The Question of German Guilt

Therefore we do not want to rage at one another but to try to find the way together. Emotion argues against the truth of the speaker. We want to affect no fanatic will, nor to outshout each other. We do not want to engage in melodramatic breast-beating, to offend the other, nor to engage in self-satisfied praise of things intended merely to hurt the other. We do not want to force opinions on one another. But in the common search for truth there must be no barriers of charitable reserve, no gentle reticence, no comforting deception. There can be no question that might not be raised, nothing to be fondly taken for granted, no sentimental and no practical lie that would have to be guarded or that would be untouchable. But even less can it be permitted brazenly to hit each other in the face with challenging, unfounded, frivolous judgments. We belong together; we must feel our common cause when we talk with each other.

When we talk aloud to each other, we merely continue what and how each individual inwardly talks to himself. In this kind of talking none is the other’s judge; everyone is both defendant and judge at the same time. All our talks are darkened by such accusations, by the moralizing which has for ages mingled with so many conversations and keeps dripping into our wounds like poison, whatever it may be aimed against. We cannot remove this shadow but we can make it constantly lighter. We can have the right impulse: we do not want to accuse, except in the case of definite crimes capable of objective determination and of punishment. All through these years we have heard other people scorned. We do not want to continue that.

But we always succeed only in part. We all tend to justify ourselves, and to attack what we feel are hostile forces with depreciating judgments or moral accusations. Today we must examine ourselves more severely than ever. Let us make this plain: in the course of events the survivor seems always right. Success apparently justifies. The man on top believes that he has the truth of a good cause on his side. This implies the profound injustice of blindness for the failures, for the powerless, for those who are crushed by events.

It is ever thus. Thus was the Prussian-German noise after 1866 and 1870, which frightened Nietzsche. Thus was the even wilder noise of National-Socialism since 1933.

So now we must ask ourselves whether we are not lapsing into another noise, becoming self-righteous, deriving a legitimacy from the mere facts of our having survived and suffered.

Let us be clear about this in our minds: that we live and survive is not due to ourselves. If we have a new situation, with new opportunities amidst fearful destruction, it has not been created by our own strength. Let us not claim a legitimacy which is not due us.

As today every German government is an authoritarian government set up by the Allies, so every German, every one of us, owes the scope of his activities today to the Allies’ will or permission. This is a cruel fact. Truthfulness prevents us from forgetting it even for a day. It preserves us from arrogance and teaches us humility.

Among the survivors, among those on top, there are today, as ever, the outraged, impassioned ones, all thinking they are right and claiming credit for what has happened through others. The man who is well off, who finds an audience, thinks that this alone makes him right.

No one can avoid this situation altogether. Time and again, when we get on this path for an instant, we must make a real effort to find our way back to self-education. We are outraged ourselves. May outrage cleanse itself, may it stay with us as outrage against outrage, as morals against moralizing. We fight for purity of soul in struggling against the invincible in us.

That is true of the work which we now want to do together in this lecture course. What we have thought as individuals, or heard in conversations here and there, may partly be objectivized in a reflective connection. You want to participate in such connected reflections, in questions and attempted answers in which you will recognize what lies ready within yourselves or is already clear. We want to reflect together while, in fact, I expound unilaterally. But the point is not dogmatic communication, but investigation and tender for examination on your part.

Brainwork is not all that this requires. The intellect must put the heart to work, arouse it to an inner activity which in turn carries the brainwork. You will vibrate with me or against me, and I myself will not move without a stirring at the bottom of my thoughts. Although in the course of this unilateral exposition we do not actually talk with each other, I cannot help it if one or the other of you feels almost personally touched. I ask you in advance: forgive me, should I offend. I do not want to. But I am determined to dare the most radical thoughts as deliberately as possible.