Europe and Islam

The Einstein Room in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences is packed for a discussion of European identity and its relationship with Islam. It is Friday night, 26 October 2007 at 6PM. This event highlights the Academy's central theme of "Europe in the Near East and the Near East in Europe" (if you are interested, please check out their webpage here and and also the related special edition from the Tagesspiegel; source of the photo above on the right). The topic itself and the "class" of four prominent historians and members of the Academy account for the larger than normal attendance. Plus all four of the historians bring a different knowledge base and set of perspectives to the question of Europe and Islam. The two hour evening followed with rounds in which the historians presented their theses. They had opportunities to sharpen their points and finally hold two rounds of questions and discussion with those in attendance. They presented a huge amount of information in a relatively short amount of time. In a way, the transcript that follows below serves as a historical and historiographical sketch and one can only hope that the Academy organizers can find ways to effectively integrate such a high quality presentation into the year's calender of interesting events.

The "Class notes":
The moderator is Dr. Christoph Markschies. He is a professor for ancient church history, President of the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Secretary of the Academy. Dr. Markschies opens the forum with the note that Islam is often viewed as a medieval phenomenon, but more and more, some scholars see Islam as a development emerging from late antiquity. What, he asks, is the identity of Europe?

Round I: Europe and Islam from the Ancient Historian's perspective:
Dr. Christian Meier has the floor first, since he is a Professor for Ancient History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and well known for his work on Caesar and Athens. Dr. Meier looks for the unique (eigenartig) qualities of Europe and, therefore, starts with the Greeks and the Roman Republic. Of course, Dr. Meier notes, Greece had roots in the “Orient”, but the Greeks created their own form of community (Gemeinwesen). In the 9th century Islamic civilization, carried on the Greco-Roman tradition in translated forms, but there were limits to this appropriation of the Greco-Roman tradition. Whereas “Europe”, in his opinion, would more deeply appropriate and develop the intellectual inheritance of the classical world, for example, in the discipline of philology. Moreover, Dr. Meier believes that the Greeks are the only known case in the ancient world, where a people emerged in freedom and without a monarchical form of government.

From the Medieval European Historian's perspective:
Dr. Michael Borgolte, a professor for Medieval History at the Humboldt University in Berlin, receives the chance to respond next. He has just published a new monograph in German translated here as "Christians, Jews and Muslims. The Inheritance of Antiquity and the Rise of the Occident". Dr. Borgolte starts by noting Dr. Meier’s “master narrative” on the classical tradition and its influence on Europe and the Near East. Dr. Borgolte does not want to necessarily question what Dr. Meier has already said, but does assert that master narratives open up room for alternative histories. Moreover, Dr. Borgolte wants to come back to the idea of identity. From his point of view, historians have the job of critically examining traditions of identity; not producing identity itself. Dr. Borgolte suggests that there is no canon of universal values. He also asserts that people develop identity mythologies as a result of state-building projects, not the other way around as Dr. Meier would suggest in his opening remarks. Dr. Borgolte also draws attention to the boundaries of European identity for further discussion, in particular toward the East. Finally, Dr. Borgolte asserts a dialectical relationship of unity and multiplicity in this “Europe’s” historical development.

From the Early Modern European Historian's perspective:
Dr. Heinz Schilling, a professor for Early Modern European History at the Humboldt University and known for his work on Christian confessionalization in the 15th and 15th centuries, has the final word in the first round. Dr. Schilling starts by addressing the question of identity too. Citing his training in the “Bielefelder” school of history, Dr. Schilling looks for the structural history and cultural development of identity. Moreover, Dr. Schilling wants to sharpen Dr. Meier’s assertion of a unique type of European identity. He also raises the question of “global” history, i.e., the idea of a “small” Europe and a “large” Europe as a way to approach the topic of European identity and Islam. Dr. Schilling sees methodological and periodical problems in approaching the historical relationship of Europe and Asia. Dr. Schilling also asserts that there are specific types of civilization and uses this approach to further delineate European identity. From Schilling’s point of view, therefore, Russia does not belong to Europe because Russia emerged from another form of civilization centered on the Greek-Orthodox religion, whereas Schilling claims that Europe is in fact a Latin-Christian civilization. Schilling, however, does not see this as a form of European identity but an experiment. It remains for historians to work out the properties of European identity and he asserts the important role of religion. Schilling adds that people defined Europe through conflict with Islam.

Round II:
Dr. Meier opens the second round of discussion. He believes that identity can be a useful term for analysis, but draws a distinction between the citizens of antiquity and modernity. Dr. Meier also questions the usefulness of “types” as Dr. Schilling would suggest and pleads for comparative analysis in large strokes (a point that needed further clarity). From the very beginning of the idea of “Europe”, Dr. Meier sees a high degree of pluralism through the building of monarchies, cloisters and universities. Europe had no center or monarchical center as in the case of the Orient in places like Baghdad. This plurality gave Europe a dynamic that moved it beyond antiquity.

