1t>4
ERIC BENTLEY
to represent this field
was
a man the German public of that time knew
pretty well, by the name of Hans Knudsen. They knew
him
because
he had been the drama critic (or non-critic, after Goebbels abolished
'Criticism) of the Volkischer Beobachter. At the Nazi University of
Berlin, Knudsen stood by while his old master
Max
Herrmann was
deprived of all his resources in preparation for
his
death (in
1942)
in
Theresienstadt. Knudsen didn't just stand by. He promoted the "philoso–
phy" of anti-Semitism in the field of Theaterwissenschaft. What happen–
ed
last winter
was
that documents proving this were published in a Berlin
newspaper-photostats and all. It also came out that Knudsen got his
title of Professor under the Nazis only by the personal intervention of
Alfred Rosenberg. Even a Dean who wrote "Heil Hitler!" before
his
signature didn't want to accept him. That was in the years
1943-44.
Five years later he
was
taken on without any known demur by the
Free University. And the Free University would never
to
this day have
taken any stand against Knud&!n had it not been shamed into it by the
liberal press.
The liberal press. There is one. That is one of the best things about
West Germany, and one which, of course, has no parallel,
can
have no
parallel, in the East. The East limits its'elf to exploiting all the dirt about
the West which the liberal press of the West prints. The Knudsen affair
was
duly gone over in
Theater der Z eit,
the East Berlin theater magazine.
The paper that "broke" the story had been the S
pandauer V olksblatt,
the
paper of dissident but non-Communist West Berlin youth. But, sprightly
as it is, the
V olksblatt
has very limited news coverage. There is not a
first-rate
newspaper
in all of Berlin. For that you have to go to Hamburg
(Die Welt)
or Frankfurt
(Frankfurter Allgemeine).
The most important
political journalist in Germany today-more important even than Walter
Lippmann in America-is Rudolf Augstein, the editor of
Der Spiegel.
The world heard something of Augstein's arrest at the instance of
Franz Josef Strauss a year or two ago. The incident symbolizes the
confrontation of liberal journalism with Old Germany. Fat, foxy, philis–
tine and ferocious, Strauss is a figure straight out of the Georg Grosz
cartoons of forty years ago; Augstein is a Georg Grosz of words instead
of drawings. You need
to
follow the
Spiegel
issue by issue to appreciate
the insistency of his guerrilla war against the Germany, not only of Hitler,
but of Adenauer, and not only of Adenauer, but of Erhardt, and not
only of Erhardt, but of Ulbricht.
One should not see the old Nazis and the Neo-Nazis
as
the chief
danger. That is a trap. Only in New York
has
The Deputy
been picketed
by men with swastika armbands. In Germany, those who a generation
ago would have worn swastikas are now happy enough with the Hammer
