During the last personal meeting of our Club, September 17th, Former Argentine Ambassador Pedro Von Eyken exposed his point of view about a comparison between Germans and Russians, through the lens of History.
Here, you can read about a topic that we discussed last Wednesday, with Mr. Von Eyhen, how German democracy was functioning the last three decades and maybe, this is an article that represents my thought.
BY KONSTANTIN VON HOFFMEISTER
LINK: https://www.eurosiberia.net/p/germany-in-chains
Germany drags a weight across its soul, a colossal anchor
created from rubble and tribunals. The nation lives inside a mirror
where every reflection shows a shadow in uniform. Every law scribbled
across paper bows before that image. The Grundgesetz
(Basic Law) speaks of liberty, but the words are an incantation written
by the victors, a charm against resurrection. Citizens march through
streets lined with cameras and prosecutors. Speak too freely and you
summon phantoms; the phantoms do not vanish, they call the police. This
is the fake democracy of chains.
The guilt complex has
grown into a sacred totem. Schools feed it daily, churches kneel before
it, newspapers chant it. The totem requires sacrifice: expression must
bleed. To question, to laugh, to remember differently: that is
profanation. The state protects the totem with penal codes sharper than
swords. The soul of Germany is pressed flat under this idol, the way
wheat is ground into powder for bread. The idol is fed endlessly, and
yet its hunger grows.
Every decade, politicians perform ritual penance, speaking with grave
lips about responsibility that can never end. They tell children they
are heirs of darkness. They tell poets their language must tread
carefully. They tell comedians that certain laughter carries punishment.
An eternal courtroom stretches across the landscape, and every citizen
is both a defendant and a witness. The process never closes; the
sentence is permanent.
Free speech becomes a decorative mask in this theater. Article 5 of the Grundgesetz
holds the mask high: “There shall be no censorship.” Yet beneath the
mask lies a courtroom docket filled with names, charges, and sentences.
Speak of history with the wrong intonation and you are marked. Display
symbols with the wrong geometry and you are marked. The promise of
“freedom” is ritual theater; the reality is a litany of prohibition.
Germany’s
intellectuals live in a paradox. They proclaim openness, diversity of
voices, and endless tolerance. Yet the chorus must always sing the same
hymn of guilt. Dissonance is heresy. The universities hum with this
dogma. Students learn early: some books are doors to prison and some
phrases are stones too hot to touch. Ideas are filed into categories of
safe and unsafe, usable and radioactive. Knowledge becomes a minefield
patrolled by guardians of memory.
The guilt complex does not
dissolve with time; it mutates into ideology. It travels into debates on
immigration, identity, and Europe. Every argument carries a
subterranean current: Germany must atone, Germany must atone again,
Germany must atone forever. Policies bend towards submission, and speech
bends with them. When people resist, they are labeled ghosts of the
past, reminders of the forbidden era. The past is treated as a demon
that must be exorcised daily, so the priests of democracy wave their
censuring torches across public discourse.
The myth of guilt
becomes an industry. Museums, foundations, institutes, and memorials
multiply. Each demands reverence, each consumes state funds, and each
produces literature reminding citizens of their inherited debt. The
culture of remembrance becomes the culture of constraint. Freedom is
traded for contrition. Speech is shackled in the name of “healing,” but
the wound is never allowed to close. A healed wound would silence the
industry, and so it must stay open, bleeding in perpetuity.
Germany’s
citizens live with two tongues. One tongue speaks in public, careful,
filtered, and adorned with the proper rituals. The other tongue whispers
in kitchens, pubs, and encrypted channels. The public tongue feeds the
system; the private tongue keeps a fragment of truth alive. This dual
speech corrodes trust, as neighbors wonder which tongue you truly speak
with. Surveillance grows, suspicion grows, and the air thickens with
self-censorship.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Americans wave
flags and declare speech absolute. Germany watches with envy and terror.
Envy, because such liberty radiates vitality. Terror, because such
liberty might awaken the sleeping forces of history. The German elite
insists: America does not understand, Germany cannot follow. So the
divide grows: between a people who crave release and a leadership that
fears resurrection.
The guilt complex is an iron garment. Every
German wears it at birth, stitched by the schools, reinforced by the
courts, and decorated by the media. To remove it is unthinkable. To
question its weight is dangerous. Yet the garment suffocates. Artists
gasp under it, thinkers shrivel under it, and ordinary citizens stumble
beneath it. Freedom struggles to breathe inside this garment, but the
garment clings tighter with every movement.
The cycle becomes
circular: guilt demands silence, silence produces resentment, and
resentment strengthens the guardians of guilt, who demand more silence.
Germany spins inside this circle endlessly. The promise of free speech
becomes a ritual chant at the center of the circle, a chant no one
believes but everyone repeats. The contradiction is sacred. The lie is
sacred.
Germany once produced poets who bent language into worlds,
philosophers who split reality with words, and revolutionaries who
forged destiny with speeches. Now the poets must sign disclaimers, the
philosophers must submit footnotes, and the revolutionaries must censor
their own manifestos. Speech becomes anemic, stripped of fire. Yet
beneath the surface, pressure builds. History has shown: pressure always
finds cracks.
The guilt complex seeks to bury the past beneath
prohibitions, yet by obsessively policing the past, it keeps the past
alive. Citizens who would forget are reminded daily; citizens who would
forgive are forbidden to. The state that claims to protect democracy
builds walls around thought, as if ideas were contraband. A democracy
that fears words is a democracy chained to fear.
The chains
clatter across the cobblestones of Berlin, across the classrooms of
Munich, and across the stages of Hamburg. Germany carries them with
solemn pride, as if chains themselves were proof of virtue. Yet chains,
however polished, remain chains. Speech under chains is a dull refrain.
True freedom does not live in Germany; it waits at the margins, in
exile, and in dreams of another dawn.
GLENN DIESEN ABOUT GERMANY
FILM ABOUT THE END OF EASTERN GERMANY
L'EXTREME DROITE DE L'ALLEMAGNE