By David Abulafia Financial Times, January 24, 2014 Review of Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, by Larry Siedentop, Allen Lane, 448 pages Medieval Catholic theology, philosophy and law are not the most obvious places to look for the roots of western liberalism, which, according to Larry Siedentop, can be found in the idea of “moral equality” among individual human beings. It is this concept, he believes, that marks out the Christian west from the rest of the world, and that provided the seed bed from which sprouted a liberal ideology that has proclaimed itself to be staunchly secular, forgetting its Catholic origins. “In its basic assumptions,” he asserts, “liberal thought is the offspring of Christianity”, for “liberalism rests on the moral assumptions provided by Christianity”. These are values that need to be defended when, in other parts of the world, different assumptions about the way society can or should be directed hold sway. In China, he says, “the governing ideology has become a crass form of utilitarianism” that tramples on human liberty, and this “offends some of our deepest intuitions”. As the author of a provocative analysis of the European Union, Democracy in Europe (2000), and as an expert on Tocqueville, Siedentop must be aware that looking for intellectual origins is always problematic. Is the idea that one can already trace a liberal outlook – whatever that term actually means – in the mainly medieval writers he considers? Not really: it is more a question, in his view, of a fundamental idea that came into its own in later centuries, but could never have emerged at all without the priming provided by Christian thinkers between St Paul and the 14th-century English thinker William of Ockham. He is not trying to prove that the Middle Ages were an epoch of happy liberal thinking, though he manages to detect promisingly inclusive views even in those great popes of the 13th century who were most assertive of the plenitude of their power. He begins with the idea that in the ancient world there was no sense of the equal status of all members of society. The Roman paterfamilias was not merely the symbolic head of the family but its ruler, exercising complete control over the younger male and female members. This was challenged, in Siedentop’s view, by the Christian message diffused by St Paul, for whom neither slave nor free, Greek nor Jew was of distinct status in the eyes of God, so long as they accepted the word of Christ. (Siedentop has the annoying habit of constantly talking about him as “the Christ”, conjuring up disturbing images of Mel Gibson.) By Richard J. Evans New Statesman, January 23, 2014 Old world decline, rogue empires, killing for God – looking at 1914, we can discover that there are many uncomfortable parallels with our own time. As we enter the centenary year of the outbreak of the First World War, many uncomfortable parallels with our own time spring to mind. In 1914 the superpower that dominated the world, controlling the seas and ruling over a global empire of colonies, dominions and dependencies – Britain – was being challenged by a rival that was overtaking it economically and building up armaments on land and sea to assert its claim for a “place in the sun” – Germany. All of this is alarmingly close to the situation today, when America’s global supremacy is increasingly being challenged by the rise of China. The ideological rivalries between the superpowers now and then look strikingly similar, too, at first glance: on the one hand, Britain then and America now, with their democratic political systems that make governments responsible to legislatures and removable by popular elections; on the other, Germany then and China now, with appointed and irremovable governments responsible only to themselves. A free press and open public on the one hand contrast with a controlled public sphere on the other, in which censorship and the trappings of a police state in effect muzzle the government’s most trenchant critics. And of course there was, and is, the baleful influence of nationalism, with China’s sabre-rattling over disputed islands today yielding little in rhetorical vehemence to the kaiser’s bombastic speeches asserting German claims in Africa and the Middle East before 1914. The clash of ideologies and religions was evident before 1914, just as it is today, and in both cases concentrated on trouble spots in specific parts of the world. Currently it is the conflicts in the Middle East we have to worry about, with a vicious civil war in Syria between rival Islamic factions standing proxy for the rivalry between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, while an additional element of danger is provided by Israel, with its nuclear arsenal, and again Iran, with its persistent attempts to build one. China and Russia are lining up behind one side while Nato and the US line up behind the other. Before 1914 the critical trouble spot was the Balkans, where nationalist passions were overlaid with religious conflicts between Christian states, such as Greece and Bulgaria, and the Islamic Ottoman empire. The Habsburg monarchy, run by a Roman Catholic