Europe may be losing its culture--but it's mostly due to influence of English-speaking countries
A special report from our European correspondent
By Robert Brecha
Special to Tropic Press
It often seems to be an exercise in futility to try and rebut the many exaggerations and outright falsehoods spread by President Donald Trump and his team.
But sometimes there are things that should not be left unanswered, especially when the purveyors of misinformation rely on the fact that many in their audience have no way of judging the accuracy of what is being said.
In my case, as a US citizen living in Europe, I am often confused by the picture painted of the continent by the Trump administration.
There is some truth to the claim by Trumpian acolytes that most European countries are, and have been for some time, losing their culture. They are being faced with an invasion of influences foreign to their centuries’ old traditions. Furthermore, this can be truly problematic for the “natives.”
To what am I referring? It’s the strong influence of the English language at all levels of society and culture in Europe.
Where I live in the middle of Berlin, one of those unrecognizable disasters of a city in the middle of Europe (according to Trump), it is hard to walk down a street filled with sidewalk cafes (okay, those are a Franco-Italian invasion) and hear anybody speaking – German.
Often enough, we can walk into a restaurant in our neighborhood, try to order, and the server looks a bit embarrassed and says, “Sorry, can you speak English?”. We had to be a bit careful where we went with my 90-year-old German father-in-law so that we wouldn’t stumble into an establishment where he didn’t understand the menu or the server (not to mention being forced to use his non-existent smartphone to download the menu), although he was in his own country.
What about the food scene in Germany? We all know about the sausage and sauerkraut culture of the country and how that is dominant. Walking down the streets of central Berlin (Mitte, Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, etc.) I would challenge you to do a comparative count of hamburger restaurants versus traditional restaurants. I’m afraid the latter would lose badly.
Walk into a café or a bakery all over the country and you will now find Brownies, Cookies, Muffins, Bagels, etc. Of course, all are labeled with the English words, capitalized to conform with German grammar (and sometimes with strange usage of apostrophes or other spellings).
Job listings for positions in Germany routinely specify: “German not required.” That would have sounded absurd a generation ago. Imagine moving to Chicago and being told English was optional.
Do you typically go to a “Public Viewing?” In my U.S. English this is a funeral, so imagine the confusion in seeing signs plastered across town during soccer tournaments advertising Public Viewing – on large-screen TVs! Germans conduct “Meetings,” brainstorm in “Think Tanks,” and aspire to become “Start-up Founders.” Of course there are “Working Spaces” everywhere. Even government ministries announce “Digital Strategy Updates.”
In Italy, one of the more amusing examples I’ve seen in this country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving are the “Black Friday Events” advertised in late November. In fact, it is now more common to see an expansion even U.S. businesses haven’t managed, with “Black Week” sales promotions. Let’s not even think too hard about that usage.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that there is anything necessarily evil about interesting features of one culture, whether food, clothing, music or anything else, being displaced, changed and exported or imported. This is what has always happened, and we all profit from the mixture of tastes and ideas.
The irony, of course, is that many U.S. conservatives who warn about Europe’s supposed cultural collapse are simultaneously exporting the very linguistic and commercial forces that reshape it, and with the current administration, trying very hard to impose their distorted version of U.S. values on the countries of Europe.
In many ways, McDonald’s in Frankfurt feels more culturally invasive than a Syrian bakery next door. One introduces cardamom and sesame; the other introduces refillable soda cups and the strange word “McDrive.” We should distrust politicians who start to use claims of invasion and cultural erasure, and who try to incite cultural wars and separate out one group as the “other.”
So, when politicians claim Europe is becoming “unrecognizable,” I am tempted to agree—just not in the way they mean.
Europe is not disappearing under the weight of migration. It is being transformed — but that’s the way it’s always been.
The U.S. has throughout its history always hated immigrants – the Germans, the Italians, the Irish, the Mexicans. But then immigrants assimilate, and perhaps more importantly, they bring important and refreshing new ingredients to the country and the culture.
The same has always happened in European countries, although perhaps more slowly. No culture is static — or maybe another way of saying it is that a culture truly preserved and unchanging is one that is dead and fossilized.
In my experience, opening borders within Europe has been one of the greatest advances in international relations in the post-war period. And yet, each European country remains stubbornly itself.
Germans still separate their recycling with religious devotion. Italians still argue passionately about pasta shapes and the proper ingredients for spaghetti carbonara (probably invented by U.S. soldiers!).
There are real challenges when opening a country to newcomers, but fueling animosity and pitting one group against another will certainly not lead to enduring solutions for anyone.
Robert Brecha is a retired professor of sustainability, renewable energy and physics (University of Dayton), and long-term newspaper junkie (print and electronic). He consults on energy systems and climate change policies, based in Berlin, Germany. When not fretting about the state of the world and the global climate emergency, he enjoys hiking, biking and reading as much as possible.