Saw for the first time the author, psychoanalyst and former political prisoner, Karl-Heinz Bomberg, here on campus at a series of events hosted by Greg Eghigian. Bomberg has a warm, intense presence and a touch of the ancient Mariner, who stoppeth one in three. Listening to him talk about the psychological impact of being imprisoned in Communist Germany, I was struck by how urgent the topic still was in the moment, and yet how quickly contemporaries want to forget about all that.
There is a tendency, in myself as in others, to let the tortures of totalitarianism slip away into quiet forgetfulness. Hearing Ingrid Miethe a feminist historian at the University of Giessen speak at the recent German Studies Association conference brought across the same point. Miethe spoke about East German feminists with a lively polemical tone as if the DDR and its women’s movement were still in existence. She still spoke in the present tense about family and social policies that have been overrun by the West.
Miethe and Bomberg have a trait in common with the Nobel laureate, Herta Müller, namely the continued analysis, critique and revision of life under Communism. They surely do not share the same experiences nor hold the same political positions today, but for all three the Communist system has an actuality that most Westerners (with the exception of right-wing conservatives) and many Easterners who were born under Communism no longer recognize. Their engagement has nothing to do with nostalgia, it is more a sign of critical tenacity. Whereas right-wingers scare their listeners by talking about Socialism as if it were everywhere, these three writers preserve the vanishing reality of Communism because it is an inescapable part of their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment