Kindergarten

[imomus]

There's a kindergarten just around the corner from my new flat with lovely folksy decorations. This morning I snapped a few pictures of them.



I was going to give you some spiel about how pre-school decorations like these are a direct route to national particularity, and how much more interesting I find the rooted, quirky imagery here than the "rebellious" (but in fact monocultural and conformist) imagery showcased by the trendy shops slowly taking over storefronts here with their denim and trainers. I was going to talk about how, along with the dress-styles of the elderly, the kindergarten was an exemplary reservoir of "Germanness", reproducing national identity as a series of values to its multi-ethnic pupils at their tiny desks. And I was going to state again that while I'm all for the preservation of national flavours, I'm not for rigid links between national flavours and ethnic groups. Anybody can be the "guardian" of these national flavours, not just an ethnic German. Anyone can go in and rewrite the code.

But then an interesting man came along and told me that his daughter had gone to this school, and that the person who runs it is Polish. So these decorations might be "reproducing Polishness". Suddenly the owl and the little grey woollen kitten looked incredibly Polish to me. Had I got my national stereotypes wrong?

Perhaps not; the putative Polishness of the school didn't contradict my thoughts about the arbitrary nature of national identity. If "anyone can go in and rewrite the code," if national identity is "open source", why shouldn't German imagery be disseminated to the next generation by a Pole? And why shouldn't there be a certain amount of Polishness in Germanness? The border, after all, is just an hour away.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(By the way, I explicity exclude Arudou Debito (http://www.debito.org/) from my "anyone can rewrite the code" philosophy. Because he annoys me with his lawsuits and his "me too" assumptions, but mostly because he's American, and the monoculture is American. So the idea that Debito can "rewrite Japaneseness" is identical to a wish to see Japaneseness dissolved into the same old monoculture.)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(And by the way I have named my rabbit Debito -- his full name is Debito Baker -- just to mock Arudou Debito. If he's done something very bad, I shout "Mukatsuku, Debito!" at him. He understands Japanese. My rabbit, that is.)

[rob.rabiee.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Well agreed, Debito does look like a bit of a tool, based on his Web site. But is what inspired him to file that brief -- discrimination of ethnically non-Japanese Japanese citizens in the private sector -- so essential to Japaneseness that you're willing to give it a pass?

So in your desire to combat the American monoculture, are you allowing for a certain degree of racism and nationalism, specifically where Japan is involved?

Admittedly, I've spent less time in Japan than you - just one summer for me, with plans to return very soon - but I'm equally enamored of the culture, texture, and people. Still, I can't see myself despising Debito because he's trying to force the nation's hand in ending an unpleasant trend. Now, as I said, he is a bit of tool. But not because of that, I don't think. Thoughts? Am I missing something about him?

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

I wish people like him would just leave Japan. His arrogance astounds me. How can he live in a new country for so long and not realize how subjective his beliefs are? Ethnocentric, ignorant, simplistic.

[dmt81.livejournal.com]

It would be interesting to see a Japanese kindergarten showing the same kind of cultural sensitivity. "Imprinting" the young generations with the necessary archetypes for survival of culture-specific imagery in the imaginations of future artists.
At any rate, I am not german, or even eusropean. It strikes me that geographical and cultural similarity would allow some overlap in the "national flavour," achieving similar ends regardless of the instigator's original homeland. The polish person could, after all, have grown up in Germany.

[(Anonymous)]

My wife's Polish, and as soon as I saw those pictures I sensed something Polish about them. In Kazimiersz in Krakow there was this really nutty children's garden this guy put outside his flat, with a sign saying "the children are asking for fish". Unfortunately the property developers have moved in, and it is no more.

In spite of the bad historical relations between Germany and Poland, I notice a lot of Germans have telltale Polish surnames ending in "-ski". A few of the German football team players have Polish names, for instance.

London is rapidly developing a Polish flavour, in response to the sudden influx of Poles coming to work. Asian corner shops now stock Polish beers and sausages, and there are posters in Polish advertizing gigs in London by Polish hip hop acts. Apparently it's quite similar in Dublin.

[(Anonymous)]

haha, maybe they'll start looking like American cities, where you can find a frosty Żywiec on every corner.

[ksta.livejournal.com]

London is overrun with poles! It's brilliant, because lovely polish food is now much much cheaper.
Plus I get translating work :)

I also now have family living somewhere in Ireland, and in Plymouth.

[ksta.livejournal.com]

sorry to go on about this, but my P.S.:
on my way home from work I passed a hip-hop poster, as you mentioned, advertising a polish night in BRixton. All in polish, of course.

[hook-and-eyelet.livejournal.com]

Podolski, on the German team is Polish, not German.

