Spring 2011 | Issue 20
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A Magazine from the American Academy in Berlin | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
THE BERLIN JOURNAL<br />
Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke<br />
April 24, 1941 – December 13, <strong>20</strong>10
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<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 1<br />
Contents<br />
The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
© Hornischer<br />
richard holbrooke at the American academy, <strong>20</strong>08<br />
Remembering Richard Holbrooke<br />
5 The Gift of Conviction<br />
john c. kornblum<br />
5 The Bridge Builder<br />
richard von weizsäcker<br />
6 Friendship Forged through Film<br />
volker schlöndorff<br />
7 A Historian at Heart<br />
derek chollet<br />
8 Extravagant Laughter<br />
geoffrey wolff<br />
10 Beneath the Bluster<br />
gahl hodges burt<br />
12 Like a Western<br />
josef joffe<br />
14 A Man and His Métier<br />
karl m. von der heyden<br />
14 If Only Holbrooke Had Been in the<br />
Balkans in 1914<br />
fritz stern<br />
16 The House That Holbrooke Built<br />
frances fitzgerald<br />
17 A Last Breakfast<br />
norman pearlstine<br />
18 To Move the World<br />
henry a. kissinger<br />
19 Not a Quiet American<br />
strobe talbott<br />
21 Theory Versus Fact<br />
james der derian<br />
N1 On the Waterfront<br />
The American Academy’s newsletter, with<br />
the latest on fellows, alumni, and trustees,<br />
as well as recent events at the Hans<br />
Arnhold Center.<br />
From Our Friends and Fellows<br />
25 Doors Open, Doors Closed<br />
tamar jacoby deliberates the details of<br />
immigration in America and Germany.<br />
28 Crossing Over<br />
hal foster steadies the precarious art of<br />
Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn.<br />
32 No Man’s Landscapes<br />
astrid m. eckert traipses the<br />
environments of the inter-German border.<br />
36 The Dead Letters Dept.<br />
peter wortsman sends up a short story<br />
on sorting mail and overdue revenge.<br />
40 Cairo’s <strong>Spring</strong> Cleaning<br />
roger cohen pits Egypt’s 2/11 as the<br />
counter to America’s 9/11.<br />
44 The Insurgency Within<br />
kirk w. johnson narrates the harrowing<br />
story of his Iraq War-triggered ptsd.
2 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
The Berlin Journal<br />
The American Academy<br />
A magazine from the Hans Arnhold in Berlin<br />
Center published by the American<br />
Executive Director<br />
Academy in Berlin<br />
Gary Smith<br />
Number Twenty – <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
dean of fellows & programs<br />
Publisher Gary Smith<br />
Pamela Rosenberg<br />
Editor Brittani Sonnenberg<br />
CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE<br />
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Copyright © <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
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Cover: Kabul, Afghanistan,<br />
November 18, <strong>20</strong>09. Richard<br />
Holbrooke talks on the phone before<br />
the arrival of Secretary of State<br />
Hillary Rodham Clinton. Photo by<br />
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images.<br />
Honorary Chairmen Thomas L. Farmer, Richard von Weizsäcker<br />
co-Chairmen Karl M. von der Heyden, Henry A. Kissinger<br />
Vice Chair Gahl Hodges Burt<br />
President & CEO Norman Pearlstine<br />
Treasurer Andrew S. Gundlach<br />
Secretary John C. Kornblum<br />
Trustees Barbara Balaj, John P. Birkelund, Manfred Bischoff,<br />
Stephen B. Burbank, Gahl Hodges Burt, Caroline Walker Bynum,<br />
Mathias Döpfner, Marina Kellen French, Michael E. Geyer, Hans-Michael<br />
Giesen, Richard K. Goeltz, C. Boyden Gray, Vartan Gregorian,<br />
Andrew S. Gundlach, Franz Haniel, Helga Haub, Karl M. von der Heyden,<br />
Stefan von Holtzbrinck, Wolfgang Ischinger, Josef Joffe, Henry A. Kissinger,<br />
Michael Klein, John C. Kornblum, Regine Leibinger, Lawrence Lessig,<br />
Wolfgang Malchow, Nina von Maltzahn, Erich Marx, Wolfgang Mayrhuber,<br />
Julie Mehretu, William von Mueffling, Christopher von Oppenheim,<br />
Norman Pearlstine, David Rubenstein, Volker Schlöndorff,<br />
Peter Y. Solmssen, Kurt Viermetz, Pauline Yu<br />
Honorary Trustee Klaus Wowereit (ex officio)<br />
Trustees Emeriti Diethard Breipohl, Gerhard Casper, Fritz Stern<br />
Senior Counselors Richard Gaul, Franz Xaver Ohnesorg,<br />
Bernhard von der Planitz, Karen Roth, Yoram Roth, Victoria Scheibler<br />
SUPPORT<br />
The Academy is entirely funded by private donations. If you like what we<br />
are doing, please contribute by making a tax-deductible donation:<br />
IN GERMANY<br />
IN THE UNITED STATES<br />
Contributions may be made Contributions may be made<br />
by bank transfer to:<br />
by check payable to:<br />
American Academy in Berlin The American Academy in Berlin<br />
Berliner Sparkasse<br />
14 East 60th Street, Suite 604<br />
BLZ 100 500 00<br />
New York, NY 10022<br />
Account: 660 000 9908<br />
by bank transfer to: JPMorgan Chase<br />
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500 Stanton Christiana Road, Newark,<br />
DE07 1005 0000 6600 0099 08 DE 19713; Account: 967 33 12 77,<br />
BIC: BELADEBEXXX<br />
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SWIFT CODE: CHASUS 33<br />
Director’s Note<br />
In Pursuit of Political Ideals<br />
You learn a great deal about a person by spending time in their<br />
library. A couple of summers ago my daughters and I stayed<br />
in the Holbrookes’ guest apartment, which doubled as<br />
Richard’s study. In the shelves surrounding us, we discovered the<br />
library of a man whose appetite for ideas was as capacious as his<br />
passion for people.<br />
Winston Churchill and George Orwell, Reinhold Niebuhr<br />
and Søren Kierkegaard, Philip Rieff and Norman O. Brown,<br />
George Kennan and Henry A. Kissinger, Edmund Wilson and Fritz<br />
Stern, Paul Berman and Leon Wieseltier, Rudyard Kipling and<br />
William Styron, Geoffrey Wolff and John le Carré – philosophers,<br />
statesmen, novelists, and historians jostled one another for<br />
space on Holbrooke’s shelves, each volume well-thumbed and<br />
exhaustively employed.<br />
In college, Holbrooke fell under the spell of Edmund Wilson’s<br />
To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History.<br />
It became an enduring leitmotif. He once wrote that “[Wilson’s]<br />
book excited me mostly because it described something unusual<br />
and extremely important: the relationship of philosophical ideas<br />
and practical events – the savage intersection where theories<br />
and personalities meet and sometimes end up changing the world,<br />
for better or for worse.”<br />
Holbrooke was passionate about the transformative power of<br />
ideas, and he put great stock in the erudition that comes from true<br />
scholarship. His idea of the Academy resembled Ortega y Gasset’s<br />
notion of the university: institutions whose moral duty it is to<br />
“intervene in current affairs, treating the great themes of the day<br />
from its own point of view: cultural, scientific, and professional.”<br />
In this special Holbrooke memorial issue, the myriad aspects<br />
of the man – diplomat, friend, Academy founder, provocateur,<br />
moralist, historian – are celebrated, by voices as varied as<br />
Holbrooke’s talents. Film director Volker Schlöndorff recalls<br />
shared jaunts through Berlin’s hidden locales; novelist Geoffrey<br />
Wolff describes Holbrooke’s love of laughter; Henry A. Kissinger,<br />
in a condolence letter to Kati Marton, recalls the lessons he and<br />
Holbrooke learned from history; and Secretary of State Hillary<br />
Rodham Clinton recounts Holbrooke’s relentless and revolutionary<br />
approach to diplomacy. Features in this issue by Academy fellows<br />
explore themes that drove Holbrooke’s own work: contested<br />
borders, erupting revolutions, and the personal price of trauma.<br />
Holbrooke’s interventions, some legendary, some untold, reflect<br />
a lifelong ambition to be transformative in the service of higher<br />
ends, and he drew on a freight of resources as variegated as the<br />
authors that lined the walls of that wonderful guest apartment<br />
those summers ago. Isaiah Berlin’s essay “The Pursuit of the Ideal”<br />
articulates the deepest convictions of the irreplaceable “realistidealist”<br />
(as Roger Cohen referred to Holbrooke), someone as much<br />
a scholar of foreign policy as that rare person who understood how<br />
to turn a vision into a reality: “If we are to hope to understand<br />
the violent world in which we live (and unless we try to understand<br />
it, we cannot expect to be able to act rationally in it and on it),<br />
the goals and motives that guide human action must be looked at<br />
in the light of . . . every intellectual resource that we have.”<br />
– Gary Smith
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 3<br />
© HORNischer
4 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
© Magnum Photos<br />
© Michel Clement/AFP/Getty Images<br />
NORMALIZATION talks at the VIETNAMESE EMBASSY, SAIGON, DECEMBER 19, 1977. PHAN HIEN (C, back), VIETNAMESE vice-MINISTER of FOREIGN<br />
AFFAIRS, facing RICHARD HOLBROOKE (R, front), US ASSISTANT SECRETARY of STATE for EAST ASIAN and PACIFIC AFFAIRS<br />
AMERICAN peace envoy, ASSISTANT SECRETARY of STATE for european and canadian affairs RICHARD HOLBROOKE, speaking to the press<br />
AT the offices of SERBIAN PRESIDENT SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, ABBAS ERBIA, BELGRADE, AUGUST 1995
The Gift of Conviction<br />
A former US ambassador to Germany on the enormous achievements of his successor<br />
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 5<br />
I<br />
have always thought<br />
one fact explained Richard<br />
Holbrooke’s success more<br />
than any other. People who only<br />
met or talked with him briefly,<br />
or, in many cases, never met<br />
him at all, feel that he touched<br />
their lives. The number of people<br />
who considered themselves<br />
to be his “good friends” runs<br />
into the thousands – more than<br />
he could have ever had a serious<br />
conversation with. Those who<br />
felt that he contributed to their<br />
well-being can be counted in<br />
the millions.<br />
All of these groups were<br />
somehow moved by his voracious<br />
desire to know who they<br />
were and what was important<br />
to them. This ability to create<br />
instant empathy gave him an<br />
unmatched talent to build<br />
bridges. Nations he had never<br />
visited were brought back from<br />
despair by his commitments<br />
to the fight against aids or his<br />
peace efforts in the Balkans.<br />
Others have made similar<br />
contributions, but they lacked<br />
the human impact of Richard<br />
Holbrooke. The reason?<br />
Richard cared so much about<br />
the world and its condition that<br />
he instinctively absorbed the<br />
personal messages from others<br />
and transformed them into<br />
mutual understanding. His<br />
prodigious intellectual and<br />
rhetorical skills did the rest.<br />
One could never forget a conversation<br />
with him or ignore a<br />
request for assistance.<br />
Exposure to this force of<br />
personality did not always win<br />
Richard friends and admirers.<br />
Those who felt bruised,<br />
unhappy, or just plain jealous<br />
of his talents were also numerous.<br />
But in almost every case,<br />
even those who were less than<br />
thrilled with his treatment<br />
could not deny the power of<br />
his ideas.<br />
Once, at a crucial meeting in<br />
Washington, Richard accused a<br />
very senior general of disloyalty<br />
for not following the president’s<br />
goals – goals which Richard<br />
had, of course, written. A year<br />
later, this general was one of<br />
Richard’s most loyal deputies.<br />
Most successful was Richard’s<br />
two-year massaging of Serbian<br />
dictator Slobodan Milosevic.<br />
Milosevic was a true sociopath.<br />
He cared little for the lives of<br />
others. His only goal was to<br />
amass as much power and control<br />
as possible.<br />
p<br />
Richard met Milosevic when<br />
the ugly Balkan war was in<br />
its fifth year. Several teams of<br />
negotiators had tried to stop the<br />
killing and had failed. Richard<br />
had decided that Milosevic and<br />
only Milosevic was the key to<br />
success. He hit him with every<br />
ounce of his matchless powers<br />
of analysis, persuasion, and<br />
coercion. Milosevic, being no<br />
slouch, gave much the same<br />
in return. It was a contest<br />
Milosevic could not win, and<br />
he probably knew it. Richard<br />
understood that he needed<br />
Milosevic to help implement<br />
the agreement. He made it<br />
possible for Milosevic to lose<br />
gracefully by ensuring that the<br />
interests of the Serbian people<br />
were also protected. By the<br />
time it was over, the Dayton<br />
Agreement had pieced back<br />
together a human and historic<br />
puzzle that had burdened<br />
Europe for decades.<br />
Richard’s other main advantage<br />
was his discipline. Much<br />
of his cajoling of Milosevic took<br />
place after a tragic accident on<br />
Mount Igman, on the road to<br />
Sarajevo. The American delegation<br />
was forced to take this<br />
treacherous mountain road<br />
because Milosevic personally<br />
had refused them safe passage<br />
through Serbian checkpoints.<br />
Richard said farewell to the<br />
three colleagues who died in<br />
the accident and returned to<br />
Belgrade within two weeks<br />
for the next round of debate.<br />
His first meeting was with<br />
Milosevic.<br />
The American Academy in<br />
Berlin is the most enduring<br />
result of Holbrooke’s “specialness.”<br />
It is a unique bi-national<br />
institution crafted from little<br />
more than a commitment to<br />
the singular relationship that<br />
grew between Berlin and the<br />
United States after 1945. But its<br />
foundations are more than idealistic.<br />
The underlying goal of<br />
the Academy was very practical<br />
in nature. It was to ensure that<br />
the United States and Germany<br />
never forget the need to build<br />
on the deep cooperation forged<br />
in divided Berlin. The seemingly<br />
random mixture of culture<br />
and politics, history and vision<br />
that the Academy projects has,<br />
for more than a decade, transmitted<br />
the special Holbrooke<br />
method to a new generation.<br />
Each views it in his or her own<br />
terms, and, in fact, the number<br />
of people who claim to understand<br />
exactly what Richard<br />
had in mind for the Academy<br />
rarely agree with one another,<br />
but they are still all right. The<br />
message is the method rather<br />
than the content. It is neither<br />
cultural, nor scientific, nor<br />
political – it is human. Living<br />
humanity is what Richard<br />
Holbrooke was all about. The<br />
American Academy is the living<br />
essence of his life’s work.<br />
By John C. Kornblum<br />
The Bridge Builder<br />
Lasting impressions from a German president<br />
Richard Holbrooke’s<br />
decisive impulse<br />
gave wing to the audacious<br />
project of the American<br />
Academy in Berlin. Thanks to<br />
the moving generosity of the<br />
founding family, this ambitious<br />
project took flight.<br />
He was an incomparably energetic<br />
friend, a bridgebuilder<br />
over the Atlantic to Europe, to<br />
the world. Make peace with<br />
all your might: he served this<br />
purpose with his temperament.<br />
He never lost hope for peace. He<br />
was restless but never spiritless.<br />
The suffering of innumerable<br />
people was eased by the new<br />
lives he made possible for them.<br />
He was a great diplomat<br />
and at the same time undiplomatic<br />
when he thought it was<br />
appropriate. “Speak slowly,<br />
think quickly, act decisively,”<br />
he would say. His contributions<br />
to our history are enormous<br />
and resounding.<br />
It is his character that founded<br />
our Academy. This is – and<br />
will remain – our guide.<br />
By Richard von Weizsäcker
6 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Friendship Forged through Film<br />
A creative force in the company of artists<br />
A<br />
creative mind<br />
himself, vibrant in<br />
empathy and imagination,<br />
Richard Holbrooke always<br />
enjoyed the company of artists.<br />
Whether sports, theater, or<br />
cinema, he enjoyed the show,<br />
shared emotions, responded<br />
gleefully to the wit of a good<br />
line. The public figure had<br />
a private life, and he tried to<br />
unify them rather than practicing<br />
the strict separation of<br />
these spheres as most others<br />
do. He showed up backstage to<br />
meet the artists, often befriending<br />
them – John Guare, Susan<br />
Sarandon, Robert de Niro,<br />
Louis Malle, Wally Shawn,<br />
Mike Nichols – every one of<br />
them a dear friend, indeed.<br />
How did I, a moviemaker,<br />
end up on the American<br />
Academy’s board of trustees?<br />
Richard Holbrooke simply<br />
asked his New York friends,<br />
before leaving as ambassador<br />
for Bonn, whether they knew<br />
any fun people in Germany.<br />
Along with novelist Peter<br />
Schneider, I must have been on<br />
his list, for henceforth we were<br />
invited to numerous joyful dinners<br />
at the ambassador’s residence,<br />
one of them ending in a<br />
memorable “shouting contest”<br />
between Jack Valenti and me<br />
about the film industry, imperialism,<br />
and the Motion Pictures<br />
Association of America’s attitude<br />
toward subsidizing culture<br />
in Europe – which they felt was<br />
unfair to Hollywood. Rather<br />
than appeasing us, the ambassador<br />
pushed for escalation,<br />
albeit an intellectual one, to<br />
bring the conflict into the open.<br />
Late at night, the adversaries<br />
left as friends.<br />
He equally enjoyed taking<br />
me to the sidelines at the<br />
Olympic Stadium, where the<br />
Chicago Bears once played the<br />
Berlin Thunder, introducing<br />
me to the players, monuments<br />
RICHARD holbrooke and volker schlöNDORFF at the american academy, <strong>20</strong>03<br />
of muscle and flesh, whom he<br />
knew personally, of course. In<br />
return he asked me to show<br />
him and Kati Marton “my<br />
Berlin”: the Turkish corners of<br />
Kreuzberg and the old harbor in<br />
Wedding, a location for “foggy<br />
London” and movie set for<br />
Edgar Wallace’s detective stories<br />
that Germans enjoyed so<br />
much in the 1960s. He checked<br />
the bullet holes and shrapnel<br />
scars left in the facades of so<br />
many buildings, not only in the<br />
East. He crawled through the<br />
labyrinth ruins of the Tacheles,<br />
enjoyed mezze at Oren’s, and,<br />
most of all, raved about the<br />
studios in Babelsberg, where<br />
Marlene Dietrich had once<br />
crossed her beautiful legs in<br />
front of Joseph von Sternberg’s<br />
camera.<br />
He was fascinated by the<br />
story or rather history of the<br />
ufa film company, created in<br />
1917 by the Kaiser’s General<br />
Ludendorff to influence the<br />
minds of the working class,<br />
prime clients of these new<br />
flicks, in order to win them over<br />
for traditional values. I’ve contemplated<br />
this strategy myself:<br />
isn’t that what we should be<br />
doing? How about telling How<br />
to End a War to a mass audience<br />
on television?<br />
Richard Holbrooke must<br />
have been one of the first<br />
clients of Netflix and the Red<br />
Envelope home distribution<br />
of dvds. During sleepless jetlegged<br />
nights or over his brief<br />
weekends, he undoubtedly<br />
watched hours and hours of<br />
films, for he knew every one of<br />
them. He cut through the bs,<br />
going straight to the “deeper<br />
meaning,” viewing the films’<br />
content through the eyes of a<br />
Serbian as well as a Pakistani<br />
audience, ever aware of and<br />
eager to debate cross-cultural<br />
misunderstandings.<br />
Arts, politics, friendship, and<br />
history in the making were all<br />
one to him. No wonder his<br />
conversations with Arthur<br />
Miller (for once I had the privilege<br />
of introducing a luminary<br />
to him), with Susan Sontag,<br />
or with the politician in the<br />
then-opposition party, Angela<br />
Merkel, were not mere conversations<br />
but always had an aim,<br />
an urgency, such as when, one<br />
day before September 11, over<br />
lunch at my home, Richard<br />
insisted on the prime importance<br />
of Pakistan. The events of<br />
the next day proved him right,<br />
even though he had to wait the<br />
better part of a decade before<br />
he could tackle what he knew<br />
all along was the key to “ending<br />
a war,” never once considering<br />
the ending to his own life<br />
would be so poorly timed.<br />
By Volker Schlöndorff<br />
© Mike Minehan
A Historian at Heart<br />
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 7<br />
A voracious reader, Holbrooke found inspiration for his public work between the pages of his favorite texts<br />
Richard Holbrooke<br />
will always be remembered<br />
as his generation’s<br />
premier diplomat and statesman<br />
– a doer. But he also was<br />
a person who had a keen sense<br />
of the past and the role memory<br />
plays in defining today’s world –<br />
he was a historian at heart.<br />
¿<br />
Holbrooke loved history. He<br />
loved books and arguments,<br />
stories and sweeping narratives.<br />
In that sense he shared<br />
so much with the historiandiplomat<br />
he deeply admired,<br />
George Kennan. Holbrooke had<br />
little tolerance for the instant<br />
policy books that dominate<br />
Washington’s bookshelves (he<br />
described them as “glorified<br />
Foreign Affairs articles”) and<br />
always pushed people to write<br />
history; something, he would<br />
say, that would last.<br />
I learned this firsthand in<br />
the years I assisted him with his<br />
Bosnia memoir, as I watched<br />
him devour other great histories<br />
to help inspire his writing.<br />
In government, Holbrooke<br />
always infused his arguments<br />
with history (needless to say,<br />
Vietnam came up quite a bit<br />
in describing his most recent<br />
mission in Afghanistan and<br />
Pakistan), and he would circulate<br />
chapters from history books<br />
to his staff and colleagues. And<br />
history was at the core of his<br />
love for his wife, Kati, and<br />
her many books that explored<br />
the past in innovative and<br />
powerful ways.<br />
In my last conversation<br />
with him, shortly before he<br />
fell ill, he mentioned that he’d<br />
been re-reading Orwell’s 1946<br />
essay “Politics and the English<br />
Language” and intended to<br />
distribute copies to his team.<br />
“There’s so much bad writing<br />
in government,” he said. In<br />
recent months, we had started<br />
to talk about the next book he<br />
wanted to write, which I believe<br />
could have been the greatest<br />
diplomatic memoir since<br />
Kennan’s over forty years ago.<br />
I will miss so many things<br />
about Richard, and only with<br />
deep sadness can I accept<br />
that we will never get to read<br />
that book.<br />
By Derek Chollet<br />
This article first appeared in<br />
Foreign Policy online.<br />
AmercAcademie_185x124 22.03.<strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> 17:55 Uhr Seite 1<br />
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BONJOUR, MONSIEUR BOTERO. 1982<br />
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8 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Extravagant Laughter<br />
A friendship nurtured by dinner-party chats, political spats, and hours of professional football<br />
Dick and I met in<br />
Washington – 1965 or<br />
1966 – at one of the<br />
many weeknight dinner parties<br />
for a dozen or twenty guests<br />
arranged by Polly Wisner, a<br />
legendary hostess. These occasions<br />
were insistently meritocratic<br />
and cosmopolitan. An<br />
Israeli defense minister might<br />
be at dinner, or Sir Isaiah<br />
Berlin visiting Washington<br />
from Oxford to lecture on<br />
Russian literature. The most<br />
striking feature of these occasions<br />
was the calculated mix of<br />
elders and kids, personages and<br />
apprentices. In my twenties,<br />
the hundred-dollar-per-week<br />
book critic of the Washington<br />
Post, I might be seated beside<br />
my boss, Katherine Graham,<br />
and at the same table with<br />
Charles Bohlen or Averell<br />
Harriman. Nobody at that table<br />
would inquire where I had<br />
attended boarding school or<br />
whether my people summered<br />
at Fishers Island.<br />
The ruling principle at these<br />
encounters was instructional,<br />
at its best educational. The<br />
young among us were expected<br />
to govern our conduct by common<br />
sense, but not by caution.<br />
Fine wines and spirits were<br />
served in abundance, and we<br />
were encouraged to enjoy them.<br />
The parties ended at eleven<br />
sharp. Sometimes grownup<br />
guests would be obliged to<br />
leave early, summoned to the<br />
White House or Pentagon or<br />
State Department, but it was<br />
assumed that everyone at the<br />
Wisners’ tables had nationally<br />
consequential work to do first<br />
thing in the morning.<br />
Were we expected to zip<br />
our lips while affairs of the<br />
day were debated by the best<br />
and brightest? There was an<br />
unspoken policy of speakwhen-spoken-to,<br />
but The Young<br />
(maybe one-third of the guests)<br />
were very frequently spoken to,<br />
our opinions solicited. And no<br />
one I met at Polly Wisner’s – or<br />
since 1966 anywhere else in<br />
the world – was more willing to<br />
share his opinions about anything<br />
at all than was my friend<br />
Dick Holbrooke.<br />
Those reading this who met<br />
Dick in his full flamboyant<br />
flower of intellect and will and<br />
self-certainty should know that<br />
he was no different when he<br />
was twenty-three. And because<br />
the subject effacing all others<br />
in the mid-to-late-1960s was<br />
of course Vietnam, and because<br />
Dick’s first job in the foreign<br />
service was in Vietnam, and<br />
because I first encountered<br />
him home from Saigon to<br />
report to his superiors (he did<br />
have notional superiors) I first<br />
experienced Dick’s style of<br />
Ciceronian discourse applied<br />
to his view of the proper course<br />
of United States policy in<br />
Southeast Asia. His view – relying<br />
on the study of captured<br />
enemy documents and his<br />
systematic study of Vietnamese<br />
history and culture as it had<br />
played out against the French<br />
in 1956 – called for ratcheting<br />
up US commitment. This was<br />
not my view, which was that<br />
Americans should come home<br />
and behave themselves, but<br />
confirming that a broken clock<br />
tells perfect time twice a day, I<br />
happened to be right. Thus<br />
my first exchange of opinions<br />
with the young diplomat:<br />
Me: “How can you be so sure ?”<br />
Dick: “Because I’m not a fool ?”<br />
Me: “And I am a fool.”<br />
Dick: “You be the judge. I’d<br />
call it case closed.”<br />
Me: “You’re a jackass.”<br />
We two prodigies met a few<br />
years later in Princeton, where<br />
we were living with our families<br />
in junior faculty housing.<br />
We became close: we both<br />
missed Washington, and our<br />
younger sons were born a day<br />
apart in Princeton Hospital.<br />
Dick and I watched pro football<br />
games on Sundays. I soon<br />
learned to expect that if I was<br />
watching an event with Dick<br />
something momentous was<br />
bound to happen. So it was that<br />
we were together witnessing<br />
the upstart Jets’ Broadway Joe<br />
Namath redeem his cocksure<br />
promise of victory over Johnny<br />
Unitas’s old-guard Colts in<br />
Super Bowl III. And we were<br />
watching TV together in<br />
Vermont on February 23, 1976<br />
when Franz Klammer threw<br />
himself down the Olympic<br />
downhill course at Innsbruck<br />
to win the Gold Medal in the<br />
most ferocious expression of<br />
reckless physical skill either of<br />
us had ever witnessed.<br />
It seemed that Dick’s passionate<br />
engagement with whatever<br />
was at hand forced a dramatic<br />
outcome. And his sense<br />
of the ridiculous – his instinct<br />
for the distinction between<br />
ambition and performance –<br />
was exquisitely refined. He was<br />
a fanatic fan – the redundancy<br />
is necessary – and the most<br />
extravagant laugher I’ve ever<br />
known.<br />
It’s losing the sound of that<br />
laughter that breaks my heart.<br />
I’ll close with a ski trip we<br />
two took to Sol y Nieve, in the<br />
mountains above Granada.<br />
Skiing was an important bond<br />
for us. I believe that it amused<br />
Dick that some processes and<br />
phenomena – gravity, say, and<br />
iced pistes – were resistant to<br />
his charms and only grudgingly<br />
submissive to his will.<br />
This spring day of 1972 the<br />
sun was behind clouds and<br />
the wind blew snow off the ice<br />
upon which Francisco Franco’s<br />
army conscripts were being<br />
obliged to learn the science<br />
and art of skiing. They were<br />
beginners, of course, and their<br />
equipment primitive. They<br />
stumbled and got snow down<br />
the necks of wool uniforms so<br />
manifestly uncomfortable that<br />
they made me itch just looking<br />
at them. That day we watched<br />
grown men cry, and Dick at<br />
dinner couldn’t shut up about<br />
the karma of it – here was the<br />
undisguised face of dictatorship,<br />
inflicting arbitrary misery,<br />
unable to stand on its feet, let<br />
alone execute a parallel turn.<br />
We were sharing a room at<br />
a parador on the mountain, and<br />
immediately after dinner Dick<br />
went to bed, determined to be<br />
up and at ’em at first light. I did<br />
not go early to bed. I went to<br />
the bar and drank much more<br />
Fundador (por favor) than I<br />
needed. I met some Aussies at<br />
the bar, two young women, and<br />
a sullen young man. I decided<br />
that I was charming, and as<br />
long as I paid for the brandy –<br />
mine and the two young<br />
women’s – they agreed that I<br />
was charming. Even hilarious.<br />
I told of the alpine legionnaires<br />
under the command of el generalissimo,<br />
Caudillo de España,<br />
por la gracia de Dios. We sang<br />
songs. We drank more brandy.<br />
And then I heard from across<br />
the lobby a thunderous voice:<br />
“Wolff! Geoffrey Wolff! You<br />
come to bed right this minute!”<br />
Our diplomat was approaching<br />
fast to take me by the ear.<br />
He was wearing pajamas. These<br />
were cotton flannel pajamas,<br />
their dominant color mustard,<br />
or maybe it was honey. Memory<br />
assures me that printed on<br />
those pajamas were teddy bears.<br />
I must misremember that<br />
detail, don’t you think? I do not<br />
misremember that Ambassador<br />
Holbrooke was in dictator mode,<br />
and that his every wish was my<br />
command, and that I wouldn’t<br />
have had it any other way.<br />
By Geoffrey Wolff
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 9<br />
© nora feller/Getty Images<br />
ASSISTANT SECRETARY of STATE RICHARD HOLBROOKE sharing a laugh with HIS wife KATI MARTON and his sons DAVID (L) and Anthony<br />
AT their wedding on MAY 1, 1995<br />
Among those whom I like or admire,<br />
I can find no common denominator,<br />
but among those whom I love, I can:<br />
all of them make me laugh.<br />
w. h. auden
10 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Beneath the Bluster<br />
Holbrooke’s aggressive demeanor belied a deep compassion for humanity<br />
© Andrew Holbrooke/Corbis<br />
at the office, NEW YORK CITY, <strong>20</strong>09<br />
I<br />
worked for Henry<br />
Kissinger at the State<br />
Department from 1973–<br />
1977 and met Richard in 1977<br />
when he came in to serve in<br />
the Carter administration. We<br />
were just acquaintances then,<br />
but I got to know him better<br />
in Berlin, where my husband<br />
was the US ambassador from<br />
1985–1987 and where we maintain<br />
close ties.<br />
Richard became the ambassador<br />
in 1993, not long after<br />
the fall of the Berlin Wall and<br />
reunification. He was not considered<br />
a German scholar or<br />
even a European expert, but the<br />
fact that he became a very successful<br />
ambassador to Germany<br />
and then assistant secretary<br />
for European affairs did not<br />
surprise me at all. Richard<br />
always had a knack of knowing<br />
what he did not know and either<br />
staying away from it (i.e., the<br />
Middle East) or learning what<br />
he needed to know. So, you can<br />
imagine my shock, some years<br />
later, when he proposed the<br />
idea of the American Academy<br />
in Berlin.<br />
It was a very Holbrooke idea,<br />
replacing a military institution<br />
with an institute of culture,<br />
and it wasn’t easy to raise the<br />
money for yet another German/<br />
American institution. But he<br />
We stand face-to-face<br />
with the terrible question<br />
of evil and do not even<br />
know what is before us,<br />
let alone what to pit<br />
against it.<br />
carl jung
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 11<br />
was never one to be deterred,<br />
and we did it by brute force.<br />
Henry Kissinger liked to say<br />
about him, “If Richard calls you<br />
and asks you for something,<br />
just say yes. If you say no, you<br />
will eventually get to yes, but<br />
the journey will be very painful.”<br />
Richard was exceptionally<br />
bright and strategic. He<br />
would always place himself<br />
