Sport, unification and reconciliation
The New York Times carries an interesting profile of Germany’s captain Michael Ballack, who grew up in what was East Germany, but is now a focus of the expectations of the entire country.
Pierre Gottschlich, a political scientist at the University of Rostock, said of Ballack. “Think about it as a game played on certain levels. We’ve gone from the first level, where everybody thinks of him as East German, to the second level, where some see him as East German and others don’t, and we’re getting to the next level, where it doesn’t matter at all. Probably in another 10 or 20 years, we’ll get there.”
What’s interesting, and may bear comparison to our own experience, is the variety of feeling about him, and how people’s perceptions of him reveal something of the different speeds of reconciliation, post-unification. In the places that were West Germany, no one cares where he’s from. But in his homeland, to some, he’s a figure of hope, of pride and of progress.
Beate Neuss, a professor of international politics at the Technical University of Chemnitz, said that eastern Germans were regularly told by the Party of Democratic Socialism, the former communists, that unification made them second-class citizens. “It’s good to have someone on top,” Neuss said of Ballack.
But then again, to those born after the Berlin Wall came down, it seems largely irrelevant.
As Ben Heber, a 14-year-old decathlete, trained Tuesday at the same Chemnitz sports club that produced Ballack, he said of Ballack’s eastern heritage: “We were born after reunification. It doesn’t matter at all.”
‘Yes, it would be nice if everyone born on the island of Ireland could at least agree to the label Irish’
seabhac siulach:
But that’s not the point. You are wishing that the German situation applied to the island of Ireland. It doesn’t.
Reality is that unionists in the main don’t consider themsleves to be Irish. Thus we have the alternative scenario that is mentioned by Keith – a Sri Lanka style one, where not everyone on the island sees themselves as being the same thing.
You may not like that, you may wish it was different, but that’s reality.
Lots of things here:
1. I’m really not sure that you can relate Germany to Ireland in any meaningful way, although sometimes I wonder (for example, many people in the DDR supported the West German football team).
2. While most of what Beano says is correct in my view, West Germans did generally refer to their country as ‘Germany’ and to East Germany as ‘die DDR’ (always initials – ‘DDR’ in fact became one of the most common words in the German language in its own right).
3. Germany’s economy has significant structural problems that are not to do with unification – unification itself has been quite a success economically all things considered.
4. Germany certainly has a lot going for it, as George says – huge external markets, an astonishing sense of safety on its streets (females happily walk around Berlin on their own at any time, for example), and environmental advancements the envy of the rest of the world.
5. People tend to forget the German-Austrian relationship, which is in some ways more obviously comparable to the NI-RoI one.
Off to Germany myself next week…
Re Ireland:
1. Interestingly, my sense is that there is a growing ‘Northern Irish’ identity among young people, yet at the same time there are more extreme ‘Irish’ (i.e. allegedly not British in any way and ‘Irish’ means ‘Gaelic’) and ‘British’ (allegedly not ‘Irish’ at all) identities.
2. Brian should be careful with his comparisons. The Tyrol was partioned after WW1, the North and East remaining in Austria, the South handed over to Italy despite a 97% German-speaking majority. Mussolini attempted an Italianization (including a plantation and banning of use of German), a terrorist campaign began in the ’60s as German speakers rose up. Yet German speakers my age in South Tyrol are not only content with the constitutional status quo (i.e. strong power-sharing devolution within Italy), but have come unquestioningly to support Italian national teams…
3. harpo therefore makes a strong point. There’s not much point in talking about anything if we have two ‘sides’ unwilling to ‘reconcile’ with each other. That is the lesson from Germany, the Tyrol, and most other successful conflict resolutions.
‘That is the lesson from Germany, the Tyrol, and most other successful conflict resolutions.’
IJP:
What made the German speaking ‘ethnic Austrians’ in the south Tyrol accept ‘reconcilition’, if as recently as the 60s some of them tried terrorism?
They could have done the Irish Republican thing and complained from day 1 that the partition of the Tyrol was unfair/wrong, just as NI nationalists have. They could have had a rising every generation and kept it up until today. So why didn’t they, whereas NI nationalists have done so?
