Reinhart Koselleck: a Commemorative Speech

Sonderdrucke aus der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

CHRISTIAN MEIER

Originalbeitrag erschienen in: Javier Fernández Sebastián (Hrsg.): Political concepts and time : new approaches to conceptual history. Santander: Cantabria Univ. Press [u.a.], 2011, S. 415 - 434

I Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech"

Christian Meier

When Reinhart Koselleck received the Prize of the Historisches Kolleg in 1989, he concluded his acceptance speech by quoting Diderot: `Youth loves events and facts, age loves reflections'. To which he added: `If this is true, a historian always has to be young and old at the same time, a truly paradoxical profession'. Old and young: This is what Koselleck was until the very end. He exuded a surprising immediateness and presence, a lively, nimble, and open character always full of plans for the future. At the same time he was one of those worldly and aged souls from a very early age. As a student, he already showed a penchant for, and excelled at, profound reflection, as his dissertation shows, and as everyone who knew him then can confirm. In this way he incorporated the paradoxes of the profession, with age and youth being indissolubly intertwined, only to be separated analytically, if at all. At the award ceremony Rudolf Vierhaus called him an outsider in his own discipline, `a solitary, who still stands right in the middle of the matter of this discipline'. One more paradox, it seems. It was the same paradox Hans-Georg Gadamer probably had in mind when he called Reinhart Koselleck the thinking historian, the historian-philosopher (and the philosopher-historian), a great exception. These paradoxes might be hard to keep up with since one could just as easily say that Koselleck 416 CHRISTIAN MEIER

was not a philosopher of history, as he was sceptical of the philosophy of history, someone who even considered it dangerous, and who dissected and refuted it. His entrance into the historical profession was most unconventional. Critique and Crisis, his dissertation, of which it has been said that it `might be the most literarily successful dissertation of a German scholar in the twentieth century', was immediately after its publication spoken of as a secret hint. It was talked about, it fascinated its readers. Yet, many in the profession appeared to be confounded by it; many did not understand it, and thus it was often ignored. It was at any rate a genial dissertation, although the examiners did not recommend it `summa' but only `magna cum laude'. Koselleck's Habilitation presented in 1967 is another example of his reflexive capacities. It was based on meticulous archival research and his analysis and presentation of the topic — Prussia between reform and revolution — was brilliant. This he followed up with a precious piece on European history from 1815 up to almost 1848, colourful and wide- ranging, related to concepts such as emancipation. He could have chosen to sustain this path and follow the usual lines of historical research, even though probably with an unusual mastery and a highly original choice of topics perhaps in his choice of original topics. He partly fitted this role in his lectures and seminars, where he — at a very early stage — discussed the concentration camps and explored the dreams of that period (and the relationship between, even the partial congruence of, dream and terror) as a `first rate source', to name only two particularly interesting examples. Yet something else fascinated Koselleck and eventually took hold of him. In the late 1960s he became increasingly occupied with the Begriffslexikon (a dictionary of historical concepts), more engaged with the theory of history, and made his first efforts in understanding and theorizing the Sattelzeit (saddle epoch), as he called it, a period of rapid conceptual transformation which took place at the turn of the nineteenth century. Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech 417

The theory of history then became, within the scope of the plans of the University of Bielefeld, the content of his professorship, for which there is no parallel in the German speaking countries, as little (or even less) than there is for him. Because it was a very special path he had chosen — but not at all a solitary path, as he was always embedded in a multiplicity of contacts. Although he specialized in the theory of history, he insisted on calling himself a `professional layman'. This self-proclaimed layman not only showed unparalleled interest in the preconditions and problems, and even in the possibility of historical knowledge, he also became fully convinced of the distinct historical character of the Neuzeit (modern times) as a neue Zeit (a new sort of time). In the course of years, the affinity of his studies to anthropology (not historical, but universal) became clear. This trajectory took shape even as Koselleck still viewed history not as his area of expertise but rather just as a source of material. He had originally wanted to attend the academy of arts, to become a caricaturist (his etchings show he had true potential). He even declared that history had not been his specialization, `I also attended lectures in art, philosophy, sociology, public law, medicine and theology'. But ultimately his main goal remained to measure historically the space of experience (Erfah- rungsraum) of his own generation after the return from Russian captivity. Commemorative speeches are made at the juncture between life and afterlife; the person being commemorated was not long ago in our compa- ny, sharing the same pursuits with delight and humour or also with anger. I had known Koselleck for almost fifty years, and we had established a lively rapport ever since my review of Critique and Crisis. We cooper- ated with each other in many endeavours, in the dictionary of historical concepts, the foundation committee of the University of Bielefeld, collaborating on poetics and hermeneutics or the theory of history in Israel, Moscow, Budapest, Cracow, Amsterdam, New York or in Berlin in the controversies over the holocaust memorial. I now wonder how am I supposed to reduce this more than rich, fulfilled life to a single tableau. And this without being able to see him, without him being able 418 CHRISTIAN MEIER