in the right place at the right<br />
time. You couldn’t be in his<br />
presence without marveling<br />
at how he could think outside<br />
the box. Shortly after he was<br />
named the special representative<br />
for AfPak, he insisted that<br />
both leaders, Hamid Karzai<br />
and Asif Ali Zardari, come to<br />
Washington together. He would<br />
not let them come separately.<br />
And he insisted that all of the<br />
cabinet-level meetings take<br />
place together as well. He was<br />
a big believer in civil society<br />
and institutions that could help<br />
these countries get on their<br />
feet, but he told me many times<br />
this was the toughest job he’d<br />
ever had. I sensed this summer<br />
that he was down, but Richard<br />
was not one to stay down, and<br />
he was never one to give up.<br />
Ç<br />
He could be very tough, it’s<br />
true. But once you came to<br />
know Richard, you realized<br />
that there was a big heart<br />
underneath the bluster. His<br />
impatience and insensitivity<br />
were often cited, but he actually<br />
cared more deeply about the<br />
human condition than almost<br />
anyone I know. Just ask people<br />
at the Asia Society or Refugees<br />
International, to name a few<br />
of the ngos that he helped<br />
establish or lent his considerable<br />
skill to.<br />
I don’t know of anyone else<br />
who could traverse so many different<br />
strata of people. When<br />
he went into the hospital, the<br />
calls were coming in from<br />
President Bill Clinton, Mick<br />
Jagger, and President Obama,<br />
and Hillary Clinton was there<br />
at his bedside. He could have<br />
friendships with all of these<br />
very different people and yet<br />
love them all and appreciate<br />
them all in their own way. And<br />
therefore his network became<br />
probably the most remarkable<br />
of anyone I have ever known.<br />
He loved knitting this whole<br />
patchwork together, and he did<br />
it expertly.<br />
On the night of December 13,<br />
while I was at the hospital, I<br />
looked around at his very<br />
youthful staff, and they were<br />
devastated, to the person. He<br />
had assembled the best and the<br />
brightest; these are kids in their<br />
<strong>20</strong>s and 30s. He was a wonderful<br />
mentor and relished the role.<br />
I was struck watching him<br />
on television one morning<br />
when he referenced Mika<br />
Brzezinski’s dad, Willie Geist’s<br />
dad, and Mark Halperin’s<br />
father. He knew the fathers,<br />
and now he knew the sons and<br />
daughters. Richard died before<br />
his time, but the mark he left<br />
on many, many institutions<br />
will be felt for years and decades<br />
to come. He will be sorely<br />
missed and never replaced in<br />
our hearts.<br />
By Gahl Hodges Burt<br />
This article first appeared in<br />
Foreign Policy online.<br />
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12 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Like a Western<br />
People like him just aren’t made any more<br />
Goodbye drinks in<br />
the Residence: after<br />
a mere nine months<br />
as ambassador to Germany,<br />
Richard Holbrooke was leaving<br />
in 1994 to head the European<br />
desk at the State Department.<br />
Dick took a small wooden figure<br />
with a bent head and bound<br />
hands from a glass case. It had<br />
been carved in a concentration<br />
camp by a Bosniac with a<br />
piece of glass and thrust into<br />
Holbrooke’s hands: “Please take<br />
this home. Tell America what is<br />
happening to us here.”<br />
This figure was a legacy. The<br />
European desk became the<br />
command post of Balkan policy,<br />
and Holbrooke, the “bulldozer,”<br />
became the conqueror of<br />
Slobodan Milosevic. This was<br />
not an exchange of diplomatic<br />
niceties; it was a showdown,<br />
something out of a Western.<br />
As Holbrooke wrote in his<br />
memoir of the Bosnian conflict,<br />
To End a War: “The Serbs talk<br />
big, but if you aim a pistol at<br />
them, they’re nothing but little<br />
troublemakers.”<br />
In one of the endless talks<br />
with Milosevic, Holbrooke<br />
set up a field telephone that<br />
connected him with the<br />
commander of un troops in<br />
Sarajevo. In another duel, the<br />
weapon of choice was alcohol.<br />
The Serb leader wanted to disable<br />
Holbrooke by making him<br />
drunk. “Therefore, we decided<br />
we would refuse drinks until<br />
we had reached a partial solution.”<br />
At the Dayton Air Force<br />
base, where, in 1995 the war<br />
was halted, Holbrooke placed<br />
the Serb delegation next to a<br />
cruise missile, the most potent<br />
symbol of American military<br />
might.<br />
L<br />
It was in Dayton that<br />
Holbrooke carved out a place<br />
for himself in the history<br />
books, even though in 1999<br />
cruise missiles were ultimately<br />
deployed during the war in<br />
Kosovo – for 78 days. The<br />
Balkans, synonymous with<br />
war until the last year of the<br />
twentieth century, had finally<br />
achieved peace. Yet a second<br />
triumph, as Obama’s man for<br />
Afghanistan and Pakistan, was<br />
not granted to Holbrooke. On<br />
December 14, <strong>20</strong>10 he died,<br />
69 years old, in Washington,<br />
after a twenty-hour emergency<br />
operation on a torn aorta.<br />
They don’t make people<br />
like Holbrooke any more, even<br />
less so in Germany, where a<br />
civil servant remains a civil<br />
servant until they turn 65. It is<br />
almost impossible to list all of<br />
Holbrooke’s jobs: junior diplomat<br />
(at 21) in Vietnam, Peace<br />
Corps director in Morocco,<br />
editor of Foreign Policy, head of<br />
the East Asia desk at the State<br />
Department, ambassador to<br />
Germany, Balkan negotiator,<br />
author, banker, ambassador<br />
to the United Nations. When<br />
Obama named Holbrooke as<br />
special representative to AfPak,<br />
Holbrooke was working on<br />
Wall Street. He served four US<br />
presidents: Johnson, Carter,<br />
Clinton, and Obama.<br />
© Amaerican Academy Archive photograph<br />
richard holbrooke AdDRESSES an audience in MUNICH, <strong>20</strong>07
VAT_39L_300_Energiemix_210x135 1 23.03.11 15:43<br />
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 13<br />
He would have preferred to<br />
become a journalist. One of<br />
our colleagues called him a<br />
“frustrated foreign correspondent”;<br />
“he thinks like a journalist,<br />
he’s as stubborn as a journalist.”<br />
A friend, Frank Wisner,<br />
said: “He knew instinctively<br />
how to feed a reporter, he knew<br />
how to engage the press in<br />
order to get his agenda passed.”<br />
Talking with this wannabe<br />
journalist was not easy.<br />
Sometimes he gave a commentary<br />
on a football match on<br />
TV until the journalist, clearly<br />
unnerved, shut down his laptop.<br />
Our last talk, last year, took<br />
place in the kitchen of his New<br />
York apartment. Half of the talk<br />
was about Afghanistan, the<br />
other half about a giant panettone,<br />
a Christmas present to<br />
his wife, Kati Marton. The<br />
problem was: how to cover up<br />
the traces of nibbling on the<br />
panettone, since his wife had<br />
put him on a strict diet? While<br />
we didn’t solve the strategic<br />
problem of Afghanistan, we did<br />
achieve a tactical victory with<br />
the cake: we simply made it<br />
disappear.<br />
Holbrooke was larger than<br />
life – physically as well as<br />
intellectually. This bulldozer<br />
was driven, on the one hand,<br />
by unlimited ambition and<br />
energy and, on the other hand,<br />
braked by a sensitivity when he<br />
realized that he had gone too<br />
far. He then overwhelmed his<br />
friends and enemies with just<br />
as much charm and humor. For<br />
that reason, his friends loved<br />
him and his enemies forgave<br />
him; for that reason, the White<br />
House always called on him.<br />
Puffed-up sail, immense ego.<br />
It was just these undiplomatic<br />
qualities that gave him an inexhaustible<br />
stubbornness, which<br />
made him one of the most brilliant<br />
practioners of foreign policy<br />
in American history. Nobody<br />
expressed it as well as Henry<br />
Kissinger: “If Richard asks you<br />
something, just say yes. If you<br />
say no, you’ll eventually get<br />
to yes, but the journey will be<br />
very painful.” With Milosevic,<br />
Holbrooke just sat put: seven<br />
hours, twelve hours, in the end,<br />
fifty hours, until he had driven<br />
him mad.<br />
Holbrooke worked with<br />
Kissinger to deliver a unique<br />
success story, one that belongs<br />
to “cultural diplomacy.” Shortly<br />
before Holbrooke left Bonn,<br />
in 1994, he gathered his own<br />
“Henry,” former German president<br />
Weizsäcker, and a small<br />
group of committed friends<br />
to whom German-American<br />
relations were dear at Berlin’s<br />
Hotel Kempinski. These were<br />
the founding members of the<br />
American Academy, without<br />
which Berlin’s cultural fabric<br />
cannot be imagined. He also<br />
brought in the first six million<br />
dollars, donated by the family<br />
of New York German-Jewish<br />
banker Hans Arnhold. Without<br />
Holbrooke this intellectual<br />
lighthouse would never have<br />
been born.<br />
Let us quote, in closing,<br />
Hillary Clinton: “Richard<br />
helped shape our history,<br />
manage our perilous present,<br />
and secure our future.”<br />
The Washington Post called<br />
Holbrooke a “literary figure.”<br />
Just before he was anesthetized<br />
at George Washington<br />
University Hospital, he is<br />
supposed to have whispered<br />
to his Pakistani surgeon:<br />
“You must stop this war in<br />
Afghanistan.”<br />
By Josef Joffe<br />
This obituary was originally<br />
published in Die Zeit on<br />
December 15, <strong>20</strong>10.<br />
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14 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
A Man and His Métier<br />
Investment banking was not his first love, nor his second, third, or fourth<br />
The date was Friday,<br />
September 9, 1993. The<br />
Berlin Brigade of the<br />
US Army had left Berlin for<br />
the last time the day before<br />
with a Grosser Zapfenstreich<br />
ceremony at the Brandenburg<br />
Gate. A New Traditions<br />
Conference was being held at<br />
the Kronprinzenpalais, followed<br />
by a gala dinner sponsored<br />
by Deutsche Bank. The<br />
name of the US ambassador<br />
to Germany was Richard<br />
Holbrooke.<br />
I had known Richard for several<br />
years, not in his capacity as<br />
a diplomat but in that of a businessman;<br />
he was a businessman<br />
whenever the Democrats<br />
were out of power. During<br />
the Reagan administration he<br />
worked for Lehman Brothers.<br />
Investment banking was clearly<br />
not his first love, and probably<br />
not his second, third, or fourth<br />
love either, but he graciously<br />
entertained clients such as<br />
me at expensive New York<br />
restaurants.<br />
But now, with Bill Clinton<br />
as president, he was back in<br />
his métier. He was considered<br />
an Asia expert and reportedly<br />
wanted to be named ambassador<br />
to Japan. But President<br />
Clinton appointed him to Bonn<br />
instead. If Richard was disappointed,<br />
he didn’t show it but<br />
instead threw himself into this<br />
unfamiliar assignment with<br />
typical Holbrooke abandon.<br />
His parents had left Hamburg<br />
because of the Nazis, and his<br />
mother had not set foot on<br />
German soil since. When she<br />
heard about Richard’s new<br />
job, she threw up her arms in<br />
disgust and exclaimed: “Auch<br />
das noch!”<br />
Getting back to the dinner<br />
on September 9, 1993. During<br />
dessert Richard went around<br />
the room and asked several<br />
of us to go to the next room,<br />
which served as a messy staging<br />
area for the dinner. He<br />
spoke with great passion about<br />
the close links between the<br />
US and West Berlin since the<br />
end of World War II. America<br />
had saved West Berlin repeatedly<br />
from falling into Russian<br />
hands, and Berliners knew this.<br />
They loved America and what<br />
it stood for. He told us that this<br />
connection shouldn’t just suddenly<br />
end, and that we should<br />
form an institution in Berlin for<br />
German and American intellectuals<br />
and leading citizens<br />
to meet and continue their<br />
special relationship. He called<br />
it “The American Academy in<br />
Berlin.” All of us mumbled our<br />
agreement to join the board, or<br />
at least we didn’t say no. The<br />
whole thing lasted about ten<br />
minutes.<br />
The next day, a Saturday,<br />
at 11 am, those of us still in<br />
Berlin held a constituting board<br />
meeting, and the American<br />
Academy in Berlin was officially<br />
born. We then dispersed in all<br />
directions.<br />
ã<br />
Richard didn’t stay long as<br />
ambassador to Germany. The<br />
Balkans beckoned, and his<br />
greatest accomplishment came<br />
later with the successful conclusion<br />
of the Dayton Peace talks.<br />
Making the American Academy<br />
in Berlin a reality had to wait.<br />
When the Republicans were<br />
back in power, Richard now had<br />
several new activities besides<br />
investment banking. Perhaps<br />
the one he enjoyed the most<br />
was chairing the American<br />
Academy in Berlin. A villa<br />
was obtained from the city of<br />
Berlin, and it soon had a new<br />
name: Hans Arnhold Center,<br />
thanks to a generous initial gift<br />
by Stephen and Anne-Maria<br />
Kellen, which restored the<br />
villa for its intended use. As<br />
for Richard’s mother, she was<br />
finally persuaded to come for<br />
a return visit to Germany. I<br />
remember her sitting graciously<br />
at a dinner in Berlin, looking<br />
happy and engaged and having<br />
found some peace in encountering<br />
the new Germany. She<br />
struck me as a symbol of the<br />
closing of the tortured twentieth<br />
century.<br />
I saw Richard for the last<br />
time on November 8 of last year,<br />
at our board dinner, hosted<br />
by Norman Pearlstine at the<br />
Beacon Restaurant in New York.<br />
He overheard a conversation I<br />
had with Jim Wolfensohn about<br />
Carnegie Hall. Wolfensohn<br />
told me that his proudest<br />
accomplishment and legacy<br />
was not the work he had done<br />
leading the World Bank but the<br />
significant role he had played in<br />
saving Carnegie Hall from the<br />
wrecking ball. Richard took me<br />
aside and said: “The way Jim<br />
feels about Carnegie Hall is the<br />
way I feel about the American<br />
Academy.” Those were the last<br />
words he spoke to me.<br />
By Karl M. von der Heyden<br />
If Only Holbrooke Had Been in the Balkans in 1914<br />
From the very beginning<br />
I was impressed<br />
by Richard’s fierce intelligence<br />
and burning ambition<br />
to understand and, if possible,<br />
change the world. We first met<br />
in 1969 in Princeton: both of us<br />
were opposed to the Vietnam<br />
War, which we thought was<br />
injurious to our national interests.<br />
He was 29 at the time<br />
(I was somewhat older), but<br />
I don’t think the gap in our<br />
ages ever made any difference.<br />
We thought of each other as<br />
contemporaries.<br />
The following year, for a<br />
variety of personal reasons, he<br />
invited me and my family to<br />
visit him in Morocco, where<br />
he had been made head of the<br />
Peace Corps. I came to admire<br />
more deeply his personality,<br />
the rapidity of his learning, his<br />
highly nuanced Francophilia<br />
(he was fluent in the language),<br />
and the way he got on with<br />
Peace Corps volunteers and<br />
with the Moroccan political<br />
leadership. I thought of him<br />
as an ideal American proconsul.<br />
The combination of his<br />
profound knowledge and his<br />
extraordinary analytical skill<br />
was accompanied by a tactical<br />
energy and an ability to see not<br />
only all aspects of a given situation,<br />
but all of its ramifications<br />
as well: a man of that talent<br />
and ambition doesn’t remain<br />
director of the Peace Corps in<br />
Morocco for very long.<br />
He was wonderfully open and at<br />
peace in Morocco, though. We<br />
spent our days talking about<br />
writing, which was a passion of<br />
his – though it was never more<br />
important for him than action.<br />
He understood, already in 1970,<br />
that the success of our foreign<br />
policy depended on building<br />
relationships – not just between<br />
countries, but between people.<br />
He was capable of admiration<br />
of other people, and he was a<br />
quick judge of human beings.
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 15<br />
© Orjan F. EllingvAG/Corbis<br />
FORMER PRESIDENTS GEORGE H. W. BUSH and BILL CLINTON at the PRIVATE SECTOR SUMMIT for POST-TSUNAMI RECONSTRUCTION and<br />
REHABILITATION in may <strong>20</strong>05. RICHARD HOLBROOKE, chairman of the ASIA SOCIETY, was moderator<br />
He had a particularly intuitive<br />
grasp of the distinction<br />
between capable and less capable<br />
colleagues and didn’t always<br />
disguise his views.<br />
ï<br />
Almost immediately upon his<br />
nomination as ambassador<br />
to Germany in 1993 he got in<br />
touch with me and asked me<br />
to become his senior advisor<br />
in Bonn. We arrived there<br />
at the same time in October<br />
1993. He quickly came to be<br />
perceived as quintessentially<br />
American in his openness, his<br />
energy, and his controlled candor.<br />
Europeans immediately<br />
understood him to be one of the<br />
most appealing, constructive<br />
American diplomats. I doubt<br />
that nato’s expansion would<br />
have happened had he not<br />
seized the initiative in those<br />
years. Later, of course, he went<br />
to the Balkans to devote his considerable<br />
energies to stopping<br />
a war.<br />
Once, at a celebratory occasion<br />
in Richard’s honor, on<br />
November 11, <strong>20</strong>04, by chance<br />
an anniversary of the Great<br />
War’s Armistice Day, I speculated<br />
about what might have<br />
happened if Holbrooke as a<br />
young statesman might have<br />
been in Europe in the summer<br />
of 1914:<br />
He would have gone on alert as<br />
soon as the Austrian archduke<br />
was assassinated in Sarajevo<br />
on June 28, 1914. When he<br />
first heard rumors of the<br />
Austrian ultimatum on Serbia,<br />
he would have jumped on the<br />
Orient Express and gone to<br />
Belgrade. There he would have<br />
told the Serbs: “For God’s sake,<br />
accept the ultimatum. Cheat<br />
later.” Before adding sotto voce,<br />
“I have in my pocket evidence<br />
of your complicity in the crime<br />
at Sarajevo.”<br />
He then would have been on<br />
his way to Vienna: “You’ll<br />
destroy your multi-national<br />
empire, already attainted, if<br />
you allow the Germans to push<br />
you into war. Don’t do it.” On<br />
to Berlin: “You’re going to risk<br />
your growing strength, your<br />
clear ascendancy, by linking<br />
yourself to a living corpse,<br />
the Austrian Empire? For<br />
a Habsburg – your ancient<br />
enemy?” On to St. Petersburg:<br />
“Have you learned nothing from<br />
1905? Another war, another<br />
revolution?” He then would<br />
have come to London, threw<br />
his arms around David Lloyd<br />
George and said, “David, you<br />
mustn’t go to war. All your<br />
social reforms will perish and<br />
some future historian will write<br />
a book about The Strange<br />
Death of Liberal England.”<br />
Yes, the Great War could have<br />
been averted if only Richard<br />
Holbrooke had been around.<br />
Stretching back to those days<br />
in Morocco, to the last time<br />
I saw him, at a recent meeting<br />
at a dinner for the American<br />
Academy in Berlin (which<br />
he founded and which we may<br />
regard as his greatest lasting<br />
legacy: symbol and reality of<br />
the civilian-cultural outreach of<br />
the United States), he remained<br />
a genuine, quiet, deep-down<br />
patriot, ever concerned with the<br />
fate of the United States. His<br />
death is a horror and a loss<br />
to me of a friend, and of a much,<br />
much admired contemporary.<br />
It is a loss to the nation of a<br />
talent that had earned worldwide<br />
recognition, a talent<br />
that could have still done so<br />
much for us.<br />
By Fritz Stern<br />
This article first appeared in<br />
Foreign Policy online.
16 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
The House That Holbrooke Built<br />
Divining Berlin as a future capital of culture and influence<br />
I<br />
think I was the first<br />
to have the Holbrooke<br />
Distinguished Visitorship<br />
at the American Academy in<br />
Berlin. It was a great honor, and<br />
it gave me enormous pleasure<br />
because Richard was a very<br />
old friend.<br />
We met in Saigon in early<br />
1966, when Richard was<br />
working as an assistant to<br />
Ambassador Cabot Lodge, and I<br />
was a fledging journalist. I will<br />
never forget the bicycle trip we<br />
took around the city one Sunday,<br />
Richard analyzing local politics<br />
as we made our way through<br />
the dense traffic of cyclo-pousses,<br />
motor scooters, ancient Frenchmade<br />
taxis, motorcycles, and<br />
heavy trucks. I was terrified.<br />
There were no stoplights<br />
and apparently no way to tell<br />
which side had the right of way<br />
at intersections. But Richard<br />
had figured out that Saigon<br />
drivers had a common understanding,<br />
and that there was an<br />
underlying order to the traffic.<br />
So we cycled on unharmed,<br />
he hardly drawing a breath in<br />
his disquisition.<br />
K<br />
I mention this because Richard,<br />
while always working the interests<br />
of his country, had fine<br />
antennae for the cultural patterns<br />
of the countries in which<br />
he served.<br />
When the American forces<br />
left Berlin, Richard felt they<br />
shouldn’t leave an absence –<br />
that the city should have some<br />
token of the continuing importance<br />
of US-German relations.<br />
While some might have chosen<br />
a monument, he, divining that<br />
Berlin would become one of<br />
the great cultural centers in<br />
Germany, thought to create the<br />
American Academy in Berlin.<br />
And Richard didn’t just have the<br />
idea. With all his other responsibilities,<br />
he worked very hard<br />
to make it a reality. When I had<br />
the privilege of a two-week stay<br />
at the Academy in <strong>20</strong>06, I was<br />
thrilled to see that the Academy<br />
was all that he had envisioned:<br />
a major center for intellectual<br />
and artistic exchange – and one<br />
with wonderful food.<br />
If I had any say in it, I would<br />
rename the institution in his<br />
honor. Were he still with us, I<br />
would have many facetious suggestions,<br />
such as the Holbrooke<br />
Home for Wayward Americans,<br />
but, unbelievably, he is not.<br />
By Frances Fitzgerald<br />
© Hornischer<br />
THe AMERICAN academy in berlin board of trustees and spring <strong>20</strong>07 fellows
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 17<br />
A Last Breakfast<br />
The Academy’s president and CEO recalls his final meeting with the Academy’s founder<br />
Richard Holbrooke<br />
was a founder of the<br />
American Academy in<br />
Berlin and, until his death in<br />
December, one of its proudest<br />
patrons.<br />
Together with Henry<br />
Kissinger and former German<br />
President Richard von<br />
Weizsäcker, Richard announced<br />
the creation of the Academy<br />
on September 9, 1994, one day<br />
after the US military withdrew<br />
its troops from Germany’s<br />
capital. He was then serving<br />
as America’s ambassador to<br />
Germany, having supervised<br />
the embassy’s recent move from<br />
Bonn to Berlin.<br />
Our mission statement<br />
embodies Richard’s belief that a<br />
cultural institution committed<br />
to scholarship and public policy<br />
could “foster greater understanding<br />
and dialogue between<br />
the people of the United States<br />
and the people of Germany<br />
through its presence in Berlin,<br />
a city with which the United<br />
States should maintain its<br />
unique cultural, social, political,<br />
and historical links.”<br />
â<br />
© <strong>20</strong>03 Mike Minehan<br />
In the years following the<br />
Academy’s creation, Richard<br />
served as our chairman when<br />
he wasn’t in government – as<br />
an assistant secretary of state,<br />
as US ambassador to the United<br />
Nations, and, most recently,<br />
as President Obama’s special<br />
representative for Afghanistan<br />
and Pakistan.<br />
I last saw Richard in<br />
November <strong>20</strong>10. Over breakfast<br />
at Washington’s Four Seasons<br />
hotel we spoke somberly<br />
about America’s challenges in<br />
Pakistan and Afghanistan. He<br />
told me despite the difficulty<br />
of his assignment and the wearying<br />
schedule that came with<br />
the job, he would stay in government<br />
so long as President<br />
AMERICAN ACADEMY in BERLIN BOARD MEETING luncheon, MAY 5, <strong>20</strong>03<br />
Obama and Secretary of State<br />
Hillary Rodham Clinton<br />
required his services.<br />
It was only when our conversation<br />
shifted to the Academy<br />
that his spirits brightened.<br />
He told me of his pride in the<br />
Academy, saying that his expectations<br />
had been high and that<br />
the Academy had exceeded all<br />
of them. He also revealed his<br />
desire to return to the Academy<br />
when his latest stint in government<br />
ended.<br />
While Richard’s death has<br />
deprived of us his leadership,<br />
the Academy remains the beneficiary<br />
of his vision, committed<br />
to building on that vision in<br />
the years to come.<br />
By Norman Pearlstine
18 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
To Move the World<br />
In this condolence letter, provided by Kati Marton, Henry A. Kissinger reflects on Holbrooke’s life and legacy<br />
Dear Kati –<br />
I read somewhere that<br />
getting old means<br />
becoming increasingly a foreigner<br />
in one’s own country.<br />
The companions of one’s youth<br />
disappear one by one and those<br />
that remain are the product of<br />
different impulses.<br />
Richard and I took our<br />
impetus from the early Sixties<br />
when for a moment hope and<br />
possibility seemed conjoined<br />
for America. We met in that<br />
distillation of disillusionment<br />
which was the Vietnam conflict.<br />
Richard had gone there as a foreign<br />
service officer, a so-called<br />
provincial reporter, I as consultant<br />
to Ambassador Lodge.<br />
We both found that our goals<br />
were not fulfillable but also<br />
that the values that brought us<br />
to Indochina remained valid. I<br />
watched a Republic Day parade<br />
from the balcony in Richard’s<br />
apartment together with him –<br />
both saddened by the probable<br />
futility of what we were watching<br />
but committed to draw the<br />
lessons which would prevent<br />
comparable tragedies.<br />
Richard’s life was a testimony<br />
to that quest. Though<br />
we acted on opposite sides of<br />
our political contests I always<br />
considered Richard the most<br />
talented and the most relevant<br />
thinker on his side of the political<br />
dividing lines. On all the big<br />
issues of the day Richard saw a<br />
challenge not an obstacle. He<br />
did me the honor in September<br />
to invite me to meet with his<br />
staff. Those dedicated men<br />
and women elevated a forlorn<br />
problem into a moral adventure.<br />
That they did it – physically in<br />
the very fringes of the State<br />
Department – at a moment<br />
that required rededication is<br />
a tribute to Richard’s leadership.<br />
Tales are told about his<br />
ambitiousness – many of them<br />
true. But he was above all ambitious<br />
to do, not to be. So at a<br />
moment when America was at<br />
a loss about its strategy Richard<br />
and his team were elaborating<br />
a direction that has a chance of<br />
surviving the military phase.<br />
Of course the American<br />
Academy in Berlin will stand<br />
as a lasting tribute to Richard’s<br />
vision and consistent application.<br />
I contributed my name,<br />
Richard the dedication and<br />
imagination that turned the<br />
Academy into a permanent<br />
fixture of transatlantic relations,<br />
fulfilling the vision of an<br />
American presence in Berlin<br />
long after the American troops<br />
had left.<br />
Richard and I in those long<br />
ago days on Martha’s Vineyard<br />
would reflect how the world<br />
would evolve. We stayed in<br />
touch in the decades since<br />
and he leaves a big hole in our<br />
nation’s life.<br />
You of course were a principal<br />
enabler; you gave him the<br />
emotional security and the<br />
Archimedean point from which<br />
he could try to move the world.<br />
And in a way he achieved his<br />
ultimate goal: in his death he<br />
became a unifier who brought<br />
together all factions in the<br />
appreciation of a dedicated life.<br />
Warm regards,<br />
Henry
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 19<br />
DOD photo by US Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley<br />
NAVY ADMIRAL MIKE MULLEN, chairman of the JOINT CHIEFS of STAFF, delivers the eulogy at the memorial service for AMBASSADOR<br />
RICHARD HOLBROOKE at the JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER for PERFORMING ARTS in WASHINGTON, DC, January 14, <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Not a Quiet American<br />
Richard Holbrooke’s<br />
legacy goes well<br />
beyond the critical<br />
role he played in bringing a<br />
decade of fragile peace in the<br />
Balkans, welcoming a reunified<br />
Germany in an expanding<br />
nato, and normalizing relations<br />
with China. He also leaves<br />
a vast, multigenerational, intercontinental<br />
network of friends.<br />
Secretary of State Hillary<br />
Rodham Clinton spoke for many<br />
when she said . . . that she had<br />
never so admired, so depended<br />
on, and so cared for someone<br />
who drove her so crazy so often.<br />
Richard, like each of us, was<br />
a package of complicated, not<br />
always harmonious, qualities.<br />
But in his case, the combination<br />
allowed him to epitomize<br />
the very best of what a single<br />
American can do to improve a<br />
dangerous world.<br />
The obituaries are filled with<br />
words not always associated<br />
with eulogies: brash, aggressive,<br />
unyielding, exhausting. But<br />
put those together with effective,<br />
pragmatic, purpose-driven,<br />
indefatigable, and idealistic,<br />
and they’re redolent of our<br />
national character. Not the Ugly<br />
American, and certainly not the<br />
Quiet American, but the Can-<br />
Do, Must-Do, Get-the-Hell-Outof-My-Way<br />
American. Larry<br />
Summers, who knew Richard<br />
well, captured the sum of his<br />
parts in a single phrase: “the<br />
audacity of determination.” . . .<br />
Sometimes his style aroused<br />
resistance and resentment. But<br />
often, he was so solidly grounded<br />
in his command of the facts,<br />
so rigorous in his logic, and so<br />
compelling in the essence of<br />
his position that any sensible<br />
target of his browbeating would<br />
have the good sense to discount<br />
the hyperbole and accept the<br />
force of his argument. And if<br />
the ensuing debate exposed<br />
a weakness in that argument,<br />
he’d listen, adjust, and press<br />
ahead for a solution to the problem<br />
at hand.<br />
A voracious reader (and writer),<br />
Richard was never bashful<br />
about enlisting history on his<br />
side – or, for that matter, anticipating<br />
what future historians<br />
would say. In the 1990s, during<br />
high-stress moments in the<br />
Situation Room, the Cabinet<br />
room, or the Oval Office,<br />
Richard would lecture those<br />
present on how future generations<br />
would not forgive us if we<br />
didn’t take decisive action to<br />
stop the latest outrage in the<br />
former Yugoslavia, in Africa, or<br />
in Southeast Asia. Eyes might<br />
roll, but the net effect was often<br />
agreement around the table, led<br />
by President Bill Clinton. As a<br />
result, talk would turn to action<br />
– an alchemy of which Richard<br />
was a master.<br />
Nothing pleased him more<br />
than engaging the next generation.<br />
As special representative<br />
for Afghanistan and Pakistan,<br />
he recruited up-and-coming<br />
diplomats, policymakers, aid<br />
specialists, intelligence analysts,<br />
and military officers<br />
to form a team of non-rivals<br />
unparalleled in the quality<br />
and diversity of its expertise<br />
and skill. We must hope that<br />
President Obama and Secretary<br />
Clinton find a way to maintain<br />
this sterling example of how<br />
government ought to work<br />
despite the loss of its captain.<br />
On a busy day some months<br />
ago, he was introduced to a<br />
14-year-old girl who mentioned<br />
that she had some sense of what<br />
he was doing because she had<br />
read The Kite Runner, a novel<br />
set in Kabul. Richard fixed his<br />
eyes on her and conducted a<br />
lively conversation with her for<br />
<strong>20</strong> minutes. Never mind if he<br />
was late to his next meeting.<br />
He had found someone who<br />
understood what was at stake in<br />
his last mission – and someone<br />
whose world is the better for all<br />
he accomplished.<br />
By Strobe Talbott<br />
This article is excerpted<br />
from the Washington<br />
Post, where it appeared on<br />
December 15, <strong>20</strong>10.