[me-vs-gutenberg.livejournal.com]

I find it important to note that it says "Kinderladen" in your photo, not "Kindergarten". Despite your intimate knowldege of German culture, you may not know that these are two very different things: "Kinderläden" are (or used to be, I don't know to what degree the idea has been co-opted by now) comitted to anti-authoritarian education, and are "selbstverwaltet", ie run by the parents themselves. Their origin lies in the social movements of the 1960s, when kindergardens in W Germany were, for the most part, church-run (they still are).
And I think you're taking it a bit far with the Germanness.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, interesting! Yes, the parent I met seemed like an activist type.

[ksta.livejournal.com]

the poles and germans like to pretend they have little in common, whereas this is clearly untrue.
obviously the poles consider themselves a separate tribe, but with all the mixing, culturally, geographically and racially (i, a half-pole/half-brit, have a few german relatives), to me the whole of central europe from about the middle of germany onwards exhibits many many many common characteristics.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Poles speak a Slavic language and are strongly Catholic; Germans speak a Germanic language and are mixed Catholic/Lutheran. However, both have similar cuisine (sausage and cabbage featuring commonly).

I heard that a few decades ago, there was an organised effort in the Polish language to purge the language of German loanwords (such as "kartoffel" for potato) and replace them with Slavic coinages.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the german kitsch for children may be less romantic. The cross between janoschentendiddlemausregenbogenfisch and hightechtrolleygoretexqualitaetsklettverschluss.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Some national identities are more open-source than others.
I've heard Englishness described as an open-source national identity a lot, in that there is no such thing as a English volk (i.e., a significant and culturally influential part of England is comprised of immigrants and the descendants thereof), and often some of the most "English" people are anglophilic immigrants/expatriates (e.g., T.S. Eliot).

[ksta.livejournal.com]

yer but, england is as mixed as france, for instance. I personally don't believe it is an 'open-source' identity. I think there is an english core nation, although they themselves were the result of anglo-saxon invasions. Maybe that would be more like open-source, I don't know. Maybe I have misunderstood the term.

Again, look at poland, trampled over for centuries, conquered and divided up by many nations. It's true there isn't much immigration there yet, but certainly there is mixing from around its present borders.

[tilney.livejournal.com]

As a Polish person, I am much partial to the idea of the 'Mitteleuropa' (Central Europe), comprising of countries such as Poland, Germany, the ex-USSR new democracies etc, united by interweaving histories and so on. It gives me more feeling of an identity than feeling purely Polish does, what with the craziness that is going on here now. What I meant to say that you might want to consider Germany and Poland as closer, in fact, than it seems.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

kindergarten was the best year of my life. in retrospect. but then i went to a kindergarten called "ethical culture" [where diane arbus and john lennon's kids also went]...i went back a few summers ago when i was working at Sesame Street and they held their annual company meeting in the school's auditorium. that school probably cost more than stanford. learned more too. i went to public school [NYC-->Orange County, CA] and my life went downhill the next year. anyway. now i just want to go to Germany.

btw my kitten also speaks japanese.

[dignified-devil.livejournal.com]

Why do I always comment on Japan? anyway:
"Yeah, but Japan is definitely much less litigious than the US or Britain. The Japanese corporation I work for has absolutely no concept of lawsuits, so I spend a ridiculous amount of time changing all these claims that people in the US have instantly brought to court before. It's crazy how two societies can be so different, even when sharing culture: of course I don't care, I'm getting some decent scratch. "

Richard Nesbitt's The Geography of Thought goes into this. Less litiguious socieities etc. I was under the impression that Japanese typically used private judges to resolve disputes i.e. courts of arbitrition. Did you know that the Chinese legal system used to consist of one law? A law was only a law as long as it only applied to one person' situation. What's good for Wei Wei isn't good for Mao etc. Hence, if a judge could not rule the same sentence twice.

Nationalism, Advertising, Conscious & Unconcscious Reification

[(Anonymous)]

Part of your observation of 'non-Germanness' or 'German-deviancy' or 'Is-this-Polisness?' has to do with reification.

By reification, I mean the embedding and re-embedding of a prevailing (and only semi-visible) ideology.

What is 'Germanness'? It doesn't realllllly exist, save for a couple of hundred 'typicalities'. Adopt and display the things that are typical of Germans, and there's a good change you'll 'be' German.

Rebel against those in significant enough ways and numbers, and no matter WHAT your cultural origins, you simply won't be perceived or perceivable as German.

When someone makes an overtly non-German window display, they're doing one of two things: (1) Actively rebelling against cultural typicalities, or (2) 'advertising' other cultural typicalities.

Maybe there's some grey ground in the middle. But I reckon it's close enough to base an argument on.