Dr. Borgolte further questions the unified history of “freedom” that Dr. Meier suggests in the historical development of Europe. Dr. Borgolte sees breaks rather than continuities in the history of the idea of freedom. From his perspective “Europe” in the Middle Ages was in fact in a pluralistic form of identity that included both Christians, Jews and Muslims. The monotheistic cosmology of Judaism from the 5th century B.C.E. and the related idea of the “transcendence” (between this world and what lies beyond) influenced the Roman form of Christianity that emerged in the middle ages and Islam in the 8th century C.E. This triad constellation of religious world views played a key role in the emergence of European identity even as Roman Christianity would come to dominate that identity.

Dr. Schilling defends the use of “types” as instruments for comparative analysis. Dr. Schilling also sees a nonlinear development in Europe’s plurality. From his view, it is pluralistic development with major discontinuities. Europe’s current development of plurality stems from the 15th and 16th century European concentration on Christianity, especially Luther’s call for reformation of the Roman Catholic Church. Social and theological changes were already underway in the late middle ages that would lead to divisions, competition and conflict. In this context, the arrival of Islam through the Turks and the Spanish re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was more a matter of power politics. Dr. Schilling adds that Europe was at this time plural in terms of particularistic states and forms of belief. There was both closure and opening to the rest of the world. As a note for further discussion, Dr. Schilling suggests that Spain makes an interesting case for the further study of European and Islamic identities.

Round III:
Dr. Borgolte suggests that the modern idea of tolerance in Europe has its roots in the interaction of the three major monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, at the time when Europe was becoming more culturally unified in the late middle ages around Roman Christianity. When Dr. Markschies asks Dr. Borgolte about the homogeneity of Europe, Borgolte responds that it was neither nor. On the one hand, the middle ages marked the convergence of a European culture in relationship to the conflict with Islam and on the other hand, the interactions between Europe and Islam generated the emergence of cosmopolitanism and the possibility for further understanding.

Dr. Schilling wants to more precisely define pluralism as the equal recognition of different views of the world. From Schilling’s view this is a modern European development. In the 15th and 16th centuries Europe was concentrating itself at the same time that it was defining itself in opposition to Islam in terms of absolute truth and eschatology. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 marks the European leaders’ decision to develop a secularized structure for international law that would seek to remove the issue of religion from international politics. Islam, Dr. Schilling notes however, did not appropriate this idea of pluralism.

Dr. Borgolte, in reply, stresses that Islam was not solely about holy warfare and draws attention to the Islamic conquest of Sicily to raise the question of Europe’s multicultural historical development and the role of difference. From Dr. Borgolte’s view, Islamic control of Sicily marks a long period of peaceful intellectual cooperation and cultural development including universities and the translation of Aristotele, which also involved Jewish translators.

Dr. Meier adds that he still sees Europe as a unique Greco-Roman inheritance, highlighting structural developments including markets, language and philosophical concepts in Latin.

Finally, Dr. Schilling wants to draw attention to the eastern boundaries of Europe again and the relationship of the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires. The emergence of religious fundamentalism in this conflict strikes Dr. Schilling as an interesting chance to ask how Europeans overcame the pitfalls of religious fundamentalism. Dr. Schilling also offers an observation (since he had prepared for a lecture not a discussion) that there is a difference in the historical relationship of Islam and Judaism to Europe. After the Spanish Christian re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, Islam withdrew to North Africa and had very little presence in Europe except for diplomatic relations (Shilling notes the presence of a tombstone for a Moroccan ambassador in the Hague for support). On the other hand, in this period Jews, although forced out of Spain, became an important presence in central Europe. Places like Amsterdam became centers of Jewish-Christian exchange.

Open Discussion:
From the audience comes a call for clearer definition of European normative values and sentiments in the first round of questions. Someone also asks about the role of the Crusades in the historical relationship of Europe and Islam and someone else asks for more comment on the particular case of Spain after the Reconquista. In the second round of questions, someone wants to know more about the role of Byzantium in the relationship of Europe and Islam. Another person draws attention to Cordoba, Spain and asks to know more about this case as a model of tolerance. Finally, someone asks about the Greeks; almost provocatively, do they belong to Europe?

Dr. Borgolte replies first. He does not see a historically stable form of European identity with related ideology and values. He reiterates the dialectical relationship of difference and unity in the development of Europe’s identity in relationship with Islam. In response to the question about the Crusades, Dr. Borgolte agrees with the audience member that the Crusades marked a distinct break in the identity of Islam that has affected Muslims to this day. In regards to Spain, Dr. Borgolte notes that under Islamic control, there was a relatively low degree of Islamicization due to the fact that most Islamic leaders were more interested in exacting forms of tribute and controlling the population. By the 10^th century, the majority of those people under their control converted to Islam but by the 17^th century, roughly 70% of Spain’s population was Christian; 15% Jewish and 15% Muslim.

