Letter from Munich – 036
Letter from Munich – the Joseph Affair – 36
EINE DEUTSCHE FASSUNG STEHT WEITER UNTEN.
14 September 2001
Dear Mr. Graf, dear friends,
After the heinous crimes committed against the people of my country and other countries this week in New York and Washington, all other problems seem relatively insignificant. And yet for any of us to halt our efforts to make the world better, no matter how small those efforts may be, would be to allow the terrorists to come closer to achieving their goals. We must all continue the struggle against crime and injustice, whether the crime and injustice result from the actions of terrorists or from the machinations of corrupt politicians and officials in German states like Saxony or even, though it is of course unlikely, in Bavaria.
Making the world better and more just will always require what John Kennedy called “a long twilight struggle.” In that spirit, these letters will continue: week after week, month after month, year after year, until I am no longer here to write them. I believe justice lies in such small, patient efforts, and not in murderous attacks against my countrymen, who are, after all, countrymen of “the whole civilized world,” whether it is the civilization of the West or the civilization of Islam.
A continuation of the letter of last week:
With these letters, as I have said, I invite reprisals from certain German politicians and officials. Reprisals are common in Germany, especially in the eastern states, when one offends politicians or officials, especially corrupt politicians or officials. The more corrupt they are, the more sensitive they become to perceived insults. On 6 September this year the German news program “Monitor” broadcast a report about the city of Cottbus and about a journalist who works there. The woman has withstood repeated intimidation and threats against her life, but she has gone on with her campaign against former officials of the Stasi, the once all-powerful East German authority that was responsible for “state security,” for spying on German citizens. These officials have formed a network and made themselves rich by providing construction contracts to their friends.
What exists in Cottbus exists in other forms in other areas of eastern Germany, such as in Saxony.
In the case that I have been discussing in these letters, the Kantelberg-Abdullas came under tremendous psychological, financial, and finally murderous pressure not only from neo-Nazis, but also from other pharmacists and from physicians in their area who are intent on maintaining a quite unusual but, for these pharmacists and physicians, lucrative system of distributing prescription medicine in Saxony, a system that the Kantelberg-Abdullas pointed out is illegal. Neither the state government in Saxony nor the federal government in Bonn agreed to act.
Instead, the government in Saxony became determined to minimize the income of the Kantelberg-Abdullas even more, and to subject them to even greater pressure of all kinds. The couple was, for example, subjected to a police search after an “anonymous informer” reported they were keeping an automatic weapon in the house. Though the police found nothing, the Kantelberg-Abdullas were made to pay the costs of the search, which the police claimed amounted to DM 500. The anonymous caller, as far as one knows, was never charged with spreading “false suspicions.”
In such a situation, one falls back on long-term considerations, such as what Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote in a poem: “Wir sind von guten Maechten geborgen” – We are surrounded by the security of good powers. Or one thinks of Gandhi statement of enduring hope: “There have been tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they fall. Remember that. Always.”
Sincerely yours,
Robert John Bennett
Mauerkircherstrasse 68
81925 Germany
Telephone: +49.89.981.0208