to answer, to contradict me. What I venture here are no more than approaches; I hope you will understand this. Biography is not a central key to Koselleck's work, albeit with one important exception. This is his experience of the National-Socialist regime, of war and the immediate post-war period and the conclusions he drew from these experiences in his early years in Heidelberg. After his conventional, upper-middle class education, war and captivity occupied him for six long years. And he was very lucky. On the way to Stalingrad he was wounded preventing his entry into the encircled city. He was released from captivity early thanks to a German POW camp doctor, who had been an assistant of his grandfather. In another stroke of luck he was able to pass through Soviet controls, which combed the trains at Brest-Litovsk for men fit for work — they skipped his wagon. His elder brother fell in action at the very end of the war, his younger one killed in an air raid, his mother's sister murdered during one of the Nazi's euthanasia campaigns. In the way in which he later spoke of death, the dead and the graves, one could hear the memory of those who had fallen at his side and of those who had died in captivity; in the later controversies over the Ho- locaust memorial the fate of his aunt was present. He knew about the mass killings of Jews at Babijar through hearsay - at the front. He knew it `theoretically'. What had happened in Auschwitz he learnt in May 1945 and did not doubt it for a minute. But only towards the end of his life were these memories to find their way into his publications. Although the NS period and the war — as also, the earlier failure of the Weimar Republic — were the topics of many conversations, they were not the subject of academic education at German universities at that time, or even of his own research. No, what this experience trig- gered in Reinhart Koselleck were questions that aimed at much deeper dimensions, that tackled the preconditions of a much longer crisis (as he understood it), a crisis which did not end with the war. It continued with the newly emerging rift between the allies of yesterday. Germany found itself divided at the seam. New catastrophes were to be Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech 419 dreaded. What conception of normality stood behind his identification of an ever-ongoing crisis lasting for centuries, is difficult to say, but it is an interesting question. Iwan Nagel has described the situation in the following terms: `Pre- sumptuously we were looking for an explanation of what had happened — and for a preconception of what would be coming. [...] When we pas- sionately took on the task to think — then this thinking, standing at the end of radical catastrophes, had to be radical'. Wherever his path was leading him, this was the scenario that best describes the starting point from which Reinhart Koselleck's historical research departed. Where did the ideologies, the utopias come from? Utopias as they shaped the 'present crisis' between the two great blocks, both of which, as he remarked in the 1959 introduction of Critique and Crisis, created fear and terror. Already in Weimar these utopias had loomed large above his `first political experience', when communists and conservatives thrashed each other in primary school during the 1932 presidential elections (`I stood aloof and watched, even then I was an historian, so to speak'). Utopian thinking was also at the root of the Soviet Union, whose bru- tality also stood sharply in his memories and influenced the prediction he would sometimes slip into conversations. But utopian thinking — this is where Koselleck's reflections and research led him — had its roots in the absolutist state, more precisely, in the fact that this state, in order to restore peace after religious civil wars — pushed the middle classes (or society as a whole) into an inner space in which they could exercise their freedom of conscience, if only with respect to private morals. According to Koselleck, however, this inner space grew into a new public sphere, in which moral perspectives and expectations dominated, apparently in a completely un-political way, defined as the opposite of politics — until the state was put into the dock. From this critique emerged the crisis. Suggesting that history had reason was a way of shirking one's responsibility for it. The political was sup- pressed. At first the work was to be called `Dialectic of Enlightenment', this title happened to have been taken already. 420 CHRISTIAN MEIER

