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Daydreaming in Germany Daydreaming in Germany
(about 4 hours later)
On Yom Kippur, last month, I was in Berlin. I am not a religious Jew, but on the High Holy Days I like to be in a synagogue, listen to the ancient lilt of Hebrew prayer and allow my mind to drift from daily cares. It is a form of respite. We all need that these days. Worry has become an early riser.On Yom Kippur, last month, I was in Berlin. I am not a religious Jew, but on the High Holy Days I like to be in a synagogue, listen to the ancient lilt of Hebrew prayer and allow my mind to drift from daily cares. It is a form of respite. We all need that these days. Worry has become an early riser.
I closed my eyes. The sounds of Jewish worship in the Pestalozzistrasse Synagogue were followed from time to time by instructions or explanations in German. This linguistic alternation, in Berlin, was more freighted than it might be elsewhere. It was an affirmation of healing, but not without a shadowy undertow.I closed my eyes. The sounds of Jewish worship in the Pestalozzistrasse Synagogue were followed from time to time by instructions or explanations in German. This linguistic alternation, in Berlin, was more freighted than it might be elsewhere. It was an affirmation of healing, but not without a shadowy undertow.
My mind turned to the poet Paul Celan’s phrase, “the thousand darknesses of murderous speech,” and to the complications for a postwar German Jew, or indeed any German, of having a mother tongue that was also the murder tongue. Nothing after the Holocaust is ever straightforward in Germany, not even the jovial smile of the rabbi who conducted the service that day.My mind turned to the poet Paul Celan’s phrase, “the thousand darknesses of murderous speech,” and to the complications for a postwar German Jew, or indeed any German, of having a mother tongue that was also the murder tongue. Nothing after the Holocaust is ever straightforward in Germany, not even the jovial smile of the rabbi who conducted the service that day.
Berlin is a city of absences. The stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are now everywhere; the small brass bricks inlaid in sidewalks that recall a single Jewish life curtailed. What a beautiful name they have! You do stumble. You catch your breath, reminded of the everyday reach of the Nazi dragnet, of what diligence it took to decompose the German-Jewish world.Berlin is a city of absences. The stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are now everywhere; the small brass bricks inlaid in sidewalks that recall a single Jewish life curtailed. What a beautiful name they have! You do stumble. You catch your breath, reminded of the everyday reach of the Nazi dragnet, of what diligence it took to decompose the German-Jewish world.
This is a time of growing fears, in Europe and the United States. Ghosts have stirred. Humanity never quite grows out of the buffoon’s attractions: the scapegoats he offers; the fast money; the rush of violence; the throb of nation and flag; the adrenaline of the mob; the glorious future that will, he insists, avenge past humiliations.This is a time of growing fears, in Europe and the United States. Ghosts have stirred. Humanity never quite grows out of the buffoon’s attractions: the scapegoats he offers; the fast money; the rush of violence; the throb of nation and flag; the adrenaline of the mob; the glorious future that will, he insists, avenge past humiliations.
The Enlightenment was not the end of the story. Nor was 1989, that giddy moment for the liberal democratic idea, deemed self-evidently all conquering. An autocratic, nativist, xenophobic, nationalist reaction is now in full swing on both sides of the Atlantic — as the election in Austria demonstrates again. It demands resolute vigilance. It also demands that we listen, try to understand and resist fracture.The Enlightenment was not the end of the story. Nor was 1989, that giddy moment for the liberal democratic idea, deemed self-evidently all conquering. An autocratic, nativist, xenophobic, nationalist reaction is now in full swing on both sides of the Atlantic — as the election in Austria demonstrates again. It demands resolute vigilance. It also demands that we listen, try to understand and resist fracture.
On the wall of the synagogue, opening my eyes, I noticed these words: “Zerstort, Nov 9, 1938, Wieder eingeweiht, September 1947” — destroyed in 1938, rededicated in 1947, eight months before the founding of the modern state of Israel. In those nine years — one more than a two-term American presidency — the German-Jewish tapestry of Berlin, of Germany, was shredded. A whole universe disappeared. Hitler was a buffoon of ruthless intuitions who contrived to take the world down with him. That’s worth recalling today. On the wall of the synagogue, opening my eyes, I noticed these words: “Zerstört, Nov 9, 1938, Wieder eingeweiht, September 1947” — destroyed in 1938, rededicated in 1947, eight months before the founding of the modern state of Israel. In those nine years — one more than a two-term American presidency — the German-Jewish tapestry of Berlin, of Germany, was shredded. A whole universe disappeared. Hitler was a buffoon of ruthless intuitions who contrived to take the world down with him. That’s worth recalling today.
Millions of European Jews, none more patriotic than the German, went to the gas.Millions of European Jews, none more patriotic than the German, went to the gas.
All that, of course, was in the 20th century, now disappearing from view at alarming speed. Few things are more dangerous than amnesia. But of course the things you remember best are things lived. What’s the Cold War or the Berlin Wall to a 30-year-old today?All that, of course, was in the 20th century, now disappearing from view at alarming speed. Few things are more dangerous than amnesia. But of course the things you remember best are things lived. What’s the Cold War or the Berlin Wall to a 30-year-old today?
The reconciliation of German and Jew after the Holocaust was unimaginable. Death was Celan’s “master from Germany”; how could such a master proffer a hand across the ashes to those who slipped through the net? And yet, just as there could be poetry after Auschwitz, there could, over generations, be a new understanding between perpetrator and victim, even German-Jewish friendship.The reconciliation of German and Jew after the Holocaust was unimaginable. Death was Celan’s “master from Germany”; how could such a master proffer a hand across the ashes to those who slipped through the net? And yet, just as there could be poetry after Auschwitz, there could, over generations, be a new understanding between perpetrator and victim, even German-Jewish friendship.
