Kafka Esken

The adjective "Kafkaesque" means something like eerie, unreal, threatening, bizarre. It is one of the few adjectives that cannot be intensified. If there were a superlative, it would probably be "kafkaesque". It would be a cross between the name of writer Franz Kafka and SPD party chairwoman Saskia Esken. The latter was a guest on ZIB, an ORF program [1] in Austria on Labour Day. Esken used harsh words to warn against the AfD. So far, so normal. And then she said the following.

"I want to tell you that Goebbels gave a speech in 1935 about the stupidity of democracy. At the time, he said, the NSDAP had all the means at its disposal to abolish it itself. We will not be prepared to give the AfD the means to abolish democracy." 

In response to journalist Armin Wolf's incredulous question as to whether she was really comparing the AfD with Goebbels, Esken reiterated her position.

"Yes. That's a Nazi party."

Double whammy. The reactions followed hot on the heels. Outrage in the social media. In addition, criminal charges for suspected incitement of the people in accordance with Section 130 (3) [2]. It was not the only borderline statement Eskens made in the interview. The SPD party leader claimed that the AfD wanted to expel 27% of citizens, i.e. all migrants, from Germany. The interview's Kafkaesque, staircase joke nevertheless remained hidden even from critical media. It was not Goebbels who made fun of the stupidity of democracy. It was someone else. The denouement comes at the end of this column. Before that, let us recall older Kafka-Esken statements from recent years.

Covidiots! They are stupid, irresponsible people! This is how Saskia Esken mocked tens of thousands of protesters who took to the streets in Berlin on August 1, 2020 to defend their basic rights. After examining hundreds of criminal complaints, the Berlin public prosecutor's office closed the investigation [3]. It can be assumed that something similar will happen after Esken's gaffes at the ORF appearance. Nothing will happen. And this is due to a law that is over 140 years old, the Courts Constitution Act. German public prosecutors are bound by instructions. They are not independent. In May 2019, Heribert Prantl from the SZ newspaper called for "Unleash the German judiciary!" in a column worth reading. [4]. Until that happens, Saskia Esken will be above the law.

The Covidioten statement is well known. It has been forgotten that Saskia Esken raved on Anne Will in February 2023 that "new ideas" had been developed as a result of coronavirus [5].

"We also applied new ideas there, back then with the vaccination campaign (...) also with 2G and 3G. Applications that would not have been possible before."

So 2G was not possible before Corona? Yes then. If you, as a reader, want to go to the source, watch out for the nervous twitching that affects Jens Spahn when Saskia Esken says this publicly on TV. My cynical comment? Even 90 years ago, interesting new ideas were applied in Germany that were not politically possible before. Even 90 years ago, people who just wanted to exercise their basic rights were called stupid idiots and far worse. And so to the speech by Goebbels mentioned by Saskia Esken, in which he spoke about the stupidity of democracy, which allowed the enemies to abolish it. It does not exist.

It is of course true that the Nazi Minister of Propaganda gave an infinite number of terrible speeches. It is also true that Joseph Goebbels gave a speech in the Wartburg on December 4, 1935 at the opening of the Reich Radio Saarbrücken. There, Goebbels ridiculed his political opponents as stupid to the cheers of the audience. Can be heard in this contemporary document [6] from around minute 15. 

"When our opponents say:  Yes, we used to give you [...] freedom of opinion (...) yes, you gave it to us, that's no proof that we should do the same with you! [...] The fact that you gave it to us is proof of how stupid you are!" 

The Goebbels statement is despicable. However, it is not the words that Saskia Esken put in his mouth. Someone else spoke about the stupidity of democracy abolishing itself. His name is Hans Schwarz von Berk. Von Berk was a Nazi journalist and editor of the book "Der Angriff" [7], published in 1935. This book is a collection of Goebbels essays from the summer of 1927 to the fall of 1930, but Hans Schwarz von Berk wrote the pathetic chapter prefaces himself. This includes the foreword to the chapter "The stupidity of democracy". It says on page 61:

"That will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it provided its mortal enemies with the means by which it was destroyed." 

In other words, the Goebbels statement reproduced by Saskia Esken in indirect speech is officially one of the quotes falsely attributed to the Nazi propaganda minister [8, 9].

A Nazi is a Nazi. Then it was a Nazi journalist and not Goebbels himself who said that about the stupidity of democracy. Goebbels certainly thought the same. He could have been expected to do the same. Perhaps that is the case. That is a legitimate point of view and yet this story about Saskia Eskens misattributing a quote on ORF has another point. What actually happened to Hans Schwarz von Berk [10]?

Little or nothing is known about his career after the war. Von Berk went into hiding for a while, is said to have worked in the advertising industry and died in 1973. Only Der Spiegel knew anything about his political views after the war in an issue from February 1964, where Hans Schwarz von Berk is quoted as follows [11]:

"I think the only party you can vote for for years is the SPD, and that's who I vote for."

Dear Chairwoman of the SPD, in the unlikely event that you read this column, I would like to translate it for you. When you compared the AfD to Goebbels on May 1, 2024, you were not using Goebbels' words in indirect speech. In reality, it was the words of an avowed SPD voter.

That's not Kafkaesque. This is Kafka Esken.