The German Europe

Prompted by the reset in thinking brought about by the euro crisis, there has been a flurry of publications dealing with a possible future of Europe recently. To begin with Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Guy Verhofstadt – both of the rarest of species: Well known Members of the European Parliament (EP) – published their federalist manifesto Debout l'Europe! Martin Schulz, President of the EP weighed in with his entry tellingly entitled The Tied Up Giant – Europe's Last Chance. Jürgen Habermas has also made his voice heard with an essay Zur Verfassung Europas. Even that weathercock of the subject du jour, Bernard-Henri Levy, has co-signed a manifesto on Europe ou le chaos? together with a number of other European writers.

Ulrich Beck with his short essay on The German Europe fits right into this – important – fad. In his book, he provides a criticism of the current state of Europe, while at the same time putting forward a new Rousseauian social contract for a better future Europe. His is an integrationist vision that he proclaims a necessity for Europe if it is to be “capable of finding answers for [today's] fundamental transformation and great challenges without falling into the trap of xenophobia and violence.”

For Beck, Europe has become German in a process that is determined by economic might on the one hand and “Merkiavelli's” (in)action on the other hand. Said inaction is what in particular reinforces German power. It is not the fear to be dominated by German money – or tanks – that prompts the submission to German policy preferences, it is the all-dominating fear – inherently part of modernity's risk society – of a forced exit from the Euro prompted by the absence of German money that results in the political might of the country.

This German inaction has been described and criticized (Beck: “Germany has become too powerful to allow itself not to take a decision”) elsewhere of course, Beck's analysis is nothing new in this regard then. It also comes up surprisingly short when he claims that Merkel had seized her chance and changed the balance of power in Europe. Even while admits himself, that the current situation is untenable with the crisis still very much – and once again – raging.

Germany's hesitant action at every recurring point of deep crisis might be sufficient to contain the problem of the day; an end to the crisis per se cannot come without deep structural and institutional solutions. Current German might in that regard is merely a temporary phenomenon based on a specific politico-economic problem-set that allows the country to position itself as a normative model whose policy solutions others are expected to apply.

This temporary and sectoral – because economic – hegemony might of course be translated into a more enduring institutional and structural format once a sort of new European Union (2.0) has emerged. Yet, Germany has so far produced little but a cacophony of voices advocating changes with little tangible proposals emanating from the supposed leader of the pack. It is is difficult to argue then that Merkel has – at least so far – managed to implement a lasting shift of powers within the EU's complex governance system.

Beck finally lays out his vision for a social contract for Europe. He regards this kind of contract as the overcoming of an out-dated national state of existence – Nationalzustand. Europe of course is not a society though, which means that a “post-national society of national societies” has to be constructed instead. The fact that there is no European people hardly matters in this regard since our societies are increasingly individualized in the first place.

The Erasmus generation were to live this kind of individualized European life horizontally already, even while the vertical, institution-oriented process of integration, prompts their criticism of Brussels. For Beck, this new social contract needs to be accompanied by more social security at the European level especially to address youth unemployment in Southern Europe. Increased integration furthermore were to go along with an increased bottom-up democratization process, leading to aforementioned individuals emerging as the sovereign of European democracy.

The German sociologist lays out an interesting vision of a German Europe, dominated by Merkiavelli's government. Yet, his analysis is a disappointingly temporal nature, not taking into account demographic, economic, nor even institutional changes, that will seriously impact the intra-EU balance of power as he presents it. His proposed social contract, finally, is an interesting idea that Beck seems to have no idea how it could be implemented though.

Lords of Finance

For many years people believed [...] that an economic cataclysm of the magnitude of the Great Depression could only have been the result of mysterious and inexorable tectonic forces that governments were somehow powerless to resist. Contemporaries frequently described the Depression as an economic earthquake, blizzard, maelstrom, deluge. All these metaphors suggested a world confronting a natural disaster for which no single individual or group could be blamed. To the contrary, in this book I maintain that the Great Depression was not some act of God or the result of some deep-rooted contradictions of capitalism but the direct result of a series of misjudgments by economic policy makers, some made back in the 1920s, others after the first crises set in - by any measure the most dramatic sequence of collective blunders ever made by financial officials.