I moved very reluctantly from Paris to Berlin in 1998. By the time I left in 2001 (a couple of weeks before the world changed), I was a convert to the Bundesrepublik. No nation guilty of a great crime has pursued an honest reckoning and atonement with greater rigor than Germany. It did not come immediately or easily. The country zigzagged its way to a full accounting. There were long silences and significant evasions. But Germany got there.I moved very reluctantly from Paris to Berlin in 1998. By the time I left in 2001 (a couple of weeks before the world changed), I was a convert to the Bundesrepublik. No nation guilty of a great crime has pursued an honest reckoning and atonement with greater rigor than Germany. It did not come immediately or easily. The country zigzagged its way to a full accounting. There were long silences and significant evasions. But Germany got there.
To me it has yielded a mystery or two, kept others back. You watch, in October, a naked woman emerging from Berlin’s Krumme Lanke lake to the hissing of a swan, watch swans’ wings thwacking the water in the struggle to get airborne, listen to the rhythmic clack-clack of hikers’ polls on the paths in the dark woods — and it is as if you are being allowed to glimpse some secret. Still, you wonder.To me it has yielded a mystery or two, kept others back. You watch, in October, a naked woman emerging from Berlin’s Krumme Lanke lake to the hissing of a swan, watch swans’ wings thwacking the water in the struggle to get airborne, listen to the rhythmic clack-clack of hikers’ polls on the paths in the dark woods — and it is as if you are being allowed to glimpse some secret. Still, you wonder.
The Bundesrepublik is America’s child. It was forged under American tutelage and inspired by high American ideals of liberty. President Trump therefore poses a particular problem for Germany, more acute than for any other European nation. If the United States has forsaken these ideals, if the nation of “We the people” is no longer a universal idea but projects only a pay-up-now mercantilism, Germany will one day have to think again.The Bundesrepublik is America’s child. It was forged under American tutelage and inspired by high American ideals of liberty. President Trump therefore poses a particular problem for Germany, more acute than for any other European nation. If the United States has forsaken these ideals, if the nation of “We the people” is no longer a universal idea but projects only a pay-up-now mercantilism, Germany will one day have to think again.
So will all allies of the United States. America’s word is a devaluing currency. Across Europe people roll their eyes at the mere mention of the American president.So will all allies of the United States. America’s word is a devaluing currency. Across Europe people roll their eyes at the mere mention of the American president.
Fritz Stern, the great historian of postwar Germany, once wrote that he was born “into a world on the cusp of avoidable disaster.” For Stern, “the fragility of freedom” was “the simplest and deepest lesson of my life and work.”Fritz Stern, the great historian of postwar Germany, once wrote that he was born “into a world on the cusp of avoidable disaster.” For Stern, “the fragility of freedom” was “the simplest and deepest lesson of my life and work.”
We find ourselves once again “on the cusp of avoidable disaster.”We find ourselves once again “on the cusp of avoidable disaster.”
Just last week Trump tweeted: “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”Just last week Trump tweeted: “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”
This is Putin-Erdogan territory (and they don’t use insane capitalization). Worse, this is the territory where books get burned.This is Putin-Erdogan territory (and they don’t use insane capitalization). Worse, this is the territory where books get burned.
We don’t know yet how far the president is prepared to go in silencing critics who do not meet his test of patriotism, perhaps further than Russia and Turkey. We do know already that he has little idea of what his oath to the Constitution meant.We don’t know yet how far the president is prepared to go in silencing critics who do not meet his test of patriotism, perhaps further than Russia and Turkey. We do know already that he has little idea of what his oath to the Constitution meant.
I am a Lithuanian-South-African-British-American Jew who, strangely, does not like walls, fences, hard borders, Messianic nationalism or race-baiting bigotry. Tell me, how did we get to the point where spewing hatred is the best way to prove contempt for the politically correct?I am a Lithuanian-South-African-British-American Jew who, strangely, does not like walls, fences, hard borders, Messianic nationalism or race-baiting bigotry. Tell me, how did we get to the point where spewing hatred is the best way to prove contempt for the politically correct?
On the way back from Brandenburg An Der Havel to Berlin this month, after interviewing a member of Germany’s ascendant rightist party, Alternative for Germany, a violent storm erupted. Loads were blown off trucks. Trees came down. One of them killed Sylke Tempel, a prominent foreign policy expert and passionate Atlanticist, in Berlin.On the way back from Brandenburg An Der Havel to Berlin this month, after interviewing a member of Germany’s ascendant rightist party, Alternative for Germany, a violent storm erupted. Loads were blown off trucks. Trees came down. One of them killed Sylke Tempel, a prominent foreign policy expert and passionate Atlanticist, in Berlin.
The storm — so strange, almost otherworldly — felt like a warning. The waters of the Wannsee lake, generally so placid, churned like the North Atlantic; the Wannsee, where the “evacuation” of European Jewry to a “final solution” was decided in early 1942 — and words had already lost their meaning.The storm — so strange, almost otherworldly — felt like a warning. The waters of the Wannsee lake, generally so placid, churned like the North Atlantic; the Wannsee, where the “evacuation” of European Jewry to a “final solution” was decided in early 1942 — and words had already lost their meaning.