Finis Germania

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Finis Germania (often translated analogously to the Latin finis Germaniae with “The End of Germany”) is a collection of texts from the legacy of the historian Rolf Peter Sieferle (1949-2016) published in February 2017 by the neurerecht Verlag Antaios . According to the publisher, the first edition was 20,000 copies. The editing was done by the new right-wing publicist Ellen Kositza .

Structure and content

The book is divided into four parts with several articles and an afterword by the retired Würzburg sinologist Raimund Theodor Kolb ( personal confessio ), who is also Sieferle's estate administrator.

The first part of the book, Finis Germania , comprises six articles ( coming to terms with the past and progress , German special path and winner's perspective , fate has a name , German and rule culture , social democracy , moral arithmetic ). Among other things, the following theses are pursued: the idea of ​​the German special path developed after the Holocaust in order to fundamentally differentiate Germany (and thus the Nazi era) from the “West”. Due to the historical ruptures of the 20th century, there is no longer an upper-class aristocratic "culture of rule". The German political scene is characterized by petty bourgeoisie. A central feature of political culture in Germany is an egalitarian "social democracy" across the board . Under moral arithmetic is trying to deal with the ethical balancing of the victims of totalitarian violence.

The second part, Paradoxes der Zeit, comprises fifteen contributions ( historicization of relativism , intellectual forerunner , science and avant-garde , politics and system , politicians and intellectuals , rationalization and atomization , return of the same , love of animals , the sensualistic strategy , the disappearance of anthropomorphic space , behind the Cosmos , The Chicken People , Old Franconian Modernism , Art and Charisma , By the Sea ). In Das Hühner-Volk the author describes German society as a flock of chickens that fear everything that even remotely looks like a fox.

The third part myth VB ( "VB" is an abbreviation for dealing with the past meant) contains the most controversial statements, and includes five chapters ( The Eternal Nazi , a new state religion , sackcloth and ashes requested! , From Auschwitz to learn , to logic of anti-fascism ). Among other things, there is the statement that Auschwitz has "become the last myth of a thoroughly rationalized world". Allegedly, the memory of the German guilt for the Holocaust is used to prevent Germany from formulating and enforcing its own interests. Instead, the Germans would have to atone for their inevitable guilt and be eliminated so that a “ homogeneous humanity” could be realized. In Eine neue Staatsreligion Sieferle drafts a kind of impossible salvation story about the “unforgivable guilt [...] Adam Hitler”, which “no Jesus can abolish” and “no grace compensate”. Sackcloth and ashes requested! deals with the commemoration of the Holocaust based on the scandalous speech on November 10, 1988 in the German Bundestag by the then Bundestag President Philipp Jenninger on the 50th anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht. In On the Logic of Antifascism Sieferle criticizes the concept of the multicultural society as a new, ambivalent religion, which is both universalistic in the sense of a homogeneous humanity and relativistic in the sense of preserving "ethnic and cultural particularity". As a result, “the indigenous people of the industrialized countries” must see their peculiarities threatened by immigration and foreign infiltration, and at the same time every contradiction is defamed as right thought.

The fourth part fragments also contains five chapters ( Ernst Jünger as an educator , Topik of civilization criticism , genius , the great waste , Pathodizee ).

reception

Choice in the list "Non-fiction books of the month"

The book was listed in ninth place out of ten non-fiction books published by the NDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung in June 2017 . This sparked a public debate as critics accuse the book of spreading " right-wing conspiracy theories ". The book came on the list because the Spiegel editor Johannes Saltzwedel said he had accumulated his twenty voting points on this one book . The jury of the “Non-fiction books of the month” then declared that such an accumulation was excluded in the future. Saltzwedel resigned from the jury after public criticism and justified his recommendation as a “vote against a zeitgeist that propagates the abandonment of European and German culture in favor of a diffuse cosmopolitanism ”. The journalist Lothar Müller had previously resigned from the committee in protest against the listing as a reading recommendation. On June 12, 2017, the NDR ended its collaboration with the jury for the time being.

In June and July 2017, Finis Germania was in Amazon.de's number 1 book bestseller, sometimes for weeks. In August 2017, the Berliner Morgenpost published an “Amazon bestseller list” for non-fiction books, in which the book still ranks first.

