On the occasion of Adam Krzemiński's 80th birthday, we remind him of his conversation with Basil Kerski (DIALOG no. 94/2011) about Willy Brandt's visit to Warsaw in 1970 and the turbulent past of German-Polish relations.
Basil Kerski: How did you remember the day of the visit of German Chancellor Willy Brandt and Minister Walter Scheel in Warsaw on December 7, 1970?
Adam Krzemiński: I had an appointment this morning with Günter Grass, who accompanied Brandt for an interview for “Politics”. For years, I dreamed of having this conversation, due to the fact that it was besides his novels that pushed me into Germanistics. After the interview, I followed Grass along with an authoritative German delegation program. It was besides late for the Unknown Soldier's Tomb, so I went to the Gatet Heroes Memorial. I saw Brandt approach the monument from a distance, but then a crowd of officials and reporters covered him up. However, I saw a stir coming back from this ceremony and a heated Agency comment, which I read a fewer hours later in the editorial "Forum", which in the next issue published a photograph of the kneeling Brandt. However, the contrast was immense – tiny pictures in us and immense pictures in “Spieglu” and “Sterna”. I besides remember embarrassing comments in the Uraar press that the Chancellor had knelt before the incorrect monument. Besides, the past of the Polish reception of Brandt's motion is interesting.
How much did a image of the kneeling chancellor scope Poles' awareness by tv or another media in front of the monument?
I can't remember whether TVP showed a kneeling chancellor in the "Diary". I think so. It is not actual that the photograph was published only by “Folks Sztyme”, the only judaic magazine published in the Polish People's Republic at the time, was “The Life of Warsaw”. In PAP, there was a "official" image taken from the front, so that in the foreground on the left is the arm presenting the weapon of the Polish soldier. This photograph is besides in the three-volume edition of "German memorial sites". However, German media usually display a side shot, on which you can besides see the facade of the monument. erstwhile in the 1970s I wanted to illustrate 1 of the texts, censorship cut them from the bottom. You could think Brandt was standing. I think this motion from 7 December 1970 reached Poles after all. Although in the authoritative media – and the second circulation was not yet – he was not peculiarly publicised. besides due to the fact that shortly the Polish opinion dealt with the strike on the coast, the departure of Gomulka, and German affairs came to the next stage. erstwhile they returned, it was in the form of a German conflict around ratification of the agreement, not a reconciliation policy. However, for young people curious in Polish-German relations – and actually waiting for their breakthrough – Brandt's motion was a kind of revelation of a fresh era.
I read Brandt's kneeling in Warsaw as a universal message, not pointed to 1 group of victims of Nazi genocide. This was besides a silent consequence to the letter of Polish bishops from 1965. The Social Democratic Chancellor, to whom, if at all, the Protestant mentality was closer than the Catholic one, expressed in a Christian motion what the German bishops did not say in consequence to the message of Polish bishops. Therefore, Cardinal Wyszyński later said with bitterness that Poles received the expected consequence to the motion of Polish bishops, but not from those Germans from whom they expected...
Were Brandt and Scheel's visits to Poland accompanied by advanced expectations?
Huge. Today, it is hard to imagine how serious the injury caused by Bonn's refusal to recognise the border on Oder and Nysa in Poland. It wasn't just a fear of German revisionism. It was a humiliation of temporaryity and the feeling that you are doomed to russian guarantees and solidarity of the bloc states. In turn the designation of this border by West Germany gave a vague hope of normality...
Basil Kerski and Adam KrzemińskiI am talking about my feelings at the time, which were not typical, that my first "night talks" with Germany, besides from the West, I survived in 1965, in Leipzig, in connection with a letter of bishops and elections to the Bundestag, during which Grass supported Brandt loudly and demanded designation of the Polish border. In 1970 I was 25 years old, but Willy Brandt was for me – and most likely for many Poles of my generation – specified a German Kennedy. Since 1967, I looked at him from the editorial board “Forum” where I had the Western press at my disposal. I saw that the establishment of the Social Liberal Coalition in the fall of 1969 was a political, intellectual and moral caesium. Not just due to the fact that Brandt was an emigrant and anti-fascist during the war, but due to the fact that he brought a young generation of rebels against the generation of parents, erstwhile Nazis. Brandt would like to invitation us, young people, to an attractive journey, to cross the barriers. It wasn't the target, it was the direction. Inside he drew the slogan "more democracy", outside "change through approximation".