The partition of the island of Ireland in my opinion was fair, as it led to NI being set up with a majority of people who wanted to stay in the UK. That’s as good a partition as you will get. One where 97% of the people in an area end up on the wrong side against their will isn’t fair. And one where I’d have thought they’d have had strong support for correcting it. So why are those folks in the south Tyrol happy, whereas NI nationalists still aren’t?
Are they just realists – they accepted that it happened and wasn’t changing?
‘There’s not much point in talking about anything if we have two ‘sides’ unwilling to ‘reconcile’ with each other.’
The big problem is that nationalists are not prepared to reconcile. They want it all their way. For them they won’t be satisfied until there is a united Ireland ie total victory for their side. That isn’t reconciliation.
Unionists on the other hand have always been, and still are, prepared to share the island of Ireland.
“In the case of unionists on the island of ireland, I think it’s not that surprising that since their ancestors came from various parts of GB that their choice is to be united with GB.”
Like the Americans in 1776….;)
“Under your theory I suppose you would say that they should have gone into a UI to give it a chance and if there had been no oppression, everything would have been OK. But that’s nonsense. You don’t put yourself into that situation based on blind hope, especially when you have the right to choose what you actually do want in the first place. Why would a people who were happy with the country they were in (the UK) give that up just because Irish Home Rulers thought it was a good idea?”
Actually in case you have forgot the Home Rulers were not calling for us to leave the UK. They wanted autonomous status for Ireland within the UK, like what Scotland now has. 26% in Scotland voted no to devolution, but you don’t see that country being partitioned. The partition plan preceded the Treaty and envisaged 2 Home Rule states remaining within the UK.
I also believe that the Unionists were just being paranoid which is a forte of theirs. Further to that I believe a certain element of the opposition to Home Rule was a Herrenvolk mentality that didn’t want “a Catholic about the place” in govt. I think your community should be honest about your real motivations at that time and what a mess you made by partitioning this island and consigning thousands of people to chaos.
Is it not also ironic that for all the warnings of “oppression” there would supposedly have been in a United Ireland, that the Unionists then inflicted this on their Catholic minority including the McMahon family massacre by an RUC deathsquad and decades of gerrymandering and pogroms?
“The partition of the island of Ireland in my opinion was fair”
What was so “fair” about handing huge tracts of Catholic territory to the Northern Ireland state? That has nothing to do with self-determination.
‘I also believe that the Unionists were just being paranoid which is a forte of theirs. Further to that I believe a certain element of the opposition to Home Rule was a Herrenvolk mentality that didn’t want “a Catholic about the place” in govt.’
There were plenty of Catholics about the place in government in the UK when Home Rule started being debated. What are you on about?
This argument is nonsense. Being opposed to Home Rule meant keeping lots more Catholics within the UK, meaning that some of those Catholics could have been in the UK government. Getting rid of Irish Catholics out of the UK would have meant a less Catholic UK.
Why can’t you simply accept the obvious reality that unionists liked being in the UK, and didn’t want to leave it? What about that is so hard to understand? Why is it that you have to invent all sorts of conspiracy theories to try to deflect from this simple fact?
You approach the whole issue from the point of view of unionists wanting control of something. They didn’t. When the whole of Ireland was in the UK, unionists were a small minority in the whole country. How did they control anything or have that much influence? So what’s the ‘Herrenvolk’ crack about? There was no NI parliament at that time, no Stormont. So unionists in Ulster had no control over nationalists.
I don’t see what’s so hard to understand that they simply wanted to stay in the UK, instead of entering this new Home Rule Ireland where who knows what would have happened. You approach this from the point of view that they were essentially the same as the Home Rulers and had no reason to not want the same thing. But it’s clear that they did. They wanted to stay in their country. What’s so hard to get about this? Why would you leave a country you are happy in?
‘I think your community should be honest about your real motivations at that time and what a mess you made by partitioning this island and consigning thousands of people to chaos.’
What you mean here is the motivations that you ascribe to unionism. I’ll say it again. Unionists simply wanted to stay in the UK. If they had been forced to leave the UK against their will at that time, there would have been an equally big mess. Partition avoided that big mess. If that big mess had happened tens of thousands of people would have been subjected to caos. Civil war etc etc.
Or do you think that Home Rule or a Free State without partition would have all ended up well, with unionists saying ‘we were only trying it on’?
BTW
What do you see the real motivations of unionists as?
