Germans, Leftists, Jews

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That anti-Semitism has nothing to do withJews has been noted; this is even more the case with the Jewish debate that has recently emerged*in West Germany. Touched off by a special issue of the Berlin journal, Asthetik und Kommunikation entitled, Germans, Leftists, Jews,' the newJewish problem has to do with German responsibility, guilt, the generational conflict, national identity, etc. The fate of the Jews as such has played almost no role. Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding the issue has brought some significant new perceptions. To the extent that they succeeded in abandoning some of the old postures, rhetorical strategies, and conceptual easy chairs, Asthetik und Kommunikation pushed the emotional and psychic temperature of the discussion to a new level of intensity. They have admitted that the idiom of the Left is no help, that the problem of national identity is linked to the national past and to the murder of the Jews, and above all that they cannot exorcise the German beast by good intentions alone. But they have also recognized their own hostility to theJews who constantly remind them of their moral vulnerability. In so doing they revealed an ugly, unpalatable side of themselves, sometimes reflectively, sometimes not. As a result they were subjected to massive criticism and reproach. For the first time in its history Asthetik und Kommunikation was acknowledged by the mass media, the press, and by a public not accustomed to browsing at thejournal racks of those radical bookstores that appear like oases in the German urban landscape. Even in the GDR this issue evoked a response by the small group of youngerJewish intellectuals which still manages to exist there. As the editors remarked: Never in the past 14 years has an issue of Asthetik und Kommunikation been so bitterly criticized, not even during the factional disputes in the aftermath of the student revolt.