yorick’s yearnings

Eine Antwort auf Karl-Peter Schwarz, Identität in der Wertegemeinschaft (FAZ vom 30. Dezember 2010)

Karl-Peter Schwarz erregt sich ganz außerordentlich über die Weigerung der EU, die Verharmlosung von Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit und Kriegsverbrechen, sofern diese aufgrund von Rasse, Religion oder Herkunft begangen wurden mit solchen Verbrechen gleichzusetzen, die aufgrund von Klassenzugehörigkeit oder politischer Überzeugung begangen wurden. Dies wurde nämlich von mehreren osteuropäischen Staaten beantragt. Schwarz sieht darin ein klares Merkmal von Doppelmoral und mangelndem Identitätsbewußtsein und hat, vordergründig betrachtet, sogar recht damit.

Allerdings ist dieser Eindruck verfehlt, wie schon ein  flüchtiger Blick auf seine Argumentation deutlich macht. Zunächst sind die Staaten zu nennen, die sich hier zu einem Vorkämpfer der Klassenzugehörigkeiten und, vor allem, der politischen Freiheit(!) machen. Hier fallen sofort Ungarn und mehrere baltische Staaten ins Auge. Was Ungarn unter der Wahrung politischer Freiheiten versteht, zeigt die neue Pressegesetzgebung, die dort die Möglichkeit schafft, nicht nur kritische Berichterstattung grundsätzlich zu untergraben. Dies mag, angesichts der Eingriffe in die Pressefreiheit in Italien und Frankreich ja für einen Autor der FAZ verzeihlich sein. Doch auch die baltischen Staaten tun sich seit langem mit gelebter politischer Offenheit hervor: zwar wird z. B. in Lettland ca. 400 000 Einwohnern die Staatsbürgerschaft vorenthalten, weil sie russischsprachig sind und erst nach 1940 nach Lettland kamen. Zum Ausgleich scheut man sich dort allerdings nicht, ehemalige Mitglieder der Waffen-SS zu Kommissionsvorsitzenden im Parlament zu wählen und die Waffen-SS jährlich durch Aufmärsche zu ehren (was übrigens auch in Estland geschieht).

Hier zeigt sich, daß es den Antragsstellern im Baltikum und in Ungarn keineswegs darum geht, gleiche Verbrechen gleich zu strafen und alle Opfer gerecht zu entschädigen. Es geht noch nicht einmal darum, die Opfer gleich zu behandeln – was an sich schon fragwürdig ist, da zum Beispiel ein deutsches Vernichtungs- und ein sowjetisches Internierungslager zwei höchst verschiedene Dinge waren, wie schon der Name sagt. Es geht hier nicht um die „Verteidigung tief verankerter Lebenswelten gegen deren Bedrohung durch totalitäre Ideologien“, sondern um simplen Geschichtsrevisionismus. Daß diese Art des Revisionismus auch Karl-Peter Schwarz nicht fremd ist, zeigt sich, wenn er die europäische Integration als Versuch bezeichnet, „die Schäden zu reparieren, die die Siegermächte des Ersten Weltkrieges angerichtet hatten“. Dies ist grob falsch. Deutsche Bundeskanzler von Adenauer bis Kohl wußten, daß die europäische Einigung eine Folge der Verheerungen des von Deutschland ausgelösten Zweiten Weltkriegs war. Die europäische Einigung geht aus von einem „Nie wieder“ und ist zugleich eine Verpflichtung zu Frieden und Versöhnung in Europa.

Karl-Peter Schwarz leugnet dies (und damit übrigens auch die deutsche Verantwortung für den Zweiten Weltkrieg). Gleichzeitig versucht er, seine Position zu legitimieren, indem er sich auf den israelischen Politiker Natan Sharansky beruft, der als Häftling im GULag saß und der damit ein unverdächtiger Zeuge zu sein scheint. Sharansky, so Schwarz, beschreibe in seinem Buch „Defending Identity“ den „unauflöslichen Zusammenhang“ zwischen Freiheit und Identität. Diese Behauptung ist sicherlich ebenso richtig wie trivial. Die Frage ist nur, worauf diese Identität aufbaut. Im Falle Sharanskys ist die Antwort klar: Sharansky gehört zu den Politikern in Israel, die sich (fragwürdig genug) auf die nationalen Wurzeln des Judentums berufen, eine Annektion des Westjordanlandes und eine Umsiedlung der Palästinenser fordern. Anderswo würde man dies wohl ethnische Säuberung für ein Volk ohne Raum nennen – so oder so dürfte sich Sharansky mit seinen Kollegen in Ungarn und auf dem Baltikum in puncto Rückbindung auf völkische Werte bestens verstehen.

