by VICTOR GROSSMAN
This Saturday many Germans, party leaders and media pundits above all, will recall October 3, 1990, when their dreams of a unified Germany became reality. May they celebrate, with speeches, fireworks, bockwurst and beer and vibrant voices, resoundingtutti with the “Deutschland über alles” anthem, sung since that date thirty years ago from the western Rhine to the eastern Oder!
That day brought joy to many good people, and many remain joyful. But few can ignore the facts; neither Germany nor the world have lived up to all past expectations, while many worry about what lies ahead. Even pagans like me may turn to the Christian Bible; its final chapter warns of four “Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, whose fierce mounts were symbols of “plague, famine, conquest by the sword and wild beasts”. Can modern echoes of those equine hoofbeats jar the harmony of the intoned anthems?
The virus plague now besetting the world is causing more harm than any in the past hundred years. How long will it dominate our lives? Germany, blameless and till now spared its worst effects, may now be facing a worse “second wave”.
As for famine, its ravages have never been fully absent. But here too Germany has been spared for nearly 75 years; since unification in 1990 it has been less its victim than its cause. Despite amazing advances in machinery for tilling soil, for planting, reaping and processing, men of power and wealth have twisted blessings into curses. Seed genetics is impoverishing variety and impelling monoculture: family farming is replaced by giant livestock factories; poorer countries are stuffed with imports of machine-wrapped white bread or plucked chicken and turkey parts; shrimp farms replace ravaged mangrove swamps and mass fishing for de-boned exports empties or sullies the high seas; heat and gases emitted by mills, factories and heavy, high-speed vehicles fog the skies. Small marginal farms become empty and arid, their displaced owners forced into hungry slums – or death-dealing escape routes through Mexican or Saharan deserts and Mediterranean storms. Too often they then find hardest low-paid toil or hunger for themselves, also providing grist for xenophobic hatred while the smug culprits enjoy their flowered mansions, high-rise penthouses, their yachts and private jets.
Menacing as this apocalyptic nightmare is becoming, a far worse one surpasses it–one which has received far too little attention. It is the curse symbolized in Biblical years by the sword. But spears or swords of old–though cruel, unjust and bloody–required personal strength and often courage. Neither are needed for today’s missiles and drones. A single unmanned drone, guided from Nevada and Ramstein, can decimate wedding festivities in Afghanistan. Two single bombs alone killed over 100,000 human beings in the horrible crimes called Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Far more powerful ones, carried by a bomber now waiting in line in Büchel and unleashed by a single spark from a modern apocalyptic hoof, can mean–within minutes–that all talk of fields, forests, famine or viruses becomes forever irrelevant.
What about the fourth Biblical menace–wild beasts? Species considered fearful then are now less dangerous than endangered! And yet an analogous but far worse danger now faces us; Nazis, fascists, wild, brutal mobs. Definitions and character vary; U.S. traditions trace back to the genocide of Native Americans and slavery. In Germany–to twelve years of terror from 1933 till 1945.
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