Le culture di Angela Merkel e di
Christa Wolf
Культу́ры Aнгелы Меркель и Кристы Вольф
Les
cultures d’Angela Merkel et de Christa Wolf
Die
Kulturen von Angela Merkel und Christa Wolf
The
case has made it happen that, at the same time, in a moment when the general attention of the World was
concentrated on Germany because of the European crisis, which emphasizes the
central role that this country is playing more and more within the European Union, the
death of the famous German storyteller Christa Wolf has recalled to the public
opinion that the history of Germany is not composed just of the one of the
Federal Republic of Germany, but includes also the one of the former German
Democratic Republic (DDR), which was not a limited construction of the Communist
period, but included also the remnants of several ancient German traditions, such as
the ones of the first Germans ( who assembled themselves in Mecklemburg), of the Slavic
invasions in the Middle Ages (Leipzig is Lipica) , of the important cultural heritages of Saxony and
of Prussia, i.e., of Luther, Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Marx and Nietzsche, a.s.o..
This
helps us to utilize this opportunity for bending upon the intricacies of German
identity, a composed one, including Central European, Atlantic and Eastern
European influences, and, hence, a typical expression of “Europes’ two Lungs”.
The
Western press is trying, in these days, to give us an explanation to the pèresent attitude
of Germans rowards economy, which appears incomprehensible to the limited cultural background
of both Western politicians and intellectuals, having recourse to their stylized
German stereotypes: the rigidity of Lutherans, or the roughness of
Prussians.
In
reality, the ideal of the defence of stability as the cornerstone of Euro goes back towards
the pre-modern ideas of social harmony, typical of the German Bildungsbuergertum;
it was emphasized by Juenger's ideological construction in “Frieden”, where he described the adventure of the European construction as the result of a sort of
“Katharsis” of the German and European "hybris" during World War II, and was "codified" by the
theories of “Ordoliberalismus” at the very beginning of the Federal Republic.
Angela Merkel's personal history is rather singular, so to point out at the fact that also
Eastern German mindset is not so much different from the one of Western Germany.
She
was the daughter of a Lutheran pastor who decided to migrate from Western Germany to the DDR (a thing which today seems
unbelievable, but which was done by several German intellectuals, such as
Thomas Mann, Hermann Bloch and Stefan Heym).
She
was a scholar in physic, and was politically engaged on the “Front der Jugends” (FDJ).
This FDJ was a strange phaenomen. Whilst, as it is not so much known, in
Eastern Germany the appearance of multipartitism was maintained under Communism, albeit the
nationalist NDP, the liberal FDPD and the Christian CDU had just a decorative
role vis-à-vis the dominating communistic “Sozialistische Enheitspartey” (SED),
the joint youth organization of all political parties, the FDJ, was conceived since the
beginning as a unitarian movement, including, expressly, many Christian
intellectuals.
Angela
Merkel was one of these youths.
During
the transition phase which led from the DDR to the unification into FRG, Angela
Merkel entered the Eastern Christian CDU Party, obtaining the confidence of Tomas de
Maizière, the CDU politician which had ruled the party during the DDR period under the hegemony of SED.
When
the “Eastern” and the “Western” CDU merged, Angela Merkel entered into the Helmut Kohl'sstaff , and became his successor not much later. At the end, Merkel’s politics results to be not so much different from the one of Kohl.
What
is different, is the public opinion in Germany of today, which, as a consequence of
20 years of globalization, has forgottena bit the “cultural” roots of the
German stability policy, and is much more keen to rough simplifications (such
as “the virtuous German” against the “disorderly South Europeans”).
Also
for what concerns Christa Wolf, it is our impression that a lot of today’s
prejudices constitute a serious hindrance for a serious comprehension of her
life and of her work.
The
only relevant question seems to be, today, the dispute among those, who attack the late
storyteller for having carried out the whole of her work in the former DDR, and to
have hoped that this would have evolved slowly towards democracy, and the others who, on the contrary,
praise her because, in the last years of the DDR, she wrote some works which
were not aligned with the orthodoxy of those times, and had even some disputes
with the ruling Party.
This
polemic is not appropriated according to us,because denotes a double standard of morality. If nothing has
prevented Angela Merkel, who had lived all of her previous life as a militant of a DDR
official organization, to become the Chancellor of the reunified Germany , why should Christa Wolf
be condemned for having worked as a DDR storyteller, even as a critical one?
The
point is that, albeit, obviously, DDR was by far very distant from the cultural
and political standards of today, it was not completely insulated from long
term German cultural trends.
So,
some of the tendencies which were allowed, and even sponsored, by the DDR cultural policies, such as
socialist Christian movements and a literary classicism, had their roots by far
before World War II, and had tight links with the culture and politics of
Western Germany.
An
example is that FDJ existed also in the West, but was banned at an early stage. Another example
is that many authors, including Wolf, continued to produce works linked to the
classicist German literature, such as Christa’s Cassandra, which, from one side, are
connected to the German “Classics” (which, by the way, lived in the “Eastern”
Weimar), and, from another point of view, also the “Western” Adorno found, in
Goethe’s work the basis of European and German identities also for the future.
The
difficulty to understand today’s Germany
is a further evidence of the fact that, without a much deeper knowledge of Europe’s different cultural roots, it will be impossible
to find out a common cultural and political project, and, hence, a criterium for
deciding upon a common European Governance.
