Hands up! Beginning of the new military policy: Chancellor Schröder visits Kosovo in 1999 after Germany took part in a war of aggression for the first time since 1945.
Photo: dpa
“Heinrich, oh Heinrich, I dread you.” Gretchen’s outcry against Faust comes back to mind today when you take a look at the German feature pages, which, with a few exceptions, stand at attention in the face of the proclamation of a “turning point” and the call for “war-fighting efficiency.” It has transformed from a stage for deliberation about culture and political times into an executioner for all those who do not yet want to join in the bellicose and affirmative sound of the pre-war period.
Stefan Ripplinger’s latest work (»Art in War: Cultural Politics as Militarization”). He has been on the trail of the relationship between art and politics for a long time.
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Ripplinger’s book operates on two levels: descriptive and analytical. He descriptively follows the development of a culture that has taken place in recent years, which has developed from dissidence to subservience to the state, through the Corona, Ukraine and Gaza wars. At the same time he asks himself how something like this was possible. In this analytical part he risks making bold theses, but always places them under the proviso that they are provisional and revisable.
Corona was, so to speak, the experimental space for practicing authoritarian behavior and attitudes. The pandemic has given the state the opportunity to try out what it can do with the people of the state. This fell into his lap due to the circumstances, and no bad intentions should be assumed. The situation was too new and too complex for that. When it comes to this topic, Ripplinger tends to assume that the state, but also its opponents from the cross-front, are too rational in their actions.
Ripplinger sees a new quality in the brutalization of the intellectual and cultural climate in the debate about the Ukraine war. The demonization of one warring party and the ‘canonization’ of the other, which is glorified as the champion of our freedom, is unparalleled in the recent past. Large parts of the art and cultural world played along with this evil game; almost no one was bothered by the boycott and disinvitation of Russian artists and the invention of a special Ukrainian national culture.
It is a de facto synchronization, and in the case of the media, a “self-harmonization” that we are witnessing, writes Ripplinger. When the state calls to arms (so far symbolically), the spirit marches. Ripplinger describes this capitulation of critical art with biting sharpness, but he also does not forget to recall a few historical contexts for a better understanding of the war.
A new picture is emerging with the Gaza war. Of course, the state’s measures against rebellious artists are not decreasing, in fact they are actually inflating. Ripplinger presents an impressive list of interventions by the state and cultural institutions, but the contradiction against the prescribed unconditional loyalty to Israel is considerable – especially in view of the rampage of the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. In Germany it draws primarily from foreign countries, where people find the Germans’ loyalty to the Nibelung irritating.
The accusation of anti-Semitism is used as the sharpest weapon against criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war. It may be true in a number of cases, but it also applies to many who would never question Israel’s right to exist, but who do have problems with its right-wing radical government. Ripplinger confidently balances this sensitive matter and belies the Antifa hotheads who can no longer differentiate between politics and the state and brand any criticism of Israel as the negation of Israel. Using the example of the Jewish artist Candice Breitz, he shows how submissively even social democratic culture ministers follow Netanyahu’s prerogatives and no longer bother to listen to their victims.
What’s wrong with the creative class in this country? Before trying to answer, Ripplinger takes a big step back. The bellicose turning point was initiated much earlier: It was Joschka Fischer who, as Foreign Minister, achieved the discursive feat of legitimizing an anti-fascist war that violated international law (1999 against Yugoslavia) and thus provided the cognitive basis for the moralistic war cries of today’s Greens. At that time he had quite a few claqueurs from the artistic milieu who fell for his “Never again” farce. Fischer (and Chancellor Schröder) have ushered in the era of “progressive wars,” the human rights wars, which – according to their mainly green adepts – must be waged until the world is to their moral taste.
This brings Ripplinger to one of his central thesis. The nervous look at those working in culture and art comes from the international faction of the local bourgeoisie. She can no longer tolerate contradictions when it comes to defending against evil (Russia) and the raison d’etre (Israel). It aggressively attacks supposed enemies of the state, which Ripplinger demonstrates beautifully with Jürgen Kaube, the editor and features editor of the “FAZ”.
The progressive cultural milieu will have to live with this new constellation – the liberals and libertarians are becoming a threat to artistic freedom, the conservatives are more lenient – in the future. It must be careful not to fall under suspicion of “delegitimizing” the prevailing order with its statements and performances. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is not far away.
Stefan Ripplinger has eloquently expressed his frustration with the new Juste Milieu and the repression of art. Despite all the “pessimism of the understanding” he still hopes for the “optimism of the will” (Gramsci), for the subversive power of art. He is encouraged by the fact that the cultural workers could not be silenced during the Gaza war, but that their criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war is becoming more and more common knowledge.
Stefan Ripplinger: Art in war. Cultural policy as militarization. Papyrossa. 135 pages, br., €14.90.
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