Andrzej Madela

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Andrzej Madela (born July 22, 1958 in Poland ) is a German scholar and historian . From 1993 to 1995 he was editor of the new right magazine Junge Freiheit .

Studies and employment

Andrzej Madela studied German language and literature and history in East Berlin and Wrocław from 1977 to 1981 . His diploma thesis dealt with the drama of the GDR in the 1960s. From 1982 to 1984 he worked in Dresden as a production assistant and punch , from 1984 to 1988 there as a teacher. In 1987 he did his doctorate under Norbert Honsza at the University of Breslau with a thesis on the change of tradition in GDR literature . From 1988 to 1990 he was a consultant at the Polish Cultural Center in Berlin (responsible for film and literature there), then worked for the monthly magazine “CONstructiv”, which is closely related to Bündnis 90 , where he was responsible for the 'Interview and Essay' section.

From 1993 to 1995 he was the editor of the new right magazine Junge Freiheit , which had recently been switched to weekly publication. There he shaped the liberal course of the editorial team, forced the break with their radical wing ( Andreas Molau , Hans-Ulrich Kopp , Markus Zehme ) and won authors from the left and liberal camps ( Wolfgang Templin , Herbert Ammon , Bernd Rabehl ) for the newspaper. . After differences with the editor-in-chief Dieter Stein , he gave up his editorial post and switched to the private sector, where he has been active in Eastern European business ever since.

Madela's positions in the debates after 1989

Postmodernism as a national opportunity

Madela dealt among other things with the collapse of communism and the accompanying phenomena. He is considered a proponent of a rational opening towards postmodernism . To their lasting consequences he counts u. a. the victory of civil society over its Sovietized counter-draft. From the implosion of the Eastern bloc, he derived a liberating effect for the modern right-wing. In doing so, he suggested a radical departure from historical notions, such as the masses produced by the East-West conflict. For his early work he used the theses of the US political scientist Francis Fukuyama of the “end of history” and combined them with considerations on the freedom potential of an open society. In contrast to the more recent liberal contemporary historiography, he stuck to the national character of postmodernism. In his essays, 1989, the year of upheaval, appears as the result of diverse but nationally based efforts by Eastern European societies to shake off their countries' de facto dependence on the Soviet Union.

From his point of view, the historical elimination of the cold war conflict has considerably reduced the alternatives to civil society and has brought about a conspicuous convergence of the hitherto widely different political positions. For example, he diagnosed the broad spectrum of West German patriotism between Jürgen Habermas and Karlheinz Weißmann as a common increase in rational, sober ("cold"), emotion-remote factors with a simultaneous dwindling of the directly tangible ("hot") sphere. The new German cultural patriotism would have to compensate for their loss with increased intellectuality and excessive historical fixation. Ultimately, however, it is the negative criterion - the different "degree of cold" - that decides whether the respective point of view can be recognized today.

Cultural continuity and political break

A fixed point of his interests is the question of continuity and change in the cultural-political space. He examined u. a. the German images in Polish post-war films 1946–1988, continuations and breaks in GDR literature in dealing with classical and romanticism, and the mental legacy of Eastern European totalitarianism . As a literary critic, he dealt, among other things, with the intellectual and technical continuity of Marcel Reich-Ranicki between his party service in Poland and political distancing in Germany. He explains its overwhelming success with the characteristics that Ranicki, as a Stalinist cultural functionary, saved over to liberal West Germany. These qualities, now offered as cultivated humanity far removed from any day-to-day politics, would have fooled the West German public into an appearance of educated bourgeois continuity between tradition and postmodernism.

He sees the gradual decline in value of former anti-communist art primarily due to its flight from realism. As the creator of ideal counter-drafts to the political practice of communism, she would only remain its downside and cannot get rid of utopia projects (which are also burdened with ideology). On the other hand, he describes the culture of the post-communist era as a gradual dwindling of national-romantic overloaded projects and master stories that gave way to an ideology-free understanding of the work and the world. Madela records the dwindling bipolar understanding of the world and the defeat of the utopia project in East and West as a gain in artistic freedom and aesthetic quality. Especially in the work of a generation whose literary ascent in 1989/1990 coincided with the decline of the Utopia project (Jirgl, Anderson, Schulze), he made a new turn to linguistic experiment and memory work that went far beyond the "punched memory norms" the tail of group 47 go out.

Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe

In 1990, when dealing with Eastern European totalitarianism, he caused a sensation when he attributed the communist breakthrough in Eastern Europe in 1948/1949 - contrary to widespread opinion - to the populist maximalism of mass society and their majority approval of the Stalinist state of measures . In contradiction to part of Polish contemporary historiography (e.g. to Bogdan Musial , who ascribes the expulsions to the decisive influence of the Soviets on the Polish leadership), he sticks to his thesis that the expulsions of Germans from Poland in 1945–1948 are mainly ethnic cleansing and out of interest emerged from the nationally unified state; in terms of their character, they are also best comparable to the post-Yugoslav faults of the early 1990s . He locates the origins of both European totalitarianisms in the spiritual legacy of the Enlightenment , which he describes as the union of ethnically motivated social engineering , militant rationalism and aggressive state ideology.

Specifics of the Eastern European cultural area

Madela interprets the Eastern European culture of remembrance of the last few years as an emancipation movement in which the new EU members gradually shed the role of the culturally and politically backward newcomer. He anchored this process politically in the victory of the civil rights movements there and culturally in the fundamental reappraisal of the Eastern European dictatorships 1944–1989. As a result, the synthesis of traditional national consciousness and progressive Europeanization vis-à-vis the “old-union” community succeeded in many cases more convincingly in Eastern Europe. He counts among the four salient features of a common Eastern European culture of remembrance: an extensive "equality of Katyn and Auschwitz " (ie victims of communist and National Socialist will to exterminate); the displacement of traditional groups of victims from the public consciousness; the conspicuous agility of the state, culture and the media in the respective national historical politics as well as a progressive "self-victimization" (highlighting their own victim role) of Eastern European peoples in the historical process 1939–1989.

Reception and political classification

The political scientist Helmut Kellershohn described Madela as a modernizer of the new right position, who translated the debates of a liberal character into the language of conservative politics; his rational-demythologizing intention towards his own political milieu is clearly recognizable.

The sociologist Lukasz Kumiega , who at the same time ascribes a pioneering role in shaping the image of the Polish right in the German media discourse , also emphasizes the modernizing and mediating aspect, although more strongly focused on political relations between Poland and Germany .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "The consequences of postmodernism", Junge Freiheit, No. 13/1994, p. 11; s. a .: "The National Revolutions of Postmodernism", Junge Freiheit, No. 29/1995, p. 11.
  2. ↑ "Patriotisms in Oversupply", Junge Freiheit, No. 23/1995, p. 11.
  3. ↑ "The figure of the German in Polish fiction after 1945", Die Neue Gesellschaft / Frankfurter Hefte, No. 9/1989, pp. 807–813.
  4. ↑ "Eseistyka literacka w NRD w latach 1970–1989", Literatura na Swiecie, Warsaw, issue 7/1991, pp. 160–185.
  5. ↑ "Turn of signs. Culture in the shadow of post-totalitarian mentality ”, (together with Reinhard Jirgl), Bublies Verlag, Koblenz 1993.
  6. ↑ "Sachwalter des Eigenen", Junge Freiheit, No. 42/1998, p. 13; see also “Dear Marceli Ranicki”, Junge Freiheit 46/1999, p. 14.
  7. ^ "Honorary Oscar for Andrzej Wajda: National romantic and esthete", Ostpreußenblatt, volume 12, March 25, 2000.
  8. ↑ "German Literature: Changing the Guard of the Utopia Project", Junge Freiheit, No. 30/1998, p. 11.
  9. ↑ “Lazy on the outside - healthy on the inside? Contribution to the discussion on the definition of Stalinism ”, Sonntag, Berlin (Ost), No. 13/1990, p. 10.
  10. ↑ "Expulsion in Polish Contemporary History", Junge Freiheit, No. 12/2009, p. 18.
  11. ↑ Ibid.
  12. ↑ "memory culture in Eastern Europe," Junge Freiheit, no. 37/2008, p. 18
  13. ↑ Helmut Kellershohn, Martin Dietzsch , “Das Plagiat. The völkisch nationalism of 'Junge Freiheit' ”, DISS-Verlag, Duisburg 1994, p. 96 ff.
  14. ↑ Lukasz Kumiega, “Strategies of Representing the Polish Right in German Media Discourse”, German-Polish Yearbook, Warsaw, Issue 16/2008, pp. 11–34.
personal data
SURNAME Madela, Andrzej
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Poland