In spring semester 1986 I took my first sabbatical leave. I traveled to Frankfurt for four or five weeks in February and March on a German Academic Exchange (DAAD) stipend, leaving Nick, now a freshman at West Valley High School, under Sally’s care in Spokane. My research project was on the Frankfurt School of Social Research led by Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) and Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), eventually culminating in an article published in Dialectical Anthropology in 1988. By that time I had had more than enough of reading the works of the many minor exponents of völkisch ideology in the nineteenth century and their crazy ideas! The writings of Adorno, Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), and many others more loosely affiliated with the “Frankfurt School” were like a breath of fresh air. My trip to Germany from early February to late March was bracketed by two tragic events, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28th and the melt-down at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union on April 26th. Gorbachow had come to power the previous year, but it was Chernobyl that convinced him to introduce glasnost (free speech) and perestroika (economic restructuring). There were also unexpected personal losses. Steffi’s sister Ulrike died of cancer at age forty-two after refusing all treatment. Her death seemed to give her negative judgment of me that much more force. Steffi’s father had already died in 1981. Uncle Nick died on January 20th, Mama’s birthday, at age seventy-eight. In his last letter to me (prompted by his reading of Idealism Debased) he had spoken of suffering from “terminal fatigue.” On my return trip from Germany I visited Trina at Harvard, and together with Olaf, who flew in from Cleveland, we drove up in a rental car to visit Mama in Vermont. What sticks in my mind from that visit was Mama’s response when asked how she was feeling: “a bit bilious,” she answered, with unconcealed pleasure at being able to describe her condition so precisely through the use of an archaic term.
Mama, 1988
In Frankfurt I was lucky to find a cheap room to rent, thus abrogating my earlier fears that I might be forced to live at Papa’s, as articulated in my journal:
The sinking feeling on learning that no rooms are available in Frankfurt and that I may have to stay in Karlsruhe. Not that I may be bored or may get in the way, but rather that I will not be able to carry out my critical project in that relentlessly positivist and consumerist atmosphere.
I spent most of my time in the Frankfurt University library, where my cousin Eva Ganzlin, Papa’s sister Tante Lulli’s daughter, tracked me down one day to tell me that Tempy was in town and trying to get in touch with me. He had flown in from London, where he worked for the Kidder, Peabody brokerage firm, to consult with some of his German clients. As usual, we argued about Thatcher’s politics over an excellent meal at one of Frankfurt’s finer restaurants. On the weekends I traveled to Karlsruhe to spend time with Papa and his second family.
With Halinka, 1986
Awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (federal service cross) for his litigation of cases before the high court of the Federal Republic, Papa had reached the zenith of his career. At age seventy-five he had become a grand seigneur who loved to entertain his guests with excellent vodka with sakuskas and fine food and wine, just as in his younger years. He had aged very gracefully, as Stella confirmed for me when she said, “er geniesst es, alt zu sein (he enjoys being old).”
What accounts for Papa’s attractiveness? It’s not just the money that permits a sumptuous lifestyle; it’s not just a generosity made possible by wealth, it’s certainly not his skill or success as a lawyer. There is an element of self-sacrifice, as if Papa had given up the right to lead a normal life in order to act out an existence that gives pleasure to others, even if it is only the pleasure of beholding grandeur, the pleasure of vicariously participating in the last grand gestures.
On my 1986 sabbatical I also began work on my book on Nazi Germany, little anticipating that it would be more than twelve years before it finally appeared under the Routledge imprint in spring 1999 as Hitler’s Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies. On January 8th, 1986, I wrote in my journal:
My book on the Nazis must surmount the East-West split: it must be written not from one side or the other, but from the higher vantage point that incorporates the best of both points of view.
Nazism is a political topic, not a question of occultism, psychology, ambition, power hunger, historical accident, etc., etc.
With my Emmet cousin Leslie Lang in Karlsruhe. 1986
Despite (or maybe because of) the accession of Gorbachev to the highest office of the Soviet Union, I was still obsessed with reconciling socialism and liberal democracy. In those days I was often invited by the local media (TV or radio) to comment on international news. Since I taught Russian history at Gonzaga, I was asked to comment on Gorbachev’s emergence as Soviet leader. The precise pronunciation of Gorbachev’s name had not yet been agreed upon, so I called on Ed Yarwood, who taught Russian at Eastern Washington University, for assistance. He said that there was no particular rule that applied in this instance, so I wrongly put the accent on the second syllable, Gorbáchev, to my later embarrassment. Nonetheless, my periodic TV appearances were successful enough to persuade the local ABC station to invite me to serve as their “expert” commentator for the 1988 presidential election. This was an invitation I felt obligated to decline, not only because of my lack of “expertise” on American electoral politics (which I gave as my excuse), but also because I knew I would never be able to disguise my partisanship for the Democratic Party. I had earlier seriously embarrassed my son Nick, who was watching the news with his friends, by my critical comments on Reagan’s cold war policies. “Can’t you ever say anything nice” he admonished me, “about our president?” When I tried to explain the reasons for my vehement objections to Reaganism, Nick’s response was, “Life is more than just a lecture, Dad.”
