Short Speech by a Rootless Cosmopolitan
Grass, Günter
Shortly before Christmas, on my way to Lauubeck from Gauottingen, I was changing trains in Hamburg when a young man approached me, practically cornered me, and called me a traitor to the...
...and "rapprochement through change" is asking too much—because it's too expensive...
...I am afraid that we Germans will also let slip by this second chance for self-definition...
...The fact is, I fear a Germany simplified from two states into one...
...This understanding of cultural nationhood takes up where the efforts of the St...
...and finally, until its unconditional surrender, as the Greater German Reich...
...What was it that young man in the Hamburg railroad station said...
...Rather, it permits something new: an independent togetherness...
...I reject this simplification, and would be much relieved if it did not come about—either because we Germans finally saw the light, or because our neighbors put their foot down...
...Against Reunification except a few ideas...
...The expression, paired with the term "rootless cosmopolitan,"* belongs to the special vocabulary of German history...
...458 • DISSENT COSMOPOLITAN arouse protest—or, worse, hostility—and I'm thinking not only of the young man in the Hamburg railroad station...
...Never before in their history had the Germans brought down upon themselves such terrifying shame...
...The paper's publishers aren't satisfied to see that communism is bankrupt...
...The strong Deutschmark will see to that...
...The crime of genocide, summed up in the image of Auschwitz, inexcusable from whatever angle you view it, weighs on the conscience of this unified state...
...The megalomania born of their complexes led them not to define themselves as a cultural nation within a federation but instead to insist on the creation of a unified state in the form of a Reich—by any and all means...
...It means a modern, broader concept of culture, and brings together the multiplicity of German culture without needing to assert unity in the sense of a nation-state...
...Paul's assembly failed...
...If sides must be drawn, let me be numbered among the rootless cosmopolitans...
...That site of terror, that permanent injury, makes a future unified German state impossible...
...Der Spiegel, edited by its founder, Augstein, is Germany's only weekly news magazine...
...460 • DISSENT...
...3. A confederation of two German states dovetails better with the current process of European integration than does a single powerful state, since an integrated Europe will itself be confederate in structure and must therefore transcend the traditional divisions into nation-states...
...Its format is patterned on Time, but it specializes in tough investigative reporting and critical commentary...
...Bahr was press secretary to Chancellor Willy Brandt and became one of the architects of Brandt's Ostpolitik...
...at the same time it respects the concerns, even fears, of Germany's neighbors by constitutionally renouncing the goal of unifying into a single state...
...Until then, they were no better and no worse than other peoples...
...Why can't we help the German Democratic Republic, through the institution of a just and long overdue sharing of the burden,** to achieve enough economic and democratic stability that its citizens will find it easier to stay home...
...they want democratic socialism too to be defunct, including Dubcek's dream of "socialism with a human face...
...I realize, of course, that my position will Excerpted from Two States—One Nation...
...Since the mid-sixties, in speeches and articles I have spoken out against reunification and in favor of a confederation...
...Translated from the German by KRISHNA WINSTON with A.S...
...This state laid the foundation for Auschwitz...
...Our capitalists and communists have always had one thing in common: out of hand they condemn the Third Way.** That is why any suggestion that the German Democratic Republic and its citizens have finally achieved autonomy immediately gets shouted down with statistics on the number of people who have fled to the West...
...Anyone thinking about Germany these days and looking for an answer to the German Question must include Auschwitz in his or her thoughts...
...And if such a state is nevertheless insisted upon, it will be doomed to failure...
...At the same time, a confederation is sufficiently sovereign to fulfill both states' obligations to their respective alliances, thereby reinforcing the concept of European security...
...In the GDR, change has occurred as a result of the revolutionary will of the people...
...Eventually, because enough is never enough, we'll succeed, with our strong currency and after formal recognition of Poland's western border, in subjugating economically a large chunk of Silesia and a small chunk of Pomerania, and so once more—following the German fairy-tale pattern—we will be feared and isolated...
...Shortly before Christmas, on my way to Lauubeck from Gauottingen, I was changing trains in Hamburg when a young man approached me, practically cornered me, and called me a traitor to the fatherland...
...The headlines meanwhile create the impression that what triumphed in Leipzig and Dresden, in Rostock and East Berlin, was not the people of the GDR but Western capitalism...
...No, I don't want an obscenely boastful fatherland fattened by swooping down and seizing—though I have nothing at my disposal to prevent the creation of this monster, nothing ** A term used in the GDR and elsewhere for a socialist alternative to Stalinism...
...There is no way to avoid this conclusion...
...Why do we insist on saddling the idea of a German confederation— an idea that could be acceptable to our neighbors—with vague notions borrowed from the 1848 constitutional assembly at St...
...2. A confederation of two German states does not do violence to the postwar evolution of either state...
