Violence Rehabilitated
Grass, Günter
(1) Violence Rehabilitated On Holy Thursday, 1968, a youth named Bachmann, an admirer of Hitler, shot and critically wounded Rudi Dutschke, the leader of a militant Berlin student group. As a...
...against the imputation that it was a new edition of National Socialism, a neo-Nazi party...
...Already there is a confusion of language: students try to enlighten the workers and are occasionally threatened with blows because they speak a jargon that no worker can understand...
...As a result of this attempted murder, there were violent student demonstrations during Easter week...
...I wish that this breach between the Left-socialist, argumentative youth and the S.P.D...
...In particular the trade union press, which for years has been serving up tailor-made boredom, should open its ears to new ideas and its columns to the opinions of the young people, however contradictory and disturbing...
...The Federal Republic offers any number of important political jobs that Kurt Georg Kiesinger could fill...
...TWO BY GUNTER GRASS If we wish to counter the N.P.D...
...What had to happen before a policeman—even if he was trigger-happy—could draw his pistol, remove the safety catch, and fire the fatal shot...
...violence against objects, yes...
...American models, good and bad, find in us their epigones...
...From Speak Out by Gunter Grass, translated by Ralph Manheim...
...Since irrational slogans change nothing but merely stir up the masses and arouse long-familiar aggressions, violence has been rehabilitated in the Federal Republic...
...No, it requires no political genius to throw light on the an tagonisms between workers and students...
...The Federal Republic, as we all know, has many faults...
...These young people are at once nonpolitical and political...
...Two days before the conclusion of the Great Coalition I wrote Herr Kiesinger an open letter calling his attention to the consequences of his disastrous decision: "How are the young people of our country to find arguments against that party which died two decades ago but is being resurrected today as the N.P.D., if you burden the Chancellorship with the still very considerable weight of your past...
...For the results of the elections in Baden-Wurttemberg cannot be glossed over...
...tions, we are familiar with his legend as it has been so touchingly cooked up by the press...
...The S.P.D...
...He painted little pictures and hung them in the parlor...
...in Baden-Wurttemberg...
...And not a word—in this he proved himself a master of the art of omission— about the part he himself had played, if only involuntarily, in helping this rising party to respectability...
...seldom have police officers had such frequent occasion to convert their training into action and to proclaim the freedom of the nightstick...
...In both senses of the word, it deserves criticism, and it is up to us to provide that criticism...
...Of course every day offers an opportunity to mediate with little success between adversaries congealed in their positions...
...Instead, there was an emotional reaction without political content...
...a respectable party with smiling prospects for the future...
...Look here, when the Americans use napalm, it's a war crime, isn't it...
...to demand the resignation of the leaders of its Munich and Berlin groups...
...Let Herr Kiesinger believe that he is expressing the will of the German people when he invokes authority and emergency laws...
...He talks about power blocs and spheres of interest, and points out that the other side does the same thing...
...Let us look back: On Holy Thursday three shots rang out on the Kurfurstendamm in Berlin...
...Totalitarian demands are being raised on both sides...
...A helpless Chancellor regrets that the emergency laws are not yet in force to help him keep order...
...For months the mass-circulation papers of the Springer trust have been clamoring for energetic measures, for active "self-help," yet after the attempt to murder Rudi Dutschke they made a show of righteous indignation...
...One of these little pictures was published in the press...
...The younger generation, only yesterday well behaved and fully adjusted to the existing order, are in a turmoil...
...And Father utters words of reassurance, sweats and utters more words of reassurance...
...and the Ex traparliamentary Opposition—is that after the attempt on Rudi Dutschke's life they did nothing to prevent a spontaneous reaction in which indignation had free rein and political considerations were left out of account...
...This organization is not monolithic...
...Seldom has otherwise so torn a society been so involuntarily yet harmoniously united in a task—the task of singling out one odd ball, lunatic house painter from perhaps a hundred thousand odd-balls, and impelling him to reach for his pistol...
...He had, so says his mother, only one friend: his motorcycle...
...Who benefits by old-fashioned class-struggle positions...
...Their fathers pat them on the back and tell them they don't realize how well off they are, but it doesn't go down, because the chasm between the theory and the practice of government is open for all to see, and none of the usual cloaks are big enough to cover it...