Liaquat Ahamed tells the story of 1929, the Great Depression, and the bankers who broke the world in his Lords of Finance. He focuses extensively on the main financial protagonists of the time (most importantly: Hjalmar Schacht, Benjamin Strong, Montagu Norman, Émile Moreau) as well as their antagonists (mainly: Keynes) in order to recount the policy failures that led from the Paris peace conference in 1919 to German hyperinflation in the 1920s and ultimately to the bust of 1929 and the ensuing global depression. His book is a gripping piece of personalized historical writing.

Most eerily and pertinent for today are undoubtedly the many similarities of the situation in Europe at the moment with what happened at the time. While policy makers clearly have drawn some lessons from the past and the kind of complete societal and economic breakdown of the 1930s has not repeated itself, there are enough worrisome comparisons that still apply. Whereas today the PIIGS owe more than they will be able to pay, at the time it was Germany stuck in the same situation. And while back then it was the strict adherence to the gold standard that worsened the economic situation in the UK, US, and Germany, it is today the Euro, which forces Spain and others through a deflationary, low growth (even recessionary), high unemployment period.

Of course superficially comparable situations will not necessarily result in the same horrifying course of events, but a study of the past makes one also painfully aware of how much of déjà vû the structural monetary and financial problems of the European debt crisis really is.

Iron Curtain

Anne Applebaum of Gulag: A History fame - within certain circles in any case - has recently published another historical account Iron Curtain - The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944 - 1956. As Eastern European history has been one of my more current fads - following Snyder's Bloodlands and Mink's Vie et mort du bloc soviétique, I am currently reading Tony Judt's Postwar - her new book fits right in. It helped to peak my interest of course that Applebaum is married to one of the more impressive European statesmen of the day, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski - check out his great speeches at the DGAP in Berlin and at the Blenheim Palace in the UK if interested.

Back to the Iron Curtain though, in it the author attempts to explain how a whole region, Central and Eastern Europe, but heavily concentrating on East Germany, Poland, and Hungary, came not just under the sway but the totalitarian control of the USSR. Applebaum's book ends where Mink's process of désoviétisation sets in with the uprisings in East Germany (1953), Poznan (1956), and Hungary (also 1956). Her focus lies on the preceding soviétisation then, the establishment of national Communist regimes subservient to the USSR.

Applebaum's book sets in with the conquest of the Red Army of Poland, where it allowed the remnants of the Wehrmacht to crush the Warsaw Uprising killings hundreds of thousands and indirectly undercutting any sizable armed opposition to Soviet-instilled rule. She moves on to the raping and pillaging of Eastern Germany followed by the creation of ethnically homogeneous nation-states in the geographically newly established Poland, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, et al. What follows is the sly takeover of national Communist parties dominated by Moscow cadres and thus to the detriment of not only non-Communist politicians of all colors but also oftentimes of convicted Communists having spent the war in their home country or in Western exile. Early post-war all-party coalition governments were often led by non-Communist leaders, while the Communists concentrated on strategically important régalien ministries such as defense, justice, interior, et al. Direct Soviet control was usually exerted over the most important propaganda tool of the day, radio, and the swiftly established repressive secret police force. A number of disappointing electoral results led to the forceful establishment of totalitarian Communist power involving a whole number of show trials diminishing opposition politicians ranging from the far-right (fascist collaborators) to social-democrats and even non-Stalinist Communists.

All in all a fascinating account of a history whose outlines one might be familiar with but whose details provide interesting insights into the emptiness of Stalinist propaganda, its excessive economic and political failures, but also the naivety of national as well as Soviet cadres, and finally their nonetheless successful - if temporary - establishment of totalitarian regimes.

Once again reviews abound (the New Yorker's might be the best, the Washington Post also had one, here is the Telegraph, the New York Times and the Guardian).

Bloodlands

Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin made a lot of noise when it came out in 2010, mostly because of its perceived moral equation of Hitler's and Stalin's crimes. Personally, I am not sure Snyder is even interested in the moral question though, for me he simply states that there is a striking geographic overlap in the areas where both Soviet Communists and German Nazis had most of their victims. 

