There are several things going on in this discussion -- both in the interview itself and in its analysis here from Ms. Stern -- which are worthy of remarking upon. These remarks encompass the general human condition with respect to politics, Germany's postwar culture, its modern self-conception, and its very identity.
Firstly, and most generally, it raises the question of what we expect our politicians to be. Are they mere civic functionaries, discharging a humble duty with a minimum of personality? Are they naked Machiavellians enriching themselves and their families as flies to the rotting body politic? Are they idealists and idealogues charged with transforming society along the ideological lines promoted by their campaigns in accordance with their voters (which, in a multi-party democracy such as Germany, will almost never reflect the will of the majority no matter which party "wins" the plurality of popular votes or ridings, and can therefore always be attacked as democratically illegitimate)? Are they aspiring philosopher-kings, taking in the broad sweep of the human condition and acting in a way ultimately beneficial to their constituents even if individual decisions remain inscrutible and opaque to the masses?
Often, the answer is "all of the above", which allows us to play games with candidates that they can almost never win. In my opinion, this interview is one such. The question is nothing more -- and nothing less -- than a simplistic litmus test to see whether a given politician is going to enforce the elite German conception that we are the most evil country, and people, to have ever lived. This conception is itself an example of Germans' general cultural narcisissm, ironically part of the selfsame impulse which led the despicable madmen of a century ago to launch their wars of annihilation and to engineer the Holocaust in the first place.
The Holocaust represents, as the late sociologist and philosopher Rolf Peter Sieferle noted in his posthumous work Finis Germania, the cornerstone of Germany's postwar civic religion. The book proved this point when one quote in particular, in a passage entitled "Aus Auschwitz lernen", was taken out of context and caused just such a media controversy in 2016.
The contextless line reads: "Oder ist es die schiere Zahl der Opfer, die ominösen sechs Millionen? Also etwas fürs Guiness-Buch der Rekorde? Aber Vorsicht, Rekorde sind dazu da, gebrochen zu werden!"
In the latest draft of my long-suffering translation of the whole work: "Or is it the sheer number of victims, the ominous six million? Something rather for the Guinness Book of World Records? But be careful, records are meant to be broken!"
In context, both of the direct passage itself and of the other essays in the section (not to mention the work as a whole), this is an ironic admonishment that failing to properly appreciate the Holocaust in its actual historical (and perhaps even pre-historical) context threatens to turn it into nothing but a rhetorical cudgel which may be used to batter German politicians and other public figures who fail to speak on the subject with anything but the approved religious platitudes.
John Lukacs, the American historian of Hungarian birth and Jewish matrilineage -- which was enough for him to desert his forced-labour detail in order to evade the Eichmann-Kommando when the Germans officially occupied Hungary in 1944 lest he himself be sent to Auschwitz -- wrote a biography and historiography of Hitler called "The Hitler of History" (or, in my translated copy, Hitler: Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung). The first chapter of this work grapples with the question of whether attempts to put Hitler (and therefore the crimes of his regime) into a "proper" historical context are borne of a necessary urge to "historicise" these events, or if they are necessarily attempts to relativise and "rehabilitate" the man and his actions.
Lukacs comes to no firm conclusions in this regard, but raises several interesting questions, including referencing an assertion from the German historian Martin Broszat, who in 1985 remarked that the "demonisation" of National Socialism (and thus of Hitler) must give way to a "historicisation", which Lukacs remarks is a "...desideratum as much as it is a declaration of a fact already apparent for some time" [caveat lector; my translation out of the German translation]. It is worth remarking upon that forty years have passed since Broszat published his "Plädoyer für eine Historierisierung des Nationalsozialismus", and that forty years had then passed since the defeat of National Socialism, and yet the German public conversation around this has grown ever-less nuanced rather than more so.
These are philosophical works, and philosophical men, handling the subject of the Holocaust and its concurrent historical events with due respect and care but also treating it as an event in history and within the scope of the human condition (since, well, it happened and we made it so). Yet they were not politicians, at most only interested in remarking upon or influencing the public conversation as analysts and observers rather than dynamic forces.
