Victor Klemperer – Of hardship and hardship and of hope

More than half a century ago, two books by the Dresden Romanist Victor Klemperer (1818–1960) were published. The first was titled “LTI” as an abbreviation for The language of the Third Reichi.e. language of the Third Reich. It described the rape of the German language by the Nazi dictatorship and was published in 1947 by Aufbau-Verlag. The second was called “I want to bear witness to the last”, Klemperer’s diaries 1933 to 1945, and was only published by Aufbau-Verlag after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1995. Both books left deep and lasting traces in the national and international coming to terms with the Hitler dictatorship as well as in special sciences that deal with language, the history of mentalities, psychology, etc.

Klemperer’s books bear witness to the progressive persecution of Jews under the Nazi regime, to the humiliations experienced first-hand and, above all – as Martin Walser noted – they are precise observations of what happened in German society over the twelve years. These two books are still used again and again today to generally analyze the nature and effects of totalitarian dictatorships. The French philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman, born in 1953 and from the Paris École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, has now read it again and prepared it in an illuminating way for future generations.

The “Witness to the Last” contains a wealth of frightening and horrifying “degenerations” of the German language in almost all areas of the conformist society. But Klemperer also registered different attitudes and language – he speaks of one the voice of the people (Voice of the People) – which, unfortunately, were rare. This is how he describes an encounter on July 19, 1943 in Dresden: “When I came from the cemetery on Sunday afternoon, an old gentleman walked across the path to me on the park path on Lothringer Strasse, gave me his hand, and said with a certain solemnity: ‘I have seen your star and greet you, I condemn the ostracism of a race and many others do the same.’ Me: ‘Very friendly – but you are not allowed to talk to me, That could cost me my life and put you in prison.’ – Yes, but he wanted and had to tell me that.”

When Klemperer has to move into a so-called Jewish house, he is able to secretly give his diary pages to an “Aryan” friend for safekeeping. On November 11, 1940, he wrote that he and his wife were “deeply depressed by the baseness and lawlessness” that “in everything makes the hardship more miserable and miserable.” Klemperer owed his survival to the protection of his “Aryan” Protestant wife.

Didi-Huberman writes three famous questions based on the three famous questions formulated by Immanuel Kant in his “Critique of Pure Reason”: “What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope?” about Klemperer’s hope: “It can be understood that Klemperer’s hope for his own presence was only one that dealt with Hardship and hardship maintained. He writes about the tragic minimization of the scope for hope due to the Notwhere he was brought as a Jew. But Klemperer’s hope was expressed in what would be diary turned into a large book of witness: in the daily claim to increase the scope for hope despite everything through persistent work – this one Effort that creates hope.«

Georges Didi-Huberman: Witnessing to the last. Read Victor Klemperer. A.d. Francis v. Petra Willim. Konstanz University Press, 123 pages, hardcover, €22.