The 1960s is the end of “our small stability” in both the East and the West. Prague Spring 1968, and March, in the US protest against the Vietnam War, in France Parisian May, in Germany the youth revolt and the departure from the power of the chadeks, was all a manifestation of a large shift of tectonic records in politics, culture, mentality, and beyond the iron curtain. The sense, although not yet concrete, was that our generation could make vessels connected over cold war divisions. Willy Brandt was 1 of the most prominent of our expectations. For the party's “beton” he was a threat. Walter Ulbricht called his east policy "revisionism in slippers", a threatening softening of communist states.
How did your conversation with Grass go?
I remember her perfectly. It wasn't long. Grass had small time, about 20 minutes, but there were wordings in it that permanently influenced my publicist-Germanist attitude. At 1 point, Grass said that the Polish "confused mentality" could be a "counterweight" for "the dense and secretive intellectualism of Germans". This confession sounded seductive: not only do we request them, but we request them! In addition, Grass followed 2 world-famous writers – Sławomir Mrożek and Leszek Kołakowski – who late emigrated from Poland. I immediately wrote the interview, translated it, and delivered it to the editors. The next day, the editor of the cultural department in “Politics” called me, Tadeusz Drewnowski, saying that censorship wants to delete the passage about Mrożek and Kołakowski. However, he can be saved if we add in your question that Kołakowski is abroad “for the cognition of the authorities, and Mrożek can return at any time” which variant you choose? I replied that I primarily wanted the reader to know what Grass's position was on this matter. Adam Michnik then told me that he read that interview in prison. Grass's intervention impressed him, but with distaste he assumed that “this Krzemiński was so foolishly wise.” But it was worth...
In your opinion, was Brandt well prepared for this hard visit? For many observers in the world, Brandt and Scheel's visit to Moscow was the most important, due to the fact that it was the destiny of divided Germany. Did Brandt realize that this 1 day in Poland would be so crucial to his abroad policy, so symbolic for West Germany? Do you know how he prepared to travel to Warsaw?
Brandt knew he was going to sign for the resignation of the erstwhile German east areas. And that consciousness must have been a large burden for him. He besides knew the warm moods of the German right. For years he endured attacks on himself that he was a traitor, an illegitimate child, that during the war he was in a abroad uniform, while all average German wore feldgrau Wehrmacht. Brandt is said to have been a mimosa, that he failed as the head of the household due to the fact that he sought acceptance of crowds and women. specified easy psychology can be seen in a 90-minute movie produced by tv Arte. Meanwhile, Brandt had to have large willpower in the 1960s. He lost the election 3 times, yet he rose and did what should have been done. He recognized the effects of the war, from which the West German parties swindled for 20 years.
In his knowing of politics Poland played a certain but limited role. I do not find any peculiar cognition of Polish past in Brandt's writings and speeches, traces of Polish readings – but for Hanna Krall. Marek Edelman claimed that in the 1930s he was at Brandt's reading in Warsaw, but in Brandt's memoirs there was no evidence of specified reading. In the 1960s, Brandt met with the emissaries of Władysław Gomulka, And the secretary of the party, like Mieczysław Rakowski, but he found no deeper intimacy with them. The translator of Gomulku, Mieczysław Tomala, tells that there was a chilly atmosphere in the car where Willy Brandt drove with Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz from Okęcia to the Wilanów residence. yet Brandt asked out of the blue, "How's the harvest going?", for he was asked about the harvest during a visit to Moscow by the russian Prime Minister Alexey Kosygin. seemingly Brandt, who was not in head for the head of the large government to be curious in the harvests, considered this question a peculiar form of kindness in socialist countries. After signing the agreement the talks with Gomułka and Cyrankiewicz were revived.