Any politician, especially a German politician, and most especially a German politician hoping to win votes for an allegedly nationalist-populist party, would be wise to avoid publicly engaging in musings and conversations of this sort. There is no winning, here; there is only the deep trivialisation of such an important subject by turning it into a "gotcha" designed to upset the balance of state-level elections in the modern day rather than to actually interrogate the legacy of our direct ancestors. Perhaps it would be better otherwise, but this has been the truth at least since the time of Socrates, and likely long before him.
Thus the official AfD response, a simple affirmation of the question, is the only politically-acceptable one...though it is also obvious that, had Mr. Siegmund given it, he would not have been believed any more than the AfD's affirmation shall be taken as their "true" opinion on the matter. It really is rather tiresome, this unwinnable political game, where we demand honesty and nuance and intelligence from our candidates but also "moral clarity" and the simple affirmation of what one is "supposed" to believe in order to be allowed access to the levers of power.
There is much more ground to cover (very much including the all-too-common elision of the AfD with Germany's "growing antisemitism", which is rather a distinct consequence of Germany inviting in millions of migrants from deeply antisemitic Muslim societies...which, in turn, the AfD is also somewhat-paradoxically accused of "instrumentalising" for political gain), but the hour grows ever-later and my insomnia wanes. I will reconsider these musings in a proper post later.
Thank you, Ms. Stern, for your thoughts and for the inspiration to continue the discussion.
Thank you, Ms. Stern, for your thoughts and for the inspiration to continue the discussion.
I second that comment, she's been an excellent addition to the German Review, that despite the fact she's a Democrat, just kidding :) - She does bring a different view and perspective
Jörg once asked why I was a (soft) AFD supporter and in thinking about it, the “far-right neo-Nazi” label feels like propaganda. In today’s Germany, people get police raids at 6 a.m., massive fines and all their devices confiscated just for “wrong” posts or memes. There are literally state-funded NGOs whose full-time job is to scour the internet for thought-crimes. Yet, it seems* that AfD politicians not getting hit with these Holocaust-trivialising charges everyone seems screams about. It's funny how that works.
I have a lot of thoughts about what he said but as the old saying goes "Discretion is the better part of valour." So I shall leave it there.
*it's possible that I may have missed this as I tend to get my news via the English feeds.
There are several things going on in this discussion -- both in the interview itself and in its analysis here from Ms. Stern -- which are worthy of remarking upon. These remarks encompass the general human condition with respect to politics, Germany's postwar culture, its modern self-conception, and its very identity.
Firstly, and most generally, it raises the question of what we expect our politicians to be. Are they mere civic functionaries, discharging a humble duty with a minimum of personality? Are they naked Machiavellians enriching themselves and their families as flies to the rotting body politic? Are they idealists and idealogues charged with transforming society along the ideological lines promoted by their campaigns in accordance with their voters (which, in a multi-party democracy such as Germany, will almost never reflect the will of the majority no matter which party "wins" the plurality of popular votes or ridings, and can therefore always be attacked as democratically illegitimate)? Are they aspiring philosopher-kings, taking in the broad sweep of the human condition and acting in a way ultimately beneficial to their constituents even if individual decisions remain inscrutible and opaque to the masses?
Often, the answer is "all of the above", which allows us to play games with candidates that they can almost never win. In my opinion, this interview is one such. The question is nothing more -- and nothing less -- than a simplistic litmus test to see whether a given politician is going to enforce the elite German conception that we are the most evil country, and people, to have ever lived. This conception is itself an example of Germans' general cultural narcisissm, ironically part of the selfsame impulse which led the despicable madmen of a century ago to launch their wars of annihilation and to engineer the Holocaust in the first place.
The Holocaust represents, as the late sociologist and philosopher Rolf Peter Sieferle noted in his posthumous work Finis Germania, the cornerstone of Germany's postwar civic religion. The book proved this point when one quote in particular, in a passage entitled "Aus Auschwitz lernen", was taken out of context and caused just such a media controversy in 2016.
The contextless line reads: "Oder ist es die schiere Zahl der Opfer, die ominösen sechs Millionen? Also etwas fürs Guiness-Buch der Rekorde? Aber Vorsicht, Rekorde sind dazu da, gebrochen zu werden!"
In the latest draft of my long-suffering translation of the whole work: "Or is it the sheer number of victims, the ominous six million? Something rather for the Guinness Book of World Records? But be careful, records are meant to be broken!"