...With his own special brand of eloquence he reduced the whole matter to the dimensions of a trifling misdemeanor which had been misinterpreted and overestimated by our neighbors...
...Even if the remote political goals of the S.D.S...
...Hence an outcast unrelated to our basically healthy society...
...let Herr Springer continue to feel that rising circulation figures prove him right...
...lowed by well-organized demonstrations calculated to enlighten the public...
...fending freedom...
...seldom has an extreme Rightist party acquired votes so cheaply...
...Published by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc...
...The cleavage deepens...
...1 Socialist Student League...
...could be mended...
...on the other, "Suppress the S.D.S...
...let all three of these tendencies and their following work hand in hand to demolish the already ramshackle edifice of democracy in this country—I for my part refuse to let my judgment be clouded by all-or-nothing theses...
...It's hard to find heroic models in a mediocre democracy sicklied o'er with compromise...
...Instead of suppressing the S.D.S., we should do better to ask ourselves whether our democratic form of government can stand up against such wanton devaluation of the office of Chancellor...
...Hard desk work was needed to arouse the ag gressive instincts of our people...
...Young people are also to be met with far to the Right, in the gathering places of the old Party comrades...
...The area between these camps of Rightist and Leftist opportunism is not a comfortable place to live in...
...And he says he won't stand for Communist propaganda at the dinner table...
...1) Violence Rehabilitated On Holy Thursday, 1968, a youth named Bachmann, an admirer of Hitler, shot and critically wounded Rudi Dutschke, the leader of a militant Berlin student group...
...But the student's reply to this stereotype appeal to order is the appeal of a North Vietnamese politician...
...The youthprotest movement has brought the fragility of our insufficiently established democracy into evidence...
...should consider the incalculable harm done to democracy by the mere fact that a former National Socialist has become Chancellor...
...Up to that point, it would have been possible to make broad sections of the public understand where the guilt lay...
...This is a job for the unions...
...I wish Rosa Luxemburg's TWO BY GUNTER GRASS plea for the freedom to disagree might find a hearing on both sides...
...This platform is available to me for only a short time...
...The Social Democratic party of Germany will bear the responsibility for this mistake for a long time to come...
...A very special case...
...In joining the Great Coalition the S.P.D...
...The outcome—two deaths in Munich— raises the question of responsibility...
...But it would be a grave mistake to suppose that the dissatisfaction of the younger generation finds its sole reflection on the Left...
...It has often seemed to me that revolutionary committees and police chiefs dig up scenes from historical revolutions and model their behavior on Eisenstein's films and on early documentaries...
...All this would be normal, it might be all right to go on in the same way—with a va cation now and then—if there had not mean while been three deaths, if it weren't for the visible and the invisible N.P.D., except for the danger that three deaths might lead to many more deaths, and if there were not strong indications that the visible and the in visible N.P.D...
...May 1 is a political holiday, a summons to speak frankly...
...A student of behavior patterns who has thus far concentrated his attention on the greylag goose or the common carp would know what to make of them...
...Since we are chronically innocent, mustn't some one else be guilty, in this case the Americans...
...But since I see no reason for succumbing to hysteria, I am quite willing to put up with the discomfort, though the libelous statements of both camps offer material for a paper skyscraper...
...must acknowledge its mistakes and take the consequences, unless it wants to be more incorrigibly arrogant than the establishment it attacks...
...Similarly the S.D.S...
...The elections in Baden-Wurttemberg were said to have proved that on the one hand there is no basis for a revolution, but that on the other hand there are few barriers left to halt a coup from the Right...
...Yesterday in the course of a debate in the Parliament, Chancellor Kiesinger tried to explain the electoral success of the N.P.D...
...English translation copyright © 1967, 1969 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc...
...The outcome: two students seriously injured in Berlin and one in Hamburg...
...It is not yet too late to reverse the decision of January 1966...
...ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: Only a few years ago the Federal Republic presented the image of a humdrum middle-class society, characterized by hard work, security, law and order, and political lethargy...
...are not my goals, I recognize its achievement, especially as a promoter of university reform, but also as the motive force within the student protest movement...
...And let's not have any talk about funda mental political antagonisms...
...If these extremes are to be reconciled in an evolutionary, democratic spirit, not only the Parliament and Herr Springer but also the S.D.S...
...How can they be put to sleep again...
