Germany is often called Das Land der Denker und Dichter, the land of thinkers and poets. It feels fitting to dedicate this week’s post to these two defining terms. This country, the birthplace of the Enlightenment, has given the world idealist philosophy, Romantic literature, and classical music. Yet its luminous cultural history is often overshadowed by a grim 12-year chapter—a period that nearly destroyed the nation and almost erased an entire people: my people.
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. Across Germany, this solemn anniversary is being observed as part of the country’s commitment to Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a hefty 25-letter word that doesn’t quite capture the hefty process of “coming to terms with the past.” Events are taking place nationwide, including a gathering at Münsterplatz in Freiburg’s Old Town, for which I'm on the waiting list. If I can't get a seat, at least I’ll have some poets and thinkers to keep me company. It's been raining all day, and Leo's been home sick all weekend. All this seems to add to the mood.
While walking home from a bakery with Leo on Friday, just hours before he developed a fever, we stumbled upon a Stolperstein (literally “stumbling stone,” or metaphorically, “stumbling block”) dedicated to the Jewish philosopher Edmund Husserl directly kitty-corner to our apartment. Stolpersteine are small, brass plaques—10 cm squares embedded in pavement—that bear the names and life details of victims of Nazi persecution. Most begin with “Hier wohnte” (Here lived), marking their final domicile in Germany before deportation or exile, a stark reminder of lives interrupted.
I knew Husserl had taught in Freiburg, but I didn’t realize how close we were to his former home. The father of phenomenology and mentor to Martin Heidegger (an avowed Nazi), Husserl was stripped of his professorship in 1933, shortly after Hitler rose to power. While Heidegger ascended to the position of rector, Husserl faced public humiliation by his own country. Reflecting on this betrayal, Husserl remarked:
The future alone will judge which was the true Germany in 1933, and who were the true Germans—those who subscribe to the more or less materialistic-mythical racial prejudices of the day, or those Germans pure in heart and mind, heirs to the great Germans of the past whose tradition they revere and perpetuate.
Indeed, who were the true Germans? I want to remember the thinkers and poets above all, but I can’t forget the unease I felt as a student in Berlin over 20 years ago. Seeing an old man on the subway, I’d quietly wonder: Who are you? Where were you? What did you do?
The Stolperstein project, started by Gunter Demnig in the early 1990s, has placed over 100,000 markers across Europe. I first encountered them in Berlin and still feel moved each time I see one. I pause to read the inscriptions and bristle whenever someone steps on one, oblivious to their meaning.
Last week, during a family walk, Rafi noticed me studying a Stolperstein and asked what it said. I tried not to stumble over my own words as I explained that Germany wasn’t always kind to everyone, and that Jews like us were once persecuted here. Without delving into details, I told him the plaque marked someone unjustly killed and reminded him that this is why his great-grandparents—my father’s parents—fled Germany, the only home they’d ever known. Leo overheard and asked, “Did Saba run away too?” I explained that my dad wasn’t alive yet and was lucky to have been born in Israel. Days later, passing another Stolperstein, Leo said, “It’s good Saba wasn’t borned here, right?” Right.
Whenever Erol teaches his summer course in Berlin for the University of Toronto, he asks me to take his students on a tour of Bayerischer Platz, a district in affluent Schöneberg that was once home to many prominent figures, such as Marlene Dietrich and Albert Einstein. I always end the tour at the Stolperstein of the poet Gertrud Kolmar, to whom I dedicated the last chapter of my book. Kolmar lived in a villa in Berlin’s leafy West End until 1938, when her family home was “Aryanized” and she and her father were forced into a cramped Judenwohnung (Jewish domicile) near Bayerischer Platz. Her "room of one’s own" was reduced to a small kitchen table, where she carved out an hour before dawn to read and write, only to then endure forced labor in a munitions factory.
On Wednesday I attended an event as part of Jewish Literature Week at Zum Wetzstein, a gorgeous bookstore located in a 12th-century house in Freiburg’s downtown. The evening was devoted to Gertrud Kolmar, and a local academic named Ingeborg Gleichauf was interviewed about her recent biography of the poet.
When the interviewer asked if anyone in the audience had read Kolmar, only three hands were raised—one of them mine. He invited us to share our thoughts, and I suddenly felt like a shy teenager, flushed and nervous as I tried to explain in German why Kolmar’s animal poems and her Berlin novel had captured my imagination.
The biographer spoke about Kolmar’s life in broad strokes (not exactly a memorable lecture), but her first recitation—a poem titled “Die Dichterin” (“The Poetess”)—was stunning. Here are the opening stanzas (first in translation):
You hold me now completely in your hands...
My heart beats like a frightened little bird's
Against your palm. Take heed! You do not think
A person lives within the page you thumb.
To you this book is paper, cloth, and ink,
Some binding thread and glue, and thus is dumb,
And cannot touch you (though the gaze be great
That seeks you from the printed marks inside),
And is an object with an object's fate.
(Du hältst mich in den Händen ganz und gar...
Mein Herz wie eines kleinen Vogels schlägt
In deiner Faust. Der du dies liest, gib acht;
Denn sieh, du blätterst einen Menschen um.
Doch ist es dir aus Pappe nur gemacht,
Aus Druckpapier und Leim, so bleibt es stumm
Und trifft dich nicht mit seinem großen Blick,
Der aus den schwarzen Zeichen suchend schaut,
Und ist ein Ding und hat ein Dinggeschick.)
As I reread these verses, I think of tracing Kolmar’s name on her Stolperstein in Berlin and of walking past Husserl’s the other day. How humbling that a Dichter or Denker can so easily be reduced to a mere Ding (thing).
I mentioned that we live in a converted villa. Evidently, intellectuals of Husserl’s caliber were a dime a dozen in our neighborhood, called Wiehre. On the side of our house is a memorial—not a Stolpersteinbut rather a large plaque—to another poet of the era, Reinhold Schneider, a devout Catholic who was actively involved in anti-Nazi resistance.
I’d never heard of Schneider before moving here, so I went digging for some poems and was struck by one of his better-known sonnets. Here’s the first stanza, which, for those of you mired as I have been in news of Trump’s latest shenanigans, will feel strikingly relevant:
Now madness builds its earthen palaces
And has its signs erected in the streets;
It drives the blindly confused crowds together
From noise to noise and feast to feast.
(Nun baut der Wahn die tönernen Paläste.
Und lässt sein Zeichen in die Straßen rammen;
Er treibt das blindverwirrte Volk zusammen
Vom Lärm zum Lärme und vom Fest zum Feste.)
I realize this week’s reflections may feel heavier than my usual musings on playgrounds and hiking trails. They, too, are part of my experience in Germany, where the weight of the past is always (quite literally) underfoot. I’m grateful to be here.
On an uplifting note, it seems German poetry has penetrated Rafi's heart. After just a few days of German school, he has memorized Die Drei Spatzen (The Three Sparrows), a famous children’s poem by Christian Morgenstern. He offered us a little recitation (half reading and half declaiming by heart), and when he reached the final couplet—Sie hören alle drei ihrer Herzlein Gepoch./ Und wenn sie nicht weg sind, so sitzen sie noch (All three birds hear their hearts beat./ And unless they’ve flown off, they’re still on their seat)—my own heartbeat quickened.
Here's his painting from art class, inspired by Morgenstern's poem. As Rafi put it, "The teachers are kind of obsessed with it." Frau Augsten told him his branch is too thick (art criticism starts early in German schools, apparently), but I think it's perfect.
Obviously many black marks had to consolidate forces to bear the weight of the Herzlein Gepoch. Thanks for the great gaze!