(NOVEMBER 1968—OCTOBER 1969)
DURING THE ELEVEN MONTHS that followed the slap—in other words, until Kiesinger and his party were defeated in the legislative elections of September 1969—I was constantly moving around, rarely staying more than a week at a time in Paris.
The hardest part was leaving Arno when he was sick: flu, mumps, measles. Raïssa would lecture me when that happened, pretending that she didn’t want to look after him, so that I would stay. But I had to go; if I’d given in and canceled a protest march or a speech, I sensed that the momentum would be lost. And so I kissed Arno’s hot forehead and left him, with a heavy heart, to catch the night trains that saved me so much precious time.
My mother-in-law grasped the enormity of the battle we were fighting then; she realized its importance. And she rallied behind us with all the courage and strength of character that she always showed. She felt it was her duty to lecture me, to warn me of the dangers I was risking, but she always did so kindly, and she always looked after my son.
How many times did Serge and I say goodbye at the Gare du Nord or the Gare de l’Est with a tender kiss that filled me with the strength to keep going? How many times did I wake up, my mouth parched, the pale German landscape rushing past the window, and feel viscerally discouraged by the immensity of the country, its huge factories, its millions of cars, all those strangers whose political morality I was trying to change? What I was seeking seemed, in those moments, so unreal, so unknowable, that I questioned myself: Was it worth the sacrifice of all my energy and the peacefulness of family life? Nazism seemed to belong to the past: the dead were dead, and the sufferings had been lessened by time; I felt alone and very small. So I listed all the advantages that I would gain personally from this campaign; I clung to the love I felt for—and from—Serge, which was constantly growing, and to the trust that so many people had put in me. I focused so hard on these things that I was able to rebuild my world of the night before, and once again I felt inspired.
I was receiving letters from all over the world. Why did so many people who didn’t really know me write to me so trustingly? Because my acts embodied the Germany that hated Hitler, the Germany that had accepted the burden of its Nazi past in order to better fight it. That is why there was sometimes such hostility toward me, an emotion born deep inside all those men and women who had not yet accepted that Germany did what it did. The German people had murdered on such a vast scale that the scar in the European flesh was still sensitive: there was so much suspicion of Germany as a nation that any Germans who, rightly or wrongly, were considered exemplary immediately attracted all the trust that foreigners wanted to put in the German people as a whole.
Through the cities and the fields of Germany, I conscientiously pursued the task that I had taken upon myself: from a stage to the head of a protest march, I organized spectacular demonstrations; I wrote detailed dossiers; I held tight to Kiesinger like a dog that won’t let go of a thief’s ankle, growling and sometimes sinking my teeth into his flesh.
The following extracts are taken from the diary of that campaign:
November 7, 1968—I slap Chancellor Kiesinger.
November 11—Brussels. I arrived from Paris last night with Raïssa, getting here two days before Kiesinger. He is going to speak about Europe to the bigwigs of NATO. I am organizing a meeting of my own that will take place a few hours before this.
November 13—It is 7:00 a.m. Hammering on the door of our hotel room. “Police! Identity check!” My mother-in-law cracks open the door and hands our passports to two plainclothes policemen. “That’s not enough. You have to come with us to the ministry. You have fifteen minutes to get dressed and follow us.”
As soon as the door is shut, I rush to the telephone. I call one of Serge’s best friends, Philippe Lemaître, Le Monde’s correspondent in Brussels, and Michel Lang, leader of the Jewish Workmen’s Circle in Berlin, who is sleeping in a room on the floor below us. My mother-in-law calls Serge, in Paris, who promises to immediately contact the secretary-general of the International Union of Resistance Fighters, Hubert Halin. He will warn his friends in the Belgian government, particularly at the Ministry of Justice.
More banging on the door. “Hurry up!”
My mother-in-law replies, “We’re ladies. We need time to get ready.”
We must leave soon. Michel Lang is arrested, too. We are taken to the Belgian police headquarters, where we have to wait for a long time. I am then brought to a small office. Two policemen interrogate me and take down my statement. I am convinced that the purpose of this arrest is to prevent me from speaking, to keep me here until evening and then put me on a train back to Paris. At first, I rage at them, looking at my watch every five minutes to see if I am late for my rally yet. Then I try to reason with them. If they don’t let me speak, they will stir up trouble with the students, and it will be an even bigger scandal. I talk about the trip Kiesinger made in 1940 with foreign journalists in Belgium and occupied France to demonstrate the superiority of the German army, and I look at the policeman and say, “You must have lived under Nazism in Belgium. You know what it represents.”
They admit that they themselves are former Resistance fighters, “but this is about law and order.” The German embassy asked the Belgian authorities to prevent any incidents during Kiesinger’s visit. And I am troublemaker number 1.
