Joy

Summary

Today we can barely understand why millions were swept along by the mass National Socialist gatherings and euphorically idolised their ‘Führer’. This chapter shows how after defeat in the Second World War, the time for waves of national enthusiasm seemed to be over, to be replaced by political sobriety. It was only in 1954, when the Federal Republic’s national football team unexpectedly won the FIFA World Cup, that the Germans, now divided, were united in cheers of joyful celebration once again. The ‘miracle of Bern’ was followed in the West by the economic miracle, which provided West Germans with growing wages and a previously unimaginable ability to purchase consumer goods. Meanwhile, the GDR was trying in vain to awaken its citizens’ enthusiasm for socialism. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, East and West Germans celebrated together in pure collective joy that was felt around the world. But most people show joy primarily in private and value ‘small happiness’ with family or among friends, and that has also to do with the experience of how often enthusiasm has been politically manipulated and instrumentalized throughout the twentieth century.