Hans Jurgen Syberberg - Marilyn Berlin Snell

From Health magazine.
[Interview]
GERMANY'S
NEW NOSTALGIA:
HOW BENIGN?
From an intertiew with Hans ]urgen Syberberg in the
\Vinter 1993 New Perspectives Quarterly. Syberberg is an essayist, playwright, and filmmaker in
Munich. His films include Hitler: A Film From
Germany and Parsifal. Marilyn Berlin Snell, a senior editor at the quarterly, conducted the interview.
NPQ: Much of your work has been devoted to
celebrating German culture and reclaiming its
lost purity. As a longtime interpreter of the German Zeitgeist, how do you explain the dark renaissance of anti-Semitic
and anti-foreigner
violence in Germany today?
SYBERBERG: First, I should tell you that no German would ever ask me that question. German intellectuals treat me as if I were the enemy. They
do not want to hear about what I believe lies at
the heart of German identity. This is a real problem-and
not just for me. It is emblematic of a
general tendency for Germans, especially intellectuals, to repress important aspects of our history-artistic,
cultural,
and political.
This
repression has succeeded only in nurturing the
growth of an ugly, right-wing street underground.
18 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I MARCH 1993
NPQ: What
exactly do you think has been re-
pressed?
SYBERBERG: After the war, intellectuals
embraced the Enlightenment
tradition, a rationalism that focused on the head at the expense of
the heart. But the heart of Germany, like that of
Russia, is very distinct. Culture is built from the
light on the trees, the way the heavens look at
night from a particular plot of land. The light and
the heavens are different here than elsewhere, so
our perspective, our feelings, are different.
Yet in postwar Germany we have felt compelled to repress this cultural identity. We feel safe
excelling in mathematics, physics, and business.
Our people, dominated by facts and figures, are
happy to dance around the golden calf of materialism. We are efficient and methodical. But
where is the German heart? It has been neglected
by our postwar tendency toward democratic repression.
Let me give you an example of what I mean by
"democratic
repression." Recently, the entire
country went into an uproar when a right-wing
leader appeared on a late-night television show.
Every newspaper, large and small, editorialized
about how right-wing opinion should not be given a forum, because the man spoke too cleverly.
But we cannot eradicate our little Hitlers by refusing to give them the microphone. If people
want a Hitler, the media and the government
cannot prevent them from having one. Indeed,
the repression of these views may only increase
their seductiveness among those who already
feel alienated from society.
This is a new era for Germany, and we must
recognize that there are dangers. We must be
concerned about extremists who burn down
. houses of foreigners and about a justice system
that reacts too slowly. But we must also look beyond these symptoms to the cause. We must try
to understand what is motivating this right-wing
movement.
The people who support nco-Nazi leaders today are not necessarily supporting a neo-Nazi
message. They are hurt, and they believe that
their pain and fear are better represented by extremist leaders than by mainstream German
politicians and intellectuals. These youths are
very vulgar, ugly,and sometimes just banal. They
represent the German postwar wound. Because
this wound has been covered up and suppressed
for so long, it has now become infected and is oozing its infection into society. These young people aren't really interested in any ideology,
neo-Nazi or otherwise. They only make fire. Violence is their only form of expression.
Our political leaders can try to extinguish
these flames with laws and decrees. They may
even succeed in putting out a few small fires.
But we know from personal and historical experience that it is unwise to stifle expressions of discontent. Psychoanalysis and Weimar should be
our guides.
Every society creates its antithesis; at certain
revolutionary moments this underside bursts upon the scene. In our German society today money is central-the
minister of finance holds a
position of importance that the defense minister
held in times past. But what is desirable today
among the younger generation has nothing to do
with money. Consider the music they listen to,
called Oi. It cannot be bought in stores; it cannot be advertised. The people who listen to it
don't make money; they don't spend money.
They simply gather, and the gatherings are getting larger.
NPQ: You are describing this phenomenon of
racist extremism as if it were somehow healthy
for Germany-a reasonable reaction to the soulless market culture that now prevails.
SYBERBERG: No. This extremism frightens me
too. These youths are bloodthirsty, aggressive.
