It isn't Weimar all over again
Cooper, Rand Richards
IT'S NOT WEIMAR RAND RICHARDS COOPER ALL OVER AGAIN THE STRENGTHS OF GERMAN DEMOCRACY ...
...where the Jews will he hanged, expect to see a giant teacher-mother figure looming over yourZ.and will stay hanging, until they stink...
...And there's a ludicrous side as well...
...Story, and other magazines, and his book reviews in the New York Times Book Review and Commonweal...
...Within ----------------weeks of sending off his open letter, Jason Sargent received over Symposium Registration Form five hundred letters back from Germans-an avalanche of anRegistration fee...
...Bonn, however, is no Weimar...
...But mysterious, but the mechanisms by which its darker mysteries the point remains: as a commitment to addressing a dangercan he brought out are not...
...Recently a top corporate executive was fired-firedolence against foreigners here, and-all moral questions aside- when it was discovered he flew the old German imperial flag this damage is a risk they're not willing to take...
...Clyde Crews Cathedral of the our past...
...Rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails...
...not only agitators like Hitler, but generals like terror, flinching at the sound of breaking glass...
...Have you learned nothing from your We')- the titles ask...
...Everywhere you turn outrage has an air of extreme innocence, as if the very exisyou see a billboard or a tee-shirt featuring the favorite slogans: tence of cruelty is a continual revelation to us...
...in the first place...
...Can this hate happen again...
...Cooper lives in Mainz, Germany...
...Recently, news"My Best Friend Is a Foreigner" or "We Are All Foreigners...
...the prospect of mobs fire(Germany, in fact, accepts more political refugees than all of bombing refugee hostels is a horrifying one...
...Can the ethnic hatreds and suspicions unleashed by the Cathedral Heritage Foundation dissolution of cold-war restraints be rooted out, or blunted, or redi- -433 S Fifth St rected, by public and civic policy...
...Human nature may he shoulder, a National Scold, telling you to he good or else...
...raiding carefully, far back from the edge...
...with a "stab in the back" had allegedly sold Germany to the In the here-they-go-again scenario, these skinhead thugs play French devil at Versailles...
...parliament and parties," wrote none other than Thomas Mann but, having lived in Germany for the past two years, I'm con- in 1920, "leads to the infection of the whole body of the nation vinced it isn't accurate...
...Imagine General Schwarzkopf going the role of SA storm troops...
...are unsafe and unwelcome...
...As the political culture of Weimar, torn and twisted by ly calling not merely for the banning of right-wing radical uncertainties, grew more and more perverted, so did its groups, but for revocation of their basic political rights, inpublic discourse--the range of things available to he said and cluding the right to vote...
...I low can I do that now...
...How many monuments to the victims of slav- Louisville, KY 40202 ery does one see in the United States...
...His stories have appeared in Harper's, the Atlantic...
...Here they go again...
...This is appropriate...
...There are benefit rock concerts and equivalent of war...
...C Commonweal 7 May 1993: 13...
...Hand over the future to a in department stores, hang photos of somber-looking Germans venomous demagogue who called openly for "a dictatorship in a "Citizens against Xenophobia" series...
...Is there any National Interfaith Religious Symposium, call the other country in the world whose citizens would do this...
...I don't want politics...
...The campaign against Ausl~indc i,/Pi~tc/lic hkc it (lit- fort...
...its social-democrat leaders as the "November criminals" who Oh no, you think...
...The point is this: Germans Private companies are also hyper-alert to charges of insensiknow that their reputation abroad is being damaged by the vi- tivity...
...A German acquaintance of apartments and bars where they hang out...
...One way some commentators get the picture wrong, both in Germany and abroad, is by framing current German unrest in the context of the 1919-33 Weimar Republic...
...and Sponsored by the most of them would be German...
...But A.J.P...
...it also suggests that City.'State,'Zip the proper background against which current German realities should Telephone (),vork) be measured is not that of the American paradise, its woods eeri- (home) ly emptied of Injuns, but rather of the Balkan slaughterfield, where each day contending factions enact their ancient and murderous Make check payable and return to...
...drugs: bundle these together, multiply time and resources by Today...
...I would like to bring side pop groups to sing campfire-like ballads about loving your friends and students to Germany next summer...
...Robert Wuthnow Princeton University Interfaith was mistaken for an intruder...
...Picture a stretch of the tions so notoriously sensitive to fiscal instability that the rest autobahn closed to all other traffic, just a tremendous stream of the world perpetually screams for them to loosen up a little...
...It's a little bit (not the Nazi flag, but the Kaiser's flag) at his house...