These Bloodlands - between Eastern Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltics and Western Russia - suffered from the Ukrainian famine, the concomitant invasion and occupation by Germany and the USSR in 1939, followed by a second invasion for the formerly USSR-occupied regions in 1941, the starvation of millions of Soviet soldiers, the Holocaust in both its early (bullets) as well as late (gas) stages, and finally reconquest by the Red Army with the Wehrmacht leaving a bloody trail on its way back to Germany.

It's essentially an absolutely horrifying account of the unprovoked killings of 14 million civilians in a 12-year span.

There is little that I feel I can truly contribute to this debate, which involves far too many outlets and national perceptions as it is (hier in der Zeit, the NYRB, ou Le Monde) and I will let historians figure out whether Snyder's Fascism-Communism comparison holds true or not:

Hitler and Stalin thus shared a certain politics of tyranny: they brought about catastrophes, blamed the enemy of their choice, and then used the death of millions to make the case that their policies were necessary or desirable. Each of them had a transformative Utopia, a group to be blamed when its realisation proved impossible, and then a policy of mass murder that could be proclaimed as a kind of ersatz victory. (Wikipedia)

Let me just say that as someone possessing slightly above average knowledge of the history of the Third Reich I discovered relatively little new in Bloodlands concerning the atrocities committed by the Germans - and, yet, even there specific events especially in Belarus and Warsaw I was little familiar with - while the account of the Soviet crimes perpetrated during those years were revelatory and for the most part completely new to me.

You Can't Go Home Again

Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again is a big tome of almost 700 pages that I had initially only picked up because of its descriptions of Berlin  in 1936. That part - even though a highlight for me - only makes up the last fifth of the book though, most of the rest deals with the self-styled protagonist's relationship with his - Southern - town of origin, then his life in New York as as an emerging famous writer and then in a self-induced exile in Brooklyn. 

Wolfe is a strong writer capable of portraying the society around him and especially his protagonist's unease with it in a powerful manner.

He wanted to see the town as he remembered it. Evidently he would find it considerably changed. But what was this that was happening to it? He couldn't make it out. It disturbed him, vaguely, as one is always disturbed and shaken by the sudden realization of time's changes in something that one has know all one's life.

or

He never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.

Yet, I felt that his novel got out of hand at times, losing itself in the details and minutiae of a party or the antics of the young writer's editor. More importantly maybe, I was deceived by the latter part of the book consecrated to Berlin and Germany. To start out, the protagonist - in a friendly manner - mocks his German friends accents in English when they are taking him to the train station, even while it becomes obvious quickly that he - as far too many Anglo-Saxons I fear - has at most a basic understanding of the language himself. In turn, how am I to take his assessment of anything going on in Germany at face value if his primary mode of communication in the country is a language other than the native one?

Still, his description provides a powerful imagery of the Olympic Games in Nazi Berlin:

And there were great displays of marching men, sometimes ungunned but rhythmic as regiments of brown shirts went swinging through the streets. By noon each day all the main approaches to the games, the embannered streets and avenues of the route which the Leader would take to the stadium, miles away, were walled in by the troops. They stood at ease, young men, laughing and talking with each other - the Leader's body-guards, the Schutz Staffel units, the Storm Troopers, all the ranks and divisions in their different uniforms - and they stretched in two unbroken lines from the Wilhelm-strasse up the arches of the Brandenburger Tor. Then, suddenly, the sharp command, and instantly there would be the solid smack of ten thousand leather boots as they came together with the sound of war.

It seemed as if everything had been planned for this moment, shaped to this triumphant purpose. But the people - they had not been planned. Day after day, behind the unbroken wall of soldiers, they stood and waited in a dense and patient throng. These were the masses o the nation, the poor ones of the earth, the humble ones of life, the workers and the wives, the mothers and the children - and day after day they came and stood and waited. They were there because they did not have money enough to buy the little cardboard squares that would given them places within the magic ring. From noon till night they waited for just two brief and golden moments of the day: the moment when the Leader went out to the stadium, and the moment when he returned.

Educated Migrants and Self-Exclusion

Gran Tourismo Travels posted an interesting interview with Paul Sullivan who runs Slow Travel Berlin. I appreciate the underlying concept and idea laid out in the interview as well as - to some extent - both websites. According to Paul slow travel were to mean

Taking your time around a city, not rushing, resisting the urge to follow itineraries, and interacting with local people and local culture, using local businesses, and using public transport and bicycles. Dropping in to a place and just doing your own thing, or knowing the ‘rules’ and breaking them.

