VIENNA, Austria — After 24 years, Die Mannschaft has finally done it. Now four-time World Cup champions, the German national team has managed to put a smile on even Jogi Löw’s face. But there is always a lot more to a win of this immense scale, particularly in the context of Germany today.

Before I go on, a disclaimer: I am not speaking for the whole of the German population, but rather about the environment through which I navigate as a German.

International news sources like USA Today reported that there was no single star on the German football team — rather, they suggested the team as a whole is the star. Einigkeit, the first word of the official German anthem, means unity or “one being.” This not only describes the German team during this World Cup, but also Germany as a spectating country. For 30 days, “failed” integration policies, xenophobia and the related rise of right-wing parties and extremist violence against immigrants were not shaping the way people in Germany interacted with one another. Instead, people in Germany were united in their support for their national team and for players like Klose, Boateng and Schweinsteiger. The diversity of the national football team is very representative of the diversity of the German population. According to official 2012 statistics, more than 20 percent of 80 million people living in Germany have a migrant background — roughly the same percentage of the 23 players on the team that played in this year’s World Cup.

Germany's population is incredibly diverse, but if such diversity is not negotiated within the country’s culture, is it not bound to be a cause for differentiation? Politically, this question remains as present as ever, particularly after the recent Euro-Vote that saw the rise of right-wing parties across Europe. How can a country go about making immigration work? Through the integration of migrants into a guiding culture, multiculturalism or neither of these two extremes? As Angela Merkel — who, by the way, is a huge football fan — said in 2010, multiculturalism, or “Multikulti,” in Germany has utterly failed.

Yet German football this past month gave way to a form of unity and solidarity that suggests there is still a way for diversity to reinforce Einigkeit or, to put it more bluntly, for immigration to work. Through pride in their team, their players and the game — and through pride in this World Cup victory — the German people are united. If only there were a way to sustain the sentiment beyond football.

From my experience, we Germans are very careful in how we express pride. Frankly, the emotion only seems appropriate, and the least susceptible to misinterpretation, once every four years during the World Cup. There is only so much pride a German can show before a World War II so-called joke is cracked. You may have come across a video titled “Blitzkrieg” circulating Facebook in response to the country’s 7-1 win against Brazil, consisting of a German Bierkrug, or giant beer glass, smashing a Brazilian cocktail glass. For those who might not know, the tactics used by Germany during WWII named Blitzkrieg, or lightning war.

How has it become acceptable to make light of human suffering in a joke that compares the mass death of WWII with the loss of a football game? How is it okay to appropriate a language of domination and war to construct an image of modern Germany as being no different from the past? Yes, we should never forget history, particularly in the German context. Yet remembering the past is not the same as perverting it to construct an image of modern Germany, an image that deprives the population of its ability to negotiate and navigate its own cultural values at a very vulnerable stage. The football-induced pride that united Germany’s population during the World Cup is a crucial gateway to a culture and identity inclusive of the diversity in Germany. Yet this narrow image of the German identity, produced through the distortion of history, causes Germans to self-impose limitations on their expression of pride in the country. And lack of pride, I believe, keeps us from uniting over a common denominator and thus a common German identity.

I was incredibly proud to see the German team, which has played amazingly tough opponents, emerge from the World Cup as the winner. I am proud of Germany, and I voice that pride in optimism for a future in which diversity is embraced through a common German identity.