Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Émigration Intérieure

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

As the Trump years finally come to an end, your host contemplates collective guilt and shame.

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called Émigration Intérieure. On May 7, 1945, the writer Thomas Mann wrote the final entry in his wartime diary. The closing sentence reads, It is not exactly elation that I feel. The following day, the Americans broadcast Thomas Mann's apprehensive voice into Germany on the Voice of America beacon. This broadcast was also published in a number of newspapers the Allies now controlled

under the provocative headline, Thomas Mann on German guilt. The thick-walled torture chamber that Hitlerism had made of Germany is broken open, and our disgrace is bared to the eyes of the world. It is our disgrace, German listeners and readers, for every German, everyone who speaks German, writes German, has lived as a German, is affected by this shameful exposure. The world shudders at the sight of Germany. Even the German who escaped in ample time from the realm of National Socialist leadership, who did not like to live in the vicinity of these abodes of abomination, did not

like to go about his business in ostensible virtue and pretend to know nothing while the wind carried the stench of charred human flesh to his nostrils, even this German is ashamed in the depths of his On May 10th, yet another version of this essay went out on German radio. The BBC had been transmitting Mann regularly since 1941 for a series called Listen Germany. This was the final broadcast. My readers and listeners in Germany, you were unable to rid yourself of this rule by your own strength. The liberators had to come from abroad. They have occupied your broken country and will have to govern it for years. At least do not regard them as your enemies.

Do not regard yourselves primarily as Germans, but as men and women returned to humanity, as Germans who, after 12 years of Hitler, want to be human beings again. Many of the ideas in these two broadcasts can also be heard in the lecture Thomas Mann gave at the Library of Congress on May 29th. It is a very strange thing that three weeks and two days after the close of a long, brutal and destructive and bestial war against Germany, the German people and the German nation, you have gathered in this room to hear a German writer, Thomas Mann.

This night was the debut of Thomas Mann's seminal essay, Germany and the Germans. As I stand here before you, I feel that life is indeed of such a stuff as dreams are made on. I am to speak to you today on Germany and the Germans. A risky undertaking, not only because the topic is so complex, so inexhaustible, but also because of the violent emotions that encompass it today. Should a German avoid this subject today, but I would scarcely have known what other subject to choose for this evening, and beyond that it is scarcely possible to conceive of any conversation rising above the purely personal today that wouldn't inevitably turn to the German problem. The enigma in the character and destiny of this people, which undeniably has given

humanity much that is great and beautiful, and yet has time and again imposed fatal burdens upon the world. Germany's horrible fate, the tremendous catastrophe in which her modern history now culminates, compels our interest, even if this interest is devoid of sympathy. Any attempt to arouse sympathy, to defend and to excuse Germany, would certainly be an inappropriate undertaking for one of German birth today. To play the part of the judge, to curse and damn his own people in compliant agreement with the incalculable hatred that they have kindled, to commend himself smugly as the good Germany in contrast to the wicked guilty Germany over there with which he has nothing at all in common, that too would hardly befit one of German origin.

For anyone who was born a German does have something in common with German destiny and German guilt. On the night Thomas Mann gave this address, the world was facing a monumental task. What were they to do with this conquered and defeated nation? How were they to determine who was innocent and who was guilty? For Thomas Mann, the path forward was clear.

There are not two Germanys, a good one and a bad one, but only one, whose best turned into evil through devilish cunning. Wicked Germany is merely good Germany gone astray, good Germany in misfortune, in guilt and ruin. For that reason, it is quite impossible for one born there simply to renounce the wicked, guilty Germany and to declare, I am the good, the noble, the just Germany in the white robe.

I leave it to you to exterminate the wicked one. Meanwhile, in Germany, a number of writers took issue with Thomas Mann's ideas about collective guilt and shame. On August 4th, the writer Walter von Molo published an open letter in a German newspaper. Molo frames his letter as a fawning invitation to Man to return to the fatherland and to his people who need him. But Molo is unable to hide his anger. His letter reads more like an order than an invitation, an order for Mann to come back to Germany so that he can see the error of his arguments and recant them.