<strong>20</strong> | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
© Bettman/Corbis<br />
RICHARD HOLBROOKE outside the VIETNAMESE EMBASSY in PARIS for the second round of the US-VIETNAM talks aimed at<br />
NORMALIZING relations between the two countries. HOLBROOKE headed the AMERICAN delegation, MAY 4, 1977
Theory Versus Fact<br />
Scenes from a diplomatic career<br />
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 21<br />
Iconducted an oncamera<br />
interview with<br />
Richard Holbrooke at Brown<br />
University, my home institution<br />
and his alma mater (’62). At<br />
the time a “professor-at-large”<br />
at Brown, Holbrooke was a<br />
natural choice for our documentary<br />
film, Human Terrain.<br />
“Winning hearts and minds”<br />
was Holbrooke’s first mission<br />
when he went to Vietnam as a<br />
member of the Foreign Service<br />
in 1963; now it was part of a<br />
controversial program in Iraq<br />
and Afghanistan we were<br />
investigating.<br />
Other discomforting parallels<br />
emerged in the course of<br />
the interview. Holbrooke had<br />
lost three close colleagues<br />
when, en route to negotiations<br />
in Sarajevo, their armored<br />
personnel carrier plunged off<br />
the side of a mountain. We<br />
were struggling with the loss<br />
of a colleague and collaborator,<br />
Michael Bhatia (Brown, ’99),<br />
after his Humvee hit an ied on<br />
the way to an inter-tribal negotiation<br />
in Afghanistan.<br />
Holbrooke apologized for<br />
having to leave his mobile<br />
phone on during our interview:<br />
he was waiting for “a very<br />
important call.” He took three<br />
calls; judging by his mood and<br />
the candor of his remarks, I’d<br />
say he didn’t get the one he had<br />
hoped for.<br />
The interview lasted well<br />
over an hour, though it was<br />
scheduled for just fifteen minutes.<br />
Holbrooke spoke reflectively<br />
and eloquently on the use<br />
and abuse of historical analogies,<br />
the role of academics in<br />
foreign policy, and the continuing<br />
importance of public service.<br />
Below are some excerpts<br />
from the uncut interview.<br />
On Holbrooke’s early<br />
days as foreign service<br />
officer in Vietnam:<br />
I graduated from Brown in<br />
1962 and entered the foreign<br />
service, and they decided what<br />
they were going to do with me.<br />
. . . Because I was a bachelor,<br />
and very young . . . they decided<br />
to teach me Vietnamese and<br />
send me to Vietnam, and then<br />
from Vietnam I was sent to the<br />
Lower Mekong Delta as a civilian<br />
in the pacification program.<br />
People today would probably<br />
call it “nation building,” a very<br />
misleading phrase. It all happened<br />
kind of serendipitously.<br />
ó<br />
On theory versus<br />
practice in Vietnam and<br />
Afghanistan:<br />
The Michigan State University<br />
teams hired by the US government<br />
went into Vietnam, studied<br />
it carefully, and decided that<br />
it was a village-based society<br />
and the best way to deal with<br />
it was to strengthen villages.<br />
Some people wanted to defend<br />
each village with barbed wires<br />
and bamboo spikes . . . . But<br />
all of this depended not on the<br />
physical idea of defending a<br />
hamlet (they were called strategic<br />
hamlets in those days) [but<br />
rather on] a government that<br />
could provide services, security,<br />
and an ideology worth living for<br />
and risking your life for. And<br />
that all failed, not because the<br />
United States was wrong, but<br />
because the central government<br />
in Vietnam, in Saigon,<br />
was not up to the task. If this<br />
sounds familiar to people, it<br />
echoes exactly what’s happening<br />
in Afghanistan. Nobody<br />
wants the Taliban back – not<br />
nobody, but very few people.<br />
[Most Afghanis] remember the<br />
black years, the brutality, the<br />
abuse of women – I don’t mean<br />
normal abuse, which is bad<br />
enough, I’m talking about killing<br />
women who dared to get an<br />
education, and beating people<br />
who danced, and things like<br />
that – and yet in Afghanistan<br />
today, notwithstanding the<br />
hatred of the Taliban, you have<br />
a very major issue: . . . the government<br />
is not providing any of<br />
the services.<br />
Jerry Hickey . . . wrote a<br />
book called Village in Vietnam,<br />
which was one of the early<br />
books I studied, and . . . Sam<br />
Popkin wrote a book called<br />
The Rational Peasant – these<br />
were terrific books but they<br />
didn’t change the basic fact,<br />
which was that no matter<br />
how conceptually sound your<br />
theory was, it would rise or fall<br />
on the strength of the central<br />
government in Saigon. It’s the<br />
government’s ability to protect<br />
the people, deliver services,<br />
and not be corrupt, and on that<br />
score the government of Ngo<br />
Dinh Diem failed, and then the<br />
successor governments, the<br />
military governments, more or<br />
less failed. And meanwhile the<br />
Viet Cong, although they were<br />
brutal, had a clear ideology, and<br />
that ideology was based on their<br />
co-opting the idea of nationalism.<br />
Even though they were<br />
communists from the North,<br />
directed from the North, they<br />
presented themselves as indigenous,<br />
nationalist patriots, to<br />
drive the Americans out.<br />
Again, this sounds familiar<br />
to anyone who’s watching<br />
Afghanistan today. Although<br />
the terrain is completely different,<br />
the culture is completely<br />
different, and the technologies<br />
have changed a lot, the core<br />
equation remains the same,<br />
and the biggest problem for the<br />
United States in fighting wars<br />
like Vietnam and Afghanistan<br />
is that they risk becoming the<br />
cause around which opposition<br />
rallies. Their very presence<br />
becomes a problem. That’s<br />
what happened in many areas,<br />
and in every case – South<br />
Vietnam, Afghanistan – the<br />
majority of the people wanted<br />
the American goals to succeed<br />
but they did not have enough<br />
strength, [nor the] security to<br />
stand up to the communists<br />
in Vietnam. In the case of<br />
Afghanistan, it’s not too late –<br />
there’s plenty of room to turn<br />
it around: the Taliban are so<br />
unpopular because of their<br />
history. Unlike South Vietnam,<br />
people in Afghanistan know<br />
what the Taliban stand for, and<br />
that is something that can be<br />
worked on.<br />
On comparing Kosovo<br />
and Afghanistan:<br />
Kosovo and Afghanistan have<br />
nothing really in common.<br />
The hatred in Kosovo between<br />
Albanians and Serbs is actually<br />
deeper than anything I’ve<br />
seen in Afghanistan . . . . In<br />
Afghanistan the Taliban are all<br />
Pashtun, and the majority of<br />
Afghans are Pashtun – it’s an<br />
ideological religious struggle.<br />
The methods are brutal, as they<br />
were in Kosovo, but it isn’t a<br />
racial hatred. To put it another<br />
way, there’s more chance of reconciliation<br />
in Afghanistan than<br />
there is in Kosovo; on the other<br />
hand, Afghanistan is much,<br />
much bigger, it’s got other<br />
ethnic groups, it’s complicated,<br />
and let us never forget it is the<br />
fifth poorest country in the<br />
world, the other four being in<br />
Africa. It is an extraordinarily<br />
remote and ancient culture<br />
with proud, deep tribal traditions,<br />
very high illiteracy rates<br />
among men and even higher<br />
among women, so the situations<br />
are quite dissimilar.
22 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
On drawing the line between<br />
humanitarian intervention<br />
and imperialism:<br />
It is a fine line . . . between<br />
humanitarianism and imperialism.<br />
In fact, sometimes a<br />
humanitarian is also an unintentional<br />
imperialist or a neocolonialist,<br />
because he or she<br />
comes from another culture to<br />
bring his or her values and culture<br />
to the place he is going. . . .<br />
Now there’s no easy solution<br />
to this, but . . . if you’re talking<br />
about non-military involvement<br />
(I wouldn’t call it intervention)<br />
there’s always been inner<br />
changes [created by] ngos,<br />
government, business, church<br />
missionaries, missionaries for<br />
secular ideas; it’s always been<br />
that way. What was Marco Polo,<br />
what were the people carrying<br />
ideas? I’m not too troubled<br />
over the semantics here. On<br />
the other hand, it is critically<br />
important that we not intervene,<br />
in the sense of interfere, with<br />
local cultures and traditions.<br />
. . . Now there are some local<br />
traditions not acceptable to<br />
Westerners, female circumcision<br />
is a perfect example; it’s<br />
just an appalling barbaric<br />
thing. While it’s an ancient<br />
tradition, it also happens to<br />
increase the spread of disease,<br />
infant mortality, and female<br />
diseases. I think the world is<br />
right to try to put pressure on<br />
those societies that still practice<br />
it. Similar with slavery, that was<br />
an ancient tradition, which still<br />
exists, there’s twenty or thirty<br />
million modern slaves in the<br />
world, we should do everything<br />
we can to stop that.<br />
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,<br />
But often, in the din of strife,<br />
There rises an unspeakable desire<br />
After the knowledge of our buried life;<br />
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force<br />
In tracking our true, original course;<br />
A longing to inquire<br />
Into the mystery of this heart which beats<br />
So wild, so deep in us – to know<br />
Whence our lives come and where they go.<br />
matthew arnold, “the buried life”<br />
difficult for traditional armies<br />
to figure out. The United States<br />
is grappling with it in Iraq<br />
and Afghanistan, as it did in<br />
Vietnam, with very limited<br />
success. The United States is<br />
powerful enough to seize any<br />
square meter . . . of soil on the<br />
face of the earth . . . because we<br />
have helicopters, we have missiles,<br />
we’re heavily armed. . . .<br />
But you can only hold it as long<br />
as the troops remain there,<br />
and what good is that? They’re<br />
a sitting target. So the issue<br />
becomes what is your goal<br />
and how do you leave something<br />
behind when you withdraw?<br />
. . . When your goal is not<br />
to destroy a national capital, as<br />
in World War II, but to push<br />
your enemy out and then turn<br />
it over to local authorities,<br />
you’re facing a whole different<br />
kind of war.<br />
consequences. Sadaam was<br />
worse than Milosevic, he was<br />
a terrible man, we all know<br />
that, but to do it this way was<br />
beyond reckless. At the same<br />
time, by doing it, we let the<br />
Taliban and especially al-Qaeda<br />
escape into Pakistan, so we<br />
went into Afghanistan to fight<br />
al-Qaeda, not the Taliban. The<br />
Taliban were terrible but so<br />
were the Burmese generals, so<br />
is Mugabe. The Taliban had<br />
been in power for six years<br />
already, and we drove them<br />
into Pakistan, where al-Qaeda<br />
stayed. The Taliban came back,<br />
and now we’re fighting the<br />
Taliban, but the enemy that<br />
took us into the region is in the<br />
country next door, which we<br />
can’t fight in, aside from occasional<br />
predators. So history’s<br />
going to give very black marks<br />
to [the Bush] administration.<br />
On the tension between<br />
traditional and modern<br />
warfare:<br />
I think there’s a tremendous<br />
tension between old-fashioned<br />
thinking about war and modern<br />
conditions. I won’t even say<br />
battlefield conditions because<br />
wars are not fought on battlefields<br />
anymore. This is very<br />
On how history will remember<br />
the invasion of Iraq:<br />
The invasion of Iraq was<br />
supremely reckless at a level<br />
that’s unbelievable. . . . History<br />
will record this as one of the<br />
most grotesque mistakes of all<br />
time. It is true that getting rid<br />
of Sadaam was a good thing,<br />
if there hadn’t been negative<br />
The above answers were<br />
extracted from raw footage<br />
for the documentary film<br />
Human Terrain, by James<br />
Der Derian, a professor of<br />
international studies at<br />
Brown University and a<br />
spring <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> Bosch Fellow at<br />
the American Academy.
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 23<br />
© Hornischer
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Notebook of the American Academy in Berlin | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
On the Waterfront<br />
News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
N2 Academy Notebook: US<br />
Secretary of State Hillary<br />
Rodham Clinton speaks<br />
at the Academy’s Richard<br />
Holbrooke Memorial<br />
N4 Academy Notebook: Pamela<br />
Rosenberg on early inspiration;<br />
cellist Yo-Yo Ma stops by<br />
the Hans Arnhold Center;<br />
welcoming Helga Haub<br />
N8 Sketches & Dispatches: Rosina<br />
Bierbaum on climate change;<br />
John Wray reads from Lowboy;<br />
René Pape at the Morgan<br />
Library & Museum<br />
N11 Life & Letters: The spring<br />
<strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> fellows; obituary for<br />
alumna Miriam Hansen;<br />
Mitch Epstein’s Berlin; and<br />
recent alumni books<br />
The Internationalist<br />
Hillary Rodham Clinton visits the American Academy to celebrate the life of Richard Holbrooke<br />
Over 150 guests joined US Secretary<br />
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,<br />
EU Foreign and Security Policy<br />
High Representative Catherine<br />
Ashton, and journalist and widow<br />
Kati Marton at the American<br />
Academy on April 15 to celebrate<br />
the life of veteran diplomat<br />
and Academy founder Richard<br />
Holbrooke. Vice Chair of the<br />
Academy, Gahl Hodges Burt,<br />
opened the forum of remembrances,<br />
followed by Kati Marton; Werner<br />
Hoyer, Minister of State at the<br />
German Foreign Ministry; columnist<br />
Roger Cohen; Vali Nasr,<br />
a senior Holbrooke advisor; Josef<br />
Joffe, publisher of Die Zeit; filmmaker<br />
Volker Schlöndorff; John<br />
Kornblum, former US Ambassador<br />
to Germany; Hillary Rodham<br />
Clinton; Philip D. Murphy,<br />
US Ambassador to Germany;<br />
Catherine Ashton; and Academy<br />
Executive Director Gary Smith.<br />
The following is the full text<br />
of Secretary Clinton’s speech:<br />
I<br />
want to start by thanking<br />
Gary Smith for the work<br />
you’ve done to realize the<br />
vision that the Academy represents<br />
and what Richard certainly<br />
hoped for. Gahl, thank you, for<br />
» continued on Page N2<br />
uS secretary of state hillary rodham clinton, April 15, <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
© Hornischer<br />
Theater in the Trees<br />
The Academy’s Dean of Fellows and Programs on how<br />
an avant-garde performance unveiled a new world<br />
Tucked into the<br />
Hollywood Hills are hidden<br />
valleys and ravines, where<br />
the vegetation is so thick it feels<br />
like stumbling into wilderness,<br />
although the next house is only<br />
five minutes away. Many celebrities<br />
own villas there. My boarding<br />
school was in one such valley. My<br />
parents had sent me to Beverly<br />
Hills to finish the last two years of<br />
high school while they remained<br />
in South America. Those years,<br />
from 1960–1962, turned my life<br />
upside down.<br />
One night, shortly after arriving<br />
in Los Angeles, friends of<br />
my parents, Lynette and George<br />
Wooliver, took me to a so-called<br />
underground theater. Lynette<br />
predicted it would be an amusing<br />
and dada-esque evening; I<br />
was 15 and had no idea what a<br />
dada-esque evening could pos-<br />
» continued on Page N8<br />
The Cost of Change<br />
Rosina Bierbaum on the environmental time bomb<br />
The world has no time<br />
to waste when it comes<br />
to climate protection.<br />
To match that pace, Professor<br />
Rosina Bierbaum, Dean of the<br />
School of Natural Resources and<br />
Environment at the University<br />
of Michigan, spoke breathlessly<br />
on the topic at the American<br />
Academy in Berlin. Her opening<br />
hypothesis was that while<br />
climate change is threatening all<br />
countries, it has been particularly<br />
hard on the developing world.<br />
Bierbaum knows what she is talking<br />
about. She has been occupied<br />
with the topic of climate change<br />
for the last twenty years, and last<br />
year President Barack Obama<br />
elected her to be one of his climate<br />
advisors.<br />
“First off, we need to understand<br />
that there is still time<br />
to pursue a different style of<br />
politics,” Dr. Bierbaum says.<br />
“Developing countries can follow<br />
» continued on Page N12
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• Academy Notebook •<br />
1.<br />
1.<br />
» continued from N1<br />
the instrumental role you played.<br />
And, of course, Kati, it would not<br />
even have the meaning it does<br />
without the partnership and support<br />
that you gave Richard all<br />
those years. And I’m delighted<br />
that Sarah and three of Richard’s<br />
grandchildren, Beatrice, Kathryn,<br />
and William, are here as well.<br />
It is so fitting that we would<br />
have this, most likely, last memorial<br />
service and remembrance<br />
of Richard in a place that he<br />
loved so much, not only here<br />
at the Academy, but Berlin and<br />
Germany. It is a fitting place<br />
to tell these stories, and I only<br />
wished that we had arranged it<br />
so that it was somewhere relaxed<br />
in this beautiful building with a<br />
giant panettone and lots of good<br />
Riesling and other treats to keep<br />
us going, because the stories<br />
would never have ended. That<br />
was the thing about Richard,<br />
every story that I’ve heard has<br />
prompted even more in my own<br />
mind to come to the surface.<br />
Richard thrived on conversation.<br />
He was an absolutely relentless<br />
conversationalist, as any<br />
of us who have engaged in conversation<br />
with him understand<br />
and remember. Les Gelb, one<br />
of his dearest friends, said that<br />
a conversation with Richard<br />
meant listening to a breathless<br />
monologue, which you could only<br />
engage by interrupting. And the<br />
story that Gahl told about Richard<br />
following John Fuegi into the<br />
men’s room was so familiar. He<br />
followed me onto a stage as I<br />
was about to give a speech, he<br />
followed me into my hotel room,<br />
and on one memorable occasion,<br />
into a ladies room – in Pakistan.<br />
So these are all now very fond<br />
memories.<br />
This American Academy meant<br />
the world to him. He talked<br />
about it, along with all of his<br />
other passions, starting with Kati,<br />
endlessly. And it was, I think,<br />
a way for him to embody his love<br />
of Germany and his belief that<br />
Germany and the United States<br />
had to be indispensably linked<br />
together, going forward into<br />
the unknown future. As John<br />
Kornblum famously said, “living<br />
humanity” is what Richard<br />
Holbrooke was all about. The<br />
American Academy is a living<br />
example, an essence of his<br />
life’s work.<br />
When my husband asked him<br />
to be ambassador to Germany,<br />
I think he was a little disappointed<br />
at first; let’s be honest. I<br />
can remember the conversation.<br />
Bill said to Richard, “You know,<br />
Richard, we don’t know what’s<br />
going to happen in Europe now.”<br />
I think the point that Ambassador<br />
Kornblum made is worth remembering<br />
– what looks now to have<br />
been inevitable was not in any<br />
way preordinated.<br />
Watching Bill Clinton and<br />
Richard Holbrooke have a conversation<br />
was truly like watching<br />
two bull elephants circle around,<br />
trumpeting their positions –<br />
looking for openings, pawing<br />
the ground, and luckily, finally,<br />
coming to an understanding.<br />
1. hillary Rodham clinton<br />
signs the richard<br />
holbrooke condolence<br />
book<br />
2. Nina von Maltzahn, John<br />
C. KorNblum, Hillary<br />
rodham Clinton, Gary SMith,<br />
Kati marton<br />
3. kati Marton shows the<br />
Academy’s photo wall<br />
4. pamela rosenberg, philip<br />
D. murphy, tammy murphy
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Academy Notebook | N3<br />
All photos © Hornischer<br />
2.<br />
2.<br />
3.<br />
4.<br />
But what Richard so quickly and<br />
very importantly grasped was<br />
that, yes, the Cold War era was<br />
over and, yes, the Berlin Wall had<br />
come down, and yes, the last of<br />
the Berlin Brigade would be leaving,<br />
including 5,000 American<br />
troops. But there was nothing<br />
that made it at all sure that this<br />
relationship that had been based<br />
on the past would continue into<br />
the future.<br />
Richard believed we needed<br />
to create an entirely new relationship,<br />
one based not just on strategic<br />
necessity, but on friendship,<br />
shared vision, and shared values.<br />
He was absolutely convinced that<br />
the United States and Germany<br />
had to form the core of a permanent<br />
transatlantic community,<br />
and that led him to the extraordinary<br />
effort about enlarging<br />
nato, which, as I was listening<br />
to John, I thought of all of the bitter<br />
arguments that were held<br />
over those years about what that<br />
would mean.<br />
Now, there are many ways<br />
to describe Richard, and we’ve<br />
heard some wonderful descriptors.<br />
You can describe him by the<br />
many hats that he wore, not just<br />
hats, but caps and helmets. You<br />
can see him wearing a cap as a<br />
development officer or a Peace<br />
Corps director or an ambassador,<br />
a magazine editor, a presidential<br />
advisor, a peace negotiator, an<br />
aids activist, a banker, a diplomat,<br />
and someone who believed<br />
always in the power of ideas. He’s<br />
also been described by numerous<br />
political labels. He’s been called<br />
a liberal interventionist, a neoconservative,<br />
a multilateralist, a<br />
liberal hawk, and those are some<br />
of the nicer things that have been<br />
said about him. He is certainly<br />
referred to as a thinker, an idea<br />
generator, a man of serial enthusiasms,<br />
a voracious reader, a prolific<br />
writer, a prodigious intellect,<br />
and a great friend.<br />
But instead of talking about<br />
who he was, what we’ve heard<br />
today is what he stood for and<br />
what he did. He was, of course, a<br />
man of powerful convictions, but<br />
he was a pragmatist and he never
N4 | Academy Notebook | News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
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» continued from N3<br />
saw any contradiction between<br />
the two. He believed in doing<br />
what was right for America and<br />
right for the world, and he actually<br />
thought those two intersected<br />
more times than not. He spent<br />
his life grappling with two of the<br />
hardest questions in international<br />
relations. The first was when<br />
and how to use military force.<br />
Sometimes, of course, nations<br />
must act unilaterally to protect<br />
their security.<br />
But there are also times,<br />
which he knew, when nations<br />
are called to join together to<br />
defend common principles, stop<br />
humanitarian crises, and act on<br />
behalf of those shared values.<br />
He believed totally in building<br />
international coalitions. When he<br />
was appointed to be the special<br />
representative for Afghanistan<br />
and Pakistan, he was the first of<br />
a kind. By the time he finished<br />
there were 42. He reached out<br />
and included Muslim-majority<br />
nations, and his successor,<br />
someone who had worked with<br />
Richard, Ambassador Marc<br />
Grossman, went to a recent meeting<br />
of the special representatives<br />
sponsored by the Organization<br />
of the Islamic Conference held<br />
in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. And<br />
as Marc told me later, it was so<br />
clearly the work of Richard.<br />
He understood that at times,<br />
one had to use military force. But<br />
he also fought hard about how<br />
to end it and what tools were<br />
necessary to do so. He knew that<br />
you had to deal with some fairly<br />
unlikable characters from time<br />
to time. After he visited Bosnia<br />
as a private citizen, he came back<br />
totally convinced that the world<br />
– not just Europe – but the world<br />
had to act, because he watched in<br />
horror one day as Serbian soldiers<br />
rounded up Bosnian Muslims,<br />
and it was, for him, a terrible,<br />
eerie echo of what had happened<br />
fifty years before.<br />
When Richard took on the<br />
State Department’s European<br />
Bureau, in September 1994, after<br />
leaving Germany as ambassador,<br />
it was, as has been described, a<br />
time of a lot of uncertainty. In<br />
the article that was written and<br />
published in the spring 1995<br />
Foreign Affairs issue, he laid out<br />
so many of the concerns and suggested<br />
actions that we have been<br />
following ever since. When he<br />
did the extraordinary work that<br />
Kati has provided an inside look<br />
to all of us for the Dayton Peace<br />
Accords, he was not only professionally<br />
engaged, but personally<br />
committed. Because the part<br />
that Kati didn’t tell you is that<br />
his three colleagues died on that<br />
road after Milosevic had refused<br />
to allow them safe passage and<br />
made them ride that road that<br />
was ringed by Serbian snipers.<br />
And yet, despite that loss, Richard<br />
was relentless in his pursuit of<br />
peace and absolutely convinced<br />
he would get Milosevic to the<br />
final line.<br />
When he was asked by<br />
President Obama to serve in<br />
Afghanistan and Pakistan, he<br />
took on the challenge with relish.<br />
He was very clear-eyed, but<br />
he did say on more than one<br />
occasion, “I thought Dayton was<br />
pretty difficult at the time. This<br />
is a lot tougher.” He set to work<br />
the only way he knew: full-bore,<br />
with everything he had, relying<br />
on the principles that have always<br />
guided him.<br />
He mapped out three mutually<br />
reinforcing tracks: a military<br />
offensive, which he, along with<br />
the rest of us, were working with<br />
President Obama, who inherited<br />
a deteriorating situation in<br />
Afghanistan, a Taliban with an<br />
enormous sense of momentum.<br />
Waiting on the President’s desk<br />
that first day were requests for<br />
troops that had not been in any<br />
way discussed or acted on by the<br />
prior administration.<br />
At the same time, Richard<br />
was probably the most relentless<br />
1. gahl hodges burt (R)<br />
2. JOSef joffe<br />
3. baroneSS catherine ashton<br />
4. werner hoyer
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Academy Notebook | N5<br />
All photos © Hornischer<br />
2.<br />
3.<br />
4.
