Dialog International

Barack Obama unter der Lupe

  Hinweis für deutsche Leser(innen) dieses Blogs, die sich für den US-Wahlkampf interessieren: der links-liberale Blogger Dr. Dean unternimmt jetzt - auf Anregung vom Spiegelfechter - eine ausführliche Analyse der politischen Positionen von Barack Obama. Der erste Beitrag befasst sich mit "vier Mängeln" des Kandidaten, und zwar:

1. Seine Zustimmung zur Verlängerung des Patriot Act im März 2006;
2. Seine (angebliche) nachträgliche Billigung des Irakeinmarsches;
3. Sein (blindes?) Vertrauen auf Marktprozesse
4. Seine Zustimmung zu Cheneys Energiegesetz – Haltung zu Lobbyismus

Ich finde die kritische Perspektive in diesem ersten Beitrag hart aber fair.  Dr Dean:" Und doch, trotz mancher Mängel, ist er der Kandidat, welcher in meinen Augen am Ehesten für Fortschritt und für Wandel steht." Da kann ich ihm nur zustimmen!

Ernst Nolte and the Historikerstreit

More than 20 years have elapsed since the German historian Ernst Nolte ignited the Historikerstreit (Historians Dispute) in Germany.  The dispute was pretty much settled - at the expense of Professor Nolte. But now the right-wing extremist weekly Junge Freiheit - the repository of contemporary völkisch thought - wants to rekindle it with an article celebrating Professor Nolte's 85th birthday. For the editors of Junge Freiheit, Professor Nolte is not simply a historian, rather he is a prophet who was schamefully crucified by the left-oriented media and (Jewish?) Germany-bashers who refused to acknowledge the truth about Germany and German history:

Die Stunde der Propheten kommt eines Tages – und mit ihr Anerkennung, vielleicht sogar Dank. Von dem Geschichtsdenker Ernst Nolte und seinen kühnen Vorstößen ins Reich der historischen Genese wird noch gesprochen werden, wenn sich an die Namen seiner heute triumphierenden Gegner längst niemand mehr erinnert. (the hour of the prophets will come to pass some day  - and along with it recognition, perhaps even thanks.  The great historical thinker Ernst Nolte and his bold venture in the realm of historial orgins will be remembered long after his detractors - triumphant today - are long forgotten).

To understand exactly what Junge Freiheit is celebrating, one need only go back to the article that Nolte had published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1986 that started the whole controversy.  Fortunately, the article - Die Vergangenheit, die nie vergehen will (The past which will not end ) - has been preserved in an online archive ( Note to English readers, an English version of this as well as many other important documents of the Historikerstreit can be found in Forever in the Shadows of Hitler?).

Now there is much to admire about Professor Nolte as a historian.  As a student I studied his classic work Three Faces of Fascism , and surely he is correct in insisting that historical analysis of the Third Reich should be subject to the same academic rigor as any other historical epoch.  But in his FAZ article and elsewhere he goes way off track by interpreting the Nazi concentration camps as a logical response to Stalin's Gulags. And where Nolte lost me (as well as most historians) completely is when he presented a letter written by Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Jewish Agency in Palestine on September 3, 1939 to the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain pledging the Jewish Agency's full and unconditional support to the British war effort. Nolte has called this "a Jewish declaration of war" against Germany; the Holocaust was Hitler's logical  - if overly extreme - reaction to this threat. Neither Nolte nor any other historian has produced evidence that Hitler was even aware of Weizmann's letter.

Of course, the deeper question arising out of the Historikerstreit is: what was Professor Nolte's motivation in relativizing the crimes of the Third Reich? And today we ask: what is Junge Freiheit's motivation in elevating Ernst Nolte to a prophet of his nation?

Hillary Wins in New Hampshire

Hillary Clinton scored a narrow upset victory in the New Hampshire Primary yesterday. I spent the entire day in New Hampshire going door-to-door as part of the Obama Campaign get-out-the-vote effort, so obviously I am disappointed about the Clinton win.  I have not read the post-election analysis nor scanned the German press to see how this is playing out in Europe. I will note that ALL the pundits and pollsters got this one very wrong. 

Here are some personal thoughts based on what I saw and heard in New Hampshire yesterday and over the past weeks:

• Many women I spoke with were undecided between Clinton or Obama.  I think they resented the media bashing that Hillary Clinton was subjected to for appearing "emotional" at a campaign event on Monday.  So there was a gender-driven sympathy vote for Hillary.
• Healthcare is a huge concern - even greater than the Iraq War for the majority of voters I spoke with. There was a feeling that Hillary had more experience and better plan for getting to universal healthcare for Americans.  Also, the "527"special interest ads that attacked Senator Obama relentlessly over the past weeks for his healthcare proposal clearly had an effect.
• As the US economy slides into recession, there is nostalgia - especially in New Hampshire - for the prosperity of the Clinton era of the '90s.
• There are persistent questions about Senator Obama's "religion", some of which are fueled by hate e-mails sent by right-wing groups.  Unfortunately, I think the Obama campaign needs to address this directly now. Several people asked me yesterday again whether "Barack Obama is a Christian."

