Unicorn Fever

The mythical creature rises in uncertain times.

- Madeleine Schwartz

SOMETIME in 2016, as Germany was reeling from disagreements over migration, politics, and national identity, the country received a magical visitor. The unicorn appeared on hats, liqueur bottles, cereal boxes, condom wrappers. By last summer, it seemed as much a part of the German landscape as bratwurst.

In Frankfurt, a stately painting of a unicorn overlooks the businessmen dining inside the Thurn und Taxis Palais, a restaurant near the seat of the German stock exchange. At a restaurant in Kreuzberg, Berlin’s hippest neighborhood, a drawing of the creature plunging chopsticks into a bowl of bibimbap advertises FOOD FOR UNICORNS. Someone on the Berlin subway has been altering the DOGS ALLOWED signs with a little horn to welcome fairy-tale creatures, too. This whimsical infatuation has made its way into the fictional world as well: In an episode of the hit German time-travel television show