The thesis was ripening when Reinhart Koselleck met Carl Schmitt, who then, as the foreword mentions, helped him to pose questions and find answers. I think it is clear that Schmitt's admirable ability to put his finger on critical points greatly benefitted the author. But these were, as has to be stressed, and counter to recent critical aspersions, intellectual influences, not political ones. It was not Koselleck's aim to mourn the absolutist state or even to long for its return. On the contrary, he found out how its emergence already contained its own final failure. Problematic indeed was his dismissal of the thinking, the judgments and the expectations of enlightened thinkers, particularly of the younger generation, which he accused of being dishonest. This was — and is — irritating. He ultimately treated them with deep mistrust and, as is usually the case with mistrust, tended to overrate their capacity for sinister (and by the way not even conscious) machinations and to over-interpret the intentions of those historical agents and the factual history, which in reality had much deeper roots (as Koselleck himself knew). If what the members of Masonic lodges predicted and desired became planned history, as Koselleck attempted to show in his writings, there had to be a different, indirect authority which was acting through these con- temporaries, transforming predictions and wishes into plans. Defining the crisis as the pathogenesis of bourgeois society was an idea Reinhart Koselleck took from medical anthropology, which he had studied under Victor von Weizsäcker. In a much later interview he said: `A minimum of scepticism is the professional illness which the historian has to suffer. With this reserva- tion I would say that I have based my whole studies on the war experience. My position was scepticism as minimum requirement to reduce utopian surplus, also the utopian surplus of the 68ers'. And he pointed out — in 1995 — that he needed to remain sceptical in order not to become a victim of deadly resignation. Thus he was also sceptical of the assumption of historical necessity (though not, it might be added, against the hypothesis of the German Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech 421

Sonderweg), which mistakenly leads to the conclusion that historical actors have limited freedom and responsibility. Already in Critique and Crisis, he states that `in history always something more or something less, in any case something different happens than is laid out in the preconditions; this is where the current relevance of history lies. On the other hand, an illusion is required to consider oneself above all things. There are many traps. How he liked to quote Fritzchen, who, when he was supposed to translate the sentence: `Man thinks, god reigns' (,‚Der Mensch denkt, Gott lenkt") into past tense, said: `Man thought, god laughed' (,‚Der Mensch dachte, Gott lachte"). This is why he thought it wrong, despite all arguments to the contrary — even his own arguments — to give up the idea of `making history'. As already mentioned, his career later led him into social history, to the book on Prussia, which, incidentally, narrates the history of a failing state — failing at least in terms of its essential intentions. Here however it is a state that tries to preclude revolution through reforms, even if unsuccessfully. Eventually, Koselleck re-engages with his old reflections, this time building upon his approach to social history and dropping his extreme assumptions concerning the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Reinhart Koselleck discovers the `singularization' of history, this particular transformation through which the traditionally dominating paradigms to view history as a plurality of histories, marked by specific reference subjects (for example the Goths or Charlemagne) suddenly become relative by the discovery that there is one history, the history, which is not only a field of studies and of research, but at the same time — as history per se — has to be understood as the driving force which pushes this process into the past, the present and the future. It becomes its own subject. Soon it will be conceived as progress (after advances in different matters become clear progress can be viewed as one uniform process). And thus time as well is conceived of as something which has its own dynamics, which moves things, so that it starts moving itself. And in this context concepts — some of which he had already studied in Critique and Crisis, 422 CHRISTIAN MEIER

