Dialog International

Review: Arno Surminski's Jokehnen

2008 has been the year of East Prussia for me.  I started the year reading Walter Kempowski's last novel Alles umsonst, a fictional account of the Flucht u. Vertreibung ("Flight and Expulsion") of Germans living in East Prussia at the end of WWII. Then in November I read the autobiographical book Weeds Like Us by Gunter Nitsch about his experiences as a young boy in East Prussia and how he and his family made their way to West Germany.  Gunter is a fan of Arno Surminski and sent me his 1974 autobiographical novel Jokehnen: Oder Wie lange fährt man von Ostpreußen nach Deutschland? . 

If you want to read a gripping work of historical fiction with a tightly constructed narrative drama, then read Kempowski's novel.  But if you want to get a true feeling for the lost territory of East Prussia, its rural rhythms, its dialect, its village life, then by all means pick up Jokehnen. For Surminksi takes his time in writing a loving description of the land of his boyhood. We meet the people of his village, get to know their eccentricities, the small dramas of rural life.  We smell the rich soil, feel the rain and snow, even become acquainted with animals. 

Hermann Steputat, the young protagonist of Jokehnen, was born on the day Paul Hindenburg - the hero of East Prussia - dies. The Nazis have seized power, but Berlin is far away from Jokehnen, a rural -almost feudal - village of 200 souls and one telephone.  Not even electricity has found its way to this remote outpost of the Thousand Year Reich. Life continues on pretty much as it has for hundreds of years for more than two-thirds of the novel - until history suddenly and  violently intrudes and sweeps everything away forever.

That's not to say that there aren't signs all along of what was to come.  Patches of brown begin to appear in the lush green of the woods and fields of Jokehnen, and Surminski is clear-eyed in his assessment of the basic blindness of the people he holds in great affection.  The villagers are for the most part indifferent to what is happening in Berlin, but as war approaches changes are inevitable. The lone Jew in town who has been part of the community forever suddenly is taken away (along with his Aryan wife).  The mayor considers writing a letter in support of his Jewish friend, but then thinks that the "authorities" must know what they're doing.  Soldiers make their way through Jokehnen to the Eastern Front and Adolfsche, the Fuehrer, builds his Wolf's Lair not far away in Rastenburg. Russian prisoners appear in Jokehnen to help with the harvest.  German military successes impress the local population, so far as news of the war even makes it into the isolated village.  As things begin the fall apart, the villagers wait in vain for instructions from the "authorities"; their love of the land turns out to be their undoing in the end. 

What prevents Jokehnen from falling into the sentimentality of Heimatliteratur is Surminki's dry humor throughout and his empathy for all, even for the Russians who eventually force the villagers from their beloved Jokehnen. The book has been translated into French and was made into a television movie in 1987.  It deserves to be translated into English.

Film Review: : Valkyrie

There is not too much I have to say about the new Tom Cruise movie except that it is not the complete disaster that had been anticipated. Most Americans know little about the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler, so the movie is not a bad introduction to the conspiracy. Director Bryan Singer elected to make this a suspense thriller, and in that context Tom Cruise was probably not miscast. Actually Cruise is more restrained here than usual, although he is clearly upstaged by a team of first-rate British actors, especially Bill Nighy as General Friedrich Olbricht and Tom Wilkinson as General Fromm. Thanks to their performances, the film does manage to build and sustain the suspense, even though we all know the outcome.

Claus von Stauffenberg is a fascinating and contradictory historical figure, and a much better film could have been made about him , one that would have traced his disillusionment with Hitler and his belief, from a young age, in a "sacred Germany".  But that would have required a different screenplay and a better actor than Tom Cruise.

God and Cincinnati vs. Deutsche Bank

'Tis the season for giving.  And Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann has promised a 25% pretax return to the bank's shareholders.  How, in the is year of failed banks and unprecedented write-downs, does the bank hope to achieve these extraordinary profits?  In the US the bank has a creative business model: foreclose on tens of thousands of residential properties, evict the homeowners, and let the properties deteriorate through willful neglect.  The City of Cincinnati has finally had enough:

Cincinnati wants Deutsche Bank [...]to pay for what officials say is neglect of foreclosed-upon properties that's worsening blight in city neighborhoods.