Poland – due to Oder and Nysa – was a central component of Brandt's east policy, but – due to russian hegemony – was a partner "in the package", not in itself. However, despite his deficiency of deeper cognition of Poland, Brandt was aware of the degree of German crimes in Poland and the importance of Poland in Europe. His kneeling in Warsaw is in my opinion a spontaneous but completely conscious motion before the right monument – Heroes of Gett. The German chancellor knelt against the immensity of all victims of the Nazi genocide, not just the Holocaust. Anyway, that's how I felt about Brandt.
Did he confirm that in later conversations with you?
I talked to Brandt twice. This was the first time it was an interview before his arrival in Warsaw in 1985. He looked like a very sick man. Just before the interview, Wolfgang Clement, the later Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, whispered to him that this was an interview for the “Politics” of Warsaw, not Belgrade. This first conversation was professional, correct, distant. The another was touching. It was a fewer days after the fall of the wall, in the Bosnian Beethoven-Halle Ebert Foundation held a large story with Brandt, respective 1000 listeners. The main talker was Brandt, then we, the Germans' neighbors, had short speeches. At the end of Brandt ostentatiously approached me and asked for the podium to the side. He then told me words that were hard to forget: “Seien Sie auf der Hut vor der deutschen Juristerei”. defend yourself from German law enforcement. Imagine a erstwhile German chancellor who warns the Pole against the legal loopholes that Germany can use. Brandt may have lacked the sense of Polish affairs, lacked adequate antennae, but inactive said this sentence. As for the motion in Warsaw: Brandt then at Beethoven-Halle did not confide in me of his motivations, but he liked my explanation that it was the right place for a motion towards all victims of Nazi crimes.
Your memories do not dispel Polish claims that Brandt did not search more intense contact with Poles.
In my opinion, it was only Helmut Schmidt in Poland that saw a alternatively independent player. His public remark from the mid-1970s that he could imagine Gierka in her government caused confusion, but was an unparalleled compliment in the past of Polish-German relations. Schmidt took the patronage over the Deutsches Polen-Institut Karl Dedecius and looked at the “Polish Library” he published. besides Gerhard Schröder – as I could see for myself – read the past of the Polish Norman Davies, which was presented to him by Aleksander Kwasniewski. However, in Helmut Kohl I have never seen specified evidence of interest...
Kohl may not have read books on Polish history, but he was aware of the importance of Polish-German relations for the national Republic...
Brandt, who, like Adenauer, reiterated that relations with Poland have the same meaning for Germany as with France. but in Adenauer's case, no of this came out. I will return to the weight of kneeling again in Warsaw, not in Yad Vashem, but at the crime scene, in a peculiar place of German memory. It is simply a pity that in Poland we frequently decision so easy to the agenda for this challenge, which Brandt made with his motion to the German public. He, who, due to his biography, was not morally obliged to do so, showed his mates that they were getting distant with guilt. And he did it the day he signed for the border. It was a clear message. Consider, at last, the resignation from the erstwhile east provinces as a form of penance for what the 3rd Reich, and so many of you, did in the East... His and Walter Scheel from the FDP – but besides Richard von Weizsäcker from the CDU – the fight for Germany's designation of the border was not a gift for Poland, it was to exhale from the Germans a historical necessity if not in the name of historical justice, it was peace and good intercourse with the most hard neighbourhood in the 20th century in Europe.
The dispute over the request to recognise post-war borders has been in the national Republic for years. Already in 1958, Golo Mann in his German past wrote that Germany must accept the change of the German map, the form of the state and draw conclusions from it. Borders have changed, German cultural scenery has changed, Mann wrote, there is no alternate to the postwar form of Germany.