In Wirklichkeit berufen sich besonders totalitäre Regimes gern auf diese Kombination. Auch dem Nationalsozialismus ging es um den Kampf um Freiheit und Identität, nicht zuletzt um die Verteidigung des Abendlandes gegen Weltjudentum und Bolschewismus, wofür er unter Islamisten, aber auch Balten oder Ungarn bis heute noch sehr geschätzt wird. Die kritiklose Kopplung von Freiheit und Identität ist immer fragwürdig, um nicht zu sagen widersinnig, solange man beide Begriffe nicht näher definiert und sie nicht auf die feste Basis von humanen Werten stellt.

Diese Basis gibt es längst, etwa in der Europäischen Menschenrechtskonvention, die durch Staaten wie Ungarn allerdings derzeit in Frage gestellt wird. Auch Karl-Peter Schwarz vermag darin nichts anderes als „eine diffuse, moralisch indifferente und multikulturell relativierte ‚Wertegemeinschaft’“ erkennen. Damit offenbart er nicht nur große Geschichtsvergessenheit, sondern er läßt auch völlig außer acht, daß die „herkömmlichen religiösen, kulturellen und nationalen Identitäten“ keineswegs genauer definiert sind. Gerade in Deutschland waren regionale Bindungen immer stärker als nationale – jeder Sachse, Bayer, Pommer, Thüringer oder Berliner wird dies bestätigen –, und auch die Bindungskraft der Religion ist nur noch schwach.

Auch deshalb gibt es die Menschenrechtskonvention. Sie ist keineswegs diffus, aber bewußt international, multireligiös und multikulturell, weil sich aus ihnen ein allgemeiner Anspruch ableitet, der die Bildung regionaler Identitäten garantieren soll. Freiheit ist, nicht zuletzt, die Schaffung eines möglichst offenen Rahmens, in dem sich der Einzelne frei entfalten und auf Grundrechte berufen kann. Es ist eine Schande, wenn eine „Zeitung für Deutschland“ diesen Anspruch, der auch ihre Existenz garantiert und nicht zuletzt siebzig Jahre lang Basis für Frieden, Freiheit und Wohlstand in Europa war, derart herabsetzt und verleugnet.

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of July 20th, 1944, the attempted killing of Adolf Hitler and thus the day that stands out as a symbol for all the German resistance movement for the other, “secret Germany”, as von Stauffenberg put it in his last words before being executed.

Being overshadowed by the celebrations related to the landing on the moon, the date probably has not been noticed by too many people, but in Jerusalem, there was a small memorial service being held at the Auguste Victoria Complex on the Mount of Olives. Although there was virtually no advertisement even within the German community (I got the first invitation less than two hours before it started!), about 30 people attended.

They witnessed a small, but very moving commemoration, that managed to ‘speak’ directly to the attendants in a most impressive manner. Its culmination was without doubt a speech, originally given by Albrecht Goes to commemorate this date 52 years earlier, on July 19th 1957. This text was framed by Max Reger’s Fantasia and Fugue in d-minor, op. 135b, which was composed in 1914/16, during the First World War and thus being Reger’s last major work for organ. It was performed by Klaus Schulten, who also played Franz Liszt’s Missa pro organo from 1879. Also, an excerpt of Helmuth James Count of Moltke’s last letter – Moltke had been one of the conspirators against Hitler and was executed in January 1945 – was read alongside with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Credo that also was presented in a Hebrew translation.