Molo reminds Mann that immigration, physical immigration out of Nazi Germany, was never a possibility for most Germans. And he uses this simple fact as a weapon. Molo demands that Mann acknowledge that while, yes, Germany had indeed become a huge concentration camp, the good Germans who were unable to leave were inmates as well. And now that the war is over, Molo argues, it is time to heal, and therefore absolutely necessary for Thomas Mann to not only cease bad-mouthing these good Germans, but step up to their defense. On August 18th, another German writer, Frank Thies, adds his voice to the debate, publishing

an article in the Muechner Zeitung entitled simply, The Inner Emigration. With this essay, Thies turns the whole affair into a literary, political, and philosophical controversy that is still smoldering today. According to Thies, there were scores of good German writers who, unlike Mann, remained in Germany to practice a craft of quiet but profound resistance. Unlike the bad Germans who collaborated or conformed, these inner immigrants created a space for German literature and culture that Hitler was unable to conquer. Batiste is also unable to hide his anger and self-righteousness. His point is not that the inner immigrants were better Germans than

the collaborators and conformists. He wants Mann to understand that these inner immigrants were better Germans than the outer immigrants. Writers like Thomas Mann, who bailed on Germany. On September 28, 1945, in the New York immigrant newspaper Aufbau, above a half-page ad for Dudley's fine coats made with imported and local fabric, Thomas Mann delivered his only response to these attacks. His answer to Molo's invitation to return to Germany is a simple thanks, but no thanks. And as for the great literature of inner immigration, in my eyes, Thomas Mann writes, books that could even be printed in Germany from 1933 to 1945 are less than worthless. There is a smell of blood and shame on them. They should all be pulped.

Mann also informs Molo that the speech he gave at the Library of Congress will soon be available in Germany. And he suggests his remarks on German inwardness will be of service to writers like Molo, who are still unable to see that there can be no unity or healing until there is a collective response of German guilt, responsibility, and shame. Ladies and gentlemen, at times, particularly when contemplating German history, one has the impression that the world was not the sole creation of God, but a cooperative work with someone else. One would like to ascribe to God the merciful fact that good can come from evil. But that evil so often comes from good is obviously the contribution of the other fellow.

The Germans might well ask why their good in particular so often turns to evil, becomes evil in their hands. Take that quality of the Germans, which is perhaps their most notable one, designated as inwardness, a word that is most difficult to define. Tenderness, depth of feeling, unworldly reverie, love of nature, purest sincerity of thought and conscience. In short, all the characteristics of high lyricism are mingled in it, and even today the world cannot forget what it owes to German inwardness, German metaphysics, German music,

German romanticism. What is it but an expression of this finest German quality, German inwardness. Romanticism poetized ethics by proclaiming the right of individuality and of spontaneous passion. But it cannot be denied it bears in its heart the germ of morbidity as the rose bears the worm. Its innermost character is seduction, seduction to death. And reduced to a miserable mass level, the level of a Hitler, German romanticism broke out into hysterical barbarism, into a spree and a paroxysm of arrogance and crime, which now finds its horrible end in a national catastrophe, a physical and psychic collapse without parallel. After 1945, most of the scholarly debate over this idea of inner immigration comes down to defense, a crude defense over which books written in Germany during the Hitler years should be rescued from Mann's judgment of blood and shame. No one seems to have paid much heed to the suggestion Thomas Mann made in his 1945 letter to Walter von Molo, that anyone

hoping to truly understand his daring declaration of solidarity with the German people, or his thoughts on how the Germans could return to humanity, should simply seek out his essay on German inwardness. This story I told you in brief outline, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of German inwardness. Not a word of all that I have just told you about Germany, or tried to indicate to you, came out of alien, cool, objective knowledge. It is all within me. I have been through it all. In other words, what I have tried to give you here within the limits of time was a piece of German self-criticism,

and truly nothing could have been more faithful to German tradition. The tendency towards self-criticism, often to the point of self-disgust and self-execution, is thoroughly German, and it is eternally incomprehensible how a people so inclined towards self-analysis could ever conceive the idea of world domination. The quality most necessary for world domination is naiveness, a happy limitation, and even purposelessness. Saturday, November 7th, just as Rudy Giuliani takes the podium at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping to announce yet another Trump campaign challenge to American democracy, the 2020 presidential election is called for Joe Biden. It is official. Donald Trump has lost.