This attitude was not apparent at the time or even much later. I remember Wolfgang Schäuble's message at the gathering with the brand-new burs, corporate students, from the erstwhile GDR at the castle in Wartburg in 1991 on German unification. He said then that the national government had to recognise post-war boundaries due to the fact that otherwise there would have been no unification. In the meantime, he could say that, despite the painful failure of Silesia, Pomerania and east Prussia, we sincerely recognised this border due to the fact that we want to live with Poles in harmony and a good neighbourhood. Schäuble spoke of costs – there is no unification without Oder and Nysa – not those historical lessons that Golo Mann spoke about 40 years earlier. Like Schäuble, Chancellor Kohl spoke in 1990. And it was not Helmut Kohl that signed the final border treaty of November 1990, but the abroad Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. It turned out that the “unification chancellor” did not want to get his hands dirty with this ink. On the another hand, Chancellor Brandt had the courage to go against a immense part of German sentiments. And in 1972, he even risked his office risking premature elections. Indeed, they were a referendum on his east policy. And he won. Kohl filmed about the border in 1990, due to the fact that he refused to hazard losing a fewer percent of the votes cast out.
Aren't you besides critical of Chancellor Kohl? Helmut Kohl did not change West German politics after 1982, after all, he continued the policies of Brandt and Schmidt. I think it is besides worth highlighting another merit of Kohl for Poland. In his desire to unite Germany rapidly in the Western structures, he besides wanted to rapidly retreat russian troops from Central Europe, and these demands were in the interests of democratic Poland, which in 1990 became a direct neighbour of NATO and the European economical Community.
That's true. However, it may besides be combined with a list of unnecessary omissions by the Chancellor of the 1990s in our cases that later retaliated. I do not think that we should treat German politics towards Poland so that 1 Chancellor is brought to the heavens and on the another only sarcasm, due to the fact that in fact German Polynpolitik has been computed and congruent since Brandt's time – with all the spikes and wettereps. This includes Gerhard Schröder. Its transition to a pot of Gazprom can be considered a mediocre kind for the German Social Democrat. But I can't forget all the good things Schröder has done for our neighbourhood – apart from the Baltic pipeline. Immediately after winning in 1998, he launched the compensations for erstwhile concentration camps blocked by Bonn for years. In 2000 he supported Polish aspirations in Nice. In December 2002, at the last minute of the accession process, it increased the subsidy for Polish agriculture by a billion euros. In 2004, he definitely cut himself off from the property claims expelled. Is that not enough?
Nor should we forget that according to the 2004 EU polls there was no majority in German society for Poland's accession to the Union. And yet the Schröder government – and all parties in the Bundestag – consistently pushed the enlargement of the Union to the East. In this respect, the Polish-German community of interests functioned. Let us return to the European memorial place “Brandt in Warsaw”. How much is this place of remembrance for Poles? In the 1970s, despite the destructive actions of censorship, the image of the kneeling chancellor was an crucial symbol for many Poles. A affirmative image of the national Republic as the states that Poles wanted to see – a image of a country based on self-critical reflection, a nation of mature, open to reconciliation. However, I get the impression that over the last 20-25 years the image of the chancellor kneeling in Warsaw many Poles disappeared from memory.
Although in the Polish People's Republic censorship reluctantly agreed to print a photograph of the kneeling chancellor, it was known as a symbol. In the 1970s, it kind of osmotically entered the consciousness of a tiny part of society. Willy Brandt was the icon of a good German. erstwhile in 1974, after it was revealed that the GDR had placed a spy around him, Brandt left, there was a confusion. I remember that the image of his successor, Helmut Schmidt, was titled “Better than the Best”. I think I got it right.
It is besides actual that the icon of Willy Brandt kneeling in Warsaw obscured an avalanche of fascinating Polish-German paintings, completely unimaginable in the 1960s. I think that the national Republic in Poland, for example, had a large reception of Polish footballers during the 1974 planet Cup. The extended tv coverage of Stuttgart and Frankfurt was shown by rather different West Germany. Moreover, they became available. During Game time, the tourist journey to the West became real.
But not everyone had that privilege...
Of course, but hundreds of thousands of people received passports. West Germany became real and closer. A textbook conference began, triggering open debates in both countries. Then the opposition arose, creating a network of its own German contacts and friendships. fresh bilateral themes appeared and the icon "Brandt in 1970 in Warsaw" was no longer a sacred picture.
It seems to me that it was Brandt's cool attitude to Solidarity in the 1980s that caused him to escape from the Polish consciousness of his 1970 gesture.
