Günter de Bruyn

Ladies and gentlemen!

I am not one of those authors who consider offending good taste to be the primary task of literature and theatre. Nevertheless, if convention prescribes that in a speech of thanks to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation I should take the man, whose name the prize bears, as my theme, then I should like to disregard that convention – and appeal to one of the many Adenauer anecdotes that used to be in circulation. According to it, when he believed he had to violate customs or even rules, then the Chancellor would say in his Rhenish accent, something which I unfortunately do not have at my disposal: There’s no need to be so fussy. In my reflections, therefore, I would like to think about, not the foundation that has awarded me the honour, but the city of Weimar in which it is being awarded, and the location is a pleasure for two reasons. First of all, the choice of this place reinforces my continuing pleasure at the fact that Bonn and Weimar, which stand for two important passages of German history, are no longer separated by watch towers and death strips. Second, the city, whose name is a reminder of German classical literature and the Weimar constitution as well as of the crimes committed in Buchenwald concentration camp, allows me to link my thanks to reflections which are aroused in me every time I come to Weimar. They are reflections on what binds us Germans, bonds which one hardly dares sum up with the word nation any more. I would have to be blind to be able avoid these thoughts. Because, coming from the railway station, I have to pass the Gauforum, which was built as the Nazi Party headquarters in the city, before I reach the places associated with Herder, Goethe and Schiller. And if I spend the night in the venerable ‘Elephant’ then I am not only reminded of Thomas Mann’s fictional waiter, Mager, who finds the visit of Lotte from Wetzlar truly worth recording, but also of the altogether non-fictional Hitler, who on his frequent visits to Weimar made the ‘Elephant’ his headquarters, 26 times in all. Every arrival in this city, in whose theatre the National Assembly met in 1919, but which in the next decade also had the first National Socialist regional government, is also to arrive in German history, which partly bears us, partly burdens us, which is past and yet constantly present. This history became a matter of controversy in important debates in recent years. Whether these were about the theory of totalitarianism, the singularity of German crimes or reunification, they always demonstrated our ties to the past, through which we became what we now are. The Federal Republic would be a different place if at its foundation the experiences of the Weimar Republic had not existed. In dealing with neighbouring states every politician has to take account of their earlier experiences with Germany. Even someone who has no interest at all in Luther and Goethe, speaks the language they perfected. Even the avant-garde author is rooted in traditions; and someone who curses his fate in being born a German is also German. In its classical period, when Weimar had the reputation of a German cultural capital, there was no state which united the Germans; but in culture there was a consciousness of unity: The intellect was ahead of politics so to speak. The establishment of identity in culture was a condition of becoming a nation, and today and tomorrow it will be the condition of the solution of our internal problems of unification. If it is true, that a nation comes together in accordance with the will of its citizens, it is also the latter which heals the split created by division. But the will to unity is also created by culture in the widest sense. For politics, as for every one of us, culture is far from being something of secondary interest. In Germany this process of cultural nation-building took hundreds of years, and in the writers of Weimar classicism it found its most worthy harbingers – worthy also because they saw no contradiction between feeling as Germans and simultaneously being Europeans. Goethe, who, as is well-known, coined the term world literature felt himself intimately linked not only with the rest of Europe but also with the Orient. Wieland liked to describe himself as a citizen of the world; Herder, consistory councillor and court preacher, always emphasised in his studies of the cultures of other peoples their equal value; and a little later Jean Paul, who spent important years of his life in Weimar, calmly told excited patriots, when the Napoleonic occupation had given rise to an excess of German nationalism, that it would be just as sad for the world if there were only Germans in it as if there were none; because no people was better than any other, none could replace another and true patriotism was a matter of love not hate. That was directed at the philosopher Fichte who, supposedly to benefit the world, had provided a taste of German arrogance and found imitators well into our own century. The sense of superiority for which various justifications were found, from language and then finally to race, remained for a long time an inherited evil of the Germans, which in the end also fostered Hitler and his crimes. It was cured by the drastic remedy of complete defeat. And even if symptoms of the evil became noticeable from time to time, they never again turned into a mass phenomenon, and the vigilance of democracy with respect to any relapse was always welcomed by the majority. The form of nationalism familiar from history which expressed itself in self-congratulation, aggressiveness and megalomania, is today fortunately restricted to small extremist groups and is hardly present in the media. Instead it has become usual to immediately see the return of old spectres in every reference to the national. If someone finds something commendable in Germany, he is accused of indulging in exaggeration. If someone uses the word nation, there are those who immediately hear the word nationalism. In order to avoid suspicion of that, the term is simply avoided, as is any mention of the duties of the individual in relation to the nation. Its current significance remains vague; it is called a delusion and a chimera or our era is declared to be post-national – which seems like blindness in the face of reality or wishful thinking given the recent achievement of German unification, the national liberation of formerly Communist ruled countries and unfortunately also those nationalist excesses which are still occurring. To some sceptical observers it can also appear like a new form of German self-conceit. The critic may not think that behind the postulation of the post-national age there lies the intention of no longer having to remember national guilt, but he will nevertheless inevitably draw the conclusion, that the Germans are once again better and further ahead than the neighbouring nations, still naively waving their little national flags or even worrying about the beauty and distinctiveness of their language, whereas we Germans have long ago left this childhood stage behind us, once again ready to let the world benefit from the German character. As comprehensible as it is, for a burnt child to fear the flame, it is just as dangerous to entirely ignore its existence, because that leaves the field open to arsonists. Out of fear of allowing national feelings to become nationalist ones, there is a failure to analyse them, to make use of them for community tasks and also to communicate an understanding of the feelings of other nations. The opposite of a vice can also be a vice. I have always despised adulation and have always suffered from bans on criticism. I value critical minds and am ready to examine and follow their thoughts. But if they are always able only to see Germany on the wrong track, consider everything in the past without differentiation to be wrong, find what has resulted in the present to be only dreadful, call today’s unification a mistake or try to convince me, that life in Mielke and Honecker’s state was tolerable after all, but the reunited country forces one to consider emigration, then to my surprise I detect in myself the otherwise unfamiliar urge to commend and praise or at least to make the simple observation, that the Germany to which I now belong, for all its faults, which I won’t be silent about, is in a multitude of respects, more agreeable than all the previous ones, not least with respect to my own self-determination. When the GDR ended, it was not the desired unification that was most important to me, but freedom. Since both came together then the celebrations were for both – which given the German history I myself have lived through, in which the desire for unity and the desire for freedom were often in conflict with one another, I may surely be allowed to call a stroke of good fortune. It is to be hoped that we are entering an era in which the nations of Europe are joining together. They will relinquish rights of sovereignty to higher authorities, but they will not relinquish their language, their culture or guilt and responsibility; because that would not only run counter to the will of their citizens, but also weaken Europe’s creative powers which depend on the diversity of cultures mutually influencing one another. So even then we will have to live with being German, with the burden of Auschwitz and the millions killed in the war, but also with the certainty of not having relapsed into the old evil in the second half of this century. We shouldn’t sanctify our link to the national, but should nevertheless treat it with respect, where that is deserved. Coming back now to Weimar and to my conclusion, we know that Goethe never gave up hope in German unification, but vehemently rejected a hate-filled patriotism, while frequently emphasising the bonds linking German culture to that of other nations. When he wanted to induce Eckermann to move to Weimar, he praised the small princely seat, which was of such great importance, in the following words: From it the roads and the gates lead to all the ends of the earth. I thank the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for the honour which both gives me pleasure and encourages me. But you, ladies and gentlemen, I thank for your interest and your friendly attention.