Around 12:45, a detective enters the office. He hands me a piece of paper and asks me to sign an affidavit that I will leave Brussels as soon as my speech is over. The detective confirms that someone high up in the government has intervened on my behalf.
I jump in a taxi and head straight for the Free University, where the rally has just begun. I am greeted by frenzied applause.
When my speech is over, a delegation of students negotiates with the police so that I can stay in the city until 6:00 p.m. This gives me time to conduct a long interview with Der Spiegel.
Kiesinger delivers his speech that evening, and Belgian students turn up to protest. I learn about what happened the next day, in Paris, reading the European press.
A headline in the evening paper Abendzeitung: “Kiesinger assaulted. Ohrfeigen-Beate under surveillance.” “Beate the Slapper” is my new nickname.
Paris-Presse reports:
As soon as he began to speak, the German chancellor, who was speaking French, was interrupted by chants of “Kiesinger Nazi.”
The police intervened, and the chancellor thought the disturbances were over. But ten minutes later, the heckling began again, with added intensity.
Firecrackers exploded from the balcony and leaflets rained down on the audience. These were little squares of paper bearing the words: “National Socialist Party. Kiesinger Kurt Georg. Membership number 2633930. Joined May 1, 1933.”
The Frankfurter Rundschau adds: “Kiesinger was visibly affected by the protests. The last line of his speech was ‘I have, from the very beginning, been a supporter of a federal European state.’ He stammered as he pronounced this sentence.”
When it was over, groups of protesters gathered outside the building, clashing with a nearly equivalent number of policemen.
So it was that Kiesinger was deeply humiliated before the Belgian government, the leaders of NATO, and the EEC (European Economic Community)—a fact that did not escape the German press, which pointed out that both of these humiliations had been initiated by me.
The next day, the Süddeutsche Zeitung published a cartoon that jokingly summed up the situation: an airplane is flying through the sky, and below it is a witch riding a broomstick, with a banner attached to it bearing my name. The caption says: “Die Quartiermacherin des Kanzlers” (the chancellors’ quartermaster).
West German political commentators began to understand that it was not possible to reduce the slap in Berlin to a mere anecdote. With its international resonance and its follow-up in Brussels, my action was taking on a new significance, and the German people were getting a taste for how embarrassing it could be to have chosen a chancellor whose reputation was being attacked like this, both at home and abroad. According to certain journalists who spoke to the chancellor during this period, the incident in Belgium bothered him even more than the one in Berlin had.
November 15—German journalists lay siege to our apartment. They want to see how this “hysterical” woman lives. Presumably they expect to find a filthy, chaotic commune, so when they come in, they are stunned to see the large foyer and the three living rooms overlooking the Seine. They are so surprised that they imagine the reproductions on the wall must be originals.
They photograph me in the immaculately clean kitchen as I do the cooking; from now on, for them, I am the middle-class woman who, driven by a passion, has temporarily left behind her well-ordered, affluent life. Kiesinger’s theory—that I am a professional revolutionary, a mercenary—falls flat.
November 19—I am welcomed to East Berlin by an official delegation bearing flowers. I am lodged at the Hotel Unter den Linden. While eating dinner, I am approached by two young people. They ask me for an autograph, and I sign the menu for them.
November 20—I cause panic in East Berlin when I tell the East German press agency that I will hold a press conference on Kiesinger’s Nazi past. My hosts are shocked by this: no foreigner has the right to invite the East German press to an official press conference. It does not happen. All the same, this incident does not dampen the enthusiasm on this side of the wall. I am ceremoniously presented with a scrapbook containing hundreds of laudatory newspaper articles and cartoons that appeared in East Germany after what is described here as my “exploit.” How can such a rigidly Communist state shower such praise on an individual act of disrespect toward authority?
November 22—In Dortmund, I attend a meeting for young socialists that also features a speech by Günter Grass.
Grass is not happy at the idea of introducing me. Presumably he is a little frustrated by the publicity that my slap has received. Kiesinger has never responded to his open letters, while my act has made a genuine impact.
A student asks him, “How come you attack Kiesinger for his Nazi past, but Karl Schiller, the minister of the economy, and also a former Nazi who specialized in the economic exploitation of conquered territories, is your son’s godfather?”
Furious, Grass answers that the two things have no connection whatsoever. Karl Schiller is his business, not the youth of Germany’s. I am disappointed. Had Schiller been elected chancellor, I would have protested in the same way as I have for Kiesinger—something I have already stated, and which the press has highlighted. Former Nazis are not the exclusive preserve of the Christian Democrats; there are some among the Social Democrats, too.
November 23—I record an album entitled The K. Affair—The Story of a Slap. The evidence from the Kiesinger dossier is read by actors, while I talk about the meaning of my action and recite a poem I have just written on the subject.