Representatives appear often in local courts to prosecute foreclosure actions against property owners, the city says in a lawsuit, but don't show up when Cincinnati asks them to maintain abandoned properties titled to them. The city wants repayment for boarding up, demolishing and the other work done to Deutsche Bank properties. The suit didn't specify an amount.

"This lawsuit is one attempt to end the abuse of our local neighborhoods and the loss of value associated with the foreclosure crisis," according to a statement released by the city Tuesday.

Deutsche Bank, in an Enquirer analysis published last year, had bought the most foreclosed properties in Hamilton County in 2007 - 265. The German banking company didn't own even one parcel in the county three years before.

Now the practices of Herr Ackermann are earning the wrath of God - or at least God's representatives on earth.  The head of Germany's Protestant Church, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, had harsh criticism of Ackermann and his bank in a Christmas Eve interview:

Speaking to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, Bishop Huber argued that bankers had a duty to look beyond the short term and to ensure stability: "Never again should a Deutsche Bank chief executive set a profit goal of 25 per cent." Such goals drove up profit expectations to unsustainable levels and amounted to "a form of idolatry", he said. "In the current circumstances, money has become a god."

Huber went on to say in his interview that the entire derivatives-driven financial bubble created by the banks was nothing more than "a dance around the Golden Calf". In the Bible, the Israelites constructed a golden calf as an idol from gold jewelry. The next day Moses, upon learning of this, had 3000 killed as punishment.  Fortunately for Herr Ackermann, the day after Huber's interview was Christmas Day - a bank holiday - and there was not a banker to be seen in the City of Frankfurt.

Eugen Drewermann on Christian Just War Theory

Beginning last spring Nordwest Radio in Bremen started a series of programs with the theologian and psychologist Eugen Drewermann.  The first program was a call-in show on the topic of War and Peace and it is well-worth downloading and listening to (it is a two-hour program). Drewermann is a provocative thinker and mesmerizing speaker; he is a thorn in the side of the Catholic Church. Eugen Drewermann was a Roman Catholic priest whose license to preach was revoked by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1992.

In the program, Drewermann discusses his first break with the Church over the issued of conscientious objection to war.  In the 1950s the Catholic Church in Germany prohibited non-participation in a "just war" scenario. This got the young Drewermann interested in the pyschological origin of war and the role of religion in promoting war.  He also wanted to find answers for why the most destructive wars of modern history - and the development of weapons of mass destruction - originated in ostensibly "Christian" nations.  The war-impulse is deeply embedded in the human psyche and once war happens religion is powerless to stop it.  So the church promotes and rationalizes war with actions and theories - such as "just war". War evolves out of the human "spiral of fear", shaped by the struggle for survival of early humans, fear of biological death. There is in human beings a tendency to seek "final solutions" : only the eradication of the "other" can eliminate fear. Christianity, Drewermann asserts, has the potential to act therapeutically in promoting a peaceful human attitude toward life. On the other hand, the sadomasochistic theologies of the cross only serve to fuel the fears that manifest themselves in war.  Drewermann has written extensively about the confluence of war and Christianity in his 1982 book Der Krieg und das Christentum (which I have put on my 2009 readling list). Unfortunately, very little of Drewermann's extensive work has been translated into English. 

In the radio program Drewermann has harsh criticism of the United States as the instigator of current wars.  He points out that a huge percentage of America's GDP is tied up with the development and perfection of weapons of mass destruction and training young men and women in the practice of killing other human beings. In general, the Darwinian, neo-liberal vision of globalized, unfettered market capitalism exacerbates the fears and insecurities that lead to new wars.

I look forward to listening to the other Drewermann programs in the series, which cover such topics as Evil, The Power of Money, Depression, Fears, and Death.

