Mr. President,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
A certain madman in boots crushed our first attempt at
a democratic state when on March 15, 1939, he burst into this
castle to announce to the world that violence had triumphed over
freedom and human dignity.
A herald of war burst in here. A herald of crudeness.
A herald of lies. A herald of pride and evil, lawlessness and
cruelty. A mass murderer burst in here. A murderer of nations.
Who let this interloper in? Who allowed him to desecrate
these venerable halls?
Above all, it was some of his fellow citizens, who had
succumbed to his primitive appeal to the treacherous side of their
feelings, to archetypical visions and to their national and social
aspirations.
Moreover, it was the infinite shortsightedness of the
governments of France and England at the time, which thought they
would preserve peace by opening the door to that herald of war.
And finally, it was our own leaders' fear of standing
up to a numerically superior force, their fear of risking great
misunderstanding and great sacrifice. Their fear was perhaps even
tinged with a vague sense of common responsibility for the belittling
attitude our former state had toward the rights of its national
minorities. This undoubtedly influenced the fact that so many
Czechoslovak citizens of German origin conspired with that madman
against their own state.
His war against the civilized world did not begin until
September 2, 1939, but the proclamation of that war actually took
place on March 15. And it happened here, in the Prague Castle.
Today, as we stand at the beginning of our second attempt
at democracy, and recall what happened here fifty-one years ago,
we welcome a different guest to this castle.
This guest is a representative of German democracy. A
herald of peace. A herald of decency. A herald of truth. A herald
of humanity. A bearer of the news that violence may never again
prevail over freedom, lies over truth, and evil over human life.
A man who said that nothing may be forgotten, because
memory is the source of belief in redemption.
Fiftyone years ago, an enemy broke in uninvited. Today,
a friend is here at our invitation.
That former visit brought the death of our prewar democracy.
Today's visit heralds our new democracy.
That former visit marked the beginning of all our recent
misfortunes. Today's visit coincides with their end.
The interloper opened the way to subjugation. Today's
guest is here to congratulate us on our freshly acquired freedom.
I believe this is an important day in several respects.
Above all, it could be the beginning of a new act in the
1,000year-old CzechGerman drama, in which the themes of tension,
discord and struggle have been constantly and indivisibly knit
together with the themes of fertile coexistence and deep mutual
influence. In this new act, the latter group of themes could finally
after the bitter experience of the recent past predominate over
the former.
The time is ripe for us to shake hands at last with a
friendly smile, certain that we no longer have reason to fear
each other, because we are connected by mutual respect for human
life, human rights, civil liberties, and general peace, a respect
we have paid for dearly.
This common starting point opens a great horizon of potential
cooperation. We can strive jointly for a democratic Europe, for
a Europe that represents unity in diversity, for a Europe that
does not give the world wars but radiates tolerance, for a Europe
that draws on its best cultural traditions, for a Europe that
no one will contaminate any longer with toxic fumes and poisoned
water.
We agree that the basic prerequisite for a genuine friendship
between our nations is truth, a truth that is always expressed,
no matter how hard.
Our guest has already spoken hard truths about the pain
that the world in general, and we in particular, have suffered
as a result of the Germans, or, more precisely, the forbear of
presentday Germans.
Have we, too, managed to say everything that ought to
be said from our side? I am not sure.
Six years of Nazi rule was enough, for example, for us
to allow ourselves be infected with the germ of evil. We informed
on one another, both during and after the war; we accepted in
just, as well as exaggerated, indignation the principle of collective
guilt. Instead of giving all those who betrayed this state a proper
trial, we drove them out of the country and punished them with
the kind of retribution that went beyond the rule of law. This
was not punishment. It was revenge.
Moreover, we did not expel these people on the basis of
demonstrable individual guilt, but simply because they belonged
to a certain nation. And thus, on the assumption that we were
clearing the way for historical justice, we hurt many innocent
people, most of all women and children. And, as is usually the
case in history, we hurt ourselves even more: We settled accounts
with totalitarianism in a way that allowed totalitarianism into
our own activities and thus into our own souls. Shortly afterward,
it returned to us cruelly in the form of our inability to resist
a new totalitarianism imported from elsewhere. And what is more,
many of us actively helped it into the world.
But in other respects, too, the decision of those days
after the war did not serve us well. We devastated large tracts
of our land, and let the weed of devastation into our whole country.
Sacrifices that will be demanded for redress will therefore
also be taxes for the errors and sins of our fathers.
We cannot reverse history, and so, besides freely investigating
the truth, we can only do one thing. We can extend a friendly
welcome to those who come with peace in their hearts to bow before
the graves of their ancestors or to see what is left of the villages
where they were born.
The relationship of Germany to the family of European
nations and the relationship of this family to Germany if only
with respect to its size, strength, and central position has
traditionally been the most important element of European stability.
This still holds true today. The whole of Europe must
be grateful to the Germans for beginning to tear down the wall
that divided them, because with that they also began tearing down
the wall that divides Europe. Despite this, many Europeans still
fear a united Germany.
This gives Germans, I believe, a great historical opportunity.
It is largely up to them to dispel the fears of other Europeans.
If, for instance, they unambiguously confirm the final validity
of all existing borders, including those with Poland, or if they
stand up to all those who still have the audacity to flirt with
Nazi ideology, they will do much to allay Europe's fears and encourage
its speedy unification.
It is also incumbent upon the Germans to determine whether
their unification becomes the welcome engine of a panEuropean
unification, or whether, on the contrary, it slows the process
down. In their own interest, they ought to engage that famous
love of order. If they work in haste or confusion, especially
if this is merely the product of electoral politics, it will not
increase Germany's trustworthiness.