...Already I fear that reunification, under whatever subterfuge, is inevitable...
...the Springer press conglomerate, now in concert with Rudolf Augstein's flippant epistles in each Monday's Spiegel, with its mass circulation, will see to that and German amnesia will do its part.* In the end we'll number eighty million...
...Briefly—not in ten points, but in five: 1. A German confederation puts an end to the postwar relationship of the two German states, that of one foreign country to another...
...Copyright © 1990 by Luchterhand Literaturverlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Mein...
...Here, once more, I will answer the German Question...
...English translation copyright © 1990 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc...
...That a new identity, painfully acquired over the course of forty years of suppression, has at last asserted itself in a revolution—this is permitted to appear only in small print...
...Isn't a German confederation already more than we ever dared hope for...
...Then, after I had more or less calmly bought myself a newspaper, he approached me again, now with no mild threat but the statement that it was time to do away with my kind...
...Property, yes, they say, but no "people's property," please...
...These days the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is making short shrift of those it labels "leftist intellectuals...
...My initial anger I managed to shake off while still on the platform, but my thoughts kept returning to the incident as I continued on to Lauubeck...
...4. A confederation of two German states points the way to a new, different, and desirable self-definition, one that bears joint responsibility for German history...
...Paul's in Frankfurt or, as if we had no other choice, * The press conglomerate founded by the conservative Axel Springer has among its publications the daily Die Welt and the tabloid daily Bild-Zeitung, read by about five million Germans on their way to work in the morning...
...A German confederation could become a model to emulate...
...Lastenausgleich, or sharing of the burden, refers to legislation passed in postwar West Germany that levied a tax on property that had survived the war, the proceeds going to help refugees and expellees from the eastern provinces get established in the West...
...It formed the power base for the latent anti-Semitism that existed in other places as well...
...Any fatherland of mine must be more diverse, more colorful, more neighborly—a fatherland that has grown, through its suffering, wiser and more open to Europe...
...German title, Deutscher Lastenausgleich...
...It helped provide, horribly, a firm footing for the racial ideology of national socialism...
...Already they are poking their noses in...
...No sooner does one ideology loosen its grip than another swoops down and seizes the prey...
...But the German Question can't be solved by working it out in marks and pfennigs...
...Traitor to the fatherland...
...If you don't toe the line, you won't get anything...
...It eliminates a vile border that also has divided Europe...
...The Western ideology of capitalism, which aims to wipe out every other kind of ideological ism, announces, as if holding a gun to the East Germans' head: A market economy or else...
...We should be aware—as our neighbors are—of how much grief this unified state caused, of what misfortune it brought to others and to ourselves as well...
...WENSINGER * "Change through rapprochement" was put forward by Egon Bahr in a 1963 speech in Tutzing...
...More than two decades ago in Tutzing the notion of "change through rapprochement" was formulated, argued over for a long time, and finally approved.* By now, rapprochement has become accepted policy...
...as the Weimar Republic, precarious from the outset...
...What hasn't changed yet is the Federal Republic of Germany, whose people have been watching the events over there with a mixture of admiration and condescension: "We don't want to tell you what to do, but...
...A unified Germany existed, in varying sizes, for no more than seventy-five years: as the German Reich under Prussian rule...
...Isn't it true that I don't give a damn for a fatherland for whose sake my kind should be done away with...
...Perhaps the young man was right when he spoke that way in cold rage...
...And who wouldn't put up their hands and surrender to the blessings of one whose lack of human decency is so plainly outweighed by his strength and success...
...5. A confederation of two German states sharing one cultural nationhood would provide an example for the solution of different yet comparable conflicts throughout the world, whether in Korea, Ireland, Cyprus, or the FALL • 1990 459 Against Ramification Middle East—wherever one political entity has aggressively established borders or seeks to extend them against another...
...To be a cultural nation in confederative pluralism apparently does not satisfy us...
...With television magazines, women's magazines, family magazines, Sunday papers, and dailies, the conglomerate controls a large portion of the West German press...
...I am already a traitor to this fatherland...
...Help—real help—is given only on West German terms...
...with the model of a super-Federal Republic...
...An all-embracing unity, expanded territory, concentrated economic power—is this the goal we should pursue, or isn't all that far too much...
...He was right...
...Once more we'll be united, strong, and our voice— even if we speak softly—will be loud and clear...
...by Ginter Grass...
...He left me standing there with the phrase echoing in my ears...
...A term used by the right in the thirties to stigmatize German leftist intellectuals, many of whom were Jewish...
...The new instrument of torture will be the market economy...
...It comes down to a choice between a nightmare and a dream...
...To be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc...
...Not even bananas...
...A few additional comments...
...And already they are cashing in...
Vol. 37 • September 1990 • No. 4
