Ich bin ein Londoner: the Germans are coming - and a lot of them are already here

They’re invading us on Saturday for the all-German Champions League final. But we’re home to more who already love das kapital, says Anne McElvoy
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22 May 2013

Should you wish to find Prince Harry and current squeeze surrounded by young ladies in gingham lederhosen, your best bet might be Bodo’s Schloss, a totally ironic (of course) ski hut just off Kensington Gardens run by his old mates David Phelps and Piers Adam from Whisky Mist and Mahiki. At Bodo’s you can drink schnapps at the bar and spot Princess Beatrice with a host of Made-in-Chelsea hangers-on. At least they have no trouble pronouncing “Ja”.

Over at the (rather cheaper) Bavarian Beerhouse just up from Old Street roundabout, urban hipsters are clinking steins and eating fare which reminds me of my old East German university canteen. Even herd-like City boys have discovered Katzenjammers (“Hangover”) in Southwark, where they can shout above the racket of a live oompah band.

German social life in London, generally regarded as a bit of a snooze, has become an awful lot hotter — which is just as well, with the Bayern Munich-Borussia Dortmund Champions League final on Saturday. If you don’t know your Robert Huth (ex-Chelsea, now Stoke City) from your Lukas Podolski (Arsenal striker), this is the moment to wave the German red, yellow and black banners.

As a lifelong Germanophile and highly trained Berlin barfly, I find the great Germano-revival in London little short of ein wunder. Out with tired Scandi-chic and in with the stylish Germans, who have steadily been colonising London. The German Conley family have just paid £225 million to add Kensington Roof Gardens to their portfolio of capital properties. The German fiefdoms are centred on Chelsea, with a particular enclave around Draycott Crescent, and Richmond, which has a German school for those who really don’t want to leave the Muttersprache behind.

Sloane fascination has never really died in prosperous Germany, so the revived Barbour-and-loafers look is alive and well. So much so that when Der Spiegel magazine last surveyed the German scene in London, it noted that “In the expensive shirt shop Thomas Pink the accents you hear are more likely to come from Stuttgart than Sandringham”.

Mid-life Germano-Londoners wear Jil Sander, while the chaps wear more tweed than you’re likely to see outside the shires. But that is changing: the young, wealthy fashion pack like the sleek, shimmery creations of hot Munich designer Marcel Ostertag, who trained in London, while star photographers like Wolfgang Tillmans and Jürgen Teller have introduced the trainer-wearing German bohos to the stiff-collared crowd. Also always in fashion is supermodel Claudia Schiffer, married to London film director Matthew Vaughn.

Top of the social pile here is Joana Schliemann, a descendant of the great 19th-century explorer and archaeologist. Schliemann is a film-maker, writer and one-woman London-Berlin link. She fundraises for good causes with Joel and Divia Cadbury, with a brace of Delevingnes and Knatchbulls in tow.

The echoes of historic Anglo-German entanglements ring oddly through this affinity. To put it bluntly, today’s London attracts a lot of people whose forebears were once part of a much less charming offensive. A current prominent member of the Germano-Londoner pack is Isabelle (Bella) Ribbentrop, head of corporate communication at Pictet and Cie, the private Swiss bank, who is married to a descendant of Hitler’s foreign minister.

Bella is a descendant of the historic southern German Sayn-Wittgenstein clan, and thus a Bayern supporter. London, she says, is “a perfect mixture of international and not cliquey. You can get a fishmonger and designer shops on the same street, it’s very easy-going, which we like.” She oversees the bank’s big photographic prize and collects modern art (pretty much all posh Germans in London do).

English private education is one of the big draws — Germans have become the largest non-Asian group in Britain’s independent schools, not least because of the school uniforms. Another is doing things they can’t do at home, such as mowing the lawn outside approved hours or making a pile in hedge funds, which aren’t legal in Germany.

Katrin Radmacher, an heiress from Cologne, enforced her record-breaking pre-nup here in the Supreme Court against a French banker husband she met on the dancefloor at Tramp. She fled back to Monaco to count the dosh. The smarter Germans settle here and spend it, with the toffs at Bodo’s or just cheering on the German footie champions somewhere really kühl.

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