Like these workers in the metal and electrical industry at the end of November 1990, three million people demonstrated against layoffs and unequal treatment in East Germany between 1990 and 1994.
Photo: Klaus Franke / dpa
On the cover is Goya’s famous etching “The sleep of reason gives birth to monsters” (1799). That suits this courageous book, because Daniela Dahn doesn’t avoid the monsters or downplay them. “So everything that happens is just a continuation of the series and not a beginning that happens by itself” – true to Immanuel Kant’s motto, she takes a look at everything that is currently so frightening. We’re not imagining it. The climate of war is actually threatening, and we are feeling the economic decline of our country first hand. »We have ample opportunity to embrace the idea that reason lies dormant in the decision-makers we elect. They do not adequately prevent harm to their people, as they have committed themselves to do. They fail to ensure a peace order, to prevent the climate from reaching an irreparable tipping point, and to combat the causes of flight. They stir up fears of pandemics, but take the risk of a world war in order to assert their values, i.e. their rule.
The author appears to us in the first person, weaving in life experiences. In 1989 she was one of the co-founders of the GDR opposition group “Democratic Awakening”, but did not want to support its rapprochement with the CDU. She was a member of the commission of inquiry into the police attacks on demonstrators on October 7th and 8th, 1989 in Berlin and was proposed by the PDS in 1998 as a candidate for constitutional judge in Brandenburg. It is not surprising that she did not get the necessary two-thirds majority in the state parliament. In April 2022, she was one of the signatories of an open letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz against arms deliveries to Ukraine and in February 2023 she was the first signatory of the manifesto for peace written by Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht. Her opening speech at the BSW party conference is printed here. As a non-party, she expresses the hope of cooperation with the left “where common ground has been preserved.” As an internationalist, she is committed to the “continuing validity of the revolutionary demand ‘Precarious workers of all countries unite!'”
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The fact that today’s challenges are global is not an empty phrase. With Daniela Dahn you can practice thinking in contexts, looking behind the appearances for the essence of social processes, especially since nothing is simplified here. It is an enlightening read because the author always backs up her assessments – on the war in Ukraine, on the deficits of capitalist democracy, on anti-Semitism and racism, on the AfD’s electoral successes and on the East-West debate – with facts that contribute to… Some of them have not yet penetrated into general consciousness. For example, that the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline resulted in “the largest methane emissions of all time,” or that even in peacetime, “according to SIPRI, the military causes a quarter of the world’s environmental pollution.” “But the states, as if they were incorrigible, have already spent six times less on climate protection than on war.” If the “admirably determined, combat-determined ecology movements … are fighting so vehemently for a change in transport,” then why do they accept it? that “the military is not accountable to anyone worldwide for its ecological footprint”? According to a study by the NGO “Oil Change International,” the “kerosene consumption from the four years of the Iraq War was as high as the annual consumption of 25 million cars.”
With regard to the war in Ukraine, the dilemma is obvious, says Daniela Dahn: »The more successful NATO warfare would be on the soil of Ukraine and the new battlefield Russia, the more likely a Russian use of nuclear weapons would be. Success as the surest path to ruin.” The 100 billion euro special fund for armaments, “the practical consequence of Scholz’s turnaround, is an investment in precisely this fiasco.”
The traffic light coalition also received a receipt for this in the East German state elections. Why so many votes for the AfD? Was that really a vote against “democracy” or rather against what is just a facade about it? Does the so-called shift to the right perhaps even have roots within the Federal German state? “Antifascism was never a reason of state in the Federal Republic,” emphasizes Daniela Dahn. The “anti-communist rollback of political decision-makers in the West” after the GDR joined the Federal Republic of Germany – many examples are given – “not only affected the East, but the entire country.” Many people will have forgotten all the injustice that happened. “According to representative surveys, three million people demonstrated against layoffs and unequal treatment in East Germany between 1990 and 1994 – twice as many as during the ‘Peaceful Revolution’ – but they were ignored.”
For reasons of power politics, the unification was not carried out in accordance with Article 146 of the Basic Law, which was actually intended for this purpose. You can read about the possibilities offered by the round table’s draft constitution, which was handed over to the newly elected People’s Chamber on April 4, 1990, in Dahn. What opportunities were wasted back then! »It was a neglect of duty in the face of a spreading feeling of powerlessness among citizens that contributed to the immediate shift to the right, to frustration, hatred, violence and contempt for representative democracy. It was organized irresponsibility on the part of those in power.”
Will a book like this awaken these “powerful ones” from the “sleep of reason” and make them think? Hardly. But let’s not be deterred, let’s keep our heads up and do what we can.
Daniela Dahn: The sleep of reason. About war climate, Nazis and fakes. Rowohlt Verlag, 192 pages, hardcover, €16. nd Literature Salon with Daniela Dahn: November 27th, 6 p.m., Münzenbergsaal in the house at Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, Berlin
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