For all the modesty in the Federal Republic of Germany, it is always quite a choreography when the first man in the state comes. At first it’s hectic, then suddenly everyone is quiet and waiting like children for the presents. In the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf the audience was then released by a friendly voice, which announced him in a friendly manner: “Ladies and gentlemen, the Federal President!”
There was something cheerful about it, but that was just the beginning, because that’s not how it ended. Tobias Koch was already in the mood when he interpreted Chopin’s Waltz in C sharp minor, Op. 64 No. 2, as if he were accompanying a complex, urban black and white film or a comic dream, groping and trying, broken down into fragments.
Everything could be so beautiful. Rachel Salamander had entered the hall a few meters before the president, accompanied by her husband Stefan Sattler and her brother Beno, who when they were children had to stand in for their father at the parents’ evening at the primary school in Munich, even though he is only a little older.
Rachel Salamander was born in Föhrenwald in 1949, a camp for survivors of the mass murder of European Jews, at the time as perplexed as it was apt displaced persons called. She spent her early childhood in a place where Yiddish and not German was spoken. She only learned German at school. In Föhrenwald she was among adults who fled a terrible past and faced an uncertain future. Very few of them wanted to spend them in Germany, but, as Salamander puts it, “got stuck”.
Every child was a promise of a better future for Jews around the world
This was also the case with her family; her mother’s illness prevented emigration to Israel. Over the years the camp emptied, many families sought their fortune elsewhere, Rachel Salamander tried it in Munich. She speaks about Föhrenwald with affection, because the children enjoyed a special status there, were “hope made flesh”, and there were particularly many of them in Föhrenwald. Every child was a promise of a better future for Jews worldwide, a source of joy and a triumph over the murderous will of the Germans and their allies. This support, the collective love of the uprooted, traumatized adults, has shaped their self-confidence, promoted their resilience and shaped their thinking to this day: The individualization that goes hand in hand with emancipation often also means a weakening.
Since then, communication, the connection to many people and, in modern terms, networking has been an important part of her life. Rachel Salamander was accompanied by many friends on her trip to Düsseldorf. She did not want to “stand all alone somewhere” and be awarded, but to be happy with old and new companions. Among them are the Suhrkamp publisher Ulla Berkéwicz, the CSU cultural politician Julia Lehner, the historian Dan Diner and many others. Some were already there when she opened the literature store in Munich in 1982, which was followed by many other book stores.
And one person is missing, although he was in contact with her almost every day, the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who died in 2013. When she wanted to invite him for the first time to a reading in her bookstore, which is dedicated to Jewish literature, he resisted resolutely: “I will not allow myself to be locked in the ghetto again!” She then convinced him with the argument that what matters to her is not origin, but effect, on the life and experiences of authors of Jewish origin. That in turn exactly matched the reading that Reich-Ranicki repeatedly recommended: Heine not only to read and interpret as a German poet, a romantic and a revolutionary, but as a Jew who writes from the perspective of his experiences, right in the middle and yet not very much a part of it, a “troublemaker” – that is the term Reich-Ranicki uses to describe Heine and others in a book that is still relevant today. Rachel Salamander wrote her own chapter in German literary criticism when she became the head of the “Literary World”, where she was responsible for a demanding, but also committed and entertaining newspaper from 2001 to 2013.
The city, in which she has hardly ever been, gives Salamanders an enthusiastic reception
Today, Salamander complained in a blog entry on the occasion of Reich Ranicki’s centenary, he’s almost forgotten. And that also has consequences for the perception, or rather non-perception, of Jewish literature in Germany. Especially since her friend Frank Schirrmacher died a year later, to whom these topics were very important and who gave a moving eulogy when she received the Schiller Prize of the city of Marbach. After the Schiller Prize 2013 and honorary citizenship in Munich 2019, the award ceremony in Düsseldorf is another special moment of honor for Rachel Salamander, because the Heine Prize is the unofficial German Nobel Prize. The city, with which she has few connections, where she has hardly ever been, gave her a warm, enthusiastic welcome.
So it could be a fairytale story when you look at the path from Föhrenwald to the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf and a committed, reflective laudation by the Federal President. As always, Frank-Walter Steinmeier made an effort and delivered a learned, clever and punchy speech. But he also linked it with an explosive message. He uses the term homeland, as he has often done recently, but it is not a Biedermeier, narrow-minded homeland, but one in which something is going on and to which the writers, poets and thinkers of Jewish origin belong. Clear rejection of all cultural purity fanatics right of the center.
Rachel Salamander goes in her lecture, which is simply announced as an acceptance speech, but with which she succeeded in a significant political and historical meditation, yet another path. Your Heine is not only the admired love poet, the ballad master and revolutionary, but also a lyrical early warning system: His concept of the “German thunder” that threatens the whole world indicates the possibility of the mass murder of Jews by German anti-Semites early on. It is Heine the Troublemaker who is called today and who interrupts the beautiful story of the arrival of the Jews in Germany – but not as a historical reference, but as a current warning and disturbance of the peace.
The Jews are on the defensive, says Rachel Salamander
And suddenly, while listening, what one has seen and does not want to admit becomes visible again: The cartoons of the “lateral thinkers” and anti-vaccination opponents that relativize the Holocaust; the attacks on Jewish people on the street; the low participation in the demonstrations against anti-Semitism; the widespread indifference to Jewish life in Germany; the increasing aggressiveness of the debates over Israel; the upswing of radical Islamists following the takeover of power by the Taliban and the defeat of the West. Or the thing with the door of the synagogue in Halle on Yom Kippur two years ago. How coincidental it was that the attempted mass murder did not succeed, and how long it took the police to cover the short distance. And how many reports about right-wing extremist activities in the armed forces and the police does it take to ask whether a pattern emerges from this? How can it be that history revisionists like Björn Höcke have regained political influence? What is the status of education and clarification regarding Jewish history, anti-Semitism and the mass murder of European Jews? The spectacular, painful series and films such as “Holocaust” and “Schindler’s List” are decades old. What is assumed to be known to all can be forgotten all the more easily.
It is 12.50 p.m. when Rachel Salamander shocks the Federal President, Lord Mayor Stephan Keller and the assembled audience with a brief question. She relates to Heine, his foresight regarding the coming danger and asks herself: “What do I not see?” Because the Jews got on the defensive. She never thought it was possible that this would happen to her. Instead of expressing thanks for herself, she dialectically formulates a search mandate, which is again her belief in the power of the courageous community: a thousand eyes see more than two, and everyone must take action against anti-Semitism, not just the Jews.
In front of the large windows of the playhouse, the park is in constant rain, watering trees, lawns and brave police officers. Summer is over.