“Help! Whatever happened to Holland-Germany animosity?”

by Hans Pul

Place reputations sometimes alter abruptly, but mostly it is a long process in time. Sometimes, place reputation changes take generations. The following article by Joris Luyendijk, a Dutch journalist at The Guardian, deals with this theme from his individual perspective (with many references to football and politics). It deals with how Germany is seen by the Dutch, and how this has changed in a positive manner in the last decades:

“Damn! Where have my anti-German feelings gone?”

Secondly, the article is a good illustration of how “the grass is always greener at the neighbour’s garden”, as a Dutch saying goes. It shows how having an (overly) positive image of Germany, combined with an (overly) negative stance towards their own country, has become fashionable among Dutch intellectuals:

 “And as Germany is becoming a country to look up to, the Netherlands is fast becoming a country to be ashamed of – making anti-German feelings even harder to harbour.”

Read the full article at The Guardian.