Dr. Schilling responds next with a note on identity politics. In the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the idea of European identity originated from above, which leaders of the various forms of Christian confession propagated from the top down in their domains. Noting the work of another scholar, Hartmut Kaeble, Dr. Schilling reasserts that there was no European consciousness before 1700. From this perspective, European identity is a modern phenomenon and closely tied with European state-building and expansion.

The historians do not have much to say in response to the questions on Cordoba and the Byzantine Empire. Dr. Schilling adds a note on tolerance in 16th century Budapest under the control of the Pasha and another note on the emergence of a Palestinian identity in the late 19th century.

In a final note, Dr. Meier draws attention to the current issue of “radical” or Islamist politics as a point that people in Europe need to discuss further.

Where the Greeks stand in all of this and what this says about European identity remains open. The questions are all interesting, but seem to present points for further exploration and clearer connection with other voices in this project. After two hours, the group discussion appears to be over and people are heading for the exits or the reception room for drinks and snacks.

After all is said and done, it appears that there really are two distinct questions: European identity (itself a complicated question involving many regions, religions (confessions) and state-building) and the question of Islam, both in historical relationship to Europe and in current affairs. I am not convinced to what extent old Latin Christian religious structures can shape current European development. From this evening's discussion, it appears that the historical interrelationship of Christianity, Judaism and Islam have at different times contributed to the unification of European identity and its idea of plurality. At least from the historical perspective, it is not simply a question of whether Islam or Islamic countries could belong to Europe. And what about those pesky Greeks and their historical roots? There seems to be more questions here for discussion exactly along all the lines of Europe's borders, especially at key places like Spain or Greece. What can these border studies tell us?

A European identity seems quite possible, but Europe within its contemporary boundaries has the potential to develop in very diverse ways, which may be an even greater strength stemming from its historical development. The question of Turkey's candidacy for the European Union has brought some of this historical knowledge into the discussion. I have heard several voices in my travels looking for a way to draw boundaries along the old lines of a unified religion and normative values of the Occident, but I am not sure if this is the best way to frame the issue and the argument itself may be on shaky grounds to begin with. The strength of Turkish civil society seems like the more pertinent question. After all, democracy had its birth on the coast of Asia Minor and Turkish society has its own long struggle with the values of secular civil society. For this kind of question, we need other voices. The Islamicist acceptance of violence, restrictions on freedom and rejection of equality, however, seems a clearer case for drawing a line in terms of normative values that go beyond Europe.

On a walk from the Kottbussertor to the Friedrichstrasse

I went looking for a building on this sunny afternoon that I'll tell you more about on Blog Action Day. I found some interesting things along the way in the architectural history of Berlin.
If you are interested, please check out the link.

Primary source 4: Protestant sermons from Erfurt

@ the Evangelical Central Archives (EZA)

I went back to the central church archives in the eastern part of Berlin-Kreuzberg today. The Protestant Church played a very important role in Germany at the turn of 20th century and I am interested in how this role looked for the first part of my study. I think this period has much to tell historians about our analysis of culture and Germany's struggle with modernity in the early Weimar Republic, and subsequently, Nazism and after 1945. I think this history may also have something to tell us about how Germans deal with fear today (See Sabine Bode's new book on German Angst. I am reviewing it for H-German in the early spring of 2008).

In the Imperial period (1880-1914/18), Protestant Church leaders strongly advocated for the Prussian monarchy and actively girded Germans for war as did most Protestant leaders across western Europe at that time. Most Germans were Protestant and in Thuringia they made up an overwhelming majority of the population. Most churches presided over districts drawn across their city maps. They estimated the numbers of people living in their districts from anywhere between 12,000 and 18,000 individual souls. They saw themselves as important administrators for those areas and supported many civic efforts and relief programs. Even before the First World War, many churches found themselves strapped for the necessary resources. In 1918/19 most churches experienced a wave of members leaving and found themselves surrounded by more and more non-believers, smaller alternative Christian communities like the Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists and Baptists, and hostile elements in the new communist movement. Still, between 300 and 500 people regularly attended services and those numbers doubled for the church holiday services.

I found a few sermons and church bulletins from ministers in Erfurt and Magdeburg (in Saxony-Anhalt). Protestant ministers never seemed to be too far away from talking about fear and that gives me an important view to how a few ministers expressed fear and and how they offered ways for Germans to deal with those fears. The number one fear was for one's soul and then for the souls of other believers around the reader or listener. They also discussed the fear of death and how to deal with death, but also questioned the way the Prussian state would order Germans to commemorate death, reminding their public about death as a religious form of sacrifice or eternal damnation.

