MASTERING THE PAST

Ian IJuruma reports on the conflicting historical fears of East and West Germany

Berlin ABOUT a month before the East Ger- mans effectively voted for a united Ger- many, the novelist Gunter Grass, speaking in the grave voice of German conscience, invoked the legacy of Auschwitz to warn against a revived Greater Germany. The Holocaust, he said, could only have hap- pened in a Grossdeutschland, so let us prevent by all means a repeat perform- ance. Ulrich Oevermann, a professor of sociology, used Auschwitz to argue for the opposite view: only a unified Germany can truly come to grips with the Nazi past. Now, it may seem a little churlish to thwart the aspirations of the much-tried East Germans by holding up Auschwitz as a barrier between them and the good life promised by unification with the Federal Republic; and the notion that the past cannot be faced without a revival of pan-German nationhood is remarkable, to say the least. But one thing cannot be denied: West German intellectuals, espe- cially liberals and leftists, are deeply se- rious about their duty to, as they put it, `labour through' the blackest pages of German history.

This is true of liberal papers and journals such as Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, in which the stream of exposés of Nazi crimes

continues unabated. It is also true of West German television. In one evening I watch- ed a documentary about the German occupation of Scandinavia, a drama about the treatment of Russian prisoners in a German mining town, and a debate on the effect of the Nazi past on German unifica- tion. The horrors of recent history were presented without sentimental shows of mea culpa — an all too common form of self-pity -- and without the slightest attempt at distortion or whitewash.

If the exercise weren't so worthy, and if people weren't so prone to suppress un- comfortable memories, and resent those who insist on bringing them up, one might even call this intellectual preoccupation with history obsessive. Perhaps with good reason, some Germans fear national amne- sia in the way a haemophiliac fears the loss of blood: catastrophe always seems immi- nent — without memory Germany's hard- won freedoms will die. (In West Berlin, a few yards from the Wall, even the rubble of the old Gestapo headquarters is pre- served as an aide-memoire.) But in the case of Grass and others, this has led to an - almost paralysing pessimism about the state of the Federal Republic, the forget- fulness and materialism of whose burghers are added to the list of German sins. Annoyed by these voices of national angst, some conservatives want all this nonsense about death camps to stop, since it stands in the way of what they would like to see as a healthy German identity.

So far, in a nutshell, the situation on the West side of the crumbling Wall. What about the other side? There, the symbols of past and present, distorted for so long by shifting party lines and propaganda, are a little more tangled. Monuments to the recent past are as visible as in the West, but history is presented with a crucial twist: the emphasis is not on the Holocaust, but on the heroic resistance against fascism by the working class, led of course by the Com- munist Party.

Inside the baroque Neue Wache, an eternal flame burns for the 'victims of fascism and militarism'. Outside, soldiers of the Friedrich Engels regiment change guard by goose-stepping down the Unter den Linden, just as Hitler's troops used to do. The spectacle is rendered even more absurd by the presence of tourists snapping pictures. But the shy grins of the boys in field-grey suggest that their hearts may not be in this kind of thing for very much longer.

Next door is the Museum of German History, built originally as an armoury and barracks in the 18th century. Even as elections take place outside to shake off 40 years of communism, inside the museum everything seems exactly as it was, as though nothing has happened. Here one can see, in its pure unadulterated form, German history as imagined by the likes of Erich Honecker. Here we learn, for exam- ple, that Nazism was supported by reac- tionary forces of British and American monopoly capital (as well as the big Ger- man industrial corporations, now about to `invade' the GDR from the West), that the German Communist Party (KPD) was the only party to defend the interests of the working people, that the victims of fascism were comforted by the unceasing struggle and resistance of all progressive forces, led by the Communist Party, and that, with the victory of the Soviet Union over the fascist powers, a fundamentally new order was born which would strengthen peace, demo- cracy and socialism. Clearly, here, there is no need to master the past, for the progres- sive forces have triumphed; they are the victors of history, which has simply fol- lowed its inevitable course, all the way to Ulbricht's and Honecker's Utopia. The fascists are in the West, the heroic resisters in the East.

But I should stop being sarcastic, for something has actually changed in the museum. Right at the beginning, next to the visitors' book and under the old ban- ners of the KPD, is a sign with the following message: 'Dear visitors. This exhibition reflects a view of history meant to justify an increasingly bureaucratic- authoritarian society. As we know now, this stands in the way of a lively and active engagement with history and the present. As we move towards democracy, we must claim responsibility for our mistakes. We shall work hard to offer a new section on 1945-1949 by 1991. Everything must be revised and viewed in a new light. We ask you humbly for your help in showing history as it actually happened.'