I have never really traveled any other way, so I am not certain how much of a novel concept this is and whether it requires its own moniker. Whatever though, I adhere to most of the ideas and Paul's website seems well done/researched and I probably should recommend him for his initiative trying to - at the margins - change mass tourism.

Yet, what struck me in the aforementioned interview is a topic I have blogged about before and that I do not seem to be able to shake, namely Berlin and its recent influx of white liberal Europeans (and Americans) who stay ignorant of the city they choose to live in to an extent that I find simply astonishing.

According to Paul 'there’s a resistance to capitalism [in Berlin], a leftover of the legacy of communism perhaps.' You have never heard of Kreuzberg pre-reunification I assume? The squats of the 80s, the Wehrpflichtflüchtigen, the riots around May 1st? Even in the early part of the 20th century Berlin was redder than the rest of the country. That's just slight historical ignorance though, let's ignore it in turn.

More importantly Paul believes that 'many [...] Berliners [...] work in the international creative industries and are used to speaking English and are open to foreigners.' Well, yeah, actually, you know what? No! Most Berliners live in parts of the city most young, educated migrants to Berlin - whether German or foreign - never go to. Spandau, Reinickendorf, Hohenschönhausen, Marzahn, the whole South West, the list goes on. These people might speak English to some extent or another but they most definitely do not work in 'international creative industries' or are 'used to speaking English.' Arguably most of them aren't even 'open to foreigners' even when they might themselves be of Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese or Yugoslav origin. They are also not the 'handful of anarchists who hate tourists' by the way.

Really what this - and soyons honnête - most of the Slow Travel website hints at is the self-exclusion and incestuous nature of most expats living in Berlin (or really anywhere else). Let's face it, if you come to Berlin without knowing German, you will gain nothing but an extremely fleeting, superficial comprehension of the city - no matter how slow you travel. Hanging out with other expats and tourists in English-language bookshops in Kreuzberg will not give you a proper understanding of Berlin either.

Point being? I am not sure. I really like the website actually. There is good research in a piece on the Pfaueninsel and a literary take on the Kudamm. Yet, I am repeatedly irked by the all too common perception of Berlin as the party town consisting essentially of the inner-city areas populated by cool people. I lived close to Barbès in Paris, I currently live near Bab Souika in Tunis, here are two women describing their quartier in Lichterfelde, I sympathize with the goals set out by the slow travel movement, in fact I try to live it on a daily basis. Paul's comments cited above make me think of my well-educated, bourgeois Tunisian acquaintances who were absolutely shocked at seeing the Ennahda, the Islamist party, handily win elections here. You need to leave your bubble if you want to know what's going on. Ironically, Paul's website tries do that even while he fails at it in his interview.

Publius Abroad Update

Just a few updates on what I've written on my Publius Abroad blog:

On the Eurozone, don't expect this to be over before 2013 and reconsidering it. Additionally, Germany's Master Plan for Europe or rather lack of it.

And a statistical and graphical breakdown of final electoral results in Tunisia.

Publius Abroad

I am running a new endeavor by the way. Publius Abroad

Here my first three posts on Tunisian elections, the Bundestag's decision on the Eurozone crisis last week, and the following summit.

White liberal European immigrants in Berlin

Joel Alas, in the English edition of the Tagesspiegel, denounces the 'demonizing of “international party tourists” (which includes longer-term foreigners who remain for months or years)' as 'a form of racism and xenophobia.' For him:

The arguments used against foreigners – rising rents, noisy streets, neighbourhood upheaval – should be directed toward the government policies which have enabled such changes, and the landlords who have taken advantage of deregulated rental prices. Stop blaming foreigners for Berlin’s political and economic structural problems.

Mark Espiner touts a similar horn in his article Berlin doesn't love you focusing on Neukölln. Yet, especially Alas, completely misunderstands the premise of the wave of criticism that has hit Berlin's party tourists and offers a Todschlagargument in response that it impossible to counter but that is simply invalid.

