ABSTRACT
This chapter is a kind of circumambulation about how a 68-year-old German experienced the United States during his lifetime. It begins with childhood memories in the ruins of World War II; the kind US soldiers in the 1950s; the famous “uncle” from Palm Springs; the adventures of Winnetou, Leather Socket, and Uncle Tom, the saga enriched by a wonderful painting: the featherheaded America of Tiepolo’s famous fresco in the Würzburg Residence. The baroque castle had been bombed by US forces in 1945, but the Tiepolo painting was rescued afterward by an American officer who cared for a new roof over the famous staircase. As a boy, the author was fascinated. America became a dream and land of miracles. It wasn’t until later that an ambivalent image of America emerged. Vietnam, napalm, and My Lai opened the eyes of the student: there were shadows in the glazing varnish. Hannah Arendt explained the contradictions in the big continent overseas and traced them back to the heritage of fundamentalist Pilgrim fathers, the slave economy, and the country’s idealistic Constitution. The fate of the extinct Winnetous was like a fatal foreboding of countless contradictions in the immense continent, held together only by a dream. And this dream is not limited to God’s own country. It is about a projection of the cultural complex of freedom, of unlimited possibilities, of individuation as a cultural project. America was the projection screen. Today, in these times of global warming and solipsistic politics, the fascination is over. Europe has lost its American Dream and has been thrown backward to itself. America shall be realized here, not with Coca-Cola®, but within the European mind. There it exists and shall be realized, not in narcissistic heroism but in mutual cooperation.
