Kohl Looks Back, Forward : ‘Everything Follows From History,’ Chancellor Says

On the eve of President Reagan’s arrival in West Germany last week, Chancellor Helmut Kohl spoke with Tyler Marshall, The Times’ Bonn correspondent. Excerpts from the interview:

Question: Your wish that President Reagan visit a concentration camp memorial and the Bitburg war cemetery arise in part because of the anniversary of the collapse of the Third Reich 40 years ago. Why is 40 years so much more important than, say 20 years ago, which passed almost unnoticed?

Answer: The 8th of May is an important date for Germans. Many are surprised that I am stressing this. May 8th (this year) is so important in contrast to 20 years ago because then four-fifths of our people held personal memories of May 8, 1945. Today, approximately two-thirds of all West German citizens have no such personal memory of that time.

We also made serious mistakes experimenting with German educational policies over the last decades. Teaching of history was partially suppressed and replaced by a (more amorphous) social studies program in the classroom. There were also false prophets going throughout the country preaching that a lack of history would be an asset to the future. I am of the view that everything follows from history. Without it you cannot understand the present or help shape the future. Included in German history are Auschwitz and Treblinka. Bergen-Belsen is a symbol of all these sites of horror.

Q: Do you believe most Germans feel as you do on this point?

A: The polls from the last few days have shown that 68% of those polled said it is a good thing for the President and the chancellor to go to Bergen-Belsen. What is very important is that there is little differences between age groups--between, say, 60-year-olds who often took part in the war and experienced it, and the young who did not.

Q: Despite the success of the new democratic Germany, there is little overt pride among West Germans in its accomplishments. Your own efforts to instill such a sense of patriotism have generated only a marginal response. Why?

A: The picture of Germany today is like a picture taken with a flash camera. It is only the image of the moment. You cannot understand the Germans of the present if you do not see the Germans of the previous century: the Wilhelmian Germany, the First World War, the collapse of the empire, the first great attempt at establishing a republic . . . the confusion which resulted in Hitler’s gaining power (and) the perversion of patriotism to nationalism.

Our present situation as a divided country (also) puts us in an extremely unusual situation. The misery, the deaths and the suffering cannot be redeemed. What can be made good materially, we have tried to do. We will achieve more, in light of this history, if, to use a German expression, we each make sure our own steps are clean.

Q: Concern about West Germany’s future political direction is a recurrent theme in the West. How do you assess West Germany’s commitment to the Western Alliance?

A: I said in my first statement (as chancellor) that the Western Alliance is a part of our political ambition. I said that we are part of the West. I repeated that in my speech at Bergen-Belsen (April 21). And from the American point of view that is important. We live in the middle of Europe and are the biggest European country (in population). That is not an achievement. It is a fact.

Q: How long do you believe the shadow of the Third Reich will fall over Germany?

A: I have an almost brutal answer to this. I think that the discussions which are presently taking place and which move us so deeply and painfully will end only when all of those who experienced that period of the time are gone, if only because from a distance, things appear in a different light. I want to repeat that the horrible events which took place in German history should not be forgotten.