Farewell to the Motherland

In the future, I will write all my texts outside of Germany.

Apparently, it is better to go into exile again in order to defend by the power of the word that Germany, which brings good, and not death to itself and other peoples of the world.

“Germany is plunging into darkness, but I do not want to bow before this darkness”

Dagmar Henn,

May 20, 2022.

“Over the shores, look!

cities bloom,

Where diligence builds on the workshops,

Science and where the sun is soft

Shines the artist, encouraging "*.

The melody of this song has been in my head for many days.

Hans Eisler set these poems by Friedrich Hölderlin to music while he was in exile.

This was in 1942, when one could only console oneself with conjectures and hopes for the defeat of Hitler's fascism.

This work, only a few minutes long, is the most capacious exposition of the essence of emigration known to me.

The communist Eisler looks from afar at his homeland, devastated by the brown horde, and creates a song that opens with the line: "The sacred heart of the world, my fatherland!"

More than 30 years ago, I already left Germany once.

That change was to be a move into a world full of life.

I followed the image that had formed in my head thanks to the novels of Jorge Amado and went to Brazil.

I stayed there for a year, got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter.

Then, at the request of her father, I returned to Germany.

And although there, in the city of Salvador da Bahia, I was surprised to discover what I suddenly lacked so much (cheese pies and rye sourdough bread - Bavarian, dense, with tiny holes and with a lot of spices), I returned nevertheless reluctantly, trying to mentally stay in another country as long as possible.

It is not easy to live with this "Germanness".

My current departure is a completely different change in life, when, first of all, you ask yourself the question: “Is this not surrender?”, When you start to worry about those who remain.

A move imbued with a desire to remain useful.

Bertolt Brecht spoke about this "usefulness".

It is a moral principle in which Hölderlin's silent diligence resonates.

It's so German.

Not all Brecht is digitized, he cannot fly away with me.

I will miss him, precisely because he symbolizes this lost Germany.

When I see blue-yellow flags, at the mere sight of which I am horrified, and I hear the hysteria with which this country is accustomed to war, when characters inhabiting the political theater of Berlin pass before my inner gaze, it seems to me that this " utility” is simply alien to them.

They do not bother to doubt and think about it, let alone consider "usefulness" as the basic principle of life.

They do harm instead of benefit.

What is useful for them is too simple, too prosaic, and, what is even worse, what is useful can be counted and recalculated, like, for example, built apartments.

Or soup in a pot, as Brecht would say.

It's not like they care about what they love.

They love what they care about.

Love for the fatherland can be exclusively political, but politics in the FRG has ceased to be politics.

The factual disappears among superficial emotions and empty phrases.

The truth remains untold.

When the current government of Germany agreed to impose sanctions, there was no storm of indignation, although only the most stupid did not understand that these sanctions would, at best, greatly harm our country, and at worst, simply destroy it.

Betrayal was not called betrayal.

A country that was once famous for its precise language, its clear definitions, now cannot even find the right words to describe what is happening.

If I had to summarize what this Germany can be valued for, it would be a gesture.

The gesture of the carpenter, who runs his hand for the last time over the shiny and smooth surface of the new table.

The gesture of a bricklayer who, after a little hesitation, puts the last stone.

The gesture of a seamstress who cuts the last thread on a dress and holds it in front of her to view the finished work.

Pride in what you do and pride in doing it well.

But this pride is reasonable, almost shy.

If you look at Berlin as a city, you won't find anything like that there.

The state of the roads causes the same feeling of shame as the homeless people sleeping on the streets or subway stations.

Everywhere there is a feverish activity that is constantly trumpeted, but which does not strive for quality.

Berlin is just the quintessence of an abandoned country, like the flood-hit valley of the Ahr river - a symptom and a prognosis at the same time.

In the 1980s, there were heated discussions about "minor virtues": punctuality, accuracy, loyalty.

They were rejected because the Nazis used them to commit horrific crimes against humanity.

At the same time, it was clearly not an excess of secondary virtues that deserved blame, but a lack of education and common sense, a lack of personal responsibility.

Yes, first of all the latter, because it is the refusal of this personal responsibility that makes people voluntary instruments of crime.

This can be seen by watching the torchlight processions in honor of Stepan Bandera in Ukraine.

Enough and 30 seconds of viewing.

It is enough just to hear the crowd shouting slogans.

There is always someone who shouts first - and everyone shouts after him.

The way the participants scream shows that they have suppressed and turned off their thinking, their feelings, their personality and are downright celebrating the rejection of them.

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Something similar is happening in Germany right now.

