Dialog International

Syria: Germany again on the sidelines

It has been instructive to watch the reaction in the German press to the unfolding events in Syria.  Throughout much of the summer, the press gleefully described the US as a weakened bystander to the strife in Egypt and the worsening civil war in Syria.  Obama was simply clueless (ratlos).  But, paradoxically, that didn't prevent many commentators from implying - or directly accusing - the US as being responsible for all the turmoil.  Meanwhile, there was precious little discussion - and much hand-wringing - about what Germany's response should be to the multiple crises in the MIddle East, or if Germany should take the lead in finding a solution.  Yes, there have been constant calls for a "political solution" - a fantasy in light of Assad's ethnic cleansing - and a United Nations resolution - impossible in light of Russia's intransigence.

Then, on August 27, Assad's regime launched a nerve gas attack on its own citizens that killed 1,400 (including 400 children).  The Obama administration announced it was considering a military response. Suddenly, over night, President Obama goes from being a clueless bystander to a ruthless warmonger. Germany's response to this terrible atrocity?  Directionless / Ziellos: 

Die deutschen Reaktionen bleiben dennoch unbestimmt, unsicher, ohne Ziel. Und das, obwohl die Deutschen mit ihrer schlimmen Giftgasvergangenheit im Ersten Weltkrieg über einen solchen Tabubruch eigentlich nicht hinweggehen können. Warum ist das so?  

(The German responses remain uncertain, without any direction.  Even though Germany, with its terrible history of deploying poison gas in WWI, can ill afford to look the away when confronted with such a breach of tabu. Why is this happening?)

But it's even worse than "directionless". Left Party leader Sahra Wagenknecht, ever loyal to Moscow, comes across as a German spokesperson for Bashar al-Assad. 

Why the weak response to Syria? To Egypt?  Because being on the sidelines - pointing fingers - allows Germany to feel morally superior, while benefiting from the sacrifice of others: 

There is no doubt that the German ambassador to the United Nations in New York occasionally has to introduce a politically correct, ineffectual resolution that -- on paper, at least -- is intended to protect children in war zones. But when the time comes to concretely prevent the massacre of children and adults in Libya, we abstain from voting and, to be on the safe side, withdraw our warships from the Mediterranean. And although we recognize that the threat of a terrorist coup in Mali could have far-reaching consequences for our own security, we would rather let the French step in to prevent it.

In the final analysis, Germany doesn't really have a foreign policy:

"When it comes to foreign policy, Germany is oddly idle. Germany is being administered, not governed"

In an interview yesterday in Der Spiegel, Daniel Cohn-Bendit - representative of the Green Party to the European parliament - urged Germany to be an active participant in a robust response to the nerve gas attack in Syria: 

Cohn-Bendit: Vergessen Sie "Nie wieder Auschwitz!" Man kann einem moralischen Dilemma nicht durch moralische Überhöhung entkommen. Auschwitz ist einzigartig. In Syrien versucht ein Diktator mit allen Mitteln, auch mit der Vernichtung eines Teils seines Volkes, seine Macht zu sichern.

(Forget the slogan "Never again Auschwitz".  You can't avoid a moral dilemma by being excessively moralistic. Auschwitz is unique. In Syria a dictator is using every means to remain in power, even eliminating part of his own people.)

German Green Party Confronted with its Pedophilic Past

The sexual revolution began just over 50 years ago and reverberates still today.  The revolution swept away old prejudices concerning human sexuality and sparked the movements for women's equality as well as new legal rights for gays and lesbians.  But, like all revolutions, there were excesses which are still being dealt with today. 

The German Green Party was at the forefront of the sexual revolution in the 1970s and 80s.  But some of its causes from the heady days of its ascent can be seen, in retrospect, as horribly naive. Or possibly even criminal: 

Walter and Klecha found that the Greens made a case at a national party conference in 1980 for striking two sections of Germany's penal code that make sexual acts between adults and children under 14 illegal. Groups that were closely aligned with Germany's pro-business, free-market liberal FDP party also supported allowing sexual relations between adults and children.

How could it have happened? "It was a time of major change," psychotherapist Jürgen Lemke told DW. The Greens founded themselves to rebel against conservative structures - a sexual and political release - they wanted to create a new system and turning their backs on authorities was just one of their demands.

"I think some people looked the other way and said: 'We're going to show the other parties how alternative and how open we are - that we have finally got past the Nazi era and accepting the sexual revolution," Greens founding member Eva Quistorp told DW.

