Fear – over the numbers of refugees or the right-wing extremism - has crept in beneath the surface of a Europe that, in many places, still remains both peaceful and prosperous. Our author says that the citizens with a migrant background need to make the first move and talk to their compatriots about their fears.
Searching for oneself is above all about dealing with memories. With the memory cards on which the borders of Europe are recorded, starting with the city of my birth in south-western Kosovo, the political unrest I lived with throughout all the years of my youth, the destructive war that raged across the whole of the former Yugoslavia, from which seven new states emerged.
And then comes the chapter full of memories and travel on the continent: of chaotic and bureaucratic Brussels and The Hague, which lies on the edge of the cold sea; Paris and the insane terrorists; Spain, which is as German on the island of Majorca as it is Catalan elsewhere; electrifying Vienna and Kafka's Prague; Slovakia without the Roma, who have now become scattered all over the continent; Catholic Warsaw and melancholy Portugal, not to mention magnificent London. Maps and borders, which you somehow no longer want to see, but just remember. In pictures or in the form of letters, letters, letters.
Searching for oneself is about escaping from people and seeking out the vastness of the mountains in the area where I live: drifting through the fields past the Stuttgart Television Tower in Degerloch in the direction of the Daimler Center; or walking down the road to Waldau, down to the only state capital in Europe in which the Greens won both the state and local elections.
To make this idyll even more perfect, it is also the state capital that produces more machines than any other in the world, the one in which one of the most modern railway stations in Europe is now being built, a capital city that with only 600,000 inhabitants can truly be described as an infinitely perfect world!
The main street in the district of Degerloch is called Epple Strasse. Along a 400-metre section of this road, which is over two kilometres long, there are five chemist’s, eight baker’s, nine other shops (mainly organic produce!), three kiosks, four inexpensive snack bars and four very expensive restaurants, two orthopaedic shoe shops, two shops for hearing aids, ten doctor's surgeries, four dentists, a book shop and a town library, a very attractive community centre, an evangelical church, a Christian Orthodox church, an apostolic church, two primary schools, a secondary school, a grammar school, two weekly markets with fresh produce, two petrol stations and, and, and... people from all over the continent! On the upper side of Degerloch, along the edge of the forest, there are sports clubs with dozens of football pitches, tennis courts, athletics tracks and fitness and gymnastics facilities. The number of senior care homes bordering these facilities has increased so much over the last ten years that it’s hard to calculate exactly how many there are now.
Chaotic and bureaucratic Brussels and The Hague, which lies on the edge of the cold sea; Paris and the insane terrorists; Spain, which is as German on the island of Majorca as it is Catalan elsewhere; electrifying Vienna and Kafka's Prague; Slovakia without the Roma, who have now become scattered all over the continent; Catholic Warsaw and melancholy Portugal; not to mention magnificent London. Maps and borders, which you somehow no longer want to see, but just remember.
This is the perfect world that is Degerloch, a place I have lived in for more than ten years now, and around which I tend to roam on a daily basis, especially in the last three years, without ever leaving it, except for the occasional holidays in Italy, Austria or the Netherlands, or one or two trips within Germany. Almost every region in the south of Germany, but also in the north, west and east. is also a perfect world. After all, this country is well-known throughout the world for having similar living standards in all of its different regions.
Invisible Refugees
The 16,351 inhabitants of the perfect world that is Degerloch have been joined by an additional 306 people in the last few months. These new inhabitants are virtually invisible, however, because they have been accommodated in the surrounding forests: the refugees. Some are welcome – others not so much.
Should the exact distribution of votes by the good people of Degerloch during the last federal elections be mentioned at this point? Or is it really necessary for the sympathy or lack thereof towards those who need help to be translated into fear at the baker’s, the chemist’s, or in the supermarkets, streets, schools and ballot boxes? Or is it rather politics with its manipulation, its war on terror and the crazy Islamists who force people and society back into the arms of the populists who only want a ‘pure’ race? Terrifying the partitioning on maps of districts into towns and villages, of states and continents, by races. Unbearable the fear. And inexcusable the confusion.