This has been in preparation since 2014, when a timid peace movement formed in response to the war in Donbass and accused of links to the Third Way ideology came under fire.

Now the entire policy of combating coronavirus can actually be recognized as part of this development.

Believe what you are told, then you are a good person.

If you don't believe us, we'll come up with a hundred little ways to make your life miserable.

The reward for this denial of responsibility is the same that is now given to the Ukronazis: whoever deserves the label of a good person can look with hatred and contempt on all bad people and, in addition, receives confirmation that his hatred is not hatred at all, but part of goodness.

After all, the idea is heard again and again that hatred and persecution are different: those who refuse vaccination, who understand Putin, and those who think differently.

If only that, then there would not be enough reason to emigrate.

I grew up in Bavaria, in Munich, and already at the age of 12 I was distributing communist leaflets.

Such experience tempers well and makes immune to some things.

That this insensitivity was misleading me about certain facts, I realized only in connection with the putsch in Ukraine.

A few weeks before the events in Odessa, a demonstration against the “Maidan” took place in Zaporizhia, the participants of which were ringed by the supporters of the “Maidan” and for several hours in a row they were bombarded with anything.

I saw the events of that day on the stream.

There reigned a mood permeated with violence, but still abhorred murder.

I was particularly struck by one well-groomed middle-aged woman who stood in the outer ring shouting slogans.

She could clearly see how much she was enjoying this moment of superiority.

The comment that simultaneously appeared in the stream and which I ran paragraph by paragraph through an automatic translator in order to somehow understand what was happening there was full of indignation: “This is fascism!”

I was taken aback.

After all, that woman in her malicious arrogance was one to one like those who scolded me when I was delivering leaflets, and threw in my face that I belonged in the camp, that I should be put against the wall and the like.

Those who reacted in this way were mostly in their 60s and 70s.

But it wasn't until I read the comments on this case in Zaporozhye and thought about it that I realized that a few decades ago in Munich, those embittered people were not just fanatical anti-communists - in fact, they were very likely Nazis.

Criminals whose desire to kill was a shadow of past murders, just as these reactions in Zaporozhye were a harbinger of things to come.

I have already written quite a lot about how the massacre in Odessa became the moment that divided the world.

What happened in connection with this and after that, the scale of outright lies in the media and politics, nevertheless surprised me.

As well as a firm determination to ignore fascism in Ukraine, which has penetrated deep into the ranks of those who call themselves leftists.

Now it has gone even deeper.

I sat in Russian blogs, trying to navigate this alien world with the help of an automatic translator and check whether my perception of events in Ukraine corresponded to reality.

What I read reminded me very much of the testimonies from Germany in 1933 and 1934.

Even the video, where the supporters of the "Right Sector" ** stormed the meetings of the regional parliaments, looked like a chronicle of the actions of the assault squads.

If German history obliges you to do anything, it is to resist Nazism.

This was not easy even eight years ago, because the wording “against the right” has already supplanted any real analysis of fascism and obscured the understanding that the difference between conservatives and fascists in the fight against fascism is the difference between possible allies and enemies.

This is shown by the history of the German Resistance, as well as the history of the National Committee "Free Germany", which, even during the war, began to prepare the way for a society liberated from Nazism.

One of the reasons why the German left does not see the real front line in Ukraine and is ready to harness itself to a completely wrong cause is their complete disregard for this history.

It is more convenient to live denying the existence of a nation than to wage a constant struggle for it.

After all, this requires political participation, which is not determined by fleeting indignation and fashion, but involves endurance, a desire to learn and a willingness to make sacrifices.

The right-wing camp, against which they want to oppose, is given a very superficial definition, without taking into account real interests.

In fact, they do not even fight with him, because such a fight would imply a desire to convince.

Instead, the right is only being isolated.

At the same time, the line is always set by the current political fashion: be it climate, migration, or the issue of war and peace.

For such a low price, real anti-fascism cannot be bought.

After all, in fact, we are talking about the struggle against the denial of everything human.

To face this challenge, one must be absolutely sure of one's own humanity.

These standards of humanity have been lost in Germany.

The current attacks on Russia would have been impossible if there had been the fact that the greatest victory of the Red Army was that it did not avenge thousands of destroyed cities, four years of fierce battles, millions and millions of victims of the German occupation.

It was this victory, this hushed up fact that made the triumph of the Red Army in the truest sense of the word a victory for mankind - and at the same time they mean that any underestimation of these merits is a rejection of humanity.

But back to our present.

Even the frenzy and warmongering in the German media, as well as the many hysterics, could be tolerated.

But the erosion of law ultimately reveals the real state of affairs in the country.

