The Americans Are To Blame: Berlin, Two Days After 9/11
During the last year, we have heard much about the need to “restore America’s image in the world.” In the next days, we will undoubtedly hear more, as Barack Obama embarks on his first European tour as president (followed by a stop in Ankara). The theme is, of course, just an extension of the legend according to which America enjoyed “the sympathy of the world” in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, but then “squandered” this sympathy as a result of Guantánamo Bay, the Iraq War, “extraordinary renditions” and any number of other Bush administration policies – most of them, curiously enough, connected precisely to the response to those attacks. In contemporary political mythology, Obama has, in effect, been “called” to bring about the reconciliation of “America and the world.” The most poignant proof of this calling – up till now, indeed, the only proof – is provided by the iconic images of him addressing a cheering throng of Germans at Berlin’s “Victory Column” in June of last year. On Friday, in connection with the NATO summit, Obama will return to Germany for the first time since that occasion.
The “Victory Column” is located in Berlin’s Tiergarten park. Also in the Tiergarten, barely half a mile away, is to be found one of the city’s best known cultural institutions: the “House of World Cultures.” On September 13, 2001, the Berlin municipal government and the Berlin-based Academy of Arts co-sponsored a panel discussion at the House of World Cultures devoted to the terrorist attacks that had taken place in the United States two days before. The author and journalist Henryk Broder did not attend the event, but his interest was piqued some days later when reports emerged in the local press about curious comments attributed to some of the participants. Despite the lack of cooperation of the House of World Cultures, Broder was able to obtain a recording of the event.
The following is his account of what transpired at the House of World Cultures on that Thursday evening two days after 9/11. To paraphrase one of the participants, it provides a “disturbing insight” into the German mood in the aftermath of the attacks. There was indeed a great deal of sympathy on display. It was, however, for the most part sympathy with the perpetrators. The text has been adapted from Henryk Broder’s 2002 book Kein Krieg, Nirgends [No War, Nowhere].
- John Rosenthal
“The Danger of Terror for the Coexistence of Cultures.” It was exactly the right sort of topic for the House of World Cultures, where international conferences are held on themes like “Global Dimensions of Cultural Policy” and where groups of drummers from all over the world perform.
On that September 13, however, more was at issue. “In light of the devastating attacks in the USA and the resulting uncertainty,” Berliners were invited to take part in a public discussion with “scholars and artists.” The event would be transformed into a show trial: but, as it turned out, it was not the terror that endangered the coexistence of cultures that would be put on trial – but rather the USA, which stood accused of causing terror.
The Berlin city government’s Department of Science, Research and Culture was the co-sponsor of the event. After introducing the participants, the head of the department, Adrienne Goehler, opens the discussion by noting that an “attack on our senses and our self-understanding” has taken place. “We are facing a situation in which a scapegoat is being found,” she continues, “a situation that threatens to discredit a whole religion, possibly an entire region.”
The General Secretary of the House of World Cultures, Hans-Georg Knopp, frames the debate with a question: “Can we speak here of a clash of cultures or of a clash between western civilization and barbarism?”
One of the discussants is Wolfgang Benz: the historian and director of Berlin’s Institute for Research on Anti-Semitism. “What frightens me most,” Benz says, “is the bellicosity of the self-righteous that are now talking about ‘civilization’ in order to be able to adopt drastic measures.” And then he recalls an event from nearly 100 years ago: the 1904 rebellion of the Herero tribe in Germany’s colonial holdings in southwest Africa. What followed the rebellion “was the first genocide of the 20th century, perpetrated by German troops….The number of victims was between 30,000 and 100,000 people, who in the name of civilization …were driven into the desert to starve, who were slaughtered.”
The listener is taken aback for a moment. What does the slaughter of the Herero have to do with the attack on the Twin Towers? Benz continues: “Don’t we have now to defend the little bit of tolerance that we have learned against our politicians…? Don’t we have to defend a little bit of normality against those that believe they have now to be drastic and bellicose, who take action with battleships and declarations of war against an unknown enemy, against an enemy whom we don’t even know yet? Isn’t that the greatest danger?”
Grateful applause fills the amphitheatre. Professor Benz is not alone. Peter Heine, a specialist in Islam at Berlin’s Humboldt University, says that there are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world. “Are they all terrorists?” he asks, “Or secret supporters of terrorism? When one points a finger at somebody else, three fingers are always pointing at oneself.”
Werner Schiffauer, a specialist in Islam at the Viadrina University in Frankfurt an der Oder, notes that the September 11 attacks are “like Pearl Harbor – only there is no one who has officially declared war. There is no group that has taken responsibility….”
At this point a woman in the audience can no longer stand it. “That’s what we’ve been hearing for two days on television,” she says, “I’d like to hear something new. I’d like to get back to the principle of cause and effect. You say that you’re scholars, after all: cause and effect, that’s how things work. The USA has been pursuing such a cynical foreign policy for forty years now. The USA builds civilized atom bombs. The USA uses civilized land mines. (Applause) The civilized USA pulls out of the climate treaty. The USA creates hunger all over the world. The USA calls itself a world power, loud and clear….”
György Konrad, the President of the Academy of Arts, interrupts her: “And 10,000 people have to be killed because of that? Is that what you’re saying?”
The woman responds that they don’t have to be: “I’m not at all for killing people. But children are starving all over the world and I know where the people are to be found who are responsible for that.” The audience apparently knows too and shows its approval with applause.