...We express GUEST SPEAKERS: "Religion and horror at the picture of neo-Nazi skinheads giv- Dr...
...like the David Duke phenomenon...
...In Ger- Cathedral Heritage Foundation at (502) 583-3100, many, a corporate executive is fired for flying the old imper- FAX (502) 583-852-i, or return this form...
...In Stuttgart recently, taxi drivers die-to-grave security guarded by Olympian financial institu- undertook a day-long sympathy strike...
...And what if African-AmeriTitle /Institution cans say that the flag is a perpetual reminder of their enslavement...
...An apart- Almost no one stood behind it-not the industrialists, not the ment building leaking flame from a broken army, not the police or the aristocracy or the church...
...candlelight parades in city after city-hundreds of thousands We Americans are outraged by the violence against foreigners of Germans publicly demonstrating solidarity with foreigners in Germany...
...Take our campaigns in hate that turned out to he a prerequisite for the later advanced against AIDS, illiteracy, domestic violence, alcoholism, and course of the Holocaust...
...In fact, window...
...and passive German onlookers play...
...Bill Leonard 18-20,1993 Samford University, ican high-mindedness and self-righteousness," he wrote, "have Birnvngham, AL been bred out of a dark past...
...in their zeal to enforce politically correct Finally, however, the most crucial difference between attitudes, both politicians and the press seem willGermany then and now lies in what one might call civic dis- ing to deal recklessly with civil liberties, blithecourse...
...ial flag at home...
...Politicians and clergymen exhort...
...grudges...
...Today's against Xenophobia...
...religions have had on cities and the anticipated The collection of all the monuments ever built by nations to vic- impact they will have in the 21st century tims of their own misdeeds would fit in a very small space...
...James Wall about safety...
...The comparison suggests the anarchic breakdown of liberal democracy, and contributes to what the Washington Post called, in a recent editorial, "a suddenly revived international impression of Germany as a lawless and racist land where foreigners...
...Well, when a sack of potatoes costs ing up the moving stairs toward the Men's Department, when 10 million marks, and money for shopping has to he carried suddenly you come face to face with "Jurgen, 28, Citizen around in baskets, such ravings may not seem so risky...
...iation of World War I was seen by many to be synonymous Cut to the inside of the building, where foreigners huddle in with treason...
...As in a Woody Allen film, you "gallows and more gallows...
...What about the German tourist murdered Ccntro1, Dr...
...In Weimar, democracy was a terclamoring rowdily in the street at night...
...What follows is by no means an at- with the virus of politics...
...Children in schools paint pictures against past...
...One thug after another scurries up to hurl in his of- the very creation of the Weimar government out of the humilfering as neighborhood residents, some applauding, stand by...
...paign...
...Constitution, and there you have Weimar...
...It's still shocking to go back to Ilitler's Surrounded by such an orchestration of earnest good will, you speeches and hear how undisguised the hatred in them was: al- sometimes get the feeling that all of Germany has been turned ready in 1922 he was telling interviewers about his plan to build into a sixth-grade civics class...
...but what about the staggering crime and violence Editor, Christian Faith for a of our own streets...
...when a recent paper mine, hearing me tell of an American friend--a father of two announced a "nationwide crackdown on rightist bands," it young children--who had quit teaching at age forty-three to meant rock bands, skinhead musicians who have suddenly found try something else, shook her head and commented, "If he were their concert permissions revoked, their recordings confiscated...
...Taylor's remark about America's past not only offers a Street Address bracing corrective to our high-mindedness...
...Back outside, Ludendorff, the great heroes of the nation, cynically regarded the thugs raise their arms in a Hitler salute...
...Panel after panel, talk show after talk show, agoniz- wrote...
...his life would be over...
...Turks and gypsies play the Jews...
...The most popof the '20s, when Germany, caught in the suffocating grasp of ular TV series sends its hero, a charismatic high school histoVersailles's massive reparations, tried to wriggle its way out ry teacher, into action against the local right-wing villains...
...In comparison to Americans, Cathedral Heritage Foundation Germans spend a great deal of time worrying about their past...
...however, Germans are getting-and giving- -differ- ten, and then you have something like the current German efent lessons...
...papers here published an open letter to the German people from On TV sports programs, top German athletes are recruited along- a high school teacher in Olathe, Kansas...
...in Gennany...
...A palpable longing well, passive German onlookers...
...Drawing on memories of a for authoritarianism arose from all corners...
...Dr...
...Sargent anxiously inquires Dr...
...Will they he hurt...
...While it's true, and disturbing, that monuments to Bellarinine College, Assumption victims of Nazism have been repeatedly vandalized here in Louis\ ilIc, KS Undercroft Germany, what's perhaps even more remarkable is that they exist 443 S. Fifth St...
...Lives are lived right-wingers, banning skinhead and neo-Nazi groups...
...They have yet another whopper of a word for this process of com- Funded by a grant from Lilh' brulou'ntent, Inc ing to terms with the past-Vergangenheitsbeit'ailtigung...
...Can you ingly takes up the theme of the Ugly German ("How Ugly Arc guarantee their safety...
...Have we learned anything from Dr...
...Commonweal 7 May 1993: 11 Second, there's nothing today like the economic desperation xenophobia...
...12: 7 Mat• 1993 Commonweal The tricky thing about outrages is that, like mounNATIONALLYtains or pointillist paintings, they are easier to dis- RENOWNED cern at a distance than up close...
...on "Donahue" and "Oprah Winfrey" and pouring contempt upon right-wing politicians like Schonhuber (leader of the Republikaner the president, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the U.S...
...The trafficking of fathomless Nazi atrocity, this scenario is both plausible and vivid...
...rified rabbit beset on all sides by armed hunters and attack dogs...
...Cyprian Davis, ful advocacy of international reconciliation-was made possible O.S.B...
...For reser\ aeons call n m. Far from signaling the collapse of civil order and the prelude to a new (51) 2) 589-5200 or fascism, the current unrest in Germany-or, rather, the country's FAX (502) 585-4260 response to its unrest-strikes me as the West's best stab at mus- ther tering the resources of liberal democracy against powerful nationalistic forces that are working everywhere to undo it...
...Germans in Weimar were taught ous social ill, the German crusade against ethnic hatred dwarfs that Jews were dangerous, evil, and dirty-a Nazi intro course anything America is used to putting on...
...In through irresponsible monetary policies and touched off an in- the lobbies of movie houses, on the walls alongside escalators flation unparalleled in world history...
...of yellow Mercedes taxis tooting their sympathy for foreignTo an American, Germany in the '90s seems startlingly risk- ers...
...It's simply civic education on a scale unimaginable in erally, "foreigner-hostility") is an effort of humane propaganda the United States-a project that begins to resemble the moral spectacular in its breadth...
...when crunch time came, the majority of Louisianans saw not only the moral repugnance of o be sure, there's a worrisome side to this cama Duke governorship, but the business costs as well...
...There's no sure answer...
...Young men spectrum of political parties...
...The foundations of democracy in today's Germany are rock-solid, the constituRAND RICHARDS COOPER is the author of a book of stories, The Last to Go (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich...
...Sam Hill Religious The British historian A.J.P...
...party) play little Hitlers...
...Martin Marty Region: ing the Hitler salute, but what about the KKK University of Chicago Images of marchers in their white robes...
...How many monuments to An exciting opportunity to hear about the impact the Native American victims of Euro-American expansionism...
...but if Louisville, KY -40202 acknowledging the problem, and talking about it, and commit- The Galt House Hotel is offering a discounted room ting vast resources of time and money and energy can do any- rate of S59 plus tax for single or double occupancy thing-if they can-my bet is that they will do so here, in Germany...
...There you are, cruisbrought through the sword...
...The government, meanwhile, has cracked down hard on averse, its citizens as much so as its Bundesbank...
...I want impartempt to downplay the horror of German xenophobia-seven tiality, order, and propriety...
...Jason Sargent neighbor...
...Roberta Bondi New Century" recently in front of her small children in Miami, or the Japanese Emory University, exchange student killed last year in Louisiana, blown away when Atlanta, GA A National he approached the wrong house while looking for a party and Dr...
...Taylor maintained that America's University of Florida optimistic world view-its faith in its own goodness, its cheer- Symposium Rev...
...ideas to be thought...
...Amer- Dr...
...Germany, on the other hand, presents its citizens with a era- On and on goes the crusade...
...IT'S NOT WEIMAR RAND RICHARDS COOPER ALL OVER AGAIN THE STRENGTHS OF GERMAN DEMOCRACY nyone who watches the news knows the pic- tion of 1949 commanding public avowals of respect across the ture of Germany in the last year...
...And yet often our the other European nations combined...
...100 To register for the guished reflection upon the questions he'd raised...
...In Georgia, meanwhile, the state government still Name flies the Confederate Stars and Bars...
...foreigners died in violent attacks here last year, including a tenyear-old Turkish girl killed along with her grandmother and aunt in the firebombing of a house in the town of Molln-but rather to widen the lens a little, to add some other images to the terrifying and violent ones...
...in part by the ruthless simplifying of its own homefront, specifi- St blemrad Seminary September cally by the near-extermination of Native Americans...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 9
