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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER 9, 1983
PAGE 11
state? Refusal to allow this natural process to begin will only
further encourage apathy, neutralism, and, maybe,� resentful
nationalism that would be detrimental to the West's security.
The decision is not Germany's alone. It is we in the West who
must make a conscious effort to give today's Germans back their
past and develop their own patriotism.
In the March 1983 edition of HARPER'S magazine, there appeared an article
entitled "Why Germans Don't Love Us." It was written by Timothy Garton Ash,
the Central European correspondent for the conservative British news maga
zine, the SPECTATOR.
The author brings out curious parallels between
today's "Greens" and an earlier green movement of a different stripe.
...Crossing the border between the two Germanys is like passing
through the looking glass: the logical order of things is
inverted. You would expect to find more communists in the East
and more liberals in the West, but the reverse is true. Like
wise, there are more friendly illusions about the Soviet Union in
the West than in the East, more about America in the East than in
the West.
Does all this reflect a growing anti-Americanism, or perhaps
prefigure West Germany's drift into an ambivalent position
between East and West? It must be remembered that West Germany
is a very Arnericanized country.
The Americanization of the
Federal Republic goes far deeper than the Sovietization of the
Democratic Republic. In the East, Soviet influence generally
stops at the front door: in the West, American influence is in
every living room.
(It is in many East German living rooms as
well, on televisions tuned to West German stations.) American
culture, styles, and values have penetrated West German life,
public and private, to� degree that the Soviets can only dream
of.•.. So when young West Germans rebel against the "industrial
system," or the "consumer society," or "capitalism," or the
limitations of parliamentary democracy...they are rebelling not
just against their own country but against America.•••
The real danger posed by the diverse protest movements lies in
the
possibility of extraparliamentary civil disobedience
(Bewegung, as they call it). Sit-down strikes on supply roads to
U.S. Army installations, for example••.. The protesters•••seem
blissfully unaware of the sinister echoes in their talk of
Bewegung.
Yet their parents have had bitter experiences of
another Bewegung (as its leaders called it then), which also
began with an agrarian romantic culture (Blut und Boden, "blood
and soil") and a revolt against the kind of modernity represented
by America.
11
Im Grunen fangt's an, und endet blutig rot," the
great satirist Kurt Tucholsky prophesied of that earlier movement
at the end of the 1920s:
"It begins in green and ends bloody
red."
As I write, I have before me a "Green Calendar," printed on
recyled paper (naturally) and replete with herbal illustrations
and reminders of such holidays as "Atomic-free Pacific Day"
(February 1--don't forget!). On one of the last pages I read:
"ISRAEL THE MURDER BANDS. After we appealed last year
I
Kauft