Henry Kissinger (centre), former US Secretary of State, has returned to his birthplace, Fürth, to celebrate his 100th birthday.
(Photo: Daniel Vogl/dpa)
Semantha is seven years old, she observes the scene with the many police cars in front of the Ludwig Erhard Center in Fürth, Franconia, and asks an obvious question: “Can you still live at the age of one hundred?” At that moment, the answer comes rolling onto the street in a wheelchair, gets into the limousine and drives away. The plane is waiting, Henry Kissinger has appointments, the birthday party is over.
Henry Kissinger turned 100 on May 27, there were at least three celebrations in New York, but the cycle of celebrations ends in the City Theater of his native city. It’s been 90 years since Heinz Kissinger went to the Fürth Theater for the first time at the behest of his father Louis and had to see the opera Fidelio. Now he is sitting on the stage himself and says in a slow, cracked voice: “The circle of my life rounds off harmoniously here. The wish I had for so many years I was able to complete here today.” The festival community held their breath for a moment – did the jubilee just announce that all goals have now been fulfilled and he can die in peace?
That’s nonsense, of course, because Henry Kissinger still has two book manuscripts to hand in and has such a busy schedule that he’s already turning down invitations for next February. He came to Fürth because he spent most of the first 15 years of his life in Marienstraße before his parents had to flee from the Nazis to the USA in 1938.
It’s about the roots of the Kissingers, the Jewish heritage, the imprint of the patriarch
The rest is known, but one of the little-explored factors from Kissinger’s life is this youth in Germany – and its importance for the life’s work. If one assumes that with old age the memories of childhood and parents become more important, then this brief trip of a centenarian back into the past provides a lot of illustrative material. They have now unveiled a plaque in front of the birthplace, spontaneous applause broke out in the streets, and the lower school choir of the school where Kissinger’s father once taught and, as the son says, had the happiest years of his professional life, sings on stage. The song is about the friend, the good friend – who stays even when the world collapses. Kissinger is familiar with this.
Especially the parents and the family. The whole family clan has come from the USA, son David, daughter Elizabeth. It’s about the Kissinger’s roots, Jewish heritage, and the imprint of the patriarch who made history as Secretary of State, national security adviser, scientist, advisor, and geopolitical one-man show. But what drove him, what does Fürth and the flight from Germany have to do with the statesman’s work?
Springer board member Mathias Döpfner, a close acquaintance of Kissinger, traces the political impetus back to the moment when Kissinger called out to a Jewish prisoner during the liberation of the Hanover-Ahlem concentration camp that he should not take his cap off, that he was now free, “You you’re still human.” The bestiality of the Nazi extermination machine against freedom – that is roughly the dimension in which Kissinger’s pendulum of life oscillates.
According to Schäuble, anyone who acts as a politician is always guilty
This achievement was extensively recognized in Fürth, starting with the Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the former President of the Bundestag and Everlasting Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder. Kissinger was awarded the Maximilian Order of the Free State, which is actually only awarded every two years for achievements in science and art. Kissinger, and here the sentimental dimension of the anniversary trip becomes visible again, accepts the order on behalf of the family and in memory of the parents, “who lived so happily in Fürth”.
Schäuble, still a friend of clear statements, cannot resist praising the Realpolitiker, who – also from his childhood experience in Fürth – “has done something indispensable for our security and freedom”. To all those who call Kissinger a cynic or, in the worst case, a criminal, he coolly advises them to stop “moralizing know-it-alls”. “Of course there is a lot of controversy about what (Kissinger) decided as a Realpolitiker.” That has to be argued about. “But I think the accusation of a lack of morals is grossly wrong.” Politicians are always guilty, Schäuble quotes former chancellor and Kissinger friend Helmut Schmidt as saying. And for a politician, perhaps just one with the package of experience from Marienstraße in Fürth, the following applies: “Acting is almost morally imperative.”