N6 | Academy Notebook | News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
© Hornischer<br />
1.<br />
» continued from N5<br />
and passionate advocate for a<br />
civilian campaign. When Richard<br />
became srap, there were 300<br />
American civilians, including<br />
the Embassy in Kabul, in all of<br />
Afghanistan. They were largely<br />
on six-month tours, and many of<br />
them spent a third of that time on<br />
R & R outside the country because<br />
it was really hard.<br />
And finally a third track was<br />
an intensive diplomatic push.<br />
Now, those who found negotiations<br />
with the Taliban distasteful<br />
got a very powerful response<br />
from Richard. Diplomacy would<br />
be easy, he would say, if you only<br />
had to talk with your friends.<br />
Negotiating with your adversaries<br />
wasn’t a disservice to people who<br />
had died, if by talking you could<br />
prevent more violence.<br />
He saw the regional implications,<br />
and as Vali Nasr said, he<br />
dove into Pakistan with all his<br />
Richard-ness. After the devastating<br />
floods that affected almost<br />
<strong>20</strong> million Pakistanis last year, he<br />
went to visit a dusty refugee camp<br />
not far from Karachi. As usual,<br />
he arrived in a way he hated. He<br />
hated having security, he hated<br />
the armored cars, and he if could<br />
duck his entourage, he always did,<br />
and then, of course, I would get<br />
the phone calls. He slipped, alone,<br />
into a tent occupied by two refugees<br />
from the floods, a father and<br />
his young son. He just wanted to<br />
hear their story.<br />
He also loved breaking protocol.<br />
He may have been the first person<br />
who told me the joke – “What’s<br />
the difference between a terrorist<br />
and a protocol officer? You can<br />
negotiate with a terrorist.” And<br />
so the protocol officers would say,<br />
“Do not wear the usaid hat. If<br />
you go to this region, you will be<br />
a target and you will also be considered<br />
somewhat undiplomatic.”<br />
Well, all over The New York Times<br />
were pictures of Richard in his<br />
usaid hat.<br />
He did make a big impact in<br />
a very complex situation, and<br />
in two countries that no one<br />
should pretend to understand.<br />
But he built a foundation for us<br />
to build on. He formed friendships<br />
and alliances. He broke<br />
a lot of pottery. He brought<br />
together an exceptional team of<br />
people. Vali described them as<br />
sort of a Silicon company startup.<br />
I thought of it more as the<br />
bar scene in Star Wars – because<br />
Richard was intent upon doing<br />
something that all governments<br />
and every bureaucracy hates.<br />
He wanted to break down all of<br />
the barriers.<br />
So this was going to be a<br />
whole-of-government commitment,<br />
which I certainly thought<br />
it was and what I thought we were<br />
being asked to do. He wanted<br />
people from every agency in the<br />
government. So you try calling<br />
the Department of Agriculture<br />
and saying we want some agricultural<br />
specialists to work with<br />
us in the State Department on<br />
helping improve agriculture in<br />
Pakistan and in Afghanistan.<br />
Very tough negotiations. But in<br />
the end, Richard got his way.<br />
Now, I think that part of what<br />
we will miss about Richard is that<br />
as we have seen the actions and<br />
events of the last months, many<br />
of us have thought, “What would<br />
Richard have said?” We didn’t<br />
have Richard to advise us in Libya<br />
but we had his principles to guide<br />
us. And we did work hard to bring<br />
the international community<br />
together – and quickly.<br />
The world did not wait for<br />
another Srebrenica in a place<br />
called Benghazi. Instead, we<br />
came together in the United<br />
Nations, a place where Richard<br />
served as our ambassador, to<br />
impose sanctions, a no-fly zone,<br />
and an arms embargo, and protecting<br />
civilians. In a single week,<br />
we prevented a potential massacre,<br />
stopped an advancing army,<br />
and expanded the coalition.<br />
And as Colonel Qadhafi continues<br />
attacking his own people,<br />
we are gaining even more partners<br />
in our efforts.<br />
There will always be conflicts as<br />
long as there are human beings,<br />
as long as there are power-mad<br />
egomaniacs running countries<br />
– which, of course, never happen<br />
in democracies, thank goodness.<br />
And we will have to navigate them<br />
without Richard, but not without<br />
his insight.<br />
I want to finish by reading<br />
something he wrote not long after<br />
the Dayton Accords were signed:<br />
“There will be other Bosnias in<br />
our lives,” he wrote. They will<br />
“explode with little warning, and<br />
present the world with difficult<br />
choices – choices between risky<br />
involvement and potentially<br />
costly neglect.” He concluded:<br />
“Early outside involvement will be<br />
decisive.”<br />
That doesn’t mean we don’t<br />
need patience. It doesn’t mean<br />
that we don’t have to continue<br />
to do the hard work that tries<br />
to avoid conflicts. But we do need<br />
to remember Richard’s plea for<br />
principled interventionism. He<br />
lived those ideals, and perhaps<br />
better than any other diplomat<br />
of his generation, he made them<br />
real to so many of us.<br />
We have a lot to learn<br />
from Richard Charles Albert<br />
Holbrooke, as advisor, counselor,<br />
teacher, but above all else, dear<br />
friend. I can see in this room on<br />
the faces of so many of you the<br />
kind of memories that we all have<br />
of this extraordinary man. Let<br />
us give thanks for him.<br />
1. peter schneider and<br />
wolfgang ischinger<br />
2. alexandra Gräfin<br />
Lambsdorff, hillary<br />
rodham clinton, kati<br />
marton, werner hoyer,<br />
vali nasr, gabriela<br />
von habsburg<br />
3. gary smith, Gahl hodges<br />
burt, hillary rodham<br />
clinton, kati marton,<br />
catherine Ashton
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Academy Notebook | N7<br />
© Sean Gallup/getty images<br />
© Hornischer<br />
2.<br />
3.
N8 | Academy Notebook | News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
Theater in the Trees<br />
» continued from N1<br />
sibly entail. But I was curious<br />
because Lynette, a former dancer<br />
at the Martha Graham Dance<br />
Company, would take part in the<br />
performance.<br />
We drove to a villa, located<br />
in one of Hollywood Hills’ wild,<br />
overgrown ravines. The theater<br />
was not inside the villa but<br />
behind it, in the garden house. In<br />
my memory, it was a tree house<br />
on stilts, with a large room and<br />
an adjacent smaller room. There<br />
were about thirty spectators, and<br />
we sat on the floor, at the edges<br />
of the big room. As the youngest<br />
among them, I felt fairly nervous.<br />
Night had fallen outside, and<br />
black window shades prevented<br />
any mote of light from penetrating<br />
the interior. In this bottomless<br />
black, the actors began to<br />
move. I occasionally felt a breeze<br />
of body movement; I heard steps<br />
and breaths. Suddenly the light<br />
was switched on, and the actors<br />
froze and remained motionless<br />
for a couple of seconds. Then,<br />
without a word, through mimicry<br />
and gestures, they established<br />
relationships amongst each other.<br />
I had never seen theater like this.<br />
I longed to try it myself – to<br />
move like Lynette, lithesome and<br />
feline; to make uninhibited faces;<br />
to play like a child – but sensed<br />
that I was too self-conscious.<br />
After the show, the actors sat<br />
around with their friends and<br />
heatedly discussed art. They talked<br />
as if their lives depended on it,<br />
as if art was a matter of survival.<br />
And for them, it was. I had never<br />
met people before in my life for<br />
whom art was so essential.<br />
I was raised in a conservative<br />
household. When I was very<br />
young, my parents moved from<br />
Los Angeles to Caracas where<br />
my father, a former naval officer,<br />
worked for an oil company. I had<br />
always been a sensitive, serious<br />
girl. In Caracas I had an Armenian<br />
piano teacher. Once a month I was<br />
allowed to visit her salon where I<br />
met Russian emigrants who made<br />
music, discussed literature, and<br />
spoke several languages. Even<br />
those early salons opened another<br />
world to me, separate from the one<br />
my parents lived in, and stirred a<br />
deep longing in me. My parents<br />
led a typically upper-middle-class<br />
life, with dinner parties and golf<br />
tournaments. I realized that the<br />
conventional atmosphere at home<br />
was stifling me.<br />
Now I sat, cross-legged, in a<br />
tree house in Hollywood and felt<br />
understood. Not that I joined the<br />
actors’ conversations. I eavesdropped<br />
and observed. I liked<br />
these original spirits. I had been<br />
searching for them. That evening,<br />
I felt like a knot unraveled inside,<br />
and I intuited that my own path<br />
would lead me far from home.<br />
On our way back, Lynette told me<br />
that the performers were a steady,<br />
hard-working group of actors. In<br />
retrospect, their forms of interpretation<br />
were reminiscent of<br />
Jerzy Grotowski’s methods, who<br />
granted the body a significant<br />
role on stage. I began to look<br />
closer, to scrutinize the gestures<br />
of those around me. George,<br />
Lynette’s husband, also enjoyed<br />
the evening, even though he<br />
wasn’t an artist but the chief ceo<br />
of a large company.<br />
Lynette became an important<br />
parental figure to me. Her crazy<br />
home was full of people, guests<br />
that spontaneously dropped<br />
by, unlike my parents’ home,<br />
where you made an appointment,<br />
arrived punctually at 8 pm, and<br />
sat dutifully at the table. Artists,<br />
including the famous painter<br />
Sam Francis, came and went.<br />
In their passionate discussions<br />
I learned to question the act of<br />
seeing. I could watch Lynette for<br />
hours when she worked on one<br />
of her sculptures. Her house and<br />
garden were full of sculptures,<br />
and she worked on them in turns.<br />
Los Angeles in the 1960s was<br />
cutting edge: the galleries on<br />
Cienega Blvd set the trends. You<br />
could find the newest, most exciting<br />
art scenes, the avant-garde.<br />
Shortly after the tree house<br />
evening, Lynette organized a<br />
“dark theater” at her home. I also<br />
participated. It took me some<br />
time to grow unconstrained and<br />
free. Every now and then, a hostile<br />
face or sudden grimace from<br />
another performer startled and<br />
shocked me. Gradually, I sunk<br />
into the play. It felt as if the makepamela<br />
rosenberg by Monika Rittershaus
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Academy Notebook | N9<br />
believe surrounding us simply<br />
dissolved. I benefited from such<br />
experiences, which question the<br />
apparent and the obvious, and<br />
continued to profit from them in<br />
the decades to come when I went<br />
on to work at the San Francisco<br />
Opera, the Oper Frankfurt, and<br />
the Staatsoper Stuttgart.<br />
My parents were happy that I<br />
had found a second family in Los<br />
Angeles with whom I could spend<br />
the weekends. To them, Lynette<br />
and George’s home was amusing<br />
and exotic. Their lifestyle was not<br />
to be taken seriously. They had no<br />
clue what the encounter had triggered<br />
within me.<br />
I developed a critical eye<br />
toward my parents’ lifestyle. It<br />
is not atypical for a 15-year-old<br />
to rebel – but my rebellion was<br />
not the typical one where peers<br />
played an important part, nor did<br />
it involve fashion or music. I disregarded<br />
all of that. My rebellion<br />
took the form of participating in<br />
L.A.’s underground scene and<br />
befriending Lynette and George,<br />
who were the same age as my<br />
parents. Larger conflicts with my<br />
parents erupted later, during my<br />
studies in Berkeley. My parents<br />
blamed my rebellion on the popular<br />
student movements of the<br />
time. But without the inspiration<br />
I had received at the Woolivers,<br />
I probably would not have been<br />
receptive to the spirit of the student<br />
movements.<br />
I remained friends with<br />
Lynette and George and visited<br />
them often during my studies in<br />
Berkeley. Over time, I witnessed<br />
how George became infected by<br />
the passion of the artists who<br />
spoke, night after night, in his<br />
home; whom he met in galleries<br />
and theaters. He eventually<br />
began painting, resigned from<br />
his high-paying position, and<br />
became a successful artist.<br />
When I walk through a gallery<br />
today or attend an avant-garde<br />
dance performance, I feel Lynette’s<br />
spirit, in whose house I learned to<br />
consciously look and to transgress<br />
boundaries by thinking. Ever since<br />
that night, sitting among artists in<br />
the dark theater, I’ve sought to surround<br />
myself with such original,<br />
passionate people.<br />
By Pamela Rosenberg<br />
Originally published in<br />
German in the Berliner<br />
Zeitung, March 5, <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
On January 11, <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong>, an intimate circle of Academy guests and<br />
spring <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> Fellows welcomed world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma<br />
for an informal reception and discussion. Ma was in Berlin for<br />
performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker, including works<br />
by Anders Hillborg (Cold Heat, Première) Dmitri Shostakovich<br />
(Cello Concerto No. 2), and Carl Nielsen (Symphony No. 5). He<br />
had expressed his eagerness to meet Academy fellows at the Hans<br />
Arnhold Center, and he did not arrive alone: “I never expected<br />
him to bring his cello !” said Pamela Rosenberg. The evening was<br />
anchored by Ma’s moving rendition of a Bach Sarabande, an homage<br />
to his friend and Academy founder, Richard Holbrooke.<br />
© cornelia peiper<br />
Conservationist on Board<br />
Welcoming Helga Haub, co-owner of the Tengelmann Group, to the American Academy Board of Trustees<br />
The American Academy<br />
is pleased to introduce a<br />
new member of its Board of<br />
Trustees: Helga Haub, co-owner<br />
of the Tengelmann Group and a<br />
dedicated philanthropist. “We are<br />
delighted that Helga Haub has<br />
joined our board,” says Academy<br />
Co-Chairman Karl M. von der<br />
Heyden. “She is the quintessential<br />
Atlanticist: equally at home in<br />
Europe and North America, she<br />
understands the nuances of cultures<br />
on both sides of the ocean.”<br />
Haub helps to oversee the international,<br />
multi-sector retailer<br />
Tengelmann Group, which has<br />
been family-owned and managed<br />
for five generations. Its divisions<br />
include Kaiser’s and Tengelmann<br />
supermarkets,obi stores, and<br />
the discounter Kik, in addition to<br />
several smaller production companies,<br />
service providers, and<br />
e-commerce retailers.<br />
In addition to her business,<br />
Haub chairs the Elizabeth Haub<br />
Foundations for Environmental<br />
Law and Policy in Germany,<br />
Canada, and the United States.<br />
The foundations support the<br />
development and implementation<br />
of legislative provisions for<br />
the conservation and sustainable<br />
use of nature. She has also served<br />
on the board of the American<br />
Chamber of Commerce since<br />
1995 and is active with the George<br />
Helga Haub<br />
C. Marshall International Center<br />
at Dodona Manor, the University<br />
of Wyoming’s Helga Otto Haub<br />
School of Environment and<br />
Natural Resources, and the uso<br />
Germany, serving as longstanding<br />
president of its Rhein-Main<br />
area. Haub has received honorary<br />
doctorates from St. Joseph’s<br />
University, in Philadelphia, and<br />
from the University of Wyoming.<br />
She has also been awarded the<br />
Medal of Merit from the United<br />
States Air Force in Europe; the<br />
Spirit of Hope Award from uso<br />
World; and the Distinguished<br />
Public Service Medal from the<br />
US Department of Defense.
N10 | Financial Overview of the American Academy in Berlin | News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
• Financial Overview of the American Academy in Berlin •<br />
The American Academy in Berlin<br />
is funded almost entirely by private<br />
and corporate benefactors<br />
and does not accept any donations<br />
from governments or political<br />
organizations.<br />
The American Academy<br />
operates as a Charitable Private<br />
Corporation (gemeinnützige<br />
GmbH) in Germany, which is<br />
wholly owned by The American<br />
Academy in Berlin, Inc., a 501(c)3<br />
corporation based in New York<br />
City. Both organizations are registered<br />
charities and empowered<br />
to receive tax-deductible donations<br />
in accordance with respective<br />
legal codes.<br />
In addition to donations to our<br />
annual fund, certain individual<br />
benefactors, groups of benefactors,<br />
and corporations have<br />
established endowments – both<br />
multi-year or in perpetuity –<br />
to secure the financing of named<br />
fellowships, distinguished visitorships,<br />
or lectureships.<br />
The American Academy prepares<br />
Consolidated Financial<br />
Statements in accordance with<br />
generally accepted US accounting<br />
principles, which are audited by<br />
independent auditors.<br />
Sources of Income and<br />
Expenditure for the last<br />
two years<br />
Our sources of income can be<br />
broken down as shown in the<br />
pie charts below:<br />
Revenue<br />
<strong>20</strong>10<br />
<strong>20</strong>09<br />
Corporate unrestricted<br />
Private unrestricted<br />
Corporate restricted<br />
Private restricted<br />
Other<br />
expenditures<br />
<strong>20</strong>10 <strong>20</strong>09<br />
Fellows & Distinguished<br />
Visitor program<br />
Development<br />
General Administration<br />
In line with regulations governing<br />
charitable organizations<br />
and applicable tax rules,<br />
whenever allowable we reinvest<br />
income from our endowments<br />
to further enhance the value<br />
and income-generating potential<br />
of such benefaction.<br />
Abridged Financial Information<br />
Our Consolidated Balance<br />
Sheet as of December <strong>20</strong>10<br />
showed net assets of $39.8m<br />
compared with $36.5m at the<br />
end of <strong>20</strong>09. This increase<br />
was attributable largely to the<br />
Our net aSSets are categorized as follOWS:<br />
abridged cash flOWS:<br />
continuing excellent performance<br />
of our investment<br />
managers as well as further<br />
endowments in perpetuity<br />
during the year.<br />
<strong>20</strong>10<br />
$m<br />
<strong>20</strong>09<br />
$m<br />
Available for operations: 1.9 2.1<br />
Board-designated endowments 10.9 8.6<br />
Fixed assets 2.2 2.6<br />
15.0 13.3<br />
Temporarily restricted assets 9.3 11.3<br />
Permanently restricted assets 15.5 11.9<br />
39.8 36.5<br />
<strong>20</strong>10<br />
$m<br />
<strong>20</strong>09<br />
$m<br />
Net cash provided by operating activities (1.0) 1.2<br />
Net cash used in investment activities (2.4) (3.0)<br />
Cash flows from financial activity 1.9 1.9<br />
Exchange-rate effects 1.6 (0.4)<br />
Net (decrease)/increase in cash and<br />
cash equivalents<br />
0.1 (0.3)<br />
Outlook for <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong>/<strong>20</strong>12<br />
The American Academy was<br />
fortunate in <strong>20</strong>10, as it received<br />
not only continuing support<br />
from its lasting benefactors but<br />
also was able to extend its base<br />
of donors both in the US and<br />
Germany, thanks to the munificent<br />
generosity of its supporters.<br />
We are extremely grateful<br />
to the members of our Board<br />
of Trustees, who continue to<br />
support us unhesitatingly, as<br />
we are to the descendents of<br />
Hans and Ludmilla Arnhold,<br />
who from their founding gift<br />
onwards have continued their<br />
invaluable support.<br />
Not least are we grateful<br />
to the multiple corporations,<br />
foundations, and private individuals<br />
who continue to enable<br />
the American Academy in<br />
Berlin to serve as a beacon of<br />
intellectual and cultural life in<br />
the German capital.<br />
The American Academy<br />
has changed its fiscal year end<br />
to June 30 in <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> to bring it<br />
in line with similar institutions<br />
and to align it with our academic<br />
year.<br />
The stub fiscal period ending<br />
on June 30, <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> will be<br />
in line with our expectations.<br />
a.w.
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Private Initiative – Public Outreach | N11<br />
• Private Initiative – Public Outreach •<br />
The American Academy in Berlin is funded almost entirely by private donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations. We depend on the<br />
generosity of a widening circle of friends on both sides of the Atlantic and wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to those who support us. This list documents<br />
the contributions made to the American Academy from April <strong>20</strong>10 to April <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong>.<br />
FellOWShips and Distinguished<br />
Visitorships Established in Perpetuity<br />
John P. Birkelund Berlin Prize in the Humanities<br />
Daimler Berlin Prize<br />
German Transatlantic Program Berlin Prize<br />
supported by European Recovery Program funds<br />
granted through the Transatlantic Program of the<br />
Federal Republic of Germany<br />
Ellen Maria Gorrissen Berlin Prize<br />
Nina Maria Gorrissen Berlin Prize in History<br />
Mary Ellen von der Heyden Berlin Prize for Fiction<br />
Holtzbrinck Berlin Prize<br />
Anna-Maria Kellen Berlin Prize<br />
Guna S. Mundheim Berlin Prize in the Visual Arts<br />
Lloyd Cutler Distinguished Visitorship in Law<br />
Carol F. Lee, William Lee, WilmerHale<br />
EADS Distinguished Visitorship<br />
EADS<br />
Marina Kellen French Distinguished Visitorship<br />
for Persons with Outstanding Accomplishment in<br />
the Cultural World<br />
Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Visitorship<br />
Stephen M. Kellen Distinguished Visitorship<br />
Kurt Viermetz Distinguished Visitorship<br />
Richard von Weizsäcker Distinguished Visitorship<br />
Annually funded FellOWShips and<br />
Distinguished Visitorships<br />
Berthold Leibinger Berlin Prize<br />
Metro Berlin Prize<br />
Siemens Berlin Prize<br />
Axel <strong>Spring</strong>er Berlin Prize<br />
Allianz Distinguished Visitorship<br />
Endowment Giving<br />
Max Beckmann Distinguished Visitorship in the<br />
Visual Arts<br />
Thomas van Aubel & Jutta von Falkenhausen,<br />
Deutsche Börse AG, Marie Louise Gericke,<br />
Lily & Klaus Heiliger, Jeane Freifrau von<br />
Oppenheim, Galerie Sprüth Magers, Galerie<br />
Thaddaeus Ropac GmbH, Victoria & Aurel<br />
Scheibler, Mary Ellen von Schacky-Schultz &<br />
Bernd Schultz, Peter Schwicht, Villa Grisebach<br />
(Berlin)<br />
Marcus Bierich Distinguished Visitorship in the<br />
Humanities<br />
Dr. Aldinger & Fischer Grundbesitz und<br />
Vermarktungs GmbH, C.H. Beck Stiftung,<br />
Deutsche Bank AG, Mary Ellen von<br />
Schacky-Schultz & Bernd Schultz, Villa<br />
Grisebach (Berlin)<br />
Individuals and Family Foundations<br />
CORPORATIONS AND CORPORATE FOUNDATIONS<br />
Founders’ Circle<br />
$1 million and above<br />
Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen<br />
Foundation and the descendants of<br />
Hans and Ludmilla Arnhold<br />
Chairman’s Circle<br />
$ 25,000 and above<br />
Henry H. Arnhold<br />
Lester Crown<br />
Marina Kellen French<br />
Werner Gegenbauer<br />
Richard K. Goeltz<br />
Helga & Erivan Haub<br />
Mary Ellen and Karl M. von<br />
der Heyden<br />
The Estate of Richard C. Holbrooke<br />
Stefan von Holtzbrinck<br />
Michael Klein<br />
Nina von Maltzahn<br />
Christopher Freiherr von Oppenheim<br />
Maren Otto<br />
Norman Pearlstine and Jane Boon<br />
Pearlstine<br />
Kurt F. Viermetz<br />
Trustees’ Circle<br />
$10,000 and above<br />
Constance and John P. Birkelund<br />
Wolfgang Ischinger<br />
Dr. Pia & Klaus Krone<br />
Wolfgang Malchow<br />
Dieter & Si Rosenkranz<br />
Rafael J. Roth<br />
Mary Ellen von Schacky-Schultz &<br />
Bernd Schultz<br />
The Fritz Stern Fund of the Princeton<br />
Area Community Foundation<br />
Barbara & Jörg Zumbaum<br />
Patrons<br />
$2,500 and above<br />
Henrik Aldinger, Thomas van Aubel<br />
& Jutta von Falkenhausen, Heinrich<br />
J. Barth, Kathrin Barwinek & Alexander<br />
Ochs, Joel Bell & Marifé Hernández,<br />
Volker Booten, Stephen Burbank, Gahl<br />
Hodges Burt, Matthias & Christa Druba,<br />
Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Julie<br />
Finley, Georg & Doris Gafron, Hans-<br />
Michael & Almut Giesen, Marisa &<br />
Carl Hahn, Jörg Menno Harms, Ina<br />
Vonnegut-Hartung & Wilhelm Hartung,<br />
Klaus & Lily Heiliger, Brigitte & Bernd<br />
Hellthaler, Roe Jasen, Ulrich Kissing,<br />
Henry A. Kissinger, Stephanie & Martin<br />
Korbmacher, John C. Kornblum, Renate<br />
Küchler, Evi & Peter Kurz, Erich Marx,<br />
Mehretu-Rankin Family, Jeane Freifrau<br />
von Oppenheim, William D. & Nancy<br />
Ellison Rollnick, Norman Selby,<br />
Peter Y. Solmssen, Paul Volcker, Will<br />
Foundation (Hans George Will), Roger<br />
M. & Jill J. Witten<br />
President’s Circle<br />
Above $25,000<br />
Carnegie Corporation of New York<br />
Cerberus Deutschland GmbH<br />
Daimler AG<br />
Daimler-Fonds im Stifterverband<br />
für die Deutsche Wissenschaft<br />
Deloitte & Touche GmbH<br />
Deutsche Börse AG<br />
Deutsche Lufthansa AG<br />
Deutsche Post AG<br />
Germanwings GmbH<br />
GÖRG Partnerschaft von<br />
Rechtsanwälten<br />
KPMG AG<br />
Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft<br />
Liberty Global Europe BV<br />
Macy’s<br />
Marsh GmbH<br />
Merrill Lynch International Bank Ltd.<br />
MSD Sharpe & Dohme GmbH<br />
Pepsico Foundation<br />
Pfizer Pharma GmbH<br />
Philip Morris GmbH<br />
Porsche AG<br />
Robert Bosch GmbH<br />
Siemens AG<br />
Susanna Dulkinys and<br />
Erik Spiekermann<br />
Edenspiekermann AG<br />
Telefónica O 2<br />
Germany GmbH & Co. OHG<br />
Vattenfall Europe AG<br />
Benefactors<br />
up to $25,000<br />
Axel <strong>Spring</strong>er Stiftung, Bayer<br />
Schering Pharma AG, Bertelsmann<br />
ag, Coca-Cola Deutschland GmbH,<br />
Deutsche Bank AG, Deutsche<br />
Bundesbank, Fleishman-Hillard<br />
Germany/Public Affairs & Gov.<br />
Relations, Investitionsbank Berlin,<br />
Rudolf August Oetker Stiftung,<br />
Villa Grisebach (Berlin)<br />
Friends up to $2,500 Johannes Altincioglu, James Attwood, Barbara Balaj, Sid & Mercedes Bass, Jagdish Bhagwati & Padma Desai, Ronald Binks, Manfred<br />
Bischoff, Susan S. Braddock, Leopold Bill von Bredow, Diethart Breipohl, Eckhard Bremer, Irene Bringmann, Christian Bunsen, Stephen B. Burbank, Gahl Hodges<br />
Burt, Caroline Bynum, Gerhard & Regina Casper, Avna Cassinelli, Adele Chatfield-Taylor, Candia Clark, Edward E. & Betsy Z. Cohen, Georg Crezelius, Edla F.<br />
Cusick & Douglas Clifford, Rudolf Delius, David W. Detjen, Steven & Margrit Disman, Norma Drimmer, Walter A. Eberstadt, Gaetana Enders, Jean-Marie & Elizabeth<br />
Eveillard, Erika Falkenreck, Donald Fox, Robert Fribourg, Emily T. Frick, Bart Friedman & Wendy Stein, Edith & Egon Geerkens, Bärbel & Ulrich Gensch, Marie<br />
Louise Gericke, Michael Geyer, Vartan Gregorian, Nancy & Mark Gruett, Christian Hacke, Franz M. Haniel, John D. Hawke, Cristine & Benjamin Heineman, Gregg<br />
Horowitz & Ellen Levy, Isabel von Jena, Helga Kallenbach, Anke & Joachim-Friedrich Kapp, Jörg Kastl, Diana Ketcham, Marion Knauf, Donald & Christine Kursch,<br />
Anneliese Langner, Regine Leibinger & Frank Barkow, Abby Leigh, Michael Libal, Nina & Daniel Libeskind, Quincy Liu, Charles Maier, Jacqueline Mars, Wolfgang<br />
Matthies, Wolfgang & Beate Mayrhuber, Joseph & Elisabeth McLaughlin, Ronay & Richard Menschel, Thomas Menzel, Hans-Jürgen Meyer, Stephanie Moeller,<br />
Michael Münchehofe, Joan & David Murdoch, Jan-Daniel Neumann, Wolfram Nolte, Axel Osenberg, Frank & Geryl Pearl, Lawrence Perelman, Justin J. W. Powell,<br />
Lutz R. Raettig & Katherine Fürstenberg-Raettig, Susan Rambow, Christa Freifrau & Hermann Freiherr von Richthofen, Hergard Rohwedder, Henry Sapparth,<br />
Helmut Schäfer, Volker Schlöndorff, Harald Schmid, Pamela & Philipp Scholz, Sebastian Schwark, Kenneth Scott, Robert Silvers, Michael & Patricia Sovern,<br />
Manfred von Sperber, Hans-Jürgen Spiller, Immo Stabreit, Ronald Steel, Thomas von Thaden, Nikolaus Weil, Lutz Weisser, Richard von Weizsäcker, Tod & Linda<br />
White, Sabine & Ned Wiley, Roger M. and Jill J. Witten, Pauline Yu
N12 | Sketches & Dispatches | News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
• Private • Sketches Initiative &– Dispatches Public Outreach • •<br />
The Cost of Change<br />
» continued from N1<br />
low-carbon paths while they build<br />
up their economies and alleviate<br />
poverty. Still, they are dependent<br />
on the financial and technical<br />
support of countries with high<br />
incomes. And these high-income<br />
countries have to act quickly to<br />
reduce their C02 emissions and<br />
to further the development of<br />
alternate energy sources to solve<br />
the problem of climate change.”<br />
Developing countries, of<br />
course, are not to blame for the<br />
crisis, and they are hardly prepared<br />
to face its challenges. Yet<br />
they must bear the financial<br />
and environmental burdens of<br />
climate change and its multiple<br />
dangers. They are, in fact, disproportionately<br />
affected by climate<br />
change. And so the world com-<br />
munity is obliged to help them<br />
more intensely.<br />
Dr. Bierbaum indicated that<br />
around 1.6 billion people in the<br />
third world do not have access<br />
to electricity. These developing<br />
countries, where the emissions<br />
per head are only a fraction of the<br />
emissions in countries with a<br />
high income, are in dire need of<br />
assistance in the fields of energy,<br />
transportation, urban planning,<br />
and agricultural production.<br />
Increasing access to energy and<br />
other facilities with a high carbon<br />
footprint will produce more<br />
greenhouse gases and thus precipitate<br />
climate change.<br />
The solution to the worrisome<br />
climate situation requires<br />
the transformation and further<br />
development of the world’s<br />
energy systems in the decades<br />
to come. Each year, investments<br />
for research and development<br />
amount to € 100 – 500 billion.<br />
No country can accomplish this<br />
alone. “This is why we need private<br />
funds,” says Bierbaum. “And<br />
that means more tax deductions<br />
for private citizens who invest in<br />
climate protection.”<br />
The financial means to fight<br />
climate change have to be augmented<br />
dramatically because<br />
current investments do not meet<br />
predicted needs. The Climate<br />
Investment Funds (cifs), administered<br />
by the World Bank in collaboration<br />
with local banks, are<br />
one such chance to engage support<br />
from industrial countries<br />
effectively, because these means<br />
can reduce the costs of technologies<br />
with low carbon footprints in<br />
developing countries.<br />
At the end of her impassioned<br />
talk, Dr. Bierbaum reminded<br />
the audience of the bygone days<br />
of smokers: “Forty years ago<br />
smoking was in fashion – there<br />
was not a movie where an actor<br />
did not have a cigarette dangling<br />
from their lips. Today, smoking is<br />
passé. The same goes for climate<br />
protection. We need to have the<br />
sense that climate protection is<br />
in style. We have everything at<br />
our hands to make this endeavor<br />
successful: new technologies,<br />
money, and determination.”<br />
By Peter Brinkman<br />
Excerpted from the<br />
European Circle’s Green Mag<br />
November 4, <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Translated by Rieke Jordan<br />
Tunnel Vision<br />
Wray’s third novel goes underground<br />
in New<br />
York knows the subway<br />
but nobody ever “Everybody<br />
looks at it closely,” said John<br />
Henderson, alias John Wray,<br />
son of an American leukemia<br />
researcher and an oncologist<br />
from Kärnten, Austria. For four<br />
years, the 39-year-old literary star<br />
from Brooklyn closely observed<br />
an underground world that others<br />
had merely glanced at in passing.<br />
He traveled exhaustively on<br />
the subway, a laptop perched on<br />
his knees, wearing headphones,<br />
as he wrote Lowboy. “Maybe I<br />
wrote in the subway because my<br />
grandfather was a subway planner<br />
in Vienna – and because I was<br />
not making any progress in my<br />
apartment,” he explained.<br />
Lowboy is the story of William<br />
Heller, a 16-year-old schizophrenic<br />
who believes he is the only one<br />
capable of saving the world. He is<br />
hunted because he is considered<br />
to be dangerous, after pushing<br />
his girlfriend, Emily, onto the<br />
subway tracks, and because<br />
he fled from a mental institution.<br />
The Frankfurter Allgemeine<br />
Zeitung called Wray’s third novel<br />
a “piece of art destined to become<br />
a classic.”<br />
This fall, the American<br />
Academy invited John Wray<br />
to Berlin for a fellowship. On<br />
Wednesday, the highly praised<br />
author came to Göppingen to<br />
read excerpts from his novel in<br />
the local art gallery. While reading,<br />
Wray stood in front of 35 listeners<br />
and the installation “Dead<br />
End Lopes,” which is reminiscent<br />
of a subway entrance. It evoked a<br />
tunnel-vision effect that could not<br />
have been more suggestive.<br />
“Lowboy,” as William calls himself,<br />
feels free and unobstruc ted<br />
in the subway and its tunnels.<br />
Wray describes Lowboy’s and<br />
the subway’s nature in a lengthy<br />
and effusive – but never tedious<br />
– fashion. “Even his cramped and<br />
claustrophobic brain felt a measure<br />
of affection for the tunnel.<br />
It was his skull that held him captive,<br />
after all, not the tunnel or<br />
the passengers or the train.”<br />
By Hans Steinherr<br />
Excerpted from the<br />
Südwest Presse<br />
December 12, <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Translated by Rieke Jordan
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Sketches & Dispatches | N13<br />
© Jennifer Brommer<br />
Pianist Brian zeger and BaSS virtuoso rené pape perform at the Morgan library on october 21, <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Nostra Voce Munifico<br />
German opera bass René Pape delivers a benefit concert in New York for the American Academy in Berlin<br />
The American Academy<br />
in Berlin was graced with<br />
the generosity of German<br />
bass René Pape, who delivered<br />
a stirring benefit recital on<br />
October 21, <strong>20</strong>10 at the Morgan<br />
Library & Museum in New<br />
York City, expertly arranged by<br />
Academy trustee Marina Kellen<br />
French. Pape was accompanied<br />
by noted concert and chamber<br />
pianist Brian Zeger in a program<br />
that included a moving<br />
rendition of Robert Schumann’s<br />
Dicterliebe, as well as a set of<br />
Franz Schubert’s Lieder.<br />
The evening performance<br />
proved to be not only a musical<br />
tour-de-force but a fundraising<br />
success. The benefit was<br />
attended by nearly two hundred<br />
Academy trustees, benefactors,<br />
alumni, and a great many<br />
additional friends. Present from<br />
the Academy’s own board were<br />
co-Chairman Karl M. von der<br />
Heyden, Academy President<br />
and ceo Norman Pearlstine,<br />
and trustees Stephen Burbank,<br />
Marina Kellen French, Michael<br />
Klein, and Richard K. Goeltz.<br />
To add to the night’s musical gifts,<br />
Deutsche Grammophon had<br />
produced a special-edition CD<br />
of Pape singing previously unreleased<br />
Wagner arias.<br />
Dresden-native Pape, a longtime<br />
friend of the Academy, debuted<br />
at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter<br />
den Linden in 1988 and has been<br />
a member ever since. He has<br />
appeared with the world’s leading<br />
orchestras and conductors<br />
in major concert halls all over<br />
the globe. The recipient of two<br />
Grammys, Pape has appeared<br />
at the New York’s Metropolitan<br />
Opera every season since 1995,<br />
a venue he recently called “his<br />
second musical home.”<br />
Pape was in New York at the<br />
Metropolitan Opera during<br />
the fall <strong>20</strong>10 season to sing the<br />
title role in a new production of<br />
Boris Godunov – a role that has<br />
won him an “Artist of the Year”<br />
title from the German Critics<br />
Association, among other accolades.<br />
The opera was directed<br />
by Stephen Wadsworth, with<br />
Valery Gergiev conducting. Pape<br />
was also honored during the<br />
fall <strong>20</strong>10 season as part of the<br />
Metropolitan Opera Guild’s new<br />
series “The Met Mastersingers.”<br />
In February <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> Pape and<br />
Zeger gave a West Coast debut<br />
recital at the Dorothy Chandler<br />
Center in Los Angeles. Without<br />
surprise, our voce munifico won<br />
resounding praise.<br />
m. r./r.j.m.
