Historian Charles Emmerson was a guest on this week’s radio. He was discussing the cultural life of various European cities during the years 1913/14 leading up to the outbreak of WWI. Berlin was one of those cities.
Emmerson mentioned that Berlin was an exceptionally clean city, made so by the deliberate policy of ruler of the German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm. The implication was that the cleanliness of Berlin was an exception. My reaction to this statement was: has Emmerson ever actually travelled in Germany? Does he not know that Germany, all of Germany, is exceptionally clean? Even though Emmerson was talking about Berlin in 1914, and my experience of (a very clean) Germany spans the 1970s through to the early 2000s, I cannot imagine that Germany or the Germans has changed. In other words, the Germans are a clean people.
It seems a small thing, but this little detail reveals the shallowness of historical research. The historian has totally failed to appreciate the character of the German people and therefore ascribes effects which are due to their innate character to historical events or figures. I mean, it really does not take very much to travel round Germany and notice how clean it all is. You cannot enter Germany from any other country without being struck by the sudden feeling of greater cleanliness……….
…………of course, it might help if this particular historian had not been an Anglophile. The man was obviously drowning in the usual Germano-phobia of the British such that he could not see clearly. Not that this is uncommon. Is there a historian who does not work for his country?
This was historian heard daily on the radio over this past week. He dealt with a number of cities pre-WWI: Berlin and Paris and a few others earlier in the week. From what he said about these other cities I thought to myself “London is going to get a glowing report.” I waited agog for the final programme. My prophesy was sound! There’s nowhere like London and no empire has ever matched the British Empire! — to be specific, he said, “The British Empire was the greatest the world has ever known.” What he meant, of course, was that it was the biggest and most powerful. Great? Is there something great about being big and powerful? Is there something admirable about walking into other people’s countries and taking over? Is there anything admirable at all about empires? Is the love affair with Alexander the Great anything more than a Biggus Dickus hard-on?