De l'Allemagne
No no don't worry I'm not going to redo a madame de Staël, a noble (well as far as I know) lady from France who wrote books at the beginning of the 19th century and is remembered mostly for her book de l'Allemagne.
I vaguely remember her from my highschool as she was included in the Lagarde et Michard, the annual textbook for French literature and culture. Each year was a new century and we started with medieval time when we were in first year so I believe XIX century arrived when I was a teenager. I vaguely remember, from the year before, the walking into nature of monsieur Rousseau, the spleen from the North (England? Scotland?) and the Sturm und Drang from Germany. I'm quite proud to have received such a refined French language education as it very clearly showed influences flowing between countries.
Madame de Staël, in her multi-volume book de l'Allemagne, presents the cultural life of Germany to the French. I haven't read the books so will not pretend anything here but all major figure of German intellectual life are present and explained in her book. She was a major factor for introducing German culture in France.
Needless to say, Napoleon, in power at the time, and who had just humiliated Germany and in particular Prussia (we French would pay the price later...) forbade the publication of the books. Thankfully it got published elsewhere (London I think). The preface of the second edition, written by the author, gives details of the peregrination of the work with 'la censure'.
Anyway, as I stated before, I won't develop too much on Madame de Staël's work, but this last travel I just did in Germany opened my eyes to a few points I was wondering about. I wish, once again, that all ideas have come from my very mature brain indeed... but it was the reading of a book, found in a German friend's library, that made me exclaim: this is so true! The book in question is Neil MacGregor's Germany: memories of a nation.
Prüfung (the follies of war) sculpture 'in' St Nicholas Church, Hamburg
One of the key points that made me say that is the relationship Germans have with the past (introduction Monuments and Memory in monsieur MacGregor's book). Years ago, I was very touched to see the bells of St Mary's church in Lübeck: they have been left exactly where they fell during the WWII bombing of the city. I remembered feeling also a bit uneasy (ashamed?) visiting the place with my friend Antje. But Lübeck is not the only place in Germany where this happened: there are many broken bells, remnants of churches (Berlin, Hamburg) and I'm sure lots of other things but I only prefer to speak about memorial I have seen myself. (I was about to add fallen statues to the list, as in Rheine, but no, this is a contemporary work of art)
So in Hamburg for example you have the remains of a church which now serves as a memorial and a place of reflexion for conflicts happening all over the world now as well as sculptures and other works of art.
Some controversial monuments have been kept such as the 76th monument in Hamburg but with other monuments added near it:
But parts of me think that we ought to do the same in France... all our glorious monuments to our Ancient or Nouveau régimes never mention the many massacres we have had in the past: paysants, Chouan, Breton independentists, Huguenots, Spaniards, native Americans, Africans...most of Europe and... the rest of the world probably...
So yes, I would agree with Madame de Staël, there was, and there is too much light in le pays des lumières...
Some will protest of course, saying that guilt does not do anything good. Guilt is a necessary process in order to become better citizens of the world.
A florist in Hamburg (sorry can't remember where that was!)
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