In the '80s, I'm sure. But the case is more complex. In the late 1970s, Poles' sympathy for Germans moved to the German Catholic Church. It was known that it was the German cardinals who decided to influence the election of Charles Wojtyla to the pope. Their commitment was as if this long-awaited courageous consequence of German bishops to the letter of the 1965 Polish Episcopal.
However, the fact is that Brandt did not feel the revolution of Solidarity. Nicaragua, El Salvador – go ahead, but not Poland and Europe, due to the confrontation of powers. Brandt wanted convergence and change in east Europe, but was afraid of destabilisation. It was only in the summertime of 1989 that he acknowledged that changes had to take account of the breakdown of the ossified structures. He keyed before. erstwhile Adam Michnik pressed him with an open letter written from prison in 1984, Brandt was flashing. Adam wanted support in the Polish interior struggle, Brandt – for support for his action for a fresh relaxation. Brandt of Poland did not feel. But for the sake of justice, it must besides be said that the chadecja was very careful, even specified anti-communists as Franz Josef Strauss willingly met Erich Honecker, leaving Polish matters aside.
Today it seems that both critics and Brandt's defenders are arguing besides emotionally and not rather historically. Brandt's gathering with Wałęsa could take place in 1985 – erstwhile the gathering at the Primate Palace was considered, it turned out that the Primate did not want to play a function as an intermediary. president Mitterrand, who accepted General Jaruzelski at the Elysée Palace on the eve of Brandt's visit to Warsaw. But no doubt: if Brandt had insisted on it, the gathering would have happened. The case was cleared up in 1989 erstwhile both Nobel laureates met in Bonn. I don't think there's a bad settlement today. In 2000, solidarity Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek and Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder together unveiled a plaque in Warsaw commemorating Willy Brandt's kneeling.
Also Lech Wałęsa has no grudge. During Günter Grass's 80th anniversary in Gdańsk in 2007, during a public discussion with Grass, Stefan Meller, and Richard von Weizsäcker Walęsa, he said directly: “I do not blame Willy Brandt for not gathering me at the time. At the time, you had to do everything you could not to annoy the bear in the East."
However, the question remains about Brandt's policy style, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, against anti-communist and democratic movements in the russian bloc.
But it's not a substance of kind or taste. Without gathering Walesa in 1985, Brandt revealed a deficiency of cognition of Polish affairs. Nevertheless, he knew that Poland was crucial to the Germans. In 1970 he did absolutely right, with large moral courage.
I believe that Brandt's visit to Warsaw is 1 of the fundamental memorial sites for the national Republic.
Absolutely. The national Republic has respective memorial sites so essential to its democratic identity. The most crucial thing is the memory of the Holocaust, a monument to the Brandenburg Gate, the second – the fall of the wall in 1989. At the center of the German iconostasis is the hug of Adenauer with de Gaulle in Reims and Willy Brandt kneeling in Warsaw. This is not the strength that, in my opinion, the photographs of Adenauer with Ben Gurion, Kohl and Mazowieckie at the time of the “community mass” in the Cross or smiling Kohl and Gorbachev in the Caucasus do not have.
Going beyond the narrow Polish-German perspective, what was the importance of the 1970 and then Warsaw Treaty for Europe?
Brandt's visit to Warsaw was, in my opinion, a turning point in the post-war past of Central Europe. Without Germany's designation of the Polish western border, the interior democratisation of the block states was highly difficult. Evidence of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Gomulku insisted in Moscow on an armed intervention against the Prague Spring not due to the fact that he was alienated from all liberalism, but due to the fact that he was afraid of excavating Czechoslovakia from the block and of Poland alone in the fight for designation by the national Republic of the border on Oder and Nysa. I'm not judging his reasoning right now, I'm just recreating it. Gomulko did not trust Moscow in German matters. He was afraid of agreements in the spirit of Stalin's 1952 note...
Consent to unify Germany in exchange for their neutralization...
