{"id":5268,"date":"2010-11-13T11:34:15","date_gmt":"2010-11-13T15:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=5268"},"modified":"2010-11-13T11:34:15","modified_gmt":"2010-11-13T15:34:15","slug":"from-germany-the-foreign-ministry-and-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/from-germany-the-foreign-ministry-and-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"From Germany: “The Foreign Ministry and the Past”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n
\u201cThe Foreign Ministry and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic\u201d <\/span><\/div>\n
by an independent historian commission<\/span><\/div>\n
\"Former<\/div>\n
Former Finance Senator Thilo Sarrazin\u2019s bestseller \u201cGermany is abolishing itself. <\/span><\/div>\n
How we are putting our country at risk\u201d. Both published by Random House<\/span><\/div>\n

Below the opening paragraphs of a signandsight article you can read the complete version of by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Hitler\u2019s diplomats debunked<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n

\u201cThe Foreign Ministry and the Past\u201d comes as a sharp rebuff to Thilo Sarrazin\u2019s bestseller, showing clearly that the last place Germany should seek salvation is in its elites. By Alan Posener<\/h3>\n

Two books have shaped German debate this autumn. Thilo Sarrazin\u2019s book<\/a> \u201cDeutschland schafft sich ab\u201d (Germany is abolishing itself) and \u201cDas Amt und die Vergangenheit\u201d (The Foreign Ministry and the past). On first appearances they would seem to have little in common, other than they are both published by Random House. Actually, though, these books are intricately bound up with one another, two souls in the breast of the politically-minded Bildungsburger<\/strong><\/em> or member of the German educated classes.<\/p>\n

Former Foreign Ministers Joschka Fischer<\/strong> and Frank-Walter Steinmeier<\/strong> both recently alluded to this connection. At the presentation of the report on the Foreign Ministry during the Third Reich by an independent historian commission, they talked to a packed auditorium in Berlin about its involvement in the Nazi killing machine. Independently of one another Steinmeier and Fischer gave speeches in which they compared \u201cThe Ministry\u201d with Thilo Sarrazin\u2019s bestseller. Fischer reminded his audience that it was in the Foreign Ministry that he been confronted with a \u201cparallel society<\/strong>\u201c. On a similar note, Steinmeier said that anyone who wanted to learn how Germany is abolishing itself should read \u201cThe Ministry\u201d.<\/p>\n

Indeed the report reveals the near total failure of a highly educated, extremely cultivated, privileged class which regarded itself as the embodiment of German Leitkultur<\/em><\/strong> or guiding national culture. The memory of this failure has impact all the more devastating because it surfaces just as another book is breaking all sales records by arguing that Germany is abolishing itself because that same elite is not having children and all the wrong people are. The wrong people being the unproductive<\/strong>, uneducated<\/strong> and uncultivated<\/strong> welfare recipients and immigrants who are reproducing with disproportionate regularity and with money from the state. And the blame goes to the multicultural and anti-elitist policies that the Red-Green coalition made Germany\u2019s national interest on entering office in 1998.<\/p>\n

(\u2026)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Foreign Ministry and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic\u201d by an independent historian commission Former Finance Senator Thilo Sarrazin\u2019s bestseller \u201cGermany is abolishing itself. How we...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,37,43],"tags":[871,873,872,870],"class_list":["post-5268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-cultural-studies","category-european-history","tag-alan-posener","tag-frank-walter-steinmeier","tag-joschka-fischer","tag-thilo-sarrazin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5268"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5273,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268\/revisions\/5273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}