The actor Viggo Mortensen has grown up in Argentina, Venezuela, Denmark and the USA. Today, he lives in California, he’s a faithful fan of an Argentinian soccer club and homesick for Copenhagen. While talking to ZDFonline the cosmopolitan describes his dream of a more open Germany. Nation states are a phase-out model for Viggo Mortensen. "You can build as many fences as you want", says Mortensen. "The more walls you build and the more you take yourself for something special as a people, race or region, the more you will see that the wall always has two sides: In reality you’re bulding your own prison."

The United Nations as a dream

Mortensen finds hope in the dream, that someday mankind will concentrate on their similarities instead of circumscribing more and more of each other in religious funtamentalism.
"Actually it should go without saying to have respect and not hurt other people", says Mortensen, who has been one of the keenest critics of the war in Iraq among Hollywood-stars for years. "I’m hearing words like „peace“, „compassion“ and „neighbourliness“ as well of my own government. These are all nice words but there doesn’t seem to be much behind them.”

Stay curious!

Mortensen likes his homecountry America. But he advices Americans as well as Germans never to think that they know or understand their country well enough.
"As soon as you believe to know about your own country, your wife, your husband, your son or your daughter who they are", says the actor-poet, "you allow the fading and dying off of the particular relationship. That’s like with words in religious works or holy books. As soon as they are written down, they are dead."
Asked for his own dream for Germany, Mortensen develops the same surprising passion that also lets him appear so latently explosive in his movies: "Try to be as Chinese as you can!", he says. "Try to be as Jewish as you can! Try to be as much Apache, Argentinian, French as possible. As soon as you stop trying to be as French or Chinese as possible this is the beginning of problems!"
"I mean that no culture should be ennobled to the „only thing“. Something like that doesn’t exist. And neither Germany nor the USA should be the “only thing”. The best thing that Germans can do is to forget that they are German. It’s the same with Americans.", believes Mortensen. "Grow above your local bounds."

Force nothing

But Mortensen also thinks that pride of the own country is essential. "Soccer is a good example for that. Me for my part, I really like my team of the the Argentinian club San Lorenzo", he reports. "But I don’t want to destroy the other team. That’s simply a question of manners and self-restraint."
"But most important of all is not to force this self-image as a German", says Mortensen in the end. "If that doesn’t come on its own you have to stop trying. Go and do something else. Go weeding, take a walk- or talk to a Chinese."