Autor/Autorin
Anyone wishing to look back on Kurt Nelhiebel’s life’s work on his 95th birthday today can do so on his website kurt-nelhielbel.de , starting with his time as a soldier in the Wehrmacht. Kurt Nelhiebel was born during the Great Depression of the 1920s and, as the son of an anti-fascist, experienced the rise of the Sudeten German Nazis and the occupation of his homeland by German troops. After the war and his expulsion, he became a journalist and later an editor at Radio Bremen for many years. He is not only the author of a large oeuvre of contemporary historical texts, stories and poems, but also an unerring caricaturist of political events. Even at the age of 95, Kurt Nelhiebel is still a passionate commentator on current political events in letters and articles for the Frankfurt-based Weltexpresso . Nelhiebel published his stories and texts on current affairs from ninety years ago in 2017 with PapyRossa under the title Gegen den Wind (Against the Wind ) and took stock:
„The quintessence of my work was the desire to see those responsible for what happened during the Second World War and afterwards disappear into oblivion once and for all. Not only because justice demanded it, but also because I felt it was necessary as a precaution for the future. Hence my fight against forgetting, hence the remembrance of Auschwitz and the causes of the expulsion.
The fact that the Federal Republic of Germany did not irrevocably separate itself from the guilty parties, but accepted them with grace and entrusted them, them of all people, with the construction of a democratic state, thereby infecting it, certainly unintentionally, with the Nazi spirit of injustice, while its opponents were excluded from participating in the reconstruction, i.e. that a self-purification never took place, that is the burden I carry around with me.“
The personal correspondence with his father Eugen Nelhiebel from the years of the Second World War and Kurt Nelhiebel’s diary entries from the period immediately afterwards are particularly impressive – unfortunately even more so in view of the current war in Ukraine. They document the father’s encouragement of the nascent author and journalist’s ongoing confrontation with the ruptures in his own history.
Conscripted as a young man, the almost schoolboy barely survived the final phase of the war and was taken prisoner of war by the Soviets in Berlin. A letter from his father saved his life on the arduous journey back to his beloved North Bohemian homeland.
„The decision must be made soon, should our youth bleed to death? When will the people finally be delivered from the fury of war?“ the father had written to his son on 28 January 1945. This question, which was life-threatening during the Nazi era and which Kurt had crossed out in red, was his salvation. Czech „partisans“, who wanted to shoot him on his way home, found the letter in his pocket and let the soldier, who had just been in the Wehrmacht, go home.
Kurt Nelhiebel has often told me about this letter from his father that saved him and it certainly hasn’t come to mind recently by chance. Do they write letters like that in Russia now? Is perhaps one of the old „Red Army soldiers“ that the young Wehrmacht soldier Kurt Nelhiebel met on his way home and who let him go laughing at the time, writing a letter to a grandson or great-grandson who is a soldier in Ukraine? Do Ukrainian fathers write such letters now? Or do the Ukrainian fathers of the young soldiers who are now fighting in the Donbass against the attacking Russian troops and the separatists consider such questions to be outside their realm of thought? Immoral, perhaps, because they are the ones being unlawfully attacked?
Anyone who reads the various recent open letters, most recently the one from Ukraine entitled „ Fight for a common Europe “ – an appeal for more military support, printed in the taz – is faced with such questions. We are also faced with the accusation of the letter writers that it would mean sacrificing Ukraine and forgetting the „vision of Europe“ if we in Germany do not now decide in favour of the „right side“.
Kurt Nelhiebel experienced persecution during the Nazi regime in his Bohemian homeland and later the abuse of love of homeland for nationalist purposes by the expellee associations with old Nazis as spokesmen. After the inevitable move to West Germany, he sided with the anti-fascists in the face of rearmament. He repeatedly criticised the failure of denazification and the establishment of anti-communism as a state doctrine, not least the fact that „double standards“ were applied after German reunification. Against this backdrop and with this experience, the war against Ukraine cannot faze him, however much it affects him personally. On 19 February 2022, he discussed Russia’s impending attack on Ukraine in Weltexpresso under the title „ Igniting the powder keg „. On 4 March, his „Open letter from an anti-fascist to Vladimir Putin“ was published under the title „ Cäsarenwahn „:
„ Mr President,“ writes Nelhiebel, „this Open Letter is written to you by the son of a German anti-fascist who had to go to war for Hitler against his will and was taken prisoner by the Soviets during the battles for Berlin. I am now 95 years old and have spent my whole life warning people about the evil spirit of Nazism and a new world conflagration. I have always stood on the side of Russia. And now you are stabbing me in the back.
Your attack on Ukraine is destroying everything that has been painstakingly achieved over decades, for example the realisation that military force does not solve any of the problems arising from the gap between rich and poor. Hundreds of billions of euros are to be spent on strengthening the armed forces in Germany alone over the next few decades because your war against Ukraine scares everyone. You want to demilitarise Ukraine and at the same time are causing an unprecedented arms race.“
Today, two and a half months after Nelhiebel wrote these lines, Finland and Sweden have joined Nato as a result of the war, after Turkish President Erdoğan cleared the way for this – of all things. It was less than a week ago, on 23 June 2022, that the Bundestag’s Human Rights Committee accused President Erdoğan in a public hearing of increasing repression of the opposition and civil society and a „dramatic dismantling“ of the rule of law.
If anyone is familiar with the misuse of anti-fascism for belligerent political purposes and knows how dangerous this is, it is Kurt Nelhiebel. In countless texts and stories, he has shown how this abuse, disguised in the guise of love of one’s homeland, comes across as national salvation from intruders or so-called foreign influences and blinds people. And so it is again now. Despite all the indignation, Kurt Nelhiebel does not allow himself to get carried away. He has remained true to his human and journalistic ethos and looks at both sides, even when he is personally affected. On 23 June 2022, his article „One hand washes the other“ was published under his pseudonym Conrad Taler. What about the fight against corruption in Ukraine?“ in Weltexpresso .
Kurt Nelhiebel was awarded the Villa Ichon Culture and Peace Prize in Bremen in 2014 for his journalistic work and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2018 for his anti-fascist commitment.