Nick, 1985
Nick, 1986
Nick playing ping-pong in the basement, 1987
A sampling of journal entries gives some idea of my evolving political views, ultimately disappointed by the failure of Gorbachow’s reforms to bring about a democratic socialism:
16 Jan 1986 Liberalism descends into fascism when it is conceived only as freedom for power.
27 Jan The point is this: a “free” society creates the conditions in which strength can exert itself at the expense of the “weak.” However, to ensure a system in which the “weak” will not be short-changed or exploited, but in which people will continue to remain “free,” people’s voluntary assent to the norms of non-exploitation must be gained. In the absence of such voluntary assent, some form of coercion is necessary, leading to the paradox (and confirming the validity of a dialectical interpretation of history) that strong leaders must exert powers that will seem arbitrary and illegitimate to those who do not accept the norms of a socialist society.
4 Feb The mechanism of coercion is more impersonal and better concealed in the West in that no individual or group—no KGB—can be held responsible. That is not the least “genius” of the market from the conservative point of view. Victims of market forces blame natural causes, or bad luck, not the representatives or institutions of the social order, for their misfortune.
9 Apr The American dialectic: the power that this country wields is at least in part a consequence of its attractiveness—the appeal of its civil liberties—to so many people in the world. But the United States is hampered—thank God—in the full exercise of its power by those very same liberal institutions, which can’t be done away with—much as the propertied would like to—without destroying the source of American attractiveness and hence some of its power. The conflict has to and will be fought out in America itself. Because as long as America retains its liberal institutions it remains strong—and thus at least potentially capable of much mischief in the world. To wish a reduction of American power is in a sense to wish a diminution of what makes the United States appealing—its liberalism. So the responsibility of taming its power lies with us—its citizens. But in the very act of exercising its liberal democratic institutions, we are strengthening the U. S. and contributing to the power we seek to rein in. Is this what Hegel meant by the cunning of reason, the dialectic of history, and the passage of the “world spirit” from one country to another?
11 Apr Problems of socialism: what do you do when there always seems to be a majority in favor of a system that excludes, or exploits, or handicaps, or penalizes certain minorities (for instance, the poor)?
1 May Every system contains the potential for abuse. Liberals claim that their system is best because it recognizes and acknowledges the fallibility of humans. But they thereby enshrine that fallibility!
9 May The positive aspect of Reaganism is that we now know what to fight. Welfare statism puts the left in such a difficult position: on the one hand, it is not nearly equitable enough; on the other hand, we cannot deny our support to ameliorative measures—even if they strengthen a system that is basically inequitable. Reagan eases this uncomfortable choice.
15 May Anti-Marxists want to have it both ways. They argue that “individual initiative“ (i.e., the acquisitive drive) is essential to productivity and progress, but they deny that economic motives and relations are fundamental to human activities. But economic activity always has social consequences because of its effect on property values, the value of money, hence prices and wages, etc. That is why there must be some sort of social control. Farmers (like Mama), for instance, are victims of economic pressures not of their own making.
21 Nov 1987 The challenge confronting America: is it possible to create a truly inclusive middle-class society (the American dream)? Then there would in fact be no need, no use for Marxism.
4 July 1988 Democratic socialism can only succeed within a consensus on the desirability and legitimacy of a socialist economy. The current turmoil in the USSR attests to how far they have finally come: at last the party feels secure enough about the popularity and viability of socialism to permit open debate. No wonder our conservatives view what is going on with such misgivings!
Little did I anticipate that it was the Soviet bureaucracy itself, filled with ambitious people with no real commitment to Marxism, who would take the lead in the transformation of the Soviet Union into a brutally corrupt capitalist system a year or two later!
Mama's sweater, 1986
The other great interest of my sabbatical semester in spring 1986 was my continuing (but ultimately unavailing) project of reconciling Nietzsche with Marx.
If we perceive the great crimes of our age as the product of a perverted morality, then Nietzsche has something to say to us.
Nietzsche’s point?? Christianity is one thing in the minds of the truly humble—Jesus; another thing in the hands of the arrogant and intolerant—Paul. One cannot say Christianity is right or wrong. One can say it is admirable when practiced, an abomination when preached.