If, on the other hand, the process unfolds rationally,
it will be possible to look forward to the day all of Europe has
been yearning to see for a long time: the day when the Second
World War and all its unfortunate consequences will finally be
put behind us including the division of Europe into halves and
the two gigantic pyramids of weapons it became. If the process
unfolds rationally and in an atmosphere of mutual understanding,
this could even happen next year, and it will definitely be better
than the former settlement at Versailles. Europe will then, at
last, be set to realize its old dream: to be an amicable union
of free nations and democratic states, founded on mutual respect
for all human rights. The forty-five years since the end of the
war are a sufficiently long interval to make possible a genuinely
wise agreement, one no longer made in anger, regardless of how
understandable that anger may once have been.
Clearly, the future fate of us all once more depends primarily
on German developments.
Is it any wonder that the newly born, democratic Czechoslovakia
is so interested in events in both German states?
Is it any wonder that on the third day after my election
as president, I visited both German states?
Is it any wonder that we are so happy to welcome at the
Prague Castle a guest who embodies the best spiritual traditions
of Germany?
Is it any wonder that we place such great importance on
this day, when two nations who lived for so long in mutual distrust
symbolically shake hands?
I was speaking about the historic tasks facing Germany
today. I must also, therefore, say what we ourselves must do.
Even after everything that has happened, there is still
much fear of Germans and a greater Germany. There are people still
living who have experienced the war, lost their loved ones, suffered
in concentration camps, hid from the Gestapo. Their mistrust is
understandable, and it is completely natural that it has been
transferred to others.
It follows that our task is to overcome this fear. We
have to understand that it was not the German nation that caused
our agony, but particular human individuals. Spite, blind obedience,
indifference to our fellow man - all these are characteristics
of people, not of nations. Were there not more than a few bad
Czechs and Slovaks? Were there not among us many who informed
to the Gestapo and, later, to the secret police? Was there not
in us a large degree of indifference and selfishness, in allowing
our country to be devastated over years and decades, while we
remained silent so as not to lose our bonuses and our peace and
quiet by the television screen even when there was no longer the
threat at least in recent times of death, or often, even of
prison! And when all is said and done, were we not actually the
very ones who performed this baneful work?
It was, in fact, the Nazis who treacherously identified
their affairs with the affairs of Germany. We cannot follow in
their footsteps! If we accepted their lie as our own, we would
only be passing the torch of their destructive errors on to others.
People who speak a different language are occasionally
detestable to other nations, especially if it is the language
spoken by a tyrant. But a language cannot be blamed for the tyrant
who speaks it. To judge someone on the basis of his language,
the color of his skin, his origin, or the shape of his nose is
to be, consciously or unconsciously, a racist. To speak abusively
about Germans in general, about Vietnamese, or about members of
any other nation, is to condemn them merely for their nationality.
To fear them only for that reason is the same as being antiSemitic.
In other words, to accept the idea of collective guilt
and collective responsibility means directly or unwittingly to
weaken the guilt or the responsibility of individuals. And that
is very dangerous. Just remember how many of us evaded our individual
responsibility by saying that we Czechs are simply this way or
that way and will probably never change. This type of thinking
is the subtle embryo of nihilism.
Obviously, there are things that differentiate Czechs
or Slovaks from others, as well as from ourselves. We have different
preferences, different tastes, different dreams, different memories,
and different experiences. Simply being Czech or Slovak or German
or Vietnamese or Jewish does not make us good or bad.
To impose the guilt of some Germans upon the entire German
nation means absolving those particular individuals of their guilt
and, with a pessimistic fatalism, submerging them in an irresponsible
anonymity. And to take any kind of hope away from ourselves. It
would be the same if someone were to call us Stalinists, as a
nation. Suffering obliges one to practice justice, not injustice.
Those who have really suffered usually know that.
The gift of forgiveness, and thus freedom from one's own
anger, can flourish only on the terrain of justice.
This day strikes me as important for one more reason.
I do not know whether, in a future multipolar world, a unified
Germany will still be called a great power. In one sense it has
long been a potential great power: as one of the possible pillars
of European spirituality, which if it wishes to can help us
all withstand the destructive pressure of technological civilization,
with its stupefying dictatorship of consumerism and its omnipresent
commercialism, a pressure that leads precisely to the alienation
that German philosophers have so often analyzed.
If Germany definitively builds and confirms its statehood,
to which it has traditionally exerted its systematic, hierarchymaking
spirit and with which has occupied itself for so long, then it
will be able, without inhibition, to devote its creative potential
to the renewal of global human responsibility, the only possible
salvation of the contemporary world, thus to a task to which the
spirit of the German intellectual tradition is so well-suited.
If today is another small step toward understanding in
the center of Europe, then at the same time it can be a small
step to awaken us all from the drugged sleep that unscrupulous
materialism throws us into daily, the consequence of which is
the feeling of indifference to what comes after us.
Dear friends,
I see today's visit of President Richard von Weizsäcker
in Prague as the genuine opposite pole of that long-ago and painful
visit we recall today.
While that visit portended approaching horror and intensifying
hopelessness, today's visit represents a great hope for us all.
Hope for a world whose center will be the individual human being
who fixes his searching gaze on the heavens to draw that mysterious
strength which alone is capable of bringing moral order to our
souls.
This is the very thing that can be the main guarantee
of a meaningful, human future.
* Edited by Paul Wilson