The first play in the history of mankind is a testament to the greatest possible overcoming: the Greek Aeschylus wrote his "Persians" from the point of view of the vanquished.

The playwright does not take the fact that a small troop of democratic Greeks defeated the overwhelming army of the autocratically led Persians as an opportunity for a victory story.

Instead, he portrays the suffering of those who lost their sons on the battlefield.

The enumeration of the fallen warriors should shock the home audience and warn against the hubris of howling in triumph.

Just as the Roman general Scipio is said to have burst into tears a few centuries later when he saw the enemy Carthage burn down: "He wept for the enemies," reports Appian.

In both ancient scenes the achievement of a humanitarian thought is expressed: in spite of all vengefulness, not blindly replying to the annihilation, but experiencing the horror of one's own violence.

This ancient figure of thought is not concerned with pacifism or turning the Christian cheek, but with the question of how to defeat the enemy without losing all honor yourself.

symbolic action

If two Berlin activists now want to set up a Russian tank captured on the Ukrainian battlefield in the immediate vicinity of the Russian embassy and – according to the administrative court – are also allowed to do so, then this does not comply with the code described.

The symbolic action, which has only been announced so far, apparently wants to reward the same with the same.

The blood of the attacked Ukrainians is to be atoned for with a war trophy that has the blood of Russian soldiers on it.

Or not?

Or is it just about mocking the perpetrators, who are also in the Berlin embassy building, with their own military junk?

Wouldn't it make a difference whether you exhibit an abandoned tank or a shot-up tank?

"No, because one way or another the murders were carried out from the tank," confirms Wieland Giebel,

one of the two activists, on the phone.

Anyone who now reminds him of the fate of the Russians sent to war makes him feel "cheated".

Maybe he's right.

Perhaps at a time when mass graves with tortured civilians are being discovered outside liberated Ukrainian cities, this is not the moment to commemorate Aeschylus or "Scipio's tears".

And yet - there is always talk of Western values ​​all the time.

With which we want to distinguish ourselves from Russia.

But how are we different?

If not by imagining that the Russian soldier also has a family?