The Never-Ending Controversy: The Reichstag Fire 75 Years On

75 Years ago today a court in Leipzig found the Dutch bricklayer Mannus van der Lubbe guilty of arson and treason in setting fire to the Reichstag in Berlin.  The fire and its aftermath are widely viewed as the beginning of the Nazi reign of terror, and the trial itself a perversion of justice. Alexander Behar has an excellent piece in Telepolis - Justizfarce mit Folgen (Judicial Farce with Consequences) - that looks into Goering's show trial of December 1933 and how it impacted what came after:

"In den Augen von Dr. Andreas Roth, Professor für Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte und Bürgerliches Recht an der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, war der Reichstagsbrandprozess hingegen „eine politische Inszenierung der Nationalsozialisten“, der neben anderen Ereignissen „zur sogenannten Machtergreifung erheblich beigetragen hat“. Darüber hinaus sei „der Prozess ein Beispiel dafür, dass sich die Richter der ordentlichen Gerichtsbarkeit nicht, wie mitunter behauptet, neutral verhielten, sondern sich schon sehr früh für die Ideologie der neuen Machthaber instrumentalisieren ließen.“"(In the eyes of Dr. Andreas Roth, Professor of German Legal History and Civil Justice at the University of Mainz, the Reichstag fire trial was rather "political theater for National Socialists" which, along with other events, "was a significant contribution to the Nazi seizure of power". Furthermore, the trial serves as an example not, as has been argued, of judicial neutrality, but rather that the justices became instruments of the new strongmen in Germany,")

Whether van der Lubbe was guilty or innocent of the crime, whether he acted alone or with other conspirators, or whether, as many historians now believe, the arson was committed by the Nazis themselves, is still fiercely debated.  Just this year, van der Lubbe was officially pardoned posthumously by the German government.  Still, as Wilfried Kugel points out in a good article in Junge Welt, there have been numerous campaigns since 1945 in  Germany - mostly by right-wing journalists and historians - to "prove" that van der Lubbe was guilty and acted alone. 

An interesting American footnote to the Reichstag fire trial: the daughter of the American ambassador to Germany, Martha Dodd, was a spectator in the courtroom. While most foreign observers were not allowed in, Dodd had a ringside seat to the proceedings since, at the time, she was sleeping with Rudolf Diels, the head of the Gestapo.  She wrote about the trial in passing in her 1938 book Through Embassy Eyes. Later, however, she worked on a screenplay for movie about her experiences (Now It Can Be Told) with Ring Lardner, Jr. where the trial is the climactic scene.  Unfortunately, the movie was never made (although Otto Preminger was under contract to direct) so Americans were deprived of an on-screen courtroom spectacle.  I was able to get a copy of the screenplay at the National Archives in Washington DC.  Diels, in his self-serving autobiography Lucifer Antes Portas (1950), equivocates concerning who or what started the fire at the Reichstag, but he would have been in on the plot in any case.

Germany to Accept Guantanamo Detainees

In a goodwill gesture to the incoming Obama administration, the German government is considering taking in a number of the detainees held at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba:

Germany is considering taking some detainees and will have “intensive discussions” about what to do with prisoners considered innocent who cannot return to their home countries, German government spokesman Thomas Steg said today.

The announcement by Germany, coming two weeks after Portugal said it “will be available” to take some Guantanamo detainees, may make it easier for Obama to fulfill his campaign pledge to shut the prison, which has been the object of international condemnation and allegations of prisoner abuse.

“There will be prisoners who will neither want to remain in the U.S. nor will be able to return home,” Steg told reporters in Berlin. He said the considerations were humanitarian, as a way to ease the closure of the six-year-old prison should the issue of repatriation become a legal barrier.

Portugal’s Dec. 10 offer came in a letter from Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado that urged members of the European Union to help resettle Guantanamo detainees who cannot be returned to their homelands.

This move, if approved, would be a good gesture by Germany and could signal a new beginning for transatlantic relations. Guantanamo is an abomination and a symbol forthe lawlessness of the Bush era. President-elect Obama has vowed to shut the facility as one of his first actions as president, so it is imperative that he follow through on this. This support by Germany will help him to close one of the darkest chapters of recent American history.  But the move can also be seen as an atonement for Germany's complicity in the prisoner abuse at the camp.  From 2002 until 2006 the Turkish-German Murat Kurnaz was held in Guantanamo. Early on, US intelligence officials realized Kurnaz's innocence, but the German authorities refused his repatriation. In fact, as Kurnaz points out in his book, Five Years of My Life, the German government sent over special interrogaters who beat him, instead of securiing his release.