The first sermon also imagines a hostile world and paints a picture of a type of community that I find interesting for its vision and how it would later influence newer forms of political culture in Germany in some interesting and important ways. The second source is a set of excerpts from a sermon and bulletin from another pastor in Erfurt. He reacted to Germany in the wake of its defeat in the First World War and preached a path for Germany's renewal through a Christian spiritual re-awakening at a time when Germans were pulling apart their society.

The last record that I shall add soon comes from among the church archives of Magdeburg in northwest neighboring Saxony-Anhalt. From these materials, I can see how German Christians battled Confessing Christians for control over local churches, their pastorships and teachings. The source I want to show you is one minister's report of his Gestapo interrogation. Those records reveal how German Christians terrorized local religious communities in the 1930s and how the Protestant church focused its resistance along these lines of Christian tradition. That said, I am still perplexed by how Christians could not muster the courage to protest the racial transformation of Germany. I think one of the keys to answering that questions may lie in the first source below and what happened to the vision of Germany as a diverse form of civil society.


1875: Imagining Germany

On May 24, 1875, the pastor from the Regler Church in Erfurt, Dr. Baerwinkel, gave a sermon at the Ulrich Church in Halle a./S. for a meeting of the Evangelical Union. His church published an edition and one copy ended up in the EZA records for the Regler Church.

What I found most interesting was how Dr. Baerwinkel talked about the kind of place his listeners should make. He invoked a story from the Old Testament book of Nehemia 4, 1-9 . That story recounts opposition to the Jewish rebuilding of Jerusalem and Dr. Baerwinkel uses this passage to paint this picture of Germany about four years after the creation of the modern German nation state in 1871. For example, he states:

We are of one opinion that the city of God we would like to build must have walls. It is necessary to give this city a mighty border so that one knows how far this territory reaches and where foreign lands begin. It must be a wall so solid that the foxes cannot find a way. Yes, this city of God, our church, must become a mighty fortress and a free place for everyone who calls out in the name of the Lord and seek shelter within its walls, but also a powerful place of arms for the battle against the unbelievers and the amoral of the world.
[...] our task here is the same as it should be in focus everywhere: proclaim the word of God, toil with our hands in the realm of God, practice the actions of the good Samaritan, take care of the sick or call sinners to repent. The is the same task we are given when we hear the sermon or fold our hands in prayer for our soul's salvation.

What I find interesting is that fortress-mentality that can almost seem ubiquitous in central Germany in the form of inscriptions on church architecture or in the verses of the Luther hymn, "A mighty fortress is our God". Even more striking to me is the reading of the Old Testament. This city of God is for believers. That does not necessarily preclude Jews, but it views everyone else as enemies. It is at once a militant and a compassionate vision of Germany. What happened to these visions are strands in my analysis for the 1920s.


1921: The German soul is sick

The second source comes from Pastor Kohlschmidt of the Augustiner Church. Pastor Kohlschmidt appears to heave been a prolific writer. The first excerpt is from his sermon, "Be at peace", in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Martin Luther Day, which the church subsequently published in a local newspaper as a three part series. Pastor Kohlschmidt's sermon captures the sense of Germany's catastrophic loss in the wake of the First World War and the feeling of occupation by foreigners, most likely the French, but possibly others, maybe Jews or communists. Pastor Kohlschmidt believes that Germans have accepted the materialism of England and France, which in turn has fractured German society much like 400 years ago during the religious wars. So Pastor Kohlschmidt invokes Luther as the German hero and admonishes Germans to turn to Jesus Christ in order to help heal Germany's sick soul. For example, Pastor Kohlschmidt writes:

[...] 400 years have passed by since that memorable day. We write the year 1921, a year not of salvation but of disaster; a year and a time of calamity […] what kind of salvation do we need? Just like 400 years ago, we are a divided people. Back then, foreigner sat upon the throne. The foreigners are now more than ever our masters.

[…] Materialism, despite Kant and Fichte, has almost stifled the German mind. Materialism has mechanized work and flattened thinking. And it has led into a form of dogmatism […]. It has atomized society and mocked reverence. It has turned duty into egotism, truth into perjury and morality into fornication […] And so it has happened as it had to happen. If Luther were to make his way from Wittenberg to Erfurt via Halle, Leipzig and Merseburg, what would he find? What would he say?

Poor German people! Other people say that today who call for salvation and offer themselves as saviors. Economic reform, socialization, school reform, new philosophy! […]

This is about the soul of our people, not our minds or our hands. Our soul is sick and therefore our ways of thinking, our entire writing and endeavors. […] Be at peace! That is how Luther advised us 400 years ago. This peace is not something that the world can give us; only he who bore the burdens of humanity, Jesus Christ!

