I'm going to let you all into a little secret: Munich is fantastic. Really, it's great. Ok, so it's not a well kept secret, the city was full of tourists, particularly American, but judging from people's reactions to the fact I was going there, it really is some sort of secret.
"Munich, why are you going there?"
"Munich? Why not Berlin?"
I'd expected some sort of desolate, soulless CBD with nothing to commend it other than a rather nice floral decoration from the seventies in the city's shopping centre. People's reactions had been as if, in suggesting I was going from Paris to Prague via Munich, I should be treated like a foreigner visiting Britain who was planning to go from, say, Winchester to Cambridge, with a few days in Slough in between.
So why not Berlin? Hmm. For a start, Berlin is miles out of the way. But more importantly, Munich is, well, just lovely. Far from being a Bavarian Milton Keynes*, Munich is full of character. Any city that is so full of committed cyclists that even old ladies cycling past shout and wave their fist at you as you wander into the cycle lane (this happened as soon as I stepped out of the U-Bahn station) seems ok to me.
Munich had a charming air; rather like the result of some sort of drunken Friday night fumblings between Vienna and Manchester, Munich cmobines both imperial grandeur and modern verve.
Munich has the wide avenues, grand buildings and gothic statues of Vienna, without its gilt ostentation, the air of faded grandeur or the feeling of an imperial city waiting for its lost empire. But like Manchester, Munich has an air of unexpected joie de vivre that belies its reputation. It comes as a pleasant surprise to visit a city that feels young, full of students, with a vibrant arts scene and cafe and bar culture.
And, just as Manchester is home to my favourite piece of public art in the world, Munich is home to my favourite fountain in the world, a collection of small toadstools, growing in the shade of a few tree, a concrete and metal manifestation of Plath's Mushrooms, quiet, discrete, asking little or nothing but still nudgers and shovers in spite of themselves.
Both works pull off a public art that acknowledges its surroundings, drawing on them for inspiration, yet reflecting them in an utterly new and unexpected way. Both engender a playfully child-like response to engage with them, gleefully clamber all over them, really experience them: in the case of the fountain I had an overwhelming urge to strip and sit, gnome-like, on the toadstools, though no doubt other onlookeers were pleased I didn't have the courage. And yet, in doing so, both ask you to pause and reflect, to observe the minutiae pf the city through the work and to wonder at the grand scale of it all too.
Perhaps, though, it is precisely because Munich, like Vienna, is an imperial city that's lost its empire that it, like Manchester, feels so young and exciting. The difference lies in the nature of that empire and the way in which it was lost. Munich was heavily destroyed during the second World War and completely rebuilt, following the original street plan and using photographs of the prewar city (leading, I'm told, to the slightly surreal situation that some frescoes were partially restored in black and white because the photos were taken in black and white and no other record of their colour remains).
In common with all other cities that really capture the imagination, Munich's restitution is built on still darker aspects of history. Perhaps more than other German cities, Munich has had to come to terms with its role as Capital of the Movement, of being the prewar seat of National Socialism and home to the Beer Hall Putsch.
Despite it's almost complete rebuilding, evidence remains - rightly so, I believe - of its history. The faded patch of the plaque that once commemorated the Nazis who died in the attempted Putsch. Munich's citizens's were forced to salute as they passed it, many of whom preferred to face the consequences of using Dodger's alley - arrest, beatings, or, caught too often, deportation to Dachau - than give the Nazi salute.
But what surprised me, and has stayed with me, is that it's not in these well known tourist attractions that the power of history lies.
On my first night in Munich, my wonderful hosts took me out to have dinner, walk around the city centre at night, have the inevitable beer and then see the famous Hofbräuhaus. It's a beerhall, capable of seating hundreds of people, mostly tourists, all drinking beer and eating suasages. A band plays Bavarian music and the staff wear lederhosen.
What I hadn't expected as we walked through was the sudden dawning of an profoundly disturbing understanding of how, in a beer hall precisely like this, National Socialism was born. But more than an understanding, it was an empathy, a strange realisation as I closed my eyes that I too could have been there and been part of it. Surrounded by the convivial atmosphere of the beer hall, closing my eyes and hearing the clashing of beer glasses, the Volkslieder - precisely the same ones they would have sung 100 years ago, that's the point of it being so touristy - I could see and feel it all: the sense of belonging; the pride of being Bavarian; and, with not much of a leap, imagining the potent feelings of bitterness and delusion, unemployment and dissatisfaction following Germany's downfall after the first World War. In a strange, unfolding instant, I could really see how it had begun. I could feel the powerful and contagious atmosphere and its toxic possiblities. And, darker than that, in empathising I could begin to see that I, too, could have been seduced by that short but perilous step from Nationalism to the ugly face of its concomitant, National Socialism (if there is any side of nationalism that is ever pretty).
This is dangerous and disturbing terrority, terrority I had barely expected to explore as I arrived in Munich. It hardly needs to be stated that empathising is far from condoning. I would like to think I'm unlikely to ever be accused of being of the "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." (thanks GW) school of thought. And I'm not going to dignify, with a comment or rebuttal, even the consideration of the possibility that some might see in the statements above concerning my political or moral views (the only reason I write even this sentence is that I have to acknowledge that this is a public blog).
Far from it. With that moment came the understanding that it is in fact in empathising that the true power of the message of the Shoah - we shall never forget, that it may never happen again - is realised. I had grasped this intellectually without fully understanding and hence believing it. It is in empathising that we are able to see that for it to never be allowed to happen again, we must recognise that though it happened in the past - a foreign country, they do things differently there - it didn't happen in a nation of automatons. It happened in real people, people just like you and me (whether you like it or not) and, in empathising, we can understand how.
It is not just the case that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, it is more subtle and more human than simple remembering. And for perhaps the first time I began to appreciate more fully the true implications of an "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." attitude. To claim the world is anything other than grey is not just irresponsible, but dangerous - and never more so than in a world afflicted with the 'postmodern condition'. In losing sight of the other's humanity, whoever they may be, we lose our own.
I spoke in a previous blog of the lessons of the hedgerows, but never could I have anticipated lessons from the Hofbräuhaus. And that, in many ways, answers all those questions I have, raised in that same blog, about just why I'm doing this trip.
Footnotes
* So it should be pointed in fairness to both Slough and Milton Keynes that I've never visited either and they could both, in fact, be like Munich.
