LONDON — "Don't mention the war," Basil Fawlty warns an assistant through clenched teeth when German tourists arrive at his hotel in the BBC sitcom "Fawlty Towers." He then proceeds to mention the war whenever he opens his mouth, taking their restaurant order--"orders which must be obeyed at all times"--as "Eva Prawn" and "pickled Goering."
John Cleese's portrait of a Briton obsessed with the Germany of World War II has become a comedy classic since it first aired 25 years ago.
What is not so funny to Germans, however, is that Britain's popular perception of their country has not changed significantly in the last quarter of a century and that, like Basil, some of the British media regularly "mention the war" in regard to modern-day Germany.
That, at least, is the view of outgoing German Ambassador Gebhardt von Moltke, who wrote before leaving London last month that Britain's understanding of his country "stops at 1945."
While political and business relations between the two countries are good, much of the public and media has failed to recognize that "today's Germany is a modern, open and democratic society which differs fundamentally from the one of the 1930s and 1940s," Von Moltke wrote in Initiative, the magazine of the German-British chamber of commerce. He added his concern that British youths, in particular, show a "lack of interest and curiosity" when it comes to learning German and traveling to Germany.
He apparently is not the first German ambassador to have finished a diplomatic tour in London frustrated by his inability to convince Britons that his country is a thoroughly modern democracy and a reliable partner in Europe. But he is among the most vocal.
"We don't deny our history. It would be a mistake to forget," Von Moltke said in a telephone interview from his new post in Brussels as Germany's ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. "But 50 years has elapsed, and Germany has undergone a tremendous change. I am saying they should take note of that."
Von Moltke's views echoed those expressed by German Culture Minister Michael Naumann earlier this year after the Sun tabloid branded Germany's then-Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine "The Most Dangerous Man in Europe" for his strong support of the euro, and the Daily Mail called him a Gauleiter, or Nazi officer, over European tax issues.