but interestingly not the term `the political' (das Politische) — and their change of meaning came to catch his attention. How and when Reinhart Koselleck came to these realizations I would not be able to date more precisely. At any rate it was relatively early. In 1967, when the book on Prussia was published, Reinhart Koselleck was 44 years old. In 1969 his contribution to the Fischer-Weltgeschichte fol- lows. The same year also saw the publication of his Vergangene Zukunft der frühen Neuzeit (Past Future of the Early Modern Period), the 1965 Heidelberg Inaugural Lecture. A topic is already made out of a fledgling theory of experience of time in the modern era. The first footnote con- tains the remark that the published lecture is the outline of a book on the temporal structures of history on which the author is presently work- ing. At this point he has already chosen the path which leads him to the theory of history. Soon after, in 1968, Historia Magistra Vitae appears. Koselleck here tackled another consequence of the radical break: histories do not repeat themselves anymore. There are new things happening that are structurally distinct. The old topos had thus lost its meaning. Previously he had published an article on prognosis. And he had long been involved in the dictionary of historical concepts. Already in the foreword of the Fischer-Weltgeschichte we find his radical conclusion that the modern era began only at the end of the eighteenth century, as a new time (neue Zeit). His 1972 essay, Die Theoriebedürftigkeit der Geschichte (On the Ne- cessity of Theory in History), gained a considerable amount of renown, and the title has since then been constantly referred to. It had been pre- ceded by his concluding presentation at the German Historians' Confer- ence in Cologne in 1970: Wozu noch Historie? (Why still History?). These were the times during which social sciences were pushing ahead and philosophy departments became `de-historicized'. How could history assert itself? How could the relationship with political science, sociology, economics and linguistics be reshaped? What was characteristic for history if its topics, politics, society, economy, language, were occupied by other disciplines? The answer was that history needed to develop a Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech 423 theory of historical time. Attempts to do so followed as evident in the new findings about the different layers of time, the acceleration of change, the modes of how they were perceived and how they were expressed in language — and, of course, in how concepts and time are related. At that time, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Koselleck was in his mid-40s, it could be said that the main foundations of his research had been laid out in Critique and Crisis. His initial exploration of what he coined as the `pathogenesis of the bourgeois world' led him into the eighteenth century, and was at the same time corroborated and evolved into a wider coherence through the awareness of what had been an epochal threshold — the `only great epochal threshold of world history' as he would put it. This insight, the many consequences it yielded and reveals, would be demonstrated by Koselleck in a long series of essays in which additional perspectives would develop, for this knowledge itself is situated in the `new time' in which the world since then has been permanently changing and temporally accelerating. This at the same time presented manifold consequences for the theory of history. Indeed, one and the other are almost impossible to separate from each other. From the perspective of theory, though, the question about histories before history would necessarily arise. Reinhart Koselleck questioned the conditions of possible history — this was the point which a Historik after the failure of historical philosophy would have to tackle — and in this way it became possible to identify anthropological constants. From here followed the discovery of `iterative structures' (Wiederho- lungsstrukturen) — since everything new needs the old, the self-repeating and is impossible to imagine without preconditions, which for their part contain largely self-repeating elements. And the question arises of how new modernity would be. Historical research was thus given a new basis and a completely new consciousness opened itself. The possibilities and frontiers of historical knowledge were laid out, accentuating the `veto right' possessed by historical sources. Koselleck reflects on the experience of history, on the 424 CHRISTIAN MEIER

