The Austrian writer Peter Handke, European public opinion, and the war in Yugoslavia
By Bernd Reinhardt
Although many German-speaking artists took cover during the war in
Kosovo, the Austrian writer Peter Handke stood out by sharply
criticising NATOs actions from the very beginning as criminal.
Morality is the new word for despotism, is how he countered all
those—such as writers Guenter Grass, Stefan Heym, Hans Magnus
Enzenburger; the cabaret artist Ellen Tiedtke, or Wolfgang Niedekken,
the lead singer of the German rock group BAP—who either supported
the bombing for moral reasons, kept quiet, or who argued for UN
intervention (Handkes interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, May
15, 1999).
Pictures and words can be used to create the greatest deception, and
earn great amounts of money, is what he said elsewhere about official
media reports of mass slaughter being carried out by the Serbs. No one
knows what is going on in Kosovo, because no one can get in.... The
refugees are all saying the same things. Why should that make it more
credible? [1]
Handke turned the tables on the official justifications for the bombings,
saying NATO had not prevented a new Auschwitz, but had rather
created one. In those days, it was gas chambers and shooting squads,
today it is computerised killers from 15,000 feet. [2]
Just two days after the first bombs had fallen, Handke issued his first
open letter, which spoke of Green slaughterers. [3] He demanded that
the German Minister of Death (Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping),
who just months before had sent him birthday wishes, should return my
books to me. [4] Handke attacked the sociologist and philosopher
Juergen Habermas for lending the war his moral support. He undertook
several short journeys to Serbia, and returned the Buechner Prize (the
highest award for a German-language author) that he had been awarded
in 1973.
The response of the media was to shower him with abuse. It was not
only German-speaking colleagues who turned their backs on him. There
are intellectuals who, after hearing his utterances about the war in
Yugoslavia, have sworn never to pick up another of his books, wrote
Susan Sonntag in New York. The French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut
saw in Handke an ideological monster, whose utterances were based
on a Germanic guilty conscience and the conviction that he was an
invulnerable genius.
This campaign reached a climax when, in mid-May, the actress Marie
Colbin spoke out in an open letter. She told of private arguments, which
apparently became violent, from an earlier time when she lived with
Handke, with the aim of portraying him as a violent, power-hungry man,
and a vain author ... who enjoyed depicting himself publicly as the voice
in the wilderness. She drew the conclusion that he was an ideologue of
modern Balkan fascism. [5]
The Berliner Zeitung pointed to Handkes Olympian outlook and
naivete, criticising the literary work of this internationally recognised
author as narcissistically wrapped up in itself, as the attempt to work on
a poetic parallel universe, which he had increasingly sought to
construct as an impenetrable castle against the real world. [6] The Swiss
writer Laederach called Handkes statements on the war in Kosovo a
case of advanced mental fog. The German-Swiss PEN Centre saw in
him the blind inhabitant of an ivory tower, whose pro-Serbian
derailment, as the PEN general secretary put it in the Berliner Zeitung,
reveals a particularly unpalatable cynicism. [7]
There is, however, nothing in Handkes public statements to indicate that
he is a supporter of the Serbian nationalist Slobodan Milosovic, or his
politics. Anyone who has followed his writings over recent years can see
this clearly. His latest play, about the war in Yugoslavia— Die Fahrt im
Einbaum oder Das Stueck zum Film vom Krieg ( Journey in a canoe,
or the play about the film of the war)—which premiered in June at the
Vienna Burgtheater, likewise contains no trace of pro-Serbian sentiment.
Handke told the Austrian magazine News that Milosevic was the
countrys elected president and had to defend his countrys territory.
He added, Anyone in his position in the last ten years would have acted
the same way he did. He was left no choice. [8]
In the interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung quoted above, he said
clearly, I am with the Serbian people, not Milosevic. Anyone who is not
a pronounced anti-Serb is despised as being pro-Serb. Whoever
mentions Milosevics name without immediately adding slaughterer,
Balkan Hitler, God protect us, is accused of taking sides with
Milosovic. He added, polemically, that to be called pro-Serb today is
an honour.
A few years before, Handke had argued against the demonisation of the
Serbs in the Bosnian war. In autumn 1995 he travelled to the land of
so-called aggressors because all the newspaper articles had unleashed
an urge to look behind the mirror.
Who can really tell, he wrote, what such a thing is like, if one has only
been shown a picture? [9] When the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in January
1996 published the report of his visit, Justice for Serbia, he was
violently attacked in the media and accused of having a pro-Serbian
attitude.
The opposite was the case. Anyone who bothered to read his text
carefully could not fail but notice that even in his dispute with the young
French writer Patrick Besson, Handke expressed concern that in
rejecting any generalised media prejudice against Serbs, one had to avoid
going over to the opposite extreme, an equally generalised defence of
the Serbs. Such arguments contained the danger of expressing
something which could be likened to the glorification of the Soviet system
by certain visitors from the West in the 1930s. [10]
One reason for the unceasing vilification of Handke is plain to see.