It is not because of racism that these short- and longer-term foreigners are met with a (semi-)hostile attitude. Rather one has to clearly differentiate between classic immigration waves of Turks, Poles or Serbs, which intended to (re)create their lives in Berlin and modern party tourists. The problem with the latter lies in their superficial presence in Berlin. They live there in passing only, without necessarily truly knowing the language, without regard nor knowledge of German or Berlin history or literature. They are part of Berlin but not of it as Churchill might put it.

Don't get me wrong, most of my recent Berlin friends are foreigners. I personally lived in Paris until a few days ago only and am now residing in Tunis. I like foreigners, I am one myself most of the time. But I speak and write French, I lived in Paris as a Parisian surrounded by French friends, speaking French, reading French literature and newspapers, listening to French music. In Tunisia now, I am starting to learn Arabic tomorrow. I will not restrict myself to German or French friends. In fact, I despise expat community living.

Yet, that is what most Western foreigners coming to Berlin do. They come for the party, for the cheap rents. They come for the fun, not to truly live there. Why the sudden emergence of English language editions of German newspapers? Isn't it just a question of common courtesy to speak the language of the place where you live? Especially since most of the people we are talking about here have at least finished their undergraduate studies, if not more?

If you're an American living in Paris, not speaking French, hanging out with your American friends or obliging your few French ones to speak English or if you're a German living in Mallorca doing the same thing, it is not racist to say that you're not contributing to the cohesiveness of the respective society, rather you're abetting its stratification. It is not xenophobic to say that you are contributing to gentrification (as do all the German middle class folks moving into cool neighborhoods of course) and the further exclusion of less well-earning parts of the general populace. Rather it is a denial of reality to claim that 'white liberal European immigrants' have not significantly changed Berlin - and not just in a good way, but that is a discussion that such be led without cheapshot arguments invoking the Nazi-threat without naming it and, quite honestly, it should also be led in German. Zumindest dann, wenn Du wirklich ein Berliner bist und willst, daß auch der Teil der Bevölkerung, der kein Englisch kann, daran teilnehmen soll.

Misconceptions about North Rhine-Westphalia

Outside of Germany the important conservative voter loss in North Rhine Westphalia is most often ascribed to the German populace's distaste over the aid to Greece (see The New York Times, Le Monde, or even academics such as Stephen Walt). This kind of assessment can at best be described as simplistic, at worst it is simply wrong, an impression which is easily be confirmed by a quick look at the polls.

According to the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (the most important German poll institute) 42% of respondents considered employment the most important subject of these elections, while an astonishing 41% were of the opinion that the education system were the most important issue. Finally, the third-most often named problematic was the financial situation of local communes (more than twice removed from the European level) with 17%.

When asked to to estimate the importance of specific topics more than 75% considered education policy to be relevant. Only then followed the Greek crisis with 54% believing it to be an important topic. Lastly, 38% deemed the conservative party's donation affairs to be truly relevant.

The importance of education policy helped the social democrats who were seen as more competent in this matter (34% vs 27% for the conservatives) and allowed them to claim 140,000 voters from the CDU. In general, the elections were decided by those not voting more than anyone else though. The CDU lost 330,000 voters who simply didn't show up and an additional 110,000 voting for parties without any chance of entering the parliament.

To sum up, it is far from certain how important the German loans to Greece were in these elections. Arguably, it is not even certain whether their impact was positive or negative in the first place. After all 58% of respondents are satisfied with Merkel's role in the crisis and only 32% are not content with her. On the other hand, 48% are not convinced by the current measures (before Sunday night) against the crisis with only 40% being supportive. Yet, maybe most importantly, 72% of respondents usually voting for the CDU are content with how Germany has handled the crisis most recently.

While the German populist media has been rallying for months against money being spent on the lying and cheating Greeks, it is far from established how this has impacted elections in North Rhine Westphalia. What can be said with certainty is that it was not the most important issue of these elections and that international media playing it up are offering a misguided analysis.

Farbspiele - Color Games

Commenting on North Rhine-Westphalia's election results on the Monkey Cage.