And he had his reasons. In 1955, Khrushchev established diplomatic relations with the German national Republic, even though Bonn refused to recognise the border. And in 1964, Khrushchev, through his son-in-law, the chief “Isvestia”, probed fresh close-up. It was on Gomulka's initiative that Leonid Brezhnev deposed Khrushchev. On the another hand, Bonn was successful. Until 1967, Gomulka’s doctrine was in force in the block. No 1 (except Moscow) will establish relations with the West Germany until Bonn recognizes the GDR and the border on Oder and Nysa. But in January 1967 Romania broke out of this principle, followed by Hungary and Bulgaria. The answer was intended to be the "iron triangle" PRL–NRD–CSRS. However, Prague Spring showed that iron besides crumbles. Brandt – who was then Minister of abroad Affairs in the government of Kurt Georg Kiesinger – spoke, in fact, at the SPD convention in May 1968 about designation of the Polish border, but in Czechoslovakia the press discussed the return to the pre-war "small entent" – without Poland, but with Yugoslavia. It was not until May 1969 that Brandt Gomułka responded to the speech, after the crackdown of the Prague Revolution, proposing talks without preconditions. Brandt responded to this speech in the fall in a government declaration. A year later, Bonn recognized the Polish border. This is not an excuse for Polish intervention, it is simply a demonstration of the planet we lived in.
As of December 1970, a fresh era begins in the east bloc. The strike on the coast a week after designation of the border symbolically showed that in Poland the political centre of gravity shifts to interior affairs. In the 1960s, these were German affairs: the 650th anniversary of Grunwald in 1960, a dispute between Gomulka and Cardinal Wyszynski around the letter of bishops in 1965. After designation of the border and the fall of Gomulka in December 1971, the Polish People's Republic "normalizes". Gierek conducts a policy of careful beginning outside and inside. In 1975, the Helsinki conference, on the 1 hand, recognises the russian hegemony in the east bloc, but on the other, creates a certain field of civilian liberties, which may include opposition movements like the NRA and then Solidarity. Finally: the martial law introduced in the Polish People's Republic in 1981 is qualitatively something completely different from the russian intervention in GDR 1953, Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
After designation of the Polish border by the national Republic, the erosion of the block takes on momentum, regardless of differences between countries or withdrawal of shares for years – as in Czechoslovakia Gustav Husaka. Without Brandt's visit to Warsaw in December 1970, Helsinki and the margin of freedom for the opposition would not be available. Without designation of the border, there would besides be no Vatican delimitation of the diocese's fresh borders on Polish western lands, and without this there would be no reconciliation of both episcopates in 1978, and the election of Karol Wojtyła as pope.
It is safe to say that Brandt's visit in 1970 was a cesuria in postwar past of Poland, Germany and Europe. And her icon was the image of the German chancellor kneeling in Warsaw...
Historian Heinrich August Winkler is right erstwhile he says that the Polish (regaining freedom) and German (regaining unity) issues have been brought together for 200 years. In the 19th and first half of the 20th century they were tragically competitive: either Germany is mountainous, and then there is no Poland, or Poland, and then Germany is truncated and occupied. After the Second War there were 2 phases in our relationship.
The first is an effort in Germany to separate the problem of unifying Germany from the Polish-German problem. Pretending that the issue of borders is open, and if there are peace talks, the limits can even be revised. The second phase begins in the 1960s with Willy Brandt's "new east Policy", whose heart – with all designation of russian hegemony in east Europe – was to realize the fact that there is no way to overcome the division of Germany, without recognizing the Polish border and Polish subjectivity in Europe. In December 1970 Brandt indirectly responded not only to a letter from the bishops of 1965, but besides to the Rapack plan, which Moscow was reluctant to support, due to the fact that an atomic-free region covering both German states, Poland and Czechoslovakia would weaken russian influences and strengthen cooperation between Central European countries.
In fact, it was in December 1970 that the foundation was laid for this "Polish-German community of interests" which was formulated by ministers Krzysztof Skubiszewski and Hans-Dietrich Genscher in January 1990 – the second was, in fact, Minister of Interior in the Brandt government in 1970. In short: without December 7, 1970, there would be no 9 November 1989, the unification of Germany, the collapse of the USSR and Poland's entry into NATO and the EU.