Comparing NATOs intervention with that of the Nazis is both a
provocation and a withering criticism of all those anti-fascists from the
1968 generation whose moral appeals for decades stressed that war
must never again be permitted from German soil. Now, having
themselves called for war, they had to conjure up a second Hitler to
justify their about-face.
There may, however, be another, more important consideration. Handke
has rejected the prevailing opinion in Europe (and especially in Germany)
that supports, in the name of national self-determination, the formation of
numerous petty states in the Balkans. He has called this policy absolutely
childish, according to one German Internet newspaper which indignantly
quoted Handkes views on the liberation struggle of the Kosovo
Albanians. [11] Is this perhaps why Handke has been labeled
pro-Serb?
Handke clearly sees nothing positive in the division of the Balkans. In
1991, in his book Abshied des Träumers vom Neunten Land ( The
Dreamers Farewell from the Ninth Land), he spoke against the
separation of Slovenia from Yugoslavia.
In the account of his travels, entitled Justice for Serbia, to which his
critics continually return, his regret over the dissolution of Yugoslavia is
evident. In the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Handke expressed his sorrow
over the tragic failure of what he called reform-communism in
Yugoslavia. [12]
His book ends with an extract from the suicide note of a former Tito
partisan who, in desperation, killed himself in 1992. The betrayal, the
decline and chaos of our country, the difficult situation into which our
people have been thrown, the war ... in Bosnia Herzogovina, the
extermination of the Serbian people and my own illness have made my
further life senseless. [13] About his wife, who was Handkes host, he
wrote: Until the end of her life, she would remain a thoroughly convinced
Yugoslavian—not Serbian—communist ... even today this is the only
possibility she sees for the south Slav people. Before the German
invasion in 1941, under the monarchy, there were a few who owned
everything. Next to them was only howling poverty. And now, in this
special Serbian state—where the powers that be are traitors, as in the
other new states—this is repeated, with avaricious war profiteers
alongside of half-frozen have-nothings. [14]
As Handke writes in his conclusion, Justice for Sebia is not only
directed at a German-reading audience, but is also for those in Slovenia,
Croatia, Serbia. [15] Handke wants to remind the people of the former
Yugoslavia that they have a common past. To this end, he is not so
concerned with the current theatres of war. He calls to mind
unspectacular, inconspicuous, everyday events shared by the various
peoples—events which previously would not have been given a second
thought.
For example, he recalls how, early in summer, swimmers would swim
backwards and forwards between the Bosnian bank and the Serbian;
that many people had Muslim friends; how cosmetics from Slovenia were
popular, as was Bosnian fruit and vegetables that were shipped over the
Drina; that at one time, the buses used to go from Bajina Basta to Tuzla
and Srebrenica, and this was nothing special; in contrast to today, it was
not unusual to see a car from Skopje/Macedonia parked on the street.
The reader is given an impression of how natural it was that the various
languages and dialects existed alongside each other in the Balkans, and
how this unconsciously penetrated everyday life—until today. When
Sladko, Handkes Serbian travel companion from Germany, visited his
parents village, despite straining to listen, I suddenly understood
nothing—were they even speaking Serbian? No, the family had naturally
started speaking Romanian, the conversational and private language of
most villagers. Porodin was renowned as such a linguistic island. But did
they even consider themselves to be Serbs? Of course — what else?
[16]
Why had there been such massive slaughter? Handke asked. Who
were the aggressors? Were those who provoked a war the same as
those who started it? And what did starting it mean? [17]
In contrast to the official media reports in Western Europe, he was
unable to discover any Serbian paranoia. He suggested that it was not
present on the territory where three ethnic peoples ... intermingled, not
simply in the multi-cultural capital, but rather from village to village, and
in the villages themselves, even from house to shack, living side-by-side
and in between one another... He concluded that legendary grains of
sand... were blown up and became as big as rocks thrown in the anger
of war. That happened in our darkrooms. [18]
How could this be compared to any violent dreams of Greater Serbia?
he asked.
In the end, wasnt it rather a Greater Croatia that proved to be
something more real, or more effective, or more massively determined
and conclusive, than the illusory grains of sand of Serbian legend, that
nowhere and never became a unified concept of power and policy?
In biting words, he wrote of the new independence of the Slovenian state:
Now... I arrived at the Hotel Zlatorog ... at the valleys end, everything
arranged for German speakers, and in the entrance the framed photos of
Titos visit had been removed—not a pity really—and replaced with
those of Willy Brandt.... On state television—almost nothing other than
German and Austrian channels—over and over again a foreign trade or
economic delegation was having native folk songs sung to them. Then the
Slovenian President would enter the scene. Wasnt he once a capable
and proud functionary? But now he behaves like a waiter, almost like a
lackey, who serves up his country to the foreigners who visit, as if he
wanted to satisfy every wish of a German employer or customer: the
Slovenians arent this or that, but rather a hard working and willing Alpen
people. The first question that Handke heard a customer in the new
supermarket ask, was: Has the Bild [German newspaper] arrived? [20]
On his journey in April of this year, Handke lashed out against the fat
German, courtly mendacious French and expansionist American
language of the negotiations, which he followed on the hotel television,
and the logic of the NATO attack, which could bomb both a corn field
and a chicken coup, because corn, chicken and eggs could nourish an
enemy soldier.