Short linguistical remark

Living in France, I am quite regularly asked 'de quelle origine je serais.' In Germany of course the question would be: "Woher kommst Du?" I feel this linguistical difference (What are my origins/sources vs Where are you from) stands for the differing perceptions of nationality in Germany and France. In France one is French if one has a passport, even if one lives here to some extent. When I meet someone on the basketball court (like yesterday) and we start talking, his assumption is that I am French, yet he wants to know where my slight (or massive depending on your point of view) accent stems from. When that same encounter takes place in Germany, the assumption is that the not-accent-free person is not German. This is not intended as some kind of a racist charge against Germans (far from it because trust me the French can give the Germans a run for their money most days of the week) but instead seems to point to a larger problem of integration into Germany which is far more difficult (if not impossible) as long as being German is defined by one's roots not one's life. In France (and the United States btw) where nationality is not based on blood but instead on the adherence to some (ill-defined of course) greater belief the situation is completely different.

Life in Berlin

Coming home for a weekend and jumping right back into life there seems so easy. I carried my sister's and her boyfriend's crap up the stairs for three hours. I had drinks with my ol-timey friends, coffee in the Bergmannstr with more recent ones. Yet, having spent so much time away changes one's perceptions, makes one have a stranger's point of view more than that of an inhabitant at various points.

Case in point. I went swimming Sunday, left Berlin and spent the afternoon at a lake, drinking beers, lying in the sun, discussing life and the such. Good times. The point isn't that I hadn't been at the Sacrower See in ages, nor that things seemingly hadn't changed with the old east-German Datschas still standing, but rather that I was shocked, well not not shocked, surprised would be more appropriate, at the number of naked kids, bare-breasted women and nude adults in general that were hanging out there. A few years ago I probably would have not even noticed this, but yesterday it struck me as a rather specific German cultural element. In France or Spain women might go topless at times, in the US, Turkey or Italia (talking about countries I decently know thus) this virtually never happens and even in the aforementioned countries full nudity is rather rare.

The popular explanation for this peculiar German trait relates it to the oppressive East-German regime which led people to some kind of inner emigration (to the beach) and liberation (by taking off their clothes). While there undoubtedly is some truth to this theory, FKK (Freikörperkultur - free body culture) apparently was far more popular in Eastern Germany than the rest of the country, it does not seem to offer a sufficient explanation as it discounts the Austrian and West German FKKs. Can I offer a better explanation then? No, sorry. I will pass it along if I come across something though.

Hitler, Nazis and so on and forth

So, I've been spending too much time on the Third Reich lately, but what can I do, it's fascinating, the dark side of human existence, whatever. Maybe I'm just dumb and incapable to devote my attention to more current and relevant(?) events. In any case, I spent a decent amount of time on youtube and ina.fr today looking at old footage, after having read 3-4 books on this topic the last few weeks. Youtube being what it is, there is a massive amount of crap on there (old and new songs celebrating Pétain for example, and no I didn't even look for any of these on Hitler, no tolerance for that kind of shit).

To make a long story short, I found this video (or refound it, I had known about it). It was done by a German comedian who also made a comic about Hitler who has survived the war and is confronted with life as we know it. Moers (the author, writer) makes me chuckle I have to admit it. But is that legitimate? Am I even allowed to laugh at this (not that I really do, but you get my point I think/hope)? Can you poke fun at this man by making him seemingly ridiculous and pitiable. I mean he was ridiculous, but not in the sense conveyed here. Definitely more questions than answers, I wish I had some (answers that is).

Zwölf Jahre

I am writing about a book I read in German today (only had the translated version), but I cannot get myself to write in German for some reason. Maybe a way to distance myself, maybe just showing off, maybe I just feel more comfortable writing in English nowadays. I have spent most of the last five-six years doing just that after all. I haven't been very busy on this thing here (the word blog seems so...limiting?), mostly because I spend my life studying for two of the most important exams I've ever taken, and when I say life I mean it.

Anyway, today I again went to the library early in the morning and read a book about the German legislative system. I just couldn't do it anymore after a while though, so I went home instead and finished my subway reading material, Joel Agee's Twelve Years - An American Boyhood in Eastern Germany. Now, this book is special in the sense that I actually know the author. He and his wife are friends of my parents, I have spent time with them in New York and will actually be seeing them this Saturday (the knowledge of which inspired me to finally pick up his book in the first place). So what does this mean? I am not quite sure, maybe that I was positively disproposed towards the book, maybe that I wouldn't have been as critical as necessary if I wouldn't have liked it? I have no idea.