But the past of our relations after 7 December 1970 is besides a communicative of the long and hard ratification of the Warsaw Treaty in the Bundestag, and the negation of the importance of this historical breakthrough in Poland. The SPD and Liberals defended east politics in the Bundestag, and many conservative politicians fought against it.
At the time, the smallness of the chadeks was a rabid one. But there was besides the courageous attitude of Richard von Weizsäcker and those CDU politicians who caused the chadeks to refrain from voting and thus made ratification possible. It is hard to forget the fact that the party, to a large degree Catholic, which is CDU-CSU, inhibited the designation of the border. National selfishness was greater than European moral responsibility. Helmut Kohl just moved those accents.
The decision of the national Constitutional Court of 1975 was besides irritating to Poles, which showed that in terms of borders the national Republic interprets the legal consequences of the Treaty of 1970 alternatively than Warsaw, only conditionally recognising the border – to future unification. The treaty was a breakthrough for Polish-German relations, but its legal interpretations caused disappointment and distrust in Poland.
However, returning to the situation before 1970 was no longer possible. Despite the disappointment of the court's ruling, despite the subsequent collapses in Polish-German relations following the introduction of martial law, the turn of 1970 was irreversible. Proof not only of German sympathy for Poles measured by millions of parcels in the 1980s, but also, in all the overdrawals, of contacts between German political elites with solidarity and Peerelian elites before 1989. All of this resulted in a comparatively mild leap of dangerous reefs in European politics in the 1990s – the collapse of communism and the restoration of capitalism.
You frequently repeat that in the last 40 years we have witnessed not only historical breakthroughs in Polish-German relations, but besides the revalorization of the importance of these relations for Europe. At the same time, you believe that only a fewer representatives of the political and cultural elite Germany is aware of the importance of this fresh dynamics of Polish-German relations for the future destiny of the German nation...
What I deficiency in the young generation of German politicians is the sense of semi-shadowing and life-giving cognition of the cultural subsoil of our part of Europe. It is not adequate to look rationally at the map of the continent, on which on the 1 hand the large neighbour of Germany is France, and on the another hand Poland, so it would be good if we went together. 1 must besides be able to think on a scale of long duration, large historical processes and cultural connections, to know the radiances and shadows of the traditions of the political cultures of both countries.
Young political careers are primarily made thanks to interior policy, not European or abroad policy. The consequence may not be the renationalisation of policies in EU countries, although there is simply a thesis, as far as its provincialisation is concerned. The same goes for the media. Look at the topics of popular talk show on both countries' television. European and neighbouring themes are on the margins.
Today Germany is moving for municipal authorities in Poland, and Poles in Germany, but Polish-German themes – just like German-French ones – are not sexy. Evidence of an absurd argument over the museumization of expulsions. It seems that the young generation has not found its own communicative of this neighbourhood, its own communicative of a common history, and its own communicative of a united Europe. In Poland there remains the trivial ideology of Waldemar Pawlak about "pressing Brussels sprouts", and in Germany – the momentum to tighten their own pouch erstwhile it comes to Brussels and Europe. The generation of 40-year-olds does not seem to be ready to go to the barricades for Europe against the "eternal yesterday" in their own countries...
Looking through the prism of 1970 and 1989, what can be said about German politics towards Poland? In his German book “A Test for Europe. The Polish-German neighbourhood must succeed” (2008) You wrote that if German Chancellors were as brave in Polish matters as Willy Brandt in 1970, we would not have all the misunderstandings and conflicts that poisoned our relations after 2005 ...
This bitter remark besides applies to our politicians. If Helmut Kohl hadn't signed off on border issues in 1990 due to a fewer percent of the votes cast out, The Exile Union would most likely have undergone another evolution in the 1990s. Her announcement was the attitude of Herbert Hupka and Hartmut Koschyk. If Helmut Kohl had recorded in the Treaty of 1991 (Gerhard Schröder said this on 1 August 2004 in Warsaw) that the German government would not support any claims for compensation, he might have caused trouble, but they would have drowned in the general package of German unification: financial transfer for the fresh lands and for the USSR for withdrawing the russian Army. But Poland was not worth confronting the chancellor from the lobby driven out.