When you see them on the news, their faces are
contorted like wild animals'. But they are the
new German underground. They're like the early Christians in the catacombs of Rome.
What permeates the air in Germany also exists in Poland, Italy, Hungary, France, Scandinavia, and elsewhere. It has, in part, the odor of
anti-Semitism. After Auschwitz, the Jewish position was a moral 'one, which developed over
[Argument]
MONDAY ..MORNING
POLICY WONKS
From an interview with Noam Chomsky, in Chronicler of Dissent, a series of interviews with Chomsky conducted by David Barsamian between 1984
and 1991 and published by Common Courage Press,
in Monroe, Maine. The interview also appeared in
the June 24, 1992, issue of the Anderson Valley
Advertiser, a weekly newspaper published in
Boonville, California. Barsamian produces programs
for Alternative Radio, in Boulder, Colorado. Chomsky is professor of linguistics at M.1. T. and author,
most recently, of Deterring Democracy.
Wen
I'm driving, I sometimes tum on the
radio and find that I'm listening to a discussion
about sports. People call in and have long and intricate conversations with a high degree of
thought and analysis. They know all sorts of complicated details and have far-reaching discussions
about whether the coach made the right decision
yesterday and so on. They don't defer to sports experts; they have their own opinions and speak
with confidence. These are ordinary people, not
professionals, who are applying their intelligence
and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge. On the other hand,
when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of
superficiality that is beyond belief. I don't think
that international or domestic affairs are much
more complicated than sports. And what passes
for serious intellectual discourse on these matters
does not reflect any deeper level of understanding or knowledge.
It seems to me that the same intellectual skill
and capacity for understanding and for accumulating evidence and gaining information and
thinking through problems could conceivably
be used under a different system of governance,
one that included popular participation in important decision-making areas, in areas that
really matter to human life.
It does not require extraordinary skill or understanding to take apart the illusions and deception that prevent understanding of contemporary reality. It requires the kind of normal
skepticism and willingness to apply one's analytic skills that almost all people have. It just
happens that people tend to exercise them in
analyzing what, say, the New England Patriots
ought to do next Sunday instead of questions
that really matter.
,
READINGS
19
By Yann Arthus-Bertrand. These photographs appeared in "Farmer's Darling," a photo essay of farm animals with their owner's or handlers, in the
October 23, 1992, issue of Suddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, a weekly published in Munich, Germany. The photographs were taken at the annuallivestock show of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, in 1991. At left is the handler at Baggrane Farms with
a Charolais, the show's bull champion. At right is Adrian McConnel with his champion longhorn. Arthus-Bertrand's work includes Bestiaux,a book
of photographs of farm animals and their owners in France. He lives in Paris.
time into a kind of moral hegemony. But there
is a danger inherent in any kind of hegemony: it
eventually engenders resentment on the part of
the weaker player. People don't like to be told repeatedly that they are morally inferior. They
bear it for a certain time, but there comes a point
when children refuse to continue paying their fathers' debts. European culture has reached this
breaking point. Not in intellectual circles, of
course-intellectuals are professionals at maintaining their equanimity-but in the streets.
NPQ: Your analysis has the" effect of transforming victims into antagonists-culprits
in
their own victimization.
SYBERBERO: People are always quick to make
that argument. But in this historical moment
the Jews are no longer victims; they are victors,
morally speaking. This has been the case since
the end of the war-not just in Jerusalem and
Germany, but worldwide. We cannot freeze
historical moments; history moves. Fifty years
after Hitler, a whole new generation has taken
the stage in Germany. They behave differently from their guilt-ridden parents. They don't
see Jews as victims, they see them as people
like themselves.
Germany is a complicated country. It shouldn't
22
HARPER'S MAGAZINE / MARCH 1993
be forgotten that there are thousands of Germans protesting right-wing attacks on foreigners.
They are shocked. They are declaring their solidarity with foreigners in numbers greater than
in any other country in the world. Those who lay
the fires are a fringe group.
'
As an artist, my role is not to judge this fringe
group but to discover what it is they are expressing, to ask what is happening. Maybe these
youths don't understand who Hitler was. Maybe
they haven't learned history; perhaps they use
Hitler only to shock. I want to know what is in
the air that nourishes their behavior. It's not just
because these young men are poor and unemployed. And it's not just a violent protest against
their fathers, against capitalism or democracy.
