Rock. Hard Place. Germany.

I will never forget the sunny evening of June 14, 2006. I sat in a café on Berlin’s Kurfuerstendamm watching Germany play Poland in a World Cup match in Dortmund: an intense, low-quality game. In injury time, Germany broke down the right and Oliver Neuville stabbed in the winning goal at the near post.

Chi-chi Ku’damm is hardly the beating heart of German football passion, yet even there the effect was astonishing. Crowds poured onto the streets. The traffic ground hopelessly to a halt. Beer cans flew through the air. Everywhere people were waving the black, red and gold of the German flag.

This would have been quite normal in any other country. In Germany it was historic. Mass displays of nationalism had been taboo there since the war. The West German education system trained students in what the thinker Jurgen Habermas called “Verfassungs-patriotismus” or “constitutional patriotism”, encouraging them to identify with the abstract ideals of liberal democracy rather than with old-fashioned national symbols like the flag.