BAHNHOF
In the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof one always ends up thinking about
Hitler. Deadest of Germans, he is also the most alive. "NS-Vergangen–
heit." This is the phrase applied
to
all Germans with a shady past: one
speaks of their "national socialist past." Of course, most Germans over
forty-five have something of an NS-Vergangenheit, and this is very
noticeably true at the professional level, since professional people occupy
positions of leadership or at least prestige. Communists, like Jews, are
exceptions. The Volksgemeinschaft did not include them, and so they feel
themselves entitled
to
claim that their State, the DDR, has been purified
from Nazism, while they mercilessly expose Nazism in the Federal Repub–
lic. In this, however, they participate in the general German hypocrisy,
since they too-perforc'e-have used many ex-Nazis, especially lawyers,
in important positions. And the very man who hands out the most viru–
lent Party propaganda on East German TV, Karl Eduard von Schnitzler,
was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's war effort up to the moment
when he was captured by the British in 1945.
By chance I met the person who interviewed Von Schnitzler at that
time on behalf of the BBC, which was looking for Germans who would
be willing to take part in anti-Nazi broadcasts. "Don't you hate the Brit–
ish?" he asked Von Schnitzler. "I did," the latter answered, "I did till a
few days ago. My heart was full of hatred for them. When 1 saw our
planes and how many there were of them, my heart was full of hate for
England." "But now it isn't?" "No, last Wednesday, 1 saw the British
planes, and how many there were of
them.
England, too, is a great
power, I said to myself. And the hate for England died in my heart." The
hate must have died also for the chief enemy, Soviet Russia, since a few
years later, Von Schnitzler switched from West to East German radio
and television.
Today he presides over a couple of weekly TV programs-both
remarkable in their way. On one he shows clips from West German
television. (1 don't know what the East/West division has done to copy–
right-probably destroyed it entirely. They rob each other's TV pro–
grams quite freely, it seems.) The idea is to see the Westerners con–
demned out of their own mouths. Some of them, of course, stand con–
demned out of their own mouths without any assistance from Herr von
S. Some of them-Heinrich Liibke, for instance- ne'ed only be seen and
heard. When I hear President Liibke's flabby, flaccid enunciation I am
ready to believe anything of him. Actually, the "assistance" Von S.
renders has the reverse of the intended effect. The intention is so evident–
ly malicious, the absence of any interest in the truth as such so very
obvious, that one's sympathy inevitably goes to the victim, Besides which,
Von S.'s logical specialty is the
non sequitur.
He is forever drawing con-
