Berlin: While Germany’s World Cup dreams are over, the nation hopes a wave of patriotism which erupted during the soccer tournament has brought lasting change in a country wary of such feelings since World War II.
A sea of black, red and gold flags appeared to have receded the morning after the night before when two late goals from Italy stopped Germany’s World Cup journey in its tracks.
While many were gone, flags were still visible in Berlin, dangling from balconies and flapping out of car windows, attesting to Germany’s new-found sense of patriotic pride.
"Germans are identifying with their country and their national flag and I think that is great," German President Horst Koehler told the mass-circulation Bild newspaper.
"We are on the right path towards coming out as Germans, and to be proud of what we have achieved since 1945," he said.
Officials are hoping that hosting the World Cup will boost Germany’s image abroad and sweep away lingering prejudices about the nation, based on the World War II and the holocaust.
The number of Germans with memories of the war are dwindling and younger generations have begun to display an entirely natural relationship to their nation and their national flag.
The outpouring of national pride prompted by the World Cup is without precedent in post-war Germany, experts say.
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"We have had this pleasant sense of national self-awareness which is rather alien to the Germans; this idea of 'outing' oneself with the national anthem or the national flag - that is something new," said pollster Klaus-Peter Schoeppner.
Schoeppner, of the EMNID research institute, said that while the World Cup feeling would wear off eventually, the positive impression left behind on foreign visitors, viewers and journalists was not to be underestimated.
"With this World Cup the Germans have managed from a foreign perspective to overcome the residual sense of blame for the Second World War," he said.
This would give Germany a chance to start afresh in terms of its international profile, he said, echoing others who felt the positive mood would help banish for good the idea that Germany is a country with more than its fair share of complainers.
"The World Cup will be too expensive, the stadiums are dangerous, Germany is a no-go area! That is how the professional pessimists tried to ruin the mood shortly before the World Cup," Joerg Quoos wrote in a Bild Zeitung editorial.
"But the Germans have shown all the doom-mongers and worry-warts!
"Now the party must go on!"
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