He mused: Its their own fault? The guilty, isnt it the people of this land
themselves.... What does the country say? The country says absolutely
nothing, it only becomes quieter, much quieter, and thereby doesnt say
anything—which is more enduring. It means: no, were not to blame.
[21]
Last year, the Austrian cultural journalist Sigfrid Loeffler delivered a
speech to the Goethe Institute in Montevideo entitled Peter Handke and
the controversy over his text , Justice for Serbia. She supported
Handke and traced the origins of the incessant, malicious press attacks
back to a fundamental question that Handke had provoked: Who will
really do justice to the war in Yugoslavia?
The storm of disapproval that arose in the press following the publication
of Justice for Serbia ... can only be understood if one keeps in mind the
really audacious provocation that the poet was undertaking, legitimised
by nothing other than the artists sheer self will. The poet is not only
seeking to criticise the predominant media practices and place a question
mark over them. He wants to counterpose his poetic experience, his
poets eye, to the picture of the Serbs that the media paints world-wide.
Against the superior power of media opinions about this war, he counters
with his poetic voice. A single individual opposes the worlds entire press:
the poet, in and for himself. And he has the nerve to pose the question
anew: Which side bears the guilt for the Yugoslavian war of secession?
[22]
Handke declares that the majority of war journalists confuse their role as
journalist with that of judge, or even demagogue, and ... are just as nasty
as the dogs of war on the battlefield. Their words are kept on the taut
leash they are given. Instead of research into the origins [of the war],
what counts is only the sale of naked, randy, market-oriented facts, or
bogus facts. [23]
For Handke, the truth about the war is not one-dimensional, and does
not run in a straight line, as the media would have us believe. The
problem—is it only mine?—is more complicated, complicated by many
levels of reality, or degrees, and in trying to clarify it, I am aiming at
something quite thoroughly real, in which all of the swirling threads of
reality enable some sort of context to be vaguely grasped. [24]
The two film directors in Handkes Journey in a Canoe also experience
this. In the end, they abandon their joint film project regarding the war in
Yugoslavia. They find the events on the ground too confusing and alien to
make a simply drawn story that would move the public, using the tried
and tested formula, as they had originally intended, where everything
unfolds nicely according to plan.
At one time, students in Berlin (before they later became writers, lawyers
and politicians) occupied the media headquarters of Axel Springer,
publisher of the gutter newspaper Bild, in protest against total
manipulation. That was in 1968. Today they look back at their fight
against the power of the media with some nostalgia, but also with
mounting incomprehension. For today they are, above all, more tolerant.
Handke clearly does not belong to this group. He goes his own way,
critical and unimpressed by the prevailing opinions. The high standards he
has set himself as a traveller in the cause of truth—as a journalist from
the Berliner Zeitung condescendingly remarked—thereby throwing his
international authority as an artist into the balance, deserves respect.
The fact that he presently provides the portrait of an isolated fighter
underscores the rapid right-wing development of the intellectual and
political milieu from which Handke himself comes, and which in past
times brought forth such critical spirits as Juergen Habermas, Stefan Heym
and Gunther Grass. The accusation that he has assumed the role of the
voice in the wilderness out of pride or to seek publicity is levelled
against Handke only because, in reality, the writer is holding the fort
alone.
Notes:
1. Burgenland-Online,
http://www.burgenland.com/Tmh/Zrlokal/Kultur/news-17380.asp
2. SZ 15. May 1999, interview
3. Online-Archiv Munzinger, Peter Handke p. 5
4. SZ 15. May 1999, interview
5. Tiroler Tageszeitung Online 21. May 1999,
http://www.tirol.com/tt/Welt/Politik/article_34300.html
6. Berliner Zeitung, 3 April 1999
7. Berliner Zeitung, 31 March 1999
8. Vienna Online,
http://www.vienna.at/pubs/news/lokalviol/1999_05_11_14_16_wwn_33.asp
9. Gerechtigkeit fuer Serbien(Part 1), SZ 05. January 1996, culture pp. 1, 2
10. Ebenda, P. 3
11. Burgenland-Online, see Note 1.
12. SZ 15. May 1999, interview
13. Gerechtigkeit fuer Serbien (part 2), SZ 13. January 1996, culture p. 4
14. Ebenda p. 3
15. Ebenda p. 4
16. Ebenda p. 1
17. Gerechtigkeit fuer Serbien (part 1), p. 2
18. Ebenda, pp. 3-4
19. Ebenda, p. 4
20. Gerechtigkeit fuer Serbien (part 2), p. 3
21. Der Krieg ist das Gebiet des Zufalls SZ 05. June 1999
22. Sigrid Loeffler Peter Handke und die Kontroverse um seine Streitschrift
‚Gerechtigkeit fuer Serbien unter http://www.goethe.de/hs/mot/vortra//loef-1d.htm
23. Gerechtigkeit fuer Serbien (part 2) p. 4; (part 1) p. 2
24. Gerechtigkeit fuer Serbien (part 1) p. 2
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