The German national team's disgraceful exit from the World Cup may be just a soccer defeat, but it feels like more than that: The expression of an anxious, luckless moment of hesitation and uncertainty for Germany.
I moved to Berlin in 2014, during the previous World Cup, in which a joyfully confident German squad didn't just squeeze its opponents like a ruthless machine, in the style of its predecessors, but wove lace around them with smart passing and stunning speed.
The 7-1 victory over Brazil had a dreamlike quality but was somehow expected from a team that combined the cunning and imagination of players of Middle Eastern origin, Mesut Oezil and Sami Khedira, the easy, cool athleticism of Jerome Boateng, son of a Ghanaian father, the chivalry and daring of Polish-born Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski with the bulldog tenacity and engineer-like precision of Bavarian Catholic Bastian Schweinsteiger.