David Baddiel:
Is going full German a step too far?
MY DAD is Welsh. This seems not a complicated thing to understand. He was born in Swansea. Even with advanced dementia, his accent is the same as it’s always been, plus he does remember, when international football is on, that he supports the team playing in deep red with the dragon badge. However: a friend of mine’s mum — let’s call her Nora — when she found this out, looked confused. “Welsh?” Nora said. “And…Jewish?” I said yes, but the lady in question continued to frown, as if these two things were clearly incompatible.
It’s hard to explain why this perplexity exists. Presumably, Nora would understand that some people are Scottish and Muslim, or American and Hindu. It may just be that there is some deep cognitive dissonance in her mind between the cultural associations concerned: between, that is, deep rolling valleys, leeks and Tom Jones, on the one hand, and bagels, hypochondria and obsession with the Nazis on the other. It does speak of something serious, however, a buried, unconscious assumption about nationality: the idea that Jews can never quite belong to any land that the non-Jewish imagination has always seen as… well, non-Jewish.
One thing that comes to mind when I think about this moment is: what nationality would Nora not have found confusing to describe my dad as? British, perhaps, associated as it is with a wider spectrum of immigration than smaller Wales? Israeli? And, I’m guessing, German. I mean, I know empirically this is true, because the same person never questioned the fact that my mother was German and Jewish.
We all know why that association exists. The interesting thing for me is that, in recent years — well, since 2016, and a certain political decision that this country made then — I have considered applying for German citizenship. I know some other Jews with German ancestors who have done so since Brexit, either because they very deeply consider themselves Europeans, or, more straightforwardly — which would be my thinking — they don’t want to wait at stupidly long non-EU queues at airports. When, that is, travel to other countries is moving freely again. Blimey, a lot’s happened since 2016, hasn’t it?
I have put out some very gentle feelers towards German citizenship. It’s a weird one. Not least because, until very recently, due to some strange sexist law, you couldn’t claim it through your mother, only your father. Plus it seems as if you need a lot of documentation, and although I have some of this, most of it has either been lost or destroyed, as would be the case with people fleeing for their lives 80 years ago.
But of course, there is an issue beyond the bureaucratic. My grandparents, Oti and Ersnt Fabian, were very German — my grandfather, for example, insisted to his dying day that Goethe was better than Shakespeare — but both of them, deeply damaged by their experience, refused ever to go back to that country, or have much to do with it at all. My mother too, although claiming to be able to speak the language — she couldn’t, my mother was always saying things like that — had similar antipathies. I don’t. I’ve always admired the modern country and its people, and particularly, the way it has come to terms with its own history. But actually becoming German feels like one step beyond. And not in the Madness way. Which itself is odd because I am. I am half-German. I’ve never thought of myself as such, but the process of considering citizenship has brought home to me the reality of it. And that indeed, the only reason I might not think of myself as German is that my mother, and her parents, were robbed of that citizenship. Which means I shouldn’t be dallying.
In terms of defying the legacy of the Nazis, surely the best thing to do would be to grab German citizenship with both hands? I’m going to Berlin for the German publication of Jews Don’t Count (Und Die Juden?) in October — maybe I should try and rush through citizenship, so I can glide through the EU channel at the airport and rush straight to the Reichstag, in order to sing Hava Nigala on its steps whilst doing that dance where you squat and kick your legs out at the same time? Perhaps that’s a bit much. But I do think I should get over it. Although then again, there is the football issue. Being German might make me feel conflicted the next time England go into a penalty shootout at Wembley with Die Mannschaft (that’s their nickname — it means The Team — which I have to say is very German: I’m allowed to say that, being German). Also, if you’re a Jew, you don’t want to be seen as too much of a rootless cosmopolitan, and claiming this citizenship would make me German, American (where I was born), and, of course, Welsh. Just think how confused all that would make Nora.