[Richard] Rorty’s article in the London Review of Books invoking Nietzsche in behalf of the adage, “truth is made, not found.” Truth is a function of choice of vocabulary, not of more perfect representation of outer reality or more perfect expression of inner reality. The dialectic is evident in that this kind of relativism can serve the communist cause by debunking the absolute claim to truth of religion, etc.; but it is now generally used to invalidate the communist claim of representing the true course and purpose of history. All is contingency. No system is more right than any other—except, of course, the system that acknowledges that truth (namely, liberalism)! To make this angle of attack possible, communism must be portrayed as a secular religion making claims to absolute truth. What gets lost is any appreciation of communism as simply partisanship for the weak and oppressed and the poor, which is exactly what liberals want to lose!
Marxism (or true democracy), by balancing the scale in favor of the under-classes and outcast, by questioning the privileges of the wealthy and powerful, by refusing to accept their superiority as givens, provides the necessary challenge that fosters greatness (which can’t be defined a priori, which develops dialectically). Nietzsche understood this.
Nietzsche’s problem is the German problem: no political awareness. Hence he generalizes his indictment of a specifically German world view into an attack on a human, or at least “Western” world view: Christianity, morality, etc. It is important, especially for Marxists, to situate Nietzsche’s philosophy in the context of his German experience. Nietzsche doesn’t help us to understand the world, as Marx does, but he does help us to understand Germans!
New York Review article on “Volksgeist” vs. “European culture:” what it fails to take into consideration is the crucial difference between Volksgeist as national liberation and as national domination and oppression. What it fails to take into consideration, in other words, is the economic base. It is the economic base that determines victimization or oppression. This neglect is what Marxists rightly impugn. The differing manifestations of Volksgeist provide a good illustration of the dialectic: Volksgeist, a liberating nationalism, carries within it the seeds of oppression. Nothing is either good or evil, except under certain conditions. Nietzsche’s failure to analyze these conditions in political terms is his true weakness.
One thing is undeniably true: Nietzsche has poisoned many minds. Mediocre minds under Nietzsche’s influence make mediocrity stronger. Nietzsche doesn’t change the quality of minds, he enhances self-confidence. Fascism: the petty bourgeois mind under Nietzsche’s influence.
Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man—“a person will desire what is injurious to himself simply to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid”—and Nietzsche’s nihilist, who would rather will nothingness than not willing at all.
Nietzsche so “aktuell” (relevant) because his rejection of majoritarianism can be used for a critique of both socialism and bourgeois democracy. Moreover, his criticism of the old order, of Bismarck and Wilhelm II, but also of idealism and religion, absolves him of being reactionary. He is ultra- (hence post-) modern, futuristic, open-ended—hence his appeal today. What those who want to activate him against socialism alone fail to acknowledge is that he can equally well be activated against liberal democracy. But he can’t be dismissed as simply a mouthpiece of the old order, as some Marxists do.
The current Nietzsche renaissance as a desperate search for a philosophically sophisticated alternative to Marxism. But not all negative: it is also a symptom of the kind of urges and motives that inspired Marx, but that cannot express itself as a commitment to Marxism in a system dominated by capital. Nietzsche at least gives one the courage to turn one’s back on traditional authority.
But then there are the “tough” Nietzscheans who appreciate his salutary critique of liberal democracy, the ruthless unmasking of liberal ideology, not out of any sympathy for fascism, but because the tough Nietzschean attack provides a safeguard against fascism. This is quite different from the ”gentle Nietzscheans” who portray him as some sort of proto-liberal.
It all depends on why Nietzsche is valued today: is it because his skepticism serves as a useful counterweight against Marxism, or is it because he has diagnosed the nihilism that has led us to the brink of nuclear self-destruction?
