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PART ISAN
REVLEW
long as unemployment did no t loom as large - th at is, until the
WC/lde –
ethnic unrest w as kept within bounds, o r remain ed an issue th at did not
result in the sort of violen ce that reminds G e rmans o f th e hatred that
allowed for their culpability in th e Holo cau st , for the murderous im–
pulses many are seeing resurge in th e violence against foreigners. Whereas
Professor Strasse r tri es to analyze the increase in arson by the new breed
of skinheads (espec ially against Turks) whi ch th e government so far has
been able more or less to control, and describes the (admittedly limited)
political options , write rs address th e prevalent cultural malaise. The
Swiss- Ge rman writer , Urs Widmer, in
Der Freibeufer
(#55 , 1993), states
the pervasive sentiments rather elegantly:
Now that houses inhabited by Turks or Vi etn amese are burning, those
who spea k of hating peopl e with different skin col or, who speak
another language, have other rituals of praye r and oth er hi stori es, run
the dange r of closing the door upon our listeners. Good will and
moral assurances no longe r are enough. . . Each of us in our own
way has thoughts of the foreign within us, and we are awa re of how
strongly we are capable of projecting our anxieti es , dislikes, dreams
and desires. "You blac k -
I
white'" We know how reli eving such a
process of splitting ca n be , and how qu esti onable. "We " are not th e
ones to set fires. We don' t even watch yo u with approval from fa r
away.... But what do we make of th e multi cultural confu sion that
too frequ ently remains a monocultural prox imity? ... We too are
swimming in an ocean of fea rs and are trying, rather helplessly, not
to
drown.
Professors and students in G erman unive rsities, in eve ry discipline,
share these fears. Some o f the children of "established" immi grants as well
as those of asylum seekers are in their classes.
In
additi o n , professors in the
forme r W es t are expec ted to help reedu cate their co lleagues from the
forme r East. (That many of th e latte r lo st their jobs and are being re–
placed by more competent "Wessies" is ye t another maj o r issue for con–
fli cts.) But even if it w ere possible to tran sform into cosmo politan poly–
maths people accustomed to ri gid Marxist thinking after decades of be–
ing deprived of all othe r te xts, how could professors deal with and ex–
pl ain the inevitable clas hes bro ught abo ut by the fe rocio us competition
fo r j o bs that often do n ' t exist and fo r apartments most people no longer
can affo rd - at a time w hen wages have become to tally in adequate to
ensure survival and Communism has turned o ut to have been a nightmare
rather than nirvana ?
The future of G ermany is parti cul arly frightenin g du e to the ideo–
logi cal and emo tional remnants of the Na zi past. Whe reas citi zens in the