...Themselves full of contradictions, they move about like bulls in a china shop in a society that does not dare to resolve its own contradictions...
...Can there be any more glaring and more frightening proof that misunderstanding between workers and students can and does foment hostility between workers and students...
...The students pointed at the House of Springer...
...The lone odd-ball and would-be murderer swelled into a triggerhappy army: He, the solitary friend of his motorcycle, had merely carried out the plans which busy pens on many desks had been sketching for many months...
...The true victims of persecution are defenseless against the falsification and banalization of their Calvary...
...The justified protest movement of the young people, which is not limited to students, must be saved from irrationalism if it is to become effective and if an entire generation is not once again to relapse into apolitical resignation merely because its utopian goals could not be attained...
...There is no point in getting excited about the rapid growth of the N.P.D...
...My suggestion is that the S.D.S., especially in Munich and Berlin, where it has been at fault for fomenting irresponsible actions, should withdraw from its position of leadership, which is in any case questionable...
...The answer to their justified protest is not appeasement but reform...
...The student protest movement ceases to be convincing when it adopts the impure methods of its political adversaries...
...A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book...
...What I hold up to those who share the responsibility —the spokesmen of the S.D.S...
...Even if Minister of Economics Karl Schiller has led the West German economy out of the pit, things will continue to go downhill with this country as long as the Great Coalition under the former National Socialist Kurt Georg Kiesinger blocks every alternative and makes the N.P.D...
...The young people are no longer willing to assume the debts of their fathers and grandfathers without discussion...
...And after the attempt on Dutschke's life the actions of certain student organizations, especially the S.D.S.,1 unleashed a movement of counterviolence...
...No concern of ours...
...This once again so disastrous German revolution and the counterrevolution it inevitably provoked are characterized by false notes, theatrical gestures, and presumption...
...But thus far this grave mistake has only provoked scholastic discussions: Where does violence begin...
...The mistaken decisions of Party Chairmen Willy Brandt and Herbert Wehner must be reversed in order that this country may again have a strong opposition capable of development...
...It has become fashionable either to lump the whole younger generation together in a blanket condemnation, or else to applaud it blindly on the ground that "the young people are our future...
...A house painter...
...Was that shot really fired by Kurras alone...
...with new voters...
...Either it will bring about long-overdue reforms, ranging from student representation to parliamentary reform and the replacement of the NATO treaty by an all-European TWO BY GUNTER GRASS peace including the Warsaw Pact countries, or else nothing will happen, and then the uncertainty that has now been laid bare will provide false prophets with promising markets and free advertising...
...He reeled off all manner of true and half-true explanations: the peasants' resentment of the government...
...So far, ladies and gentlemen, I have been obliged to concern myself almost exclusively with the extremist camps in this partly political, partly biological conflict...
...On one side: "Expropriate Springer...
...this emotional reaction inevitably effaced the beginnings of reflection...
...They can promote discussion between workers and students and so counter the uncompromising extremism that threatens to create a ruinous division among our people...
...Let us look back: On June 2, 1967, in Berlin the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by Police Officer Karl-Heinz Kurras...
...must begin to show some understanding...
...Of course it is morally rewarding to play the heroic fireman in the midst of incendiaries, and anyone who wants to can sit for quite some time rather uncomfortably— I speak from experience—between two stools until, yes, until he falls to the floor...
...OF COURSE IT IS LAUDABLE to go on talking the language of reason...
...And since epi gones can seldom answer for their own acts, the House of Springer likens itself to the per secuted Jews and the spokesmen of the pro TWO BY GUNTER GRASS test movement liken themselves to the oppressed Negroes...
...they are obvious...
...Even at the family board fathers are called to account: "Look here, Greece is a member of NATO and NATO is supposed to be deCopyright © 1968 by Hermann Luchterhand Verlag GmbH, Neuwied and Berlin...
...acquiesced in Herr Kiesinger's Chancellorship...
...The actual murder weapon, they declared, was the open and veiled appeals to violence of the Springer press, especially its Berlin papers...
...No concern of ours...
...But anyone who imagines that the only 3 On this date, the state visit of the Shah of Iran in Berlin occasioned tumultuous student demonstrations during which the German student Ohnesorg was shot by Police Officer Kurras...
...they protest, demonstrate, and laugh at the rules of our domesticated democracy...
...the repercussions of the Easter disorders, and so on...
