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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, April 3, 1�81
romanticism, the German regard for artists as demonic evokers of universal
powers (Doctors Faustus) reached a strength that was to affect our own
times. Even the Nazi leaders wanted to be considered artists: Hitler
attempted to be an architect and a painter; Goebbels published a novel;
Goering was a patron of the arts. They sought to be universal figures,
transcenders.
The German historian Ludwig Dehio said after the war,
'We were the last, and the most daemonic, power to exercise hegemony over
the declining old continent of Europe.' The Germans had finally been
successful in summoning demons: The demons came."
And the ashes. And the rebirth from the ashes, the post-war "French
connection," the American imitation, and the goal of a united Europe,
arrived at peacefully through econOQics and politics. But the Germans
sense that the European Community is going no place. Even the Americans
are not to be trusted any more. For Bonn, the Carter Administration
amounted to four years of will-of-the-wisp frustration. And the fear
now is that the new men at the helm in Washington might pursue a "dan
gerous course" with Moscow. (Although Strauss is a firm believer in Mr.
Reagan's economic and foreign policies).
"We are the least nationalistic of all people," says (privately of
course) an official in the German Foreign Ministry. But when German
nationaiism is awakened with a mission again for European civilization-
look out!
Would a Soviet invasion of Poland stir Germany and the rest of Western
Europe
into an
awareness of the need to get the idea of a United Europe
off dead center? Will the Pope once again appeal to the German people
to preserve Christian civilization? Will the German people at last
acknowledge that Franz Josef Strauss' many warnings last year about
Germany's loss of direction, morality and the will to defend the country
--which voters dismissed as scary oratory--were correct after all?
Strauss' day may yet come.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau