When Charlotte Knobloch speaks, every word has weight. As a young woman, says the president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, she dreamed that “side by side” in society would one day become “coexistence.” Knobloch believes that her dream has come true; she turned 91 a few weeks ago. But of course this happiness remains fragile, as the past few weeks have shown, in which the Middle East conflict has also created trenches in Germany. “We are seeing that more and more people in Bavaria are living in fear,” says Knobloch, not least Jews.
Anyone looking for confidence in a rather gloomy autumn will find it this November evening in a side room of the Munich restaurant Pageou. The Turkish Community in Bavaria (TGB) has invited people to honor three state politicians with their plaque of merit – for special efforts towards integration and German-Turkish friendship. Knobloch has agreed to give the eulogy for the three, a gesture that gives the small ceremony an extraordinary character: It is, at exactly the right time, a warm solidarity between the Turkish and Jewish communities.
In his greeting, Vural Ünlü, the chairman of the liberal-oriented TGB, reiterated what he had said immediately after the cruel attack on Israel by the terrorist organization Hamas on October 7th: that his association stands “unconditionally on the side of the Jewish communities in Germany” – and that it was “completely unacceptable” that the murders were also applauded by some in this country. Among the Turks in Bavaria, Ünlü explains, there is a “basic empathy” with the Palestinian civilian population. But hardly any sympathy for the Hamas terrorists.
Knobloch says that it is also encounters like this one here at Pageou that give her hope: after all, it is “the power of democratic discourse that transforms coexistence into coexistence.” Laudator Knobloch and host Ünlü agree that the evening’s honorees contributed a lot to this discourse. All three have just resigned as members of the Bavarian state parliament, Harald Güller from the SPD after a total of 24 years. When he started working at the Maximilianeum, Güller, a Swabian, says he “couldn’t imagine the brutalization of society” today. But the democracy that he was able to get to know over this long period of time is defensible.
Gudrun Brendel-Fischer, CSU politician from Upper Franconia, has been the state government’s integration commissioner for the past five years. Now she, the former teacher, wants to continue this work in a completely different place and give German language lessons to migrant women. The third member of the group is Hep Monatzeder from the Greens; he was the third mayor of Munich for 18 years. Monthzeder says he will remain “a person with a political heart and conscience” even in retirement. And certainly “do not stand idly by” when “mischief and hatred” poison society.
All of the award winners have always tried to maintain “close contact with the migrant community,” says TGB boss Ünlü, and they are very grateful for that. And then it’s up to Charlotte Knobloch to formulate something like a basic recipe for coexistence in Bavaria: “Whoever lives here and shares our values, who speaks his mind and doesn’t spread hate, who follows his own path without diminishing that of his fellow human beings – he must be able to find a home here, no matter when and where he prays.”