A few minutes later, the author and poet Ulrike Draesner returns to the heart of the matter: the relation of cause and effect. “I get infuriated when I have the feeling that I am being manipulated. I had a look at CNN yesterday and today. What I am hearing there is a language of war and a language of emotion and a language of self-righteousness. There is no questioning of one’s own history: namely, the history that led to such acts, which are not just there, which don’t come from nowhere. (Applause) I get infuriated, since I can sense how they are trying to manipulate me and play with my emotions… We hear the same expressions again and again. We hear Mr. Bush saying, ‘Freedom has been attacked.’ What sort of freedom?”
Then the poet turns to the politician on the panel: “Ms. Goehler, what can one do, what can you do on the political stage, to promote de-escalation and a more differentiated view?”
Goehler appears to know something that other people did not even suspect. “I regard this act not as an act of desperation or of the oppressed,” she responds, “Rather this act was the product of the thoroughly cold and calculated logic of a highly professional intelligence service and/or military apparatus. And that’s what’s so interesting, since it not only struck this superpower, which is so sure of itself, the only superpower, in its Achilles heel, but it also went right in to its symbolic heart. These two towers, freedom, World Trade Center. It’s such a loaded symbolism that’s been attacked…. And that’s where my greatest source of concern is to be located: that this highly symbolic action, that it will, so to say, let loose everything that one can imagine has been pent up in America….”
In keeping with the tradition of the House of World Cultures, when the time comes to open things up to the public, the first person to speak is a Japanese woman who makes a long statement that finishes with a question: “What is the essence of the USA? How many innocent people have been killed by the USA?” She receives sympathetic applause and sits down again. A woman who has said nothing up to now comes back to the discussion’s main point: “Nothing comes from nothing,” she says. It is, she continues, American and western policies that “entail such consequences.” A man wants to know: “What means do we need to use in order to eliminate poverty in the world, in order to fight and overcome injustice?” Before anyone can answer this simple, though undoubtedly fundamental question, a middle-aged woman gets up who introduces herself as a “psychological psychotherapist” who also writes “political-literary texts.” She is shaking from “grief, fear, rage, and desperation” – namely, in reaction to Chancellor Schröder’s pledge of “unlimited solidarity” with the United States. She has even written a letter to the Chancellor, which she proceeds to read out. There must be “no identification of the terrorists with evil,” she says reciting from the letter, since this “could seem to legitimate a war of good against evil.” A woman from the University of Halle says: “The evidence is not sufficient to identify the perpetrators. That’s why it’s so amazing that not only in the media but even here everyone assumes that it’s already a fact.” This cryptic remark is greeted with thunderous applause.
Then Adrienne Goehler speaks up again: “I want to say something more about this World Trade Center. After all, I’m a psychologist by training and, of course, this World Trade Center does not stand, say, for a civilized society [Zivilgesellschaft], but they are the pure symbols of globalization, of capitalism, of world power. It’s a symbol of world power and this symbol has been attacked. Exactly as the Pentagon is also a symbol of world power and not, for instance, a peace-loving and, above all, civilizing institution. That doesn’t change the fact that people who worked there are affected [getroffen werden], even if it’s a matter of such aggressive symbolism. Who benefits from this war? Of course, it benefits internal as well as external rearmament; it benefits the need for security and hyper-security….”
Something that Berlin’s culture chief has said seems to have provoked Wolfgang Benz: “If I may, I can’t entirely resist – without wanting to meddle in your learned reflections, Ms. Goehler – the symbolism of the towers…”
Goehler: “The historian against the psychologist…”
Benz: “They are, after all, also…”
And before Benz can finish his sentence, Goehler shouts:
“They are also phallic! I forgot to say that!” – whereupon uproarious laughter in the amphitheatre completes the humoristic ejaculatio praecox.
Benz: “I wouldn’t say that. But they are symbols of pride and wealth and arrogance. To put up such buildings is the most extreme sort of arrogance, and vulnerability is thus built into them. And the attacks against these buildings – by way of these attacks, one can erase one’s own feelings of powerlessness and one’s own humiliations and transform them into the powerlessness and humiliation of one’s opponent….And that evokes [sic.] drastic and dramatic reactions and bellicose reactions, and that’s what makes it so dangerous and so disastrous to attack and to destroy precisely these symbols.”
Only towards the end of the proceedings has one of the participants finally had enough. “I’m shocked, even outraged by some of the comments from the audience,” the author Hans Christoph Buch shouts: “….It is really bizarre to pillory the victims two days after a murderous attack! The Americans are to blame, and they are arrogant and they should not even react emotionally. My dear Ms. Ulrike Draesner, what world are you living in? ...I want to take my distance from the consensus here that American imperialism or globalization is to blame for the attack. No, those who are to blame for the attack are the people who perpetrated it. And the attack was not against symbols. It annihilated human lives. If you find that okay, then please say so out loud. I don’t want to have anything to do with this sort of populism. The comments here provide an insight into the popular mood in this country that I find deeply disturbing…. I’m all for being critical with regards to allies, and I’m for a self-confident Germany that does not get involved in a war for no reason. But this is unacceptable.”
Wrong. It is indeed acceptable, Ulrike Draesner responds, as if she were merely defending free verse poetry: “My dear Mr. Buch, I live in a world in which politics has the role of precisely not reacting emotionally, but rather responsibly and in consideration of the consequences… And as far as I’m concerned I live in a world in which the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth does not apply.”
It was barely 48 hours after the attacks in New York and Washington. And in the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, at Berlin’s House of World Cultures, a show trial was coming to a close. At this show trial, the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth did not apply. Instead, a mass murder was excused and tacitly condoned, because the victims of the abomination were supposed somehow to be associated with capitalism, imperialism and globalization…
Translated from German by John Rosenthal