Freedom is overwhelming for many people

A former German president on the AfD, the darkness and the light

Joachim Gauck is the closest thing Germany has to the conscience of a nation.

To coin one of his own phrases, he was born into darkness and emerged into the light.

Raised in the port city of Rostock, he spent his early years under the Nazis and his formative years under Communism. When Gauck was eleven years old in 1951, his father was arrested by the Soviets and convicted of spying. His ‘crime’ had been to receive a letter from the West. He disappeared for four years.

On graduating from university, Gauck concluded that the only way to have a role in public life and keep his integrity was to become a priest. By the 80s, the Church had become the home for the dissident movement in East Berlin, Leipzig and elsewhere. During the Peaceful Revolution of 1988-89, Gauck was a co-founder of New Forum, the main opposition movement, along with the likes of the artist Bärbel Bohley and scientist Jens Reich.

In the frantic months between the fall of the Wall and reunification, when East Germans had their first taste of proper politics, he became a member of parliament for a group aligned to the Greens. Elected to the new all-German Bundestag, he resigned after one day – the shortest ever tenure – after being chosen by MPs to become the first Federal Commissioner in charge of preserving the Stasi records.

In his own Stasi files, Gauck was described as an ‘inveterate anti-communist’. At a ceremony marking his 70th birthday in 2010, Angela Merkel described him as a ‘true teacher of democracy’. Both are pithily accurate.

Why do I feel the need to chart his career so meticulously? Because, at this dark (that word again) time for Europe, when hard right meets hard left, when the extreme has become mainstream, when democracy is mocked, it is hard to find someone with credentials such as his. It matters what Gauck says.

Gauck went on to become president between 2012 and 2017. During that time, he had a ringside seat at the most traumatic events - the election of Trump, the arrival of one million refugees into Germany and the rise of the AfD.

The role of president is non-partisan, but it is political in a broader sense, setting the moral parameters of public life. In the eight decades of the Federal Republic, some have occupied it with distinction; others such as Gauck’s successor, and present incumbent, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, have too much baggage. As Foreign Minister under Merkel, Steinmeier hugged Vladimir Putin too close for comfort.

I was therefore intrigued to watch ‘What Will Become of Germany, Mr Gauck?’ a special programme aired last week on ARD, the first channel. (You can watch it here… in German). Germany does political chat shows well. They allow discussions time to breathe, they don’t feast on soundbites. Moderators tend to be neither rottweilers nor pushovers. And the shows go out on prime time… (no pressure to dumb down).

The topic of the programme was the extremist surge in the three regional elections of September, which saw the AfD win in Thuringia and come perilously close in Saxony and Brandenburg. Meanwhile, the new far-right-left, pro-Putin grouping, BSW, also performed extremely well.

Gauck was reminded of something he said in 2015, as Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis and others were distributed across Germany in what seemed at the time - and was - the ultimate demonstration of generosity. At the time, however, and earlier than most, he warned of the difference between goodwill and the ability to deliver housing, schooling and other services for the refugees, while ensuring harmony with the original population. ‘Our hearts are wide open,’ the then president said. ‘But our absorption capacity is limited.’

Caren Miosga, the accomplished interviewer, also recalled another phrase Gauck used. He praised the many ‘volunteers who want to show that there is a Germany in the light, a shining contrast to the dark Germany we witness when we hear about attacks on refugee centres or even xenophobic acts against people’.

Nine years on, Gauck is more nuanced, careful not to denounce voters, particularly those in the east, who have flocked to the far-right. East German society is not ‘worse in character’, he insisted, but ‘had worse starting conditions’ – a society ‘marked by 56 years of political powerlessness’.

Asked by Miosga whether the AfD is a Nazi party, he replied with an emphatic ‘no’. Such comparisons, he insisted, did not help. The problem is ‘not that many people want Adolf Hitler back’, but that they feel disorientated and yearn for the simple solutions of authoritarians such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban.

Freedom, Gauck said, is ‘overwhelming’ for many people. ‘Modernity demands a lot from us’.

Perhaps only two other post-war politicians in Germany come close to providing a similar moral compass. One hails from the left, the other a conservative.

As Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt came to the city’s aid when the wall was put up in 1961 (the records show that the Chancellor at the time, Konrad Adenauer, was quite relaxed about letting Berlin go, in return for other concessions from the Russians).

As Chancellor, Brandt’s act of falling to his knees before a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970 is seen as one the great moments of penitence. ‘Faced with the abyss of German history and the burden of the millions who had been murdered, I did what we humans do when words fail us,’ Brandt wrote in his memoirs.

Richard von Weizsäcker is remembered most for a speech he gave in 1985, just weeks after becoming president. The Bundestag was marking the fortieth anniversary of the Nazi surrender. Germany, he told MPs, had not been defeated on 8 May 1945. Instead, it was ‘a day of liberation’. That single sentence was stunning. His conclusion was a moment of drama: ‘It is not a case of coming to terms with the past. That is not possible. It cannot be subsequently modified or made undone. However, anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present. Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to new risks of infection.’

A quarter of a million copies of his speech were distributed to schools. It was important not just for what was said but who said it. The Weizsäcker family had been steeped in the Third Reich. His own regiment had been part of the invasion of Poland. One of his brothers was part of a secret team trying to build nuclear weapons for the Nazis. His father, Ernst, became the secretary of state in the Foreign Ministry and was charged at Nuremberg with involvement in the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz.

The darkness and the light: the eternal German juxtaposition.