Guido Westerwelle and the English language
Guido Westerwelle disappeared from view for a few hours last week and the word among my compassionate colleagues was that he was just exhausted; emotionally, physically. In need of sleep. Well, you can certainly understand that. A few weeks ago he could buy mangoes at my local greengrocers; now he has to discuss his daily movements with his security team. His world has shrunk at the very moment when his political career expands. But my very unreliable sources have a more fanciful explanation for Westerwelle’s missing hours: he was whisked away for re-education to a Schloss (or what the Prussian aristocracy used to call Schloss – in fact, an old Gutshaus that was converted into an Altersheim in the DDR and now made into a kind of academy with cracked windows and linoleum on the floors. Some say it looks like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts school and this would be appropriate since the house outside Berlin is where apprentices learn the schwarz-gelbe magic, the dark arts.
This is what could have happened, who knows, in the basement cinema room. A short film is running and the introducing title is: GW PK 28.09.09. An elderly teacher stands near the screen. GW is transfixed by his own image. A BBC reporter poses a question in English. On the film, GW snaps: “Hier in Deutschland ist es üblich, dass man hier deutsch spricht.”
Teacher, touching the screen wiht a long cane:
“What is wrong here?”
“Nothing,” says GW, “they speak English in England, we speak German in Germany. Finde ich gut. Selbstbewusst.”
The teacher sighs.
“Take notes: foreigners react badly to the slogan Deutsch für Deutsche. Now let me ask you, without intruding too much in your private sphere: are you wearing boxer shorts?”
GW nods.
“Did you cooperate with the Angela Team?”
“Yes”, says GW.
“Do you appear in talk-shows? Are you a VIP, a Very Important Person? Do you phone using the city-tariff? Is your friend a Marketing and Events manager? Have you been brainstorming with Brüderle? In a meeting?”
Having established that Germany is the very last country to speak German, the Schwarz-gelb guru continues with the film of GW’s unhappy inaugural press conference.
O-Ton GW: “Und damit das nur gleich klar ist: wir können auch gern mal außerhalb einer Pressekonferenz fabelhaft uns zum Tee treffen, und dann sprechen wir nur englisch.”
„Herr W – do you see nothing wrong here?“
“Why? The English drink tea, don’t they?”
“First: ‘fabelhaft’ is a Cabrio-drivers word. Second, you are saying that German is the only acceptable business language and English is for teatime. You are reducing a foreigner to an ethnocentric caricature. What next: drunken Russians, curry-eating Pakistanis, snail-eating French?”
“It was a joke.”
“Leave the jokes to the English. It is the German role to laugh. The correct response to a question posed in English is to say, in fluent English, ‘I love the English language but forgive me if we speak now in German’. This demonstrates to the world that you are not afraid to talk publicly in a foreign language.”
The film continues.
O-Ton GW: “Es ist Deutschland hier.”
Teacher: „This is your third mention of Germany in 90 seconds.“
GW: “Why not? Wir sind tatsächlich in Deutschland.”
The teacher sighs and tugs his yellow jumper; he has advised many would-be foreign ministers but none has been quite so stubborn.
“This was not a geography lesson. The reporter was almost certainly already aware that he was in Germany.”
Will young Guido listen to his elders? I hope so, because they know that the first week after winning an election is not about re-organising the power apparent or bargaining about policy. It is about setting a tone. The correct tonal pitch for a future foreign minister and vice-chancellor is to be modest and sunny and promise the world that they will be dealing with an open and self-confident Germany. It is not about being zickig to the first foreign reporter who asks him a public question. When Angela Merkel faced a similar conference in 2005 she was asked (by a foreign reporter) “are you happy?”; she answered with all the joy of someone has just buried her pet dog in the garden. The world suddenly realised what it was dealing with – an overly rational, slightly melancholic, hesitant leader. It took 18 months and a WM to shed that image.
In the case of both Merkel and Westerwelle, there is a simple explanation – the sudden onset of fatigue after a long campaign – for their lack of charm. But in Westerwelle’s case the problem is deeper, at least for those with a long historical memory. Does the FDP still have a deutsch-national gene? And does Westerwelle perhaps reflect that? The FDP, after all, was the party of Erich Mende, the Ritterkreuz winner who became vice-chancellor to Ludwig Erhard. It was the FDP who urged a gesamtdeutsches Ministerium; it was the FDP who kept the Vertriebene issue alive for many decades. It was Mende who urged the withdrawal of missiles from west and “Mittel”-Deutschland in the late 1950s. Now we have an echo of that with Westerwelle’s wish to get rid of all tactical nuclear missiles form Germany.