1925: Totenfest: commemorating death and dealing with fear

In a second piece from an Augustiner Church's bulletin from 1925, Pastor Kohlschmidt talks about the holiday commemorating the dead. According to Pastor Kohlschmidt, this festival did not always exist in Germany. Over one hundred years earlier, Kaiser Wilhelm Friedrich III had ordered Prussians to remember those who had sacrificed their lives in the wars against Napoleon. Here, Pastor Kohlenschmidt claims that Germans have forgotten the origins of this festival, but asserts a deeper meaning behind the notion of death than simply dying for a nation state's wars on earth. Pastor Kohlschmidt invokes the fear of death without salvation and admonishes his readers that they really should be more concerned with where they end up in the afterlife. For example, he writes:

Is that really the deepest meaning of Totenfest? Are we allowed to say that dying means becoming blessed? No, the Holy Scriptures says that only those who die in the Lord are blessed. How many have died and have not wanted to know about the Lord while living? How often is the inscription, “Here rests in the Lord”, only an untrue form of speaking? More true is the word:

“Who acts according to my word,

To him I open the gates of peace;

Who transgresses against me, will not find what he seeks!

I come knocking at your door.”

Therefore Totenfest should remind us that we too must die. The earnest, bitter earnest question should press upon us and never let go, “Where do I want to spend eternity?"

Just who felt this fear of damnation is unclear. The churches presided over districts with populations in the tens of thousands, but only 300 to 400 regularly attended services. So on the one hand, the fear of damnation may not have had that much of an affect on Germans. On the other hand, however, there were significant groups of practicing Christians and that will influence their views of Germany, the Weimar Republic and the idea of Germany's renewal through religious practice.

Research in the Evangelical Central Archives in Berlin-Kreuzberg

I have spent the last two days looking through the records of the central archive in Berlin for the collections of the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD) and the Evangelical Church of the Union, the former Prussian state church (EKU) (See the reading room on the left). I am searching for records from local churches in hopes of finding sermons, petitions or letters from people in the communities in my study, Erfurt, Magdeburg and Nuremberg. I am particularly interested in any materials that can give me a sense of how German Protestants reacted to the growing anti-Semitism and political violence after the First World War. Protestant Christians made up a majority in my areas of study. So I want to see what fear looks like from a Christian’s point of view and how they dealt with the presence of fear resulting from the rise in more violent forms of politics from more radical leftwing working class groups and racist rightwing associations.

I found interesting sources dating back into the 1870s that I think are worth presenting here at some point. For example, I found a sermon from 1875 in which the minister shapes the Christian vision of a community in the form of a fortress. Notably, the minister draws that vision from the Book of Nehemiah 4, 1-9 in which the Jews must raise a wall to defend Jerusalem from their enemies. I also found a judicial case from 1911-1915, which offers a window into how marital relations and gender shaped a legal investigation and the very physical feeling of fear that influenced the accuser's willingness to tell the truth. The case involves the expert opinions of the local minister, the district doctor and police chief. So there is quite a wealth of material, but one should also be prepared to sift through stacks of documents and read really bad handwriting. It makes getting outside on a beautiful fall afternoon essential and makes me miss my yoga teacher and regular classes back home.

The majority of the correspondence that I have found in these administrative records, however, involves the requests of specific congregations and their ministers for things like pensions, health care support and additional ministers. The early and late periods of the 1920s witnessed massive inflation, unemployment and housing shortages. These findings in themselves tell me that these congregations were more focused on different concerns about old age, health, housing and adequate ministers for spiritual and educational need than the kinds of issues in my work.

It struck me that Erfurt was still growing with industrialization after the First World War. Many people left the churches right after the First World War because of their disappointment in the way the churches had so whole heartedly supported the Kaiser and Imperial Germany’s war aims (Dr. Roeber notes that this was also an international trend after the war). The churches noted larger and larger populations in their districts because of Erfurt’s growing economy, but also added that large numbers of these residents were socialists, communists, freethinkers, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists and Baptists and expressed a militant attitude toward them. On most Sundays there were perhaps only 300 to 400 people at a service. On religious holidays like Easter the numbers more than doubled. So thousands of Germans did not attend for one reason or another, but, interestingly, they were sending more and more of their children to the church schools in their districts (why?). Therefore, the church councils requested the need for more ministers to teach the growing numbers of children in their religion classes. Several churches either built whole new worship houses or requested an additional minister and spent much of the 1920s dealing with the issues of finance in their correspondence with the upper levels of the national church administration.

So far at least, I have not found many records of how Christians responded to the earlier period of violence that is the focus of my study, i.e., the political assassinations from 1921-1922 or the wave of Anti-Semitism in 1923. Why that is the case, is not clear. In part it involves the type of records I am examining, but there might be more (I have found other records elsewhere that I will present in due time). From the little I did find, some Christians viewed the world in terms of believers and non-believers, i.e., Socialists, Communists and even other Christian sects that had erred in their view. The authors of these sources make an effort to remind their audience about how scared Christians were of the anti-religious and anti-private property actions of Communists during the revolutionary period and the wave of people leaving the churches in 1918/19. Where Jews fit into this picture is an interesting question. The sermon that I found from 1875 raises some of these questions for consideration, especially how Jews and others fit into a Christian world view of community through a reading of the Book of Nehemiah. The discussion of actual Jewish neighbors, interestingly, does not appear as a topic. I think that is an important question for the possibility of more diverse and tolerant communities, especially in times of economic crisis. So I wonder why this is the case. That said, it appears that more everyday issues of money, housing and health shaped the concerns of these individuals rather than larger political or moral issues resulting from the spate of political assassinations or reports of violence directed against Jews or defenders of civil society.