In July 2017 Finis Germania was listed sixth on the Spiegel bestseller list for non-fiction books. Shortly afterwards, the editorial team deleted the book from the list without giving any reason. After increasing inquiries about this procedure, Der Spiegel stated that it saw itself as having a “special responsibility” to remove this book, which would not have made it onto the list without the recommendation of its editor Johannes Saltzwedel. The Spiegel editorial team did not explain why the editorial change to the bestseller list had not been made known beforehand.

Regardless of whether the book might be anti-Semitic or not, criticized Henryk M. Broder in the World manipulating the mirror bestseller list that "as a kind of gold standard applies the book trade," as "literary criticism by lord of the manor ." In the SWR2 culture talk , the literary critic Denis Scheck described the decision of the Spiegel editor-in-chief as a “journalistic scandal” and called for the resignation of the editor-in-chief Klaus Brinkbäumer . The spokesman for the freedom of opinion interest group in the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Christoph Links, describes Finis Germania as a “terrible book” and at the same time criticizes the “excessive and inappropriate reaction of the Spiegel [s]”.

Content controversies

The following passage in particular triggered criticism of the book: “ National Socialism , more precisely Auschwitz, has become the last myth of a thoroughly rationalized world. A myth is a truth that is beyond discussion ”(see p. 63). Jan Grossarth said in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that the connection between Auschwitz and myth is close to the criminal Auschwitz lie . The literary scholar Rüdiger Safranski later opposed this interpretation in Deutschlandfunk Kultur : It was said to be the result of "sloppy" and "negligent" reading. A right-wing extremist position that Auschwitz denies is not recognizable. Safranski also said it was a “negligent and hysterical” debate, which, because of its scandal, was itself a “scandal”. This was criticized by Adam Soboczynski at the time , as "Safranski reinterprets the work into a harmless, historically interesting Völkerschau".

The literary critic and historian Gustav Seibt considers Finis Germania to be a "collection of glosses and polemics " that are shaped by Sieferle's loss of "ability to differentiate " in the last phase of life and an "ancient anti-Semitic topos of Jewish revenge or Jewish vengeance and mercilessness" . Seibt also criticizes the fact that Sieferle “does not present a counter-proposal for coming to terms with the past ”. Instead, the discussion about the controversial book is a “triumph for the publishers”, who are enemies of the constitution and democracy. Seibt therefore demands a calm analysis and description of Sieferle in order not to get involved in “this game” in which “this group around Götz Kubitschek in Schnellroda ” would win through insults.

The political scientist and co-juror Herfried Münkler also described Finis Germania as “a work deeply saturated with anti-Semitic ideas”.

The deputy editor-in-chief of Spiegel, Susanne Beyer , described the work as "right-wing radical, anti-Semitic, historical revisionist ".

For the historian Volker Weiß , Sieferle uses "the jargon of classic anti-Semites". The book is an alienation of the "Kampfschrift" The Victory of Judaism over Teutonicism from 1879 by the anti-Semite Wilhelm Marr . Weiss called Sieferle's publication a “hair-raising and cynical treatise against coming to terms with the German past ”.

The journalist Christopher Caldwell, however, ruled in the New York Times that Sieferle neither denied nor trivialized the Holocaust . Caldwell interprets the book's popularity as a sign of the public's distrust of the German literary establishment .

Right-wing extremism researcher Armin Pfahl-Traughber classifies it as an “anti-democratic and right-wing extremist book”. He made a "relativizing historical revisionism".

Finis Germania is rated as “right-wing radical” by the specialist journalist for right-wing extremism, Andreas Speit .

Dirk Pilz , literary scholar, rejected the book - despite his criticism of the mirror - as an "anti-Semitic, reactionary, anti-democratic inflammatory pamphlet".