Green Party polticians have been among the loudest critics of the Catholic Church and the attempts by the Vatican to whitewash or cover up the cases of child sexual abuse.  But the Greens don't seem to want to confront their own dark history - much less make restitution to the victims.  Last week the editor of the left-leaning (and Green-friendly) Tageszeitung cut (censored) an essay by one her own editors - Christian Füller - which was highly critical of the Green Party and its handling of the child sex scandal in its past.  In his essay - which can be read here - Christian Füller argues that pedophila wasn't simply an abberation, advocated by some crazy extemists in its rank, but rather was core to the Green ideology of total liberation. Hence  Füller's subtitle to his essay:

Die Grünen wollten die sexuelle Revolution. Jetzt sollten sie sich um die Opfer kümmern

(The Greens wanted the sexual revolution.  Now they should take care of its victims.)

German SPD's Disastrous Anti-American Campaign Course

HIstory, Karl Marx wrote, repeats itself - the second time as farce ("das andre Mal als lumpige Farce").  Gerhard Schröder rode an anti-American wave to victory in 2002.  Peer Steinbrück thought he could do the same this election cycle in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations concerning the NSA data-mining activities.  For weeks Steinbrück and other SPD leaders have been hyperventilating about how the US has violated the rights of German citizens, and how chancellor Angela Merkel is complicit in abdicating German sovereignty to the "Amis". 

As the facts in the "scandal" emerge, the SPD's campaign tactics appear increasingly desperate.  Anti-Americanism is the only arrow in the quiver, and it's turned the party into a "lumpige Farce". 

Der Politologe Christian Lammert von der Freien Universität zeichnete gegenüber der NZZ am Montag das Bild von zutiefst verunsicherten Kontrahenten, die ganz einfach in den Nebel schössen in der Hoffnung, zu treffen und nicht getroffen zu werden. Die SPD, so Lammert, habe mit ihrer Taktik der empörten Beschuldigung Merkels und ihrer eilfertigen Bedienung des stets virulenten Antiamerikanismus eine völlig falsche Strategie gewählt.

(Christian Lammert, professor of political science at the Free University, described on Monday to the NZZ the picture of a deeply insecure opposition that was firing wildly into the mist in the hope of hitting a target and not being hit itself. The party, according to Lammert, has followed the wrong strategy with its campaign tactic of making outraged accusations against Merikel and its hasty eploitation of a virulent anti-Americanism)

And even some officials in the SPD are alarmed at the course of the campaign.  They realize the party is facing a crushing defeat on September 22, and are hoping to live to fight on another day:

Innenpolitiker der SPD distanzieren sich vom bisherigen scharfen Kurs ihrer Partei in der „Snowden-Affäre“. Sie kritisieren, dass die Vereinigten Staaten in die Nähe eines Unrechtsstaates gerückt würden und die Arbeit des Bundesnachrichtendienstes in Frage gestellt werde. „Die Debatte hatte mir zu sehr eine antiamerikanische Komponente, die ich nicht für angemessen halte“, sagte der SPD-Abgeordnete Fritz Rudolf Körper der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung (F.A.S.).

(Domestic politicians of the SPD are distancing themselves from the sharp course the party has taken in the "Snowden Affair."  They are criticizing that the United States is being labeled a "lawless country" and that the work of the German Intelligence Service is being questioned.  "The debate has taken on an exaggerated anti-American component, which I don't feel is appropriate," Fritz Rudolf Körper, a SPD member of parliament, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday Edition. )

Eugen Ruge's Novel Reviewed in the New York Times

Adam Langer has a terrific review of Eugen Ruge's novel In Times of Fading Light (Translation in English by Anthea Bell).  Why is this news? First, it is rare that a contemporary novel in German gets translated and published in the United States these days.  Second, it is rare that translations are reviewed by major media outlets.  Third, if reviewed, they are often panned.  Happily, Ruge's book gets very good treatment in the New York Times: 

"Mr. Ruge’s novel is a pulsing, vibrant, thrillingly alive work, full of formal inventiveness, remarkable empathy and, above all, mordant and insightful wit. Yes, this is a serious, ambitious work with the scope of a Russian epic, juxtaposing the disintegration of the Umnitzer family with that of their political system. But the novel doesn’t plod forward in a predictable, linear way; with self-assurance and playful erudition, it seems to follow the unreliable chronology of memory, hopscotching back and forth over critical moments in family and world history, displaying an extraordinarily bearable lightness of being even as it describes weighty, tragic events."

Read my review of In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts. 

