Responses to ‘Being German’

Karla responded to my reflections on being German here and perhaps you’d like to keep on following the discussion. It has been an intriguing one so far; friends’ comments included the following (2. responds to 1., 3. responds to 2.):

1. From my conversations with German friends, it’s pretty obvious this ambiguity is not a problem for ex-Easterners alone. On the contrary, a good few of my friends point out the adverse/ambiguous effects of the exceptionalism in the (Western) education they received about WWII (as you know, there is a generation of Germans who have grown up in a pacifist tradition, and who while reviling Nazism, are growing tired of being told that they carry the responsibility for the crimes of their grandparents). Personally, I’m very wary the risks of exceptionalism in thinking about WWII or the camps, or the Holocaust: on the one hand exceptional guilt/responsibility warns the future by remembering the past, on the other it restricts the applicability of that warning to particular groups of perpetrators or victims (not to mention even more pernicious manipulation of that history -see Finkelstein’s “The Holocaust Industry”). And perhaps thinking about this comparatively helps in more than the debates on WWII genocide(s): however imperfect the historical memory and the lessons learned from it, if there is one European country which has dealt with the culturally and politically fascist dimensions of its past, it is Germany. Have other countries gone close? Italy or France? Or England? Do Italians learn or even vaguely know they invented concentration camps and killed hundreds of thousands in Lybia? How about Vichy? Or Scandinavan eugenics programmes? Or indeed that the UK and the US refused to increase their immigration quotas after 1933, when the persecuted were literally dying to get out of Germany? And what is the result? That, for example, over the last two years both France and Italy have been deporting the Roma, that racist parties and policies become ‘electable’ (witness the ‘hijab debates’). That, for example, when you try to raise these questions, people look at you blankly, as though you’re pointing out some sort of nit-picking historical detail of dubious truth or relevance. And so on. Paraphrasing Justin, what should horrify all of us, but rarely does, is that such horrors were perpetuated by human beings against other human beings. And that in different ways they still are. We should not allow our commitment to remember the past to cloud out knowledge of the present.
2. The German struggle of collective guilt has always interested me in light of other places’ histories of slavery, segregation, and aggression against native peoples.  I’ve also talked about this before not only with Germans, but Canadians (re. the First Nations), Australians (re. Aboriginals) and South Africans (re. Apartheid).  Whereas many (but certainly not all) Americans and others seem to have a sense of national responsibility for recognizing and correcting past injustices, there isn’t any guilt like that felt by so many Germans born or coming of age after the war.  Guilt implies actual wrong-doing, and so is different from consciousness of the past and responsibility for future, but not past, actions.  So guilt for the war and the holocaust, felt by those with no personal connection to them, seems to be a unique German complex.  I wonder how much of this stems from post-war education, the tensions of post-war history, or something deeper in the German mentality (if there is such a thing).
3. Your observation about guilt & wrong-doing is very interesting! I think guilt implies the recognition of wrong-doing, but it seems that the reverse is not always true! Perhaps it should be, but perhaps the key thing is where this guilt identifies the ’cause’ of the wrong-doing: is it in particular historical circumstances, or is it built into the nature of the ethnic/religious group in itself? The US and Australian cases seem to fall under the former (“sure, it was bad, and we’ll try to fix it, but it was the culture of the time / a few bad apples / etc.”) while the German case seems to fall under the latter (“There’s something about Germans: sure, they’re cuddly now…but flip a switch and it could turn nasty”).

   Understanding the past as a lesson/warning for the future necessarily requires the premise that there is a continuity between them. I would prefer to think of that continuity simply as a shared humanity (if human beings can get it wrong once, we can again), but a lot of the time the ‘lessons learned’ about Nazism in particular are bracketed as though they were relevant to Germans alone. And while the responsibility to learn lessons from the past is all the more acute today when policies which target ethnicities/religions are becoming so much more popular, this already difficult task is not helped by those in the ‘Holocaust Debate’ who argue there was something unique about Nazism (let alone those who manipulate the debate for political ends – hence the reference to Finklestein’s book). Making Nazism unique also makes it easier to accept the racist policies of today in other European societies: if we *did* think of the line between ‘cuddly’ democracy and ‘nasty Nazis’ as rather more blurred than we do, then we would be a lot more concerned about policies like fingerprinting or deporting the Roma, or allowing racial/religious profiling. The truly scary thing about Nazism is precisely that they were patently *not* somehow a different brand of human. I’m not suggesting that we’re a gnat’s whisker away from setting up death camps, but, as a famous journalist once said: Why is it that people recognize the seeds of fascism only when uniformed jackboots stomp up and down the main street?”

Being German

The River Elbe was the Northern boundary between East and West Germany. Source: Mathias Scholz/UFZ

I wrote about solitude and silence a few days ago; both are chronic conditions for me whenever I am faced with the German past and the Second World War. I am German. I grew up in the East under a regime that indoctrinated me and children like me that East Germans have always been good people and that it was the West Germans only who supported the Nazis – but war crimes and terror didn’t stop at the boundary-to-be between what later became the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic. All Germans are somehow in this, or that’s how it feels anyway.

