Editor's Introduction

by Walter Hasenclever

IN NAMING this issue Perspective of Germany, the editor cannot have an entirely clear conscience. The truth is that politically and economically there is at present no Germany as an entity. There exists a German Federal Republic with three quarters of the population, a democratic constitution, a duly elected Parliament, a free press, a free culture, and a free economy. Sealed off from it lies the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany, which styles itself the German Democratic Republic, surrounding Berlin, the brave and indomitable island in a sea of red. And there are finally the territories east of the Oder-Neisse Rivers, presently under Polish administration. Their fate can only be decided in a peace treaty as envisaged by the Potsdam Conference agreement of August 2, 1945.

Perspective of Germany can attempt to deal only with the Federal Republic. This part of Germany is in all phases of its life oriented toward the West and can be described in terms comprehensible to the Free World. The other Germany will not be entirely excluded from this issue: it will speak with the tortured and truculent voice of Bert Brecht; it will peer through the Iron Curtain in divided Berlin; and it will be referred to again and again with grief and longing.

The tourist in the booming Federal Republic will hardly be aware of this tragic aspect. He will nolice the signs of miraculous recovery which Germany has staged since the days of her collapse. The contrast to the picture of 1945 is so enormous that the former G.I. who remembers the shoddy, grayskinned, scrawny figures picking their plodding path through the rubble will be tempted to disbelieve his memory. Life is energetic and purposeful in Western Germany; it has reached a high standard of economic wealth, social security, and technological comfort. Thus it would appear to the uninitiated onlooker as if the so-called “German Miracle” were complete. But is it not in some ways a miracle without grace or cheer?

It will probably strike the readers of this issue that all the articles treating various aspects of German life begin with a shuddering reminiscence of the time of collapse. When the Germans were able to shake off the daze which had been left not only by war and defeat, but by the entire bloody and brutal nightmare of the Hitler era, they began to realize their loss. It is amazing to an observer who was intimately familiar with the German scene before the Nazi regime how utterly and irrevocably a whole tradition can be eradicated in only twelve years. The great books of the preHitler period had been burned or banned, the great works of art had been exiled as “degenerate,” and modern music was expelled from the concert halls.

The new freedom after the war did not bring an immediate surge of creativeness: the spirit had been broken and the tools had been lost. While the economic recovery was going on at a hectic pace the cultural life stagnated. Moreover, the loss in ethical substance brought about by the Hitler period was not easily overcome. The repressed sense of guilt — seldom admitted, but keenly felt — has left many Germans shy of displaying emotions or of showing interest in their fellow men. Wealth and technological progress did not immediately bring about a richer life or new cultural and ethical impulses.

And yet there are many signs which indicate another, more hopeful direction. Today, twelve years after the cataclysm, one can point to promising attempts of young German artists and writers to express themselves in their own idiom. They have no traditions to sustain them and they lack the center of inspiration and criticism which was formerly furnished by Berlin. But as this publication may prove, they have achieved a will and a style of their own.

Another hopeful sign, though not always a pure blessing, is a young generation which is skeptical, irreverent, and fiercely independent. It is not at all sure of its values, but it has at any rate thrown overboard all remnants of nationalism, romanticism, and above all militarism. Rearmament will have to overcome the determined resistance of the young generation.

There is hope for the political future of German democracy. Though there may be some grumbling National Socialists left, Fascism as a political fact or force is as dead as its leader. It is Germany’s good fortune that all her makers and media of public opinion are keeping a constant and hawk-eyed watch over the institutions of the new democracy. And the political leaders and statesmen of the Federal Republic are internationally known to be persons of integrity.

There is hope for the German conscience. It seems that the German people are finally getting ready to face their past. Albrecht Goes’s book The Burnt Offering, which describes the faces and fates of the Jews in Stuttgart during the Nazi time in a language of Biblical simplicity and impact, has been a best seller for over a year, and the stage play The Diary of Anne Frank was performed simultaneously in eleven German theaters before silent and profoundly stirred audiences. Furthermore, two gigantic church conventions of the two Christian faiths have proved that the German people are still — or again? — capable of acts of love, charity, and human kindness.