The intellectuals are back in Germany. Not that they have disappeared. But it had been a long time since they had occupied such a place in the public debate. The reason for their mobilization: the green light given by the government on April 26 to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine.
Three days after the announcement of this decision, twenty-eight personalities published an “Open letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz”, asking him to reverse course and “do everything possible so that a ceasefire can be concluded as soon as possible”. Main argument put forward by the signatories, including feminist journalist Alice Schwarzer, filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge, comedian Lars Eidinger and novelists Romain Seethaler, Martin Walser and Juli Zeh: “The delivery of large quantities of heavy weapons risks making Germany a co-belligerent, and a Russian reaction could then trigger the mutual assistance procedure provided for in the NATO treaty, posing the danger of a war world. »
In the hours following the publication of the forum on the site ofEmma, the magazine run by Alice Schwarzer, social networks were on fire. One of the first to react was the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk. “These celebrities, who want to deprive Ukraine of heavy weapons and thus allow the assassin Putin to bomb women and children, are betraying the principle of ‘never again’. No lesson learned from history. Sad “, was indignant the diplomat on Twitter, before returning to the charge, the next day, by targeting Alice Schwarzer by name: “Your call for the surrender of Ukraine proves that your feminism is only a facade, a fake. Accepting the gang rapes of women by soldiers is pure cynicism.»
” Never again “
Wednesday, May 4, the weekly Die Zeit published another open letter, also addressed to Olaf Scholz, but this time to congratulate him on the contrary for having decided, after weeks of procrastination, to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine, as well as to ask him to punish Russia more heavily. The initiator of the text, the essayist Ralf Fücks, is a historical figure of the Greens, which says a lot about the distance taken by the latter vis-à-vis the pacifism of their beginnings. Along with the Liberals, the Ecologists are today those who, within the “traffic light” coalition of the Social-Democrat Chancellor, are indeed pushing hardest to help Ukraine militarily.
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