Making Up For It

On Sunday Martin Scorsese won the best director and best picture Oscars for his film “The Departed.” These victories are being both celebrated and sarcastically groused about, but nearly all agree on what they represent: making up for the snubbing the virtuoso has endured in past years. Those who applaud this tactic herald the Oscars as long-overdue; those who don’t complain that better nominees got overshadowed. Meanwhile, a different kind of making up for history was going on across the Atlantic, where Berlin’s municipal government passed a measure last Tuesday requiring all public buildings to hang flags every 18th of March. This date marks the German peoples’ attempt at Revolution in 1848, an attempt that many think failed because the population lacked the required disobedient spirit. The new measure is therefore being interpreted by some as an attempt to make up for earlier docility. The 100-word announcement in daily Der Tagesspiegel unleashed an unusual flood of commentary on their website.

Some felt the event’s embarrassing failure should occasion no commemoration. As “BK” put it caustically, “It’s the primary symbol of the German people that they can’t resist a ruler for long and ultimately obey the authorities.” Indeed, the powerful German princes and dukes pretended to accede to local revolutionary demands when it looked as though their heads might roll, but when the masses had calmed a bit, they claimed every ounce of their old power, in places strengthening it. Yet there was no significant further revolt because residents of the various provinces that would one day become Germany were never as riled up as their contemporaries in France and remained respectful of traditional leaders. One observer who had witnessed the revolution in Paris was astounded by the obedience he saw in Berlin, where revolutionaries continued to lift their hat to the king when he rode by.[1]

Yet the government wants to restyle this perceived blemish on national character by giving the revolutionary attempt its day in the sun, as if to say, “we weren’t feisty then, but we would be now.” This underlying message has caused some to look through the collective aura that surrounds civic commemoration decisions and read the measure as a partisan choice. It was drafted by a government dubbed the “Red-red coalition” in reference to the composition of left-wing parties that currently dominate the city senate. As the reader “Aging Rebel,” comments, it is not the first time that coalition member PDS [Party of Democratic Socialism], the successor party to the SED Communist dictators, wants to rename history. “Rebel” cites the PDS’ political success by normalizing the term Wende, or "Turn," rather than "Revolution" for the events in East Germany in 1989. In so doing, he claims, they tapped into a German distaste for real revolution, allowing the Germans to “obey the authorities” once more—and re-elect the PDS in the recent vote rather than letting it fall in permanent disgrace from the political scene.

Indeed, the PDS’ attempt to perhaps tweak how history is read—the 18th of March as a day of honor rather than failure—is mocked in another wry comment that suggests “flag-hanging and no school for children on the 21st of October, to commemorate the victims of the 2001 vote for Berlin Parliament, when the incompetent Red-Red coalition was first elected.” Ouch. At least Scorsese’s detractors don’t insult the man, just the measure: he’s great, they acknowledge, but better-late-than-never Oscars lower the integrity of the event. Yet, Berlin’s never-ending stream of memorials and memory gestures runs by a better-late-than-never credo, even when its measures begin to seem a bit laughable. And in fact this better-late-than-never motto motivated more than just Scorsese’s wins over in California: the environmental, international, and self-effacing air of the 79th Academy Awards urged us to make up for our atmosphere-destroying sins while subtly apologizing for Hollywood’s own cultural hegemony of yore and promising a brighter future. Even the caustic Berliner wit received this message well; as liberal rag die tageszeitung (taz for short) conceded, “Never was the alliance of mass media power and simple messages so clearly directed to attune a global public to a good cause.” It appears easier to accept reconciliation when it’s not in your backyard; Berliners are more comfortable with red carpet proselytizing than perceived preachiness from the Red-red coalition.

Note: Discussed as a realistic antidote to historical white-washing in the Feb. 12 Post, “The Lives of Others,” Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s work about life under surveillance in East Germany, upset Mexican favorite “Pan’s Labyrinth” to win best foreign language film.

[1] Amos Elon, Zu Einer Anderen Zeit: Porträt der jüdisch-deutschen Epoche 1743-1933 Aus dem Englischen von Matthias Fienbork (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag: 2002), 160. Originally published in English under the title The Pity of It All. A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933 by Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York.

Scorsese image courtesy http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/26/features/oscars.php.

Barricade image courtesy http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=311
Berlin 1989 image courtesy http://www.defence.gov.au/news/raafnews/editions/4711/letters.htm