? Nothing but different and the same, everything different and the same, the care, the love, the solitary confinement.
– Roger Willemsen,
trip to Germany
At the beginning of the millennium, the TV presenter Roger Willemsen undertook a journey that could hardly be more exotic: He was driving from Germany to Germany, he wrote, to look for the so-called "people out there in the country".
What immediately struck him was that there is a gap between the Germans as they are and the Germans as they see themselves.
And that most people don't know anything about this gap.
On the cover photo, Willemsen is standing in the doorway of a train, his gaze past the photographer to the outside and at the same time deep inside: curious and exhausted, full of expectations and a little worried.
Travel texts follow one rule: you have to move yourself so that something can start moving.
Sometimes the traveler seeks himself, sometimes he avoids himself;
sometimes he strives towards a goal, more often he just wants to get away from something.
On the other hand, all travelers are driven by the longing for a realization, the search for the heart of darkness.
A trip to Germany is always: sociology, history of mentalities and archaeology.
Everywhere there are traces of the past, only carelessly painted over by the present: prohibitions, warnings and advertisements, words like "grocery store" or "guest room" and, under peepholes, doormats with "Welcome" written in colorful cursive.
The Germans, that is the basic assumption of every trip to Germany, are a mystery to themselves.
They revere the practical and dream of the spiritual, they are often loud in small things and often timid in big things, incapable of recklessness, of leaps, of revolution in general.
When the Germans stormed a train station, Lenin sneered, they first bought a platform ticket.
"The land is most beautiful as a promise, far away," writes Willemsen.
His view of Germany is a view from the warm compartment, limited by the frame set by the train window.
A view from a distance, but even more a view from above: a journey through a miniature wonderland, an expedition through a cozy setting.
After all, the train driver is an explorer waiting: always ready to marvel at the miracle that he is hoping for and that may never happen for that very reason - and at the same time prepared to have to keep going.
In fact, Willemsen finds evidence of what he expects everywhere.
Uniform everywhere that would love to be individual, nothing but attempts at distinction from the hardware store, the desire of people who would like to stand out from others and still want to be part of a community.
Man, wrote Elias Canetti, fears nothing so much as contact with the unknown.
He finds consolation in community, in equality with others.
The fear of contact paralyzes, the experience of equality makes happy.
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Elias Canetti, 1970
Photo: brandstaetter images / Getty Images
Nothing but different and equal: That is beautifully observed;
Willemsen knows, of course, that the Germany he is traveling to does not exist.
It is therefore important to find a punchline that sets the tone for what follows, that summarizes a phenomenon (»everything different and the same«) in one term, or even better: in three terms, because then a nice breach of expectations can be created .
But which?
Faith, love, hope, the consolation formula from the letter to the Corinthians?
too similar to each other.
Something like "Peasants, Bigwigs and Bombs" is the name of a novel by Hans Fallada?
Already better, although alliteration is always difficult.
Concern, love: that's pleasant in principle and without any arrogance, big, simple concepts, Willemsen obviously understood what people are concerned about.
And then, at right angles to it, almost abruptly: solitary confinement.
Germany is a country without a centre, it consists almost exclusively of the periphery.
And in the end, taste is just the skill of putting together a unique combination from a range of industrially manufactured mass-produced goods – colorful glass blocks or a house number that is attached in stages.
To a traveler in motion, everything he perceives must necessarily appear static.
Garages, driveways, glass blocks: big questions, a big helplessness.
The closer you look at this country, the further back it looks.