Given my scholarly interests, the most important historical controversy of 1986-1987 for me was the dispute known in Germany as the Historikerstreit. Precipitated by an article by the historian Ernst Nolte (b. 1923) in the leading conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) entitled , “Vergangenheit die nicht vergehen will” (the past that will not go away), the dispute pitted defenders of the “new conservatism” of the Reagan era against liberal critics of the “new cold war.” Nolte called for the same dispassionate analysis of Nazism as all other past events eventually received. Reagan’s visit on the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the Bitburg military cemetery that also contained the graves of numerous SS soldiers had already set the tone for the new cold war hawks who wanted to play down the Nazi past to strengthen West German commitment to the fight against Soviet communism. My comment in my journal was: “Bitburg is the revival of appeasement: even the SS have their uses in the struggle against the Reds.” Nolte argued in favor of a more positive reappraisal of Nazism, without denying Nazi extremism or the Holocaust. He interpreted Nazism as an understandable, if excessive (überschiessende) reaction of a fearful bourgeoisie to the greater horror and threat of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. In that way he could even give the Holocaust a rational justification, while incriminating communism for having precipitated the violent fascist reaction. Some of Nolte’s defenders, such as Joachim Fest (1926-2006), a biographer of Hitler and editor of the FAZ, went so far as to describe the Holocaust as just another of the tragic catastrophies that have always marked the course of human history. For liberal American historians Nolte’s interpretation of fascism as a reaction to and mirror image of the prior and allegedly more lethal communist movement provided an unpleasant provocation, as I tried to sort out in several entries in my journal in January 1987:
The German Historikerstreit: Nolte’s analysis of fascism as basically anti-Marxism is correct; his effort to derive a certain justification of fascism from this is not. Nolte is performing a useful service in “historicizing” fascism, i. e., embedding it in its historical context and thus facilitating understanding. But his analysis does not so much “relativize” fascism (as just a militant and not totally unwarranted response to communism) as it discredits militant right-wing anti-communism (though of course that is not how Nolte, or his liberal critics, see it). Liberal American critics, such as [Stanford Professor Gordon] Craig [who wrote about the dispute in the New York Review of Books] have such problems with Nolte, et al., because they cannot criticize his anti-communism because they share it. So they have to claim (citing [historian Eberhard] Jäckel) that Hitler did not eliminate the Jews out of fear of Bolshevism. They sidestep the real issue—the analysis of fascism—to focus on a much narrower topic—the uniqueness of the Holocaust. The typically liberal cop-out of taking a relentlessly positivistic and empirical approach. What other state, after all, had used gas in so systematic a fashion on men, women, and children? And they reject (or attack) what is strongest about Nolte—his “philosophizing,” his dialectic, or, more accurately, phenomenology—rather than his basic values. Nolte provides a real challenge: he is forcing Americans to confront the implications of their anti-communism. They don’t like it.
The real issue in the controversy was not the historical interpretation of Nazism but the politics of the new Cold War at the height of the Reagan era:
Nolte’s project: in the outrage over fascism and its atrocities, don’t lose sight of the prior and perhaps greater atrocities of communism. Precisely because he is aware of the importance of the anti-communist impulse in fascism, he is concerned (as are Fest and the FAZ) that outrage about fascism (and the charge that Nazi crimes are uniquely horrible, execrable) may dim people’s anti-communist ardor, may turn the youth of the Federal Republic into guilt-ridden pacifists. None of them are apologists for fascism. All of them are Cold Warriors. This is really a debate about motives, not substance. Critics of [Jürgen] Habermas have tried to turn it into a debate about substance—or rather, they have tried to discredit Habermas because he called into question the motives of Nolte and his defenders rather than offering a substantive rebuttal of Nolte’s interpretation. The hidden (and not so hidden) agenda of all the participants is present policies and the present political ethos, not history at all. An extremely instructive example of how the interpretation of history is relevant to contemporary politics! American liberal historians have such problems with this controversy because they don’t even accept Nolte’s analysis of fascism (at least not whole-heartedly). What is at issue is not the interpretation of fascism or the uniqueness of the Holocaust, but the Cold War, the Wende (conservative turn). Nolte is well aware that his quite accurate analysis of fascism can work both ways—to indict anti-communism or to ”relativize” or “historicize” Nazism. Since he doesn’t want the former, he is left with no choice but to pursue the latter. Americans take a cop-out: fascism is not anti-communism (in essence) but unique (demonic) evil.
Ultimately what was at stake for Nolte and his defenders in the Historikerstreit was not just German support for the new Cold War, but rejection of the values of the generational revolt of the 1960s in favor of the new conservatism of the 1980s. Hence the title of the article on the Historikerstreit I published in Radical History Review in 1988: “1986 vs. 1968: The turn to the Right in German Historiography.”
Several years earlier Sally and I had become quite active in protesting the Reagan Administration’s support for the right wing government of El Salvador, whose paramilitary death squads had assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero and murdered three American nuns in 1980. Reagan also financed counter-revolutionary terrorists known as “Contras” in their efforts to overthrow the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. Sally had become a member of the steering committee of the Central America Solidarity Association (CASA) cofounded by her young colleagues from the economics department at Eastern Washington University, future Democratic majority leader of the Washington state senate, Lisa Brown, and the later Washington delegate to the Northwest Power Council, Tom Karier.
