Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht

“The mass symbol of the Germans was the army. But the army was more than just the army; it was the marching forest,” Elias Canetti writes in his classic “Crowds and Power”. Countless songs have been devoted to this German forest, operas written using it as a backdrop, rhymes made about trees and dreams, fairy tales and sagas invented about its world of fairies and witches. Eichendorff asked: “Who built you, beautiful forest | Up there so high?” In “The Forest Passage” Ernst Jünger glorified partisan fighters, while both the Greens and the Nazis have used it to counter the erosion of the German cultural landscape. And Kleist depicted the Roman legions being defeated in the Teutoburg Forest by Hermann and the Cherusci. Or as Heine satirically put it: “Here he (the Roman Varus) was beaten by the Cheruscan prince | Hermann, the noble warrior; | The German nationality | Was victorious in this filth.” But was it really victorious? Did it actually exist? Or does German national sentiment not consist primarily of heroic tales that do have little in common with historical reality? Despite this – or perhaps because of it – they remain stubbornly persistent. And to this day they continue to provide intellectual nourishment for flawless concepts of homeland, nationhood and potency. Which makes the question all the more pressing of where they actually come from, these myths about the Germans. And how we can prevent yesterday’s dreams from turning into tomorrow’s nightmare.