The boundaries of the villages must be broken down for the people who have now settled here. On the fringes of our residential areas, in containers, old buildings, abandoned areas. It won't be easy. But it's much easier to actually start on the work that is needed. Then you see something magical happen: they will start to feel a part of this society, like every one of us did when we came here after the Second World War, to help rebuild Germany, for the ‘Made in Germany’ miracle, during the fall of the Iron Curtain and to work on the process of reunification, at the time of the horrific wars in the former Yugoslavia. And now, during the appalling Syrian war, the consequences of which are now being felt by Degerloch, with its 306 new inhabitants.
And Stuttgart is not that far from places where terrorist attacks have been committed: Istanbul, Brussels, Istanbul again, Nice, SaintÉtienne-du-Rouvray, Würzburg, Ansbach, Munich, London, Berlin.
Powerless Letters
These cities are normally associated with sightseeing, beach holidays, shopping trips or hiking tours. Or at least they would be during ordinary, peaceful times. But sadly not over recent months and years.
Unfortunately, therefore, letters alone are powerless against all the pain and insufficient in themselves to describe the tragedy that has befallen the unknown and unsuspecting victims in all of these cities. The despicable murders, the suffering brought about by this awful confrontation between religions and civilisations, cultures and languages, states and peoples. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a diagnosis for the disease that is currently infecting humanity.
Just as the internet knows no borders or languages, so the security and intelligence services will find it impossible to avert the dangers and cowardly attacks of the frustrated and the conned, who blow themselves and the people around them up in the name of a God that does not exist.
And it is the politicians who, more than ever before, have the task of providing their citizens with security when they go to work or on holiday. And it is the citizens who must use their votes to elect those politicians who will work hard and with all the necessary care, attention and vision to achieve peace in these fragile and uncertain times.
That’s what needs to happen. Though nothing will happen, if nobody wants it to. This is why I think we are sliding inexorably into a time that will be even more frightening than the one we live in now.
After the Brexit vote and Trump’s victory in 2016, and the elections in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Austria, we are all still standing around as if nothing has actually happened. The elections in those countries were referendums in their own right: for nation-states and discrimination against foreigners or for improvements to the legal framework surrounding migration policy and for European cooperation in the war on terror.
This disease, which mankind does not have under control, knows neither prophets nor doctors. No politician or secret service agency can protect the unaware against those who believe they can take revenge for their own misfortune by attacking people at the market with a truck or a bomb. There is no sociologist or philosopher, let alone a writer with sufficient knowledge or power, who can provide an adequate answer to our impotence in the face of such a violent storm, which can strike at any moment and at any place, whether it be in the department store, the football stadium, at a train station or in any other public place. And this makes people lose their last vestige of hope of ever finding something that can truly be described as ‘human’.
Our European, Western concept of civilisation is being attacked by that of another world, represented by groomed or manipulated individuals, either refugees or migrants of the second or third generation, some of whom are now regarded as a threat, who have grown up in Europe but yet want to strike a blow against it. Wherever and whenever. During the year we are leaving behind, or the one we are entering into.
So fear has become an inseparable part of our everyday lives. Former German President Joachim Gauck said in a speech that we should not be afraid: ‘We feel fear – but we are not consumed by it. We feel powerlessness, but we are not consumed by it. We feel rage, but we are not consumed by it’. What a relief! And yet the fear remains. Because it's that fear that prevails in every speech, including those given by the highest representative of both country and continent.
Fictitious Ministries
And I don’t mean just Europe. Two examples – one European and the other Asian. Dubravka Ugrešić and Arundhati Roy. The first is the author of the novel The Ministry of Pain, the second the author of the novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. These two authors, whom I always read, refer to nonexistent, fictitious ministries in the titles of their fictional works. And they recount the tragedies of their home countries. Ugrešić comes from the former Yugoslavia, a state that no longer exists, while Roy is from India, a country that is surviving. Striking stories, marked by centuries of individual and collective history.
Writers create and destroy. Homelands and empires. Real and fictional. So they are like prophets who know no government, no constitution, no laws or times. And they reserve the right to create their own ministries. Like the women in these novels.
Writers create and destroy. Homelands and empires. Real and fictional. So they are like prophets who know no government, no constitution, no laws or times.
Do you think there's a novel called Homeland Ministry too? Or Ministry of the Fatherland? The two designations for someone’s region of origin don’t just differ in terms of gender – ‘die Heimat’ and ‘das Vaterland’ in German. The term ‘homeland’ also sounds much more homely and was also clearly less abused in the past than the word ‘fatherland’.
