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Wolfgang Schivelbusch: "
Civil wars rarely begin with such a symbolic act"
Photo: Maurice Weiss / Der Spiegel
The cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch, 79, has written major studies, among other things, on the "History of Railroad Travel" and "On the History of Artificial Brightness in the 19th Century", but above all two books that have just become very topical again due to the US election are: »The Culture of Defeat« (2003) and »Retreat. Stories of a Taboo «(2019). Schivelbusch lives alternately in Berlin and in a village in Prignitz. This conversation also takes place there, in a former forge on the outskirts. The cell phone shows: "No network."
SPIEGEL:
You lived in New York for 40 years and, among other things, wrote a cultural history of defeat.
Militarily, the withdrawal is ...
Wolfgang Schivelbusch:
... the most difficult of all operations.
That's what all military theorists say.
The trick is to keep the troops together as a unit at all costs.
SPIEGEL:
Then Donald Trump would be a capable strategist.
The Republican Party is still almost united behind him.
Schivelbusch:
I would rather call it peasant cunning, which makes him stand out.
Like these figures at Balzac, who bought up the goods of the aristocrats at ridiculous prices after the revolution.
Despite being born rich, Trump is not part of the elite, the Kennedys and Bushs dynasties and not even the Clintons.
With his heavily indebted casinos in New Jersey, he has something of the worker who drinks his wages.
SPIEGEL:
Can't he lose because of that?
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