You can besides throw a pebble into the garden of our politicians in the 1990s. In turn, if we took the initiative of jointly commemorating expulsions and displacements – and specified initiatives were born from the bottom up in Silesia, Pomerania, Mazury, Wrocław, Głogów, Gdańsk – we would not have a war on the Centre against Exiles. In both cases, the atmosphere would be different and otherwise the 2005 presidential election could end.
Grandpa from Wehrmacht would have appeared...
But it would not matter, due to the fact that the process of interior Polish-German reconciliation would already be so rooted that anti-German sentiments could not be shaken. I think they were weaker in 2005, and both camps thought so – the winning PiS and the lost PO. The fact that the anti-German card is weak showed the results of the elections in the west of Poland and massive support in Gdańsk for Grass in 2006 erstwhile he was attacked in Germany and by the Polish right hand for revealing his war episode besides late with the appointment of the autumn 1944 to Waffen-SS.
In Poland, on the right hand side, the awareness began to fade, that it was in Poland's interest to integrate the European Union deeply, and that the incorporation into Western Europe was the dream of anti-communist opposition, democratic currents in Polish political thought before 1989...
Exactly. However, even with the argument of national egoism, 1 can say as the French said in the 1960s: European integration is needed in order to supply Germany with friendly embraces, and thus to defend itself from them, but besides from possible ours, madness. Furthermore, Germany itself, engaged in the unification of Europe, recalled this educational function of Europe. I liked it erstwhile Gesine Schwan, coordinator for Polish-German affairs, participated in the run in France before the 2005 Constitutional referendum, telling the French: do not leave Poles alone with us, aid them... Unfortunately, the French fear of the Polish plumber proved stronger. But the call for European solidarity was exemplary.
Finally, I will return to the basic question of our conversation. Why is returning to 1970 events crucial from today’s perspective? After all, can we focus on the turn of 1989, on the border treaty of November 1990 or on the good neighbourly treaty of 1991?
It is not adequate to treat past as a set of isolated events. Otto III's gathering with Chrobry, Grunwald, Warsaw Uprising, 1989 "ms. reconciliation" – it is crucial to realize historical processes, due to the fact that they let to learn from mistakes.
Both Polish and German graduates should know not only basic facts, but besides the processes around them. Catastrophic mistakes made in the past and extraordinary successes – both common and not at the expense of the neighbour. To realize this process, the investigation of the Germans and Poles into today's community of interests in 1970 is of groundbreaking importance.
This is not just about the icon of the kneeling Brandt, or the "objections from the Cross" of Kohl and Mazowiecki. Both Polish intelligent and German Bildungsbürger should know and realize the logic of the Polish-German neighbourhood in the 20th century: the return of Poland to the map of Europe as a consequence of the German war and revolution in Russia, the genesis and course of planet War II, Nazi crimes committed in Poland and post-war fates of east Germans. On the another hand, both of them should know the process of pursuing values and interests in the community, which, with all the differences, we besides have today. And Germany, and Poland are keenly curious in the EU being functioning, strong and keeping both our nations in check if we abruptly lose control of ourselves...
Do Poles and Germans have anything to say to another conflicted nations?
Absolutely. I believe that Polish-German relations have much greater for the prosperity of Europe than German-French relations, although Bonn and Paris developed this pattern of cooperation and reconciliation before 1989, which we copied first for Polish-German relations, and then transferred to relations with Ukraine, Lithuania, and late tried with Russia. However, German-French reconciliation is easier, as it is based on comparable economic, civilizational, historical and military potentials. With Poland, it's harder. Germany must enter Poland into its political and historical consciousness, contrary to the 2 100 years of tradition, which since the mid-18th century, and thus from Frederick II the Great, taught that the main neighbour of Germany in the east – the partner and opponent – is Russia, and Poland is only a shapeless geographical concept, a distribution mass in a test of forces with Russia. It was practically Brandt's – and unfortunately not Adenauer's – that the fundamental change of paradigm in German reasoning began, which besides allowed us – or at least should let – to free ourselves from the "German complex" and take an active function in the European Union for the sake of a united Europe, not only to respond to our own historical complexes.
