Less love per favore
The first German with an Italy fetish was probably Goethe. If he had had Instagram, he would have posted stories from his Italian trip every minute, using these hashtags: #dolcevita, #zuvinosagichnieno, #italienischereise. Perhaps he would have even gone live every day to share his Eat, Pray, er, Write, Love moments with us. He had managed to escape his creative slump, thanks to Italy. Finally!
"Do you know the land where the lemons bloom?" he wrote in his Mignon poem. Yes, I know it; my family comes from there. And you know what? I'm fed up with the idealized image you have of Italy. And of lemons, too!
Someone else had had enough before me. In the 1980s, the Italian poet Gino Chiellino, who had migrated to Germany, wrote a parody of the famous "Mignon" poem from Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Goethe. If these lines were the lyrics of a rap song, Chiellino's poem could also be a good diss track:
Do you know of a country where life is cheap, very cheap for you
and sun too?
Do you see the country through which you are walking with the film in your head, the camera around your neck shielded by your sunglasses?
Women by the river, men in the piazza , children playing in the dirt, cunning faces on luminous slides satisfy your aesthetic longing for poverty.
Not this, not this is the country where guest workers flourish!
The title of the poem is “Cunning Faces (for JWvG in full anger)” and it was published in 1984 in Chiellino’s poetry collection “My strange everyday life”.
Why am I starting with this? Because the poem criticized something back then that still regularly annoys me today: the romanticized view Germans have of Italy. The differences to today are clear: Italy is no longer one of the cheapest holiday destinations, people watch Instagram Reels instead of slides, and social conditions in Italy have changed. Germany has changed too: the Italian guest workers, who used to be called "spaghetti eaters," have now become something like the Germans' favorite migrants. "You're not really foreigners" – I've been told things like that, too. Germans love spaghetti ice cream (which, by the way, was invented in Mannheim), they know what a zucchini is, thanks to the guest workers, and they have lots of amore cups from a Berlin label in their cupboards.
Last year, around six million Germans chose Italy as their vacation destination. Some travel to see Goethe and Bachmann. Others seek the perfect carbonara. Every year, Germans make pilgrimages to Lake Garda or speed down the Autostrada del Sole . Italy serves as a projection screen for everything Germany lacks: beautiful weather, the sea, and good food.
"Italian longing" is a word that only exists in German. It's so German that even Friedrich Merz uses it. During his inaugural visit to Rome, he said: "It's always been a bit of the German DNA; in recent years and decades, Italy has always been a bit of a longing country for Germans." Historically and politically, this longing may not always have been the best decision, but it's okay.
It has been silently agreed that asking people about their origins in small talk is taboo. One doesn't do it. The risk of putting one's foot in it is too great. When I meet people at parties, exhibitions, or birthdays, things are different. They hear my name and then ask if I'm from Italy. I always answer: "My family, I grew up in Munich." I have no desire to recount my family history to people I've only known for minutes. But my worries are unfounded. Something completely different happens: Ornella, my name, is so triggering that my conversation partners mentally zoom in on their last vacation in bella Italia . Their faces soften. They smile. And then comes a lecture about the Italian vacation that lasts at least 45 minutes: "We went way down there once. All the way to the south; it's different there, the people, the nature, and everything. Fantastic. But all that garbage is terrible." Most of the time they talk about some Gianni who was really nice, "even though he couldn't speak English."
I nod and smile. I've never been to many of the places people tell me about. Why does everyone think Italians know every little town in Italy? For half my life I've only been to Sicily, where my family comes from. And there it was mostly obligations. My summer holidays were holidays too, but with visits to cemeteries and relatives fighting over some piece of land. I know Italy, especially southern Italy, well; I go there often, and have studied the country both at university and professionally. But that also means that I don't experience this country primarily as a holiday destination, but also with all its other rough edges. With more reality. And fewer lemons.
Something that people tend to forget when on holiday in Italy: Climate change is becoming more noticeable there every summer, and the Mediterranean is warmer than ever before. The heat is causing blackouts in the cities. It was recently revealed that the ultra-right government under Giorgia Meloni had been monitoring journalists with spyware. In June, right-wing politicians called on the population not to vote in the referendum on faster naturalization and stronger workers' rights. A controversial security decree has also recently become law in Italy. Critics see it as an attack on basic democratic rights. And as if that weren't enough, Meloni is making questionable deals with Albania to conduct asylum procedures there. Friedrich Merz likes that. I have a stomach ache.