To understand better how unusual the Times review is, here is a rather depressing video from earlier this year of Michael Krüger, publisher of Carl Hanser Verlag in Munich, talking about the American aversion to translation.   Krüger's goes on to bemoan the demise of German language and the global hegemony of English:

 

For those English speakers who have difficulty with the video, here is an interview in English with Michael Krüger which covers some of the same terrain: 

Krüger: Of course I am unhappy with the fact that European publishers are translating a lot of the good, and a lot of the mediocre, and even a great deal of the bad books from the States into European languages, whereas our American friends are very reluctant. With the exception of Knopf, only the small houses like New Directions or Other Press are constantly translating from Europe. For example, much of the work of Robert Walser, one of the best German writers of the 20th century, is coming to an American audience only now. But he was a contemporary of Franz Kafka! And only very few European poets have been translated into English, whereas German translators and publishers take the risk of translating great English and American poetry.

The "NSA massive surveillance of German citizens" that never happened

Two weeks ago we were informed by Der Spiegel that the NSA was capturing "500 million data points" of voice and e-mail communication of German citizens - each month!  The "revelation" unleased a firestorm of anti-American and anti-Merkel frenzy.  According Spiegel columnist Jakob Augstein Obama had transformed the US to a totalitarian state whose mission was to "control" Germany.  His colleague Sascha Lobo had a real hissy fit ("man hat ein fucking Recht darauf, in einem fucking Rechtsstaat mit einer fucking beachteten Verfassung zu leben.") And the story dominated the campaign of SPD candidate Peer Steinbrück, who over and over again essentially accused German chancellor Angela Merkel of treason (" Jeden Monat wurden 500 Millionen persönliche Verbindungsdaten von uns abgesaugt... ahrelange, millionenfache Grundrechtsverletzung“). 

Just one problem for Augstein, Steinbrück, Spiegel & Co:  The massive spying on German citizens by the NSA never happened.  First, the "500 million data points" were collected by the GERMAN intelligence service BND, and transfered to the NSA after any reference to German citizens was scrubbed.  Second, the data involved communication data from Afghanistan - nothing to do with Germany.  The truth was finally acknowledged in Der Spiegel: 

Should the BND information be correct, it could provide Berlin a convenient way to save face. The data gathered in Bad Aibling apparently would seem to relate to the BND's legal foreign surveillance targets, which consists primarily of data transmitted in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

In response to inquiries, the BND confirmed that it does transmit connection data to the NSA. But it notes: "Before metadata relating to other countries is passed on, it is purged, in a multistep process, of any personal data about German citizens it may contain." According to the BND, its surveillance does not apply to German telecommunications and German citizens. In addition, say BND officials, there is currently no reason to believe that the "NSA gathers personal data on German citizens in Germany."

Still, Der Spiegel is trying to gin up a scandal, implying that the decades-long cooperation between the NSA and the BND is somehow illegitimate.

The respected Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was much harsher in its assessment, blasting Steinbrück for his defamatory accusations: 500 Millionen Irrtümer (5oo Million Mistakes):

Die (SPD) hatte die Diskussion über den Umgang der Vereinigten Staaten mit weltweit geschürften persönlichen Daten aus sozialen Netzwerken, Internetsurfing oder Telefonaten nutzen wollen, um die Bundesregierung mit der Kanzlerin an der Spitze als Marionette der NSA zu denunzieren. Das ist nun vorerst missglückt, und Peer Steinbrück hat seinen Ruf gefestigt, mitunter unbedachte Äußerungen zu tätigen.

For Augstein, Steinbrück, Spiegel & Co America is always the bogeyman, but this particular line of attack evidently blew up in their face.

 

 

 

 

The Common Roots of Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism

When analyzing the virulent anti-American sentiment that has resurfaced in Germany - especially among left-wing pundits and observers - following the Snowden revelations concerning massive data-mining, it is useful to consider the recent history of anti-Semitism. 

Martin Engelberg, writing in Die Presse, sees a close connection between both positions, which are particularly entrenched in the German left today: 

Dazu werden beide ("die Amerikaner" und "die Juden") für bestimmte Erscheinungen – insbesondere der Moderne – personifiziert und diffamiert. Juden und Amerikaner werden als „das andere“ oder „das Böse“, als konträr der eigenen moralischen Position gegenüber bezeichnet. Bereits zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts wurde der „amerikanische Geist“ als bedrohlich und zersetzend für die deutsche Kultur angesehen; sehr ähnlich der „jüdische Geist“, dessen Bekämpfung in der Nazi-Zeit ihren Höhepunkt fand.