N14 | Sketches & Dispatches | News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
The Cult of the Word<br />
Authors develop<br />
– how could it be otherwise?<br />
– special relationships<br />
to language. Han Ong, a<br />
New York-based novelist and<br />
dramatist born in the Philippines,<br />
nurtures a distinct vocabulary<br />
fetish. The 42-year-old is the<br />
current Holtzbrinck Fellow at<br />
the American Academy, in<br />
Wannsee, and is working on his<br />
third novel. At a recent reading<br />
he celebrated his cult of words<br />
with the public.<br />
An ideal balance of eccentricity<br />
and laconic self-irony accented<br />
Ong’s performance, as well the<br />
use of single words projected<br />
on a screen. Using rare Anglo-<br />
American terms like “to transmogrify”<br />
and “inchoate,” Ong<br />
described what his new project<br />
was all about.<br />
Initially, “Burden of Dreams”<br />
was a self-contained short story;<br />
he refined the piece over months,<br />
read many short stories by other<br />
authors and then realized that<br />
his story lacked the essence of<br />
the genre’s brevity. Since then he<br />
has been working on expanding<br />
his original story about a rich<br />
American who supports twelve<br />
Philippine students financially<br />
and has decided to include the<br />
stories of the twelve students.<br />
“Immigration” and “assimilation”<br />
– expressions that have<br />
already found their way into<br />
everyday language – were the<br />
keywords of the evening. Ong<br />
was born in 1968 in Manila to<br />
Chinese immigrants. Sixteen<br />
years later the family moved to<br />
Los Angeles. Due to an early and<br />
overabundant consumption of<br />
English literature and Hollywood<br />
films, Ong’s English was hardly<br />
shabby before he came to the<br />
United States. Nonetheless he<br />
wanted to lose his accent – which<br />
he did. He coquettishly compared<br />
his adolescent ambition with the<br />
heroine of Shaw’s Pygmalion,<br />
who is transformed from a<br />
cheeky brat into an elegant lady.<br />
“Eliza Doolittle has nothing on<br />
me,” he quipped.<br />
In most of his books (which<br />
have not yet been translated into<br />
German), Ong tells the story of<br />
immigrants and their highly<br />
original methods to stomach<br />
their culture shock in America.<br />
The author has obviously come to<br />
terms with it. His dramas have<br />
been showered with stipends and<br />
prizes: his debut Fixer Chao was<br />
chosen as the book of the year<br />
<strong>20</strong>01 by the Los Angeles Times; six<br />
years ago his second novel The<br />
Disinherited was short-listed for<br />
the Lambda Book Award.<br />
Ong does not return to the fate<br />
of immigrants in order to critique<br />
society or because of his familiarity<br />
with their mentality. What is<br />
particularly alluring to him are<br />
the verbal possibilities. The linguistic<br />
clumsiness of his protagonists<br />
allows the English language<br />
to gain pliable dimensions and<br />
semantic versatility. There is<br />
nothing clumsy in Ong’s writing,<br />
but he exudes a childlike awe<br />
and delight in language.<br />
By Marianna Lieder<br />
Excerpted from Tagesspiegel<br />
December 12, <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Translated by Rieke Jordan<br />
Stalinism and Genocide<br />
Norman Naimark delves into the ugly past of Stalin’s killing machine and the legal tribulations of its crimes<br />
Beginning in the 1930s,<br />
a Polish-Jewish attorney<br />
named Raphael Lemkin<br />
became fascinated and horrified<br />
by the topic of mass killings that<br />
had occurred throughout history.<br />
In all likelihood he had a premonitory<br />
sense of what was to happen<br />
in neighboring Germany, so he<br />
lobbied the League of Nations<br />
to make constituents aware of a<br />
phenomena he was calling “barbarism.”<br />
He was ignored.<br />
In 1939 Lemkin left Poland<br />
and landed in the United States,<br />
where he began working for<br />
the Carnegie Endowment, and<br />
then for the Department of War.<br />
During this time he wrote a book,<br />
The Axis Occupation of Europe,<br />
where the word “genocide” was<br />
used for the first time.<br />
On March 3, Norman<br />
Naimark, the Axel <strong>Spring</strong>er<br />
Fellow this spring, discussed<br />
Lemkin’s work and his continued<br />
lobbying to punish and prevent<br />
genocide across the world.<br />
A specialist on the Stalinist<br />
genocide of the 1930s and early<br />
1940s, Naimark focused in his<br />
lecture on the ways that the<br />
Soviet Union managed to erase<br />
between ten and twenty million<br />
people in social, national, economic,<br />
and political slaughters<br />
meant to square society with<br />
the Communist project. These<br />
groups included not only ethnic,<br />
political, and religious minorities<br />
but “socially harmful” people:<br />
prostitutes, the homeless, alcoholics,<br />
drug users, political<br />
opponents, and former revolutionaries.<br />
Stalinist ideology<br />
was used to justify these mass<br />
murders, to dehumanize and<br />
then exterminate human beings,<br />
Naimark reminds, leading to<br />
the literal decimation of the<br />
Russian population still demographically<br />
palpable.<br />
Aside from the historical problems<br />
involved in the Stalinist<br />
genocide, there is also the<br />
problem of numbers of deaths<br />
unearthed in the nkdv (People’s<br />
Commissariat for Internal<br />
Affairs) archives since being<br />
opened after the end of the<br />
Cold War. You simply can’t<br />
believe them, Naimark says.<br />
Why? Because just like the Five-<br />
Year Plan, they always add up.<br />
The number of ethnic Kulaks<br />
eradicated in the process of<br />
de-Kulakization, for example,<br />
reads exactly 1,837,622. Crimean<br />
Tartars killed exactly 179,604.<br />
Naimark notes that these figures<br />
don’t include tortured victims<br />
who died from their injuries, people<br />
who were simply left to perish<br />
of famine, and those who were<br />
“deported,” many of whom simply<br />
died out of sight.<br />
After the war, in 1946, Raphael<br />
Lemkin went to the Nuremberg<br />
trials and insisted that the Nazis<br />
be tried for genocide. His pleas<br />
fell on deaf ears. No one was tried<br />
for genocide, Naimark points<br />
out, and the very idea was not<br />
attached to any indictments.<br />
Yet Lemkin’s efforts forced the<br />
United Nations into recognizing<br />
that something of extraordinarily<br />
horror had just occured.<br />
The United Nations Genocide<br />
Convention of 1948 successfully<br />
passed an international<br />
law prohibiting the mass killing<br />
of “national, ethnic, racial, or<br />
religious groups, as such.” By lobbying<br />
the un with the assistance<br />
of the Poles, however, the Soviets<br />
had prevented the legislation<br />
from including the words “social”<br />
and “political.” They would reign<br />
over half of Europe for another<br />
four decades.<br />
r.j.m.
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Life & Letters | N15<br />
• Life & Letters •<br />
Berlin via Epstein<br />
Academy alumnus Mitch Epstein’s book of visual odyssies through the German capital<br />
Photographer Mitch Epstein, who<br />
was awarded the presitgious Prix<br />
Pictet in March <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong>, was a Guna<br />
S. Mundheim Fellow in the Visual<br />
Arts at the American Academy in<br />
spring <strong>20</strong>08. He had just completed<br />
his monumental photo survey<br />
American Power (Steidl, <strong>20</strong>09)<br />
and was looking for a small respite<br />
in Berlin. No such luck: Epstein’s<br />
curiousity was piqued by the<br />
German capital’s quotidian and<br />
quirky corners, such as this defunct<br />
air-raid shelter in Wünsdorf.<br />
The result of Epstein’s rich visual<br />
odyssey, Berlin, will, at last, be<br />
available in June <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> from<br />
Steidl. The following is the book’s<br />
Introduction.<br />
I<br />
was raised in a Jewish<br />
American family that refused<br />
to visit Germany in deference<br />
to lost kin who had perished in<br />
the Holocaust. At 49, I broke the<br />
family protocol and traveled to<br />
Göttingen to supervise the printing<br />
of a book of my photographs<br />
at the publisher Steidl. This trip<br />
became the first of a dozen to<br />
Germany in the decade that followed,<br />
during which I worked<br />
on more books at Steidl, and<br />
on exhibitions in Cologne with<br />
my gallerist, Thomas Zander.<br />
Then, in <strong>20</strong>08, I was awarded<br />
the Berlin Prize. To my astonishment,<br />
Germans had become my<br />
staunchest allies.<br />
I left New York with my wife<br />
and daughter for a six-month residency<br />
at the American Academy<br />
in Berlin. We arrived in bonechilling<br />
January and I planned<br />
to sequester myself for a period<br />
of reflection and reading. But the<br />
city – more complicated and poignant<br />
than any I’d known, except<br />
Hanoi – could not be ignored.<br />
Mitch Epstein, Winkelturm Air-Raid ShelTER, Wünsdorf, <strong>20</strong>08<br />
The day we arrived, a driver took<br />
us from Tegel airport to the<br />
Academy in Wannsee, the suburb<br />
where the Nazis plotted the Final<br />
Solution. As he drove, I asked<br />
questions, and a flood of historical<br />
information poured forth: What<br />
was that toy-like tower? “That was<br />
Hitler’s radio and look-out tower<br />
during the war. Now it’s part of<br />
the Berlin Convention Centre.”<br />
The highway we were driving<br />
on was Hitler’s former racetrack.<br />
Only a few miles down the road<br />
was the legendary Glienicke<br />
Bridge in Potsdam, where the cia<br />
and kgb traded captive spies only<br />
twenty years ago.<br />
It was tempting to remain in the<br />
comfortable Academy enclave,<br />
with its fireplace and brilliant<br />
scholars. But I was drawn to<br />
the Berlin that had attempted to<br />
annihilate my ancestors, as well<br />
as the Berlin that had embodied<br />
the Cold War division, which had<br />
threatened the bedrock stability<br />
of my American childhood. I<br />
looked for the remnants of those<br />
tormented wartime and postwar<br />
histories; they were often overt,<br />
and sometimes lay just below the<br />
thin skin of contemporary Berlin.<br />
With an 8 x 10 camera, I started<br />
at Sachsenhausen concentration<br />
camp in January and ended with<br />
the Dalai Lama speaking at the<br />
Brandenburg Gate in June.<br />
Berlin was reconceived with<br />
the reunification of East and<br />
West in 1990. And although it<br />
has to contend with the stresses<br />
of all modern cities, Berlin has<br />
come to signify a society with<br />
a conscience. The remnants of<br />
wretched histories that I found<br />
were not accidental. Berliners<br />
have chosen to leave traces of the<br />
worst of themselves in their architecture<br />
and landscape. They have<br />
understood what a largely amnesiac<br />
America has not: reform<br />
relies on memory.<br />
mitch epstein
N16 | Life & Letters | News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
A Life in Film<br />
The Academy mourns the death of film theorist and alumna Miriam Hansen (1949–<strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong>)<br />
Since it began, film was<br />
made to be seen. It has created,<br />
in turn, unique ways<br />
of seeing. Miriam Hansen, an<br />
Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow in<br />
spring <strong>20</strong>04, spent her academic<br />
career fascinated by this filmic<br />
dialectic. Hansen’s intense commitment<br />
to film led her to found<br />
the now legendary Committee<br />
on Cinema and Media Studies<br />
at the University of Chicago,<br />
where she was the Ferdinand<br />
Schevill Distinguished Service<br />
Professor in the Humanities<br />
in the Department of English<br />
since 1990 until her death, on<br />
February 5, <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong>.<br />
Born Dorothea Miriam Bratu<br />
in 1949 in Offenbach, Germany,<br />
Hansen’s parents were Jewish<br />
exiles who had met returning<br />
home after World War II. Hansen<br />
went on to receive a doctorate,<br />
in 1975, from the Johann<br />
Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in<br />
Frankfurt. Prior to her arrival<br />
at the University of Chicago, in<br />
1990, she taught at Yale and<br />
Rutgers. Her pioneering study,<br />
Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship<br />
in American Silent Film (Harvard,<br />
1991) was lauded by peers as “a<br />
work that has revolutionized the<br />
concept of spectatorship.”<br />
Hansen was an influential and<br />
subtle reader of the key cultural,<br />
social, and film theorists loosely<br />
affiliated with the city of her studies,<br />
including Theodor Adorno,<br />
Walter Benjamin, Alexander<br />
Kluge, and Siegfried Kracauer.<br />
She had completed a book manuscript<br />
on these monumental<br />
thinkers shortly before her death.<br />
American Academy Executive<br />
Director Gary Smith, who taught<br />
at the University of Chicago contemporaneously<br />
with Hansen,<br />
was struck by both her brilliance<br />
and her kindness towards rising<br />
scholars. “Miriam was revered<br />
by younger colleagues for her<br />
personal generosity as well as<br />
her scholarship. I remember her<br />
always having time to discuss<br />
Walter Benjamin and other topics,<br />
despite her continuing battles<br />
with cancer.”<br />
The eminent German author,<br />
social theorist, and film director<br />
Alexander Kluge, who broadcast<br />
several lengthy interviews of<br />
Miriam Hansen on German television,<br />
described to the Academy<br />
her profound influence: “Like<br />
a careful gardener, Miriam<br />
Hansen planted and interwove<br />
traditions of Frankfurt critical<br />
theory, modern film history, and<br />
her own critical passions and<br />
curiosity. She is an important<br />
transatlantic bridge for the traditions<br />
of enlightenment and film<br />
art. She was not only a theoretical<br />
mind, but someone who also<br />
exerted a strong, practical influence<br />
on filmmaking. Because of<br />
her, the Minutenfilm saw a rebirth,<br />
as well as film projected onto<br />
multiple screens, the Max Ophüls<br />
renaissance, and much more. We<br />
auteurs listened to her. She was –<br />
as she sat in her Chicago office<br />
and worked, occasionally glancing<br />
over the lake – our prophet.”<br />
Hansen is survived by her<br />
husband, Michael Geyer, the<br />
Samuel N. Harper Professor of<br />
German and European History at<br />
the University of Chicago and a<br />
trustee of the American Academy<br />
in Berlin.<br />
r.j.m.<br />
© Howard Helsinger<br />
Profiles in Scholarship<br />
Presenting the spring <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> fellows<br />
James Der Derian<br />
The terrorist attacks of<br />
September 11, <strong>20</strong>01 occurred a<br />
decade ago. Yet the preoccupation<br />
with terrorism continues to<br />
hamper the response of statesmen<br />
and scholars alike to global<br />
changes. Bosch Fellow James Der<br />
Derian, professor of international<br />
studies at Brown University,<br />
argues that the American unipolar<br />
moment has passed, succeed<br />
by a “heteropolarity” of networked<br />
forms of power. Is there<br />
a way to move on to a new global<br />
security agenda that recognizes<br />
and can manage these changes?<br />
Der Derian has been theorizing<br />
what such an environment would<br />
look like, as well as its ethical<br />
considerations. While at the<br />
Academy in spring <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> he will<br />
be writing on these subjects and<br />
completing an e-book version of<br />
the documentary film Human<br />
Terrain.<br />
Der Derian received his BA at<br />
McGill University in Quebec and<br />
was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford<br />
University, where he completed<br />
his MPhil and DPhil in international<br />
relations. Der Derian<br />
has authored and edited several<br />
books on international relations.<br />
In addition to his work on Human<br />
Terrain, Der Derian has produced<br />
two documentaries, Virtual y2k<br />
and After 9/11. His writing has<br />
appeared in numerous global<br />
security publications, as well as<br />
the New York Times, The Nation,<br />
Washington Quarterly, and Wired.<br />
Astrid M. Eckert<br />
Since Churchill’s Fulton Speech,<br />
in 1946, the Iron Curtain has<br />
served as one of the primary<br />
political metaphors in Cold War<br />
politics. But what exactly happened<br />
at the Aussenrand of the<br />
“free world” during those tense<br />
decades? Daimler Fellow Astrid<br />
M. Eckert revisits the history<br />
of Cold War West Germany by<br />
focusing on its most sensitive<br />
geographical space, the border<br />
with its ideological adversary,<br />
socialist East Germany. An assistant<br />
professor of modern German<br />
history at Emory University,<br />
Eckert studies the borderlands<br />
that emerged on the eastern edge<br />
of the new West German state.<br />
Viewing borderlands as “fields<br />
of heightened consciousness,” as<br />
Daphne Berdahl observed, Eckert<br />
seeks to recast West German history<br />
from the periphery. Her new<br />
book project, tentatively entitled<br />
West Germany and the Iron<br />
Curtain, will be Eckert’s focus<br />
during her residency.<br />
Eckert received her PhD from<br />
the Free University of Berlin in<br />
<strong>20</strong>03. With a dissertation entitled<br />
Battle for the Files: The Western<br />
Allies and the Return of Captured<br />
German Archives after World War<br />
II, which was awarded the <strong>20</strong>04<br />
Friedrich Meinecke Dissertation<br />
Prize of the Free University’s<br />
history department and the biennial<br />
Hedwig Hintze Dissertation<br />
Award of the German Historical<br />
Association. She also co-edited
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Life & Letters | N17<br />
Institutions of Public Memory: The<br />
Legacies of German and American<br />
Politicians, published in <strong>20</strong>07.<br />
Hal Foster<br />
In Walter Benjamin’s 1933<br />
essay “Experience and Poverty”<br />
he observes, “In its buildings,<br />
pictures, and stories, mankind<br />
is preparing to outlive culture,<br />
if need be.” Hal Foster, the<br />
Townsend Martin Class of 1917<br />
Professor of Art and Archaeology<br />
at Princeton University, takes<br />
inspiration from Benjamin’s<br />
“surviving civilization” sentiment<br />
in his project, “Bathetic, Brutal,<br />
Banal: Strategies of Survival in<br />
<strong>20</strong>th Century Art.” While each<br />
of these terms refers to a specific<br />
Foster began writing art criticism<br />
for Artforum in 1978. The<br />
strength of this early writing<br />
quickly propelled him into a<br />
major presence in the New York<br />
art scene: from 1981–1987 he<br />
was an editor at Art in America,<br />
and in 1983 he edited a seminal<br />
collection of essays on postmodernism<br />
The Anti-Aesthetic:<br />
Essays on Postmodern Culture.<br />
Foster received his PhD from<br />
the Graduate Center at the<br />
City University of New York in<br />
1990. Foster’s books include<br />
Compulsive Beauty (mit, 1993),<br />
The Return of the Real (mit, 1996),<br />
Design and Crime (and Other<br />
Diatribes) (Verso, <strong>20</strong>02), and<br />
Prosthetic Gods (mit, <strong>20</strong>04). He<br />
Atmospheric Disturbances (Farrar,<br />
Straus & Giroux, <strong>20</strong>08), was<br />
selected as a New York Times<br />
Notable Book of the Year as<br />
well as both a Slate and Salon<br />
Best Book of <strong>20</strong>09. Galchen<br />
has taught creative writing at<br />
Columbia University, where<br />
she completed her own MFA in<br />
Fiction in <strong>20</strong>06 and was a Robert<br />
Bingham Fellow. She also holds<br />
a medical degree in psychiatry<br />
from the Mount Sinai School of<br />
Medicine. Her medical expertise<br />
and psychiatric sensitivity<br />
reveal themselves discreetly<br />
in Atmospheric Disturbances<br />
through the leading character of<br />
Leo Liebenstein, a psychiatrist<br />
who believes his wife has been<br />
the Believer, and New York<br />
Magazine. In July <strong>20</strong>10, Galchen<br />
was featured as one of the New<br />
Yorker’s “<strong>20</strong> under 40” fiction<br />
writers.<br />
Todd Gitlin<br />
No fewer than three crises are<br />
affecting journalism today,<br />
claims Columbia University professor<br />
Todd Gitlin: the economic<br />
travails of newspapers; an attention<br />
crisis of the news-consuming<br />
public; and, perhaps most worrisome,<br />
an authority crisis that<br />
has led to mistrust of the news<br />
media generally. Journalism and<br />
journalists<br />
themselves have begun to lose<br />
both morale and legitimacy.<br />
© hornischer<br />
Class of spring <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> (l to R): Hal foster, H. C. erik midelfort, david b. ruderman, dave mckenzie, p. adams sitney, ellen kennedy,<br />
ken ueno, astrid m. eckert, james der derian, norman naimark, pieter m. judson, rivka galchen (not pictured: todd gitlin)<br />
cultural moment – respectively<br />
Dada, Brutalist architecture, and<br />
Pop banality – they are unified<br />
in a longer view of modernism,<br />
specifically in a key, overlooked<br />
strategy that Foster calls “mimetic<br />
exacerbation.” Exploring what<br />
exactly this strategy is and how<br />
it continues to influence contemporary<br />
art will be Foster’s focus<br />
as a Berlin Prize Fellow at the<br />
American Academy.<br />
continues to write regularly for<br />
the London Review of Books, the<br />
Los Angeles Times Book Review,<br />
October (where he is also a coeditor),<br />
and the New Left Review.<br />
Rivka Galchen<br />
Rivka Galchen, the Mary Ellen<br />
von der Heyden Fiction Fellow,<br />
is a New York-based writer and<br />
a contributing editor to Harper’s<br />
magazine. Her debut novel,<br />
replaced by an almost identical<br />
double.<br />
Galchen won the <strong>20</strong>10<br />
William Saroyan International<br />
Prize for Writing and has<br />
received fellowships from the<br />
New York Public Library’s<br />
Cullman Center for Scholars<br />
and Writers and the Rona Jaffe<br />
Foundation. Her work has<br />
appeared in the New Yorker,<br />
Harper’s, the New York Times,<br />
“To say that the atmosphere<br />
among journalists is troubled,”<br />
Gitlin says, “is an understatement.<br />
’Toxic’ might be a better<br />
adjective.” At the American<br />
Academy as a Bosch Fellow, Gitlin<br />
aims to write a concise account<br />
of journalism’s current predicament:<br />
its origins, significance,<br />
and the eventual effects it will<br />
have on both civil society and our<br />
shared intellectual environment.