language of the historian and at the same time he made them suitable material for the understanding of further correlations. A whole set of concepts he coined demonstrate this. They partially recur in the head- ings of his works. Koselleck's work on war memorials somehow sits beyond the bound- aries of this subject matter; they started occupying him in the 1960s. In 1971 he undertook his first excursion to France. Among the memorials he visited, the equestrian monuments eventually became a main focus of interest. One has the feeling he needed this extremely intensive collecting as a means of regeneration from his more lofty endeavours of the concept. But soon one sees him reflecting on the role of the horse in world history, of the ànimal, that in the symbiosis with man stands closest to him'. In the 1990s another topic connected to memorials came to play a central role, however in a more journalistic rather than scientific way, namely in the controversy about the memorials in Berlin. Eventually one problem confronted Reinhart Koselleck, which had been only mar- ginally approached in his two essay collections: the general problem of remembrance, and in particular remembrance of the time of war, terror, mass murder and expulsions. It would take hours to give even a rough overview of Reinhart Ko- selleck's works and knowledge. Writing was never an easy task for him. He knew this: Ònly through written fixation do thoughts become clear. And the stylistic form turns out to be a strict instance of control. A bad style exposes wrong thought and forces correction'. Therefore much remains unwritten: the book on temporal structures, for example, the Historik (which he was still planning at least in 1987). He was not very pleased with his great, important essay Erfahrungswandel and Metho- denwechsel, because it should have become a book. But it was already difficult enough to draw at least this essay out of him, and I have a thick file on this affair. In the dictionary of historical concepts the article Time is missing and the book about the war memorials will probably also be withheld from us. We owe many beautiful works to an insurmountable number of requests which reached him from all possible sides, but this Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech 425 frittered away some of his energy. Complaints about the èxtra work' which he had to undertake in order to cope with all requests come up frequently over the years in his letters. Altogether Koselleck's legacy comprises an almost superhuman sum of work. Imagine the energy just the dictionary of historical concepts cost him — and Conze — simply considering the amount of organizational and editorial work, correspondence (and critical confrontation) as well as research and writing! Beyond his own exceptional articles, which are the shining stars of the project, Fortschritt, Geschichte, Revolution (progress, history, revolution) (to mention only those three), he had to write intermediate supplementary pieces, for authors who had overlooked certain essential aspects of their allotted concept. And at one time he had to take over a whole article, Bund (federation), which demanded from him two hard years of work, but admittedly also offered him substantial knowledge of the federal structures in Germany (and possibly of Europe). It was a very general collection of themes and at the same time one which Reinhart Koselleck had a specific understanding of. The connec- tion to the problems with which historians usually have to quarrel about is not always easy. It can also be questioned whether it was necessary and right to evacuate the whole traditional terrain of historical research when challenged by the social sciences, in order to concentrate on the problems of historical times. Furthermore, the underlying question regarding the anthropological conditions of a possible history is quite far removed from what historians usually tend to seek in theory. The search for highly formal, unarguable pairs of opposition like friend/foe, inside/outside (or: public/secret), master/servant, victor/defeated is apparently to be understood not only in the context of his confrontation with Gadamer, but also as evolving from the prolonged defensive position of the time around 1970. However what really matters is the long series of splendid, infinitely revealing pieces of work which we owe to Reinhart Koselleck, in this as in other contexts. In each case he has laid out a whole complex of questions each time framed from a different angle, cautiously and com- 426 CHRISTIAN MEIER

prehensively, exactly structured, and step by step. Everything is strictly thought out and defended against all possible arguments. Where others take much for granted and consider it not worth further reflection, partly because of naivety, partly because their problems are of a different nature — he followed his own paths guided by his great and central questions. The justification and explanation of the history of concepts consti- tuted a special problem. Facing the standards of social history, which he perceived to be strict, he had to prove and demonstrate how concepts could be means to understand history. They were indicators, but also fac- tors of change. And this was particularly true for the epoch which stood at the centre of his interest, the Sattelzeit (saddle epoch). The epochal threshold implied, according to his hypothesis, that countless traditional concepts became either meaningless or were transformed, temporalized, that they became loaded with new expectations and that countless new concepts were developed. It was characteristic for this epoch, that its history, as history per se, was understandable and dependent on understanding by means of concepts — in contrast to preceding times and also, at least from my point of view, in contrast to the time that has since then followed; for which as an indicator, but no more as a factor, the term post-modernity could be used, a term which Reinhart Koselleck, by the way, considered meaningless. The starting hypothesis proved its value, heuristically and by pro- voking differentiations in the course of time. It has been suggested that the history of concepts would lead to a dead end. And it has been as- sumed that it came either too early or too late to attract enough interest. Nevertheless, on the one hand, the research into the history of concepts, essentially initiated by Reinhart Koselleck, has been proved to be a highly fruitful field of research on an international level as well. On the other hand, it has to be asked if it is not rather going against the grain of the usual ways of research. The history of concepts was never suitable to become really fashionable. It would, however, have deserved discussions of a general nature to a much greater extent than it has done so far. In that way and in every detail reflected by Reinhart Koselleck, Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech 427 it could probably not have been conducted by others. But it does not take much prophecy to say that the impact of its reception is not yet over. Researching concepts turned Reinhart Koselleck into a specialist of semantics. Two essays from this field are worthy of mention here. First, the Erfahrungsraum and Erwartungshorizont (Spaces of Experience and Ho- rizons of Expectation), a conceptually brilliant and vivid demonstration of how what had originally been more or less congruent was separated in the new epoch. It is this discrepancy which paralyzed the notion of historia magistra vitae. Secondly, Koselleck's Asymmetrische Gegenbegriffe (Asymmetrical Counter Concepts) should be mentioned. Here he explored the succession of dichotomies; he showed how the static dichotomy of the Greek/Bar- barian was followed by the missionary driven dynamic Christian/Pagan one, whereas the last century took a third step towards the destructive dichotomy Human/Inhuman (Mensch/Unmensch). How the diverse elements of this knowledge could have been inte- grated into a Historik, to a system, is at the moment and perhaps in the long run difficult to say. Reinhart Koselleck, it should be mentioned here, also possessed great expertise in ancient history, being very familiar with the works of Herodotus and Thucydides. And sometimes in his works something of the Greek tragedies shimmered through as well, for instance, when protagonists were made to subtly tell truths of which at the time they were not aware of. Koselleck quoted what Hitler said in 1932: `In the end it doesn't matter, how many percent of the German people make history. What really matters is that we will be the last ones, who make history in Germany'. To which Koselleck adds that he also made history, but in a way which was different from what he thought. And he cites Roosevelt, who on April 11, 1945 saw `more than only the end of this war', namely: `the end of all beginnings of war, indeed the end for all times' to be imminent. Koselleck's comment: Roosevelt's message was indeed correct, although in the reverse sense than he had hoped for. The end of all beginnings of war was a first formula for the Cold 428 CHRISTIAN MEIER

