Bearly related
by Jim Curtiss

A pair of seemingly unrelated topics have occupied Germany of late. The first, obviously, is the Soccer World Cup, which is allowing the German national team – and the country itself – to present their best face to the world. Across the board, critics are lauding the German organizers, football fans and overall population for their ability to put together such a world class event.

Columnist Steve Richards of British daily The Independent wrote this week that Germany had already won the tournament off the pitch with, “the ease of travel from city to city, the cleanliness of its towns, the class of the accommodation, the cycle-friendly paths… and the ability of its cities to stage late-night festivals without them ending in a drunken brawl."

In addition, German flags, once a source of shame due to the grim specter of German history, are again being waved proudly. People are happy, and a previously lacking sense of community has formed. All of which are surely bright spots and worthy outcomes of the World Cup’s slogan “A time for making friends”.

The second engrossing topic of late is related to the World Cup only in how it illustrates what one might call the Flip Side of German Efficiency.

About a month ago, you see, the first brown bear since 1835 was sighted in Bavaria after having raided a beehive.

Soon after that first spotting, Bavaria’s Environment Minister Werner Schnappauf said the bear, dubbed Bruno, was "Welcome in Bavaria". Schnappauf went on to tell people they had nothing to fear from Bruno, who had been released in Italy in an attempt to repopulate the northern Alps with brown bears.

A few days later, however, Schnappauf was in the news again. He was now describing Bruno as "a problem bear" because, as bears are wont to do, Bruno had taken to killing sheep. A lot of them. And not just killing to eat, but killing to kill. Bruno ran through a couple of herds of sheep like, well, like the adolescent bear that he was, excited to try out his God-given hunting tools on such easy prey.

After pronouncing him a nuisance and possibly a threat to humans, the same minister predicted that a man-bear encounter could occur at any time and that the bear could not be allowed to roam freely. “We will ask hunters to shoot the bear,” he said.

“Hysterical,” pronounced Bavaria's animal rights groups, who, in cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund, decided to employ alternate means. A special bear trap was flown in from the US State of Montana. A team of Finnish tracking dogs and their handlers, confident they would find Bruno and deliver a dart into his considerable backside, were presented to the media with great aplomb.

But the bear was wily and for weeks eluded all attempts to capture him. He criss-crossed the Alps, leaving the hounds far behind, and was even seen, in the best Yogi Bear style, sitting in front of the police station in the town of Kochel.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs created a Bruno teddy bear, on sale for 120 Euros a pop, and a website sprang up where you could shoot darts at a virtual Bruno. In short, the country had Bruno Fever until Bavaria’s government bear expert, Manfred Woelfl, faced the cameras last Monday and announced, "The shooting has happened. The bear is dead".

Almost immediately, Austrian animal rights group Four Paws called for a police investigation into Bruno’s ursinicide. They also released a statement that perfectly captured many people’s opinion on the matter. It read, "We are extremely dismayed that Bruno had to die."

Farmers and sheepherders, on the other hand, couldn’t believe the fuss over killing the big varmint. He was a nuisance and a threat to their livelihood, they reasoned, and in the cosmic struggle of man versus nature, well, man has to come first.

A blogger from Canada summed up this idea when he wrote, “We occasionally have bears in our backyards. We live with it and accept that they too have a right to be on this planet. It seems the Germans only have room for one species -- Homo sapien. So sad and so narrow a viewpoint. In many ways, I believed European countries were more "mature" than us savages of North America. Perhaps not.”

To come full circle, how is it, exactly, that the soccer World Cup and the handling of Bruno the bear are related? In my opinion, they both serve to highlight the inherent strengths and weaknesses of two well-known German characteristics: logic and efficiency.