Because reification is almost always invisible and unintentional (the exception are when the tool is used by propagandists of some sort -- nationalistic ones or professional advertising companies or PR companies), national cultures propogate.

A Polish person walking past your photographed window display thinks, 'Ah -- someone who's Pole-friendly.' They don't think, 'Ah... the reification of nationalistic tendencies through the use of typical Polish artefacts.' (Well, MOST don't think such things, anyway.)

So I would say that what you saw was an unconscious stab at 'displaying Polishness', along with a few 'I'm proud to be Polish' stirrings.

Blue skies
love
Roy

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[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

This post saddens me, because I work in elementary school here in California, and the prevailing theme is, "plastic, plastic, plastic!"

Polishness/Germanness

[archosidf.livejournal.com]

> So these decorations might be "reproducing Polishness". Suddenly the owl and the little grey woollen kitten looked incredibly Polish to me. Had I got my national stereotypes wrong?

> Perhaps not; the putative Polishness of the school didn't contradict my thoughts about the arbitrary nature of national identity. If "anyone can go in and rewrite the code," if national identity is "open source", why shouldn't German imagery be disseminated to the next generation by a Pole? And why shouldn't there be a certain amount of Polishness in Germanness? The border, after all, is just an hour away.

And Jolanta, the designer of all this and the good spirit of the kinderladen, grew up in Upper Silesia, an area that was probably more German than Polish until after Hitler.

The borders, also the intellectual borders, are artificial and I agree with Roy that there are reifications at work here that are better to leave behind.

Really good post, iMomus, I'm spreading your word around already.

Re: Polishness/Germanness

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, hello, Archos! Nice to meet you!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually, I wanted to add something else here.

One of the reasons I came to Berlin is that I love the atmosphere of the Boxhagener Platz trodelmarkt. I looked around that in February 2003 and it really made my mind up about coming to live in the city. Since then, I've discovered that many of the traders there are Polish, and many of the folksy things I've bought there (this straw cat (http://imomus.livejournal.com/161481.html), for instance) are made in Poland.

Now, it may be that only poverty (and the Poles are much poorer than the Germans, of course) can keep certain forms of otherness alive -- but not just otherness. Only poverty can keep flavour itself alive, perhaps; non-monocultural flavour. And I think this helps explain my feeling that the Maybachufer market, although mostly run by Turks, is the thing I've found in Berlin which I find closest to the medieval atmosphere of Northern Europe. It's because the Turks are poor that they preserve this atmosphere, because all of Europe at that time was poor.

It's problematical to say this, because it looks like an endorsement of poverty, but poverty preserves all sorts of virtues. High density living, physical fitness, using bicycles instead of cars, extended families; all these are best enforced by poverty, not by legislation. They become impossible to return to beyond a certain level of income.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Weird, here they go shopping at the newly arrived Lidl instead of travelling back to the medieval times. But I might be wrong as I've only visited that Lidl place once.

[gybexi.livejournal.com]

I can't quite understand what you're on about re: arudou debito.

First, i'd like to point out I never heard of the man before - I can only base my observations on the website you mentioned.

The website seems very american in as far as it seems to be based on a very stateside 'defensive-attack' sort of culture and some very american terminology (terms such as 'the rogues gallery' have very dubya resonances). You attack style (which does deserve to be attacked in parts) but not content... the content being that there are some very disturbing signs in 'the rogues gallery' that the Japanese nation - or certain members thereof - can sometimes be slightly racist. Could you imagine signs like those being as prevalent in mainland Europe as Debito claims they are in Japan ?

I'm as guilty as you are of fetishization - I fetishize Belgium (where I currently live) as much as you fetishize japan [and, to a lesser extent, berlin]... but I fail to see why the man (debito) is evil incarnate. I'm not being rhetorical... I really can't understand what's so wrong with the guy - maybe I don't know the whole story?

[gybexi.livejournal.com]

whoops. I didn't notice someone else wrote something similar to what I wrote...

Moulton's Opinion

[(Anonymous)]

It is the artist who takes the time and effort to craft something new and appealing that will attract the public's attention and worm its way into the culture and into people's hearts. In a relatively poor folk culture, anyone with talent can aspire to be a starving artist who fires up the imagination of others. Folk songs, folk art, and folk cuisine are good examples.

Here in corporate America, redolent of advertising, cultural evolution is pushed by commercial interests. Even Hip-Hop is highly commercialized.

Tinkering with the cultural code is a sure-fire way to get oneself ostracized and outcast by the diehard purists who are aghast at anything new and different which threatens to displace their old, tiresome, tried-and-true cultural fare.

The true artist is the rejected outcast who answers back with a piece of art that survives his infamy and isolation from the mainstream of society.