War. Since then there are no more beginnings of war. `Instead the wars, which since then have brought misery, terror and fear to our world, are no longer wars, but interventions and punishment campaigns, and above all civil wars'. In closely surveying his scholarly life as a whole Begriffsgeschichte (the history of concepts) clearly stands in the foreground, despite the importance of Critique and Crisis, the book on Prussia and his work on the middle classes of the nineteenth century. The great dictionary is not Reinhart Koselleck's only greatest work. Concepts remained as recurring topics in presentations and essays. For him concepts were also the key to historical theory, to the very understanding of history. `Sometimes I regret that you have systematically abstained from framing your results in one concept', he wrote to me in an almost ex- uberant letter of praise for my book. As if, like that country which had been capable of generating concepts central to comprehension of the ancient world, in the same fashion modern history, his modern history, had been able to produce concepts in order to understand the manifold dimensions of change characteristic of modernity in which one could easily immerse oneself by using semantics to plunge into a whole range of sources. On this basis Koselleck could move on a very specific level, beyond all complexity, in order to understand essential connec- tions and history itself. This stood at the very centre. This characterized him and it was what rendered his opus so full of insights and at the same time so astonishingly consistent. This was the main concern of this thinking historian. Here above all lies his enduring greatness. The history of the NS period did not play a major role in Reinhart Koselleck's written work. Yet, his own family suffered greatly under the regime through death in the war and murder. In addition, his father had been dismissed in 1933 and was reappointed only in 1937. Resistance was not offered, rather a critical distance was kept. When the family was asked to Germanize its surname, they refused. `But not (as he would subsequently on say in Krakow) because we were Poles, but because we were Germans. We did not want to be identified with those National Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech 429

Socialists who had requested the Germanization of our surname'. This distance spared Reinhart Koselleck the guilt complex that sooner or (in most cases) later greatly troubled so many others. The discussions about the regime after 1945 remained, as he said, on a rather general level. Except for extreme examples, very rarely were others blamed for their past. Survival seemed to suffice. More than enough terrible things had already happened. What people had thought or ex- pected during the Third Reich hardly interested Reinhart Koselleck at that time. `Because it was far too obvious to me, that nearly everyone had been involved. Nothing was further from my mind than to make a moral reckoning'. One wanted to learn, from all those who had to tell something. And among those Carl Schmitt and Heidegger were among the most inspiring and interesting. Later, Reinhart Koselleck coura- geously defended Werner Conze and Otto Brunner against exaggerated accusations. He did not participate in the Historikerstreit. When the German past appeared on the agenda in the 1990s in such a way that he felt compelled publicly to express his opinions, he did so — first of all — on the subject of memorials. In 1993, he protested against the monument in the Neue Wache, or more precisely, against Helmut Kohl's idea of mixing perpetrators and victims in memory. The inscrip- tion — `To the Victims of War and Tyranny' — had indeed been taken, with slight variations, from the preceding memorial in Bonn of 1967. But in the meantime, one might have begun to think about that in a new way — after all, a different awareness of the German past had been developing since then. Koselleck drew attention to the difference between those who, as soldiers, had sacrificed themselves, and those who had been murdered and thus were passive victims. He pointed to the question of `who had sacrificed whom or himself for which purpose and who had been sacrificed for which reasons and for whom'. In addition, and I quote his own words, the `fluffy Pieta', as he called the `anthropophagic sculpture of a mourning Madonna' by Käthe Kollwitz, was evidently inappropriate for such a monument. `Behind the mourning for the body of Christ there is the medieval image of the evil Jews who had murdered the Son of God. 430 CHRISTIAN MEIER

