As a guest of the city, I spent the first week of September 1993 in my native city of Mainz, Germany, together with about 80 other older Jews expelled from there some 60 years ago. In the colorful, rich Mainz of today it was difficult to recall the gray, poor city of my childhood. During World War II, 82 percent of the city was destroyed; it was rebuilt and its ancient core restored. Only the 1,000-year-old cathedral was left standing, relatively unharmed. Many of the group had come to Mainz apprehensively. The media had half prepared them to find a place where violent hostility to foreigners would be a painful reminder of the poisonous brown fog that had covered the city like the rest of Germany during the Nazi years. And indeed, the official speeches, many and long, dwelled ritually not only on the Nazi crimes of the past but on the xenophobic violence of the present.
Yet, apart from the speeches there was hardly any evidence of tension, violence, or unrest. Well-dressed and smiling people pass one another in the streets and crowd sidewalk cafes by 5:30 in the afternoon. The spontaneous sociability among strangers in the "Weinstuben" and their good-natured mirth confirm Dr. Johnson's dictum that "public affairs vex no man."
Indeed, again apart from the official speeches, public affairs were absent from private discourse; long dinner parties and long lunches went by without any intrusion from GATT, Bosnia, or the Blair House agreement.
SAFE STREETS OF MAINZ
Walking back to our hotel late one night through safe streets, I was struck by a publicity poster for camembert that read: "Do you have principles about nutrition?" "Yes, enjoying my food." That poster, it struck me, sums up the philosophy of the citizens of Mainz better than any sociological study.
Still, Mainz is no earthly paradise. Signs of the culture war and cultural decline are not absent. Many of the ubiquitous statues of saints face walls disfigured by politically correct graffiti. "Expel Nazis," "death to racism." And at least a few instances of a marginal reality did intrude.
During an afternoon session with high school students designed to let them listen to our reminiscences of the Hitler period, one student said that "her Turkish friends" had decided to go back to Turkey after finishing school. An Indonesian cameraman--television cameras were our frequent companions--entered the discussion by saying that "ever since three, four years ago I am afraid to go out at night alone."
Finally, and here is the last of the anecdotal support for alarmism, the young daughter-in-law of
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