Is German Pride Still Taboo

Is German Pride Still Taboo at the Sachsenhausen Crematorium Memorial This summer, I went with my Holocaust Memory in the Present class to Germany and Poland.  During this time, we were   fortunate enough to participate in Annamaria Orla-Bukowskas Holocaust class with international students at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. We were divided into groups and assigned questions to discuss.  In my group’s discussion, we talked with each other about the different ways in which we were introduced to the subject of the Shoah in school.  A girl who had grown up in Germany brought up the idea of a kind of unspoken, understood way that the Germans still punish themselves as a people for letting Nazism happen.  She said that they do not  ever sing the national anthem, wave the flag, or even cheer for Germany except at football games. She explained  that doing any of these things outside of appropriate settings is taboo. She told us about how a guy she went to school with started singing the national anthem in the hall randomly, as a joke or something , and people responded by saying, “What are you, a Nazi?” When in Germany, we learned of the ever present “German guilt” and noticed many leftovers from Nazism such as the architecture and the eerie prevalence of blue-eyed people, but until speaking with this girl, I hadn’t realized that there was an expectation for Germans to lack national pride.  As a person coming from America, a country that can be sickeningly prideful, this seemed really odd to me. part of an exhibit in the Galicia Jewish Museum- Krakow, Poland This wariness against nationalism does make sense considering German history, but is it really still prominent?  In his article German Identity, Long Dormant, Reasserts Itself,  Nicholas Kulish gives several examples of the positive resurgence of German culture, but he also notes the lack of concern with which the younger generations seem to have about the past. There is  a problem here.  Do these things have to go hand in hand?  Do we have to forget in order to move on?  I think it is  great that German culture is thriving, but it  is  unsettling to think that there lies  a detachment forming between people and history.  Philosopher Jürgen Habermas also cautions this return to normality in his article Germanys mindset has become solipsistic.  The title pretty much says it all. a Buddy Bear in Berlin So, will there ever be a time when its okay to be German?  Can you be proud of your country while still acknowledging its grave history, or are these things mutually exclusive?