Leading the initiative to take in the Guantanamo detaines is German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.  There is a certain logic to this, since it was Steinmeier who blocked Kurtnaz's early release back to his German homeland.  As Bernhard Docke, the German attorney for Murat Kurnaz,  told Der Spiegel today:"Aber der Himmel freut sich über einen reuigen Sünder mehr als über 99 Gerechte." (Heavan rejoices more for one repentent sinner than for 99 righteous ones.)

Crisis at Germany's Private Universities

The World Economic Forum recently published its Global Competitiveness Index (pdf) and it makes for interesting reading. Once again, the United States ranks first among all countries in terms of global competitiveness, notwithstanding its current economic crisis.  One of the reasons cited by the researchers is America's excellent university system which collaborates strongly with business on R&D.  Germany slipped to 7th place overall for competitiveness despite having the top-ranked transportation and telephony infrastructure.  One of the issues cited is Germany's mediocre institutions of higher education. Germany's elite students often find better study opportunities at top-rated colleges and universities in the US. 

Private universities in Germany were established as an alternative to Germany's overcrowded and moribund public institutions.  In recent years, a number of private colleges and university were created, sometimes in partnership with American schools.  Students at these private universities pay tuition, often as much as 10,000 Euros per semester, and in return get much more individualized instruction, more interaction with faculty, smaller class size, etc. - all of the advantages of private liberal arts education in the US. The students receive their degrees at much younger age: typically at 23 rather than the average of 27 at the state universities. The private universities are funded by a combination of tuition, donations by wealthy benefactors and state subsidies.

Now the economic crisis has put the state subsidies for private colleges and universities in jeopardy. Germany's oldest private uiversity - Universität Witten/Herdecke - is facing a financial crisis and may be forced to shut its doors for good:

NRW-Wissenschaftsminister Andreas Pinkwart (FDP) hatte am Mittwoch mitgeteilt, dass er Deutschlands ältester und größter Privatuniversität für das Jahr 2008 zugesagte Landesmittel in Höhe von 4,5 Millionen Euro nicht auszahlen werde. Als Begründung gab er an, sie habe keine ordnungsgemäße Geschäftsführung nachweisen und weder für 2009 noch für die darauffolgenden beiden Jahre einen verlässlichen Wirtschaftsplan vorlegen können. Außerdem fordert das Land für das Jahr 2007 bereits ausgezahlte Gelder in Höhe von 3 Millionen Euro zurück. (The science minister for North-Rhine Westphailia, Andreas Pinwart, announced on Wednesday that he would not pay out the approved 2008 state subsidy in the amount of 4.5 million Euros to Germany's oldest and largest private university. The reason cited was that the instutition did not present a suitable management structure and could not produce a credible business plan for 2009 and subsequent years.  Furthermore he demanded that the university return the 3 million Euros that were already paid out in 2007.)

Not too many observers in Germany are shedding tears for the collapse of the University Witten/Herdecke.  It was seen as a school for the wealthy and the elite - let them go to Harvard or to Stanford.  An exception is Thomas Schmid in Die Welt, who sees the demise of the university as a "crying shame" (Jammerschade):

Ein Grund zur Freude ist das nicht. In anderen Ländern ist zu besichtigen, dass private Universitäten ein gutes Gegengewicht zu staatlichen Universitäten sein können. Und gerade der Welt der Ausbildung täte es gut, wenn tausend Blumen blühten und auch ein paar nicht staatliche darunter wären. Der hohe Mut, der die Gründung von Witten/Herdecke getragen hat, gehört zum besten Erbe der alten Bundesrepublik in ihren späten Jahren, in denen sie ein bisschen experimentierfreudig zu werden schien. Es wäre jammerschade, wenn sie unterginge. (There is no cause for celebration here. We see in other countries that private universities can provide a good balance to state institutions.  And especially in education it would be good if a thousand flowers could blossom and a few non-state schools were around.  The audacity and courage that led to the creation of Witten/Herdecke are part of the legacy of the old Federal Republic in its later years when it dared to experiment with new ideas.  It would be a crying shame if it were to collapse.)