In a bourgeois state, democracy does not disappear overnight.

She crumbles.

The load-bearing walls gradually weaken until the rest of the building suddenly falls at once.

The path to Adolf Hitler went through Heinrich Brüning and Karl Zörgiebel.

When the German Constitutional Court upheld the coronavirus measures last year, it was one of the biggest pieces that fell off.

The space for other opinions is steadily shrinking.

It has never been particularly large in Germany anyway, but given how much it is now forbidden to say, how much more can not be shown, what uncomplicated opinions can cost a person his job and career, we can say that almost nothing is left of him.

The process continues to gain momentum.

When the taz newspaper, which was created as an alternative to the corporate press, publishes a fascist text because the author is against Putin, it shows how far the corruption has gone.

To ban the Soviet flag from the memorial to Soviet soldiers on May 9 is not just a distortion of history.

This is the decision of our day, which is made on the basis of historical example.

So it was in 2014 in Ukraine.

History may provide examples for imitation, but the decision is always relevant to today and bears fruit here and now.

Taking the side of the Azov militants is nothing more than supporting Franco or the Colombian death squads.

The West has been doing similar things for decades.

He did this mostly in secret, in defiance of the official narrative of democracy and the rule of law.

However, active consent is now required.

NATO, along with its brown minions, has become a state doctrine that requires an oath to be taken.

Under it, appropriate laws are cut to stop any resistance.

We have already seen how this works in the case of the coronavirus: there have never been so many bans on demonstrations.

It is the measures of the state apparatus that determine the difference between sympathy for fascist positions and fascist rule.

Both at the level of the EU and at the level of Germany, positions that are different from the mainstream, primarily directed against NATO, are in every possible way not allowed to be published and distributed.

In the short term, it looks like they will be punished.

Austria, for example, already has a law that imposes monetary penalties for the distribution of RT content.

The ban on the letter Z in Germany is a step in the same direction.

If even such trifles lead to criminal prosecution, then what does this mean for the authors of texts like this?

The use of the letter Z is regarded as "support for military aggression".

Such law enforcement of the relevant paragraph in the Criminal Code is the top of a complete denial of its very origin.

After all, the Nuremberg Tribunal declared military aggression the highest crime against international law - the military aggression of Nazi Germany, including against the Soviet Union.

These paragraphs were directed not at opinions, but at deeds - especially at people who can actually commit such deeds.

When the FRG bombed Belgrade, it was military aggression.

One of its supporters, who could be prosecuted, was at that time German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

However, even then the German legal system had fallen into such decay, and the peace movement was so weak, that the accusation of preparing military aggression against the then federal government was not crowned with success.

The explanation of the Constitutional Court stated that only the preparation, and not the actual conduct of military aggression, is punishable ...

The paragraph concerning government action now applies to expression of opinion.

At the same time, the blurring of the boundary between opinion and deed is a characteristic feature of the Nazi judicial system.

Roland Freisler's People's Court of Justice handed down death sentences for opinions.

The fact that one of the legal consequences of the Nuremberg trials is now being used to approximate the practice of the also condemned fascist court system shows where the distortion of history leads.

Germany is plunging into darkness, but I do not want to bow before this darkness and I will not.

My weapon is the word, and here they will try to take it away from me and from people like me.

Others resist in other ways and make different decisions, but that certainly doesn't make their task any easier.

I will leave the country.

When I think about how all those who emigrated at that time felt - Brecht, Eisler, Therese Giese, Thomas Mann, Oskar Maria Graf, Anna Seghers, Kurt Tucholsky - what was going on in their souls when they saw the country, which was suddenly flooded with swastika flags, I wonder if it was the same mixture of unreality and disgust with which I look today at everything painted in blue and yellow, with which I read all these war-hungry lines in the press.

I wonder if they also heard these two voices, one of which tells me: "It's still not so bad," and the other is in a hurry to leave?

What a heavy burden it must have been to save not only one's own skin, but also to preserve the honor of the country.

I hope that I can save a piece of that other Germany, as they could save it then.

Cheese pies and bread I now know how to bake myself.

When I walk the streets of Moscow, not Munich or Berlin, my path overlaps the paths of the past.

It's different, but still the same.

Perhaps there will be a third point of contact - a return and a new beginning.

“Holy heart of the world, my fatherland!

You endured everything, like Mother Earth herself,

When from the depths of your aliens

The best was taken out."

* The poems of Friedrich Hölderlin are quoted in the translation of Vladimir Letuchy.

** Right Sector is a Ukrainian association of radical nationalist organizations, recognized as extremist and banned in Russia (decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of 11/17/2014).

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.