Senator Obama has the resources to compete on a national scale in the presidential campaign.  Over the past weeks I have met many wonderful people from all over the US - many but by no means all were young people participating in the democratic process for the first time - who dropped whatever they were doing to come to New Hampshire. They are convinced, as am I, that Barack Obama represents the best chance for a transformational leadership that will change for the better how America behaves - and is perceived - in the world.

A Reappraisal of Heinrich Böll

  Heinrich Böll died in 1985 at the age of 67, and his literary reputation quickly began to fade. Throughout the 1970's Böll was the "Good German" - the moral mouthpiece of post-war Germany, a mantle now assumed by Guenter Grass. But already in the 1970's Böll began to irritate the political and cultural establishment by speaking out against the "anti-terror hysteria" that swept West Germany in the wake of the German Autumn. By the time of his death, he was seen by many as a kind-hearted, but hopelessly naive, Gutmensch (closest English equivalent is do-gooder) whose novels and stories reflected their time and had more historical, rather than literary, value.

Checking on Amazon I was saddened to find that only a collection of his stories and the novel The Clown (Ansichten eines Clowns -1963) are still in print in English translation. You can't find Group Portrait with Lady (Gruppenbild mit Dame -1971) , the novel which earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Now there is a chance that Böll's reputation will be restored with a new 25 volume collected works ( Kölner Ausgabe). Literary historians, critics and the reading public will have the opportunity to reevaluate Heinrich Böll, and, with luck, some of his works may be retranslated and reissued in the US. Already the new collection has sparked renewed interest in Böll's last novel, completed only weeks before his death, which was dismissed by the critics at the time: Frauen vor Flußlandschaft (Women in a River Landscape), which I don't believe was ever translated into English. The critic Walter van Rossum, writing in Freitag, sees a forgotten masterpiece:

In jedem Kapitel präsentiert Böll ein neues Tableau mit Bonner Herrschaften: Ministrable und Minister gar, Veranstalter des Wirtschaftswunders, Täter und Opfer in wechselnder Konstellation - sämtlich vereint in einem Geschäftsgang, den man Politik nennen könnte, genauso gut könnte man von einer Dauerintrige mit mobilen Seilschaften sprechen. Man wird übrigens bis zum Ende nicht genau erfahren, worum sich die Intrigen spinnen. Man hat sogar den Eindruck, die Spinner selbst hätten den Überblick verloren. Und es ist großartig, wie Heinrich Böll es schafft, niemals zum Kern von irgendetwas vorzustoßen. Aus dem einfachen Grund: Es gibt keinen. Böll erzählt nicht die Geschichte einer Verschwörung, um sie am Ende aufzudecken. Er erzählt von der Verschwörung als Lebensform der Macht.

Böll was not writing a roman à clef about political corruption in Bonn. The Catholic Böll rather saw a perversion of the moral universe in the abuse of power by politicians. In his words he wanted to portray
Bonn als Ort der Zerstörung des Christlichen (Bonn as the place where Christian beliefs are destroyed). In this case Frauen vor Flußlandschaft sounds like a worthy successor to Wolfgang Koeppen's postwar masterpiece about Bonn Das Treibhaus (The Hothouse). Van Rossum suspects that Böll's final novel was dismissed by the literary establishment because it exposed some very uncomfortable truths about German society, which the establishment critics (especially the "Pope" of German literary criticism, Marcel Reich-Ranicki) were unable - or unwilling - to face.

Sie (die Literaturkritik) hat einem literarischen Meisterwerk die Kunstleistung abgesprochen, um die Wahrheiten dieses Buches nicht ertragen, nicht tragen zu müssen.

Obama Triumphant in Iowa

History was made last night at the Iowa Caucuses.

Barack Obama has tapped into a deep-seated hunger for change in America.  The results in Iowa confirm what I have seen myself in New Hampshire: Obama appeals to young voters, first-time voters, independent voters and women (sorry, Hillary!).  He has enormous cross-over appeal. 

Scanning the German language media, the Austrian daily Der Standard picked up on this historic shift in the voter make-up: Obama mobilisiert neue Wählerschichten:

Senator Barack Obama ist es gelungen, mit seinem Motto „Change We Can Believe In“ zahlreiche Neuwähler zu mobilisieren: 57 Prozent der 227,000 Teilnehmer am Caucus der US-Demokraten gaben an, sie seien zum ersten Mal bei einer solchen Veranstaltung. Bei diesen „First Timers“ erreichte er 40 Prozent der Stimmen, bei den 17- bis 29-Jährigen waren es sogar 57 Prozent. Die New Yorker Senatorin Hillary Rodham Clinton lag nur bei den über 65-Jährigen vorne.

Also worth reading is Dietmar Ostermann in the Frankfurter Rundschau: Der Hoffungsträger.

