A Love Story

by Stephan J. Domke

Danke sehr to Stephan J. Domke, once an exchange student at our high school, both for writing this essay and for allowing me to use it at the Window. I’m sure some of you have read it already, but believe me when I say it’s worth reading again. Have a good week and be nice to somebody. - Liz

There are declarations of love that are easy to write. When everyone agrees. When admiration is fashionable. When nothing is at stake.

And then there are declarations of love that feel slightly out of time.

This is one of those.

Because in today’s Germany, saying that you love America almost requires justification. How can one admire this country — the land of “political polarization”, “gun violence”, “social inequality”, and “relentless headlines”? Few Western nations are criticized as consistently as the United States.

America may not be a perfect country.

It never was.

But I sometimes feel that particularly in Germany people judge the United States with a moral certainty that is only available to those who have forgotten their own history.

We speak about America as if we owed it nothing.

And yet we owe it more than we often care to admit.

Above all, we forget that history is not made by states, but by people.

It was not “the Americans” who landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

It was Johns, Tims, Mikes.

Young men from Nebraska. From Ohio. From Indiana. From places many Europeans would struggle to find on a map.

They had never seen Europe. Germany had done them no personal harm. And yet they ran into machine-gun fire to end a war that Germany had unleashed upon the world.

Many of them never became fathers.

Never became grandfathers.

They died on a beach thousands of miles from home.

That we live today in a free and democratic Germany is also thanks to them.

And gratitude does not expire.

Perhaps I feel all of this so strongly because America has never been an abstract superpower to me.

America has faces.

My story with this country began in the summer of 2000.

I was a teenager when I first traveled to California. Los Angeles. San Francisco. Highways. The national parks. The Pacific.

At the time, I thought I had simply experienced an extraordinary holiday.

Later I did understand that something had been set in motion inside me that never truly left.

A year later, I returned.

Not for two weeks.

For an entire year.

As a somewhat lost, pubescent high school student, I went on exchange to Indiana.

Much to the quiet alarm of my grandparents who belonged to a generation that had lived through four very different German states — the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and finally the Federal Republic. Their lives were shaped by rupture: war, collapse, rebuilding. Their view of the world was necessarily different from mine.

For them, America was above all the land of Mickey Mouse, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Sesame Street. A country of abundance, advertising, consumerism — loud, colorful, and at times superficial. That was the image their generation had formed over decades. Admiration for America would never have fit comfortably into their worldview.

And yet I sometimes wonder whether, deep down, they knew more than they ever allowed themselves to say.

They had lived through what Germany had done to itself.

They had experienced the bombings, the collapse, and the long, difficult rebuilding. Perhaps they understood very clearly that the freedom their children and grandchildren grew up in was, in no small part, made possible by America. That after the soldiers came the CARE packages. That after liberation came the Marshall Plan. That the Berlin Airlift kept a city alive. That former enemies became allies, and that America became the protective shield of a fragile young democracy.

Perhaps they knew all of that.

But gratitude and admiration are two different things.

The first may well have existed — quiet, unspoken, buried deep.

The second they would likely never have permitted themselves.

Maybe that is the difference between their generation and mine: they knew America through history. I was able to know America through people.

And that is why historical gratitude became personal affection.

I, on the other hand, had the privilege of encountering America not through historical narratives or political debates, but through human beings.

Stuart Sullivan, Christy Sullivan, Sean Sullivan and Patrick “Redbeard” Sullivan welcomed me into their home in Indiana as if I had always belonged there. They did not just give me a room. They gave me a place in their lives.

I did not learn America from news broadcasts.

I learned America at the kitchen table.

At shared dinners with Max Sullivan and Marlene.

At football games under Friday night lights.

On porches, in conversations, in everyday life.

I met neighbors like Bradley A. McClain who stopped by simply to welcome the exchange student. Teachers like Coach Bridge who encouraged me. Friends like Daniel Friend who never saw me only as “the German boy,” but simply as one of them.

That kind of openness left a deep impression on me.

American hospitality is not a cliché.

It is a way of being.

In high school I formed friendships. I encountered a country whose people approach strangers with a kind of openness that can seem almost naive to Europeans. And yet it is precisely this openness that is one of its greatest strengths.

America believes in people.

In second chances.

In new beginnings.

In possibility.

Perhaps that is the real American idea.

Not that everyone will succeed.

But that everyone should have the chance to try. Or two or three.

Of course, I have also seen the contradictions of this country. The political conflicts. The inequalities. A from an European perspective barely existing social security system, especially on healthcare. The tensions that have become more visible than ever.

To love America does not mean to remain silent about its flaws.

Quite the opposite.

Love does not mean ignoring mistakes.

But it does mean refusing to reduce a country — or a person — to those mistakes.

What troubles me is not criticism of America.

It is its one-sidedness.

Because anyone who sees America only as a collection of political problems has stopped seeing its people.

America is not its presidents.

Not its news networks.

Not its loudest voices on social media.

America is millions of ordinary people.

Teachers. Mechanics. Farmers. Nurses. Firefighters.

Mothers and fathers.

People who get up in the morning, go to work, love their children, help their neighbors, and welcome strangers to their table without hesitation.

That is the America I came to know.

And that is the America I love.

In the meantime, I have been fortunate enough to return twice with my own family.

There are few things more beautiful than seeing enthusiasm passed on to the next generation.

To watch my wife Anja Domke and our children experience the same openness, the same hospitality, the same genuine curiosity that once moved me so deeply a quarter of a century ago.

They now understand why I never stopped speaking with a deep love about this country.

When I think of America, I do not first think of Washington.

Not of the White House.

Not of Hollywood.

I think of a kitchen table in Indiana.

Of Stuart, Christy, Sean and Pat.

Of friends from high school.

Of Friday night football games.

Of open doors.

And of Johns and Tims from Nebraska or Ohio, who never sought glory, yet whose sacrifice still echoes today.

America is not great because it is flawless.

America is great because its history has repeatedly been written by people willing to take responsibility, to offer hope, and to welcome strangers.

This country changed my life.

Not through its politics.

Not through its power.

But through its people.

Happy Birthday, America

And thank you

For your friendship.

For your generosity.

For your freedom.

And for memories that will stay with me for a lifetime and beyond.

God bless you.

Stephan J. Domke