Germany falling

You are leaving the civilised sector. These words were pinned, in German and English, to the outside of the fence which protects the American embassy in Berlin. In order to get through that fence, you would have to persuade the gallant, bone-headed men of the Bundesgrenzschutz – Germany’s frontier police, who also guard government buildings – that you are not intent on blowing up the Americans. Meanwhile you can take the chance to study the messages left by German peace protesters, of which the general drift is that George Bush is a mass murderer.

It would be easy, on the basis not only of these messages but also of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s foreign policy, to dwell at some length on the anti-Americanism that has become so visible in Germany. But to give an accurate and exhaustive account of that phenomenon would require, as Beerbohm might have said, a far less brilliant pen than mine. A more difficult task is to describe the civilisation which the Germans are so intent on preserving against any kind of external disturbance.

This civilisation has the defects of its virtues. It is peaceful but passive; stable but stagnant; morally concerned but preposterously self-righteous. To return to Berlin for my first extended visit for three years is to find a city that has gone to sleep. My mobile phone does not ring much, but mine is the only phone that has rung on the excellent trams and trains or in the peaceful beer gardens of Berlin. Nobody moves on the escalators, or even stands so that others can move. The hectic commercial life of London or New York seems a million miles away.

This is not just my impression. In a penetrating essay in the latest issue of the magazine Merkur, the critic Gustav Seibt argues that no great, all-encompassing novel can ever be written about Berlin, because Berlin society has always been divided into separate and generally introverted segments.