Scott Nicholson, Kevin Baxter. Susan Reicheldorfer, Lisa Brown. Sally, Julie Barnard, Mort Alexander, Tom Karier
In 1986 the so-called Iran-Contra scandal burst on to the scene with the disclosure that money from arms sales to Iran had been diverted by the White House to finance Contra attacks against Nicaragua in violation of a law barring U.S. aid to the Contras—a law passed by the Democratic Congress in a futile effort to halt the aggressive policies of the Reagan Administration in Central America.
Protest at the Federal Building, 1986
But those of us hoping that the judicial system would now function as impartially as it had in the Watergate scandal were to be disappointed. None of the persons responsible for the illegal diversion of funds or efforts to cover up the affair ever went to jail. In fact, one of them, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, an aide to National Security Adviser John Poindexter, became something of a national hero to conservatives, despite admitting his role in revising, shredding, and removing key documents in the affair. I was able to use the resulting “Olliemania” as a teaching tool in my course on Hitler’s Germany.
On January 1st, 1987, at Tom Karier’s suggestion, we held the first of our annual New Year’s Day “Open House” brunches.
With Tom Karier and Jill Gibion, 1985
We made a mistake, not to be repeated in future years, of not specifying any hours for our “open house.”. While most of our guests arrived in the late morning, some, including my Whitworth College colleague Bob Lacerte and his wife, did not arrive until late afternoon.
Lisa Brown with Sally, New Year's Day brunch, 1987
Sally spent the summer of 1987 in Seattle at an NEH faculty seminar given by University of Washington Professor Ernst Behler.
Sally in mid-1980s
Sally, 1986
This gave us an opportunity for a number of weekend outings in Seattle and its scenic environs. We spent a particularly memorable weekend on Orkas Island with its well-known hot springs resort, where bathing suits were optional, but not required. I spent most of that summer working on a review of Abraham’s book on The Collapse of the Weimar Republic for the German Studies Review. It was to be counterbalanced by a review by Bob Grathwohl, who took an opposing view on the controversy over the book, but unfortunately he never lived up to his part of the bargain. Pleading lack of time, he failed to submit his review, whereupon the editors forced me to cut down the length of my review by severely curtailing the space they had originally promised.
Christmas, 1987
In June 1988 I traveled east to attend Trina’s graduation from Harvard. Sally was not able to attend this festive event as her semester did not end until the middle of June. Trina and her boyfriend at the time, her classmate Paddy Spence, had visited us in Spokane over Christmas both in 1986 and 1987.
Trina and Paddy
They shared a common interest in tie-dyeing, which they hoped to expand into a business.
Trina's Commencement June 1988
Trina on the veranda of her apartment in Cambridge, 1988
Under the influence of her jewelry-crafting mother, Trina had earlier shifted her major field of concentration from history and lit (my field of concentration at Harvard) to the very different field of environmental design. In her working career, however, which already began with a part-time job while she was still at Harvard, she pursued a different line altogether. She became quite skilled in creating computer models of the cancer risks generated by certain kinds of industrial hazardous wastes. This was the burgeoning field of risk management in which she eventually became very successful.
Trina getting her degree 1988
I tried to give Trina some advice based on my own experience of having delayed my graduate education too long. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do with your life,“ I told her, “but if you’re planning to get a PhD, don’t make the same mistake that I did by waiting so long.” It was advice that went unheeded. Ironically it would be exactly eighteen years, the very same number of years between my AB and PhD, before Trina earned her doctorate in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2006!
Tie-dye Christmas, 1987
In the summer of 1988 I attended another NEH faculty seminar under the direction of Robert Wohl at UCLA. The long drive to Los Angeles was my pretext to finally trade in my aging VW van and buy a new car, a Ford Escort, though that decision was not reached without the usual brooding over the implications of such a move. In the end I convinced myself with the help of a little casuistry:
Trying to decide whether to buy a new car: is it more materialistic to be attached to the old car than to covet a new one? If a car is just a use object, not a fetish, shouldn’t one buy a new one as the most efficient, time-effective means of transportation (the old car, because it needs constant tending, is more time-consuming)? At the very least, one should not worry about the money that a new car costs, for isn’t it materialistic not to want to trade in money for time and freedom from distraction?!?
My main concern that summer was to prepare for my forthcoming trip to Switzerland, where I was scheduled to give a presentation on Nietzsche and the Nazis at the annual conference in Sils-Maria in October 1988, the picturesque alpine village where Nietzsche had worked most summers in the 1880s. Sally joined me in Los Angeles at the end of July, and together we visited her parents in Phoenix before returning to Spokane via scenic route 1 along the Pacific coast with a stop-over in San Francisco and numerous stops along the Oregon coast.
Oregon coast, 1989