War or Peace: Prantl Book: Lubricant for War

There seems to be a new generational conflict: the older ones are pleading for peace, negotiations and cooperation in view of the war in Ukraine; The younger ones, on the other hand, are outdoing each other in demanding more and better weapons for Ukraine; the “turning point” seems to them to be absolutely necessary in view of Russian aggressiveness and they want Ukraine to win the war. Heribert Prantl sets a different tone with the title of his new book: “Winning Peace – Unlearning Violence.” He writes a committed educational piece against the war. Prantl, once editor of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” and honorary professor of law at Bielefeld University, is now in retirement. So he is one of the older people who, like Günther Verheugen, Klaus von Dohnanyi, Peter Brandt, Wolfgang Streeck or Reiner Braun, warn of the horror of war and repeatedly quote Willy Brandt: “Peace is not everything, but everything is nothing without peace .”

»The German tanks rattle past the Basic Law, the German howitzers fire past it; But they kill specifically.”

Heribert Prantl

The title of the book suggests a non-fiction book, a book about military blocs, arms spirals, imperialism, aggression and counter-aggression, about legitimate and unjustified interests that are discussed in many places. To a certain extent, these expectations are positively disappointed. Prantl does not provide dry facts, but rather biased literature by quoting, rearranging, interpreting and formulating lessons for the present from many of the great thinkers who took a stand against the war. He tackles the Bellizists where they think they are strong: in values-based politics.

He discusses Max Weber’s famous distinction, the distinction between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility. According to Weber, the former follow an ethical maxim without considering the consequences, while the latter take responsibility for the consequences of their actions and act accordingly, even if they thereby violate ethical maxims. This was also an anticipation of the distinction between realpolitik and idealpolitik that pervades foreign policy discussions today. Strangely enough, today it is the Realpolitikers – officers like Kujat – who are in favor of negotiations and consider Siegfried to be an illusion.

Prantl shows that Weber’s distinction was directed against pacifism. For Weber, ethicists were “the supporters and protagonists of the November Revolution of 1918 – Kurt Eisner, as well as Erich Mühsam and Max Levien, who had recently interrupted him (Weber) with loud heckling during another speech. He has poets like Gustav Landauer in mind, who will shortly later take influential positions in the Munich Soviet Republic. Prantl also thinks that the distinction is quite nonsensical, taking Weber’s example of mental ethics, the Sermon on the Mount, and arguing: “How should one keep the commandments if one is subject to Roman occupation? In this situation of powerlessness and defenselessness, how are you supposed to resist evil and put a stop to injustice? This is the ethical question of Matthew and his community. The Sermon on the Mount attempts to answer this. But that means: according to Max Weber’s standards, it is an ethic of responsibility of the highest standards. She considers how one can still keep the commandments and do good when one is hardly able to act politically and is at the mercy of the powers of the empire. It is a question of “ethics at the risk of life and in a state of emergency.” It is an ethic of responsibility in the given time to put aside the biblical commandment “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” and turn the other cheek.

In one chapter, however, Prantl actually writes a non-fiction book, namely when it comes to the ban on war of aggression in the Basic Law. According to Article 24 of the Basic Law, the Federal Republic of Germany is allowed to join “a system of collective security”. This did not originally mean a military alliance like NATO. The republic had learned the lessons from Nazi barbarism and started antimilitaristically and without an army; the Basic Law was formulated accordingly. What was meant was not NATO, but the UN and similar security systems such as the OSCE. Prantl writes: »In summary: constitutional practice has changed, but the constitution has not. The German tanks rattle past the Basic Law, the German howitzers fire past it; But they kill specifically.”

The book begins with a song and, in a sense, with religion and it ends with a song and religion. Prantl begins with a passage from Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem,” where it says: “There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in/ you can add up the parts,/ but you won’t have the sum .” “There is a crack – a crack in everything.” There is also a crack in the hopeless war euphoria, the Bellicism of the turn of the century. Prantl is a pessimistic optimist because: »Unlike vulgar apocalyptists, real apocalyptists are not hopeless prophets of the end of the world. They are dialectics.” He ends with John Lennon’s “peace hymn par excellence,” with Imagine: Imagines there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try/ No hell below us/ above us only sky.” But he insists: “The path to peace is possible not about fighting religion. It is more promising and wiser to understand both: the violence potential and the peace potential of religion. The former needs to be tamed, the latter needs to be realized. Religion has so often been a lubricant for war. Abusing them like this is a mortal sin, a war crime.”

Prantl has written a peace text that is fun to read, entertaining and educational – he leaves out nothing that he can unearth from the depths of his humanistic education and that is a lot.

Heribert Prantl: Winning peace – unlearning violence. Heyne, 240 p., br., 20 €.