Hfurnish! I dread you! Only with Goethe’s Gretchen can anyone who is following the self-exposure of the Duke of Sussex, from which there would have been an escape at most in a submarine that had been submerged weeks ago, be as omnipresent as the life confession of the royal reservist is in the German media . Whichever page you open, whatever station you turn on, everywhere and always only the annoyance with Harry, whose real name is Henry, but is not even called that by his wife (but “H”, pronounce: eytsch). How are you supposed to find yourself there?
So we can assume that the tragic stages of this princely life are well known, from the brief introduction to physical love behind the pub, to the thankfully not permanent frostbite below the royal belt, to the doubts that he really was his father’s son who, of course, had already been prompted by love to say such an unforgettable sentence that one must necessarily speak of blood relationship.
The whole story is so sad that even our Reich citizens have to ask themselves whether they really want their Kaiser Wilhelm back. We fared much better with the Republic and our Federal President. Compared to Buckingham Palace, that racist and sexist snake pit, Bellevue is a pony farm. Not even the Wulffs could even remotely compete with the Windsors.
Formative battles: Sedan, Tannenberg, Gorleben, Wackersdorf
We, the ordinary citizens, are the salt in the German soup. It is true that very few can claim to have killed 25 Taliban like Harry. But many of us have also selflessly gone into battle with a firm belief in a good cause. The names of the glorious battles, which have such a formative meaning for the Republic as Sedan and Tannenberg once did for the Empire, are known to everyone (well, maybe apart from the little Paschas): Gorleben, Startbahn West, Wackersdorf, Hambacher Forst.
Most of these were won against superior odds; the recaptured Hambi is now crossing the Wupper for other reasons. But the British eventually had to retreat from the Hindu Kush again, despite Harry’s heroic deeds. And for us Germans, it’s more about the gesture than the success, see Qatar recently.
What Darth Habeck has already recognized
That’s why the name Lützerath will only temporarily stand for a defeat against the stormtroopers of the empire, which Darth Habeck has already recognized. Lützerath is not a new Stalingrad, but just a line! When the last charcoal briquette is ceremoniously burned in front of the Reichstag, the activists will be able to proudly tell their grandchildren that they caught their rheumatism in Lützerath when they had themselves embedded in ice-cold concrete in the fight against global warming. The retreat into the tunnel system was not healthy either, a tactic that our climate fighters had probably copied from the Vietcong, but did not quite bring it to its perfection.
Each and every one of the Lützerath veterans could write at least as much about their dreams and trauma as Prince Harry. We would be interested in these careers and especially the plans for future actions far more than the question of whether Willy and Harry were divided by the evil stepmother Camilla or rather by the cunning sister-in-law Meghan.
It matters who wades through the mud
But our young idealists will probably wait in vain for offers like the ones the Sussexes received from publishers and broadcasters. Whether it is princes and princesses wading through the mud or Krethi and Plethi obviously plays a major role in the readiness and willingness to pay, even among republican audiences. But even royals shouldn’t overdo it, as one can read in Goethe: “Why is a king swept out like that with a broom? Had they been kings, they would all still have stood unharmed.”