Iowas Demokraten jedenfalls wollten hoffen und glauben und träumen, von einem anderen, besseren Land, einer neuen, helleren Zukunft. Und einem Präsidenten, zu dem sie wieder aufblicken, in den sie ihre Sehnsüchte und Wünsche hinein projizieren können.
[...]Obama spielt mit Gefühlen und hat im kalten Winter die Herzen im Farmerstaat Iowa gewärmt. 37 Prozent für Obama, auf Platz zwei Außenseiter John Edwards, Dritte nur wurde Hillary Clinton. Das Verfolgerduo blieb knapp unter der psychologisch wichtigen Marke von 30 Prozent. Damit fiel Obamas Iowa-Sieg deutlicher aus als erwartet. Und er wirkt noch eindrucksvoller, wenn man die Wahlanalysen studiert: 56 Prozent der Wähler bei den Demokraten waren Frauen – doch die vermeintliche Hillary-Hausmacht stimmte für Obama.

A surprisingly bad commentary is provided by Gabor Steingart in Der Spiegel: Der Winterkönig von Iowa. Steingart sees the results in Iowa as a one-time fluke victory for Senator Obama which he will be unable to replicate on a national scale.  Steingart has little understanding of Americans, of Barack Obama, and his impressive campaign organization.

Now it's on to New Hampshire;  next Tuesday Steingart will have to change his tune.

America's Servant Leadership

In 1998 the Southern Baptist convention, America's largest evangelical Christian organization, issued a decree that in a Christian marriage  "a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."  A full-page ad reiterating this was later published in USA Today and signed by 120 Baptist ministers, including Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

This evangelical view of Christian marriage mirrors how most neoconservatives see the relationship between Europe and the United States: "Europe must submit graciously to the servant leadership of America."

The fact that Europe refuses to play the role of the submissive wife angers many commentators on the right. Joerg Wolf of the Atlantic Review is annoyed at the neo-con commentator Soeren Kern who, in an op/ed piece in the American Thinker,  rails against the Europeans for their "anti-Americanism".  Kern singles out Germany for special criticism:

In Germany, anti-Americanism is an exercise in moral relativism. Germans desperately want their country to be perceived as a "normal" country, and its elites are using anti-Americanism as a political tool to absolve themselves and their parents of the crimes of World War II. They routinely equate the US invasion of Iraq with the Holocaust, for example, as a psychological ruse to make themselves feel better about their sordid past.

First of all, why do Germans need to "absolve" themselves of the crimes of their grandparents?  Do Americans today need to "absolve" themselves of the crime of slavery, or the annihilation of Native American tribes? Second, I have never heard anyone equate the US invasion of Iraq with the Holocaust, much less "routinely" make this equation. Kern is either deliberately lying or is unbelievably stupid. For Kern America has no option but to ignore the objections of the weak, sanctimonious Europeans and forge ahead with the Bush Doctrine of unilateral pre-emptive war, torture and open-ended dentention of terror suspects outside the rule of law:

This is the dilemma America faces: If it wants to be popular abroad, it will have to pay in terms of reduced security. And if it determines to protect the American way of life from global threats, then it will have to pay in terms of reduced popularity abroad.

The truth is, there is a hunger for American leadership in the world - a hunger even among Europeans. Moisés Naím writes about this Hunger for America in an excellent Washington Post opinion piece:

Of course, the America that the world wants back is not the one that preemptively invades potential enemies, bullies allies or disdains international law. The demand is for an America that rallies other nations prone to sitting on the fence while international crises are boiling out of control; for a superpower that comes up with innovative initiatives to tackle the great challenges of the day, such as climate change, nuclear proliferation and violent Islamist fundamentalism. The demand is for an America that enforces the rules that facilitate international commerce and works effectively to stabilize an accident-prone global economy. Naturally, the world also wants a superpower willing to foot the bill with a largess that no other nation can match.

My hope is that in this election year Americans will also have a Hunger for America - not the America of the Bush Doctrine, but a hunger for an America that leads by example.

 

Marsden Hartley and the Volk

Maine has been the home of some of America's greatest painters such as Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth and - my personal favorite - John Marin. But these artists were not from Maine; as we say here: they were from away. In his watercolors Marin captured the beauty and violence of Maine's rocky seacost, but he was a New Yorker, dividing his time between Manhattan and Maine. Marsden Hartley is the one great American modernist we in Maine can call our own. Hartley (1877-1943) was born in the central Maine city of Lewiston, and he died in Ellsworth, Maine.  He aspired to become known as "the painter from Maine" and sought to capitalize on the Maine brand as a popular tourist destination. His work is today seen in the context of the American Regionalist movement in painting, which celebrated the diverse landscapes and people across the country.  Hartley desired to see his name attached to Maine just as Georgia O'Keefe's name is connected to New Mexico, Thomas Hart Benton's with Indiana and Missouri and Grant Wood's with Iowa. But Hartley was much more complex than the folksy, backwoods persona he sought to cultivate.  And, in fact, the greatest influences on his art came not from his fellow American regionalist painters but from Germany.  This is what the art historian Donna Cassidy explores in her very interesting book: Marsden Hartley: Race, Region and Nation.