Glan-Donnersberger

There is something particularly indecent about the fact that Europe, which has transformed the memory of the two world wars into an almost obligatory element of its political culture, continues to produce military rhetoric with the same ease with which it organises commemorative ceremonies, while its intellectual circles, so generously represented at international congresses, literary festivals, and award ceremonies, rarely manage to formulate a common position that goes beyond the predictable vocabulary of institutional respectability. In 1914, Romain Rolland understood something that many of his educated contemporaries refused to acknowledge: national belonging does not absolve the intellect of its obligation to distinguish justice from collective self-deception. His Above the Battle was not a rejection of moral responsibility, but a refusal to subordinate it to governments at war. Zweig, Hesse,Barbusse, Russell, Heinrich Mann,Kraus, Sassoon, and Owen, each in a different way and at a different personal cost, left testimonies against militarism, propaganda, and dehumanisation. They did not constitute a unified political school, which makes their resistance all the more interesting: conscience has no need of a common party secretariat. Thomas Mann initially supported the German war effort, but after a long and painful transformation, he arrived at a position of public opposition to National Socialism, and from 1940 onwards his radio addresses to the German people became an act of intellectual resistance. These people were not omnipotent. Some were contradictory, others made mistakes, and still others were forced to leave their countries. But they left behind something far more substantial than a reputation: a record of the refusal of thought to serve power unconditionally. Today's question, however, is more uncomfortable than the usual indignation directed at politicians. When war becomes an enormous economic system, when military budgets increase, contracts multiply, and political influence is measured partly by the ability to manage fear, which of the celebrated bearers of public authority consistently insists upon public accountability, upon the limits of military necessity, and upon the genuine possibilities of diplomacy? Where are today's Nobel laureates, philosophers, writers, and academic celebrities who would put the same questions to their own political allies, rather than only to their opponents? I am not speaking of a naive equivalence between aggressor and victim, nor of a peace that legitimises conquest. I am speaking of the far more difficult obligation to defend international law without turning that defence into permission for endless escalation, and to recognise the right of self-defence without removing the obligation to seek a political way out. An intellectual is not obliged to have a ready-made peace treaty. But if he claims public authority, he ought to be capable of questioning official explanations, examining the interests behind decisions, and naming the human cost that the abstract language of strategy so successfully conceals. It is particularly ironic that the names of Rolland, Zweig, Hesse, and Mann are today pronounced with reverence at the very cultural forums where the moral discomfort of their historical positions is often meticulously neutralised. I do not expect a new Romain Rolland to stop a war with a single essay. I do expect, however, the contemporary intellectual elite not to transform independence of thought into an honorary title that confers prestige but entails no personal risk whatsoever. For the most difficult question to ask an educated person during a historical catastrophe is not how many books he has written, how many awards he has received, or how many governments have invited him to official dinners. It is whether his education has served any purpose beyond enabling him to find sufficiently sophisticated words with which to justify his own silence. Sleep peacefully.