Before this trust even the Dr.
Faustus lay down his arms: "Well, you're happy that I've come." That's what Nepomuk Schneidewein, called Echo, said to his uncle Adrian Leverkühn.
The assumption that one's own appearance triggers positive feelings in others can be realistic in individual cases;
saying them under normal circumstances seems strange.
But in "Doctor Faustus" nothing is normal.
Echo's whimsical charm is, so to speak, the ax for the frozen sea in Leverkühn, a break into the human icy cold to which he is devilishly condemned.
One can really only understand this from his time, the Gottfried Benn and Ernst Jünger epoch, in which even the slightest touch of charm evoked a contrasting experience.
Today you can make less impression with it.
It is tried anyway.
Unless I'm mistaken, the participants in radio discussion rounds have gotten into the habit of replying to the moderator's greeting and introduction: "Nice that I can be here" or "Nice that I'm here".
It would be against the principle of courtesy to wait and see: "Don't be too hasty.
Whether it's really nice that you're here is still the question and we'll see then."
You know what that means
You know how all this is meant: hardly evil.
After all, it's grown-ups who talk like that.
Freud came up with the idea that a child's power of attraction is fundamentally based on its narcissism, and not just in the case of Echo Schneidewein.
That's a plausible assumption.
Adults, however, should actually know that being self-referential or even in love usually triggers disgust, and they usually act accordingly.
So where does the phrase come from?
Anne Will started by greeting the audience in a somewhat pastoral way: "I'm glad you're all with us." And when Anne Will says that, everyone thinks it must be true: It's nice that I da bin - "da am" in the sense of presence, not in the existential sense of "it's nice to be in the world" (Roy Black and Anita).
The ringelpiez-like, yes, diaper-soft tone reveals a need for an understanding that one apparently no longer believes can be achieved with conventional politeness, and fits with the fear of conflict that can be observed everywhere in public space and is growing parallel to the general digital bickering.
It used to be “Thank you for the invitation”, and that was it.
One had not yet tied one's hands with exaggerated niceness, but could, if the situation required it, shed any inhibitions more easily.
In other words: It might not do any harm to reflect on those “behavioral principles of the cold”, which Helmut Lethen described almost thirty years ago and with which one should not overdo it.