(Both the Americans and the Jews personify certain social phemonena - especially modernity - and are reviled for this.  Jew and Americans are seen as "the other" and "evil", since they are contrary to the superior moral standing of the Volk.  Already at the beginning of the 2oth century the "American spirit" was seen as a corrosive influence on the "German spirit; the same as well with the "Jewish spirit", the resistance against which reached its apex in tne Nazi era.)

Underlying both anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, according to Martin Engelberg, is a feeling of profound powerlessness: 

Amerikanern und Juden wird gleichermaßen zugeschrieben, die Macht zu besitzen, das Weltgeschehen bis in Details zu bestimmen. Die Bedrohung durch beide ist deshalb so gefährlich, weil sie sich im Inneren europäischer Gesellschaften „eingenistet“ haben. Die Juden lebten tatsächlich bis zur Nazi-Zeit inmitten europäischer Gesellschaften, die USA drangen mit ihrer Sprache, Kultur, ihrem Lebensgefühl in Herz und Seele der Europäer ein. Bei jeder sich bietenden Gelegenheit muss die Volksseele versuchen, sich dieser Dominanz zu entledigen.

(It is taken for granted that both the Americans and "the Jews" have the power to influence world events down to the smallest detail. They pose such a great threat since both have "burrowed" deeply in European society.  Up until the Nazi era the Jews lived in the heart of European society, while the US forced itself into the European soul with its language, its culture, its American way of life. The pure soul of the Volk must take every opportunity to throw off this dominance.)

But Engelberg's critique is tame compared with that of Andrei S. Markovits, who sees anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism as "Siamese Twins" in Europe today.  Markovits has written a good book about the history of anti-Americanism in Europe:  Amerika, dich hasst sich's besser.  In another essay he writes about how the perception of an all-powerful Israel has bled into the perception of an all-powerful America - creating a two-headed evil monster in the left-wing imagination:

In today's intellectual Europe it is illegitimate to view European Jews as Shylocks (or deride them as such), but it is entirely legitimate to portray those Jews who, instead of fitting the picture of the weak pariah, have built their own state (namely Israel and the Israelis) as Rambos and to hate them as such.¹³ It is the figure of the tough, aggressive, unscrupulous, and ruthless Jew in the form of the powerful, brutal Israeli that is lending a new dimension to contemporary European anti-Semitism. And it is strength and (military) power that assigns anti-Americanism an auxiliary and indispensable role in this new form of anti-Semitism (outfitted as hostility toward Israel)¹⁴ and that turns these two phenomena into politically potent Siamese twins throughout Europe.

Until recently, it was clear how the U.S.-Israel relationship fit into this line of thinking: It was the powerful United States that was using Israel as a marionette or "aircraft carrier" for its "imperialist" and "neo-colonial" schemes; the U.S. was the real power, and Israel was the henchman. But in the discourse of many Europeans after 11 September 2001 - and especially since the Iraq war - this has been reversed almost 180 degrees.

The current controversy around the spying activity of the HSA will gradually fade away, but anti-Americanism is bound to resurface in Germany over and over again.

 

Let's stop the USA - Stasi analogies

For weeks we've been reading in Der Spiegel and elsewhere in the German press about how the US is just like the Stasi - only more efficient - in spying on German citizens. 

Alan Posener, writing in Die Welt, comments on the absurdity the Stasi comparisons and the hypocritical outrage of people who post the most intimate details of their lives on social media sites like Facebook:

Es ist eben nicht trivial, dass die Stasi demokratische Regungen im Keim ersticken sollte, während es der NSA – und dem BND – darum geht, Terror zu unterbinden. Die Begründung, wir Deutschen seien wegen unserer Vergangenheit gebrannte Kinder, führt sich selbst ad absurdum, wenn wir nicht aus dieser Vergangenheit zuallererst den fundamentalen Unterschied zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie ableiten.

Fakt ist: Die Demokratie hat Feinde. Und sie sitzen nicht in Washington, Langley oder Cheltenham. Dort verteidigt man die Demokratie.

(It's no trivial matter that the Stasi worked to suppress any democratic impulses, while the NSA - and the BND - are tasked with combatting terror.  The argument that we Germans have been traumatized by our history in these things is absurd is we have failed to learn from our history the difference between  dictatorship and democracy.  The fact is: democracy has enemies.  And they don't sit in Washington, Langley or Cheltenheim.)

Now Edward Snowden has found refuge in a country where there is a real Stasi-like intelligence service, that seeks out and detains (or murders) all "whistleblowers" who opposes the government of Vladimir Putin.  But this irony is apparently lost on those who are blinded by a reflexive anti-Americanism. 

