The war in Ukraine reveals generational divisions over what lessons Germany needs to learn from its own history of bloody conflict, as some of the country’s leading artists and intellectuals line up for or against supplying weapons to Kyiv in a series of open letters. .
The first, published in the feminist magazine Emma last Friday, days after the German government announced it would send about 50 Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine, called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to refrain from direct or indirect contributions. additional systems for heavy weapons to the conflict.
Signed by 26 prominent artists and intellectuals, including Emma’s feminist publisher Alice Schwarzer, writers Martin Walser, Juli Ze and Robert Zittaler, directors Andreas Dressen, Alexander Kluge and Helke Sander, and actor Lars Eidinger, the letter condemning Russia’s war. violation of the basic norms of international law ”.
However, the letter claims that it is a mistake to assume that the responsibility for Vladimir Putin’s war, which potentially escalates into a nuclear conflict, “will lie entirely with the original aggressor, not with those who openly offer him a motive for potentially criminal acts ”.
The signatories called on Scholz to address Germany’s “historical responsibility” by helping both sides find a “compromise they can both accept”.
The letter provoked some angry responses, including from the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany. Economy Minister Robert Habeck accused Schwarzer and his co-authors of “vulgar pacifism.”
“What is the conclusion of such a dispute?” The green politician asked. “The main thing is that a little occupation, rape and execution must be acceptable and that Ukraine must capitulate quickly. I don’t think that’s right. “
Another open letter, published Wednesday in the weekly Die Zeit, extended this counter-argument, urging Scholz to continue to support Ukraine’s defense with military equipment.
Initiated by former Green politician Ralph Fuchs and signed by 58 artists and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Herta Mueller, pianist Igor Levitt and German PEN President Deniz Yutzel, the letter said it was preventing Russia from winning in Ukraine. “Lies in Germany interest.”
“Those who want peace through negotiations that do not lead to Ukraine’s submission to Russian demands must increase [Ukraine’s] “defense capabilities and to weaken Russia’s militancy as much as possible,” it said.
Booker-nominated German writer Daniel Kelman, who was another signatory to Zeit’s letter, told the Guardian that he was motivated to include his name in the call after seeing “deep shock and horror” among his Eastern European friends reading Emma. “. letter.
“He seemed to be urging Ukraine to capitulate as soon as possible to end the war,” Kelman said. “This may have been an understandable opinion on the first or second day of the invasion. Now the reality is different: there is a chance that Ukraine will win this war, and we must support its defense efforts in every way, for both moral and tactical reasons.
Kelman said he had some sympathy for Germany’s reluctance to accept military rhetoric in light of its own aggressive past. “When Scholz announced that he would increase military spending, I also instinctively felt strange at the thought of supporting German armaments,” he said.
In a long essay published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on the same day as Emma’s letter, sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas presented the German arms export debate as a generational divide over the application of “aggressively confident” and “screaming” language to military conflict.
The younger generation, embodied on Habermas by 41-year-old German Foreign Minister Analena Burbock, was “educated to be sensitive to regulatory issues” and was only able to “view war through the prism of victory or defeat,” he said. His own generation, the 92-year-old philosopher, seems to suggest “he knows that a war against nuclear power cannot be won in the traditional sense of the word.”
He said the “broad dialogue, a peace-loving focus of German politics” was a “hard-won mentality”, given his experience as an aggressively militaristic state and historically condemned by the right.
But the ability of some Germans to view the war in Ukraine solely through the light of World War II experience has also drawn criticism.
In a radio interview, the 90-year-old Kluge said he was happy to see US troops march in his hometown in 1945 and that “there is nothing wrong with capitulation if it ends the war.” The interview was met with widespread mistrust for the confusion of the historical lessons of an aggressor nation and those of countries that had been attacked by the Germans.
With an average age of 54, the signatories of the letter to Die Zeit are significantly younger and have more multicultural backgrounds than those of the previous letter to Emma, who averaged 76 years.
“One of the lessons of German history must be that you cannot defeat fascism with appeasement,” Kelman said. The writer, whose grandparents were Jewish, added: “It is noteworthy that arguments for a strictly pacifist foreign policy are rarely made by Germans whose relatives died in the Holocaust.
Add Comment