The work of Herta Müller (Müller), the German winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is a beacon of hope in the fight against violence and oppression. The writer looks at today's events through her own experience of life in the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. And she spoke about this to dpa on the eve of her seventieth birthday.
dpa: You yourself lived in a dictatorial system. These and other experiences are repeated in your books. In your opinion, and considering the experiences you have had, how unstable is the allegedly consolidated democracy in the context of current radicalization or authoritarian aspirations?
Herta Müller: Yes, "allegedly fixed" is the right term. I think this is the case in all democratic countries today. It seems as if in democracy freedom has become boring or saturation (of freedom) has occurred. It is the same in Germany. Right-wing extremists talk about a "social-national" state and, of course, allude to National Socialism, thinking they are clever because they don't say it openly. They romanticize Hitler's dictatorship and consequently Putin's dictatorship. And this is consistent, because there is as much National Socialism in Putin's Russia as anywhere else in the world. They promote the "real" European Union made up of "fatherlands", but whose homeland did the EU really take away from?
It's not about that at all. "People's thought" dreams of a different Germany in which mass deportations in the name of the homeland will once again become everyday. For that, they want a strong leader who will leave NATO and seek protection from the war criminal Putin. We must resist that. It seems that their voters have forgotten that it was in Germany that the defenders of the homeland have already dragged their country and half the world into the abyss.
Dictatorship is imaginable again due to ignorance of history. Because right-wing extremists are perfidious. They smear democracy as a dictatorship every day and their voters believe them. The reason is political infantility. People turn a blind eye to world problems - such as Putin's war, climate change or economic interdependence - and believe in foggy and red-hot political fairy tales.
dpa: With your involvement, you are supporting the Exile Museum that is being planned in Berlin. Why is it so important to have an institution that will illuminate both a part of German history and the world today?
Herta Müller: For years there has been a museum, financed by the Bundestag, dedicated to the exiles, who at the end of the Second World War were expelled from the eastern regions (until then under German control), that is, those who were accepted by Germany. But there is no memorial for half a million Germans who had to flee to exile to save their lives before the Nazis. I ask - wasn't Germany their homeland? Weren't they exiled too? And from Germany.
Germany has never recognized these expulsions. And those were the first victims of the Nazis who survived only thanks to the fact that they escaped. However, after 1945 they were not seen as victims. They even mocked them for allegedly settling comfortably abroad. And in the years that followed, Germany never invited them back.
The dark chapter of flight and exile after 1933 can best be presented through individual biographies - and that's exactly what this museum needs. And since the German state has not tried to do this so far, I support a private initiative that tries to collect the necessary millions from donations. Given the large waves of refugees we see around the world today, the Museum of Exile becomes even more necessary.
dpa: What personal criteria did you use when writing the last book ("Eine Fliege kommt durch einen halben Wald")?
Herta Miller: All the texts are about exile, dictatorship and the destruction of the individual. And about the eternal question in all dictatorships: How can you live if you cannot be what you want and do not want to become what you are allowed to be.
About the caller:
Herta Miller was born on August 17, 1953 in Nickidorf, Romania, inhabited by Germans. She studied Romanian and German literature in Timisoara. She lost her job as a translator in a machinery factory because she did not want to cooperate with the Romanian secret service. She managed to emigrate to Germany in 1987. Her books have been translated into fifty languages. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009 for the novel Swinging Breath. He lives in Berlin.
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