Mathias Siems has a good list of requirements for successful private universities on his blog.  It not clear to me how many of these criteria are missing at the Universität Witten-Herdecke:

(1) attractive building; (2) attractive location; (3) commitment to high quality research (pure teaching institutions less respected); (4) commitment to high quality teaching (e.g. small classes, teaching evaluation); (5) flexible but competitive student admissions (vs. bureaucratic procedures at public universities); (6) appealing website (not just “ok” – there are millions of other websites); (7) international profile; (8) innovative curriculum (challenges traditional universities); (9) reasonable tuition fees (demand taken into account); (10) stable ownership of university.

Obama and the European Left

My piece on Lessons for Europe's Social Democrats from the Obama Campaign is up at the Atlantic Review blog.

"Stupid American Phenomenon" and the Decline of the US Press

Heribert Seifert und Stephan Russ-Mohl have a piece in the NZZ-Online about the vanishing foreign correspondents working for American newspapers (and television networks).  The paradox is that everyone acknowledges that we live in a globalized world, where a terrorist attack in Mumbai impacts events in the US, yet the big media organizations devote fewer and fewer resources to covering international stories. The results of this cutback in foreign coverage is growing ignorance of the world, which could lead to more disastrous policy decisions like the Iraq invasion:

Philip Seib, ein Experte für internationale Berichterstattung an der University of Southern California, spricht vom «stupid American phenomenon». Die Medien hätten versagt. Die Amerikaner seien nicht mehr hinreichend informiert, um Entscheidungen zu treffen. Je stärker die Auslandberichterstattung abgebaut werde, desto weniger weise fielen die politischen Entscheidungen in Washington aus – eine kühne Hypothese, an der bei näherer Betrachtung aber doch eine ganze Menge dran ist: Ranghohe Politiker erfahren bekanntlich vieles aus der Zeitung – und nicht nur von ihren Geheimdiensten und diplomatischen Vertretungen. Wenn in ihren Zeitungen nichts in Erfahrung zu bringen ist, entscheiden sie womöglich nicht nur schlecht informiert, es fehlt ihnen auch jenes kritische Korrektiv sachkompetenter und meinungsmächtiger Kommentatoren, das in der «guten alten Zeit» öffentliche Meinung genannt wurde, obschon es sich eigentlich um die veröffentlichte Meinung einiger weniger handelte. Zugegeben, das war Kommunikation unter gebildeten Eliten, die sich aber durch das Blabla «demokratisierter» Diskurse im Internet nicht ersetzen lässt. (Philip Seib, and expert on international reporting at USC speaks of the "stupid American phenomenon".  The media have failed. Americans are no longer sufficiently informed for making decisions. As more foreign coverage is cut back, the political decisions made in Washington have been unwise - a bold hypothesis that has a great deal of merit: it is a fact that senior politicians learn a great deal from newspapers - and not just from intelligence sources or diplomatic outposts.  If there is nothing to learn from reading the newspapers, they are apt to make less informed decisions. They are no longer exposed to the critical corrective of knowledgeable commentators with strong opinions on topics, who, in the "good old days" formed the public opinion, even if it was only the published opinion of a few observers. Admittedly, it was communication by an educated few, but preferable to babel of the "democratic discourse" that we get on the Internet.)

Today is seems almost quaint to read the dispatches by Dorothy Thompson at the Berlin bureau of The New York Post, reporting on the rise of National Socialism to American readers. Or the work of William Shirer, who reported from Berlin for the Chicago Tribune on the start of World War II. The Chicago Tribune shut down its foreign news bureaus some time ago. I had a feeling of nostalgia recently when I read Martha Dodd's book Through Embassy Eyes about her time as the US ambassador's daugher in Berlin from 1934- 1938.  The book contains vivid descriptions of the large contingent of  US newspaper correspondents living in Berlin.

