SPIEGEL:
Mr. Grohmann, exactly 60 years ago you were one of the first Germans to do community service.
First you had to be recognized as a conscientious objector and you justified your application on 40 pages.
Did you mean to annoy the examination board?
Grohmann:
(laughs)
Yes, of course.
Please read this if you don't want it any other way!
That was definitely a statement for posterity, according to the motto: Man, the Grohmann got really deep.
SPIEGEL:
How did you argue?
To person
Peter Grohmann,
83, was politically active even before his career as a Stuttgart cabaret artist and journalist.
He was a member of the socialist youth organization "Die Falken", was Baden-Württemberg's first conscientious objector and in 1961 was one of the first 340 German civil servants.
Grohmann supports the citizens' initiative »Die Anstifter«, which aims to promote peace projects, solidarity and moral courage.
Grohmann:
Once there was this basic attitude that one has as a leftist and humanist: Put down your arms!
That was the credo of our socialist youth movement, the falcon, at the time.
We were internationalists, met at peace camps with French, Russians or Yugoslavs.
It was very clear: You don't raise your gun against these people.
In addition, my family had fled the GDR.
We did not want to shoot down our own brothers and sisters in the event of war.
Hiroshima was also a strong motive.
This mushroom cloud as a symbol, which strengthened our belief that wars are no longer possible in these times - world wars at least.
SPIEGEL:
How did it go for you in the dreaded oral »examination of conscience«?
Grohmann:
Very bad.
They paid me back.
It took about five hours.
And I always had the feeling that there were former Wehrmacht soldiers or SS men who wanted to set a trap for me.
SPIEGEL:
How?
Grohmann:
You asked: »Imagine if your mother or sister is raped.
What would you do? ”They didn't believe that I wasn't willing to use force to defend myself.
They did not believe that there was someone sitting in front of them who was steadfast inside.
They literally took you apart at the back and front.
A misery.
Enlarge image
The »conscience test« for conscientious objectors was repeatedly criticized, here a demonstration from 1978
Photo: Klaus Rose / Klaus Rose, photo journalist
SPIEGEL:
What did you answer?
Grohmann:
I told you that my mother was actually raped by Russian soldiers, in front of my brother and in front of my eyes.
What should you do in such a situation when one is armed and the other is not?
“Aha,” the examiners then said, “if you had been armed you would have shot the soldiers down!” I said: “No, of course not.
I would try to argue.
Or sing a song.
For pacification. "
SPIEGEL:
You actually said that?
Grohmann:
(laughs)
Yes, and that got the auditors excited.
Of course, I didn't really mean it.
I later became a cabaret artist.
"People made fun of themselves: 'The fatherland can do without someone like you, you haven't learned anything right anyway!'"
SPIEGEL:
You rattled through the exam, appealed and made it on the second attempt.
How did the Second World War shape you?
Grohmann:
As a child I experienced the war first hand.
All the troop movements, the bombs, the impacts.
We were buried in a cellar during the air raids on Dresden and then dug up.
These are traumatic experiences.
At the time I packed it well in my soul, but it stayed.
Conversely, on our flight from Silesia we had previously seen that the Nazis and party cadres had run away with their mistresses and the cash register.
And the simple soldier, the stupid ones, they stayed behind.
SPIEGEL:
From Wroclaw via Dresden and back to Wroclaw, your family finally ended up in a conservative village on the Swabian Alb in the 1950s.
Did you start there with your wish for community service?
Grohmann:
People made fun of themselves and said: "Well, the fatherland can do without someone like you, you haven't learned anything right anyway!" There was a clear social disregard, a mark.
But that was also up to us.
SPIEGEL:
Why?
Grohmann:
We didn't hide with the socialist hawks.
Not in the villages and not in the small towns of Weingarten and Ravensburg, where I had lived.
There I belonged to a small, radical minority, in a positive sense.
We knew color and took to the streets on May 1st and Hiroshima Memorial Day, recited anti-war poems and generally worked our way through the war.
That is why we have been fought and defamed.
SPIEGEL:
What was the accusation?
