THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Bonn's First President and the Holocaust
In his description of present-day
Germany , entitled "Journey
Through a Haunted Land — The
New Germany," published by Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, the Israeli
journalist, Amos Elon, comments
on the efforts of Bonn's first pre-
sident, Prof. Theodor Heuss, to
prevent the spread of Nazism. Elon
writes:
"The first president of West Ger-
many, Professor Theodor Heuss,
tried hard to ban the wearing of
World War II decorations and ser-
vice medals. Eventually he had to
give up. Cabinet members and de-
puties, professors and judges, gen-
r
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erals and managers of the new
economy adorn themselves with
Hitler's decorations — from which
the swastika has been carefully
removed. Few miss an opportunity
to prove on white, starched dress
shirts how hard they worked to
help Hitler to victory. When quer-
ied, they say "objectively" it was
a bad war, put "personally" they
were fighting for "good": loyal
service being always honorable.
West Germany — through a de-
mocracy — is marked by moral
schizophrenia. At official recep-
tions in Bonn, proud memories of
war clink and shine on the breasts
of the prominent. What clinks in-
side? The same decoration sat on
the chests of men who stood guard
in Auschwitz (awards that were
won there because their recipients
were good at throwing cyanide gas
into sealed chambers packed with
screaming naked human beings).
"President Heuss also fought to
replace the old megalomaniac
national hymn:
Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles
Uber alles in der Well
Wenn es stets zu Schutz and Trutze
Brudlelich zusammen halt.
Von der Maas bis an die Memel
Von der Etsch bis an die Belt
Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles
Uber alles in der Welt
"Four rivers are mentioned.
None of them is German. The Maas
flows through Holland, the Etsch
through the Italian part of South-
ern Tyrol. The Memel lies in what
is now the Soviet Union; the Belt
is a narrows in Denmark.
"Heuss wanted a new hymn for
a new state. Again he had to give
in. When August Heinrich Hoff-
mann, romantic poet and professor
of German in Breslau, wrote this
poem in 1841, as a flaming protest
against German disunity, perhaps
he only wanted-to strike up a song
full of naive hope and love for his
country. But words lead a life of
their own. Hoffmann's anthem has
acquired a heavy patina by now.
To -many non-German, and even
German, ears, it now sounds like
a macabre echo from the grave.
At first, the leading stanza was
avoided; a third, rather harmless
stanza was sung. This custom is
still kept up, though mainly at of-
ficial occasions. According to an
Reproof to the Lazy
From the Proverbs
Go to the ant, 0 sluggard,
Study her ways, and learn wisdom;
For though she has no chief,
No officer, or ruler,
She secures her food in the
summer,
She gathers her provisions in the
harvest-time.
How long will you lie, 0 sluggard?
When will you rise from your
sleep?
(You say) "A little sleep, a little
slumber,
A little folding of hands to rest"—
So will poverty come upon you
like a footpad,
And want like an armed man.
Friday, June 9, 1967-37
official announcement made by
the President's office in Bonn in
the spring of 1965, the first stanza
is as much part of the national
anthem as ever.
"Toward the end of 1964 the
semi-official Wehrkunde (Defense
News) published without comment
a longish essay by retired General
Friedrich von Boetticher. Boetti-
cher wrote: 'A well-conducted war
is like a great symphony. . . when
educating staff officers the task is
to light a holy fire in their breasts:
thus they will be fit for war, the
greatest enchantement of human
life (sic!) and will overcome the
weakness of their time.' Does the
general want the new German sold-
iers to anticipate war as they
would a concert? In 1945 Goebbels
compared war with a church ser-
vice. Excessive preoccupation with
the past is to be avoided, says
even an editor on such a respected
liberal paper as the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, Erich Dom-
browski. In his view history is
nothing but the foam on top of the
"waves of eternity." And besides,
he notes, France is responsible for
the wars of 1870 and 1914.
"Others go still a step further,
and actually rationalize Nazi
crimes. This is nothing new. One
reads about it before coming to
Germany. Hearing it with your
own ears and, of all things, from
the mouth of a twenty-five-year-
old, has a shattering effect. A
young man sat next to me in a
railroad compartment: 'Oh, it
can't have been as bad as all
that,' he said idly stretching his
legs. That stuff about the six mil-
lion murdered Jews is enormously
exaggerated. I heard it from an
absolutely trustworthy sorce. And
besides it's the British who inven-
ted the concentration camp. . . in
South Africa during the Boer War."
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