My friend Karla, reflecting on growing up during the war, writes on her blog:

To be frank about it, sometimes when I read the unpublished documents about the expulsions and tortures that German women and children, as well as broken soldiers, had to endure after WWII was over, I experience myself screaming soundlessly. A similar suffocation overcomes me when I read about the fate of the three million Russian soldiers who were left to die by the four million German soldiers because, of course, there were no means to feed them all in a war that should not have been started.

Karla imagined Munch’s The Scream when she wrote ‘screaming soundlessly’. Why does it make me personally feel so helpless when I read this? Living in New Zealand a few years ago, I thought I could get away from it all. I thought I could simply ‘drop’ being German and become something else. Like Karla who wrote in one of her books that she tried to be the ‘all-American girl’ when she was a teenager; anything but to be German. I also have this attitude (though it’s gradually subsiding), and not only because of the Nazi past. Like I said above, growing up in the East means growing up with a load of socialist concepts and truths that later turned out to be, well, not true. This doesn’t mean you simply believe in something else, quickly. I was 11 when Germany was reunified and too old to develop a sense of combined (capitalist!) Germanness, I think. I had deep ideological objections, I must admit. The West was capitalist which I had learned was bad. Early indoctrination is difficult to overcome when you’re young and unreflective. Also, my Germany, the one that I grew up in and knew as ‘my Germany’, simply doesn’t exist any more. It took many years to develop a new sense of what the idea and entity of Germany now encompasses and means.

About a year ago I decided that it was time I started reading a bit more about how Germans experienced the Holocaust. This inner resolve has been triggered by recording my granny’s life history. Initially I was interested in her story so that I could find out about my family tree and tell my future children where we are coming from. See, the thing is that lots of families in central Europe don’t actually know their family trees, not if they had to evacuate during the War. Documents burnt in churches and council buildings, so the main source to find out about family trees is actual memory, be it oral or in book form. A wonderful example of the latter is Edith Hahn Beer’s The Nazi Officer’s Wife (Ich Ging Durchs Feuer und Brannte Nicht in German) which is actually set in my home town. My granny recommended it to me and I can recommend it to others; a fascinating book. More novels, biographies and autobiographies on the Holocaust can be found here.

When my granny talks about the War, it’s all one: descriptions of buildings or trees (my granny has always really liked trees) and details such as the colour of the dress she was wearing intermingle with the Russian tanks approaching, and there’s always a bit of humour in her stories. In hindsight, for instance, she laughs about how she dramatically flung herself onto the floor at her father’s feet refusing to board the train that was to bring her into safety. Whenever she reaches that point in the story, she begins to chuckle. I chuckle too by now because I know that it’s ok. Or she will talk about the soldiers that she corresponded with in letters; it was important for them to have someone to write letters to, she said. Over the years, she exchanged letters with three of them. None of them came back, I think.

My granny’s history is my way into the German past and the German guilt. The young woman she was is someone I can relate to. That’s how it becomes personal, and that’s how I can deal with the German past. I guess this could easily be a call for more oral history – because nobody can ever deal with ‘the Holocaust’ or ‘the Nazis’, I don’t think. This is partly why Bernhard Schlink’s ‘The Reader’ was such a success; personalising the Holocaust he removed the entire subject from the discourse on Germanness. In my opinion, it is necessary for Germans to take a step like this in order for them to be able to deal with the ugly past. Addressing the historical, political and social conditions that made the Holocaust possible is also important; scholarship there, however, is much more advanced already, however. Oral history and micro-projects are lagging behind in comparison. (Because they represent a step away from ‘the guilt’? Probably. Should we step away from it? Shouldn’t we? Hm.)

Having said all this – the Holocaust and the war are shaky ground. Neither ever comes up in conversations that I have. I try to read about both (Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust, for instance, is brilliant and on my desk) but I feel I don’t have a claim to saying very much about it. Well, I just did, but still: I am too young to make any significant claims, simple as that. Being German in itself doesn’t predispose me to any great insights on that topic, and as I am not a scholar looking into these things I must restrict myself to personal anecdotes and reflections. The last thing I would want to do is trivialise anything. The fear of accidentally achieving precisely that is probably the most significant reason why silence is the prevailing reaction when it comes to the Holocaust. Oral history, I think, can still break through this silence though.

The kindness of General Wade

Wade’s military working parties consisted of 1 captain, 2 subalterns, 2 sergeants, 2 corporals, 1 drummer and 100 men, and one of his most remarkable achievements was to persuade the government to make an extra payment to every soldier in road work. [...] With each working party there was a small body of ‘reserves’, usually messengers and letter-bearers. The number varied from a lance-sergeant and ten men to a corporal and four men. The general realised that these men would be at a disadvantage, because by Cumberland’s ruling they could get no extra pay, as they were not working on the road. All detachment commanders, therefore, were ordered to work a rota system whereby a different set of men were reserves every day. Sometimes the high command showed an amazing degree of humanity and understanding.

