...cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn
I have decided to completely abandoned the already tenuous chronological order of my posts and jump ahead to Munich.
I went to Munich because I wanted to see my friend who lives nearby. I was taken a bit off-guard by how much I loved the city.
One thing that didn’t occur to me until our bus crossed from Italy into Austria was how much my home state was shaped by Germanic immigrants, much more than Italian. Much as I love Italy, Austria and then Germany, felt instantly so much familiar. This was reinforced by the also-much-more-similar-to-Wisconsin climate of Munich. November was cold but not bitter and it was bright with fall leaves painting brilliant backdrops to the wide streets, famous facades, and lovely walks.
I have no doubt that this physical feeling at home, combined with the joy of being with my friend, constituted a majority as well as a foundation to how much I enjoyed Munich.
But one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was the way that Germany carries the scars of WWII and Nazism.
I’ve often thought that an important aspect of being a good person is understanding your own capacity for evil (hear me out). When a person sees all that is wrong in the world, there is a temptation is to think that if I can only keep all those forces at a distance from me and those I love, then my life will be good. Though tempting, this attitude is profoundly problematic on many levels. Not only does it set up an equating of people to their beliefs and a subsequent judgement of who they are; it also creates an extraordinarily destructive blindness. A blindness that is a breading ground for the kind of hypocrisy of which this story (which I've been processing lately) is only one example. A blindness that also allows for the mindset that if the enemy outside is bad enough, any atrocity can be justified as necessary for its defeat.
I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I digress.
In Germany, there is a clear and keen understanding of the possibility of horrific corruption. While it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) constitute some sort of constant burden on everyone’s mind, their recent history is firmly and inextricably a part of their memory. Based on my incredibly brief experience and completely unqualified opinion, this seems to be a very healthy (if rather heavy) perspective.
One of the places we visited was the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism. The clunky name (and drab website) set my expectations for some sort of small, run down, depressing museum. Instead, we found a place in which I would gladly have spent hours longer. It's built on the site of the former headquarters of the Nazi party and is an incredibly detailed walk through the history of the rise of the Nazi party. From the website:
The City of Munich is aware of its special obligation to keep alive the memory of the Nazi era and its crimes and to inform citizens and visitors about it. After all, it was here in Munich that the rise of the National Socialist movement began after the First World War. Munich was also the scene of the attempted putsch of 1923 and of Hitler's subsequent trial. Here Hitler found influential patrons who gave him entry to bourgeois circles. And it was here in 1938 that Goebbels called for the nation-wide pogrom against the Jewish population. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Munich was chosen by Hitler as the place to celebrate the cult of Nazism and given the titles 'Capital of German Art' and 'Capital of the Movement'.
We spent about an hour and a half there and didn't make it halfway through. I realized that, despite my fascination with all the stories of the heroism of WWII, the specific conditions in a country that allowed the rise of such a horrific power were largely a blind spot for me. Other than a vague idea of excessive measures against the German people after WWI, I had pretty much no idea of what kind of cultural and political environment, and particularly what specific strategies, allowed Hitler to gradually take power. I have to imagine I am not the only one with this blind spot. I left with a determination to educate myself further, (as well as a desire to spend many more hours in the museum) and a sneaking suspicion that both American political parties are so busy coming up with all the ways that their opponents resemble Hitler, than no one has paused to ask if the extreme political climate we are collectively building is tipping more and more towards the kind that allows such radically dangerous leaders to gain a following.
Crucially (and beautifully), both throughout the museum and throughout the wider city, the memory of Nazism is tempered with the honor given to the (many) individual Germans who, each in their own ways, made a stand against Nazism. We visited the graves of Rupert Mayer and Romano Guardini and I was particularly moved by standing in the courtyard outside of the University of Munich and hearing in new detail, the story of Sophie Scholl. She definitely deserves her own post, especially since friendship has been a recurring theme through this pilgrimage. But her story was particularly relevant and encouraging when darkness feels both hopelessly big and absolutely necessary to stand against. Although she and her friends accomplished very little externally, the fruits of their sacrifice multiplied after their deaths because, as the woman sharing the story said, the really important thing was not so much what they did but who they became. And their heroism continues to bear fruit today, giving hope that evil can be resisted and goodness will always rise.
The care with which memory is preserved in Munich - both the memory of the depths to which we can fall, but also the heights to which we can rise - was profoundly moving and encouraging to me and will leave a lasting impact.
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