Grohmann:
It was said: "You are all communists!" The left beyond the SPD did not have a good reputation.
But we were not dogmatic communists.
Our model was rather the kibbutz in Israel.
Or the model in Yugoslavia with the workers' councils.
That is why we later had great sympathy for the start of the Prague Spring.
Enlarge image
Demo in Stuttgart: On June 17, 1961, Peter Grohmann caricatured the non-recognition of the GDR by the Federal Republic
Photo: private
SPIEGEL:
Do you remember April 10, 1961, when you started working as a civilian?
Grohmann:
Yes.
The television was there.
I was the first conscientious objector in Baden-Württemberg.
They came to my room at home on the outskirts of Stuttgart.
The cameramen accompanied me as I went to the train station with a small suitcase, my beautiful haircut and my jacket under my arm.
SPIEGEL:
Back then, people doing community service had to move out as if they were going to the barracks and live in their company.
You worked in a youth recreation center run by the workers' welfare organization.
Why?
"Civil servants were cheap labor."
Grohmann:
My fellow civilian service colleague Klaus and I hoped to be able to continue our political work on the falcons there: reading stories, organizing fun evenings, making games, discussing, hiking, campfires - everything that children and young people like to do.
But we weren't allowed to have any direct contact with the young people.
That was the biggest disappointment.
SPIEGEL:
Why were you banned from doing that?
Grohmann:
The Arbeiterwohlfahrt was afraid that someone would say: If you take political action with your community service providers, you will no longer get any civilian service in the future.
And civilians were cheap labor.
SPIEGEL:
What have you been doing all day?
Grohmann:
The youth recreation center had its own supply with three cows and other animals, plus a large gardening center.
My colleague worked with the cows, I in the nursery.
SPIEGEL:
Wasn't that terribly dreary?
Grohmann:
Especially if you don't have much to do with plants like me.
And I didn't smoke them either.
So I maxed out tomatoes, transplanted seedlings, and grown geraniums.
After a while you find a certain joy in it.
It wasn't alienated work in the classical sense.
SPIEGEL:
Were you at least able to swap places with your cow colleague?
Enlarge image
After work for community service (Peter Grohmann far left)
Photo: private
Grohmann:
Yes, you could.
We helped each other, for example with the harvest, the recreation plant also had meadows.
Sometimes there was construction work, for example when the water pipe burst in winter.
There was heavy work.
As a thin youth, it was difficult for me.
SPIEGEL:
Was it still fun?
Grohmann:
We kept this great euphoria for community service.
The idea that here we are saving the fatherland in a different way.
And we organized cultural events for the staff and the teachers several times a month: reading hours and record evenings where we played anti-war songs.
"We walked around with weird hats that were supposed to keep atomic beams out."
SPIEGEL:
So that was possible?
Grohmann:
Yes, what we weren't allowed to do with the children, we did with the employees.
Sometimes it was borderline because work and personal life were mixed up.
In our free time we campaigned for the German Peace Union (DFU) in 1961 and also organized an action against civil defense.
The civil defense should regulate what to do if a nuclear war suddenly breaks out: jump into the ditch quickly, lie down flat, the briefcase over your head.
We then walked around in the next village with briefcases, self-made signs and funny hats that were supposed to keep atomic beams out.
Enlarge image
Mini bunker and coffin sale in case the nuclear war comes: Peter Grohmann carried out his community service in 1961
Photo: private
SPIEGEL:
So you impaled it satirically.
Grohmann:
Yes.
Big excitement.
It looked as if we were agitating in the name of the workers' welfare.
She then distanced herself from us: “No, that has nothing to do with us, that is their private matter.
And we will forbid that in future. "
SPIEGEL: In
2011, 50 years after you started work, your community service ended.
Do you regret that?
Grohmann:
I think it's really a loss.
The contacts that community service workers made with each other, the work they did for society.
Those were very formative months for me too.
SPIEGEL:
Are you going to have a sparkling wine on April 10th for the 60th birthday of your community service?
Grohmann:
(laughs)
Nah.
I do not know.
But if there was a meaningful demo anywhere - I would go there.