There is something more.
But it is difficult to discover what that something isbecause Germans stifle discussion of these
issues. This is true not only of German politicians but of artists too. Artists have taken part in
the demonization of certain aesthetic themes
that they regard as tainted by fascism. This, of
course, is part of Hitler's legacy.His aesthetic glorified rural life as the embodiment of German
blood and soil. In effect, Hitler co-opted the
beauty of German myth and history.
NPQ: Do you think it is possible to have a notion of specifically German tradition, of community and memory, that does not devolve into
nationalism and anti-modernism?
SYBERBERG: We should ask the question, Why
is heimat, this deep cultural identity with a fatherland, experiencing a renaissance in contemporary Germany? Heimat was one of the
aesthetic subjects that was forbidden territory
after the war. But now that 15 million people
have lost their homeland in the eastern
provinces, they have a strong desire for a sense
of heimat. People will always need food and shelter, of course, but it is also a natural human desire to want love, community, a home.
Instead of being worried about making our
neighbors nervous, we should be taking a look at
ourselves. We are afraid to sing our grandfathers'
songs; we are afraid to appreciate Wagner; we
are afraid even to mourn history's thefr of our
myths and fairy tales. We live in cities with
fouled air, water, and soil--eompletely detached
from ourselves and our cultural heritage. We
have become neurotic beings.
Contrary to popular opinion, I think that the
urge to retrieve what it is we have lost-water we
can drink, fresh vegetables from our garden plots,
our songs, our Teutonic fantasies-is healthy.
This desire for heimat is not a yearning for Hitler.
Germany is capable of a benign nostalgia. We
must be allowed to long.
[Commentary]
THE GREAT
BUCKSKINNER
DEBATE
From "Looking to the Future," by Susan]ennys, in
the Marchi April 1992 issue of The Backwoodsman, a magazine for modemfrontiersmen and "buckskinners" published in Westcliffe,
Colorado.
Buckskinners are hobbyists who adopt the dress,
food, tools, and customs of the American West in the
1830s, including shooting with muzzle-loading rifles, trapping, wearing buckskin clothing, and meeting at regular "rendezvous," where participants sleep
in lean-tos and tepees and compete in shooting and
tomahawk-throwing contests.
In
the past decade the living-history movement has undergone a surge of interest, which has
brought an influx of diversity to its doors. Some
practitioners of living history are gradually coming away from the "gee whiz" approach to the
hobby and are now approaching it in a more intellectual, research-oriented fashion. These folks
are commonly dubbed "re-enactors." Largely due
to this breakaway, living history is lefr curiously
divided. There will always remain a large proportion of the encampment crowd who are not
particularly interested in doing serious research
on which to base their camp, clothing, or persona.
For lack of a better term, these folks could be
dubbed "generic buckskinners." For these good
folks, buckskinning is a special mode of escape
from the hectic life of twentieth-century American society. They consider the rendezvous as a
time to kick back and find refreshing selfrenewal. Their interest in history is secondary to
their desire for relaxation and fellowship at the
council fire or shooting range.
[Glossary]
HIS HAM ..HAM'S
WORSE THAN
HIS BITE
From "An Onomatopoeia or Glossary of Words
Used to Imitate the Sounds Made by Dogs and
Cats," an appendix to The European Market for
Pet Food and Pet Care Products, a report published last August by Frost & Sullivan, a New York
City market-research firm. The glossary, which
was compiled by Frederick Marsh, is intended for
international pet-food manufacturers who advertise in more than one language.
Country
Dog Sound
Czechoslovakia
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
Germany
Greece
Indonesia
Iran
Italy
Laos
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Philippines
Portugal
Romania
Spain
Spain (Catalonia)
Taiwan
Thailand
United Kingdom
haf-haf
vuf-vuf
auh-auh
hau-hau
wuff-wuff
rav-rav
gong-gong
hauv-hauv
bau-bau
voon-voon
wau-wau
woef-woef
aw-aw
ao-ao
ham-ham
guau-guau
bup-bup
wang-wang
hong-hong
woof-woof
READINGS
23