Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Volume 19 Number 2/3 August/December 2018
(Final Issue)
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Heinz-Uwe Haus and the salt of contradiction
It is no coincidence that Heinz-Uwe Haus precedes his new book with a quote by Vaclav Havel. Both were deeply moulded by communism. In contrast to Havel, however, Haus was spared being locked away in prison. Havel spent five long years there in the 80s. In this quote, the highly gifted dramatist, essayist, and later president of Czechoslovakia (1989 to 1993) until the division of the state, then as Czech president until 2003, argues that the transformation from communism into the new world does not lead directly from hell to heaven. Literally he writes: "So anyone who claims that I am a dreamer, who expects to transform hell into heaven is wrong. I have few illusions. But I feel a responsibility to work towards the things." Havel passed away in December 2011.
They are more differences in life between Havel and Haus than common features. Who would question that. Among the most significant differences is that Havel did not hesitate to take the path into politics from his self-image of critical intellectual, in order to ultimately take responsibility as state president. House did not take the path into politics, although he affiliated himself, in the course of the Peaceful Revolution, with the opposition group "Demokratischer Aufbruch". Co-author and interview partner Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, formerly professor of drama at the University of Lincoln, explains further: "He was one of the leading voices of the movement credited with being instrumental in the collapse of communism in the 'GDR'".
Among the features they have in common is that they both are (respectively, were), “men of the theatre|”, and their careers took their origins there. What they also have in common, however, is that they were both led by a vision, and Haus is still led by it today. It is the vision of strengthening democracy and to improve the world if possible at least a little bit. However, Haus’s stage for that has not become politics, but it has remained the theatre. For both this means first and foremost: fighting any possible form of totalitarianism. National socialism and communism move to the centre of their considerations as two forms of the inhumanity of political systems. But not only that. They also work against the slow poison of being usurped by everyday political life within modern democracies. With his new book, Haus focuses precisely on this, 30 years after the beginning of the Peaceful Revolution: To show what was and to warn against what might come.
Haus is among the many intellectuals who developed dissidence towards the GDR and who left it. But he is among the few intellectuals who did not seek their new home in the Federal Republic, but who dared the step abroad. He was trained at the Film High School in Babelsberg near Potsdam. He became director at the Academy of the Arts in East Berlin. After that he worked together for 5 years with Manfred Wekwerth at the Deutsches Theater. From there his path lead him, after a disagreement with Wekwerth, to many renowned stages, predominantly abroad. For example, to Cyprus, where he still directs today as a guest, to Greece, to Turkey, and many major European cities. After reunification he did his PhD at the Humboldt University Berlin about the practical impact of Bertolt Brecht's theatre work. But ultimately it was not in Germany or Europe where Haus set up shop, but in the USA, where he has held a professorship for directing, dramaturgy and theatre theory since 1997. However, Haus is not only a man of the theatre. He searches for intellectual engagement also as a dramatist, poet, and as a commentator on politics and current affairs. The book to be introduced here provides information about this. It encompasses 27 chapters. The text was written already before reunification. Essays and interview conversations alternate. The interview partners, internationally renowned people of the theatre scene, professors, on the one hand from the United States but also from different countries, honour the author and point to his acceptance as a critical intellectual and an example of lived urbanity. Here, this is no fossilised catchphrase, but it serves as the credentials of a human being who knows foreign lands, who honours the Other, but who does not doubt his cultural identity. It was and remains the starting point and the reference point of his life. Thus it is not surprising that current events in Germany and their impact on Europe and the world are always at the focus of his considerations.
Haus's reflections about the synergy of culture and politics captivate through this double perspective. From it, his analyses gain their acuity and their particular perspective on the world. Haus is always wary not to drift into the trivial waterway of mainstream and populism. He confronts the reader with pointed insights and positions. They are never comfortable. Lukewarm is not his preferred bath temperature. He invites to join argument and contradiction. He does not shy away from daring to look into the future. Every now and then he surprises the reader with his prognosis having become reality—sadly, one might almost be tempted to add. For example, when he predicts that the refugee politics of German Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel, will lead to a continuing crisis which leads Europe to the edge of deterioration. This, written down in 2016, reads like a stocktaking of today. It is because of his political and cultural socialisation that Haus knows that morals and humanity are two pairs of shoes. Morally founded political behaviour does not necessarily also lead to behaviour that can be justified on a humanitarian level. What may be good for refugees and migrants is not necessarily so for other people. Where does this become apparent more clearly than on the Greek islands where the locals suffer bitterly under the influx of refugees, and where they are concerned to lose the material basis for life besides their identity. Haus writes about this: "EU leadership will be forced to correct this flaw—if not now, then at some point in the future. And once it should stop lecture and discriminate member nations and people who do not want to give up their national identity for the same of global policies".
It is these sober, unconventional perspectives, which do not emphasize what can be generally read about in public opinion. This makes reading this book so valuable. In the concluding conversation with Meyer-Dinkgräfe, which summarises the book, Haus again refers to life under dictatorship. He describes forms of its everyday terror, and the mechanisms of suppression that part of Germany had experienced since 1933. They did not experience the 8th of May 1945 as the day of liberation, as official propaganda of communists declared, but as the continuation of dictatorship from a different ideological perspective.
Only when the citizens of the GDR tore down the Wall in 1989 did they feel liberated, liberated from an illegitimate state which had trampled on human rights. However, arrival in Paradise, which many had hoped for, did not come to be with this. The end of history, as promised by Francis Fukuyama, did not happen. Rather, the next couple of decades made it clear that it was Samuel Huntington's thesis of a clash of civilization that held more authority. Soon it turned out that the "West" had derived a lot of its strength from its opposition against Soviet communism, and only partly from the much-praised Western values. The growing tensions between the United States and Europe are an expression of the change of world order.
For Haus, the clash of civilization has long become the daily experience of people, even if the appeasers of public opinion do not like to say this. " I do not want to accept", he writes, " then we allegedly live in a time of relativity, in which the truth does not count, but what counts is what one is allowed to say and what one is not allowed to say." It may be that this is the perspective of a hurt, sensitive individual who has experienced dictatorship directly, and who senses the gentle dictatorship of public dominant opinion more strongly than others. It may also be the case that he tends to over-interpret them when he turns against the medial guardians of political correctness, who hear the grass shaking already when mice are dancing on it. His new book is an appeal to call things as they are, and to bluntly pronounce them in public discourse. It should be taken seriously. Because democracy, too, needs to sort of contradiction.