Review: Nora Bossong's Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung

Having spent most of my working life either employed in business or working on behalf of businesses as a banker I am naturally interested in any works of fiction that deal with the world of commerce.  But there are surprisingly few novels that really focus on business.  Last year Rainald Goetz released Johann Holtrop, a strong effort about a sociopath CEO of a German media conglomerate.  One of my personal favorites is Walter Richartz's 1974 satirical Büroroman, which captures perfectly the everyday life of white collar office workers in Frankfurt.  And then there is the greatest business novel of them all - Buddenbrooks - where the decline of a business enterprise mirrors the rise and fall of a family. 

Nora Bossong is a gifted novelist and poet,  With her third novel - Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung ("Limited Liability Company")  Bossong attempts to write an anti-Buddenbrooks - the young heiress of a family enterprise ruthlessly attempts to save the business which her father has intentionally run into the ground.  Unfortunately, Bossong lacks the knowledge of how a business actually operates, so the novel only partially succeeds: her strong prose style keeps the reader engaged even as the plot veers off track. 

The novel has an intriguing beginning.  Kurt Tietjen, the Terrycloth King of Essen and heir to the family business Tietjen und Söhne, steps off the plane in Newark, New Jersey with the intention of saving his company through high-level meetings with potential investors.  Instead, he spots a rather shabbily-dressed young woman and follows her to a third-rate hotel, and later to an apartment building in a run-down section of Brooklyn.  In the process, he cuts off all communication with his company in Essen, thereby hastening its collapse. 

The unlikely would-be savior of Tietjen und Söhne of turns out to be Kurt Tietjen;s 27 year-old daughter Luise. The young woman abandons her promising academic work at the university and plunges into the work of managing an international company, taking advantage of her boyfriend, an up-and-coming executive at Tietjen und Söhne, to quickly learn the ropes.  Seemingly over night she is transformed into a ruthless operator, restlessly shifting between Essen, Shanghai, and New York City, where she attempts to wrest control of the company from her father. 

Along the way, the reader learns about the early days of the company and how the founder,Justus Tietjen, saw and opportunity to make a fortune from the Great War:

Justus Tietjen hatte ein gutes Gespür. Er wusste, dass sich die Mode ändern würde, dass man nicht ewig auf Paris, Müssiggang und Luxus setzen konnte, und er handelte vorausschauend. Als im Folgejahr der österreichische Thronfolger einem Attentat zum Opfer fiel und die Militaristen sich in Bewegung setzten, war Justus vorbereitet. Sein neues Erfolgsrezept lautete: Je härter die Welt, desto dringlicher der Wunsch nach weichen Stoffen. Wenn das Leben hart wurde, musste man ihm etwas entgegensetzen. Der Mensch sehnte sich nach Weichheit. Im Krieg mehr noch als im Frieden. Justus Tietjen war gewappnet.

(Justus Tietjen had a good nose for business.  He was well aware that fashion trends were fickle and that you couldn’t count on leisure and luxury forever.  So he acted strategically.  When, in the following year, the Austrian pretender to the throne fell victim to an assassin and the militarists began to mobilize, Justus was ready.  His new recipe for success could be summed up like this:  the harder life becomes, the more pressing the desire for soft material.  When you fall you want something soft to cushion you.  When life becomes hard you need to have something to counter this.  People longed for the softness – more so in times of war than in peace.  Justus Tietjen was sufficiently forearmed.)

This is by far the most entertaining section of the novel, and Nora Bossong's ironic style is on full display.  One wishes she had stayed put in Essen and focused on the generational shifts in the Tietjen family fortune instead of making extended excursions to China and New York.  The New York scenes, in particular, are problematic as Ms. Bossong has a shaky grasp of American names (has any woman since te 19th century been named "Fanny"?) and Manhattan geography (Fourth Avenue?). 

In the end, both Kurt Tietjen's breakdown and Luise Tietjen's ruthless rise don't gain credibility with the reader through the logic of the narrative.  Furthermore, one gets the sense that Ms. Bossong believes business is inherently corrupt, that is only through corrupt practices that Tietjen und Söhne is able to grow and sustain itself.  Rainald Goetz also put a spotlight on corrupt corporate practices in Johann Holtrop, but in that novel the corruption was just a symptom of social decay in which eveyone - the banks, the media, the politicians - was complicit.  Against the backdrop of the financial meltdown of 2008 it seemed completely real.   

It is clear that Nora Bossong is a major talent,  I look forward to reading many more - and better - novels from the 30 year-old writer.