Writing letters to church officials noticeably increased with the rise of the Nazi movement and their seizure of power in 1933. Erfurt became a bastion of the German Christians in the State of Thuringia in the years leading up to the seizure of power. These Christians sought to aryanize Protestantism and very closely align it with Hitler and Nazi racial doctrine. The letters in support of aryanization, however, reveal different ideas about how Protestantism should be Nazified, e.g., removing the Old Testament because it was Jewish or even getting rid of Christianity all together because it was scientifically outdated.

The records from Magdeburg reveal a high level of struggle within the local churches and their governing bodies between 1933 and 1938 over Christianity, i.e., the struggle between the “German Christians” and the “Bekennende Kirche”. "Bekennen" means confessing or professing the ideals of Christianity in this case, but "bekennen" can also convey the sense of coming out and admitting one's responsibility. Many of these letter are from people who were interested in bringing the churches and their evangelical mission in line with Hitler and the Nazi State, but there are also letters (so far fewer) from people invoking a kinder and more tolerant Christianity. They made no bones about how Nazism contradicted Christian teachings and bluntly expressed their mistrust of the Nazi State. There are even cases of Germans questioning the Nazi sterilization programs as early as 1933.

In one case, there was a letter justifying the Nazis' eradication of the communists because of their “enemy” status. From this first culling of the materials, not too many Germans invoked Christianity in response to the violence in the earlier period that is my focus. They did invoke Christianity in the early Nazi period, but that in turn led to a rift within the churches. Interestingly, few seemed to question German or Nazi treatment of Jews or the persecution of political opponents. Why not remains an interesting question. What is just the more pressing material needs of everyday life? Was it the Christian individual's focus on one's own Christian community? the understanding that the others did not belong? the appeal of Nazism? ignorance? apathy? What had happened to Christian notions of compassion for others among Christians in general? Why did fear of one's standing before God in final judgment not urge more to worry about their actions or inaction on earth and in the world around them? These are questions worth pondering for our own understanding of the contemporary world and the visions of our own communities as well.

The bug on the wall

My former tenth grade English teacher, David Emory, wrote me and asked whether I intend to stay within the relatively safe format of observation and private reflection. Will I remain the quiet spy, known to you readers only as a narrative voice with opinions, or will I become a character in the scenes I report on, interacting extensively with the people there?
To be quite honest, I walk around Berlin kind of like a quiet spy, a detached voice, an alien or a bug on the wall. I have a vivid imagination that evokes fears of the city and myself: flash images of pickpockets’ hands, bullish men, skinheads, people just looking at me funny like I am from Mars (and not in that really nice way some people greet Martians). Sometimes it is the eyes in the city, catching glances, darting looks, thousands of them. Sometimes it is the mass of bodies passing – streams of them. I begin to imagine people imagining me as some sort of thief, vagabond or sexual predator. What do I look like to all these people? Who am I?
In part this goes back to two posts on Larissa Chace-Smith’s blog about fear and stepping out of one’s comfort zone. I am very aware of people here and the closer I get to them, the more things matter in my mind like my appearance or my accent. It also makes me think about my post on Heinrich Mann’s character Diederich Hessling, who imagines his surroundings through his fears of specific people. Hessling’s name, by the way, refers to him as the ugly one. He worries about his appearance as a gentleman in the eyes of his town's society. He is dominated by the older men and war veterans and he is aggressive in his actions toward his employees and women. I am also reminded of the more obvious reference to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, that sense of one’s ugliness and alienation in relation to the world and one's self. Reading Emerson's essay "Experience" also raises the issues of the person and his or her relationship with the world around them.
As I initially thought out this post, I was riding the tram. A Muslim woman sat down next to me. I imagined this veiled person and thought about exploding. The image of the threatening Muslim has affected my consciousness and more importantly, the American consciousness. I am paranoid. We are paranoid. So we seek comfort and safety - a lot of it, if possible (see the designs for the US embassy in Berlin or the one in the Green Zone in Baghdad).
Much of this is my imagination; in part a collection of old fears from notions of the city, run-ins with Nazi skinheads and experiencing the sense of not belonging. My imagination can run wild, but things are not that bad – my German is pretty good and I really do not look like some horrible creature (except at night when I am tired). Plus, I have learned not to let some of the actual experiences get to me so easily - like watching a baker turn her face into a grimace when she looked up and saw me after having just acted so friendly toward another customer. What appearance did I express with such thoughts active in my mind? This is part of learning how to deal with the fear we confront in our everyday lives. I cannot control what anyone thinks of me nor do I always know what is really going on with that other person. Who knows what that baker saw or what she intended with her facial expressions. In the process of navigating Berlin through this mix of experiences, I have been encouraged to just be comfortable with the ever changing me and not worry so much about my bug-like self (I have clad myself as a yellow bug today).
I often relate the humorous side of this to friends: people here do not necessarily know what to make of me. I heard an old man describe me to his wife as a “real Indian”. So I began to walk as if I was some proud Indian I had only seen in movies. A vendor at a street market started talking to me in Spanish and wanted to know if I were from her home country of Peru. It gave me the chance to practice some Spanish and meet a person from another world. In Magdeburg, a man did a double take and then turned to me in the street with a Russian-accented German. He begged his pardon and told me that at first he thought I looked like Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris?!? Not knowing what to make of myself makes it interesting. Yet what were to happen, if enough people began making an environment hostile because of one reason or another, and then focus that hostility in law and policy? Why should we even notice? How would we respond to the presence of such widespread fear, intolerance, hatred, violence and terror? Would we defend a more liberal vision of society, when there appear to be enemies all around us? These are key questions underlying my own work on Germany in the wake of the First World, but I also think that we should consider them in our own world too.
But back to Berlin: I love walking through this city and interacting with people. I lived here for three years. So I feel at home here.
I also think I sense a mood swing among people here in Berlin from my last visit less than a year ago. Granted the weather is turning colder. That oppressive ceiling of leaden grey has hung low over the city much of the day. The air becomes thick and clammy. In the afternoon, the clouds break and the air becomes crisp. Also keep in mind that Germans have been making their moods an issue of late (more on that in a later book review). The government has even made uplifting Germans’ moods, no matter how absurd that might sound, a point for national initiative.
That said, business on the streets and in the corner markets looks robust. Large international realtors are buying up apartment properties and renovating many more, speculating that this relatively cheap market is going to appreciate quite well in the next years. Moreover, the people I see ranging about the city are quite diverse, and more and more, Berlin has that kind of energy I get from places like London and New York City. This place has interesting things going on and can inspire. People seem friendlier too in passing, on the tram or in line. My friend, Stefanie, thinks that children are taking over the city, whole hordes of them in the playgrounds and parks spreading throughout the city, influencing marketing campaigns, business and social life. From the archive windows in east Kreuzberg I can hear children laughing outside. Maybe that is just Berlin on a good day or maybe I have been catching the city at the right moments when I miss the grumpy, racist, lonely, sad and sick or stark mad.
One last note on the recent national holiday that marks German Reunification: I get the sense from talking to Germans that they do not know what to make of this day. My friend, Stefanie, wanted to celebrate and called up her East and West German friends and family. Her father complained about the money that West Germany had spent on the East (Stefanie partially agreed). Her friend Ollie likes to refer to the day as the “Day of the Imperialist Annexation). He was just joking, but he also asked what exactly should one celebrate on this day and how? Stefanie shot back that the wall is gone; well, at least Ollie agreed to that. Most East Germans do not want to go back, although we hear those voices too. From the smells in the inner courtyards of the old apartment blocks, it appears that people slept in on their national holiday, cooked big breakfasts and had afternoon cake and coffee almost like any Sunday in some parts of Germany.

Pictures from the Day of German Unity, the Holocaust Memorial & Potsdamer Platz

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From the Brandenburg Tor to Potsdamer Platz

