The case triggered a debate over whether Nadja Drygalla was being unfairly persecuted and subjected to guilt by association, with the Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière defending the young rower, saying her personal life had been intruded on. Others argued she should not have been allowed to compete in the first place because she evidently tolerated her boyfriend's activities enough to share her life with him, making her unsuited to represent her country. Now, anyone who is familiar with this peculiar milieu in the deprived north-east of Germany, formerly part of the GDR, won't be too shocked by this story. It is shocking, however, that Fischer's activities went unnoticed for so long.

The real issue that ties this all together is the insecurity that lies behind it: desperately longing for medals as a kind of validation while rebuffing that very same idea as anachronistic, at odds with a newer, more relaxed patriotism that Germans are meant to have discovered. When it comes to sport, it seems, Germans still indulge in their never-ending quest for identity. Recent events call into question this 21st-century patriotism, which seems strangely contingent upon sporting success and unable to shake free of traces of the older, nastier variety.

"Britain is a country where nothing ever works properly," a German who teaches at Cambridge University remarked grimly when talking about the London Olympics, "but the British just seem to have got tired of being losers." In fact, it is fair to say that quite a few Germans were surprised at how London rose to the occasion. 

Maybe there's an insight into the nature of enlightened patriotism here: tying a nation's self-image to sporting success is not the same as freeing oneself from the burden of history. Whether Britain comes out as a loser or a winner at a sporting event (or the  export statistics) has perhaps the same short-term effect on the national mood as it does in Germany, but the impact on the deeper sense of self of the two nations seems to be quite different. How long would the new German patriotism survive if we Germans were to see ourselves as losers once more?