Two Open Letters to Feher/Heller

Abstract

I have just read your essay Eastern Europe Under the Shadow of a New Repallo. It is really too bad that we had no opportunity to discuss these issues earlier. Alongside many interesting observations, I discovered an abundance of wholly untenable conjectures which I would gladly have argued out with you before the essay saw print. For the past ten years, I have been a member of the Fundamental Values Commission of the SPD's Directorate, and from this vantage point I have become relatively well-informed as to the views of leading Social Democrats. I know Erhard Eppler and Richard Loewenthal (Chairman and Deputy of the Commission, respectively) rather well, and I have talked on occasion with Egon Bahr and Willy Brandt. Moreover, I regularly write for Vorwiirts and the Neue Gesellschaft and read the (poorly edited) Party Magazine. I mention all of this so you will believe me that, even if I do stand on the left and Green wing of the SPD, I have a fairly good idea of what is going on in the Party. Of course, you relied on texts by non-Social Democrats (such as Brandt's son Peter and Herbert Ammon, as well as Rudolf Bahro, who has just left the Greens since they wouldn't accept his religious messianism). However, you evidently consider these figures significant enough to draw upon for interpretation of the basic mood in the Federal Republic (FRG). One could question their representativeness, naturally. But I would rather like to focus on your arguments one by one. 1. Bahro's answer, Rapallo why not? is wholly unfit to serve as an accurate indicator of the emerging trends here. Not only is there no German politician, there is also no figure in the Peace Movement worth mentioning who is striving for such an alliance. To convince yourselves of this, you should read publications such as Mediatus, edited by Mechtersheimer, rather than rely on a few lonely eccentric voices.