Letters from Munich

Letter from Munich – the Joseph Affair – 25

EINE DEUTSCHE FASSUNG STEHT WEITER UNTEN.

29 June 2001

Dear Mr. Graf, dear friends,

The discussion turned out to be a grudge match, with each side throwing its worst accusations against the other:

“The PDS – the successor to the East German communist party – accuses us of having bankrupted Berlin”, said Heinrich, a Christian Democrat. “They’re enraged because the money the Berlin city government owes is equal to the national debt of a certain whole countries. If just the interest payments on that debt could be set aside for a week, they say, it would be enough to overhaul and refit all the crumbling school buildings you find everywhere in the city.”

Berlin is in fact a kind of Potemkin village, its critics say, where the opulence of the new federal chancellery or the buildings of Potsdamer Platz hide the rotten condition of the apartments that many people even in the western part of the city have to live in.

Someone said later that Heinrich appeared so outraged, with his eyes staring fixedly at Sarah and his thick lips almost permanently curled into a sneer, that she wouldn’t have been much surprised if he’d started foaming at the mouth. “What did the communists leave us with in Berlin?” he asked. “A city of flowering landscapes? We’ve had to spend billions cleaning up the mess you left us with, billions to bring Berlin up to the standards you would expect of the capital of a developed country.”

“Helmut Kohl didn’t have to persuade everybody to move the capital from Bonn,” Sarah replied quietly, with that intensity in her voice that articulate, brilliant young women always seem to have. “That’s where some of your billions went. He didn’t have to sink millions into that monstrosity of a chancellery, a building that exceeds the symptoms of megalomania that a Roman emperor or an Egyptian pharaoh might exhibit. Nor did Kohl have to allow the Christian Democrats to install their friends in positions in municipal banks and other organizations that allowed them to bilk the city of still more billions. Ten years after the collapse of East Germany, you can’t blame us for the financial disaster in Berlin.”

Heinrich, usually among the most articulate of men, was caught off guard and remained speechless during a split-second pause in Sarah’s stream accusations. “But there are other things about Germany that fill me with outrage and indignation. And again, as others have said before, they all seem to be associated with the murder of the boy Joseph in Sebnitz. Just as Neo-Nazis, advocates of the old ideas, killed Joseph, and advocates of other old ideas have killed the hopes of a better future for many Germans.”

Her indignation and suppressed fury made such an impression on us all, even on Heinrich now, that not even he tried to interrupt. “And yes, Helmut Kohl,” Sarah went on, “our dear Helmut is out campaigning for the Christian-Democrat mayoral candidate in Berlin, at a time when Kohl should be in jail for his campaign finance scandal and other crimes. In any country but Germany – or some dictatorial banana republic – Kohl would have long ago been prosecuted and forced to tell where he got his slush fund from and who destroyed the records in the Chancellor’s office the night before he left.”

Sarah had cleared the field of opposition now, and when no one spoke up to oppose her, she continued, “And yes, we all know that Helmut Kohl is free now, despite his crimes. We all know that the district attorney allowed him to simply pay a find and avoid having a criminal record.” And here she lowered her voice, as though fighting back the urge to cry out. “And at the same time that Helmut Kohl is free and has no criminal record, do you know who still DOES have a criminal record in Germany? Thousands of German former soldiers who deserted the Wehrmacht during World War Two. These men are considered felons. And the ones who went on fighting for Hitler until they were ordered to stop? Ah, those good Germans are rewarded for their obedience to Hitler. They’re all receiving fat pensions. And none of them, of course, have been deprived of their rights as citizens, which of course is not quite the case with the deserters”.

I don’t know. I’ve heard things like that on German television. But surely that couldn’t be true. Surely not in Germany. This land of “Denker und Dichter” – thinkers and poets. Or am I being naïve?

Sincerely yours,

Robert John Bennett

Mauerkircherstrasse 68

81925 Germany

Telephone: +49.89.981.0208

E-Mail:  

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