And behind the visibly surviving mother millions of annihilated, murdered or gassed and disappeared women call: And who remembers us?'. Yet, as it is common in Germany, one of the nationally and inter- nationally most respected and renowned historians of the country can say whatever he wants without being heard, even when it concerns his proper field of research. It has no effect whatsoever on those in power. It is different if the most affected group, namely the Jews, takes up this position. It does not matter then if the Berlin Jewish Community does not take part in the inauguration of the Neue Wache but organizes a protest march instead. After all, relations are good with the President of the Jewish Central Council (Zentrairat), and this comes on the con- dition that the memorial will be accompanied by footnotes. But this is not enough. The organizations of the real victims still refuse to accept the equation of being victims in the same way as the dead of that nation from which the murderers came. But nothing is to be changed. Instead, the Holocaust-Memorial — already planned — shall be constructed. But it is supposed to remember only the Jews. Again, Koselleck became involved and protested against the exclusive dedication of the memorial to the Jews, excluding gypsies, homosexu- als, the murdered Poles (who suffered the highest percentage of victims after the Jews!), the Russian prisoners of war, the mentally ill. Either they must be considered all together or each group apart. He was part of the group of experts who were invited to a so-called discussion in the building of the former GDR-Staatsrat. Its genius loci had, obviously, survived the changes of 1989/90. All discussions were in vain. The event merely functioned as an alibi. Koselleck's objections were ignored. As if critical arguments become wrong when they are ignored', he lashed out. That hurt him, and rightly so. But he was shocked when he heard from the Federal Chancellory that his objections to the design of the Neue Wache had not been completely unheard. That they were taken up — I suppose by Ignaz Bubis — and had led to the agreement by which Chancellor Kohl made the field next to the Brandenburg Gate available for the Holocaust-Memorial. Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech 431

How many misunderstandings and how much irritation, for example with the Poles, could have been avoided, if Reinhart Koselleck's arguments had been taken into account! A further problem is attached to the problem of the appropriate remembrance of the German victims of the allied air strikes, violence and expulsions. This was close to Reinhart Koselleck's heart too. At least regarding the expulsions this has become much more difficult following the protests of the Poles who were rightly outraged and concerned. When Reinhart Koselleck was confronted with the problem of how to conduct remembrance on the occasion of the 50th and 60th anniver- sary of the end of the war in 1995 and 2005, he clearly distinguished between one's own memories and a secondary, mediated form of memory. He questioned the theory of collective memory: what is the subject that is remembering collectively? It is a linguistic construct! He insists on each individual's right to an `unchangeable memory' as a part of human dignity, and in this context he even referred to the first article of the German Constitution, the Grundgesetz. Memories of violence and fear of death are drawn into the bodies of the survivors. They are not only kept in the mind. `They seize the heart, the kidneys, the gall, the intestine, all muscles and nerves and this is not only metaphorically spoken'. All forms of collective and patron- izing instruction are criticized with firm decision. `Man has the right to his own memory — this I do not allow to be collectivized!' Reinhart Koselleck insisted on being neither cast as a victim, nor having been liberated (because he had fought as a soldier until the end, he was a perpetrator as well). And had those millions been liberated, who had to experience the 8th of May 1945 as the beginning of slavery? But who still understood this? The topic burned under his nails. He spoke of the `veto right of personal experience'. But soon, and now resignation comes to play a role, `the generation of natural know-it-alls will win. Maybe at some point the smuggled mail of world history will reappear from the sea of oblivion'. That was his comment in a letter he sent me that he had attached to his statement on May 8, 2005. 432 CHRISTIAN MEIER

