I love Great Britain. I’ve always loved it: the mysteries by PD James, the pop songs by Oasis and Pulp, the comedy of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. But the Great Britain I love seems to have fallen apart. Much like Monty Python’s Norwegian Blue, it has ceased to be.



The founding nation of the Commonwealth with its multinational population has closed its gates to immigrants and will be the first country to leave the European Union.

But before it does, I have come to the UK – thanks to the George Weidenfeld Bursary, an international journalists’ exchange scheme – to watch the British stumble their way out of the EU from close up, and to witness this big experiment.



My idyllic view of the UK might be shared by many Germans – how else do you explain the disappointment with which leading German politicians, as well as citizens, reacted to the outcome of the referendum?



The day after the result was announced, the European parliament president, Martin Schulz, sounding like a betrayed husband, said that London should put the vote to leave into practice as soon as possible.

The national newspaper I work for, Die Tageszeitung, published spontaneous readers’ reactions such as: “Fuck you very much!”

Theresa May and Angela Merkel in Berlin in July. Photograph: Xinhua/Barcroft Images

In the aftermath of the vote, some predicted that Great Britain would become Little Britain, with Scotland and Northern Ireland declaring independence as soon as No 10 triggered article 50 of the EU constitution and formally applied to leave. But it’s not that clear cut. Scotland won’t hold a referendum immediately and a court ruling in Belfast rejected a bid to challenge the legality of Brexit.



So it would seem the process of leaving the EU is more complicated than imagined and that there is more than one way out. And although the prime minister, Theresa May, said Brexit means Brexit, we’re beginning to see that Brexit might be a movable feast.

It’s not only in Great Britain that rightwing and Eurosceptic forces have become substantially stronger. There is a possibility that they might take control in other countries as well: the Front National in France, with Marine Le Pen running for president, has always praised the nation state and complained about mass immigration, as well as the Dutch Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders, who said this week on Breitbart News: “Britain is the Brexit pioneer and others will follow.”



Polls show that Le Pen will make it into the final round of the presidential election in May. Wilders’s party is the second biggest , according to October polls (released by the research agency Kantar TNS). The Netherlands will elect a new government in March.

In Germany, the party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which was founded initially as a Eurosceptic party, now turns out to be a nationalist and anti-muslim party. It has made it into every federal parliament elected since 2013, with well over 20% in two recent eastern German state elections and 14% in Berlin.

Great Britain could set a precedent with Brexit: the beginning of the end of the European Union. During my seven weeks here to study the UK, I am hoping it will help me to understand what’s going on in other European countries and what they might face. What are the concerns of UK citizens, and how do they assess the future?

And as a German I’m interested in how the German community in the UK – there are around 300,000 German-born residents living and working here – feels about its situation. Is there a new “German angst” arising about becoming aliens in the UK?

There are Germans living in Britain who told me they were seriously thinking about going back to Germany and starting to look for jobs there.



“The atmosphere has changed,” they say. “We are now more often reminded of the fact that we are foreigners.” They are worried about the future of their children, who maybe won’t feel free to speak their mother tongue in public any more.

Germans in the UK are one of the biggest minorities. Among the teaching staff in British universities are 5,250 academics from Germany – the largest group of foreigners teaching and researching in the UK. Every tenth student enrolled in British universities has a German passport.

German manufacturers contribute substantially to the UK economy, says the German-British Chamber of Commerce. Will companies like Siemens, BMW and Deutsche Bahn Schenker, who have large subsidiaries all over the UK, pull back if the country is no longer a member of the European single market? Or will they stay whatever it costs?

What do the British think about all this? Are some of those who voted to leave getting cold feet? And who are the British? The result of the referendum showed that the country is heavily polarised.



What kind of Brexit do people want? Does it differ for those in Birmingham to those in Edinburgh? Or Liverpool and Belfast?

There is a lot for me to look at, and much I want to explore. Feel free to send me your thoughts on what might be interesting aspects to look at from an outsider’s viewpoint at anna.lehmann@guardian.co.uk.



The UK I marvelled at with my continental view might never have existed outside those pop songs and literature, but there is another one to explore, and who knows? I might yet fall in love with it again.