***

William Taylor (1976) The Military Roads in Scotland. Newton Abbott: David and Charles. pp. 32-36.

If we were Etruscan women…

(This is what happens when you watch documentaries during your lunch break: You find out about the most amazing stuff and you think ‘gee, this is so amazing I have to write about it on my blog!!’. Of course you’re not sure that it’s maybe only amazing to you because your work that the documentary allowed you a 40-minute break from is so boring.)

The Etruscan Empire was one of the cornerstones of Antiquity. Between 1200 and 550 BC Etruscans dominated what is today central Italy. They were exceedingly progressive from today’s point of view; several murals depicting erotic scenes, sometimes between two males or two females, are seen to point in that direction, as does the fact that each house had its own well in a central area which cut down the time needed to get water for washing etc. (and Etruscans washed before eating – very important).

Far from being the hedonistic, reckless nudists that Roman propaganda has often made Etruscans out to be, careful analysis of murals reveals the huge social significance of the family, and indeed of the bond between husband and wife in particular. Etruscan women were independent, owned property and were respected as men’s equals. This aspect of Etruscan culture was also covered up by the Romans; in Roman society, women were inferior to men. Socially, they were attached to the roles of housekeeper and mother, much as is the case in many parts of the Western capitalist world in the present day:

Roman women were in charge of raising children and keeping house. Since there was no birth control in Roman times, women were often pregnant. Men would leave the house in the morning for work till about noon, and then spend the afternoon relaxing at the baths or a public entertainment event. When a man returned home, he expected to find his house in order.

Women would have to wash clothes by hand on a weekly basis. Clothes were washed in a large tub with a type of soap know as lye. They would be laid on bushes or on the ground to be dried by the wind and the sun. Large blankets were taken to a local stream, while small items were washed in a bowl in the kitchen. Rich women would have slaves do all the work, or they would take the clothes to a wash store.

This is very ordinary stuff (so ordinary to the 21st century reader, in fact, that one instantly questions the quality of the source…but I’m not going to undermine my own argument here.) Now imagine Rome had not superceded Etruria and the Etruscans would have kept going strong for another thousand years or so; how different would our lives be today?

Working with counterfactuals like I am doing here only serves one purpose: to highlight the difference that a change in one tiny little factor in the chronological chain of historical events makes. Granted, the change in this case is a big one – Romans beleaguered Etruscan cities and eventually the Etruscan Empire crumbled.

Dog-head, Son of Adam

Saint Christopher, it might not be very well known, was widely depicted as a dog-head, i.e. a man with the head of a dog. Yes. As all dog-heads, Christopher, or Reprobus as he was then still called, also did not have the power of speech, nor of fully coherent thought. He could therefore not pray as effectively as others – but well enough to ask God for the power of speech. His prayer was granted, Reprobus could all of a sudden speak, and making the best use of his new-found powers he renounced the pagan practices he saw around him in the early Roman Empire. He confessed to be a Christian. We’re talking about the 3rd century here, and Reprobus died pretty quickly after ‘coming out’ as a Christian. (Which seems a shame for that gift of speech; he couldn’t use it for very long. Long enough though to become martyred and immortal in the Christian world.) Saint Christopher, as Reprobus is known today, is venerated in the Roman Catholic as well as Eastern Orthodox Church.

But it is true, Saint Christopher was a dog-head. What do we know about these interesting creatures? (Bear with me, it is worth it.) (But don’t expect a practical applicability in what follows. There is none. This is merely interesting.)

The 9^th century theologian Ratramnus was asked by one of his disciple monks who was preparing to travel to Britain: ‘What do I do when I encounter the dog-heads? Do I preach to them? Can I thereby save their souls? Or do I look at them as animals and therefore don’t preach to them?‘ Ratramnus who was a great expert on dog-heads replied: ‘Ask them first if they are descended from Adam.’ (Ignoring the fact here that dog-heads don’t have the ability of speech, but anyway…) He further reminded his disciple that dog-heads live in villages, wear clothes, and practice agriculture; that they cover their genitalia (sensitivity on these matters is a sure sign of humanness); and that they keep their own animals, and dogs no less. Ratramnus concluded that dog-heads are clearly descended from Adam and that their souls can therefore be saved. He consequently commanded his disciple to always preach to the dog-heads.

Who else, after reading this, also sees a dog-head farmer bowed over some sort of agricultural equipment in the field? I do and I haven’t been able to get this image out of my head – not that I want to – since I came across this. Dog-heads, according to medieval sources, lived all over Britain and were really common on the Continent as well. In fact, there are more sources from the Continent; Isidore of Seville and Pliny also wrote on dog-heads.

It isn’t sure what the significance of the canine features was intended to be, for medieval sources do not interpret it in the way that we would now. To the modern observer the topic of dog-heads can therefore be hardly anything more than amusing. It is surely an intriguing part of medieval mythology, a bit quaint, a bit wonderful…

You can find more on dog-headed saints here.