Of course the FDP changed under Brandt-Scheel, but even then, there was a dark strain to some of its policies. The FDP is a curious party and it has always attracted strange, unpredictable personalities (Jürgen Möllemann for example). So what we foreigners want to hear from Guido is something simple and optimistic, a Yes We Can; we want a Germany that is willing to cooperate enthusiastically in beating global recession and global terrorism. The past 18 months has seen Germany withdraw inside itself and now it needs to open up again. The old Guido would have caught the mood and tried harder to charm has audience. The new Guido, with his exaggerated seriousness, looks like he is afraid of power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laUJzGMUEI4
05. November 2009 um 19:58
I was recently explaining the wonderful German word “fremdschämen” to my family in the UK. Guido Westerwelle is a perfect example. Cups of tea! My god! It makes you cringe, and I’m not German, I just live here.
06. November 2009 um 20:09
Hallo Roger,
einfach nur wunderbar! Dein Artikel hat mir geholfen, mein Englisch zu verbessern. Er ist geradezu eine Empfehlung für alle deutschen Kultusministerien. Manche non-native [deutsche] Englisch-Lehrer sollten sich davon einmal eine Scheibe abschneiden.
Es ist mehr als erstaunlich, daß Westerwelle Chef der FDP und seit kurzem gar Deutscher Außenminister werden konnte. Das sagt eigentlich alles über die FDP, jene kleine substantiell unbedeutende, aber wichtigtuerische – und von allen wahrlich überflüssigste Partei Deutschlands, welche nicht erst seit Genschers Verrat an Schmidt 1982, sondern bereits seit 1974 die Grenze moralischer Integrität überschritten hatte – damals, als Genscher in der ersten sozial-liberalen Regierung Innenminister war und er den damaligen Bundeskanzler Willy Brandt 1974 als Lockvogel in der Spionageaffaire Guillaume mißbrauchend schließlich diesen indirekt zum Rücktritt veranlasste, obgleich doch er selbst, Early Earl of Genschman, als Innenminister für Sicherheit im Innern zuständig gewesen war und durch seinen, Genschers, eigenen Rücktritt Verantwortung für das Zulassen eines DDR-Spions in Kanzlernähe hätte übernehmen müssen. Genscher war ähnlich wie Nixon verschlagen, “tricky” und – als gelernter (DDR-) Hallenser Opportunist – taktisch geschickt im Umgang mit Worten. Das sicherte ihm seine Existenz als Außenminister in 16 langen Jahren.
Westerwelle ist ebenso überflüssig wie Genscher, ebenfalls Opportunist wie Genscher, gleichfalls wortreich wie Genscher – aber taktisch tapsig wie ein Tanzbär im Honigladen, keine Schüssel auslassend; und ebenso klebrig, jedoch von vollkommener Hohlheit sind seine langen vielen Worte.
Doch stets noch gilt der alte Satz: Ein Zuviel an Worten kompensiert nicht ein Zuwenig an Geist.
Liest man seine letzte Parteitagsrede vor der Bundestagswahl im Detail nach, so findet sich dort außer Phrasen ["Die Steuern sind zu hoch" (für wen?) … "Leistung muß sich wieder lohnen" (für wen?) … "Wer arbeit, soll mehr in der Tasche haben, als jemand, der nicht arbeit" (wen meint er? - auch jene, die die Taschen voll haben, ohne jemals in ihrem Leben gearbeitet zu haben?)] nichts Konkretes, nichts Gehaltvolles, und selbst von jener im Wahlkampf noch lautstark propagierten Steuer auf Finanzprodukte, also einer echten anteiligen Umsatzsteuer für Banker, ist jetzt, nach der Wahl, nichts mehr zu hören; und im Koalitionsvertrag ist kein Wörtchen mehr darüber zu lesen. Eben das zeigt anschaulich das seit mehr als 40 Jahren geltende FDP-Prinzip: Lärmen, laut sein, erforderlichenfalls bellen – aber den Schwanz einziehen, wenn es zur Sache kommt. [Ihr fehlen hierfür, wenn ich es einmal so sagen darf, die Eier …] – Und man sieht wieder einmal: Außer Reden nichts gewesen. Übrigens kann Westerwelle nicht nur kein Englisch, sondern auch kein Deutsch: Denn den Ausdruck (’idiom’), eine “fabelhafte” Tasse Tee miteinander zu trinken, gibt es nicht. Hier flossen vor Lachen der Tränen reichlich aus deutschen Augen – kein Auge konnte bei solch’ schwachsinnigem Fabulieren trocken bleiben!