...Where does it stop...
...There ought to have been a preparatory pause, fol...
...would not have veered toward utopianism and radicalism had it not been expelled from the S.P.D...
...Let's face it...
...Neither attitude is free from opportunism...
...The following speech was delivered by Gunter Grass on May 1, 1968, in Hildesheim, and published in Der Spiegel, May 1968...
...In both cases the drivers stepped on the gas...
...The Springer papers, especially Bild, had been calling for violence, for "self-help...
...I should much rather speak of the authentic youth protest, which is aimed at reforms and evolutionary changes but finds less and less of a hearing...
...What the opponents of the student protest move ment expected happened...
...might openly unite...
...Yet this country has not deserved to have the House of Springer share in its government, extending its pressure even to the Parliament, or to be driven by a few desperate revolutionaries—desperate because there is no basis for their revolution—into a civil war hysteria which, to clo , e the circle, provides the Springer press with banner headlines and the N.P.D...
...LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I have no other weapon than the word, my possibilities are limited...
...way to save democracy is to suppress the S.D.S...
...But who in this country is willing to listen to a plea for tolerance...
...But didn't this solitary odd-ball say that the murder of Mar tin Luther King had inspired him to pick him self out a King and shoot him down...
...should abandon this alliance before it is destroyed by the alliance...
...And now the question arises: Who was responsible...
...Violence was answered with violence, windowpanes were smashed, fires set, stones hurled, and records thrown into disorder...
...In this it has been successful, but it is far from certain where this success will lead...
...but when objects are used by persons, when the throwing of stones gets out of control, then scholastic discussion must cease...
...Not only our parliamentary democracy, but also the oldest democratic party of Germany, is in need of far-reaching reforms...
...No less a man than Chancellor Kiesinger sent a message of sympathy to Frau Dutschke and thereupon proceeded to defend the National Democrats against the accusation of complicity...
...let the leaders of the S.D.S...
...Violence against persons, no...
...We know the marksman's name, 2 we have seen the list of his previous convic 2 The reference is to Bachmann, the would-be murderer of Rudi Dutschke, who had portraits of Hitler, painted by himself, hanging in his room...
...so we borrow...
...But as a member of the National Socialist Party from 1933 to 1945 he should not permit himself, and we should not permit him, to hold the office of Chancellor...
...When after the events of June 2, 1967, 8 Mayor Alberti of Berlin, Senator Busch, and Police Chief Duensing were asked—and rightly so—to resign, they did indeed resign...
...with something more than the usual verbal appeasements, the parties represented in the Parliament, and first of all the S.P.D., must make up their minds to perform a political act...
...I advise the S.D.S...
...Since May 1 is a political TWO BY GUNTER GRASS holiday, I should like to devote the few minutes still at my disposal to a plea against any further hardening of positions...
...The S.D.S...
...The Social Democrats should look for their allies not to the Right of themselves, but among the young protesters, now helpless and left to their own resources...
...Seldom have newspapers and illustrated magazines found more rewarding material...
...How could it allow shallow intrigue and petty bureaucracy to alienate first the Socialist Student League and then the Social Democratic University League from the party...
...And he tried to allay the alarm of our neighbors by defending the N.P.D...
...that is the role of the liberal, the useful idiot in the service of one or the other side, the Simple Simon who still believes that a socialist democracy can be built by evolutionary methods...
...And just as he painted and exhibited his pictures in his room, he himself was painted and his picture exhibited to the public: An odd-ball...
...In Berlin and Hamburg, students tried to stop Springer trucks...
...go on defining violence as coldly and technically as if the deaths of the last few weeks had resulted from traffic accidents...
...And now suddenly the Germans have been seized with unrest...
...A lunatic with a police record...
...Arrogant politicians, corrupted by power, are expertly engaged in eroding the substance of the constitutional state...
...it comprises several groups which freely discuss their possibilities and manias together...
...Trade unionists and Social Democrats, in Berlin and elsewhere, mobilize the workers against the students...
...I have not come here to make a secret of my skepticism...
...as long as Herr Kiesinger, through the revalorization of his political past, revalorizes the N.P.D...
...At the same time I call on the Social Democratic University League to abandon its policy of solidarity at any price with its political allies, in other words, to stop covering the mistakes of the S.D.S...
Vol. 16 • March 1969 • No. 2
