34 / CHRONICLESnLetter FromnSwitzerlandnby Harold O.J. BrownnThe German SwindlenTo walk along a narrow ridge or cliffnpath, German-speakers will tell you,nyou have to be schwindelfrei. ThenFrench word vertige exists in Englishn(vertigo), but we would be more likelynto say “dizziness.” The German wordnis for vertige or dizziness der Schwindel,nbut Schwindel also can meannwhat it does in English — swindle.n”Mir schwindelt’s”: I am dizzy; but,n”Ich schwindele”: I swindle. BrigittenSauzay, a young professional translatornat international conferences, knowsnmodern Germany as well as she knowsnGerman. Most people who have donensimultaneous translation—which involvesnspeaking the translation into anmicrophone as fast as the words in thenoriginal language—say that it is antremendous strain. I did it for a numbernof years and remember that itnproduced headaches, and sometimesneven Schwindel. “False friends”n—such as demander, which meansn”ask”, not “demand” in French, arenbad enough, but when one runs into ansuccession of words such as Schwindel,nwhich may truly mean swindle orntreacherously mean vertigo, even thenmost skillful interpreter may be hardnput to render a correct simultaneousntranslation. Dealing with contemporarynGermany, it is hard to tell whethernone is getting dizzy, being swindled,nor both. In Le vertige allemand (Paris:nOlivier Organ), Brigitte Sauzay tries tonclarify matters a bit.nOne of Mme. Sauzay’s characteristicncomments evokes an earlier remarknby Nietzsche: “Germany is a countrynwhere a more ancient past and a morenCORRESPONDENCEnimminent future than ours dwell together.n” The contrast between Germanynas the creator of the most sublimenculture and the perpetrator of the mostnsordid crimes has been noted in manynvariations: The land of Bach, Beethoven,nand Brahms is also the land ofnHitier, Himmler, and Goering.nMme. Sauzay identifies the problemnin a new way. After its catastrophicndefeat in World War II, Germanyn— or rather West Germany, thenBundesrepublik—engaged in a frenzynof economic expansion wrapped in annorgy of self-reproach. Germans tend tonwallow in their own guilt—sometimesnvoluntarily: Every new season. WestnGermany’s government television networksnbring week after week of dramatizationnof the country’s criminal,nNazi past. Schoolchildren have to takenas much as a full year of “HolocaustnStudies.” Officially this is to help Germanyn”come to terms with its past,”nbut it has become a dead weight onnGermany’s present and a heavy mortgagenon the future—not to mention anpsychological disaster for countlessnschoolchildren. Many Germans seemnto take a macabre satisfaction in denouncingnGermany’s past atrocities.nThe slogan “Nie wieder!” (Nevernagain!) involves more than repentance,nhowever. It seems to involve ancertain claim to moral nobility for thenpresent generation, authenticated bynthe intensity of the moral atrociousnessnof the second generation past.nGermany gave us the ProtestantnReformation and in a sense dialecticalntheology. (The most eminent representativenof dialectical theology, KarlnBarth, was a German-speaking Swiss,nbut very much a part of the Germannintellectual world.) Both of thesenmovements emphasize the depravity ofnman in contrast with the holiness ofnGod, and each of them is subject to annnpeculiar perversion by which man,nhaving identified himself as depravednand God alone as holy, reevaluatesnhimself as holier still by virtue of hisninsight in recognizing the “absolutenqualitative difference” between Godnand man. Seeing how evil he is makesnhim superior to everyone else.nGerman intellectuals, students,nmuch of the press, and the betterpublicizednparts of the ProtestantnChurch are caught up in a frenzy ofnpacifism, environmentalism, and antiauthoritarianism.nReagan may be acceptednas the moral equal of Stalin butncertainly not of Gorbachev. West Germansnlive in the shadow of the BerlinnWall (which was a quarter-century oldnin August 1986) yet as a matter ofncourse excoriate South Africa, Ghile,nand even the United States as thenworld’s paramount examples of oppressivenregimes. One curious paradoxnis that the very intellectuals who engagenin vituperating all authority in thenWest make excuses for totalitarian absolutismnin the East. Because this isnso, it might be supposed that much ofnthe German intellectual world is innthrall to Marxism if not to Moscow.nThis is true, in part, but it is notnthe entire explanation. Germannenvironmentalists — the “Greens”n—reacted to the Chernobyl disaster byndemanding, among other things, thenabolition of West Germany’s defensensystem. So that the Soviets might benable to move in and build similarnreactors in West Germany? The logicnis perplexing. Are Pershing rockets andnGermany’s own Nachrilstung (catchupnarmament) the real threats to peacenand freedom? The environmentalistic,npacifistic, antiauthoritarian, moralisticallynsupercilious Greens are a smallernminority in Germany in the mid-80’s,nno more important than the Nazisnwere in the early I930’s, and yet in ann