Wenn das der Auftakt gewesen sein soll, dann stehen Satirikern in Deutschland (nicht in England) vier harte Jahre bevor – : Ist nach Schiller die Definition von Satire eine Übertreibung der Wirklichkeit – mit dem Ziel, die Wirklichkeit als einen mangelbehafteten Zustand darzustellen, den es durch Kritik und Arbeit zu überwinden gilt; die durch Verfremdung (Brecht) aus einem profanen Bekannten in ein erleuchtendes Erkanntes erhoben werden sollte, und welche, mit Tucholsky zu sprechen, bei diesem satyrhaften Vorgehen “alles darf” – wie, bei Isis und Osiris, soll Satire überhaupt noch vernünftig arbeiten können, wenn alle mögliche kritische, erlaubtermaßen komische Satire von der Realität selbst mittlerweile übertroffen wird? Durch Guido Westerwelle, die deutsche Antwort auf Johnny English? Oh armes Deutschland. Und glückliches England. Möge John Cleese darob nicht arbeitslos werden! Well, vielleicht gibt es ja demnächst ein Remake von “Das Leben des Brian” …
York
[November 6th, 2009]
19. November 2009 um 18:08
Never mind me entering my humble musing of gratitude late. Thank you ever so much for doing the linguistic pilpul and not leave it at that.
Recently we had a dear friend staying over here in Berlin who introduced us to the infamous GW clip. Funny, wasn’t it?! Not really. We all agreed there was something somehow unsavoury and embarrassing about that inauguration press conference. But since we had not systematically analysed the exchange as one should have, we failed to put a finger exactly on the point where GW was carried away, got derailed, blundered, unambiguously failed or whatever. Thus, in the end, our friend decided, GW, however, had made a vital point somehow, at least, no matter how inaptly his words were putting it, he was still showing some healthy pride in his language, culture and country and could be seen as the new face of a self-assured political leadership which would be good for Germany and make it more predictable to its foreign partners. ‘Not so,’ I thought, ‘the impression of that performance appeared to work exactly the other way. By all means he comes accross like a whimp, a self-possessed, and inflated, regular addressing his equally unsophisticated cronies at a provincial pub. Something I shouldn’t have to come to expect of any foreign minister of Germany. As if GW had simply won his post, and suddenly at that, in a lottery a la ‘Slum-dog Millionnaire’. Part of any politician’s homework (already as a kind of ‘Shadow-Foreign Minister’) should have been to role-play at least the basics of his trade. ‘Well,’ you might argue, ‘who would have the right to ask for perfection?’ Yet, it is foremost and overall the attitude which matters when someone like GW is out there, as newly appointed special VIP, who is going to talk on behalf, and, maybe, represents the interest, of all German citizen to others, to foreign goverments, other VIP that were, who will get his very word translated to the dot and comma. GW wants to be respected, doesn’t he. And, by the way, no one could claim he did handle his mother-tongue very well, as you have so nicely illustrated. What if he had expressed himself in a clumsier way in English – would this just have sounded charming enough in a novice. But I guess not, with the patronising stereotypes as well as the empty repetitions and all that.
‘I love the English language but forgive me if we speak now in German.’ – What a powerful, re-assuring and friendly sentence this could have been, coming from the mouth of a modern German gentleman! If only, only… we could have been allowed to hear it coming from the Foreign Minister’s own mouth, then, tired or not.
Alas, and full of woe, I must console myself with some expectation that at least any new generation of German diplomats will continue to be nurtured on the good and sound Satow’s Diplomatic Practice just as their predecessors surely must have been. Axious question: will someone from the diplomatic corps be kind enough to lend GW the golden book? So far, though, the most recent edition is in English only. –
Oh, well; let’s go and have a coffee now and talk about something different and hope Herr GW will be kept out of that place for reasons of upgraded security or the much needed lessons in public relations.