N18 | Life & Letters | News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
Gitlin was educated at Harvard<br />
University, the University of<br />
Michigan, and the University of<br />
California, Berkeley; and is the<br />
author of twelve books, including,<br />
most recently The Bulldozer and<br />
the Big Tent: Blind Republicans,<br />
Lame Democrats, and the Recovery<br />
of American Ideals (Wiley, <strong>20</strong>07).<br />
Gitlin’s articles have appeared in<br />
scores of publications, including<br />
New York Times, Los Angeles Times,<br />
San Francisco Chronicle, Harper’s,<br />
and Mother Jones, where he is a<br />
contributing writer, and he has<br />
often appeared on television<br />
and radio programs. Prior to his<br />
position at Columbia, Gitlin was<br />
a professor of sociology and director<br />
of the Mass Communications<br />
Program at the University of<br />
California, Berkeley, and then<br />
a professor of culture, journalism<br />
and sociology at New York<br />
University.<br />
Pieter JudSOn<br />
For over eight centuries the<br />
Habsburg Monarchy alternately<br />
attempted, succeeded, and failed<br />
to unify states throughout<br />
Europe under a succession of<br />
duchys, kingdoms, and banats<br />
from Vienna to Carpathia. The<br />
policies implemented to achieve<br />
such grand reach did not die with<br />
the Empire in 1918, however, and<br />
it is the aim of historian Pieter<br />
Judson to write a new history of<br />
the Habsburg Monarchy and its<br />
successor states, one that looks<br />
closely at events that occurred<br />
as the Empire crawled to a halt.<br />
Judson’s Academy project during<br />
his Nina Maria Gorrissen<br />
Fellowship will consider a broad<br />
range of imperial campaigns<br />
that sought to unify the diverse<br />
regions and thereby offer an alternative<br />
to the fragmented, nationbased<br />
accounts that continue to<br />
dominate narratives about East<br />
Central Europe.<br />
A professor of history at<br />
Swarthmore College, and an<br />
award-winning author, Judson’s<br />
current work on modern<br />
European history, specifically<br />
on Germany and the Austro-<br />
Hungarian Empire between 1848<br />
and 1948, focuses on nationalist<br />
conflicts, revolutionary and<br />
counter revolutionary social<br />
movements, and European fascism.<br />
Judson has been awarded<br />
grants from the Guggenheim<br />
Foundation, the neh, and has<br />
been a Whiting, Marshall, and<br />
Fulbright fellow. His most recent<br />
book, Guardians of the Nation:<br />
Activists on the Language Frontiers<br />
of Imperial Austria (Harvard,<br />
<strong>20</strong>06), offers new challenges to<br />
traditional accounts of the rise<br />
of nationalism in multi-ethnic<br />
regions of Central and Eastern<br />
Europe.<br />
Ellen Kennedy<br />
In University of Pennsylvania<br />
political scientist Ellen<br />
Kennedy’s Academy project<br />
“The Political Theory of Market<br />
Governance,” she observes how<br />
economic and financial crises in<br />
Weimar Germany and the United<br />
States became a source of greatly<br />
expanded executive powers in<br />
both constitutions. Economic<br />
emergencies caused escalations<br />
in presidential power. These historical<br />
examples, Kennedy says,<br />
reveal the fragility of “rule of law”<br />
concepts in the social context of<br />
modern democratic constitutions.<br />
There is an alternative, however,<br />
in the theorists of Ordo liberalism<br />
and the soziale Rechtsstadt,<br />
specifically in the relatively<br />
obscure figure of Walter Eucken,<br />
an economist whose ideas helped<br />
create the miracle economy of<br />
postwar Germany – the subject<br />
of her work in Berlin as an Axel<br />
<strong>Spring</strong>er Fellow.<br />
Kennedy’s work has long<br />
focused on a variety of topics<br />
with the fields of comparative<br />
political economy and the history<br />
of modern European political<br />
and legal theory. She received<br />
a PhD in government from the<br />
London School of Economics,<br />
and before joining the faculty at<br />
the University of Pennsylvania,<br />
Kennedy taught at the universities<br />
of London, York, Manchester,<br />
and Freiburg. Kennedy is the<br />
author of several books, among<br />
them Constitutional Failure:<br />
Carl Schmitt in Weimar (Duke,<br />
<strong>20</strong>04), The Bundesbank (Johns<br />
Hopkins, 1997), and Freedom<br />
and the Open Society: Henri<br />
Bergson’s Contribution to Political<br />
Philosophy (Garland, 1987).<br />
Dave McKenzie<br />
Brooklyn-based artist Dave<br />
McKenzie blazes across multiple<br />
media – sculpture, video, painting,<br />
and performance, while<br />
engaging in the tradition of<br />
public art that boldly interrogates<br />
society’s unspoken assumptions<br />
about itself. Often employing<br />
his own likeness, McKenzie’s<br />
self-ironizing, playful approach<br />
to art-making belies the seriousness<br />
of his themes: artistic and<br />
racial identity, social masking,<br />
and economic nonfunctionality,<br />
which he will continue exploring<br />
as a Guna S. Mundheim Visual<br />
Arts Fellow at the Academy.<br />
McKenzie was born in<br />
Kingston, Jamaica in 1977. He<br />
received a BFA in printmaking<br />
from the University of the Arts in<br />
Philadelphia and studied at the<br />
Skowhegan School of Painting<br />
and Sculpture. He has had<br />
numerous solo exhibitions, most<br />
recently On Premises at Susanne<br />
Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects<br />
in <strong>20</strong>09, Present Tense at the<br />
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center<br />
and Screen Doors on Submarines,<br />
shown at redcat Gallery in Los<br />
Angeles, both in <strong>20</strong>08. Prior<br />
exhibitions were held at the<br />
Institute of Contemporary Art<br />
Boston in <strong>20</strong>07, as well as<br />
at Gallery 40000 in Chicago<br />
in <strong>20</strong>06.<br />
H. c. Erik Midelfort<br />
During his Ellen Maria<br />
Gorrissen Fellowship at the<br />
American Academy in Berlin,<br />
historian of early modern<br />
Germany H. C. Erik Midelfort<br />
will pursue his project “Fear of<br />
Freethinking: the Suppression of<br />
Dissent in Germany, 1650–1750,”<br />
which examines the ways in<br />
which the German states during<br />
that century, with no Inquisition<br />
like that of Catholic Italy or Spain<br />
– and with virtually no effective<br />
central government – managed<br />
to suppress radical and dissenting<br />
political, moral, religious or<br />
irreligious views. It is Midelfort’s<br />
aim to show how certain cultural<br />
dynamics led to the development<br />
of a surprisingly academic<br />
culture in which Catholics and<br />
Protestants (both Lutherans and<br />
Calvinists) could survive in their<br />
own separate religious niches,<br />
but where other thoughts were<br />
rigorously censored.<br />
Midelfort’s pioneering<br />
research into some uncanny<br />
facets of early modern Germany,<br />
including exorcism, witchcraft,<br />
and the history of madness,<br />
has resulted in acclaimed findings<br />
and in prize-winning<br />
books such as Mad Princes in<br />
Renaissance Germany (Virginia,<br />
1994), and A History of Madness<br />
in Sixteenth-Century Germany<br />
(Stanford, <strong>20</strong>00). Midelfort, at<br />
the University of Virginia since<br />
1970 and since 1996 the Julian<br />
Bishko Professor of History, has<br />
been a visiting scholar at several<br />
universities in the US and abroad,<br />
including at his alma mater Yale –<br />
where he received his BA, MA,<br />
and PhD degrees – at Harvard,<br />
and at both Wolfson and All<br />
Souls College at the University<br />
of Oxford.<br />
Norman Naimark<br />
What was the span of Joseph<br />
Stalin’s plans for Europe from<br />
the end of World War II until his<br />
death, in 1953? Which European<br />
ideologies, social movements,<br />
and cultural values intersected<br />
with Soviet designs on Europe<br />
at the beginning of the Cold<br />
War? Norman M. Naimark, the<br />
Robert and Florence McDonnell<br />
Chair in East European History<br />
at Stanford University, is interested<br />
in the problems of radical<br />
politics in the Russian Empire<br />
and Eastern Europe. In his current<br />
Academy project, the Axel<br />
<strong>Spring</strong>er Fellow aims to explore<br />
seven case studies that highlight<br />
how the shape and tenor of<br />
postwar Europe were decided<br />
by a “three-cornered historical<br />
relationship” between Stalin’s
News from the Hans Arnhold Center | Life & Letters | N19<br />
policies, European social movements<br />
and values, and the growing<br />
rivalry between the US and<br />
Soviet Union.<br />
Formerly a professor of history<br />
at Boston University, a<br />
fellow of the Russian Research<br />
Center at Harvard, and senior<br />
fellow at the Hoover Institution,<br />
Naimark has served as Director<br />
of Stanford’s Center for Russian<br />
and East European Studies and<br />
chair of the history department,<br />
in addition to acting as director of<br />
Stanford’s interdisciplinary programs<br />
in International Relations<br />
and International Policy Studies.<br />
In 1996, Naimark was presented<br />
with the Distinguished Service<br />
Cross from the government of<br />
the Federal Republic of Germany.<br />
David B. Ruderman<br />
In 1797 Phinehas Elijah Hurwitz,<br />
a Jewish mystic who lived<br />
from 1765 to 1821, published an<br />
obscure book called the Sefer<br />
ha-Brit (Book of the Covenant)<br />
in Moravia. The book offers an<br />
exegesis on an older work of<br />
Jewish mysticism and expounds<br />
upon the sciences of the day<br />
before detailing the soul’s preparation<br />
for imbibing the Divine<br />
Spirit. David B. Ruderman, the<br />
Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of<br />
Modern Jewish History and<br />
the Ella Darivoff Director of<br />
the Center for Advanced Judaic<br />
Studies at the University of<br />
Pennsylvania, will tackle his own<br />
exegesis of Hurwitz’s volume in<br />
his project “Mysticism, Science,<br />
and Moral Cosmopolitanism in<br />
Enlightenment Jewish Thought.”<br />
The German Transatlantic<br />
Program Fellow aims to open a<br />
fascinating window into the processes<br />
of continuity and change<br />
in Jewish thinking at the dawn of<br />
the modern era.<br />
Ruderman was educated at<br />
the City College of New York,<br />
the Teacher’s Institute of the<br />
Jewish Theological Seminary<br />
of America, and Columbia<br />
University. He received his rabbinical<br />
degree from the Hebrew<br />
Union College-Jewish Institute<br />
of Religion in New York and<br />
his PhD in Jewish history from<br />
the Hebrew University. He has<br />
taught at Yale University and<br />
the University of Maryland,<br />
College Park, and at the Graduate<br />
School of the Jewish Theological<br />
Seminary of America and the<br />
Hebrew University in Jerusalem.<br />
He is the author or editor of<br />
eighteen books, including The<br />
World of a Renaissance Jew: The<br />
Life and Thought of Abraham b.<br />
Mordecai Farissol (Hebrew Union<br />
College Press, 1981) and Jewish<br />
Enlightenment in an English<br />
Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction<br />
of Modern Jewish Thought<br />
(Princeton, <strong>20</strong>01).<br />
P. Adams Sitney<br />
P. Adams Sitney, Professor of<br />
the Council of the Humanities<br />
and Visual Arts at Princeton<br />
University, was last in Berlin in<br />
the bright fall of 1967. It was then<br />
that he met two pioneering filmmakers:<br />
Gregory Markopoulos<br />
and Robert Beavers. Both avant<br />
garde auteurs would come to<br />
occupy a large portion of Sitney’s<br />
critical attention over the coming<br />
decades, and in Sitney’s<br />
Academy project, “Cinema and<br />
Poetry,” he re-examines not only<br />
their work, but also that of filmmakers<br />
Pier Paolo Pasolini and<br />
Andrey Tarkovsky, both of whom<br />
push the subtle visual language<br />
of poetry into the cinematic<br />
dimension.<br />
Sitney, this spring’s Anna-<br />
Maria Kellen Fellow, was educated<br />
at Yale University, where he<br />
studied Greek and Sanskrit as an<br />
undergraduate before obtaining<br />
his MA and PhD in comparative<br />
literature. He went on to found<br />
the Anthology Film Archives and<br />
curate international film series<br />
and exhibitions of contemporary<br />
film, as well as serve as associate<br />
editor at Film Culture for three<br />
decades. He has taught at New<br />
York University, Bard College,<br />
Cooper Union, and Middlebury<br />
College. His book Visionary<br />
Film: The American Avant-Garde<br />
(Oxford, 1974) remains required<br />
reading for aspiring filmmakers.<br />
Sitney’s most recent work<br />
is Eyes Upside Down: Visionary<br />
Filmmakers and the Heritage of<br />
Emerson (Oxford, <strong>20</strong>08).<br />
Ken Ueno<br />
Composer Ken Ueno’s music<br />
shirks easy categorization, drawing<br />
on influences as disparate<br />
as heavy metal and Tuvan throat<br />
singing. Ueno himself is not only<br />
a composer of acoustic and electronic<br />
works, but also a performer<br />
and vocal improviser specializing<br />
in “extended techniques,” such<br />
as growling, gurgling, humming,<br />
and whispering. In his second<br />
semester as the Berlin Prize<br />
in Music Composition Fellow,<br />
Ueno will continue work on two<br />
compositions.<br />
Currently an assistant professor<br />
of music at the University<br />
of California, Berkeley, Ueno<br />
has taught at the University of<br />
Massachusetts, where he was<br />
also was the director of the<br />
Electronic Music Studios. A<br />
graduate of West Point, he holds<br />
degrees from Berklee College of<br />
Music, Boston University, the<br />
Yale School of Music, and a PhD<br />
from Harvard University.<br />
Sneak Preview<br />
Announcing the fall <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> fellows<br />
This fall welcomes<br />
another outstanding class<br />
of scholars and writers<br />
to the Hans Arnhold Center.<br />
Jennifer Culbert, a political<br />
scientist at Johns Hopkins<br />
University, will be studying the<br />
jurisprudence of Hannah Arendt;<br />
Leland de la Durantaye,<br />
who teaches English at Harvard<br />
University, is beginning work<br />
on a study of Samuel Beckett;<br />
James Der Derian, a<br />
spring <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> fellow from Brown<br />
University, will fulfill the remainder<br />
of his Bosch Fellowship at<br />
work on his film, Human Terrain,<br />
part of his project of “Global<br />
Engagement through Innovative<br />
Media.” A professor of social<br />
psychology at Northwestern<br />
University, Alice Eagly,<br />
delves into the origins of malefemale<br />
psychology, and, tangentially,<br />
Adam Haslett, a San<br />
Francisco-based writer, is at work<br />
on his novel Kindness. Daniel<br />
Hobbins, an associate professor<br />
of history at Ohio State, is<br />
researching the medieval origins<br />
of print; Susan McCabe<br />
of the University of Southern<br />
California furthers her research<br />
on the writer Annie Winifred<br />
Ellerman, in her project “Bryher:<br />
Female Husband of Modernism,”<br />
and Geoffrey O’Brien,<br />
Editor-in-Chief of Library of<br />
America, is working on “America<br />
before the Code.” Visual artist<br />
Paul Pfeiffer will delve into<br />
new works, and Elizabeth<br />
Povinelli, who teaches anthropology<br />
and gender studies at<br />
Columbia University, explores<br />
the relationship between “new<br />
media and late liberalism.” Jut ta<br />
Schickore, a professor of history<br />
and philosophy of science at<br />
Indiana University, is studying<br />
three hundred years of experiments<br />
with snake venom (1660–<br />
1960); poet Tom Sleigh, of<br />
Hunter College, is putting down<br />
brave new lines while in Berlin,<br />
and lastly John Van Engen,<br />
a professor of history at Notre<br />
Dame, is studying the European<br />
twelfth century as a “turn” in<br />
the medieval narrative.
N<strong>20</strong> | Life & Letters | News from the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
Alumni Books<br />
Recent releases by former fellows<br />
Anne Applebaum<br />
Gulag Voices: An Anthology<br />
Yale University Press,<br />
January <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Sigrid Nunez<br />
Sempre Susan:<br />
A Memoir of Susan Sontag<br />
Atlas, March <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Charles Lane<br />
Stay of Execution: Saving<br />
the Death Penalty from Itself<br />
Rowman & LittleField,<br />
October <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Mitch Epstein<br />
Berlin<br />
Steidl, June <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Francisco Goldman<br />
Say Her Name<br />
Grove Atlantic, April <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Nicole Krauss<br />
Great House<br />
W. W. Norton, October <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Wendy Lesser<br />
Music for Silenced Voices:<br />
Shostakovich and His Fifteen<br />
Quartets, March <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
W. S. Di Piero<br />
When Can I See You Again ?<br />
New Art Writings<br />
Wafer Press, September <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Geoffrey Wolff<br />
The Hard Way Around:<br />
The Passages of Joshua Slocum<br />
Alfred A. Knopf, October <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Michael Taussig<br />
Feldforschungsnotizbücher<br />
Hatje Cantz, March <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Alex Katz<br />
Catalogue Raisonné<br />
Hatje Cantz, June <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Leonard Barkan<br />
Michelangelo: A Life on Paper<br />
Princeton University Press,<br />
January <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Thomas Holt<br />
Children of Fire: A History<br />
of African Americans<br />
Hill & Wang, October <strong>20</strong>10<br />
Mitch Epstein<br />
State of the Union<br />
Hatje Cantz, March <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Walter Mattli<br />
(with Tim Büthe)<br />
The New Global Rulers:<br />
The Privatization of Regulation<br />
in the World Economy<br />
Princeton University Press,<br />
March <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Call for Applications<br />
The American Academy in Berlin invites applications for residential<br />
fellowships for <strong>20</strong>12–<strong>20</strong>13 and future academic years. The<br />
application deadline is October 1, <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong>. Prizes will be awarded<br />
in February <strong>20</strong>12 and publicly announced in early spring <strong>20</strong>12.<br />
Approximately two-dozen fellowships are awarded to established<br />
scholars, writers, and professionals who wish to engage in independent<br />
study in Berlin. Prizes are conferred annually for an academic<br />
semester – and on occasion for an academic year – and include<br />
round-trip airfare, housing, partial board, and a monthly stipend of<br />
$5,000. Fellows are expected to reside at the Hans Arnhold Center<br />
during the entire term of the award.<br />
Fellowships are restricted to candidates based long-term in the<br />
United States. American citizenship is not required, and American<br />
expatriates are not eligible. Candidates in academic disciplines<br />
must have completed a doctorate at the time of application. The<br />
Academy gives priority to a proposal’s significance and scholarly<br />
merit, not its specific relevance to Germany. It is helpful, however,<br />
to explain how a Berlin residency might contribute to the project’s<br />
further development. Application forms may be submitted via the<br />
Academy’s website, www.americanacademy.de.
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 25<br />
Doors Opened,<br />
Doors Closed<br />
Can’t anyone get immigration right ?<br />
By Tamar Jacoby<br />
Ithought I was taking a break<br />
from my life as an immigration reform<br />
advocate in Washington during my<br />
stay at the American Academy in Berlin. I<br />
knew, of course, that immigration was a<br />
roiling issue in Europe, too. Even from my<br />
beleaguered bunker inside the Beltway, I’d<br />
caught wind of the murder of Dutch filmmaker<br />
Theo van Gogh, the Paris riots, the<br />
Danish Mohammad cartoon crisis. Still,<br />
I thought a few months of living in Europe<br />
and listening in on its immigration debate<br />
would clear my head and give me some perspective.<br />
After all, I reasoned, the issues –<br />
and our countries – are so different.<br />
I couldn’t have been more wrong – about<br />
the escape.<br />
Europe and the United States are certainly<br />
different. Germany, where I spent<br />
two months this winter, is an economic<br />
powerhouse. But to an American its stratified<br />
social structure feels left over from<br />
another era: rigid high-school tracking,<br />
pervasive credentialism, and workplace<br />
seniority systems sharply limit personal<br />
opportunity. Denmark, where I also visited,<br />
is even more different: a tiny, homogeneous<br />
country (population 5.5 million),<br />
with the world’s most developed welfare<br />
state. What, I asked, could it possibly have<br />
in common with the giant, hyper-diverse<br />
US, the world’s most developed free-market<br />
economy?<br />
In both Germany and Denmark, unlike<br />
in the US, the immigration debate is less<br />
about how many foreigners to admit than it<br />
is about how to handle those already living<br />
there. In the 1960s, both nations imported<br />
guest workers from southern Europe and<br />
Turkey – foreigners allowed to stay, joined<br />
later by their families. But for one reason or<br />
another – some economic, some cultural,<br />
some rooted in government shortsightedness<br />
– many of these workers and families<br />
failed to integrate into their new societies.<br />
And over the past decade, both German and<br />
Danish publics have become increasingly<br />
alarmed, calling for sometimes helpful,<br />
sometimes punitive and coercive integration<br />
policies – from government-funded<br />
language courses to much-resented restrictions<br />
on visas for foreign spouses.<br />
Still, for all the differences, when you<br />
scratch the surface, Europe and the US<br />
turn out to be more similar than they first<br />
appear. All three countries, it turns out,<br />
need foreign workers – both highly skilled<br />
and less skilled. But voters in all three<br />
nations are anxious about the cultural<br />
As the world’s second<br />
largest exporter, just<br />
behind China, Germany has a<br />
voracious need for foreign<br />
workers to do jobs Germans<br />
are either too educated or<br />
not educated enough to do.<br />
differences the immigrants bring. As a<br />
result, policymakers in all three places are<br />
paralyzed: caught between rationality and<br />
emotion, between their country’s economic<br />
interests and voters’ spiraling fear and<br />
resentment.<br />
As the world’s second largest exporter,<br />
just behind China, Germany has a voracious<br />
need for foreign workers to do jobs<br />
Germans are either too educated or not<br />
educated enough to do. Every summer<br />
300,000 Eastern Europeans and others<br />
come to Germany to fill seasonal agricultural<br />
jobs. That’s a huge number: translated<br />
to the US, it would amount to 1.2 million<br />
agricultural workers every year. In fact, we<br />
admit fewer than 70,000 legally, relying<br />
instead largely on illegal immigrants. But<br />
the bottom line is the same in both countries:<br />
the domestic workforce, hardly growing<br />
and increasingly educated, has less<br />
and less interest in outdoor, physical work.<br />
Neither nation can sustain its agricultural<br />
sector without immigrants. And in both<br />
countries, even in the downturn, the same<br />
is true in an array of other industries – hospitality,<br />
the personal service sector, and,<br />
most urgently in Germany, home healthcare<br />
for the elderly.<br />
Europe’s generous welfare<br />
states complicate the picture. In<br />
the US, the labor market self-corrects<br />
to synchronize with the business cycle.<br />
Thanks to cell phones and the Internet,<br />
even unskilled workers know about job<br />
opportunities a continent away. And when<br />
little work is available, fewer migrants<br />
make the trip – so few that during the<br />
downturn less than half as many Mexicans<br />
entered the US each year than were coming<br />
a decade ago, when the economy was booming.<br />
It doesn’t work that way in Germany<br />
or Denmark, where many immigrants and<br />
their children find it cheaper to live on the<br />
dole than hold a job. Still, in either case,<br />
what drives most migration is an economic<br />
calculus – individuals’ calculus about their<br />
opportunities in a global labor market.<br />
Receiving countries need to manage this<br />
dynamic to their advantage.<br />
The same is true at the skilled end of<br />
the job ladder. The twenty-first century is<br />
posing the same challenge in all developed<br />
countries. Innovation is our era’s key to<br />
business success, not just in it and communications,<br />
but also in traditional sectors<br />
from banking to manufacturing. No nation<br />
produces enough scientists, engineers,<br />
inventors, or high-end business managers<br />
to drive its knowledge economy. And all of<br />
our countries are scrambling to attract fi
26 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
© Scott Groller<br />
Dave McKenzie, installation from the exhibit Screen Doors on Submarines at REDcat, Los Angeles, <strong>20</strong>08
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 27<br />
highly skilled immigrants. This is<br />
the global race of our era: not for new,<br />
advanced weaponry – or colonies or<br />
natural resources – but for international<br />
brainpower.<br />
In <strong>20</strong>05 Germany created a new visa<br />
to attract highly skilled immigrants.<br />
It’s an appealing package: the visa is<br />
permanent, not temporary; you can<br />
bring your spouse, who can also work<br />
legally. And there’s no test to determine<br />
if you’re taking a job that could<br />
be filled by a German worker, tests of<br />
a kind that often lead to red tape and<br />
delay. Still, even these favorable terms<br />
attracted fewer than <strong>20</strong>0 applications<br />
for the new visa last year. In the US, by<br />
contrast, we admit some 350,000 highly<br />
skilled immigrants annually, some temporary,<br />
some permanent, plus roughly<br />
five times as many foreign students as<br />
Germany. Yet in the US, too, employers –<br />
from universities to government labs to<br />
cutting-edge it companies – complain<br />
about a shortage of high-end workers.<br />
It’s no mystery why policymakers in<br />
Germany, Denmark, and the US have<br />
proven unable or unwilling to satisfy<br />
their economies’ demand for foreign<br />
workers. Voters in all three countries are<br />
skeptical of immigrants, if not hostile<br />
to them, blind to the economic benefits<br />
they bring, and worried about whether<br />
they will integrate. Last summer,<br />
establishment politician and former<br />
central banker Thilo Sarrazin shocked<br />
Germany with an incendiary, bestselling<br />
book claiming that immigration<br />
was destroying the country, more than<br />
likely because of foreigners’ defective<br />
genes. In Denmark, the Danish People’s<br />
Party is fixated on origins, calling for a<br />
halt to all immigration from non-Western<br />
countries. And though Denmark’s<br />
mainstream parties have hesitated to<br />
go that far, in government both left<br />
and right have followed the DPP’s lead,<br />
slowly making their tiny country less<br />
and less hospitable to foreigners.<br />
In America, we still pride ourselves<br />
on being a nation of immigrants, and<br />
we frown on talk of genetic inferiority.<br />
But returning to the US from Europe this<br />
spring, I began to feel this was perhaps a<br />
distinction without as much difference as I<br />
once thought. Rising anti-immigrant sentiment<br />
in Arizona and elsewhere doesn’t<br />
feel that far removed from the xenophobia<br />
surfacing in Germany and Denmark. And<br />
new claims, from House Republicans<br />
and others, that every immigrant we<br />
deport will open a job for an unemployed<br />
American, are just as misleading and ultimately<br />
self-defeating as the counterfactual<br />
anti-immigrant arguments I heard in<br />
Europe. Once again, in all three countries,<br />
the bottom line seems much the same: rising<br />
public anxiety, mainly about unskilled<br />
immigrants, is driving out all rational<br />
discussion and preventing policymakers<br />
from acting effectively to meet national<br />
economic needs.<br />
The fact that many of the immigrants in<br />
Germany and Denmark are Muslims only<br />
raises the stakes, adding to concerns about<br />
what their failure to integrate would mean<br />
for the host country – for its cultural mores<br />
and national security. Muslim populations<br />
are growing; native-born families are having<br />
fewer children. And it’s easy for many<br />
Danes and Germans to imagine the worst –<br />
that every headscarf and every mosque is<br />
a sign of surging fundamentalism.<br />
there is relatively little American debate about whether<br />
immigrants are succeeding in the United States.<br />
We count on the traditions of generations past – that<br />
mysterious alchemy we once called “the melting pot.”<br />
Thoughtful people in both Denmark and<br />
Germany recognize that radical Islam is<br />
a reality in their country, but many feel the<br />
threat is exaggerated. According to Naser<br />
Khader, a Danish member of parliament<br />
of Syrian-Palestinian descent and an outspoken<br />
critic of Islamic fundamentalism,<br />
perhaps 10 percent of Muslims in Denmark<br />
are anti-Western Islamists. An equal share,<br />
he says, are unequivocally supportive of<br />
Western values. The problem, in his view,<br />
and survey research bears him out, is that<br />
the majority in the middle is often hesitant<br />
to repudiate radicals, and no one, newcomer<br />
or native born, draws a sharp enough<br />
distinction between “religious Islam” and<br />
“political Islam.” This dynamic and the<br />
need to reverse it help put our American<br />
situation in some perspective. Whatever<br />
problems we’re facing, they look small in<br />
comparison to Europe’s.<br />
Still, standing back, I found myself struck<br />
by a final, haunting parallel. We Americans<br />
tend to think we know the answers on<br />
immigrant integration. We argue bitterly<br />
about border issues and enforcement and<br />
how many foreign workers to admit. But<br />
compared to Europe there is relatively little<br />
American debate about whether immigrants<br />
are succeeding in the United States.<br />
We count on the traditions of generations<br />
past – that mysterious alchemy we once<br />
called “the melting pot.” And unlike<br />
in Europe, we make virtually no effort to<br />
help newcomers make their way in the<br />
new country.<br />
But what if, like Europe a generation<br />
ago, we too are sowing the seeds<br />
of a long-term failure? True, immigrants<br />
in the US are still integrating more<br />
successfully than in Europe: labor force<br />
participation is higher, unemployment<br />
lower, language acquisition and educational<br />
outcomes significantly better. But what<br />
kinds of results can we expect over the long<br />
haul from eleven million unauthorized<br />
immigrants and their children – newcomers<br />
blocked by law from full participation in<br />
society? Workers stuck in black-market jobs<br />
with little opportunity for advancement;<br />
families discouraged from putting down<br />
roots; parents afraid to send their children<br />
to school; talented students denied college<br />
scholarships – it’s not exactly a recipe for<br />
successful assimilation. Add our angry<br />
debate to the mix – the unrelenting antiimmigrant<br />
rhetoric now a staple across<br />
the country – and it’s hard not to fear for<br />
the future. Legal and illegal, Latino young<br />
people are getting the message, and it is<br />
breeding social alienation that will create<br />
problems for decades to come.<br />
Yes, the US and Europe are different.<br />
But thanks to the global economy, we are<br />
all what Germans call “immigration countries,”<br />
and the challenges we’re facing are<br />
surprisingly similar. So instead of a needed<br />
respite, my time in Europe felt like a wakeup<br />
call. America has a glorious record as<br />
a nation of immigrants, but that heritage<br />
may be more fragile than we think. µ<br />
Tamar Jacoby, president of<br />
ImmigrationWorks USA, was a Bosch<br />
Public Policy Fellow at the American<br />
Academy in fall <strong>20</strong>10. A version of this<br />
article first appeared in Zócalo Public<br />
Square, an online magazine.