As he wanted to `historically measure' the experiences of his generation in the beginning, he allowed his memory to speak once again in the end — as one of the last, as the great historian of this generation who was bound to be precise. Since we are commemorating Reinhart Koselleck in an academic set- ting, special attention must be given to his academic work, his written legacy in my case. But in the end we also have to remember, at least in a few words, the person to whom we owe this work and who was truly much more -- and will be kept alive as such in our minds — than the author of a highly important body of work. His influence extended far beyond what he has left in books, through his school (and students), through countless discussions — reaching often far into the night — through questions, remarks, helpful suggestions; through his criticism (never offensive, yet sometimes severe, always focused on the matter, never on the person), through encouragement. Not forgetting the immense number of letters he has written. He responded to nearly all letters. In direct, personal conversations he easily transcended the bounda- ries of his thematically focused works of research and presentations. What was channelled here became liberated there. His true forums were lectures (and essays), discussion, and conversation. In these settings the unbelievable richness of his questions, observations, perspectives, his culture and his ever stimulating wit and esprit was present; his irony and his sarcasm. Cynicism played a much less important role in this, if any role at all. Thus he also debated enthusiastically all night long, patiently, on an equal level with the generation of 1968, taking them seriously (even defending them occasionally, a fact which many colleagues strongly re- sented), although he never developed any sympathy for utopias. In spite of all his scepticism: he focused on knowledge, on argument, the gaining and the spreading of intellectual insight, on historical understanding (even though it cannot keep pace with the acceleration of the present). And he constantly focused on questions. It was often a happy and enjoyable opportunity to come together, discuss with him the most Reinhart Koselleck. A Commemorative Speech 433

different intellectual and artistic fields, and learn so much. He stimulated further reflection in these discussions and initiated many projects. With his intellectual antennae he developed a great culture of par- ticipating and understanding. He had the ability to listen, to share wor- ries, mourning, and memory. He had a very generous and strong heart (metaphorically speaking) and has always continued to refine it. He had a quasi unlimited capacity for kindness and receptivity, for continuously accumulating experience. Whilst he could in history gave the impression that through concepts he barred himself from accessing the subtleties, this did not play any role in his conversations. He was able to find the right tone in difficult situations, and took his time in order to generate mutual understanding. This contributed to his very authority. He was a man of extraordinary decency. And he had a clearly-shaped, as well as an emotionally-deeply rooted sense of justice, and therefore a strong desire to enforce justice; for others. He was hardly vulnerable, but always sensitive to all forms of mean, scheming and knavish behavior. He could be resentful in such cases. Last but not least: what joy and love of life inspired him! Still in the 1980s, after a congress — he must have been in his 60s — he was tempted to run up an escalator coming down in the opposite direction in Frankfurt central station. He was nimble in spite of his (albeit light) luggage. And he was a wonderful friend, of many, in many countries. Everyone present, and in particular you, my dear Fee**, and your family could now add many more personal things. But all of us can conclude this commemoration with an expression of great admiration, gratitude and -- this concerns many of us at any rate -- great love for a friend (Freundesliebe). 434 CHRISTIAN MEIER

Notes of the Editor

* „Gedenkrede auf Reinhart Koselleck", first published in Neithard Bulst and Willibald Steinmetz, eds., Reinhart Koselleck 1923-2006. Reden zur Gedenkfeier am 24. Mai 2006. Bielefelder Universitätsgespräche und Vorträge 9, 2007, 7-34; also in Hans Joas and Pe- ter Vogt, eds., Begriffene Geschichte. Beiträge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011). Translated from German by David Krumwiede, Jörn Leonhard and Sonja Levsen (Historisches Seminar, Universität Freiburg). Partially revised by Iain Hampsher- Monk (Department of Politics, School of Social and International Studies, University of Exeter), and finally by Professor Christian Meier himself. My sincere thanks to all of them. Here Professor Meier affectionately addresses Mrs Felicitas Flimm-Koselleck, Reinhart Koselleck's widow, and the other members of the family present at the commemoration.