I Think, Therefore I Am (German)
In a day and age when professional alarmists fret about the dumbing down of humankind - because all medieval peasants were avid readers of the Literary Review - it is reassuring to know that thinking is positively thriving in at least one country. Germany is rather fond of pondering, dissecting, mulling, musing, ruminating and other mental gymnastics. Germany has been the main exporter of dry philosophy since time immemorial, before the French started smoking and hanging out in cafés. Often it is sublime and other times it is tad too dense. Martin Heidegger’s magnus opus Being and Time was according to Roger Scrutton “formidably difficult - unless it is utter nonsense, in which case it is laughably easy. I am not sure how to judge it, and have read no commentator who even begins to make sense of it”. This incidentally is often how I feel when I peruse the politics section of Süddeutsche Zeitung.
George Bernard Shaw claimed that “an Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable” . A German, on the other hand, feels uncomfortable when he thinks he is being moral. Can he ascertain this morality? How do you define morality? And what social forces cause him to question his morals in the first place? Which role does the concept of moral play in today’s society? At this point, and to assuage his (or her!) guilt, a German feels compelled to write a 5,000 word editorial in the Tagesspiegel consisting of 10 line sentences containing 20 subclauses interspersed with 30 brackets and asides written exclusively in the passive mode, so they can bring out their entire collection of “geworden gewesen wurden haben” verbs they have been keeping for those special occasions. Whatever the conclusion (spoiler: it might be America’s fault), rest assured that readers will be reminded of their victimhood. In an Advanced Capitalist Society we are ALL victims. Blame it on the Advanced Capitalist Society. Whatever an Advanced Capitalist Society is (clue, a German philosopher* is its main analyst). But if it weren’t for an ACS (I’m not German, and got tired of typing) there wouldn’t be editorials, debates, opinion of the day. There wouldn’t be any Tatort!
With this in mind I recently came across a piece in The Economist on Muslim immigrants learning about Germany’s Nazi past. Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste), a peace organization founded to confront the legacy of Nazism, is running a series of seminars and tutorials about the third Reich targeted at immigrant women who want to know more about this episode in history. This has provoked controversy and much soul searching in Germany and its brooding inhabitants and led to yet another wave of editorials. I don’t know about you, but at this point I’m expecting editorials whenever Facebook changes its layout. Anyway, on the one hand there’s scepticism in certain quarters about the genuine interest of immigrants in the Holocaust. The course is partly funded by the interior ministry who is eager to prevent anti-Semitism and discourage Islamist extremism, as well as reach out to the country’s large Muslim community. There are, of course, many Germans who welcome interest in Hitler’s regime on the part of guest workers and encourage them to contribute with their thoughts on the subject. The whole kerfuffle is Germany in a nutshell:
The unspoken assumption is that there is a middle ground between German remorse and indifference. As enlightened Germans, the seminar-givers see the Holocaust as a unique crime committed mainly against the Jews. Yet they must make room for the views of women whose backgrounds have little to do with the persecution of Jews and who may have suffered horrors of their own. Taking their experiences seriously matters as much as instructing them. There is a risk of “relativising” the Holocaust, says Astrid Messerschmidt of the University of Education in Karlsruhe. Yet the German version of history “cannot be imposed from above”.
Most fraught, says Mrs Weduwen [who organises the seminars] , are discussions of the Middle East. The women learn that both sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict have grievances. The message can receive a hostile reception when Israeli commandos storm ships trying to break the Gaza blockade. Mrs Boumekik is involved in educating Arab families who blame Jews for the conflict. That is like assuming Muslims are terrorists, she says. With hostility to Muslims mounting in Germany, some women draw parallels with Nazi racism.
To a German pundit, this news item is a dream come true. Sod Advanced Capitalist Societies! It contains National Socialism + Collective Guilt + Immigrants + Women in Headscarfs + Israeli-Palestinian Conflict = Editorial Gold! Throw in a healthy dose of nuclear energy, a sprinkle of homeopathy with a side of Hartz IV, and I guarantee you that Germans will be thinking for a very very long time. Anyway, I don’t know what these poor women have to do to integrate into German society. They’re already willingly taking part in a 60-hour tutorial about the Nazis (and knowing Germans I suspect this is one session). Maybe they could engage in a 7 hour debate on what it means to be German, and whoever refrains from rolling their eyes and beating other participants over the head repeatedly with an unabridged copy of Being and Time gets a German passport.
* I actually happen to like Habermas
