How right-wing Christians forgive themselves the German guilt

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The cross as a protest symbol at a Pegida demonstration in Dresden (archive picture from 2015)

Photo: Jens Meyer / AP

As is well known, one of the central topoi of new right thinking is the defamation of the German culture of remembrance as a "guilt cult".

Equally popular are terms used synonymously such as "national masochism", "German self-hatred" or "pride in guilt".

This is intended to make the culture of remembrance with regard to the victims of the National Socialist crimes, as it has developed since 1945, contemptible.

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It becomes particularly bizarre when such ideas are also charged with Christianity.

This is what happened at the end of August in a Facebook posting on a page entitled "Christians in the AfD", which, however, is not identical to the official Facebook page of the "Federal Association 'Christians in the AfD'".

"Prayer for Germany" was the title of the article.

To the author

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Liane Bednarz

is a publicist and holds a doctorate in law.

She looks at current events from a liberal-conservative perspective.

In particular, she deals with the New Right, populism and religious movements.

In spring 2018, Droemer-Verlag published her last book "Die Angstprediger - How right-wing Christians infiltrate society and churches".

Liane Bednarz lives in Hamburg.

What is in the "prayer" formulated in an evangelical-charismatic style is shaken.

The unnamed authors not only "proclaim" the name of Jesus over Germany, but even believe in a shocking act of presumption that "God has forgiven our country's guilt".

Even more so, "that our land was washed in the blood of Jesus by our repentance and has now been cleansed, sanctified and spoken freely".

In this way, they go beyond the idea of ​​a "guilt cult" in that they describe guilt as already extinguished.

This is accompanied by an appeal to God, which draws the consequence of the allegedly extinguished guilt of absolving the country of feelings of guilt.

It sounds like this:

"

"

Theologically not tenable

Such a perfidious instrumentalization of Christianity has a seductive potential, because Christian circles open to the right can be inclined to take it at face value.

In a paper published at the beginning of 2019, the conservative Hanns Seidel Foundation, close to the CSU, pointed out that "the subject of religion plays a key role" in "the political debate with right-wing populism", since right-wing populists think Christianity "is primarily a strategic one Reasons "claim.

Indeed.

If, as in the aforementioned "prayer", they even deal with the issue of guilt, which is central for Christians, in such a succinct and instrumental manner, of all things, in the face of the Holocaust, it must be alarming.

Certainly the "prayer" is not tenable theologically, fits neither with Protestant penance nor with the fact that at the beginning of every Catholic mass a confession of sins is made.

But that will hardly impress Christians who have long since adopted the "guilt cult" enemy image.

This idea is far too central in the right world of ideas and is constantly being tried anew.

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As is so often the case, Björn Höcke, the right-wing extremist Thuringian AfD chairman, went particularly far on this issue and in his notorious Dresden speech in January 2017 even called for "a 180 degree change in memory policy".

While others in the party do not take it to extremes in this way, this does not change the fact that the notion of a "guilt cult" is widespread.

The deputy federal chairman Alice Weidel, once an opponent of Höcke's but who has long since come to terms with him, also used this term in a post on "Facebook" a few months after Höcke's speech.

Even in the milieu of the right-wing weekly newspaper "Junge Freiheit", which claims to be "conservative" and is more moderate than the circles around the folk publishers Götz Kubitschek and Björn Höcke, the "guilt cult" is a recurring theme. Your editor-in-chief Dieter Stein For example, in the foreword of his book "For a New Nation - Reflection on Germany", published in July 2020 in a new, expanded edition, speaks of an "internalized and increasingly monstrous exclusive German guilt cult", which "transcends the national into a redeeming cosmopolitan -to make multicultural European identity irreversible and without alternatives ".

In fact, however, the fantasy of the "guilt cult" marks a decisive boundary to conservatism, as it developed especially in the corresponding wings of the two Union parties after 1945.

No matter how hard the new right wing try to hijack the term "conservative".

There is nothing conservative about their "school cult" phantasm, absolutely nothing.

Instead, it is a seemingly grotesque defensive reaction against the, and here the term is different from the alleged "guilt cult", the monstrosity of National Socialism and the Holocaust.

It should definitely be made small, this deeply dark spot of German history, be it as "Vogelschiss" (Alexander Gauland) or as "the twelve years", as it is often belittled in right-wing circles.

Personal inability to criticize and staging as a victim

Certainly, one should hold back on psychological interpretations, but what is striking is that precisely the milieu that wants to "say something" and quickly rejects criticism of its own views as "muzzle" or "censorship" demands not to be confronted too much with the memory of the crimes of the Nazi era.

Apparently the over-idealization of one's own nation goes so far that one simply cannot endure the culture of commemoration.

The personal inability to criticize and staging as a victim is thus transferred to the nation.

The lamentation of the nation allegedly plagued by the "guilt cult" joins the wailing and lamentation about alleged personal "limits of what can be said".

It is all the more important that conservatives, especially conservative Christians, resolutely reject such distortions.

The conservative sense of identity is habitually characterized by realism and prudence.

Conservatives do not gloss over, but also endure dark sides in the history of their own nation and look for ways to deal with them appropriately.

This distinguishes them from right-wingers who, like Höcke, chase after a grotesque German identity fantasy, in which the Kyffhäuser saga about the 1190 deceased Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa is evoked, while the atrocities of the National Socialists, which are less than 90 years old, should be hidden as far as possible.

Conservatives, especially those in the Union parties, on the other hand, keep the memory of the latter alive.

Out of mourning for the victims and out of a sense of responsibility so that the barbarism never repeats itself.

Nothing about such an attitude is a "guilt cult", which is supposed to bring about a "transcendence of the national, redeeming cosmopolitan-multicultural European identity".

Conservatives stand for the idea of ​​the nation, but are grateful for the willingness to reconcile all those other European nations to whom Germany has caused a lot of suffering.

Those who rave about the "guilt cult" should, as the author of this text recently did, go to Görlitz, stand on the old town bridge there, which connects Germany and Poland, and experience the friendliness of the people there when continuing to the Polish side.

That makes you humble.

So it is time to distinguish ghosts even more strongly than before, especially when dealing with the culture of remembrance, and not to let rights get away, to pass themselves off as conservatives.

This is especially important these days.

After all, this weekend we're not just celebrating 30 years of German unity.

The previous Friday, October 2nd, also marked the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto.

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