Jill Carroll, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor (Carroll was kidnapped in Iraq) wrote a study for Harvard's Kennedy School on Foreign News Coverage by the US Media (pdf) where she documents the decline in foreign bureaus.  Carroll estimates that the number of US foreign correspondents fell from 188 in 2002 to just 140 in 2008.  In 2007 the prestige newspaper The Boston Globe, which over the years won many awards for its international news coverage, shut down its offices in Berlin, Bogota and Jerusalem and recalled all of its foreign correspondents. But Carroll also discovered that the decline in foreign news coverage does not reflect a lack of interest by the public in international stories.  If anything, the demand for international news is greater than ever, but shutting down foreign bureaus is purely a financial decision by the conglomerates and private equity groups that now own most of the major US newspapers:

The declines in coverage and foreign bureaus don’t seem to be because editors or reporters don’t see the value of foreign coverage, but is rather a reflection of the priorities of the financial decision makers at media companies. Those decision makers don’t appear to factor in the non-monetary value great foreign coverage brings a paper when considering the cost of running a foreign bureau.

The private equity groups care nothing about the public mission of the newspapers: to them, it is just an asset that hopefully will throw off enough cash to cover debt service.  A good example is the Chicago Tribune - the paper of the great William Shirer.  The Tribune's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on December 5.  It's owner lists $13 billion in debt.  Thus a great newspaper has been destroyed by greed.

Battle of the Scoundrels: Deutsche Bank Meets Its Match

As Christmas approaches, Deutsche Bank has stepped up its foreclosure activities across the US.  In California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan - where ever Americans are being forced out of their homes - Deutsche Bank is making its presence felt.  According to the New York State attorney general, Deutsche Bank is one of the top ten banks responsible for foreclosures in New York City. The city of Springfield, Massachusetts has been devastated by a wave of foreclosures and local residents are shocked that international banks with no connection to the community hold title to the abandoned properties:

Sheila McElwaine knows all too well what absentee landlords and abandoned properties can do to a neighborhood.

Some of the houses have been foreclosed on; others have simply been abandoned by their owners, who've stopped paying taxes or maintaining the properties. Some shabby houses are still occupied, either by legal tenants or squatters. Others are vacant, with boarded-up doors and windows that don't necessarily dissuade drug dealers or thieves looking to strip the old houses of copper piping and other fixtures they can sell.

These days, the mortgage holders are likely to be national or international banks with little if any connection to the city. "What the hell is Deutsche Bank doing owning some dump on White Street?" McElwaine asked. "That's mind-boggling. "

In central Michigan, Vidas Brown, an African-American woman with severe medical disabilities, was forced from her home, even though her lawyer showed she was the victim of fraudulent lending practices. Her eviction sparked protests against Deutsche Bank:

National emails were also sent, and people responded from cities as far away as New York and Baltimore. Brown’s supporters flooded the Deutsche Bank headquarters on Wall Street with calls demanding they stop the illegal foreclosure and eviction.

Throughout this unprecedented crisis, Deutsche Bank has maintained that it is not to blame for the untold misery it has inflicted on American homeowners.  In fact, the bank sees itself as a victim of forces beyond its control and is not even responsible for the upkeep of the properties it has taken over:

“Deutsche Bank has consistently failed to take responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep,” said the city’s complaint. “In fact, Deutsche Bank has denied ownership of its own properties.”

Attorneys for Deutsche Bank did not return calls, but in court filings, the company claimed any damages suffered by the neighborhood were caused by “superseding, intervening forces” for which it is “neither liable nor responsible.”

But now a big customer of Deutsche Bank - Donald Trump -  has turned the tables on the lender, claiming that"superseding, intervening forces" prevent him from paying back a $40 million loan. 

The project is the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, which is to be the second-tallest building in that city (after the Sears Tower). By Mr. Trump’s account, sales were going great until “the real estate market in Chicago suffered a severe downturn” and the bankers made it worse by “creating the current financial crisis.”

Those assertions are made in a fascinating lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump, the real estate developer, television personality and best-selling author, in an effort to avoid paying $40 million that he personally guaranteed on a construction loan that Deutsche Bank says is due and payable.

Rather than have to pay the $40 million, Mr. Trump thinks the bank should pay him $3 billion for undermining the project and damaging his reputation.

He points to a “force majeure” clause in the lending agreement that allows the borrower to delay completion of the building if construction is hampered by such things as riots, floods or strikes. That clause has a catch-all section covering “any other event or circumstance not within the reasonable control of the borrower,” and Mr. Trump figures that lets him out, even though construction is continuing.

“Would you consider the biggest depression we have had in this country since 1929 to be such an event? I would,” he said in an interview. “A depression is not within the control of the borrower.”