Good news first, I really liked this book. I finished it today in 3-4 hour reading session and spent 30 minutes on the internet afterwards trying to find out more about some of the (real-life) characters. Joel is the son of James Agee (quite the famous writer to have as a father, not very relevant for the rest of his story though) and Alma Mailman/Agee/Uhse. His mom went to Mexico with him where she married a German communist and writer, Bodo Uhse (who himself has an interesting life-story, being a left-wing Nazi in the 1920s only to become a communist in the 30s). The Uhse family (sorry all you label-centered feminists) then moved to the Soviet-occupied zone in 1948. In his novel, Joel, more or less liberally, recounts his years in Germany, the German Democratic Republic actually. Some of it is very personal and in that sense not related neither to the time-period nor the geographic location, his first sexual experiences and his difficulties with them, but also his driftlessness, his lack of direction, of application. Other parts are more directly connected to his unique position an American Jew growing up in Germany in the 1950s, the rigid party rule, the blind obedience for which Germans then (and now) are famous for.

I really liked this book, I can only recommend it to all of you. Especially maybe people that know Germany but don't come from here or at least have managed to gain some kind of an outsider's perspective on it.

Erich Honecker and the German population at large

So, I found this out completely randomly while reading the Stauffenberg book and I feel it is highly indicative of how much Hitler and his fellow cronies managed to control the German population (whether through violent repression, by instilling a deep and profound belief in the Nazi-ideology. How much the German population finally was broken whether morally (because of their belief system) or physically (through a combination of hunger, allied bombings and (most important in this regard) Nazi-terror).

Erich Honecker (yes, that Honecker) at the time just one of many imprisoned Communists (and thus in posession of sympathy on the part of the reader, as the common enemy of one's enemy, as one of the few good (and brave) guys in a Germany that was sorely lacking them) fled his prison in Brandenbuerg-Goerden in early March 1945. So far so good. The incredible thing is that he decided to return to his prison, to return to his work unit because he had to realize that attempting to organise resistance against the Nazis even at this point in time was doomed to failure and would only lead to his almost assured immediate death, which considering the imminent Soviet invasion would have been a futile course of action.

To repeat this, he went back into imprisonement because the German population didn't even feel it worth trying to become active against the NSDP-dictatorship in 1945! Apparently he wasn't even the only one that did this either. What a fuckin' sad state of affairs.

Money and Security

Hubert Zimmermann, a German author, wrote Money and Security. Troops, Monetary Policy, and West Germany's Relations with the United States and Britain, 1950-1971 in English, even while focusing on a part of German history I had been embarassingly unaware of. I will not focus too much on it, as I plan on using it in my master thesis and an economics paper that I have to write.

Let it suffice to say that Zimmermann, shows in a very conscise and convincing manner how Germany came under pressure from the United States (and to a lesser extent Britain) because of the foreign exchange surplus that foreign troops in Germany created for the mark. Because these troops had to be paid in German money, Germany ran a balance-of-payments surplus for years on end (not only because of that though, but this was responsible for a large part of it).

The United States continously during the 1960s tried the German government to offset this deficit (for the US), succeeding increasingly less over the course of that decade. Highly interesting stuff, the foreign troops in Germany thus directly contributed to the end of the Bretton Woods system. Economy and security as two sides of one and the same coin. Read it. (I am too tired for better posts tonight, sorry)

German Jews in the Resistance 1933-1945

I picked this up on a vist to the German Resistance Memorial Center (worth a visit for anyone coming to Berlin btw, free entry, super interesting and huge exhibition). It was slightly dumb to have it in English, because the original was in German, but that's what I happened to pick up, so that's what I read.

Arnold Paucker in German Jews in the Resistance 1933-1945. The Facts and the Problems gives a historigraphy of the role of German Jews in the Resistance, and with that answers charges that the German Jewry like lambs obeyingly slowly walked into doom. I am not such a big fan of historigraphies usually, they are written too dense, they have too many footnotes, because of their breadth they don't provide enough depth, in the end they are not too pleasant to read. The only pleasures you derive out of having gone through one of them, is the overview, the amount of additional information you have obtained. In this case then, the reading itself was not too much fun, but I found it highly interesting how many Jews were fighting against the Nazi Regime in all kinds of ways possible. The Allies employed a lot in their armies, resistance movements all over Europe had Jewish-German brigades, as did most Communist Groups inside of Germany.

