Helmut Schmidt is now 93, but the highly respected former
German Chancellor sent a vigorous message the other day to Mrs Merkel and
Wolfgang Schaueble. He said that Germany
cannot and should not try to take on the leadership of Europe
in response to the economic crisis. The wounds of the Holocaust and of WWII are
still too raw and the memories too painful. He is right. While it may be unfair
to the present blameless generation, the Germans are burdened with war guilt
for years to come. They can be valued friends, partners and allies but they can
never again assert German hegemony.
Central Europe has always
interested me. I use the term to mean all modern Germany,
Austria, Poland, the Baltic
Republics, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Hungary, Romania and the
Slav Balkans. Historically the term Mitteleuropa
described those lands which would fall under German hegemony if it won the
First World War. It covered all the above (though with very different frontiers
if the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire survived) with the addition of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine. Mitteleuropa as a political programme
was not taken very seriously but it is useful shorthand for the large European
hinterland.
I cannot readily explain my fascination. We had elegant
refugee Hungarian neighbours in Aberdeen and an
inspirational schoolmaster in Edinburgh taught European
History- he was half-Scots but had been educated in Germany
and Heidelberg.
He taught me the career of Frederick the Great, the various Polish partitions,
Maria Theresa, von Kaunitz and the diplomatic revolution, The Enlightenment,
the reforms of von Stein, the Congress of Vienna, the manoeuvres of Metternich
and the later brilliant diplomacy of Bismarck. So I had the framework.
I have scant knowledge of the German language and I have not
travelled widely in Mitteleuropa.
While I have been much stimulated by visits to Vienna,
Berlin and Prague
and often toured in Germany
and Austria, I know nothing
first hand of Poland, Hungary
and points south. Yet Mitteleuropa culture
has entranced me with its Baroque, Rococo and Neo-classical buildings, its
incomparable musical genius, its profound philosophic and historical writing
and its diverse and brilliant intelligentsia.
 |
| Rococo St Nicholas, Prague |
 |
| The Ringstrasse Boulevard, Vienna |
Music seems to appeal particularly to the German spirit. The
air is filled with glorious harmonies from the joyful sonorities of Bach, the
exquisite sympathy of Mozart and the passionate sensibility of Beethoven, only
three in a wonderful catalogue including Telemann, Haydn, Schubert,
Mendelssohn, Brahms, Strauss, Wagner and non-German Dvorak and Liszt.
 |
| J S Bach |
 |
| W A Mozart |
In the world of philosophy and scholarship the Germans have few
rivals. Prominent leaders of the Enlightenment, Mitteleuropa gave us Immanuel Kant (of the categorical imperative)
never venturing further than 10 miles from his beloved Prussian home city of
Koenigsberg in a long life, or profound Hegel, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The
status of Leopold von Ranke as the pre-eminent champion of unbiased history is
undoubted and eyes were later opened wide by the biblical scholarship of Albert
Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann. The universities of Mitteleuropa were famed throughout the world for arts and sciences.
Surrounding all this was a glittering intelligentsia of
artists, novelists, journalists, connoisseurs and dramatists. Mitteleuropa civilisation perhaps
reached its apogee in late 19th and early 20th century Vienna, so evocatively described in Edmund de Waal’s The Hare
with Amber Eyes.
This civilisation was, alas, only skin-deep and concealed a
festering canker. From 1897 to 1910 the Mayor of Vienna was Jew-baiting Karl
Lueger, building up votes by working on populist anti-Semitic themes long latent
in Austria-Hungary.
Hitler himself was Austrian and learned his street politics in Vienna
bringing his poisonous opinions to Germany proper in 1913. Defeat in
World War 1, privation and poverty bred political extremism in Mitteleuropa and the Jews, the most
loyal supporters of the Kaisers, became the scapegoats. All decency, all human
feeling deserted the German-speaking world as the Nazi persecution gathered pace.
Human and property rights were ignored and the intelligentsia dispersed.
Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas
Mann were among the legion of intellectuals, mainly Jewish, who fled to Western
Europe and North America, greatly enriching
their adopted countries. Tragically, poor Jews could not emigrate and during
WWII 6m Jews and many other minorities were butchered and gassed with bestial
cruelty to the enduring horror of the outside world.
How could such a civilised people behave in this way? Nemesis
was severe with ethnic German populations brutally repatriated and historic
territories like Silesia and East Prussia lost. Breslau became Wroclaw, Koenigsberg
Kaliningrad and Danzig Gdansk. Germany
itself was in ruins but with a new constitution and effective politicians, it
renewed itself, acknowledged its crimes, paid substantial compensation, kept a
low external profile, revived its great industrial base and achieved
reunification in 1990. It had rehabilitated itself in many respects.
Austria
sadly is still in denial about its Nazi past, posing as a victim rather than a
willing accomplice. Vile Austrian Nazis Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Ernst
Kaltenbrunner were deservedly hanged after the Nuremburg tribunals, but
property restitution to Jews was only grudgingly and partially made; its
election of deeply compromised ex-SS officer Kurt Waldheim as President
exemplified its ambiguous attitude.
Nationalism is a strong emotion and a very dangerous one. Mitteleuropa, apart from Germany, is now a mosaic of small
nation states and the old multi-ethnic Imperial unity has long disappeared. It
seems almost impossible to keep multi-ethnic countries together – see the USSR, Bosnia
or Czechoslovakia.
Under the stress of the economic crisis,
moral standards slip; countries look inwards and fear foreigners. Even here in Greece I have faced abusive jeers from otherwise
rational, if peasant, Greeks to “go back home to England” – the ultimate insult to a
Scotsman! Theft and even assault may not be all that far away.
Freude schoener
Gotterfunken, Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh, Walther von der Vogelweide – the
words and the names trip off the tongue pleasantly and easily. But other names
- Belsen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz-
stick in the craw and conjure up a nightmare. The nightmare can never be
forgotten and may only be forgiven when the last Holocaust orphan or loser of
siblings passes away.
SMD
11.08.12
Text copyright Sidney Donald 2012
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