Fritz Stern: A vote against the old Germany – ZEIT ONLINE

Last, on the phone, we talked about Marion Dönhoff, his voice as always, behavior, searching and safe at the same time to endeavor a very precise word choice. Committed he had, on a biography about them to help me, I may call him whenever I had a need for discussion. The TIME-editor, 17 years older than him, who is now died a few months after his ninetieth birthday, was more than a friend to him. She was, he often told, a bit of home “in everything she said – and not said”. They helped to build this bridge, which enabled him to gain insight to reconcile with the country again, from which he – the young Breslau Jew – had fled in quasi last minute via Rotterdam to New York 1938th

I have before eyes, for example, the image of Fritz Stern in his apartment on Riverside Drive in New York, directly at Columbia University, where he taught fifty years history. The grandchildren swarmed around him, his wife, Elisabeth Sifton, sought order in the turbulence to bring. He swayed as he always did that, between reflections on the past, and angry interference on the situation of today. Especially for American politics that brought him to the sofa. He saw it as sharp because he loved the country and it meant him freedom. America, he told me, had his youth influenced – but Nazism his life.

For life issue, he wondered at the time, he had the German-Jewish drama, the relationship between Germans and Jews, but not allowed to be, before this “final chapter” he had “hidden”. He should have otherwise think it over, he did not want. But many books, that on Bismarck’s banker Bleichröder ( Gold and iron ), especially his great autobiography Five Germany and a life and finally his collection of essays under the wonderfully ambivalent title at home in the distance revolve exactly that.

Fritz Stern – the first part of the name is German, the second Jewish, he once said – to did not want to rob his optimism. This confidence was the one who drove him a lifetime to interfere publicly. Wonderful letters, angry and wise at the same time, he was able to write, the war in Iraq, for each recent race for the presidency in the United States to David Cameron Zauderlichkeit, to verkämpfen for Europe. The story that he lived as a public intellectual is man-made. We must not remain silent and knuckle.

Coming back I have at the site again on Marion Dönhoff. When asked how he met her, he took like a small piece of paper from his wallet. In her tiny handwriting – as small as Sterns own – she had written in a German-British conference in Koenigswinter on whether he had already agreed, or whether they did not want to eat together. She was bored with the official speeches, differentiated this, but at the same time clearly arguing New York from Breslau had noticed her, she wanted to meet him. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Helmut Schmidt and Fritz Stern to Middle East policy Helmut Schmidt and Fritz Stern discuss the German responsibility towards Israel and the US Middle East policy.

they began also the part of the image, with a dissent. Because Fritz Stern had put on record that this young generation of protest on the streets and in the lecture halls of the Federal Republic troubled him deeply. Had the Germans not learned? Marion Dönhoff countered: That was too “conservative” thought her that one should the protesters – far everything remains peaceful – maybe listen first of all. You could say that, because she had a huge bonus in his eyes – she played like few others, Richard von Weizsäcker in particular, some of the “other Germany”.