Indivisible Peace

A very beautiful, artful human voice sings to us, simple and difficult tones, words that tell of the world, of places, of people without war. A friendly language, no proselytising. This little song is peace, so it seems to me.

As though there were such a thing as peace, as though we knew what it is supposed to be – peace. Peace is more than the absence of war.

Not deathly silence, but peace
Not uniformity, but peace
Not boredom, but peace
Not fixity, but peace.

What do Brecht, Eisler and Gisela May ask of us?

Can they speak of peace in this way because they know war, real, deadly war?

What do we know of peace today? I think nothing, perhaps nothing any more.

From whom is something to be taken away? Why may nothing tomorrow be as it is today or was yesterday? War against everything past? Today’s tomorrow is the day after tomorrow’s past. A war against everyone and everything and always?

Our games, our images in the media celebrate war every day; only war is an event. Politics as the continuation of war by other means. The ordained holidays bring no peace, perhaps small pauses for breath. But it goes on, for this, this must now be, and that, that must now be as well! Must the duty of constant change become a war against everything that has come into being? Does civil society declare its own history obsolete? Is happiness enforced as a permanent technical revolution? The adaptation to the eternally new is dictated – by whom?

Nothing may remain?

An eternal amnesia is demanded! Why? Is there even still any notion of a life together without war?

A constant flogging-through of new rules, on the grounds that saving the world is a lust for war.

Where do all our enemies come from, what have they done to us? About what do we wish to lecture the world? Why must we be in the right? Could we instead, for once, understand something – Russian security interests, for example? Perhaps we must learn a notion, an inkling of peace, before the everyday war can be ended? Before the threat of the very great war fades.

Once more, perhaps, Brecht and Eisler help us with a little song, which came close to becoming the national anthem of the GDR:

Anmut sparet nicht noch Mühe
Leidenschaft nicht noch Verstand,
daß ein gutes Deutschland blühe
wie ein andres gutes Land …
Und nicht über und nicht unter anderen Völkern wollen wir sein.

Can we accept that elsewhere it is different, that there are other civilisations from which we may learn?

Human experiences and biographies are concrete. Never can we, as individuals, act universally; our time on earth is limited, we cannot become omniscient. The notion, too, of a single-handedly acting world power spreading its limited culture in dominion over the earth is ignorant, and conceals within its own claim the wish for eternal war.

The USA lose themselves in their wars. In the imperial claim against ever new enemies no country can flourish. Let us learn peace, let us learn to respect other civilisations, let us learn to ask ourselves what we can learn. Let us learn to understand who we are, for we need a new enlightenment about our Western societies. To think for Germany is difficult enough; no participation in imperial megalomania can help us.

Through the acceptance of the past we may perhaps come to understand again that neutrality can be a step towards peace.

Neither above nor below other peoples do we wish to be, not even with a helping hand. We must not conjure ourselves up a Ukraine out of the remnants of our own National Socialist history, in order to wage war against Russia again and again – no.

Germany is too small to be an ordering world power, but too large to keep silent.

No war against Russia, never again!