“Under Nazi rule, the Germans were finally able to live out their arrogance towards others and their great-power fantasies, which had dominated them since the 19th century.”
Rolf Petri is Full Professor of Contemporary History (19th and 20th centuries) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
George Grosz: Das Gesicht der herrschenden Klasse (1921)
[Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Das_Gesicht_der_herrschenden_Klasse_57_politische_Zeichnungen_Front_cover.png]
What would Kuby make of Germany today? Erich Kuby (1910–2005) was a leading journalist, whose work appeared in numerous periodicals and magazines, including Stern, Der Spiegel, and the Frankfurter Hefte. He was also a novelist, radio dramatist and screenwriter—notably for the film Das Mädchen Rosemarie, which revolved around a famous criminal case from the era of Germany’s postwar ‘economic miracle.’ A persistent critic of militarist continuity in German history, Kuby opposed rearmament and sympathized with the student and peace movements. A meticulous investigative journalist, he held up a critical mirror to the German public until his later years. His books addressed, among other contemporary and historical subjects, German crimes during the occupation of Poland and Italy in World War II, as well as Germany’s role in Europe before and after 1990. He spent his final years in Venice, where we interviewed his widow, the literary scholar Susanna Böhme-Kuby.
Rolf Petri: Since the time of my youthful readings, particularly the novels of Arnold Zweig, I have always interpreted the continuities and ruptures in twentieth-century German history in light of the conditions and outcomes of the First World War. You knew and loved a man, Erich Kuby, who personally lived through and traversed this long German twentieth century with clear-sighted awareness. What do you think he would say today: are we still stuck in the long German twentieth-century?
Susanna Böhme-Kuby: Of course, I cannot answer as the voice of Erich Kuby, but can only say as much as I infer from my knowledge of his writings, thoughts, and our countless conversations. He never did, and would not today, speak of a ‘German century,’ because he knew that the ‘German bid for world power’ had failed twice and that after the lost Second World War, German affairs were subordinated to U.S. interests, which in 1945 had firmly established themselves as a world power. The Yalta division of the world served the restoration interests of German big industry, which could continue producing almost uninterrupted and swiftly brought unexpected prosperity to the young Federal Republic (in stark contrast to the GDR, which had to pay a large share of German reparations to the USSR and build an industry almost from scratch).
As early as March 22, 1945, while still an American prisoner of war in Brest (France), Kuby noted in his war diary: “At present, it seems as if German madness was more dangerous to the world than American stupidity, which disguises itself as democratic reasoning while unmasking German madness as bestiality. However, I am not sure whether this stupidity, if it fully asserts itself on a global scale with missionary zeal, might not cause at least as much disaster.” One can infer from this that Kuby would not be very surprised by the current US policy under Trump.
And after the “deserved” division of the country—which he understood not only as the price for the unleashed war but also as the willing German subordination to the strongest victor, along with the rejection of a much more arduous all-German, neutral perspective for Germany (he called this the untrodden “lower path”)—he ironically spoke of the first ten years after the war, until rearmament, as of the “beautiful time of hardship” and that “short German holiday,” during which the German Michel [a fictional character that since the Biedermeier period embodies the ostensibly ‘apolitical’ German national character], far from taking political responsibility, could bask in his rise during the early ‘economic miracle’.
Rolf Petri: From his early youth, Kuby was acutely aware of the political developments in Germany after the First World War, including the sprouting of the Nazi seed in its first hour. He later described the Nazi era as the time of Germany’s greatest self-realization. What exactly did he mean by that?
Susanna Böhme-Kuby: The “self-realization” referred to Kuby’s conviction that under Nazi rule, the Germans were finally able to live out their arrogance towards others and their great-power fantasies, which had dominated them since the 19th century. He had experienced the apolitical masses of people—more nihilists than convinced fascists—very directly and up close for the first time during his war years, which shaped him negatively forever, and he came to the conclusion that he could not trust this people.
Rolf Petri: How would Kuby today judge the opinion of many Germans that they can be proud of their admission of guilt? They apparently see themselves as world champions of remembrance and seem to believe that this legitimizes them to a new kind of German superiority in judging other countries and ‘villains’—so much so that they morally elevate themselves above the International Court of Justice when it expresses a “plausible” suspicion of genocide against Israel.
Susanna Böhme-Kuby: He would likely see this as confirmation of renewed national arrogance and hubris, which could be unleashed again after the ‘undeserved’ unification. According to Kuby, this absolute commitment to Israel was based not on genuine atonement or repentance, but on a deflection of guilt, since the structural foundations of Nazi crimes continued to exist in the Federal Republic. Even in captivity, Kuby wrote in the spring of
1945: “There is no way to make one or a few people atone for the death of millions and the suffering of nations. (…) The question is whether there is still personal guilt when no personal atonement can be made for this guilt because the guilt is too great. Guilt of this dimension is distributed among many or even all, for one could not have borne it without help or toleration.” And as early as 1943, after Stalingrad, Kuby noted in his war diary regarding the end of the war: “… then it is clear where the journey will lead—into the sky-blue of innocence. You can’t hang anyone morally with such ropes, but they are what shackle reason.”
Rolf Petri: In 1990, the year of German reunification, Erich Kuby published two books. The subtitle of one describes the German division as deserved and the unification as undeserved, while the subtitle of the other prophesies that Europe would henceforth be a ‘German Europe.’ 35 years later, I ask you, was he also right about this?
Susanna Böhme-Kuby: Kuby feared that the ‘national reawakening,’ which had been underway since the 1980s, would, with the so-called reunification, once again lead to a German claim to leadership in (Central) Europe, with a renewed turn to the East and increased militarization. When I remarked in a conversation in the mid-1990s that this couldn’t be so bad within the EU, he replied: “Just wait until the Germans come to their senses again, in about 20 years… I won’t live to see it, but you will.”
Rolf Petri: In today’s largely conformist media landscape, a still-active Erich Kuby would likely be branded as a ‘disinformation agent,’ or even a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ And yet, the confessed ‘nest-fouler’ apparently loved Germany, for he “spent his entire life dealing with nothing other than this country,” as Heinrich Senfft summarized in 2005. Apparently, he could imagine another, better Germany.
Susanna Böhme-Kuby: I would disagree with this suggestion, because Kuby did not ‘love’ this Germany. He, like [the former German President Gustav] Heinemann once did, would reserve this verb for his wife or family. Nor did he believe in the existence of a better ‘other Germany’—in this, he was close to Kurt Tucholsky—for Kuby, the so-called ‘other Germans’ were always only those small minorities who, throughout history, were always ‘against,’ against the powerful, but they were always only small minorities. Kuby had a strong political-historical consciousness and interest and always wanted to be part of history. This is also why he abandoned his exile plan in Yugoslavia in 1934, because he wanted to be in Germany on the ground and observe the developments up close—just as he recorded the events of the war in his diary.
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