I do not think that writing a critic on this evening would be appropriate (in my eyes, there is not too much critical to say about it anyway), so I will leave the word to Albrecht Goes, whose speech I will present here in an English translation I did recently (the German original can be found here):

The Imperfect Needs Perfection

held by Albrecht Goes (1908-2000) on July 19th, 1957 in Plötzensee, Berlin

Among the documents related to July 20th, 1944 that have been preserved are many to disturb our sleep. They do so with good justification. Among them, we will also find notes of sons and daughters of those who have been accused, shot and hanged. Some of them have been written somewhat later, preserving memories about the time of their own imprisonment. In autumn and winter 1944, these children were placed in a ‘home’ – in fact, a house without home. According to their reports, they were treated rough, but not brutal – apart from one thing: they ought to lose their name.

It is touching and exciting to witness the resoluteness of these kids to save their names – a small boy, without any respect for what might have been advantageous – saying: “My name is…” and then, a surname… and then, “Goerdeler”; and in the evenings, in the dormitory, after the SS-guard went away, the older children also reminding themselves: “Ich heiße…”, and then, again, some of the names we memorize in this hour.

This is how it should be: the sons and daughters back then wanted to connect their own fate and their own future with the defamed names – and equally, these names should be present and potent amongst us in a clear and well considered manner. We will keep them, as we will keep those names that cannot be named in the same phrase – the names of the murderers, and those of their aides and informers.

The names of the victims of July 20^th -: all of them cannot be named here, for their number would be too big. But it is even less possible just to say numbers, horrific numbers: five thousand, ten thousand … all those hundreds of thousands from all the European resistance movements, those millions of Jews…

The names of the dead: we will just name a few, saying: Stauffenberg and Tresckow, Otto Hirsch and Julius Leber, Johanna Kirchner and Edith Stein, Father Delp and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Moltke, Yorck and Harnack – just to say this: they have been men and women of many different heritages. No single class – military and gentry, Confessing Church, priests, Socialists, Communists, Jews – has been, as a class, chosen to do what was right – but no class was missing among the chosen. We said names – and we know: every name we said stands for many names.

We do not speak of heroes. Nor do we speak of saints. In many of them has been something heroic, something related to the order: “Lech lecha me’artsecha umimoladetecha umibeyt avicha” / “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred”. All of them had to leave what was theirs – and they had to do so repeatedly, not once, but again and again in the darings of the day. They left behind heritage and tradition, security and shelter, their nature, their mentality and, most importantly, this half-peace of conscience that ever, even in adaption and silent subordination can be preserved. They understood that it has not been asked what somebody has been or what somebody is – but what will become out of what we have been trusted with, what will become out of the life of our home.

And regarding holiness -: those people did not think of holiness – as they did not think of heroism. But some of them were blessed from the Holy with this one thing that sometimes is given to the holy: serenity, this last ease, this precious being-taken out of context that we can find so powerful in Moltke’s last letter. This being ex-cepted of all those errors and confusions, of worldly ignorance and irrationality. All this finally has fallen behind their backs and under their feet. When we read these last letters, we often feel touched and shaken. Not touched by sentimentalities, but by Cleopatra’s excitement in Shakespeare’s drama: “O infinite virtue, comest thou smiling from / The world’s great snare uncaught?”

We do not want to affront those who took over the plight and responsibility of leadership following 1945 – but we cannot read Annedore Leber’s book ‘Conscience in Revolt’ that unites word and image, we cannot – just to mention once more two names where so many should be mentioned – look into Wirmer’s or Reichwein’s faces without dealing with the simple insight that these people constitute the lost elite of our nation.

And still do we neither speak of heroes nor saints, we do not speak of perfection, but of sherds, of broken fragments.

However, we cannot think about this fragmentation in every way. The melancholy, the train of thought “what, if…” or “what, if not…” will accompany us in all our lives at dark – and it doesn’t help. Also the insight that plans, routes and goals remained uncertain in many respects, that all understandings could only be partial cannot help us. Those we think about here knew that very well – and still they would have referred to what a young Danish sailor said: “I went on a path I do not regret. And I believe that now, I can see a relation.”

But there is one way to understand these fragmentations: The imperfect needs perfection: this is the demanded insight. “Perfection”? We should guard ourselves before using such words – nobody embodies perfection. Let us say the incomplete calls for more than memory and conservation. It asks for acceptance, obedience, continuation.

