André Brie, January 17,
2007; Contribution to the “Tagesspiegel“
Plea for our own
sovereignty
Wolf Biermann has received
plenty of honours. The distinction of being disputed vehemently and
from all sides always belonged to that. That the dispute almost
always also has the most base and pitifully philistine sides he will
quite certainly also have perceived as an honour. He has remained
true to his thought: “Only he who changes, remains true to
him/herself” to a degree that his possibilities for changing are in
the meantime almost completely exhausted, his changes may even have
exhausted himself. I must say for clarity’s sake that I believe his
attitude on the Iraq wars to be incorrect and dangerous, even taking
into account his honest desire to secure Israel. However, hardly
anyone will ever receive the honorary citizenship of Berlin for
pleasing everybody. I know myself in many a difference to Biermann
and in much greater ones to quite some other honorary Berliners. Yet
what a criterion would that be, let alone face to Biermann who in
the course of his life has blockaded almost everyone?!
He has his soft and his aggressive sides and tunes. Who again or
finally reads and listens to his poems and sounds will voluntarily
or with grinding teeth have to count him among the great German
poets of the present. Who knows about Biermann’s life and about the
political role he has sought and that is forced on him, will not get
around him least of all in the political city of Berlin. His
expatriation in 1976 was not the only political watershed in GDR
history, but the one that made the end of the GDR become apparent.
The SED leadership not only broke an anti-fascist axiom of its
constitution, the interdiction to expatriate, it shouted louder than
its own propaganda of strength: We do not even suffer the free word
and are pitifully weak face to criticism fro the left. Not
emancipation within the system but emancipation of it became a need
recognised by many artists, intellectuals and oppositionists. Back
then, I only understood the former, not its consequence. Biermann
was not an unconscious victim; he was a hurt, but clear-thinking
actor, who was the first to tear in, with bloody hands, our own
walls. Long before those honorary citizens of Berlin, who were
celebrated for the fall of the wall, and in contrast to them, by
putting of his whole personality on line. No, you don’t have to like
him. Yet not to recognise him and his central place in the cultural
and political city of Berlin –for that I lack understanding.
Why thus the excitement at the SPD and of Wowereit? Don’t they know
that for a long time already they can trust in the political
learning process of their coalition partner? Or do they understand
so little of the political dynamics that they thought the surely
intended manipulation of the discussion by the opposition would be
sufficient for a rejection to be kept up? And my party? Its Berlin
heads are large and sovereign enough to suffer even such a sharp
critic as Biermann, and to appreciate him. His decidedly left-wing
criticism in the 70s and 80s of the GDR and of Party communism as a
matter of fact has entered as part and parcel into the declared
break of the PDS with the SED. Left-wing policy in the 21st
century is not even thinkable otherwise. However, it probably has
enough to do with defending its practical policy (its true void may
be more appropriate) in Berlin face to the adherents of the true
teaching. To assure itself of its own, newly won values and
programme, to fight for these actively and in a sovereign way among
the whole basis, not to accept our own disdain of Biermann, of the
victims of Stalinism (flimsy stone in the wrong place is enough, or
what?) and of Cuba is apparently seen as secondary. Yet then history
becomes present and falls on your feet so heavily that you can only
move with great difficulty.
Translated by Carla Krüger, January 24, 2007