Our old mentor and notes on sources

I had a surprise today. I went to work in the Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfeld on the former grounds of the Prussian military, which also later housed the US military. I am still setting up my study of central Germany through the eyes of the old Empire's state system and the Weimar Republic, but I have ordered several sets of materials and plan to get started after tomorrow's national holiday which commemorates German reunification in 1989/90. So I decided to check my email and found a note from my old friend and college classmate Colin. Our mentor in German studies from Colgate, Dr. Hans-Juergen Meyer-Wendt, and his wife Barbara were in town and wanted to meet him at the original Einstein Cafe on the Kurfuerstenstrasse at 4PM. They had no idea that I was in town and I had not been in contact with them for several years. So it was a pleasant surprise for all of us when we sat down for coffee. Some things have not changed. Juergen wanted to know where we are in our own dissertation work (Colin is working on Aristotle from classical philological and philosophical perspectives at the Humboldt Universitaet). As he is wont to do, Juergen wanted to know who would finish first, but Colin and I have learned to take the old game in stride. He and his wife are retired now and traveling around Europe to visit friends, attend his 50th high school reunion and finalize the publication of his upcoming book. With so much time, Juergen and Barbara have translated W.E.B. DuBois's Souls of Black Folk into German together and published it to good reviews. Juergen is in the final stages of finishing his book on Emerson and fully documenting Emerson's influence on European intellectual history (Colin used to help Juergen way back in the early stages of what will probably become Juergen's major life work). For my own work, Juergen's notes on Emerson are interesting. Emerson influenced writers such as Nietzsche, Hoffmansthal (much of the Vienna Secession), but it was Juergen's note on Emerson's articulation of a Wirkungsaesthetik and Wirkungsgeschichte - the aesthetics of "effect" and its history that caught my attention. It has struck me that there is a history to historicizing effects and the modern subject (who we are as individuals and how we are able to experience). So it struck me that our old mentor was still going on about Emerson after all these years, but it was like a small gift from an old teacher. If you are interested, he told me to check out Emerson's compact presentation of these ideas in his essays, "The Poet" and the more famous "Experience". I guess I will have to keep my eye out for the release of Juergen's book in the coming year. On another note, he echoed a suggestion from Dr. Schaepdrijver to look through Sebastian Haffner's Memoirs of a German (ca. 1938) translated into English as Defying Hitler. What struck Juergen is how well Haffner described how German society came apart in the 1920s. More striking, is how Haffner recalls his childhood at the beginning of the First World War and makes insightful observations, for example, how children would excitedly line up at the news kiosks to read the soccer scores before the war and then gathered at the same places during the war to read the lists of the fallen as if it was a similar kind of game cheering for the home side and wishing death and destruction upon the enemy that markedly worsened as the lists grew longer. From Haffner's view, this relation between sports, children and war is more than coincidence, claiming that many of the most militant and eventual Nazi supporters after the war were not the war veterans but the next generation of young men seeking that feeling of winning again and willing to prove themselves through more violence. Such notes strike eerie chords with someone like Juergen who grew up during the First World War and fled from East Germany with his family later on. He sees parallels with our own US society in which he has now lived for about half his life, particularly the "Mitlaeufertum" or going along with everyone else without question. Before I left, Colin and I also talked about blogging and doing something relevant with the new media and its potential for democracy, for our own work, but perhaps more importantly, for US politics. He suggested a couple new blogs, "The Timber Room" for its eclectic but solid group of writers and Uwe Steinhoff's work, both his blog and his recent book from Oxford University Press, On the Ethics of War and Terrorism. After hearing more about my work Colin suggested that I write an essay on fear and the fragmentation of society. It is kind of funny how things work, but I plan to stay in better contact now with the Meyer-Wendts and see what Colin and I can do together. Thank you for sending that email, Colin.

Pictures from today's walk through the Mauerpark

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Mauerpark, Berlin, October 2007

Frederick the Great and the Notion of Fear

On Sunday I took a walk through the middle of Berlin. It was cold and rainy, but I wanted to see how things had changed since my last visit a year ago. One of the highlights is the newly restored Bode Museum on the Museum Island in the middle of the city. Originally designed by the Imperial Court's architect Ernst von Ihne between 1897-1904, the neo-Baroque museum was meant to hold the sculpture and artwork collections of Wilhelm von Bode. When I entered the main doors, I found my way into the "small" cupola hall facing a large bronze statue of Frederick the Great on his horse. In reading a little more about this place I found out that the emperor was originally surrounded by statues of five of his generals. They are no longer apparently there, but in looking around the large hall and the ornately wrought balustrades winding up along the sides toward the restaurant and gift shop above, I could read gilt inscriptions in Latin and English. One read, "I and my house want to serve the Lord" and another read, "Fearlessness and Perseverance" (Furchtlosigkeit und Beharrlichkeit).
This was not a place meant for just any German to enter. When the curators opened the museum in 1904, they invited the Emperor's court society and upper middle class patrons. I have not found any documents that demonstrate how people received this architectural display of the old Prussian emperors, but it is striking that the architects chose to invoke the likeness of arguably the greatest Prussian monarch as military leader in the entrance space to this museum. It is even more interesting to me that the architects chose texts that link the notion of service to the activity of the emperor's house and the belief in God. Moreover, instructs those connected to the undertakings of the Prussian monarchs that they should not feel fear and they should persevere in the face of...what, fear itself? On the one hand, it is clear that the builders would intend to eradicate the feeling of fear with this place as it calls onlookers to serve their leaders. One emotion that should not have been present under this monarchy and in that society was the feeling of fear, and yet there it is written in large gold script on the ceiling.
In future postings, I plan to explore the problem of fear in more detail. One of the things I plan to do is review a new book on fear in German society built on interviews with prominent Germans who discuss the specificity of fear in Germany and the way Germans go about their lives today. Reflecting on this statue, I am not sure how much this, I'll call it, "emotional culture" differed from those of other monarchies and nation states in Europe, but it does not appear unusual so far in comparison. Plus, I think it is worth exploring the notion of fear more widely in that time and place at the turn of the century through different types of sources. I will keep an eye out as I now enter the archives. Please let me know what you think.