In the estimation of Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, protagonist of the Nazi supremacist theory of the Aryan race, it is the blonde, blue-eyed Caucasian that belongs to the super race. All others are feral beings at best.
Although the United Nations has not adopted German as one of its official languages, like English and French, it’s tough luck to anyone who cannot speak or understand German, even in his own country.
Germany, as you know, bequeathed the ruling House of Windsor to the British. It is the biggest economy within the European Union and the fourth biggest economy, in terms of the Gross Domestic Product, in the world.
It is a leader in telecommunications technology and the manufacturing of heavy industrial machinery, chemicals and automobiles. You already know that the country gave the luxury Mercedes Benz, the urbane BMW, the sleek Porsche and the “unkillable” Volkswagen, to the world.
Germany is also the home of the phenomenal “Bundesliga,” and the incredible national soccer team nicknamed “The German Machine.” A country can’t be home to these feats and suffer “wobbling and fumbling” Nigerian fools gladly.
Recall that Africa was balkanised into colonies of the European powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884. After losing the Second World War in 1945, Germany lost its colonies to the victorious Allied Powers, namely, the United States of America, United Soviet Socialist Republic, Great Britain and France. Germany itself was divided up into Western Germany and Eastern Germany along the lines of the Cold War between the free world of the West and the communist eastern bloc.
Even the city of Berlin, within eastern Germany, was partitioned into West and East Berlin, each ruled by the Cold War faction whose name it bore. It wasn’t until 1989 that the Berlin Wall was pulled down and the two Germanies were unified once again.
To underscore American support for West Germany after the Soviet Union-occupied East Germany erected the Berlin Wall to prevent mass emigration to West Berlin, visiting American President, John F. Kennedy, proclaimed, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” meaning, “I am a Berliner.”
President Kennedy, who was the leader of the free world, which pretty much held West Berlin and Western Germany as a colony, found it necessary to humour and honour a people that were not even in a position to harm America.
Although President Kennedy could have addressed the West Berliners in English as demanded by diplomatic protocols and let the interpreters earn their pay, he chose to speak in German, the native language of his hosts.
Those versed in the lore of diplomacy swear that President Kennedy’s use of German on this occasion was a mark of great respect for the people and the city of Berlin. Imagine the impact of this courtesy on a people defeated in the Great War!
The thinking is that a visitor, however prominent, must be sensitive to the sensibilities of his hosts. If you can manage a few words of greetings in the language of your hosts, you would have made their day. And the effort is more than worth it.
But the proud, it may be too strong to say xenophobic, Germans of the 21st Century do not seem to share this opinion. They rather disrespect several Nigerian professionals and business owners who had the misfortune of applying for visa to attend the convention of an international society in Germany.
The German Consulate in Nigeria asked for what amounts to an arm and a leg of visa fee of N25,000, which it officially receipted; a photographed page of the Nigerian passport, together with the passport itself; strangely, a health insurance policy; flight ticket; evidence of hotel reservation in Germany; and an invitation letter from the hosts.
The embassy also asked for the visa applicant’s employment documents, such as letter of employment, letter of identification by employer and tax clearance; personal bank statements; and marriage and children’s birth certificates, even if neither spouse nor children were travelling. All for just a visiting visa of less than one week.
Yet, the consulate thought it would add insult to the injury of the visa applicants by responding in German. Although the visa application form was written in German and English, the response from the consulate was written in highly technical German.
The idea must be that anyone who wants to visit Germany must learn German, otherwise, the response to their visa application will be “No, can’t do.” It is curious that the offending letter of response was datelined Lagos. The interpretation is that whoever signed that correspondence didn’t care if Lagos was in an English speaking country.
It’s instructive that even the hosts, who are based in Hamburg, Germany, wrote to the office of the Visa Consular, Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, in the English language.
The German embassy in Nigeria certainly does not think much of whatever tourism value the Nigerian visa applicants would be bringing to its country. The naira of the Nigerian tourists is of little value when you compare it with the convertible Deutsche Mark of the Germans.
Maybe Nigerians deserved the rudeness on their own soil. After all, Nigerians are the ones who cannot feed, clothe and house their 180 to 200 million people. Nigerians are the ones who cannot provide electricity and water for themselves.
It is these same Nigerians who go through the Golgotha of the sandy Sahara Desert and cross the treacherous Mediterranean Sea in dinghys, seeking the mercies of the European and North African economies to meet their basic existentialist needs.
If Nigeria cannot take care of its own, then its nationals, including the well-heeled, who just want to express their self-actualisation, or Marslow’s highest order of economic emancipation, must endure insults from the Aryans.
But it may be that the Aryans think that these visa applicants are going to abandon their upscale jobs and enterprises in Nigeria, “miss,” like some of Femi Kuti’s band boys did, and go underground in Germany or slip to other countries through some underground Appian Way.
The unyielding spirit of racist Adolph Hitler, who refused to shake the hand of Jesse Owens, an American black sprinter who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games held in Germany, is working real hard to confine Africans in their “shithole,” as America’s current President, who is of German descent, famously put it.
The “niggers” of the 21st Century, who are “forming” to be humans, must first learn German, it seems. After all, the English language that is spoken in Nigeria and the entire Commonwealth bloc has its origin in the German language. It’s back to the Old Country, erm, Olde Englishe!
Just how the German consulate expects the visa applicants to translate its rude response to English is not very clear. It’s like, “You just take this and go figure it out.” Somebody says that the consulate expects the visa applicants to pool money and pay a translator.
A Nigerian professional translator, who speaks German almost as a first language, said it would cost N20,000 to translate the response into English. He submitted that the document was highly legal and technical, and a ploy by Germany to make others speak German. That took away the appetite to know what the document contained.
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