I went to see Very British, the exhibition in Bonn reviewed by Philip Oltermann (The Beatles to Brexit: A German history of ‘unrequited love’, 30 September). It made me cringe because it brought into sharp focus our lack of understanding of the Germans today and their much more developed understanding of us.

A wide range of artifacts showed multiple aspects of the relationship between Britain and Germany over the past 70 years, political and cultural. It showed the Germans following our royal family, being familiar with British icons such as Mr Bean, Monty Python and James Bond, and a wide range of British music from the Beatles onwards.

What do the British know about the Germans? We know BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz. We know, and the exhibition showed, that Shepherd Neame brewery produced a beer in the UK called Spitfire, named after a plane whose purpose was to kill Germans. We know that during Euro 96 the Daily Mirror had the headline “Achtung! Surrender! For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over” when the English football team was about to play the Germans (who won). We know that we beat the Germans in a war 74 years ago and in a football match 53 years ago.

We are almost completely ignorant about German culture and life today. How much did that ignorance contribute to the British vote to leave the EU? The Germans are well informed about the mess we have got into with Brexit and are looking on open-mouthed as our political system, steeped in medieval ritual, tries to cope with it. The faultlines in British society that the Brexit vote has exposed will never be sorted out until we start living in the present and not the past, we start seeing the value of our European neighbours and put on exhibitions about them, like Very British, over here.

Cath Potter

London

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