December 1—I am met at the train station by a man holding a bouquet of flowers. This is Mr. Koenig, a journalist who invited me to Munich for a meeting at the Rationaltheater. He suggests we eat lunch at his home. His wife is far from welcoming. After the meal, they have an argument: he doesn’t want to help her wash the dishes. I feel very ill at ease and swear to myself not to accept any more invitations to people’s homes.
It is only as I’m leaving Munich that I finally understand this gentleman’s intentions: he wants to “manage” me, to organize a tour of meetings all over Germany—displaying the slapper like a circus freak show. He would take half of the receipts, naturally, because he believes we ought to be charging people for entry. He even offers me a contract.
I politely brush him off, and he is very surprised.
December 3—I am much more at ease at a “teach-in” at the University of Munich. Tonight, I announce that I will stand as a candidate for the legislative elections in September 1969 against Chancellor Kiesinger, wherever he decides to stand. By doing this, I believe I will be able to avoid prison at the appeal trial that has been brought against me. Any conviction would be interpreted as a dirty trick engineered by my electoral opponent. And it will give my campaign an even-greater impact. Now all I have to do is find a political party for whom I can stand. I have already been expelled from the SPD [the Social Democratic Party of Germany], so I think about the future coalition of small left-wing parties and the Communist Party. I am making my intentions public in order to force their hand.
December 4–7—I speak to the Young Communists in Dortmund.
December 10—I attend a heated debate organized by the MEJ (Jewish Student Movement): “Should Chancellor Kiesinger Be Slapped?” One of the MEJ’s leaders decides to come with me to Berlin with a Star of David flag. He wants to protest the recent acquittal of the Nazi judge Rehse. On July 3, 1967, Hans-Joachim Rehse was sentenced to five years in prison for “assistance in criminal acts.” The federal appeal court quashed that verdict in April 1968, deciding that, as a judge, Rehse bore the full responsibility for his acts.
Rehse had indeed lent his support to at least 231 death sentences. But instead of finding for the prosecutor, who was demanding life imprisonment for five verdicts given by Rehse during the war “that went beyond the laws of the Nazi terror and constituted murder, pure and simple,” the court decided “almost unanimously” that Rehse had acted in good faith, convinced that the verdicts were necessary for “consolidating the Reich.”
In his ruling, Judge Oske claimed that a state “cannot be blamed in times of crisis for resorting to exceptional measures of intimidation.” To support this, he cited “the recent adoption of the emergency laws in the Federal Republic.”
As might be expected, these words caused quite a stir in the audience. On several occasions the reading of the verdict was interrupted by heckles, and a former Gestapo detainee managed to slap Rehse while he was leaving the court a free man.
I pay for the MEJ leader’s journey, because he is not able to scrape together enough money to travel in forty-eight hours: I consider it essential to show the German people that Jews are coming from abroad to protest Rehse’s rehabilitation.
How many trials where Nazi criminals were acquitted might have had a different, more just outcome if the Jews had demonstrated their determination not to see their people’s persecutors go free?
December 14—Ten thousand people gather outside the Berlin-Schöneberg city hall, chanting, “Rehse, murderer!”
The stage is set up in the middle of the square. It’s very cold, and I’m bundled up in a leather-and-fur coat. The correspondent for Pravda writes: “It was like a scene from the revolution, this young woman speaking in front of a mass of red flags.” But he forgets to mention the flag of the Star of David hanging above my head, highly visible in all the photographs in the German press.
I tell the crowd, “When Kiesinger became chancellor, I understood that it marked the start of Germany’s reconciliation with its Nazi past; that is Kiesinger’s historical role. Through my individual actions, I tried to put an obstacle in his path, but victory can only be won through collective action.”
December 18—Serge comes to Berlin. He is here on business for Continental Grain. I spend New Year’s Eve without him, however, as he has to take the train to London, where he will expand the Kiesinger dossier through his research work at the Wiener Library.
January 10, 1969—A far-right newspaper has put together an article under the headline “The Beate Klarsfeld Saga” in which they list all the nicknames I’ve been given by the press. I am, by turns, “the pretty Machiavelli,” “Joan of Arc,” “the Berlin nemesis,” “Charlotte Corday resurrected,” “the modern Ravaillac,” “Beate the Red,” “Saint Beate descended from her red heaven,” and “the figurehead for the new Left.”
January 22—A weekly Communist newspaper, DVZ in Düsseldorf, asks me to be its Paris correspondent. They pay me eight hundred marks per month. I assume this is a form of discreet aid from the East German government, even though the editors of DVZ always deny having been ordered to hire me.
February 1—After Bremen, Lebach, Bonn, and Cologne, I give a speech in Duisburg, where it is so cold that I shiver as I turn the pages with my numb, gloveless fingers. After it’s over, I go by car to Dortmund, then take the night train to Berlin, where I take part in a meeting at the Free University.