28 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
crossing over<br />
The precarious practice of Thomas Hirschhorn<br />
By Hal Foster<br />
What happens when the<br />
avant-garde is faced with a state<br />
of emergency, whether real (when<br />
the rule of law is actually suspended) or<br />
imagined (when it only seems to be)?<br />
Modernist movements like Dada were<br />
marked by the chaos of world war, to be<br />
sure, yet in many ways our own present is<br />
also one of emergency. If there is a condition<br />
that has governed recent art, it is a<br />
precarious one.<br />
Almost any litany of the machinations<br />
of the last ten years will evoke this state of<br />
uncertainty: a stolen presidential election;<br />
the attacks of September 11 and the War on<br />
Terror; the deception of the Iraq War and<br />
the debacle of the occupation; Abu Ghraib,<br />
Guantánamo Bay, and rendition to torture<br />
camps; another problematic presidential<br />
election; Katrina; the scapegoating of<br />
immigrants; the healthcare crisis; the ecological<br />
disaster; the financial house of cards,<br />
and so on. For all the discussion of “rogue<br />
states” elsewhere, our own government<br />
has sometimes operated out of bounds. It<br />
is little wonder, then, that the concept of<br />
“the state of exception” (developed by Carl<br />
Schmitt, in the early 19<strong>20</strong>s) was revived,<br />
that this state once again appeared to be<br />
“not the exception but the rule,” as Walter<br />
Benjamin wrote in his 1940 essay “Theses<br />
on the Philosophy of History,” and that<br />
as a consequence one could assert that the<br />
camp was “the new biopolitical nomos<br />
of the planet,” as Giorgio Agamben did<br />
in 1994.<br />
Perhaps our political bond – whether we<br />
call it the “social contract” or the “symbolic<br />
order” – is always more tenuous than we<br />
think; it was certainly precarious long<br />
before September 11. Prior to Bush and<br />
Blair, Reagan and Thatcher led the charge<br />
of neoliberalism with the battle cry, “There<br />
is no such thing as society,” and the lives of<br />
the most vulnerable (the underclass, gays<br />
and lesbians, immigrants) have become<br />
ever more precarious since. It is this heightened<br />
insecurity that some art has attempted<br />
to manifest, even to exacerbate. This<br />
social instability is redoubled by an artistic<br />
instability, as this contemporary practice<br />
foregrounds its own schismatic condition,<br />
too, its own lack of shared meanings and<br />
methods. Paradoxically, then, “precarity” is<br />
almost constitutive of some art today.<br />
This “precariat” is seen as a product of the<br />
post-Fordist economy; though, historically, precarity might<br />
be more the rule, and the Fordist promise of relative job<br />
security and union protection the exception.<br />
Precarity has come to figure in sociological<br />
discourse, where it is used to describe<br />
the situation of a vast number of laborers<br />
in neoliberal capitalism whose employment<br />
(let alone healthcare, insurance,<br />
and pension) is anything but guaranteed.<br />
This “precariat” is seen as a product of the<br />
post-Fordist economy; though, historically,<br />
precarity might be more the rule, and the<br />
Fordist promise of relative job security and<br />
union protection the exception, as Gerald<br />
Raunig points out in A Thousand Machines<br />
(<strong>20</strong>10). It is a tricky category. What might<br />
be lost in a discursive shift from “proletariat”<br />
to “precariat”? Might the latter term<br />
normalize a specific condition, a “society<br />
of risk,” a condition that is subject to challenge<br />
and change? Can the precariat be<br />
pried from its victim status and developed<br />
as a social movement? At least one thing is<br />
certain: it is not a unified class. As Raunig<br />
argues, there are “smooth forms of precarization”<br />
for “digital bohemians” and<br />
“intellos précaires,” on the one hand, and<br />
“rigidly repressive forms of labor discipline,”<br />
for migrants and sans papiers, on the other.<br />
The Swiss artist Thomas<br />
Hirschhorn, who represents<br />
Switzerland in the <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> Venice<br />
Biennale, has long used the term précaire,<br />
though its full significance was not always<br />
apparent. Initially the term denoted the<br />
insecure status and limited duration of<br />
his pieces, some of which, such as Travaux<br />
abandonnés and Jemand kümmert sich um<br />
meine Arbeit (both 1992), were made up of<br />
odds and ends left on the street to be picked<br />
up by others. In a conversation with Alison<br />
M. Gingeras, Hirschhorn stressed the<br />
commonality of his means:<br />
What I’ve got around me is some packing<br />
material; there’s some aluminum<br />
foil in the kitchen and there are cardboard<br />
boxes and wood panels downstairs<br />
on the street. That makes sense to me:<br />
I use the materials around me. These<br />
materials have no energetic or spiritual<br />
power. They’re materials that everyone<br />
in the world is familiar with; they’re<br />
ordinary materials.<br />
For a while, Hirschhorn merely distinguished<br />
the precarious from the ephemeral.<br />
He told Gingeras,<br />
My work isn’t ephemeral, it’s precarious.<br />
It’s humans who decide and determine<br />
how long the work lasts. The term
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 29<br />
© Photo courtesy of Paul Sacher Foundation<br />
© Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London<br />
Stefan wolpe, circa 1936<br />
Thomas Hirschhorn, Europa, 1999, Mixed media wall sculpture, 181 x 221 x 6 cm<br />
‘ephemeral’ comes from nature, but<br />
nature doesn’t make decisions.<br />
Soon enough, however, the precarious<br />
came to figure less as a characteristic of his<br />
work than as a predicament of the people<br />
addressed by précaire, with ramifications<br />
both ethical and political.<br />
Is there a way to cross from our stable,<br />
secure, and safe space in order to join<br />
the space of the precarious? Is it possible,<br />
by voluntarily crossing the border<br />
of this protected space, to establish new<br />
values, real values, the values of the<br />
precarious – uncertainty, instability, and<br />
self-authorization?<br />
This is a question that Hirschhorn has<br />
probed in all three of his “monuments” to<br />
date, which take the form of makeshift<br />
centers of homage, assembled with the help<br />
of local inhabitants, where discussions,<br />
readings, performances, and more casual<br />
encounters can occur.<br />
The first monument, dedicated to<br />
Baruch Spinoza, was set in the red-light<br />
district of Amsterdam, in 1999; the second,<br />
to Gilles Deleuze, was located in a<br />
mostly North African quarter of Avignon,<br />
France, in <strong>20</strong>00; and the third, to Georges<br />
Bataille, was placed in a largely Turkish<br />
neighborhood in Kassel, in <strong>20</strong>02; a fourth,<br />
the last, dedicated to Antonio Gramsci, is<br />
planned for Queens, New York, in <strong>20</strong>12.<br />
This practice of “the precarious as a real<br />
form” has also guided Hirschhorn in his<br />
other projects, such as his Musée Précaire<br />
Albinet, set in the Aubervilliers banlieue<br />
of Paris, in <strong>20</strong>04, and his Bijlmer-Spinoza<br />
Festival, located in the Biljmer project of<br />
Amsterdam, in <strong>20</strong>09.<br />
What does this precarious practice entail?<br />
“The truth can only be touched in art in<br />
hazardous, contradictory, and hidden<br />
encounters,” Hirschhorn asserted in a text<br />
for his <strong>20</strong>06 installation Restore Now. This<br />
suggests a first principle, an actual sharing<br />
in the conditions of social risk lived by a<br />
precariat in a particular situation; to this<br />
end, Hirschhorn has sometimes adopted<br />
the guise of a squatter on-site (in effect,<br />
he also “squats” the work of the artists,<br />
writers, and philosophers chosen for his<br />
altars, kiosks, and monuments). “In order<br />
to reach this moment I have to be present<br />
and I have to be awake,” Hirschhorn<br />
continues. “I have to stand up, I have to<br />
face the world, the reality, the time and I<br />
have to risk myself. That is the beauty in<br />
precariousness.” Alert to the Deleuzian<br />
caveat about “the indignity of speaking for<br />
others,” Hirschhorn does not stand in fi
30 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
place of a precariat; rather, he insists, in an<br />
essay for Musée Précaire Albinet, he wants<br />
“to engage [in] dialogue with the other without<br />
neutralizing him.”<br />
In fact, Hirschhorn does not always seek<br />
solidarity with this precariat, for such solidarity<br />
might only come of a forced union of<br />
very different parties. To the benign community<br />
imagined by relational aesthetics,<br />
he counters with the principle of “Presence<br />
and Production,” which names his double<br />
commitment to be present on the site<br />
where he produces his work and acknowledges<br />
that the result might be antagonism<br />
with residents as much as fellowship. In<br />
this way, Hirschhorn updates the argument<br />
in “Author as Producer” (1934), where<br />
Benjamin finds the political use-value of a<br />
work less in the attitude of its content than<br />
in the import of its production.<br />
the political dimension<br />
of the precarious shades<br />
into the ethical.<br />
Precarious derives, the oed<br />
tells us, “from the Latin precarius,<br />
obtained by entreaty, depending<br />
on the favor of another, hence uncertain,<br />
precarious, from precem, prayer.” This definition<br />
underscores that this state of insecurity<br />
is a constructed one, engineered by<br />
a regime of power on whose favor the precariat<br />
depends and which it can only petition.<br />
This means that to act out the precarious,<br />
as Hirschhorn often does, is not only<br />
to evoke its perilous and privative effects<br />
but also to intimate how and why they are<br />
produced, and so to implicate the authority<br />
that imposes this “revocable tolerance,” as<br />
his sometime collaborator, the French poet<br />
Manuel Joseph, defines précarité. The note<br />
of entreaty lodged in the word “precarious”<br />
is strong in many Hirschhorn projects,<br />
where it often also carries the force of<br />
accusation.<br />
Here the political dimension of the precarious<br />
shades into the ethical. “To give a<br />
form to the precarious,” Hirschhorn comments<br />
in his <strong>20</strong>09 essay “Théâtre précaire<br />
pour ‘Ce qui vient’,” is to attest to “the<br />
fragility of life,” awareness of which “compels<br />
me to be awakened, to be present,<br />
to be attentive, to be open; it compels me<br />
to be active.” In “Precarious Life” (<strong>20</strong>04),<br />
her brief essay on Emmanuel Levinas,<br />
Judith Butler writes in a similar vein:<br />
“In some way we come to exist in the<br />
moment of being addressed, and something<br />
about our existence proves precarious<br />
when that address fails.” Here Butler<br />
explores the notion of “the face,” which<br />
Levinas posed as the very image of “the<br />
extreme precariousness of the other.”<br />
To respond to a face and to understand its<br />
meaning, Butler argues, “means to<br />
be awake to what is precarious in another<br />
life or, rather, the precariousness of life<br />
itself.” This is the face often put forward<br />
by the precarious art of Hirschhorn,<br />
who refuses to turn away. µ<br />
Hal Foster is Townsend Martin 1917<br />
Professor of Art and Architecture at<br />
Princeton University and the spring <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Siemens Fellow at the American Academy.<br />
29
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 31<br />
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32 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
Jürgen Ritter, Inner-German Border at the Junkerkuppe Hill between Lindewerra and Oberrieden, November 1, 1984<br />
© Ullsteinbild – Jürgen ritter<br />
© Ullsteinbild – Jürgen ritter<br />
Jürgen Ritter, Former Inner-German border at the Junkerkuppe Hill between Lindewerra and Oberrieden, September 1, <strong>20</strong>09
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 33<br />
No Man’s Landscapes<br />
The Iron Curtain stopped humans from crossing political borders for over four decades.<br />
In their stead, an ecosystem all its own.<br />
By Astrid M. Eckert<br />
One day in March 1982, a<br />
red telephone rang at the East<br />
German Border Control Office<br />
in Salzwedel. The phones had appeared<br />
nine years earlier, a by-product of the 1973<br />
inter-German Border Commission, and<br />
allowed for immediate communication<br />
between West and East German border<br />
guards. Conversations unfolded according<br />
to a strict protocol; the caller began by saying,<br />
“I have some information for you,” to<br />
which the respondent would answer with<br />
a single word. Not even a “Good day” crept<br />
into these austere exchanges.<br />
The call that day in March was no<br />
exception. A Western border guard in<br />
Uelzen asked his Salzwedel counterpart<br />
to postpone a scheduled mine detonation<br />
until late June. The explosion, the Western<br />
officer explained, would disturb the breeding<br />
grounds of cranes. The East Germans<br />
consented, and the red receiver was placed<br />
back in its cradle. Before returning to<br />
more pressing business, however, the East<br />
German officer mused over the peculiar<br />
nature of the call, making a note that<br />
“requests . . . pertaining to bird sanctuaries<br />
have not been made before.”<br />
In truth, no official bird sanctuary<br />
existed, though an accidental one was<br />
flourishing. By 1982 the border strip had<br />
already undergone more than two decades<br />
of enforced tranquility. East German borderland<br />
regulations, introduced thirty years<br />
earlier, had reduced legal cross-border traffic<br />
to a trickle. After the construction of the<br />
Berlin Wall, in August 1961, gdr authorities<br />
also escalated fortifications along the<br />
inter-German border. The various layers of<br />
border elements created a space Westerners<br />
commonly called “no man’s land” although<br />
it was part of gdr territory. It began at the<br />
demarcation line and extended to the first<br />
fence; Westerners were forbidden entry.<br />
Depending on the terrain, it could be<br />
50 to <strong>20</strong>0-plus meters deep. In the parlance<br />
of East German border guards, this strip<br />
of land lay “on the enemy side” (feindwärts).<br />
It was patrolled by reconnaissance troops<br />
(Aufklärer) known to be politically reliable;<br />
regular border troops remained behind the<br />
fence and covered the hinterland. Hence,<br />
this stretch of land rarely ever encountered<br />
foot traffic. Birds, especially ground-breeding<br />
ones, were the prime beneficiaries of<br />
the new ecological regime in the immediate<br />
border strip.<br />
What, then, do state borders<br />
do to nature? The inter-German<br />
border was, of course, a very particular<br />
border. Its political and social function<br />
was to delineate the socialist project<br />
the Iron Curtain was<br />
set up to lock people in,<br />
not to keep invaders<br />
out. Not surprisingly,<br />
it regularly drew<br />
comparisons to a prison.<br />
from its capitalist foe and to prevent East<br />
Germans from exercising a choice between<br />
the two. To that end, the East German<br />
regime invested heavily in border fortifications<br />
that were designed to kill. At the<br />
very least, 270 people, but more likely well<br />
over 700, lost their lives trying to cross the<br />
Berlin Wall and the inter-German border.<br />
Unlike other fortified state borders, the<br />
Iron Curtain was set up to lock people in,<br />
not to keep invaders out. Not surprisingly,<br />
it regularly drew comparisons to a prison.<br />
As the spatial theorist Karl Schlögel puts it,<br />
if borders are the outer skin of states, their<br />
appearance tells us much about the polity<br />
they surround.<br />
East Germany’s “skin” consisted of<br />
several generations of border fortifications<br />
that evolved from a simple barbed wire<br />
fence, in the 1950s, to an elaborate border<br />
control system replete with metal fences,<br />
walls, minefields, spring-guns, observation<br />
towers, flood lights, vehicle ditches, guard<br />
dogs, alarm wires, and border patrols in the<br />
1980s. In May 1952, East German authorities<br />
deported borderland residents deemed<br />
untrustworthy and created a 500-meter<br />
security strip and a five-kilometer-deep<br />
security zone characterized by access<br />
restrictions. All in all, the border created<br />
a buffer zone in the heart of Europe<br />
that funneled traffic through a scant few<br />
permissible routes.<br />
In view of this excessive infrastructure,<br />
Western commentators often referred to<br />
the Iron Curtain in relation to its impact on<br />
nature and the surrounding cultural landscapes.<br />
“From the air,” noted a British travel<br />
writer, “the border looks like earth that has<br />
just been prepared for a new road, much<br />
lighter than the surrounding ground of<br />
fields and forests.” Watchtowers disturbed<br />
the scenery “like the gibbets in a landscape<br />
by Breughel.” Another writer emphasized<br />
the border’s interventions in the landscape,<br />
describing the mined strip as it “runs over<br />
hill and dale, zigzagging through woodland<br />
and meadow. Trees and undergrowth<br />
have been cut down to minimize cover<br />
and provide a wide field of fire.” With the<br />
ground ripped up, weeds controlled with<br />
herbicides, and corridors cleared in thick<br />
forests, the idea of a “scar” in the landscape<br />
became a common metaphor. fi
34 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
A leading West German geographer called<br />
the border a Zerreißungsgrenze, a lacerated<br />
boundary. What incensed him in particular<br />
was the extent of arable land lying fallow<br />
in the East German security strip. For this<br />
geographer, the landscape on the other side<br />
thus took on the character of a “wasteland.”<br />
The Iron Curtain sliced through<br />
mountains, forests, lakes, wetlands,<br />
grasslands, fluvial ecosystems, open<br />
cultural landscapes, and even mining areas<br />
– a cross section of German landscape<br />
types. With the same biota often found on<br />
both sides of the fence, the Iron Curtain<br />
confirms a truism of environmental history:<br />
nature rarely respects man-made<br />
boundaries. The installations and practices<br />
that constituted this border, however,<br />
impacted nature and wildlife on both sides.<br />
Depending on the species, this impact<br />
could prove beneficial or problematic.<br />
Where red-listed birds eventually found a<br />
welcome refuge, game animals could meet<br />
a cruel end. Much like the recently constructed<br />
fence between the US and Mexico,<br />
the installation of a ten-foot razor wire<br />
fence between East and West Germany in<br />
the 1960s posed formidable challenges<br />
to mammals. Traditional deer-crossings<br />
became impenetrable, restricting habitats<br />
and interfering with genetic exchange.<br />
Worse still, along 800 kilometers of<br />
the border, minefields supplemented the<br />
fence. Between 1961 and 1986, well over<br />
one million landmines were planted. They<br />
were triggered frequently, and locals shuddered<br />
at the sound of explosions, unsure<br />
whether the mines had encountered beast<br />
or man. Clearing dead animals in the mine<br />
corridor was usually not worth the risk;<br />
an East German hunter residing in the<br />
security strip in the district of Schwerin<br />
remembers “cadaver fields” adjacent to the<br />
fence. By the mid-1960s, West German<br />
customs personnel in the Harz Mountains<br />
were convinced that the mines had already<br />
seriously reduced the population of roe<br />
deer. The mines were sensitive enough to<br />
be triggered by hares and foxes, prompting<br />
gdr authorities to insert holes into the wire<br />
mesh to serve as passages for small game –<br />
not out of consideration for the animals but<br />
because replacing mines was expensive<br />
and dangerous. The carnage abated along<br />
those stretches of border that eventually<br />
received a double fence, closing off the<br />
minefields.<br />
Although the East German regime did<br />
not intend the border to serve as a contact<br />
zone and tried to undercut any ties and<br />
unsupervised communication across the<br />
border, the Iron Curtain impacted the<br />
natural environment in a fashion that<br />
forced both German states to address its<br />
consequences. To that end, the Border<br />
Commission was founded in 1973. Its<br />
primary job was to come to an agreement<br />
about the exact location of the demarcation<br />
line in order to remove recurring irritants<br />
in German-German relations. Many of its<br />
subsequent negotiations, however, dealt<br />
with environmental problems, above all<br />
with water management. In the Harz<br />
Mountains, the border cut through a water<br />
reservoir, turning maintenance of the<br />
dam into a diplomatic maelstrom. Both<br />
sides also had a stake in the dikes along<br />
the Elbe River. Each and every cross-border<br />
stream could turn into a state affair. Some<br />
had been outfitted with grids to prevent<br />
escapes and became clogged with debris.<br />
Drainages in marshes could not be maintained<br />
because the ditches were off-limits.<br />
At times, the ensuing floods washed up<br />
landmines on the western side, turning<br />
farming into a dangerous occupation.<br />
Inter-German water management was<br />
probably more pressing for the Federal<br />
Republic than for the gdr. With 37 streams<br />
pointing westward and only ten flowing<br />
eastward, one of the overarching West<br />
German concerns during the 1970s and<br />
beyond was the pollution of border rivers<br />
and streams with untreated sewage, slurry,<br />
household waste, and chemicals. Similarly,<br />
the air in the western borderlands was at<br />
times heavy with sulfur dioxide, fly ash,<br />
and other dust, affecting people’s health,<br />
the integrity of forests, and the public<br />
images of borderland towns. The politically<br />
contentious border threw these environmental<br />
offenses into sharp relief. The<br />
history of the Iron Curtain thus confirms<br />
another truism of environmental history:<br />
if nature knows no boundaries, neither<br />
does pollution.<br />
In short, the border fortifications and all<br />
activities that kept them functional became<br />
causal (either directly or in a somewhat<br />
mitigated fashion) to changes in the natural<br />
environment adjacent to the border. The<br />
conditions impacting the 1393-kilometerlong<br />
strip on both sides of the Curtain<br />
The history of the Iron Curtain thus confirms<br />
another truism of environmental history:<br />
if nature knows no boundaries, neither does pollution.<br />
included its inaccessibility to humans in<br />
certain sections, and the relatively thin populations<br />
found in others; scant agriculture,<br />
forestry work, and fishing; the restriction of<br />
industrial development in the East and its<br />
subsidization to little avail in the West; and<br />
the presence of security structures such as<br />
fences, towers, and ditches. The resultant<br />
landscapes are probably best understood<br />
as having “transboundary natures,” which<br />
transcend a politically and socially constructed<br />
barrier, a barrier, however, that<br />
was itself an agent in their emergence.<br />
Landscapes with comparable transboundary<br />
natures emerged along the<br />
seams of the ideological divide in Asia. The<br />
1953 armistice between North and South<br />
Korea brought forth, in the words of historian<br />
Lisa Brady, “a new ecological regime<br />
. . . shaped by war and maintained by diplomacy.”<br />
A 155-mile-long and 2.5-mile-deep<br />
Demilitarized Zone (dmz) was designated<br />
as a neutral buffer to keep the two antagonists<br />
apart until hostilities abated. Not<br />
only did military activities cease in this<br />
stretch of land, but agriculture, logging,<br />
and development came to a halt as well,<br />
allowing the native ecosystems to recover<br />
without human interference. The resultant<br />
accidental nature preserve has become a<br />
haven for flora and fauna, most notably<br />
for migratory birds like cranes. In recent<br />
years, it has also turned into a destination<br />
for ecotourism, showcasing the once native<br />
natural heritage that had prevailed on the<br />
Korean peninsula before rapid industrial<br />
and urban development compromised the<br />
integrity of many ecosystems. Efforts are<br />
underway to turn this accidental oasis into<br />
a transboundary Peace Park or, in the yet<br />
unlikely event of a political status change<br />
in Korea, to protect the swath of land from<br />
sudden development.<br />
In Germany, too, the idea of transboundary<br />
nature preserves briefly flared up in the<br />
mid-1980s, when it had become sufficiently<br />
clear that red-listed species such as whitetailed<br />
eagles, black storks, eagle-owls and<br />
whinchats had withdrawn into portions<br />
of the sparsely developed borderlands.<br />
West German state officials, supported by<br />
environmental non-governmental organizations,<br />
extended feelers to persuade<br />
gdr authorities to help establish several
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 35<br />
commonly protected areas on the border.<br />
These included parts of the Lauenburg lake<br />
region in the north, the Drömling wetlands<br />
east of Wolfsburg, and the Rhön mountain<br />
range straddling the border between<br />
the states Hesse, Bavaria, and Thuringia.<br />
None of these projects came to fruition,<br />
however. gdr officials, already forced by<br />
international agreements to negotiate on<br />
transboundary pollution, had no interest in<br />
getting roped into a cooperation that would<br />
increase unwanted contact with West<br />
Germans and did not promise any Western<br />
currency for the trouble.<br />
November 9, 1989 changed all that.<br />
At issue was no longer whether the gdr<br />
would agree to conservation across borders.<br />
Rather, the fall of the Iron Curtain<br />
suddenly presented both the real chance to<br />
protect the transboundary natures that had<br />
emerged along the inter-German border as<br />
well as the real danger of their destruction.<br />
Hastily opened and locally celebrated new<br />
border crossings sometimes led directly<br />
through the hatcheries of rare birds. The<br />
heavy equipment used to take down border<br />
fortifications and locate remaining landmines<br />
plowed through tranquil meadows.<br />
Bogged down by throngs of cars driven<br />
by excited East and West Germans who<br />
wanted to visit each other, politicians in<br />
borderland towns soon called for new roads<br />
across the former German divide. After<br />
years of controls and high fences, local residents<br />
yearned to swim, row, and fish in the<br />
border lakes, hike without stop signs, and<br />
take back the land.<br />
Alarmed by such demands, a group of<br />
conservationists under the leadership of<br />
a Bavarian environmental ngo, the Bund<br />
Naturschutz in Bayern, convened a meeting<br />
of East and West German activists in<br />
December 1989, calling for the preservation<br />
of the “Green Belt” that had developed<br />
in the border strip. The demise of the gdr<br />
and the concomitant disappearance of<br />
border fortifications allowed ecologists to<br />
conduct habitat inventories on both sides<br />
of the border, confirming the conservation<br />
value of what had become a unique string<br />
of habitats. Against many odds, the Green<br />
Belt today has become one of the flagship<br />
projects in German nature and wildlife<br />
conservation, enjoying widespread political<br />
and public support. Its efforts are seconded<br />
by the European Green Belt project that<br />
covers the Iron Curtain in its entirety from<br />
Finland to the Adriatic Sea.<br />
An environmental history of<br />
the Iron Curtain has much to tell us<br />
about natural spaces along fortified<br />
borders. It reminds us how military activities<br />
and installations shape environments.<br />
In view of the success of the Green Belt<br />
conservation project, it is quite tempting to<br />
read the Iron Curtain’s history as a “barbedwire-into-biodiversity”<br />
conversion. But animal<br />
encounters with landmines and contaminated<br />
rivers are as much a part of this<br />
tale as the resurgence of red-listed birds<br />
and undisturbed wetlands. This “dirty”<br />
side of the story makes the emergence of<br />
a Green Belt in the heart of Europe even<br />
more wondrous. What an environmental<br />
approach certainly contributes is a better<br />
understanding of the historicity of the landscape<br />
that the Iron Curtain occupied and<br />
helped create. µ<br />
Astrid M. Eckert is an assistant professor<br />
of modern German history at Emory<br />
University and the spring <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> Daimler<br />
Fellow at the American Academy.<br />
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36 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
The Dead Letters DepT.<br />
By Peter Wortsman<br />
image courtesy of the artist, www.christian-stoll.com<br />
christian stoll, mailroom, <strong>20</strong>10
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 37<br />
“Besides, 99 hundredths of<br />
all the work done in the<br />
world is either foolish and<br />
unnecessary, or harmful<br />
and wicked.”<br />
Herman Melville<br />
At 16, after my father’s repeated<br />
prodding to stop idling and finally<br />
make something of myself, I<br />
answered a want ad in the Sunday paper<br />
under the heading “Editorial,” and was, to<br />
my great surprise and decidedly mixed<br />
emotions, hired as a junior filing clerk in<br />
the Dead Letters Department of Selden<br />
& Reinhardt, an international dealer in<br />
obscure reference materials and arcane<br />
scholarly works: Uzbek-Russian dictionaries,<br />
Sanskrit etymologies, Finno-Ugaritic<br />
grammars and the like.<br />
In those bygone days of cheap storage<br />
space, before hard drives hoarded data and<br />
shredders devoured the detritus, Dead<br />
Letters was the company repository of<br />
the unresolved: partially completed order<br />
forms, letters of inquiry and the like, which,<br />
for one reason or another, could not be processed<br />
– either because the return address<br />
was unintelligible, the zip code inaccurate,<br />
incomplete, or lacking altogether, or the<br />
sender’s name obscured. It was company<br />
policy to maintain such missives for future<br />
reference, based on the old bromide: You<br />
never know. Envelopes stamped with a<br />
telltale finger above the words “Returned<br />
to Sender,” inscribed in various languages<br />
and shades of red, were filed and consigned<br />
to a state of administrative limbo. fi
38 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
My immediate superior, Leo<br />
Coocoo, was short, beady-eyed,<br />
near-sighted, stooped and squat,<br />
his oily black hair and leathery complexion<br />
mole-like, his paws girded with long fingernails<br />
twisted like claws, his foul breath<br />
reeking of mold and decay. He had worked<br />
his way up – or rather, strictly speaking,<br />
down – from company gofer to head clerk<br />
of Dead Letters, a position he had carved<br />
out for himself and from which there was<br />
no prospect of promotion. Still, Leo took<br />
unconcealed pride in his work, which he<br />
viewed as a wellspring of future possibilities.<br />
Having amassed a kind of patchwork<br />
erudition reading through reams of unanswered<br />
inquiries from, as well as returned<br />
Sunlight and fresh air<br />
never filtered down to our<br />
windowless precinct –<br />
sometimes I thought of<br />
it as a bunker.<br />
mail addressed to, scholars and librarians<br />
from a wide spectrum of fields, fueled with<br />
the conceit of the autodidact and the resentment<br />
of the scorned romantic, he felt woefully<br />
underappreciated by the higher-ups,<br />
who, by an inverted emotional geometry, he<br />
considered beneath him.<br />
“They see us as scavengers, but we are<br />
treasure hunters, Henry, archival archeologists!”<br />
He flashed me the semi-deranged,<br />
under-oxygenated smile of a happy coal<br />
miner in a Golden Book I pretended to be<br />
able to read when I was five, simultaneously<br />
nodding and shaking his head. Leo thought<br />
I had promising filing fingers and advised<br />
me to keep a good inch-and-a-half of nail<br />
on my right thumb and index if I hoped to<br />
make the grade.<br />
Sunlight and fresh air never<br />
filtered down to our windowless<br />
precinct, an oblong partitioned<br />
chamber – sometimes I thought of it as a<br />
bunker, sometimes as a submarine going<br />
nowhere, sometimes as the secret passageway<br />
of a pyramid – lined with scratched<br />
gray filing cabinets and illuminated only<br />
by a pair of flickering bare fluorescent<br />
bulbs forever on the blink, two flights<br />
below street level. Having come of age in<br />
the “duck-and-cover” days of the Cold War<br />
era, it did occur to me that I might survive<br />
a nuclear attack here, and so felt somewhat<br />
snug and cozy at first, even privileged –<br />
before the claustrophobia set in.<br />
There were a few minor annoyances I<br />
tolerated at first. The ceiling leaked a sticky<br />
black ooze and buckets had to be placed at<br />
strategic locations; their position changed<br />
in accordance with the shifting source of<br />
the leak and were emptied several times<br />
daily – part of my ill-defined job description.<br />
While Leo manned the helm, silently pawing<br />
and sorting the recently returned mail<br />
that dropped down the shoot, I was perched<br />
in an alcove adjacent to the clanking boiler<br />
room, in an armless olive-green metal<br />
office chair on wheels that badly needed<br />
oiling and gave off a tortured squeak.<br />
Despite the squeak, I even developed<br />
a fondness for my chair, which I dubbed<br />
Rosinante, Rosy for short, after the broken<br />
down nag of the Spanish knight errant –<br />
whose illustrated adventures, translated<br />
into Serbo-Croatian, and returned to sender,<br />
address unknown, I salvaged from a<br />
frayed Warsaw Pact paper-wrapped package<br />
and kept hidden at the bottom of a filing<br />
cabinet. I pulled it out and flipped through<br />
the pictures from time to time, focusing,<br />
in particular, on a rather racy depiction of<br />
Don Quixote’s lady love, Dulcinea, her torn<br />
dress falling off one shoulder, to distract<br />
from the drudgery.<br />
In the early days of my employment I<br />
liked to ride Rosy from corner to corner,<br />
shoving off with a spry flex of the knees<br />
from the cabinets assigned to the first few<br />
letters of the alphabet and butting the dented<br />
back of the chair into the x’s, y’s and z’s.<br />
Correspondence from foreign lands<br />
with unrecognizable alphabets were<br />
lumped together in what Leo designated<br />
the “Beyond-Z-Zone” – he himself had<br />
devised the system, of which he was very<br />
proud. It was my job to fetch batches of<br />
discarded letters and packages through<br />
which Leo had sifted, to be filed for future<br />
reference according to a roster of decipherable<br />
features, the first letter of a surname<br />
or company acronym, if that could be made<br />
out, or any other clue, like the city, state or<br />
country indicated on the rubber cancellation<br />
stamp. I was efficient, even avid, for<br />
the first two hours or so, studying each<br />
envelope closely, doing my best to break the<br />
code of unintelligibility. In time I turned it<br />
into a game, pretending I was at the nexus<br />
of a top-secret spy operation in the bowels<br />
of the fbi and that the future of the Free<br />
World depended on my precision and zeal.<br />
Occasionally I would break for target practice<br />
with rubber band and paper clips to<br />
simulate the firing range in the basement<br />
of the Bureau in Washington, which had<br />
profoundly impressed me on a family trip.<br />
On good mornings I took pains<br />
to weed out the obviously Asian<br />
letterings from the Semitic and<br />
the Cyrillic. But soon enough my spirit<br />
sagged and my energy level slumped for<br />
lack of stimulation and oxygen. I could<br />
keep filing more or less efficiently till noon,<br />
cheering myself on with the promise of<br />
light, nourishment, and communion in<br />
the company cafeteria and a timid peek at<br />
the lengthened lashes of the new recruits<br />
in the secretarial pool. But we were the<br />
company’s untouchables, the lowlifes at<br />
the bottom of the barrel. Leo’s oily hair<br />
and calcified claws drew sneers from the<br />
gum-clicking typists who changed hair<br />
color monthly and lived for their bi-weekly<br />
manicure. Being Leo’s underling, the scorn<br />
rubbed off on me too. At the water fountain<br />
they shrank from us.<br />
“Don’t let it bother you,” Leo breathed<br />
his foul breath on me in between bites of<br />
his mustard-doused Wonderbread and<br />
bologna sandwich, sensing my distress.<br />
“Deadbeats – I’ve filed more with my left<br />
pinky than their manicured digits ever<br />
It was my job to fetch batches of discarded letters<br />
and packages through which Leo had sifted,<br />
to be filed for future reference according to a roster<br />
of decipherable features.<br />
thought about.” At such times, Leo liked<br />
to reminisce. “Did I ever tell you about the<br />
time I hit pay dirt – almost?”<br />
“Tell me again,” I dutifully replied,<br />
repressing a yawn. Leo derived great pleasure<br />
from the storytelling, and it was a welcome<br />
respite from my filing duties.<br />
“It was a saffron-colored 9 x 12 with a<br />
broken red-wax seal and a rubber stamp in<br />
classical A-rab script I’d filed away in the<br />
Beyond Z-Zone,” he began.<br />
“I thought it was gold-sealed, Leo!”<br />
Leo shrugged, as if such inconsequential<br />
details hardly mattered. “Whatever, it<br />
was all Greek to me, but I kept coming back,<br />
trying to sniff out its secrets!”<br />
“Who was it from?” I asked on cue.<br />
“Just wait,” he winked. “Well, wouldn’t
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 39<br />
you know it! One day, Accounts Payable<br />
hires this babe from Casablanca” – in<br />
alternate accounts, she hailed from<br />
Cairo, Damascus, Karachi, and Istanbul,<br />
sometimes she was a Kurd, sometimes a<br />
Chaldean, sometimes a Lebanese Maronite<br />
from Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn –<br />
“a swell gal with dark eyes and just the right<br />
length of nail.” – I could tell by the tone of<br />
his voice and the glint in his eyes when he<br />
spoke of her, particularly her fingernails,<br />
that he had been smitten in the Beyond<br />
Z-Zone. – “So one day I show her the letter.<br />
‘Sulaya,’ I says,” – sometimes her name was<br />
anglicized as Sally – “‘who’s it from?’<br />
“One glance at the sender on the back<br />
of the envelope and those coal black orbs<br />
almost popped out of their mascara-ringed<br />
sockets. ‘This missive, Mr. Coocoo, is from<br />
the private secretary to His Royal Highness,<br />
Mohammed V, King of Morocco!’ She<br />
bowed her head as she uttered the name.<br />
“‘Holy Moly!’ I says, ‘Open sesame! What<br />
does His Highness want?’<br />
“Gently then, like she was handling something<br />
precious, or dangerous, Sulaya inserted<br />
the long red nail of her right thumb in<br />
under the break in the seal, plucked out and<br />
studied the gold-rimmed letter.” – Leo’s<br />
voice trembled each time in the telling, as if<br />
he himself were the letter and that long red<br />
nail were inserting its sharp edge beneath<br />
the buttons of his pinstriped Permapress<br />
shirt, stroking his chest hairs. – “I tell ya,<br />
Henry, she was breathless! ‘It is, Sir, an<br />
order for a thousand red leather-bound copies<br />
of the Holy Koran to be given as gifts to<br />
the members of His Highness’ entourage<br />
on the last day of the month of Ramadan.’ –<br />
it was a chance in a million, Henry . . . a<br />
chance in a million!”<br />
“Did the company fill the order?!” I asked,<br />
though I already knew the answer.<br />
And each time he told the tale, Leo<br />
heaved a great sigh, part moan, part groan,<br />
part lamentation, dramatically laying a<br />
hand on his chest for the inconsolable loss.<br />
Slowly he shook his head. – “It was too late.<br />
By the time the big shots upstairs finally<br />
got their act together to reply, the old King’d<br />
kicked the bucket and the new private secretary<br />
of his son and successor, Hassan II,<br />
reneged on the order.”<br />
“And Sulaya?” I pried.<br />
Leo paused, his face flushed a Vitamin-<br />
E-deficient shade of faded red. – “She was<br />
promoted to the executive typing pool, and”<br />
– Leo shook his head and paused again, as<br />
though revisiting the memory of a terrible<br />
tragedy – “they made her cut her nails.” The<br />
reminiscence always ended abruptly. “No<br />
point crying over spilt milk,” he tried to<br />
shrug it off with a half-hearted smile and a<br />
last gulped-down bolus of bread and baloney.<br />
“There’s work to be done!”<br />
The afternoon hours were the worst,<br />
the final home stretch after coffee break<br />
between three and five o’clock positively<br />
lethal. I filed for a while till my energy level<br />
ran dangerously low. The boiler banged,<br />
a sharp pair of claws would<br />
clasp me by the shoulder<br />
blades and a malodorous<br />
cloud would waft round my<br />
nostrils. “Just keeping you<br />
on your fingertips, kid !”<br />
echoing my impatience, and the ventilation<br />
system strained noisily, pumping in a day’s<br />
worth of carbon-dioxide-rich yawns from<br />
above. I checked the ooze buckets and spat<br />
in them for good measure. I kicked around<br />
in Rosy, tilting with my windmills of boredom,<br />
peered repeatedly at my wristwatch,<br />
but time slowed to a crawl and the squeaking<br />
grated on my ears.<br />
Initially I was cautious in my distress.<br />
Leo liked to creep up behind unannounced.<br />
Suddenly a sharp pair of claws would clasp<br />
me by the shoulder blades and a malodorous<br />
cloud would waft round my nostrils. –<br />
“Just keeping you on your fingertips, kid!” –<br />
he’d slap me on the back: “Keep up the good<br />
work!” and slink back off to his hole.<br />
One day I thought I hit pay dirt.<br />
The brittle brown-edged envelope<br />
must have slipped out the back<br />
of a battered cabinet drawer and landed in<br />
another, God knows how long ago. I happened<br />
upon it when trying to wrench open<br />
the S-drawer. “Sehr geehrter Herr/Most<br />
Honored Sir,” read the crisply folded note<br />
typed on the Gothic letterhead of the Reich<br />
Office for Racial Research, “We are respectfully<br />
seeking any and all original literature<br />
available on the slave trade, posters, bills<br />
of sale and the like, as well as bodily measurements<br />
and sample skulls, should they<br />
be available, to aid in our research. Your<br />
kind assistance in this matter would be<br />
most appreciated.” It was signed Professor<br />
Hans Hauptmann, Doctor of Anthropology,<br />
Section Head, Department of Racial<br />
Documentation. I dashed over to show Leo<br />
the letter.<br />
“It’s a historical find!” I cried out.<br />
Leo gave it the once over. “It’s historical<br />
alright,” he pointed out the postmark,<br />
August 4, 1941. “A quarter century too late,<br />
f & f it, kid!”<br />
The same command to f &f (meaning file<br />
and forget), which I’d heard and dutifully<br />
obeyed countless times before now made<br />
my stomach twitch. Something snapped in<br />
me. The drip drip drip into the ooze bucket<br />
drove me to distraction. The sordid truth<br />
of my totally useless work broke into my<br />
benumbed consciousness. Nothing we did<br />
or would ever do down here mattered. It<br />
was a total waste of time.<br />
Despondent, I cast caution to the wind.<br />
It started with a stray letter of the alphabet,<br />
a furtive f scribbled on the back of an<br />
envelope to be filed, and soon expanded<br />
to full-fledged expletives spelled out in<br />
ever-bolder script inscribed ever more<br />
audaciously on the lips of envelopes and the<br />
fronts of letters and unfilled order forms.<br />
For weeks I got away with it, though the<br />
curses swelled to colossal capital-lettered<br />
imprecations:<br />
F*ck THIS JOB ! F*ck SELDON<br />
& REINHArdt ! F*ck DEAD<br />
letters ! F*ck LEO COOCOO !<br />
scrawled in black magic marker and circled<br />
in rings of red.<br />
I gave poor Rosy a kick and sent her<br />
flying with a desperate un-oiled squeal,<br />
denting the gray metal face of the Beyond-<br />
Z-Zone. I fired paperclips round the room<br />
and peed into the ooze bucket for good<br />
measure. For a while Leo didn’t notice. Or<br />
maybe he chose to ignore these infractions,<br />
hoping I’d get it out of my system, buck up<br />
and pull myself together. But when finally<br />
he did, inevitably, catch me red-handed<br />
stuffing curse-covered correspondence in<br />
the gaps between hanging files behind the<br />
Beyond-Z-Zone, it was with more disappointment<br />
than anger that he let me go.<br />
“You had the finger for it, Henry – ” he<br />
shook his head sadly, unable to finish the<br />
sentence.<br />
I raced up the stairs, stumbling on every<br />
second step, chest heaving, gasping for air,<br />
my duplicitous heart beating double-time,<br />
feeling a bottomless sadness coupled with<br />
a profound sense of relief once I reached<br />
street level and ran out the door, as if half of<br />
me had been returned to life and the other<br />
half buried alive. µ<br />
Peter Wortsman is a translator and writer<br />
and was the spring <strong>20</strong>10 Holtzbrinck<br />
Fellow at the American Academy.
