LEON BOTSTEIN
201
government of dras ti call y different values and habits. T ha t h orribl e
past has never been adequately addressed either in the home or in the
school. Mys tery and secrecy regarding the pas t, asserti on s of coll ective
guilt notwithstanding, ma ke the hand of the past more po tent th an it
mi ght otherwise be.
In
the height o f the wave of terrorism in October, J acob Neusner,
the distinguished scholar from Brown University, visited T uebingen
on the occasion o f the fi ve-hundredth anni versary o f the founding of
that city's un iversity. Neusner was struck du ring his visit tha t " the bad
memori es of their (the Germans') country's hi story are n ot to be
mentioned."
In
the o ffi cial ceremonies and throughout his vi sit to
Germany, Neusn er was struck by the fact tha t, especiall y among the
older genera ti on, no real di scuss ion o f the pas t took place, so tha t in
any meaningful sense " no hi sto ry can be brought to speech ."
It
is
perhaps signifi cant tha t the recent wave of terrori sm coincides with the
appearance of an apolitical revisionist interpreta ti on of Hitler and the
current di sturbin g, seemingly uncriti cal ahi storical fascinati on with
Hitler now visibl e in West German y, phenomena ominously criti cized
in the news magazine
Der S p iegel
and the newspaper
Die Zeit.
Whil e
the
Frankfurter Zeitung
di smi ssed the signifi cance of the recent rev ival
of interest in Hitl er, it and other media continue to examine the
ques ti on , " Is there a Hitl er craze?"
The willingn ess of the o lder generation in the Federal Republic to
openl y tolera te, in the name of democracy, a less than perfect society,
and to urge respect for the law is therefore subj ect to an extreme
personal mi strust incomprehensible to the American. The glib radical
asserti on that democra tic values and idea ls in the face of a less than
utopian world a re nothing but the ra ti onaliza ti ons of autocratic
imperialists who seek onl y power and domina tion is made all the
more believable by the fact tha t German history makes tha t view
plausible in a personal way for mos t German ho useholds, mos t Ger–
man politicians, and mos t Germans over forty-fi ve years of age.
The di sclosure, after the recent kidnapping of Martin Schl eyer,
apparentl y a well-respected German business executi ve, tha t he had
been a prominent S.S. offi cer in Prague onl y confirms the mistrust, the
suspicion tha t those in power who urge the tenets of democra ti c faith
are not real, are n o t fundamentall y beni gn , are not even unapologeti c
and corrupt hypocrites, but ra ther despera tely evil magicians, wolve in
sheep 's clo thing. Since the American radi cal's perception of the older
generation 's na ti onal hi story can be easil y confirmed , the older genera–
tion needs onl y to be cast aside, albeit with force. For the German
