Germans are still shackled to their past and it greatly influences the way they deal with Europe and the wider world, according to one of the country's foremost writers and thinkers.
Bernhard Schlink, author of The Reader and a series of other works that tackle the guilt of his and other generations about the past, says that German children today still have to deal with the difficult hand history has dealt them. In an interview with the Guardian to start a week-long series looking at Europe's pre-eminent power, the 68-year-old author says he sometimes experiences his own Germanness as a "huge burden" that he has come to accept.
And he adds that the reason the European crisis is so agonising for Germany is that the country has been able to retreat from itself by hurling itself into the European project. An unravelling of the European ideal would deprive the Germans of an "escape from themselves". "I can't say I'm thankful about being German because I sometimes experience it as a huge burden," Schlink says. "But it is an integral part of me and I wouldn't want to escape it. I have accepted it." The former judge, whose main home is in Berlin, cites examples of friends and colleagues who have done much to disguise their Germanness, to assume other identities in an effort to escape the sometimes overwhelming historical responsibility. » | Kate Connolly in Berlin | Sunday, September 16, 2012