40 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh<br />
Amr abdallah dalsh, Prayer on tahrir square, february 4, <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong>
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 41<br />
Cairo’s <strong>Spring</strong><br />
Cleaning<br />
A new generation of young Egyptians inspires the old<br />
By Roger Cohen<br />
Watching the revolution<br />
unfold in Cairo and, before<br />
that, in Tunisia, I have come to<br />
believe that 2/11, the day Hosni Mubarak<br />
fell, may very well emerge as an important<br />
antidote to 9/11.<br />
We have been living with an Arab<br />
Jurassic Park. Rulers in place for decades<br />
turned their countries into personal fiefdoms.<br />
They enriched themselves and their<br />
offspring, groomed to succeed them as if<br />
by divine right. All this was justified in the<br />
name of the tired binary thinking whose<br />
For a long time a dismissive<br />
phrase, “the Arab Street,”<br />
has been used as<br />
the glib shorthand for<br />
the disenfranchised<br />
Arab masses. Let’s retire<br />
the phrase.<br />
core was that the only alternative to jihadist<br />
mayhem in the Middle East was the repression<br />
of Western-backed dictators as practiced<br />
from Benghazi to Bahrain. In fact the<br />
brutality of the Arab dinosaurs fed the very<br />
condition the West has sought to reverse.<br />
When the only legal place of assembly is the<br />
mosque, Islamist radicalization becomes<br />
more likely.<br />
For a long time a dismissive phrase,<br />
“the Arab Street,” has been used as the glib<br />
shorthand for the disenfranchised Arab<br />
masses. Let’s retire the phrase. The Arab<br />
<strong>Spring</strong> has given the lie to it. I’ve seldom<br />
seen such discipline and composure – and<br />
culture – as in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Many<br />
people there said to me, “This is the first<br />
time I’ve felt I really count for something,<br />
that I as a human being have my dignity<br />
and can have some impact on the society<br />
around me.” Here was another source of<br />
radicalization among the systems now<br />
crumbling: people who feel their identities<br />
are worthless are more likely to subsume<br />
those identities in violent movements<br />
promising eternal redemption.<br />
Of course, the uprisings are not a panacea.<br />
Remaking Arab societies in ways that<br />
offer freedom and representation to their<br />
people will be the work of generations.<br />
There will be setbacks; as I write, the fate<br />
of Libya hangs in the balance. Germany<br />
knows something about how painstaking<br />
these rebuilding processes are – but also<br />
how they can succeed over time. The West<br />
has a deep strategic interest in buttressing<br />
positive outcomes, particularly in Egypt,<br />
where it will be important to show that a<br />
democratic system can also bring growth,<br />
jobs, and education.<br />
After Hosni Mubarak fled, I witnessed<br />
remarkable encounters between an older<br />
generation and younger Egyptian protestors<br />
who were working together to clean the<br />
streets. One young woman in particular<br />
made a deep impression on me. Normally,<br />
Cairo is the city of dust par excellence.<br />
But Tahrir Square, the day after Mubarak’s<br />
fall, was gleaming – almost Zurich on<br />
the Nile. I asked why she swept. “We want<br />
to clean out the old and bring in the new,<br />
bring in what is fresh,” she said.<br />
A man in his sixties<br />
approached me and pointed<br />
at the young woman,<br />
commenting, “They did what<br />
we couldn’t do.”<br />
Her vigorous sweeping was also about<br />
affirmation of purpose: doing things<br />
to change things rather than being the<br />
pawn of some despot. A man in his sixties<br />
approached me and pointed at the young<br />
woman, commenting, “They did what we<br />
couldn’t do. This is a precious generation.”<br />
In other words, the Facebook-armed young<br />
overcame fear. Both Egypt and Tunisia<br />
were studies in how real-time, flat, websavvy,<br />
youth-driven movements could<br />
outmaneuver heavily armed but ponderous<br />
hierarchies at a loss in the world of twentyfirst-century<br />
politics and social media.<br />
While reporting on the revolution<br />
in Egypt, I found myself<br />
comparing it to the tumultuous<br />
<strong>20</strong>09 protests I covered in Tehran. The<br />
Green Movement was an important precursor<br />
of the Arab uprisings. The repression<br />
of it was brutal, as I witnessed fi
42 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
but the Iranian example of courage in confronting<br />
repression important. Nothing<br />
has been more grotesque in recent weeks<br />
than the attempt by the Islamic Republic to<br />
claim that it has been a source of inspiration<br />
to people in Cairo and Tunis. On the<br />
Iran is ready for some form<br />
of representative<br />
government that will<br />
at last balance freedom<br />
and faith, rather than<br />
betraying the former<br />
in the name of the latter.<br />
contrary, Iran’s hypocrisy in repressing its<br />
own people has been further exposed.<br />
I have thought a lot about Iran since<br />
<strong>20</strong>09. The desire for freedom that has<br />
existed there for more than a hundred years,<br />
the hunger of which Ayatollah Khomeini<br />
spoke in 1979, at the time of the revolution,<br />
remains present in Iran today. Protest<br />
has been pushed down but anger persists.<br />
Many of the friends I made have been<br />
through terrible times since I left. Some<br />
have been in prison. Many are leaving, or<br />
trying to leave, mainly to Canada. It is a<br />
terrible waste. Iran is ready for some form<br />
of representative government that will<br />
at last balance freedom and faith, rather<br />
than betraying the former in the name of<br />
the latter.<br />
The example of Iran’s revolution<br />
has been much cited by those who<br />
believe the Arab <strong>Spring</strong> will only<br />
yield some new form of repression. Israel,<br />
worried by change and the loss of Mubarak,<br />
has advanced this view. My own is more<br />
hopeful. The challenges are immense, but<br />
Egypt, always a reference point for the Arab<br />
I believe 2/11 may do more<br />
to counter 9/11 than<br />
all America’s recent wars.<br />
world, can inspire Arabs with an example<br />
of freedom and development, as well as<br />
the first example of a peace between Arab<br />
and Jewish democracies. That will be good<br />
for the peoples of the region. It will also be<br />
good for Western societies. They have suffered,<br />
in New York and Madrid and London,<br />
from the rage the dinosaur-despots generated<br />
year after year. And so I believe 2/11 may<br />
do more to counter 9/11 than all America’s<br />
recent wars. µ<br />
Roger Cohen is the international affairs<br />
columnist of the International Herald<br />
Tribune and the international writer-atlarge<br />
for the New York Times. This essay is<br />
derived from an interview he gave on npr<br />
on February 16, <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong>.<br />
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44 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
© Cy Twombly – Courtesy Cy Twombly Foundation<br />
Cy Twombly, Proteus, 1984
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 45<br />
The Insurgency<br />
Within<br />
Out of Fallujah, into the bell jar of trauma<br />
By Kirk W. Johnson<br />
There is an amusement park in<br />
downtown Fallujah. Jolan Park has<br />
not functioned or amused for years,<br />
since our war in Iraq began. When Zarqawi<br />
held sway over the city in <strong>20</strong>04, his minions<br />
reportedly used the cluster of shacks<br />
within the park as torture cells. Some of<br />
the fiercest fighting occurred there when<br />
the Marines finally took control of the city<br />
later that year. A grove of trees once shaded<br />
the rides, but Fallujans cut them down for<br />
wood to heat their homes and to fire the<br />
ovens that baked their bread during the<br />
siege. Splintered foot-tall stumps remain,<br />
dusted pikes stabbing up through the<br />
weary soil.<br />
One of the main rides, a whirly-goround,<br />
is improbably aquatic themed. A<br />
ten-foot-tall octopus, the color of moldering<br />
lime, looms at the hub of the ride, extending<br />
his swirling tentacles outward over the<br />
small cars, which are made to look like severed<br />
heads of fish. They are all scowling as<br />
they bake under the Fallujah sun.<br />
A motorless Ferris wheel slumbers nearby,<br />
more of a monument now, its bucket<br />
seats piling up with years of dust.<br />
I try to wipe the dust from my brow and<br />
cheeks, but it turns into a film as it mingles<br />
with sweat and clings there. I lick my<br />
lips and frown as the chalky dust settles<br />
on my parched tongue. The sky is more<br />
orange than blue. I do not like this place, or<br />
this day.<br />
Across the street, renamed Route Henry<br />
by Marines who struggled with Arabic<br />
street names, the veterinarian of Fallujah<br />
is waiting for me. Dr. Nazar is a tall, hefty<br />
man, maybe sixty, with a darkly creased<br />
face and gold-rimmed glasses that he<br />
pulls from a breast pocket before running<br />
through a list of supplies and equipment<br />
he has prepared for me, with the hope that<br />
I might direct some usaid support his way.<br />
He needs incubators, vaccines to combat<br />
diseases like Brucellosis, refrigerators for<br />
the vaccines, generators for the incubators<br />
and refrigerators, fuel for the generators.<br />
Syringes, gauze, everything.<br />
Ihave just arrived in Fallujah as<br />
usaid’s first coordinator for reconstruction<br />
in the city, after seven frustrating<br />
months confined within the sixteen-foot<br />
blast walls encircling Baghdad’s Green<br />
Zone. I am 24, relieved to be in the field<br />
and using my Arabic again, having studied<br />
and lived throughout the region. I came<br />
to Iraq to pitch in on rebuilding efforts,<br />
despite my opposition to the war. I didn’t<br />
come to party with drunken contractors<br />
and jaded bureaucrats.<br />
I want an early success. I’m not sure<br />
what information I’ll need from Dr. Nazar,<br />
so in a pale-green US Government-issued<br />
Federal Supply Service notebook, I write<br />
down everything I can learn from the<br />
doctor. How many head of cattle are there<br />
in Fallujah and the outlying villages?<br />
How many animals does he treat a week?<br />
Which diseases are most prevalent at the<br />
I have just arrived in Fallujah as usaid’s first<br />
coordinator for reconstruction in the city, after seven<br />
frustrating months confined within the sixteen-foot<br />
blast walls encircling Baghdad’s Green Zone.<br />
moment? What are the farmers doing without<br />
these vaccines? How many chickens are<br />
there in the city?<br />
I take his list, which will take hours to<br />
decipher and translate (after all, I never<br />
learned the Arabic words for Brucellosis or<br />
hypodermic or hoof ) into a report with recommendations<br />
for my bosses in Baghdad,<br />
and wedge it in my notebook. I heave my<br />
armored body back into the tub of the<br />
Humvee, and Dr. Nazar calls out to me.<br />
Mister Kirk ?<br />
One of the Marines protecting me gives a<br />
glance, signaling that we need to move<br />
on, so I answer the veterinarian brusquely.<br />
We never spend more than a few minutes<br />
in each place.<br />
Yes, doctor, what ? We are in a rush.<br />
Fallujah needs a working slaughterhouse<br />
again. fi
46 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
The Marines had temporarily occupied the<br />
old slaughterhouse just a few blocks away,<br />
which the veterinarian wants to re-open<br />
with our help. He needs a generator to<br />
keep it cool. He points to the ground I just<br />
walked across, at a startling rivulet of dark<br />
blood running alongside the curb, which<br />
is also stained blood-brown. The stream<br />
issues from the gullets of sheep and other<br />
small livestock being slaughtered twenty<br />
feet up the street. There is enough flow<br />
to stretch another fifteen feet down before<br />
it disappears into a small heap of rubble<br />
and garbage.<br />
It’s not good, it’s not safe to handle meat<br />
this way, Doctor Nazar pleads.<br />
The butchers are staring at us, in one<br />
hand a blade, in the other, the napes of<br />
wild-eyed livestock. Over their shoulders,<br />
the octopus glares.<br />
We need to clear out, a Marine grunts,<br />
to my relief.<br />
Sweetie ? Kirkie ?<br />
I opened my eyes at the sound of my mother’s<br />
voice and Fallujah – the amusement<br />
park, the menacing octopus, the veterinarian,<br />
the Marines – evaporated. Something<br />
was wrong with my vision; there was a<br />
jagged grayish frame around the edges of<br />
my sight.<br />
Sweetie can you see me ?<br />
Yes, I mumbled. What is this ?<br />
It’s a mask, honey. They put it on you<br />
after the operation. The doctors said<br />
that you . . .<br />
I was in an anesthetic haze in a dimly lit<br />
hospital room at the Centro Medico<br />
Bournigal in the Dominican Republic.<br />
I had left Fallujah a few days earlier for a<br />
week-long R&R with my parents and brothers.<br />
I knew there had been an accident, but<br />
the details now evaded my drugged state<br />
of mind, as I struggled to orient myself.<br />
I glanced through the tunnel of my vision<br />
and caught a dusky sight of myself in the<br />
screen of a wall-mounted hospital television<br />
broadcasting my reflection. Dread<br />
seeped from my brain, coursing throughout<br />
my battered body, which I inventoried<br />
with alternating panic and fury. I could not<br />
breathe through my nostrils. I furrowed<br />
my brow in frustration and a punishing jolt<br />
of pain answered. My teeth felt missing.<br />
My arms felt heavy.<br />
I was broken all over and could not<br />
grab the tails of any memories from the<br />
morning hours of December 29, two days<br />
earlier. They had all fled to an undiscovered<br />
country in my mind, and now amnesia<br />
had clawed an impenetrable ocean around<br />
them. I stumbled around my thoughts, calling<br />
out futilely for something to explain<br />
what happened?<br />
The antibiotics turned my stomach. My<br />
jaw broken, I drank meals through a straw.<br />
I soon gave up trying to control the eruptions<br />
of my mind, which erratically spewed<br />
forth scenes, snippets of conversations,<br />
and scents, without order or mercy. In the<br />
span of a few seconds, I flitted from the<br />
memory of a midnight ride in a Humvee<br />
filled with mannequins (to be propped on<br />
rooftops by counter-sniper Marines) to the<br />
wail and acrid smoke of my 1969 Pontiac’s<br />
roasting tires during a drag race in high<br />
school, to the past-tense conjugation of<br />
a form-four Arabic verb, to the name of<br />
my kindergarten teacher. At first, I tried<br />
to make sense, to understand why one<br />
thought followed another, but was soon<br />
beaten back by a new torrent of unconnected<br />
thoughts and memories. My mind was<br />
a wasp trapped in a jar, bouncing furiously<br />
against its walls and ceiling.<br />
I spoke with quiet apprehension: if<br />
I opened my mouth too wide, the tear<br />
across my chin would slit open and the pus<br />
of infection colonizing its borders would<br />
stream watery-yellow down my chin<br />
and neck.<br />
Mom, I need to get out of here.<br />
I know, dear, you will, but first you<br />
need to heal a bit more.<br />
The first drops of an oncoming storm of<br />
depression began to fall, as I realized that<br />
I had failed, that my mind had stumbled,<br />
that Iraq had spit me out. A year of struggle,<br />
risk, and fatigue had resulted in a chaotic<br />
disorder, filed neatly under the label posttraumatic<br />
stress. The fugue state that piloted<br />
my sleeping self from my bed and out my<br />
hotel window (as I would subsequently<br />
piece together from the reports of a hotel<br />
watchman) was not a state but a shadow,<br />
from which it would take years to flee.<br />
I<br />
would not return to Iraq to finish<br />
my work. Doctor Nazar would not<br />
get his vaccines. I always knew that<br />
I would eventually leave Fallujah, of course,<br />
but I wanted to do so on my own terms.<br />
The potent knowledge that I could just<br />
leave whenever I wanted had sustained me:<br />
I always knew that my seat ejected when<br />
things got bad enough. What did the Iraqis<br />
have? Or the Marines?<br />
The first drops of an oncoming storm<br />
of depression began to fall, as I realized that<br />
I had failed, that my mind had stumbled,<br />
that Iraq had spit me out.<br />
But I was ready to stay another six months<br />
beyond the year I’d already spent in<br />
country, partly in reaction to the endless<br />
turnover in personnel that was dogging<br />
even the most basic government initiatives.<br />
Every other night back in the Green Zone,<br />
there were “hail and farewell” parties in<br />
the aid compound, to bid goodbye to some<br />
lucky soul on his or her way out and to size<br />
up the fools who were only just arriving.<br />
Those who left brought with them a year<br />
of accrued but erratically documented<br />
knowledge.<br />
And in time, one sensed that we had<br />
stumbled into a sweltering Macondo,<br />
amnesiacs pinning simple labels on this<br />
project here or that face there in a futile<br />
attempt to exert control over a situation<br />
that was well beyond our grasp. usaid<br />
developed a massive database of its 10,000<br />
projects throughout the country, but I<br />
never knew more than three people in the<br />
government other than myself who bothered<br />
to study it. The Marines maintained<br />
their own database in Fallujah with photos<br />
and notes, updated regularly, on each of<br />
the sheikhs and civilian leaders throughout<br />
Anbar province. This one was good.<br />
Trustworthy. This one funds an ied-factory.<br />
We gave this one money in <strong>20</strong>05. Rumored<br />
al-Qaeda in Iraq. This newspaper on payroll:<br />
don’t arrest editor.<br />
We pinned these little scraps of information<br />
to the hide of the beast, sometimes<br />
with hope, more often with resignation. In<br />
doing so, Americans attempted to reduce<br />
the churning cauldron of shifting alliances,<br />
insurgency, corruption, blood-feuds,
<strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong> | Number Twenty | The Berlin Journal | 47<br />
criminal enterprise, and revenge to a<br />
consumable broth. We hoped that once we<br />
left Iraq and our memory faded, that these<br />
notes, these databases, these reports would<br />
aid whoever was mad enough to replace us<br />
and patient enough to read. It was not to<br />
be. Each of us came in blank, unwittingly<br />
made the mistakes of our predecessors,<br />
and left with fried or cynical brains. Our<br />
replacements fared little better.<br />
Dr. Nazar’s list of medications and<br />
other veterinary supplies remained folded<br />
inside my notebook, one of a stack that I<br />
left on my desk in Camp Fallujah before<br />
leaving for what I thought would only<br />
be a week-long vacation, which, after my<br />
accident, resulted in months of reconstructive<br />
surgery and rehabilitation. During<br />
this time, the Marines surmised that<br />
I wouldn’t be returning, gave my desk<br />
to someone else, and likely pitched my<br />
notebooks into the burn pit. Within a<br />
year, nobody working for usaid in Iraq or<br />
the Marines knew who I was, and I didn’t<br />
know who they were. Iraqis that I worked<br />
with were assassinated or else chased out<br />
of the country.<br />
Weeks after my fall, I realized that the<br />
daily tide of Vicodin, depression, and<br />
fatigue would soon erode the details I did<br />
remember. After mourning the loss of my<br />
Fallujah notebooks, I pulled blank ones<br />
from the shelf of my childhood bedroom,<br />
where I recuperated.<br />
But I could not write with a normal pen.<br />
Both wrists were broken, and my thumbs<br />
and index fingers had been imprisoned in<br />
blue fiberglass, just inches apart. I lurched<br />
my way to the basement, where I found<br />
a roll of duct tape and a white sock from the<br />
laundry room. Even this degree of effort<br />
left me winded, with a headache that felt as<br />
though my brain was swelling against the<br />
inner walls of my cracked skull. I worked<br />
my way back to my room, sat down at the<br />
desk and placed the duct tape next to the<br />
pen and sock.<br />
I clumsily wrapped the sock around<br />
the pen and spent the better part of 15<br />
infuriating minutes trying to free a corner<br />
of the tape without the capacity of opposable<br />
digits. Sweat issued relentlessly, and I<br />
barked, to no one,<br />
God dammit, does it have to be so hot<br />
in here ?!<br />
With great effort I managed to tear free<br />
a foot-long piece of tape, which I crudely<br />
wrapped around the sock. I lowered my<br />
right hand over the fattened pen and<br />
wedged it into the space between my<br />
thumb and index finger until it lodged<br />
tightly. I had regained the capacity to write.<br />
The sweat made the lacerations in my<br />
face sting. I looked at the clock, and realized<br />
that an hour and a half had passed, all<br />
for a sock-pen. A few weeks earlier, I was<br />
coordinating tens of millions of dollars<br />
worth of aid. People called me sir.<br />
I wedged the sock-pen into position<br />
over a blank page and began to write, in<br />
nervous and oversized letters. Most pages<br />
could hold no more than six or eight<br />
words. I raced against the loss of memory<br />
of a year that nearly destroyed me, filling<br />
notebook after notebook, documenting<br />
the recurrence of nightmares, capturing<br />
details from Baghdad and Fallujah, writing<br />
through my ptsd and my recovery.<br />
One morning, years later, on<br />
a golf trip with my brothers, I read<br />
about plans in Fallujah to convert<br />
the amusement park into a cemetery. In<br />
the weeks following the siege of <strong>20</strong>04, the<br />
Marines warehoused the dead in a potato<br />
storage facility on the eastern outskirts of<br />
I clumsily wrapped the sock around the pen<br />
and spent the better part of 15 infuriating minutes<br />
trying to free a corner of the tape<br />
without the capacity of opposable digits.<br />
town, until the Fallujans ploughed their<br />
soccer field into a graveyard. They had since<br />
run out of room in the pitch, and were tired<br />
of burying their dead in backyards.<br />
Later that afternoon, I pull a wedge out<br />
of my golf bag to pitch a ball over fifty emerald<br />
yards of watered suburban fairway grass<br />
and towering oaks.<br />
Think you can clear ’em ?<br />
my brother asks. µ<br />
Kirk W. Johnson founded and directs<br />
the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies and<br />
formerly served as the usaid Regional<br />
Coordinator for the Reconstruction<br />
of Fallujah. He was a Bosch Public Policy<br />
Fellow at the American Academy in<br />
fall <strong>20</strong>10.<br />
The List Project<br />
The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies<br />
was founded by Kirk Johnson in <strong>20</strong>07<br />
in order to help resettle Iraqi refugees<br />
who aided the United States during<br />
the Second Gulf War. The project<br />
has brought together 250 attorneys<br />
from eight leading law firms to offer<br />
thousands of hours of pro bono representation<br />
for Iraqi refugees. So far<br />
the organization has resettled over<br />
sevenhundred Iraqis and cultivates<br />
grassroots support across the United<br />
States.<br />
The List Project was founded on<br />
the belief that the US government has<br />
a clear and urgent moral obligation to<br />
resettle to safety Iraqis who are imperiled<br />
due to their affiliation with the<br />
United States and who can no longer<br />
return to Iraq without fear of reprisal or<br />
death stemming from their affiliation.<br />
Legal volunteers have formed chapters<br />
across the United States and are helping<br />
Iraqi refugees with everything from<br />
retooling resumes to finding furniture.<br />
The List Project also provides<br />
recently resettled Iraqi children with<br />
support and material resources to<br />
adjust to life in the United States,<br />
called List Kids. This arm of the project<br />
sends monthly carepackages to children<br />
to give them a sense of belonging<br />
and to provide them resources to promote<br />
academic success. These packages<br />
include books, school supplies,<br />
ESL materials, toys, gift cards, and<br />
other emergency assistance.<br />
Never before in US history has<br />
there been such a vast group of refugees<br />
with access to their own pro bono<br />
representation by top American law<br />
firms. The project, which receives an<br />
average of 12 new Iraqi citizens each<br />
week, hopes to contribute to a new<br />
model of how refugees can be assisted<br />
and resettled with dignity. More information<br />
about the List Project can be<br />
found online at www.thelistproject.org.
48 | The Berlin Journal | Number Twenty | <strong>Spring</strong> <strong><strong>20</strong>11</strong><br />
We are grateful to<br />
for underwriting<br />
The Berlin Journal.<br />
This special issue commemorating<br />
American Academy Founder<br />
Richard Holbrooke<br />
would not have been possible<br />
without their<br />
generous support.<br />
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