As I noted down this touching text, I overheard a shabby museum guard observe to a smartly-dressed West German couple that nothing would actually change. 'The people in charge are the same damned people,' he said. The couple kindly sug- gested that perhaps West German museums might be of help. The guard muttered an obscenity and stomped off.

One hesitates to argue with the cynicism of a man who has been subjected to lies, and nothing but lies, for 40 years. Yet some effort probably will be made to alter the official view of history to fit the changing times. The question is how much, and how, and where to begin. Altering the postwar section alone is obviously unsatis- factory. Moreover, old ideas have a way of sticking around, in fragments, long after the vessels that contained them have been shattered. Just as the Prussian goose-step and the heavy romanticism of Wilhelmi- nian philosophy and art were preserved in the Marxist state, some of the cherished myths and traditions of Marxism will no doubt survive the 1989 Revolution, and even the election of a right-wing govern- ment.

One of the most common myths, cher- ished by romantics on both sides of the Wall, is that a collectivist society is war- mer, more virtuous, more profoundly hu- man than the cold, brutal, greedy, selfish capitalist society. And didn't, after all, the capitalist fat cats support Hitler? This is why Gunter Grass, among others, claims he feels a certain nostalgia in the East, something he thinks has been lost in the Western economic miracle. It is why he believes the old, slow, human East must be protected from the cold winds of capital-

ism. It is also why an East German writer like Stefan Heym sneers at his less high- minded countrymen, who rush to the nearest West German department store to indulge their 'cannibalistic greed'.

Hatred for capitalism and nostalgia for the warmth of the tribe are, of course, not new ideas, nor only Marxist ones, nor confined to Germany. But they do have a particularly strong tradition in that coun- try, especially among intellectuals. Five minutes' walk from the Museum of Ger- man History, adjacent to the Alexander- platz, is the ruin of an old abbey and former school. A plaque informs us that this was the site where Friedrich Ludwig Jahn developed his patriotic ideas in the early 19th century. Jahn was the inventor of mass callisthenics; he believed in collec- tivism, an unselfish devotion to German roots, and a continuous vigilance against the greed and rootlessness of Jews and gypsies. He also hated the upper classes. He worshipped the warm, human solidar- ity of the Volk. He was a kind of spiritual forerunner of National Socialism, and, in many ways, of the old GDR.

Such ideas may not find such support among people who are only too glad to embrace the good life of Western material- ism. The lure of the deutschmark has proved as strong as the tribal warmth of `Germany One Fatherland', and the con- servative Alliance has promised both. But what if the shotgun marriage between East and West leads to disappointment and disillusion? What when, instead of the good life, former subjects of the GDR find themselves without work, on a meagre dole, watching the Mercedes Benzes of their rich cousins speed along the potholed

roads on the way to buying another piece of cheap East German real estate? It is not difficult to imagine that the old ideas of Volk-ish solidarity, with all the concom- itant xenophobia, might then prove irres- istible, just as, on the other side of the Wall, euphoria and hospitality are slowly turning into resentment against the shabby Eastern guests; a resentment vented most- ly against the Poles, whose 'greed' and sharp practices are denounced even among the bien pensants of West Berlin.

These same bien pensants, in their con- genital angst, are deeply disturbed by Helmut Kohl and the blustering Right, not to mention the neo-Nazis. It is easy to see why, but one can be so intent on chasing the same old ghosts, that one ignores them when they appear in a different guise; for the echoes of Jahn are often strongest precisely where people think they don't exist The spectacle of 300,000 people in Leipzig braying, 'Helmut! Helmut!' is un- edifying, to be sure, but even more chill- ing, to me, was a demonstration of 'anti- fascists' in West Berlin, all uniformly dres- sed in torn black jeans and leather jackets, shouting: 'We are the people. We are the real people. The future belongs to us!'

In the visitors' book of the Museum for German History, I found the following entry: 'As a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany, I am opposed to reunifica- tion, because consumer terrorism will get us nowhere.' In fact, as almost every citizen of East Germany now agrees, uto- pian ideas lead nowhere; and a bit of consumer terrorism might not be the worst start to finally mastering the past.

Ian Buruma is our new Foreign Editor.

'Oh, I see. I always thought "under the counter' was a figure of speech.'