Novemberland: 9 November, the German Master Example of Hauntology

In his ‘Children’s Hymn’ of 1950, Bertolt Brecht, back in East Berlin after exile, revealed an unexpected patriotism: ‘So that a good Germany flowers/Like many another good country. [ … ] And because we are tending to this land,/May we love and protect it;/And may it seem to us the dearest,/Just as to others their own land seems.’ A great deal stood in the way of Germany’s recognition by other nations, however, including a day of infamy: 9 November 1938. It was because of that day that Germany was not acknowledged like any another good country. ‘So that the peoples do not turn pale/Before us as before a bird of prey/But that they reach out their hands/To us as to other peoples’ (Brecht [1950] 1997: 507–8) — that was probably only possible after 9 November 1989.