The only problem with this kind of leaflet (70 pages) is of course its briefness, most of the stories hinted at would have been highly interesting to explore further. Hopefully, I will have time for that at some point. The general point is clear though, Jews did fight back, quite massively in fact.

20, July 1944

Tom Cruise will star as Stauffenberg in a movie on Operation Walküre, the biggest coup attempt ever attempted against the Hitler government (check Wikipedia if you never heard of it). Over 200 people sentenced to death, 5,000 arrested after it failed (one of which ironically - to all those familiar with the Revolution 1918/1919 was Gustav Noske, the bloodhound). Admittedly the Gestapo used the coup attempt as a way to settle some scores, yet, considering its scope, a military takeover with the SS being usurped as well as the NSDAP and a civilian government had been prepared as well as a new military leadership, the 20, July 1944 was unparalleled in the history of the Third Reich.

Even though I usually like to watch historical movies and even more so about aspects of history that interest me (I watched the Good German for God's sake, it, well, wasn't that great), I am not going to watch this movie.

Why? A couple of reasons are decisive here:

Tom Cruise sucks. I don't have a problem with him being a member of scientology(I just think he is a moron for being a member of an authoritarian or even totalitarian religious society), but I don't think I have ever seen a movie with him where I came away impressed by his acting.

I don't trust Hollywood to not turn this into a melodramatic movie, with Stauffenberg's love interest riding off into the horizon to classical music in the end.

Finally, I am sick and tired (j'en ai marre! - le francais est vraiment plus fort là) of the overemphasis on the conspirators of the 20th July 1944 and even more so the way are portrayed nowadays. Let's not forget that these same guys supported the Hitler regime until military victory became a virtual impossibility, which is when they decided to act. Their opposition was directed in no sense whatsoever against the extermination of Jews, homosexuals and others. The only reason for their coup-attempt was to enable Germany to escape the shit hole (sorry, but it's true, ain't it?) that the Nazi-government had guided it in (and into which the Germans had proved to be more than willing to be lead).

Their glorification is completely ridiculous in the end. There were so many other people that acted, and for better reasons, and earlier, and braver (meaning alone or in smaller groups with lesser chances of success). My favorite will always remain Georg Elser.

Ah, wirklich also? Ein wenig spät, ihr Herren, die ihr diesen Erzzerstörer Deutschlands gemacht habt, die ihr ihm nachliefet, solange alles gutzugehen schien, die ihr, alle Offiziere der Monarchie, unbedenklich jeden von euch verlangten Treueid schwort, die ihr euch zu armseligen Mamelucken des mit hunderttausend Morden, mit dem Jammer und dem Fluch der Welt belasteten Verbrecher erniedrigt habt und ihn jetzt verratet, wie ihr vorgestern die Monarchie und gestern die Republik verraten habt.
Friedrich P Reck-Malleczewen zum 20.07. 44

Being Jewish 3

I've worn my Yarmulka for a week now and my experiment's original time frame is coming to an end (I haven't yet decided whether I will prolong it for the first week of classes which start tomorrow in order to have a bigger sample and exposure to more people). So far I have not heard one outright antisemitic comment. Yet, two people have commented in a rude manner that at least implicitely made a negative attitude towards jews obvious.

In the store right near my house, the shopkeeper rather incredously asked me: "Is that a Jew hat?" I responded affirmitavily and no real further conversation took place. In the second incident a baldheaded guy in the company of a dude in a German national football jersey uttered to his friend: "That's is a Jew!"

In both cases it was not so much what was so said, but the way in which the word Jew was pronounced, that made clear that these guys had a very negative opinion of Jews. Still, it seems clear that antisemitism is less openly pronounced as I thought it would be up front.

One important aspect should be mentioned though, one that a friend of mine made me aware of: Most people seem simply not to know that a yarmulka is part of the jewish religion. If this is true, and I definitely have come to the conclusion that it is, then of course the experiment has not so much led to the aforementioned conclusion, but rather has failed due to a lack of knowledge on the part of its - unknowning - subjects.