The Fatherland
German politicians from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party insist that a homeland ministry should be set up in Germany along the lines of the Bavarian model, partly in response to the results of the recent elections, in which the right-wing AFD achieved double-digit results in some areas. I imagine that the AFD leadership under Mr Gauland et al would also be sympathetic to this idea. Except that they would probably want to go even further and call it the Ministry of the Fatherland!
Ten years ago, I wrote a poem on this subject entitled Das Vaterland, which Michael Krüger published in the literary journal ‘Akzente’:
Von dir Vaterland sagen viele du seist für sie/ Vater und Land. für dich werden viele tränen vergossen/ von wissenden und unwissenden du hast die macht/alles dir eigen zu machen. deine erde ist alt, dein himmel/ unendlich, die menschen gehören niemand als Gott und dir/ so auch vögel, die flüsse, die ebenen, die meere,/ die schmerzen, die kinder, die träume… die eroberer/ die poeten, die verliebten, die verratenen, die vergreisten…/ alle gehören dir… so auch das leben, der tod./ nur eins ist mir nicht klar/ Vaterland/ wem gehörst du?‘
[‘Of you Fatherland many say you are for them/ father and country. for you many tears are shed/ by knowing and unknowing you have the power/ to make it all your own. your earth is old, your heaven/ infinite, the people belong to no one but God and you/ so too birds, rivers, plains, oceans,/ the pains, the children, the dreams... the conquerors, the poets, the lovers, the betrayed, the aged.... / all belong to you... so also life, death./ only one thing is unclear to me/ fatherland/ who do you belong to?’]
I believe that it is actually quite difficult to clarify the kind of political situations that nations both large and small sometimes go through – whether with novels in which ministries are created or with poems that demand something of the fatherland. Especially in the times we are now living in.
Silent Neighbours
Because the AfD is now a reality in Germany. Some might call it a normality that simply fits in with the rest of Europe, in which the extreme right has long since found its voters, and who they keep on trying to catch with the appropriate bait for all their resentments and fears, which clearly have a significant role to play.
I would argue that it is we, the citizens of with a migrant background, who are to blame for this, as much as the parties in the centre, on the right or on the left. We have failed to talk to these millions of people, our neighbours, our work colleagues, the people waiting in the queue at the baker's or claming benefits at the employment exchange, about the fears they feel about the many refugees who are now in the country. The discussions amongst our fellow citizens, who ‘migrated’ to the political right, and their recriminations against millions of their fellow human beings, seem to be as tragic as they are terrifying. And the talk of a homeland ministry on the right and the notion of what constitutes homeland on the left are just as worrying.
Should we start talking about a ministry of migration as well, or should we perhaps be calling for a ministry of integration? No! What we – the new Germans, the new Europeans, the millions of citizens of this country and this continent with a migrant background – need to do is very simple: start talking to our fellow countrymen about their fears. We need to break the taboo and ask them: ‘Why are you afraid? What exactly are you afraid of?’ We need to tell them that we are scared too. That we may even be more scared than they are. Scared of Gauland, but also of those new arrivals in this country who do not come to seek shelter, but to attack us in our inner cities, trains and airports.
We need to start talking to our fellow countrymen about their fears. We need to break the taboo and ask them: ‘Why are you afraid? What exactly are you afraid of?’
We live without a home – but we now need to make the first move, for the sake of this new state, Germany, and for the sake of this continent, Europe, where our children were born. I, for my part, have already started talking to my friends and acquaintances about their fears. And about my own!
About the Author
Beqë Cufaj
Author, Ambassador (ret.)
Beqë Cufaj (born 1970) was born in Deçan, Kosovo. He has written for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) for years and has also published several novels and essay books. From 2018 to 2021, Cufaj held the position of Ambassador of the Republic of Kosovo in Germany. Today, he resides in Berlin with his family.
Culture Report Progress Europe
Culture has a strategic role to play in the process of European unification. What about cultural relations within Europe? How can cultural policy contribute to a European identity? In the Culture Report Progress Europe, international authors seek answers to these questions. Since 2021, the Culture Report is published exclusively online.