elite, was being challenged by Orthodox Serbia. Just as there have been wars previously in the Middle East (in 1948, 1967 and most recently in 1973), so too there had been wars in the Balkans, between Russia and Turkey in 1877-78 and between Serbia and Bulgaria in 1885. So 1914, sometimes known in the region as the third Balkan war, was nothing new for these countries. Die Welt, January 25, 2014 He was responsible for the death of millions, organizer of the Holocaust, head of SS and Gestapo. His letters, photos and notes had been considered lost. Now they are published here for the first time. There was noticeable tension on that Thursday in June. Rumors went around. It had been speculated that there could be "a profound change in the relationship with the Soviet Union". That is what the messages by the leading circles of the Nazi party to the Third Reich's Ministry of Propaganda said. All leave for the members of the Wehrmacht had been cancelled. Something was going to happen on this weekend. Everyone who knew anything about how the Nazis' apparatus of power worked knew that. And it was known that Adolf Hitler had made it his habit to launch his political and military offensives on a Sunday. Heinrich Himmler, "Reichsführer SS", Chief of the German Police and the Reich's Commissioner for the "Festigung des deutschen Volkstums" (Consolidation oft he German Race) cancelled the ban on leave for himself. For 36 hours he flew from his Berlin office to his private home at Lake Tegernsee, where his wife Marga and his daughter Gudrun were waiting for him. The small family made a trip to the idyllic Valepp valley and had their pictures taken happily frolicking in nature. It was 19 June 1941. "There is still one can of caviar in the fridge." Himmler didn't say a word about this to his wife Marga. For all we know the upcoming events were not mentioned during the hastily organized family holiday. Did Himmler give any hints? "Now we are at war again. I knew it. I didn't sleep well at all", Marga Himmler wrote to her husband shortly after hearing the news about the beginning of the attack on the Soviet Union in the morning of 22 June 1941. But as a caring wife she also had some good advice for her husband: "There is still one can of caviar in the fridge. Take it." His daughter Gudrun sent a letter to her father on that historic Sunday. "It's terrible that we are going to war with Russia. They were our allies after all." And the not even twelve-year-old girl added another concern in her letter: "Russia is sooo big. The struggle will be very difficult if we want to conquer all of Russia." Gudrun's father had to learn the hard way how true that prediction turned out to be. Two days after the attack he made his way to Hitler's East Prussian headquarters "Wolfsschanze" in his personal train "Heinrich". Although he tried to call his home in Gmund almost every day he still forgot a very important date. "I felt so sorry that I forgot our wedding anniversary for the first time," Heinrich wrote to Marga on 7 July 1941, four days late. "There was quite a lot going on these days" adding that "the fighting is very hard, especially for the SS". Very Personal Documents of a War Criminal The letter is one of about 700 sent by Heinrich Himmler to his wife. They are the very personal documents of a war criminal that now have become available to the "Welt am Sonntag", almost 69 years after the end of the war and the suicide of the head of the SS. They are published here for the very first time. The letters, along with other private documents – many previously unknown photographs, diaries and the estate of Himmler's foster son Gerhard von der Ahé – were considered lost for decades and have been kept in a private home in Israel for some time. They are currently stored in a vault in Tel Aviv. The director Vanessa Lapa, who based her documentary about Himmler on that material, owns them now. Her documentary "The Decent" will premier on 9 February at the 2014 Berlinale film festival. "Die Welt" financially supported the production of the documentary. Especially Himmler's early letters to his wife seem to be mundane at first glance. But they reveal a lot about the mindset of a cold-blooded, self-righteous bureaucrat, who became the mastermind and chief organizer of the Holocaust. When Nazi era documents that have been considered lost forever suddenly surface, caution is obviously required. The papers from the Tel Aviv vault were therefore thoroughly examined by experts. The President of the German Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv), Michael Hollmann, who heads the world's most important institution for written legacies of the Nazi era, as well as the now retired expert on Nazi archives Josef Henke, came to a clear conclusion: "There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the documents in Tel Aviv." The handwriting of the letters, often signed "Dein Heini" ("Your Heini") or "Euer Pappi" ("Your Daddy"), matches other known documents of Himmler perfectly. His letters complement exactly those of his wife that have been kept in the German Federal Archive for many years. |
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