Soccer World Cup 2006 Changed Germans Attitude Towards Patriotism

This article is meant to be an update to the old article on the relation of Germans towards their flag (see here).
Germany was the host of the soccer world cup 2006. This event seemed to have changed the German's perception towards their flag and patriotism at large.
Before the event you pretty much were never able to see any German flags flying in the country, but once the first game started, flags just appeared everywhere.
They were flying on flag poles in front of houses, hanging out of windows or put in the windows of cars.

Some Americans might be surprised what the big deal of this would be, but as stated above, there has never been this kind of flag waving in Germany since the end World War 2, not even after Germany won the world cup in 1954, 1974 or 1990.

Surprisingly, when asking Germans (especially young ones), what they think about this change, almost everybody says that they like it and that it was about time this change had come. However, with every change there are always some groups lobbying against it - same with this one.
They said that the rising patriotism would not be good for Germany, because Germany would be a special country because of their bad history.
In my point of view, this is just ridiculous. How can patriotism be bad for a country?
Germany - a country full of inventors, big companies and great cities - needs to step up and acknowledge that there are many things to be proud of.

As I'm writing this article, the world cup has almost ended - the 3rd place game is on right now - and it will be interesting to see if the German patriotism really did rise or if all the flag waving did not have anything to do with patriotism at all and was just meant as support of the German team.
If it was just plain support - and this might have well been that way - then everybody will be looking back at all the articles written about this topic and wonder why it was that big of a deal. However, if the changed relation of Germans to their flag did picture a change in German patriotism, then the world cup 2006 was the reason for a huge change in German culture which definetely need to be adressed.

Whatever the outcome of all of this will be (expect another update in a couple of months after all the dust has settled), it was certainly nice to see a Germany as it should be.
Many proud Germans walking around with t-shirts showing the flag and having flags on their cars without having to bother what the neighbour might say about them.

So keep up the flag flying and let Germany win this one against Portugal :) !

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