In context, both of the direct passage itself and of the other essays in the section (not to mention the work as a whole), this is an ironic admonishment that failing to properly appreciate the Holocaust in its actual historical (and perhaps even pre-historical) context threatens to turn it into nothing but a rhetorical cudgel which may be used to batter German politicians and other public figures who fail to speak on the subject with anything but the approved religious platitudes.
John Lukacs, the American historian of Hungarian birth and Jewish matrilineage -- which was enough for him to desert his forced-labour detail in order to evade the Eichmann-Kommando when the Germans officially occupied Hungary in 1944 lest he himself be sent to Auschwitz -- wrote a biography and historiography of Hitler called "The Hitler of History" (or, in my translated copy, Hitler: Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung). The first chapter of this work grapples with the question of whether attempts to put Hitler (and therefore the crimes of his regime) into a "proper" historical context are borne of a necessary urge to "historicise" these events, or if they are necessarily attempts to relativise and "rehabilitate" the man and his actions.
Lukacs comes to no firm conclusions in this regard, but raises several interesting questions, including referencing an assertion from the German historian Martin Broszat, who in 1985 remarked that the "demonisation" of National Socialism (and thus of Hitler) must give way to a "historicisation", which Lukacs remarks is a "...desideratum as much as it is a declaration of a fact already apparent for some time" [caveat lector; my translation out of the German translation]. It is worth remarking upon that forty years have passed since Broszat published his "Plädoyer für eine Historierisierung des Nationalsozialismus", and that forty years had then passed since the defeat of National Socialism, and yet the German public conversation around this has grown ever-less nuanced rather than more so.
These are philosophical works, and philosophical men, handling the subject of the Holocaust and its concurrent historical events with due respect and care but also treating it as an event in history and within the scope of the human condition (since, well, it happened and we made it so). Yet they were not politicians, at most only interested in remarking upon or influencing the public conversation as analysts and observers rather than dynamic forces.
Any politician, especially a German politician, and most especially a German politician hoping to win votes for an allegedly nationalist-populist party, would be wise to avoid publicly engaging in musings and conversations of this sort. There is no winning, here; there is only the deep trivialisation of such an important subject by turning it into a "gotcha" designed to upset the balance of state-level elections in the modern day rather than to actually interrogate the legacy of our direct ancestors. Perhaps it would be better otherwise, but this has been the truth at least since the time of Socrates, and likely long before him.
Thus the official AfD response, a simple affirmation of the question, is the only politically-acceptable one...though it is also obvious that, had Mr. Siegmund given it, he would not have been believed any more than the AfD's affirmation shall be taken as their "true" opinion on the matter. It really is rather tiresome, this unwinnable political game, where we demand honesty and nuance and intelligence from our candidates but also "moral clarity" and the simple affirmation of what one is "supposed" to believe in order to be allowed access to the levers of power.
There is much more ground to cover (very much including the all-too-common elision of the AfD with Germany's "growing antisemitism", which is rather a distinct consequence of Germany inviting in millions of migrants from deeply antisemitic Muslim societies...which, in turn, the AfD is also somewhat-paradoxically accused of "instrumentalising" for political gain), but the hour grows ever-later and my insomnia wanes. I will reconsider these musings in a proper post later.
Thank you, Ms. Stern, for your thoughts and for the inspiration to continue the discussion.
Thank you, Ms. Stern, for your thoughts and for the inspiration to continue the discussion.
I second that comment, she's been an excellent addition to the German Review, that despite the fact she's a Democrat, just kidding :) - She does bring a different view and perspective
Jörg once asked why I was a (soft) AFD supporter and in thinking about it, the “far-right neo-Nazi” label feels like propaganda. In today’s Germany, people get police raids at 6 a.m., massive fines and all their devices confiscated just for “wrong” posts or memes. There are literally state-funded NGOs whose full-time job is to scour the internet for thought-crimes. Yet, it seems* that AfD politicians not getting hit with these Holocaust-trivialising charges everyone seems screams about. It's funny how that works.
I have a lot of thoughts about what he said but as the old saying goes "Discretion is the better part of valour." So I shall leave it there.
*it's possible that I may have missed this as I tend to get my news via the English feeds.