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PARTISAN IUVIEW
During the seventies and eighti es I was not particularly comforted by
watching the Germans put their national identity problem on ice,
though I knew it would not remain there for long. Ca n what we in
Eastern Europe call the national renaissance or nationalist upsurge cir–
cumvent Germany?
In the atmosphere of growing national self-awareness following the
fall of communism will the desire to re-establish continu ity bring the
Germany of the thirties back into fashion? Romantic commentators
notwithstanding, Hitler's Germany had no more demons than other
places, though it did have less autonomy. Because the validity of the goal
went unquestioned, its radical implementaion went unimpeded. The
Volk
accepted its leaders' project unthinkingly, worked hard, and followed
directions loyall y. Had it been more slipshod , less thorough, it would
not have caused nearly so much suffering.
As the twentieth century draws to a close, Germany - a liberal
Rechtsstaat
and the world's number-one export power - sta nds in the
transnational forefront of the Western-style democracies. Today's
Germans are no longer the aggressive egoists or knights of irrationalism
observers once saw in them. A large nation has been granted the oppor–
tunity to unite two civili zations, two human types in such a way as to
avoid the subordination, liquidation, or even excoriation and humilia–
tion of one by the other. Uniting the two Europes in Germany is a
paradigmatic chall enge. It is logical that in the process all parties should
examine their former selves and alter them accordingly.
What I would tell my students , then, is: Don't identify the responsi–
ble individualism of the twenty-first century with the numbing, consumer
driven mass-individualism of the twentieth. You have nothing coming to
you, I would tell them, nothing but the whole world, and your calling
as students is to formulate a world view based on you own first-person
experience. Keep studying, I would tell them; keep rethinking things
after you leave the university and for the rest of your lives. Only then
you w ill be able to oppose tyranny. Beware of abstractions and
terminologies, I would say; pay close attention to everyone fate or
inspiration puts in your path. The least you can do is make Europe an
electronic network of distinct entities. Why? So it contin ues to exist. So
we don't kill one another
ofT.
And finally, I would dissuade students in the West from playing
missionary in the East. Don't go too far, I would tell them, because the
natives may get restless and boil you for dinner.
