Brexit need not negate two centuries of Anglo-German symbiosis
This year has a special meaning for the Anglo-German relationship. 1819 was the year when both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were born: a royal couple who profoundly influenced, indeed embodied, their era. It is also the bicentenary of two of the greatest British and German novelists, respectively George Eliot and Theodor Fontane: both also great journalists who wrote extensively about the other’s country.
A bicentennial conference is taking place this week at the Victoria and Albert Museum — an institution that still reminds us of a golden age of cultural curiosity, built with the proceeds of the Great Exhibition which Albert boldly championed. The museum has also put on an exhibition to celebrate its founders.
At last night’s opening event of “Two Centuries of Anglo-German Correspondences: Celebrating Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, George Eliot and Theodor Fontane”, we heard from Prince Hubertus, scion of Albert’s family, the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and from Rosemary Ashton, who presented a tour d’horizon of the 19th-century Anglo-German symbiosis. The conference continues today and tomorrow, with papers on literature, music, art and architecture to explore the mutual enrichment of British and German culture that began two centuries ago, was interrupted by the world wars, but then resumed after 1945. The public is welcome; day tickets are available at the V&A.
So far, so good — but what about Brexit? It’s all very well to have worthy reminders of how the two nations endowed one another with everything from the automobile to the Christmas tree. And it remains the case that no two peoples in Europe have more in common or are more similar than the British and the Germans. At the political level, however, their relationship is being tested as it seldom has been before in peacetime.
This is not the place to remedy the mutual misunderstandings that surround Brexit. It is enough to note that Germans have taken the British decision to leave the EU as a personal affront, while the British often fail to appreciate the existential significance of the European project for the only nation in history to bear such a heavy burden of guilt. The Holocaust and other Nazi crimes still cast their shadow over our Continent; and what the British see as a legitimate exercise in national self-determination seems to the Germans, whose national identity is still too fragile to risk such experiments, like a dangerous lapse into Europe’s destructive past in the homeland of parliamentary democracy.
So what can be done to mitigate these political and economic tensions at the cultural and social levels? The most powerful solvent of all barriers is, of course, the English language. But for a nation that is as proud of its Dichter und Denker (poets and thinkers) as the Germans, the marginalisation of their native tongue is deeply problematic. Young Germans grow up speaking, writing and even thinking in English to the point where many are no longer able to enjoy, let alone express themselves, in the language of Goethe.
Paradoxically, the threat of Anglophone colonisation creates an opportunity for post-Brexit reconciliation. The British have some of the best universities, museums, theatres and other artistic or scientific hubs in Europe; hundreds of thousands of Germans, including many in the arts and humanities, now work here. Yet hitherto there has been no concerted effort to create centres of excellence at our institutions that focus on the German cultural and intellectual achievements, past and present.
It would be a magnificent gesture if patrons, practitioners and politicians on both sides of the North Sea could come together to establish an Anglo-German body dedicated to furthering the arts, sciences and humanities. It should aim to build up central institutions in the two capitals, London and Berlin, with satellites in other great cities, from Manchester to Munich. Funded primarily by businesses that benefit from the vast volume of trade between the two countries, but with significant government input on both sides, the purpose of the project would be to secure and expand the connections that were first formed in the Victorian age and enhanced by the German Jewish emigration of the 1930s.
The incentive for the Germans would be the preservation of their own heritage; for the British, it would be a precious bridge to our most important Continental partner. Under the aegis of Prince Charles and the German President, such an initiative could go a long way to soothe ruffled feelings and smooth the rocky path to a new phase in our relationship. As Professor Ashton said in her lecture at the V&A, in the 19th century the Germans admired the British above all for their politics, while the British admired the Germans for their culture. Is there any reason why, after the hiatus of the early 20th century, that mutual admiration should not still flourish in the 21st?