‘What was so “fair” about handing huge tracts of Catholic territory to the Northern Ireland state? That has nothing to do with self-determination.’
Brian:
No partition is ever completely successful, but the one of Ireland was pretty good. It would be impossible to ensure that everyone ended up on the side of their border of their choice.
What is ‘Catholic territory’ BTW? Were all Catholics solidly for nationalism? No Catholic unionists existed?
Let’s say only 4 of the 6 counties had ended up in NI. And each had a unionist majority. Would that have been OK with you? Or would you then be complaining that within those counties certain ‘Catholic’ towns, villages, wards, down to even townlands should have not been in NI either?
Where do you draw the line? And does it work the other way? Could parts of the 2 counties have been carved off if there was a unionist majority in the area concerned.
Counties was used as an arbitrary unit, but I still think that they did a good job. I’d say that the minimum amount of people were inconvenienced by partition.
BTW
Does this mean that you don’t object to partition in itself as a method of ensuring the right to self-determination, so long as it is fair?
“BTW
What do you see the real motivations of unionists as?”
I don’t want to tar them all with the one brush but in general it was a sectarian attitude that feared Catholics and therefore Catholics in govt over them. I think they also feared they would be discriminated against because of the wrongs their ancestors had committed against the Catholics e.g. land confiscations. A hypothesis that I disagree with.
“No partition is ever completely successful, but the one of Ireland was pretty good. It would be impossible to ensure that everyone ended up on the side of their border of their choice.”
All the 26 counties were Catholic at the time of partition. Only 4 of the 6 counties were Protestant. Furthermore the 2 that were Catholic were geographically contiguous with the Southern Irish state, and your minority was 31% compared to 7% in ours. Which is easier to integrate 7% or 31%? The will of the people should have come first. I am opposed in principle to partition, but Nationalist Ireland wouldn’t have gone on about it so much were not so many Catholics excluded from the Irish state. I don’t think Unionists would have accepted Protestant border counties going to the Republic yet we had to accept that happening for Catholic ones.
“Let’s say only 4 of the 6 counties had ended up in NI. And each had a unionist majority. Would that have been OK with you? Or would you then be complaining that within those counties certain ‘Catholic’ towns, villages, wards, down to even townlands should have not been in NI either?”
I would have been more comfortable with that. The sense of injustice and resentment would have been a lot less. I would still find the existence of a border an irritation, but not the kind of outrage the present border became. The suspension of Tyrone and Fermanagh Co.Councils for refusing to recognise the Northern State is an example of how their incorporation into the NI state was opposed by the majority of the people there. As was the fact that Unionists rejected proposals in the earlier Home Rule talks for a referendum in each of the 6 counties to determine where the border should lie.
The way NI was governed from 20-72 was nothing short of disgraceful. We saw on our very TV screens Catholics being burned out of their homes while the RUC and B-Specials either took part of did nothing. No wonder so many people were outraged. The Unionist community is still in denial over this period in history and that should end.
George,
Of those three citations, only two are British; none are from financial press; and none are crowing – the Times, a de facto tabloid, is the tetchiest, the Guardian, no lover of markets, will probably de delighted if no pro-market reforms take place.
Listen, I’d be amazed if at various times over the last while the British tabloid press hadn’t crowed about British growth compared to German stagnation – it’s part of their bread and butter after all.
However to claim that there’s some sort of systematic conspiracy among anglo-saxons to belittle the German economy is nonsense – although it may be more palatable to attribute all of the studies and articles on the need for reform to this, than to apply Occam’s razor and say, maybe it’s because there IS a need for reform.
What you say flags another point which is often made, which is that because the big Euro economies (particularly Germany, France and Italy) are after all, still advanced and rich, that for many people it doesn’t feel like there’s a real need for change – of course things are a bit different if you’re a second generation Algerian living in a Parisian ghetto, or a German graduate who has been unemployed for 10 years..
But at the minute there is no real momentum from voters in favour of reform, although in France Sarkozy’s popularity is holding up and he has often spoken about a “rupture” with the past (although he hasn’t been above changing his spots when the need has arose). And the problem is that with very few exceptions there is limited responsible political dialogue to explain the need for reform – the danger being that things will continue in their slow (but comfortable) downward trajectory until the need for reform is more obvious, more serious, and much more painful.