Social scientist Wilhelm
Heitmeyer has been publishing studies on German attitudes for a decade. In
a SPIEGEL interview, he discusses his latest results, which show that Germans'
relationship to minorities and the disadvantaged has become increasingly
hostile.
SPIEGEL: Professor Heitmeyer, you have been studying the
condition of the Germans for the last 10 years. How are we doing?
Heitmeyer: Not very well. The growing
social divide is corroding the sense of community, and society is poisoned.
Social disintegration is dangerous, especially for disadvantaged groups.
Substantial segments of society believe that they are more valuable than
others. Only those who achieve something, who are useful and efficient, count
for something.
SPIEGEL: Hasn't that always been the case?
Heitmeyer: Yes, but the principle of
rationality, which has its place in the economy, has increasingly permeated our
thinking, finding its way into living rooms, schools and social relationships.
This application of economic principles to the valuation of human beings is
inhumane. Immigrants, the homeless, the long-term unemployed, the disabled, all of these people are worth less
than others according to these standards.
SPIEGEL: How do elites treat the weak?
Heitmeyer: Significant segments the
elites and higher earners are increasingly withdrawing from a mutually
supportive society. They claim the privileges of the establishment, and they
fight against a minimum wage, the wealth tax and the inheritance tax, even
though the policies of redistribution have been in their favor for years. This
is class warfare from above. It shows that the core standards of this society
are in great jeopardy. Some 64 percent of society believes that striving for
justice is pointless. Solidarity and fairness, values that are vital to the
cohesion of a society, are being eroded.
December 14 2011
Niall
Ferguson and Nouriel Roubini, 12 June 2012:
"...We find it extraordinary that it should be Germany, of all countries, that
is failing to learn from history. Fixated on the non-threat of inflation,
today's Germans appear to attach more importance to the year 1923 (the year of
hyperinflation) than to the year 1933 (the year democracy died). They would do
well to remember how a European banking crisis two years before 1933
contributed directly to the breakdown of democracy not just in their own
country but right across the European continent..."
Peter Watson in chapter titled 'The German Ideology And The
Future Of Human Nature':
"...is Germany itself always to remain unredeemable?
Perhaps Norbert Elias was correct in saying that the country cannot move ahead
until a convincing explanation for the rise of Hitler has been given..."
Brooke Allen:
"Not many people can remember the year 1945. For those
of us who were born well after World War II, into a world governed,
however imperfectly, by entities like the United Nations, the European
Union, the International Criminal Court, and the World Bank, the scale
of pure chaos during that fateful year is unimaginable. Many millions
lay dead. Beyond the murder of 6 million Jews, 8 million Soviet soldiers
and 16 million Soviet civilians had been killed; in China, 10 million
civilians. At war's end, 8 million "displaced persons" were stuck in
Germany, 3.5 million in other parts of Europe. Six and a half million
Japanese were stranded in Asia and the Pacific, a million enslaved
Korean workers in Japan."
Marathi daily Loksatta (लोकसत्ता) has reviewed Peter Watson's 'The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century', 2011 on September 21 2013.
First some funny things.
The reviewer says "...‘द जर्मन जीनियस’
या पुस्तकाच्या शोधात बरेच दिवस होतो. लंडनला सापडलं..." (I was in search of 'The German Genius'. Found it in London.).
I wonder why. I did casual search on internet. I started with Amazon.in. I found it right there on my screen. It (paperback edition) costed only Rs. 402 on Sept 21 2013 much lower than the price of British Pound 9.99 given at the end of the review.
We of course conclude reading the review that the reviewer has been to Germany a few times and (probably) drops by London to pick up books. I envy him.
The review itself is disappointing.
The world will in less than a year's time observe the 100th anniversary of the start of the World War I.
20th century is the bloodiest century in the history of mankind and the
principal party responsible for it is the nation of Germany.
Therefore,
although I understand that there is a lot more to Germany than those
wars, how can you avoid the subject? Has that unprecedented violence anything to
do with their so-called 'genius'? Shouldn't you be raising these
questions?
David Crossland says:
"...Few would disagree that Germany as a nation has worked hard to atone for its
past, unlike Austria and Japan which have cloaked themselves in denial. Germany
has paid an estimated €70 billion in compensation for the suffering it caused,
conducts solemn ceremonies to commemorate the victims and, above all, has owned
up to what was done in its name.
Companies and government ministries have opened up their archives to
historians to illuminate their role in the Third Reich, and a late push in
prosecutions of war criminals is underway to make up for the failure to bring
them to justice in the decades after the war.
But millions never confronted their own personal role as cogs in the Nazi
machinery..."
Therefore, a lot remains to be done or was never done.
The review mentions William L. Shirer's book. Ron Rosenbaum observes:
"....Shirer does not condemn
Germans as Germans. He’s faithful to the idea that all men are created equal,
but he won’t accede to the relativistic notion that all ideas are equal
as well, and in bringing Fichte and Poetsch to the fore, he forces our
attention on how stupid and evil ideas played a crucial role in Hitler’s
development..."
As the Loksatta reviewer brings Mercedes to the fore, can we be sure that even today "stupid and evil ideas" are not lurking close behind?
Reviewing this book for The New York Times, Brain Ladd has said:
"...Even if Heidegger hadn’t been a
Nazi, we would still face the question of whether Hitler was the nemesis or the
culmination of German genius. Just as Mann had to acknowledge Goebbels as his
bastard child, Watson knows that Germany cannot disown the Nazis. He borrows
many different and contradictory theories of the German catastrophe, variously
suggesting that the educated middle class was too weak to stop Hitler, that it
abdicated its responsibility to do so and that its antipolitical ideals taught
a nation to welcome a charlatan’s promises of a redemptive community.
Yet no history of ideas can explain
the tragedy of German genius. Hitler may have fancied himself a great thinker,
but his success came from his brilliance as a political tactician in a troubled
time. Intellectuals admired (or feared) him for his ability to seduce millions
of voters who knew nothing of Kant or Heidegger. Watson gives us a compilation
of German ideas; a history of the German genius would be a different and dicier
matter..."
Artist: Rea Gardner, The New Yorker, 10 November 1945
