Told in her recently published volume of essays the Ukrainian author Tanya Malyarchuk at a point that will run across Vienna Central Station in 2022. The hall is filled with Ukrainian refugees, mothers, daughters and “ten-year-old boys with thick, colorful jackets and lined trousers, as if they were planning to spend a belated skiing holiday in Austria”. The sight takes her mentally back to the year 1919, when a free Ukraine had already been invaded by the Russians. A total of 50,000 Ukrainian refugees were in Vienna at the time, including lawyers, writers and scientists. They wanted to hold out in hotels and boarding houses until the Russians had withdrawn from their country. But the Russians stayed, time was getting long, money was scarce, fur coats were being transferred, and the Ukrainian diaspora was scattering to the four winds. “That’s also why,” writes Malyarchuk, “the downfall that Ukraine is once again facing must not be repeated.”
The Exile Magazine Volya (Freiheit) had her office at the time in the Viennese Café Central. A century later, the base of operations of the Ukrainian intelligentsia was in Frankfurt am Main for the duration of a book fair. Malyarchuk presented her essays, Yuri Andrukhovych a new novel, Serhiy Zhadan a war diary. Most importantly, they all went about the arduous task of encouraging Germans to understand the extent of the destruction and violence that has swept through their cities for the past eight months.
It is a meaningful spectacle how many Germans reflexively take the perspective of the aggressor
The conditions couldn’t be better. Germany has the undeserved luck that today’s authoritative generation in Ukraine speaks fluent German almost across the board. And that there are publishers in Germany who have been transferring, publishing and making available the works of these authors for years, although it has only been financially worthwhile for a few months. In theory, the Germans would have every opportunity to be well informed about the situation in the Ukraine. But that is out of the question. To this day, Tanja Malyartschuk is subjected to investigative questioning as soon as she has anything to do with German intellectuals: how do you feel about Stepan Bandera? What about corruption in your country? How about the oligarchs? Jorge Luis Borges once wrote that history always identifies itself with those who are attacked, not with the attackers, which is why it is called “Trojan horse” and not “Greek horse”.
In Germany, however, the Ukrainians are seeing how they are persistently blamed for the attack on their country. They would have provoked unnecessarily and pursued their own freedom too ruthlessly – with the aim of immigrating into the German social systems. From a collective psychological point of view, it is a telling spectacle how many Germans in this war reflexively take the perspective of the aggressor, who today is devastating precisely those cities where the Wehrmacht helmets have hardly disappeared from the ground: Mariupol, Kyiv, Kharkiv… The greater the suffering of the Ukrainians, the more they have to justify themselves, the more they feel they deserve it.
Karl Schlögel, Germany’s best-known historian of Eastern Europe, said in Frankfurt that he could only be amazed at the discourse artists on German talk shows, who perform the most complicated tricks to explain away the situation instead of confronting the obvious. The question of guilt and innocence, perpetrator and victim, aggressor and attacked in this war is as clear as it is rare. Today, Europe and Germany are dealing with a regime that does not shy away from any crime in order to enforce its territorial claims, which are based on national mythology and blood theology.
Even while the discussions were taking place on the Frankfurt podiums, rockets were falling every day on Ukrainian infrastructure with the declared aim of razing a country to the ground and exposing millions of Europeans to cold and hunger in the approaching winter. According to Schlögel, he does not see that the extent of this crime, which is taking place right before our eyes, is even remotely understood in Germany. What is Europe if it is not able to prevent missiles on Babyn Yar?
The most brutal way in which the German media rotation’s automated speaking sequences collided with the reality of the Ukrainian war was when the Ukrainian President’s wife, Olena Selenska, was interviewed on Saturday on “Brigitte Live”. She was asked whether she was a power woman or whether she just wanted to lie down for a while. And if she’s already thinking about Christmas.
The turning point was proclaimed in Germany and immediately forgotten
As dignified as the situation could be, Selenska steered the conversation to the rockets that fall on Kiyv every day. Just a few days ago, one hit the large playground in Taras Shevchenko Park, today the children played in the crater like in a sandbox. According to Selenska, she is committed to ensuring that the Ukrainian schools are equipped with ramps after reconstruction so that they are also accessible to all those children who are currently being seriously injured by the bombs.
Are you already thinking about Christmas? Olena Selenska, wife of the Ukrainian President, at “Brigitte Live” at the book fair.
(Photo: Alexander Koerner/Getty Images for Brigitte Live)
The turning point was proclaimed in Germany and immediately forgotten again, said the Munich political scientist Carlo Masala. His experiences with political mandate holders and the different administrative levels showed that the Federal Republic had already returned to peace mode. Not for a second was the question raised of how a democratic society would have to be reshaped when faced with a hostile regime like that of Vladimir Putin.
At the end of the fair, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade was presented in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche on Sunday to the Ukrainian poet Serhij Zhadan awarded. Almost at the same time, the Prime Minister of Saxony spoke out in favor of resuming Russian gas supplies after the war. Where he gets his confidence that Russia won’t send missiles instead doesn’t seem to need any further explanation. Any kind of social transformation would first have to be preceded by recognizing that the turning point is also a cognitive process. It doesn’t take place.
How else should the Ukrainians in Frankfurt have followed the German news than with cold terror? The Germans find it difficult to understand because they don’t know “what it’s like to be attacked and not to be the aggressor yourself,” said Karin Schmidt-Friederichs, head of the stock exchange association, in the Paulskirche. And in his acceptance speech, Zhadan once again slowly and clearly explained what his compatriots in Frankfurt, what Olena Zelenska, Tanya Maljartschuk, Yuri Andrukhovych had already said into every microphone in the days before: that he, too, wanted nothing more than peace, that peace but something other than a frozen conflict, and unthinkable without justice. “Do we have to remind ourselves of our right to exist or is this right self-evident?” Things demanded that they be clearly stated: “A criminal is a criminal, freedom is freedom, base is base.”