expenditure

  • Rolf Peter Sieferle: Finis Germania (=  Kaplaken. Vol. 50), Verlag Antaios, Schnellroda 2017, ISBN 978-3-944422-50-3 .
  • Rolf Peter Sieferle: Finis Germania , Manuscriptum Verlagsbuchhandlung Thomas Hoof eK (Landtverlag), Lüdinghausen 2019, ISBN 978-3-944872-90-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christopher Caldwell : Germanys Newest Intellectual Antihero. In: New York Times , July 8, 2017, accessed July 19, 2017.
  2. ^ Finis Germania. In: book report. Retrieved July 28, 2017 .
  3. ↑ a b Mariam Lau : Actually everything like in Wendland . In: Die Zeit , August 3, 2017, No. 32, p. 38.
  4. ^ Andreas Wang: Non-fiction books of the month June 2017. In: NDR.de , June 12, 2017, accessed on July 4, 2017.
  5. ↑ Jan Grossarth : Who gave the right-wing extremist reading recommendation? In: FAZ , June 12, 2017, accessed on July 4, 2017; Lothar Müller : Recommendation on points. In ninth place on the list of non-fiction recommendations from NDR and SZ is the book by a right-wing radical publisher, the pamphlet “Finis Germania” by the historian Rolf Peter Sieferle, who died in 2016. Why? In: Süddeutsche.de , June 11, 2017, accessed on July 4, 2017.
  6. ↑ Andreas Wang: Statement of the jury. In: Heise online , June 12, 2017, accessed on July 4, 2017.
  7. ↑ Florian Rötzer : Review. In: heise.de. June 12, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
  8. ↑ Controversy over the NDR best list - right shift in the features section? In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . ( deutschlandfunkkultur.de [accessed on July 26, 2017]).
  9. ↑ NDR Kultur suspends cooperation with jury “Non-fiction books of the month”. In: NDR.de , June 12, 2017, accessed July 4, 2017.
  10. ↑ Thomas Moßburger: # 1 best seller on Amazon: Right-wing radical book creates a mega-vortex. In: Chip.de , June 13, 2017, accessed July 4, 2017.
  11. ↑ Best seller list without “Finis Germania” . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed on July 28, 2017]).
  12. ↑ Top 10 non-fiction books from the Amazon bestseller list . In: Berliner Morgenpost , August 1, 2017, No. 207, p. 16.
  13. ↑ Bestseller: Non-fiction book. In: Der Spiegel , July 15, 2017, p. 124.
  14. ↑ Gerrit Bartels: From right to top . Rolf Peter Sieferle's völkisch whispering work “Finis Germania” is now also in the top ten of the “Spiegel” bestseller list. In: Der Tagesspiegel . July 16, 2017, ISSN  1865-2263 ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed July 18, 2017]).
  15. ↑ Amazon mirror bestseller: How Finis Germania once disappeared. In: Welt Online . Retrieved July 26, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Susanne Beyer : On our own behalf: “Finis Germania” and the SPIEGEL bestseller list. In: Spiegel Online . July 25, 2017. Retrieved July 26, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Der "Spiegel" and Finis Germania: literary criticism according to the manor style. In: Welt Online. Retrieved July 26, 2017 .
  18. ↑ Denis Scheck calls for the resignation of the Spiegel editor-in-chief - Kultur Info - SWR2 . In: swr.online . ( swr.de [accessed on July 28, 2017]).
  19. ↑ Markus Decker: Finis Germania: Why the controversial book flew off the Spiegel bestseller list . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . ( ksta.de [accessed on July 28, 2017]).
  20. ↑ Jan Grossarth: Book recommendation for NDR and SZ: Editor of "Spiegel" gave right-wing extremist reading recommendation . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . June 12, 2017, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed July 31, 2017]).
  21. ↑ Rolf Peter Sieferle and his “Finis Germania” - a “negligent and hysterical” debate . In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . ( deutschlandfunkkultur.de [accessed on July 26, 2017]).
  22. ↑ Adam Soboczynski: "Finis Germania": Völkische Nachtgedanken . In: The time . June 29, 2017, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed July 26, 2017]).
  23. ↑ Nicole Dittmer and Julius Stucke (moderation): SZ literary critic Gustav Seibt on "Finis Germania": "A terrifying crash" , Deutschlandfunk Kultur, June 12, 2017, accessed on July 12, 2017.
  24. ↑ See Herfried Münkler in conversation with Joachim Scholl : Herfried Münkler on the “Finis Germania” debate: “A miserable book” , reading (Deutschlandfunk Kultur), June 16, 2017, accessed on July 12, 2017.
  25. ↑ Susanne Beyer: Menschenwerk: On freedom of expression in SPIEGEL . In: Der Spiegel , June 17, 2017, p. 126.
  26. ↑ Volker Weiß : Furor Teutonicus . In: Jüdische Allgemeine , No. 27, July 6, 2017, p. 17.
  27. ↑ Armin Pfahl-Traughber : On the non-fiction best-list , look to the right , July 21, 2017.
  28. ↑ Andreas Speit : "Finis Germania" . In: Die Tageszeitung , July 27, 2017, p. 15.
  29. ↑ Dirk Pilz : Whoever believes it . In: Berliner Zeitung , August 1, 2017, p. 21.