Thousands of miles away and six hours ahead, I watch with glee as New York City erupts with joy. TOE's Andrew Calloway sends me a video he recorded on my street. As the news spreads through my neighborhood, I follow along in real time as people post images and videos to Twitter. And then congratulations start pouring in from my fellow students in my French class. The week before the U.S. election, in response to the rising COVID numbers, France closed all bars, restaurants, gyms, and universities. My French class moved to Zoom. We were now communicating with each other via WhatsApp.

And even though it's Saturday afternoon, everyone chimes in to send me, the sole American in the class, congratulations and good wishes. A number of students in the class are actual refugees. Unlike me, they're not in France waiting out COVID in a summer vacation home by the beach. Many of them are here in France because they've fled war and violence. Some of my fellow students hail from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, countries that have been totally destroyed by American policy and American purposelessness. Their felicitations move me to tears. Of course, they also know how much I hate Donald Trump, because earlier in the semester,

back when we were physically together in our classroom at the University of La Rochelle, we each had to present a lecture on the news from our country. I chose to speak about Donald Trump. I wanted to talk about how important it is to grasp that Trump is terrifying because he's both a moron and a menace. And I wanted to talk about how dangerous he is, not just to America, but the world. But I lacked the language skills to pull something like that off. All I was able to do with my rudimentary French was signalisation de la vertu.

Donald Trump called the countries in Africa, shithole countries. Donald Trump has promised to make America an extraordinary new country. According to many experts, during the last four years, Donald Trump has made America a shitty country. After I finished my presentation, Wahid, one of the Iraqis, raised his hand and asked, To M. Bush?

On Saturday, November 7th, Wahid sent me three emojis. A party face, a heart, and a champagne bottle. I shared a bunch of the videos taken in my neighborhood with the class. Like one from Tompkins Square Park on the Avenue A side. Woohoo! But I didn't share the one taken around the corner on 7th Street. Woohoo! This one actually got a lot of media attention.

It's the one with the four white girls in their underwear dancing on a balcony under a giant Black Lives Matter banner. Give it up for Joseph Biden! Woohoo! At the moment, I told myself that it was the bizarre visual dissonance that kept me from sharing this video. I didn't want any of my classmates to assume I believed that waving a flag is the same thing as being committed to justice and social equality.

But I also didn't want any of my classmates to assume I was judging or mocking these young women. So I stuck with videos of crowds, big crowds, videos that made it clear that the number of Americans who, like me, hate Trump are numerous. Legion. Legion. But after watching all the videos of the much larger crowds of Trump terrorists

storm the Capitol building on January 6th, I realize now why I didn't share that video of the dancing Biden girls with my class last November. You see, I'm the one who finds the visual dissonance jarring. It messes with my assumptions. Like the QAnoners, I too have submerged myself in a vast sea of misinformation and conspiracy over these past four years. And I'm finding it extremely difficult to let go of my irrational belief that there are two Americas, a bad America and a good America. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything.

This installment is called Émigration intérieure. This episode was written and produced by me, Benjamin Walker, and Andrew Calloway, who also composed some of the music you heard. Special thanks to Jesse Schapens for help with the German translations, and everyone in my French class. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell a friend. You can find TOE on the web at theoryofeverythingpodcast.com. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, home to some of the world's best podcasts.

Find them all at radiotopia.fm. Radiotopia.fm.