Suhrkamp – Siegfried Unseld: The circumstances with the fact

Germany, land of youth sins. As the historian Thomas Gruber recently revealed in the “Zeit”, Siegfried Unseld (1924–2002), the highly respected former Suhrkamp publisher, in 1942, at almost 18 years, has entered the NSDAP.

If you believe the numerous articles and comments with which the German media reacted to this message, it seems to have hardly given any conviction among all the young, proud Aryan people who became a member of the Nazi party in the 1940s. Anyone who decided at the height of the deportations in the extermination camps to become a party mow, primarily did ignorance, jux and dolling, naivety, youthful exuberance, “missing maturity” (Alexander Kluge), short -term amnesia or because he was unfortunately wrong about the machinations and goals of the NSDAP.

It is unthinkable that the young unhappiness, who, as a flag guide at the young people of the Hitler Youth and had “apparently fun” (“Tagesspiegel”), could have had a political conviction at that time. Rather, his path was prescribed, as Willi Winkler found in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”: The young man finally had Nazi parents, the party entry of the “sports enthusiasts of young people” after the emergency table “was only consistent”.

But you don’t know anything about Unseld’s “Motivation”. At least that’s how Andreas Platthaus formulates in the »FAZ«. Perhaps the party has joined the party because he was forced to do so. Not entirely to rule out that – if the history revisionism continues to move as successfully into the future as at the moment – will soon be called that the Germans were forced by the Nazis with a pistol to enter the NSDAP.

The “most important German publisher of the post-war period” (“FAZ”) never spoke about his NSDAP membership. He was a “publisher who was rarely silent, but at this point” (“Frankfurter Rundschau”). A silence that was the normal case for many decades in the Federal Republic. And that is why “because there was no need for revelation” (“FAZ”).

At the request of the “FAZ”, the writer and filmmaker Alexander Kluge announced that Unseld had “had no way” at his time as a publisher to “address this membership”. Sure, he certainly had more important things to do: corresponding to writers, checking manuscripts, taking over representation tasks, exhibiting checks for Wolfgang Koeppen, drinking white wine with Martin Walser, turning your thumbs. In everyday work, there was no “possibility” to “address” your own past as a party moss.

In addition, “from the 1950s to his death has never been asked how much influence the Nazi loyal and anti-Semitic parents had on his political-spiritual development” (“Tagesspiegel”). And the publisher himself “obviously never been asked about any NSDAP membership” (“FAZ”). And if you are not asked, you don’t say anything. In the Unselds generation, it was learned from the parents at the Sunday afternoon coffee table as a child.

A currently popular submissive is: The man-a “legend”, as almost all the media call it-has done so much for the intellectual life of the Federal Republic that the “circumstance” (Jürgen Habermas) should be neglected by his Nazi past.

In 1951, Unseld had acquainted with the Hermann Hesse he revered, who in turn seemed to be liked to find his young fan and recommended him Peter Suhrkamp. Schwupps! -The whole tiresome Nazi matter dissolved into air: “With the blessing of a pacifist Nobel laureate”, the young unseld “was able to shake off the past and start a new life in culture … The past was behind him, the culture before him” (Winkler).

Sometimes it can go so quickly in life: the “fact” was “shaken up” in no time at all and “lay behind him”. According to the “FAZ”, the fact that it is actually a “background” is already “overcome”, albeit not yet “illuminated”: “As it seems, it seems to have an overcome National Socialist background, and it will be illuminated.”

But whether shaken or overcome: “Does the fact as such really play a role in the assessment of the life’s performance of this man?” Asks Jürgen Habermas, for example. The Suhrkamp-Dichter Rainald Goetz also has nothing to complain about at the fact as such: »I also don’t think that someone has to regret the mistakes of earlier times, especially those of youth, at some point; It is enough if you do not stick to them and try to make life as good as possible to make these mistakes – and Siegfried Unseld did. «

If you believe the German media, there seems to have hardly been a conviction among all the young proud Aryan people in the Nazi party.

According to this logic, in which the Nazi guess of a person and his joy in the relief in this regard, a “mistake of earlier times” that was made as an inexperienced young adult, a not inconsiderable part of the Germans acquitted itself in May 1945.

The writer Judith Schalansky asked in the “FAZ”: “Unseld’s publishing work could not be read as overwritten by this biographical facts-much more than what is now called so big and run” silence “?” Which should probably mean about as much as: has the deserving Naziza not through decades of a respected literature publisher Successful or let go of long ago? And are those who are now indicating the former Nazi conviction of the great publisher and supposedly “murmur” anything, not the actual pointed boys on this matter?

This shows the other popular strategy of dealing with the NSDAP membership of the venerable publisher: to blame the bearer of the message and to assume unfair interests. For example, the literary critic Helmut Böttiger on Deutschlandfunk culture was noting: It is not concerned that Günter Grass and Siegfried Unseld, who had “performed a lot” for the democratization of the FRG in the 50s and 60s, “to” seal black holes in biography. This is a completely wrong accent and only owed to a journalistic sensational need. “” “But, as Böttiger assumes, nobody became anything, especially not a hole.

Schalansky would be happy to be able to ask the deceased unseld “to understand what form of conscious or unconscious forgetting or non-more and more things can be in this specific case”. Even without being a trained historian, I can say exactly what form of conscious or unconscious forgetting or non-more and no-uninvesting people can be in this and numerous other cases (Grass, Walser, Walter Jens, Siegfried Lenz, Dieter Hildebrandt): about the German. More precisely: to get the specific German form of nothing-mit-haben, non-knowledgeable haben, non-Dabei-and beings, the non-reminder quantity and non-almond-Über-speech, which was and is surprisingly widespread in this country.

Perhaps a look at the photo album of parents and grandparents will help with one or the other among those born after 1940. It will surely find a photo for not too intensive searches on which the grandpa, when he was still dashing, can be seen in uniform or mom with Hitler salute. It is also quite possible but also that none can be found and unfortunately nobody can remember.