The new task is the old, remaining and ever new task of turning the ideas of freedom and justice into an indefeasable property and life force of a nation. This work has to be done already in calm and peaceful days because this is the only way to prevent dangerous times when it will become very hard to learn this lesson properly. We had to witness this.

But how should we start this work? What are we called to?

We are called to venture forth. The rotten compromise of ‘as well as’, ‘on the one hand…on the other hand’, this ‘well, in principle, but unfortunately…’ cannot be continued until the end of days. When we speak about venturing, about daring, we do not speak about stubbornness. We do not advocate being a maverick for the sake of it – but we learned how important it is to say ‘No’ every now and then. [...] In our world today we need people who say ‘No’ and continue to resist the dictators of the past and their ambitions for power today. It might very well be that a vigilant observer cannot help but is caught between two chairs or might even get oneself it hot water, to put it bluntly. This might not be a comfortable position to be in – but it is honorable and sometimes necessary.

But we are also called to keep listening. Those who met worrying about peace in our world or resisting dictatorship had many different points of departure. But they had learned to listen, to be bold and alert for the message we can find in the last letter of an Italian carpenter. There we read that there always are two kinds of persons: the spectators and the actors and that he loved to find his place among the actors, closing with the words: ‘Not for nothing we make the beds for others to sleep in…’ Those we think about today are now beyond our reach and engrossed by the eternal silence of death – and so it is our task to continue. To continue listening even across walls and borders, to stay bold and alert. My friends, I do not advocate dreaming, naive love: careful and critical accuracy is not to be put off like an evening’s dress. But I do believe that do not only have to figure with the people we have known in the past nor the people we believe to know today. We have to realize that they can turn in someone else tomorrow – especially regarding those who are removed from us, who are our ‘enemies’ or – generally speaking – strangers. We have to be open for others with continuing willingness and patience. We will not move forward ourselves when we accept the one we need for in the stranger – because without him, the truth that lives between all people, cannot be complete.

We are called for sacrifice. For those who know the Bible, July 20^th brings back to mind the tale of Shimshon/Samson, the man tearing down the columns of the enemy’s palace – finding death together with the enemy under the rubble. Julius Leber once said clearly what all of them believed in: ‘For such a good and just cause, sacrificing one’s own life is a fitting price.’ The sacrifice essentially means this: back then and today we are called for sacrificing our peace and our security, the soft pillow of a clear, self-confident conscience. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others, it could not have been easy not only to agree with the plea for liberation of tyranny but to find the strength to act. Following these men and women, we are not allowed to retreat from those things that have to cloud our heart and our conscience in this complex world. This is not an easy way. The path is not comfortable, but worthy – and it brings us close to an old rabbinic wisdom: ‘There is no fairer thing than a broken heart.’

A Polish girl who accompanied one member of the resistance movement in prison until the end wrote after the death of her cell mate Maria Terwiel: ‘I have witnessed so many decent people dying… after Helmut’s and Mimi’s death I continue to ask myself whether there might some be left?’ This is written for us – and it is as much a question as a request.

Concluding, please let me speak of this request in a parable, following a tale that has been handed down by Martin Buber. Martin Buber writes: “While I was a kid, I once read an old Jewish legend I could not understand. It did not contain anything more than this: ‘In front of the gates of Rome we can find a leprous beggar, sitting and waiting. It is the Messiah.’ Back then, I went to an old sage and asked him: ‘What is he waiting for?’ And the old man answered me something I did not understand and only learned to apprehend much later; he said: ‘He is waiting for you.’”

The world we think of, this home of humans, in which we can live as free persons, as individuals, together – at peace – is not the Kingdom of God that will be brought by the Messiah. But it is a reflection, a glance of this world. If our sadness is what it should be – not a reflecting sentiment, but a strength that carries us forward, it will lead us towards the responsibility for it. We do not need to worry for the dead who went ahead. About their way and their parting, it rightfully can be said: ‘If my ship sinks it sinks to new beginnings.’ But we have to worry for ourselves, and everybody should take care to listen to the call, to listen with all essential attentiveness on what is called for: “For you.”