For a long time after the formation of the EU, Germans seemed to crave normalisation and acceptance more than anything and were keen to be good citizens of the EU, downplaying nationalism and being happy to be the largest net contributors, grateful of the acceptance and respectability that EU membership conferred.  Then something changed.  

Perhaps it was always going to change as the wartime generation died off and the new status quo came to be taken for granted by the younger generation. But even then, liberalism, progressivism, environmentalism, multi-culturalism and pan Europeanism seemed to dominate in the younger generation.

However in more recent years the old guard seem to reasserting control.  Perhaps it was victory in the Cold war. Perhaps Re-unification reignited dreams of a greater Germany.  I don't know.  I have been back only briefly and rarely. But since Merkel has come to power - and perhaps because of an unreconstructed east German authoritarianism - all the old German insensitivities to and arrogance towards other peoples seems to be reasserting itself.

I'd love to read more from Germans writing on this site, but the flakiness of Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Cameron and (perhaps Zapatero) seems to have allowed Germany to reassert old dreams of dominance.  And they seem to be enjoying it.  Nazism it is not, but neither is it the pan Europeanism or community of nations dreamed of by the more idealistic EU project proponents.

Or is the ET ethos not attractive to significant German participation?

Index of Frank's Diaries