Before things get totally uncomfortable, back to the longing: Admit it, when you read the byline and saw Ornella, you thought of the actress Ornella Muti. Didn't you? Then you're probably too young. After I introduce myself by my first name, about every second person reacts like this: "Ahhh Orrrrrnella (they roll and emphasize the r ), such a beautiful name. Ornella Muti, you know her, right? A wonderful woman!" Some even ask if I was named after Muti. Back then, many considered her a sex symbol, which doesn't exactly make the situation any easier for me, especially since I'm too young to have actively experienced the Muti era. The banal answer: No, my parents just thought the name was beautiful.
My parents' decision to give me this first name sparked a family dispute because my mother and father decided against the tradition, especially in southern Italy, of giving me the same first name as my grandmother. My parents were tired of it. It was viewed as an affront. So much for the happy Italian extended family.
I don't want anyone to love Italy any less now. I love it very much too. But it doesn't hurt to turn off the film in your head and not point your phone camera at every pensioner you meet in Naples. The pasta and dolce vita hype is also fueled by images. These days, especially by photographers like Sam Youkilis, who captures supposed everyday life and the light in the south on Instagram. I, too, enjoy looking at his pictures and videos. Especially in winter. I, too, am looking for beauty, for warmth. And it's true that Italy has a lot to offer in that regard.
Such images, however, contribute to the spread of stereotypes. If you follow the Sam Youkilis narrative, Italians in Naples are constantly sitting on plastic chairs by the sea, letting tomatoes ripen in the sun, making out disproportionately often, or hanging out in a bar, drinking one espresso after another. Yes, there is a bit of this Italy. In the summer months. But looking at these pictures, you might think that Italy, all year round, consists only of July and August and of dolce vita , the sweet life.
What exactly is Dolce Vita ? What Sam Youkilis's photos and videos on Instagram show us? Our own photos from a holiday in Italy, which all look somehow similar? Dolce Vita is the name of the 1960 film by Federico Fellini. The main roles were Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni. Fellini's film is about the dissolute life of high society in Rome in the 1950s. The weight of life's existential questions, of reality, hovers above the lightness of the film the whole time. But that's a hard sell. People want Italian lightness, after all.
So it's fitting that the Dolce Vita myth has mutated into a marketing tool for restaurants, cars, clothing, food, and drinks. They use it in Italy, too, and not exactly sparingly. Everywhere I look, I'm being served Dolce Vita in the form of lemons. I can't even see Italy anymore for all the lemons. At every Italian market: tablecloths with lemons, lemon fridge magnets, beach bags with lemons. Where there's supply, there must be demand. Is that what you want?
The sweet life is usually lived by vacationers during the two weeks a year they spend in Italy. Perhaps the sweet life is also lived by Germans (is that called the German Vita then?), Americans, and English, who buy houses in Italy and set up their Dolce Vita second homes there. However, the Dolce Vita in everyday Italian life looks like this: Happy is he who has a job. The average net earned income in Italy in 2023 was around 24,207 euros, placing Italy below the European average of 28,217 euros. By comparison, in Germany it was 38,000 euros. Switzerland ranks first with around 85,000 euros. Youth unemployment is high in Italy. The number of young people, mostly well-educated and with degrees, who leave the country today fluctuates between 70,000 and 100,000 annually. Their families miss them. The young Italy you experience in summer doesn't exist year-round. Young people only return during the summer months to visit their families.
Back to vacation: The Italian daily newspaper "La Repubblica" recently reported that approximately eight million Italians cannot afford a summer vacation this year due to financial reasons. So, while we look through rose-tinted glasses at the people from Naples shown to us by famous Instagram photographers, we should also keep in mind that many of them rarely have the opportunity to vacation anywhere other than at home.
I encounter this romanticized longing for Italy not only on social media or in conversations. I live in Munich, and the people of Munich passionately refer to their home as Italy's northernmost city. Unfortunately, Munich was recently named the unfriendliest city in the world. It was by expats, of all people, that is, people from abroad who live in Munich for work. The perception of others and the perception of themselves could hardly be further apart.
Enough complaining – you should still enjoy Italy. With love , but also with a little reality check in mind. And you can't help but be pleased that a passionate Italian woman has set your mind straight!
süeddeutsche
