Crowds drawn to Berlin museum by Arendt’s warnings

From the Weekend edition of The Irish Times.

DEREK SCALLY in Berlin

On the plaster facade of Berlin’s leading modern art museum, a discreet metal plaque reads: “Stroke here in case of emotional surges.”

Given Germany’s unstable mood these days, crowds should be lining up here in the drizzly morning. Instead, people have gathered inside under the museum hall’s cast- iron arches to listen to the words of Hannah Arendt, the German-born philosopher.

For 100 hours since Wednesday, day and night, artists have read from – and audiences on grey beanbags listened to – the entire 500-page text of Arendt’s On the Origins of Totalitarianism.

The project, by Cuban artist- activist Tania Bruguera, was long-planned and twice postponed. As the world appears to spin ever-faster off its axis, Arendt’s analysis of anti- democratic dictators seems eerily and wearily timely.

“Desperate hope and desperate fear often seem closer to the centre of such events than balanced judgment and measured insight,” she wrote in 1950. “The central events of our time are not less effectively forgotten by those committed to a belief in an unavoidable doom, than by those who have given themselves up to reckless optimism.”

For Bruguera, whose first reading of the book in 2015 during her house arrest attracted official ire, the reading is a form of “behavioural art”. It has added relevance in Germany, she says, given a political instability and what she calls a “hardening of prejudice”.

The Berlin event began with a public reading of the names of artists in Germany who in recent times have come into difficulty, or had work or shows cancelled, because of their Israel-critical and pro-Palestinian views.

Beyond the museum, further demonstrations are planned this weekend against the radical deportation policies of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, which is up to 35 per cent in polls in eastern Saxony in advance of a September election there.

“Many people here in Germany, the centre, are afraid of the AfD growth and do nothing, but a major lesson of Arendt is that evil happens when ordinary people just carry on with their days,” says Alice, a Berlin artist.

While German politicians face a dilemma – given historical responsibilities for Israel – Alice sees public opinion in Germany as increasingly pro-Palestinian. Recent social media posts of Israeli soldiers joking about destruction and killing were, for many, the last straw. “This is the tragedy which Hannah Arendt warns about: What can happen when you are trained to see your fellow human as an inhuman other?” Alice asks.

Fury at the ongoing war spilt over earlier this week in Berlin, where a local university student who is Jewish was reportedly attacked outside a city bar by a fellow German student with Arab roots.

In the latest disruption on Thursday night in Berlin, pro-Palestinian demonstrators entered an international legal gathering at the Humboldt University and prevented an address by Daphne Barak-Erez, a constitutional judge critical of government court reforms.

Argentinian artist Evangelina finishes her reading of a particularly dense section of the Arendt text on Lenin’s death with an air of calm. “I feel totalitarianism is creeping in everywhere once more: look at my homeland, Argentina,” she says. “We are losing free places to talk without judgment, and to listen with kindness.”