February 3—Serge joins me in Berlin, which is in a feverish state on the eve of the presidential election. Heinrich Lübke, who was the president of the Federal Republic, has been ousted. Accused by the East Germans of having designed the barrack blocks for the concentration camps, he denied being the creator of those sketches. But graphology experts gave the lie to his claim.
The arrival of neo-Nazi delegates from the Bundesrat, roughly West Germany’s equivalent of the U.S. Senate, triggers a riot. The student activists of the APO gather in the Technical University and discuss what they should do. But indecision and a dearth of ideas lead, after an hour of speechifying, to an impulsive call to action: everyone heads for the Hotel am Zoo, where many of the leading politicians are staying, only to find the hotel is surrounded by hundreds of riot police. As the protesters yell “Kiesinger Nazi!” they are met with a wave of truncheons.
We hardly dare to believe it, but it’s true: Gustav Heinemann has been elected president of the Federal Republic. This is a major setback for the Christian Democrats, whose candidate, Gerhard Schröder, a former SA member, was backed by the neo-Nazi vote.
February 4—I take the early plane from Berlin to Nuremberg. I give a speech in the afternoon, and that evening I lead a demonstration through the streets. A crowd of students boos Kiesinger, and I feel a sort of intoxication when I hear my voice booming from speakers in this city where, thirty years earlier, Hitler readied the German people for a diabolical adventure. I have the impression that my voice is that of another Germany; there is something much greater than myself behind me.
February 14—Arno has come with me to Oldenburg. Today, for the first time, I give a speech to the activists of the ADF (Party for Democratic Action and Progress), which has named me as its candidate in Kiesinger’s precinct: number 188, in Waldshut, in the Black Forest. This is a great step forward for me. I stand in front of hundreds of hardened Communist militants, and I sense their hostility toward me. I was imposed on them because my celebrity attracts press attention, and I have the support of the East German government. On the press invitations, my name is the most prominent, as if I’m the sugar coating on the Communists’ pill. In fact, I have become the driving force of the ADF in this election, even though I have not received the party’s material support. At least the journeys I make on behalf of the party are reimbursed, which makes it easier for me to travel around the country. As an independent candidate, I do not belong to any of the parties that make up this far-left federation. This gives me almost free rein when it comes to speaking my mind.
As the meeting is in full sway, with the ADF’s president, Professor Hoffmann, speaking to the audience, the door suddenly opens in a gust of wind … and Arno bursts into the room, his underpants around his ankles, shouting loudly, “Mama, poo-poo!” The ADF’s driving force slips out of the party congress to attend to a more urgent task …
February 20—The neo-Nazis of the NPD [National Democratic Party] are holding their congress, and I am going to attend. If this party obtains 5 percent of the votes in September’s election, it will be represented in the Bundestag. The anti-fascists have only one way to stop them: by physically engaging the thugs of the NPD’s security staff in fighting, so that they show their true face, which they are attempting to hide behind a mask of respectability. Perhaps the electorate will recoil when it sees this latter-day SA showing its true colors. This dangerous task will be undertaken by the young socialists of the SPD, the APO, and the Communist youth organizations.
Using a DVZ press card, I enter the hall and am immediately spotted by two burly bouncers, who shadow me closely.
Adolf von Thadden, the neo-Nazi leader, is stirring up his supporters. I head quickly toward the stage, shouting loudly, “Thadden, you always talk about democracy, so let the real democrats speak!”
The bouncers grab hold of me. Thadden speaks into the microphone: “Gentlemen, gentlemen, you must act properly with ladies! I should count myself lucky that my cheek is farther away from this lady’s hand than the chancellor’s was when she met him…”
Howls of laughter. After a passionate rendition of “Deutschland über Alles,” the meeting ends. A Soviet journalist rushes over to protect me because, while most of the crowd moves grudgingly out of the way to let me through, a few thugs come menacingly toward me, yelling insults. I manage to reach the exit, unscathed and relieved.
February 27—From Augsburg, I go to Waldshut, a rural area close to the Swiss border. Local far-left activists want to show me where I should hold electoral meetings.
Is the far left really going to waste its energy trying to win a few votes here when the Social Democrats are in a position to defeat the Christian Democrats with a reasonable program? I remember Serge’s explanations of the pre-Hitler period, which made such an impression on me. He told me how the Communists, prioritizing their fight against the Social Democrats, had neglected the threat posed by Hitler and had even sometimes joined forces with the Nazis to undermine the Weimar Republic. Of course, they ended up withdrawing that support, but by then it was too late.
I tell the local militants that I have no intention of wasting my time in empty meeting rooms here, that this is a national campaign, and my role is to appear wherever Kiesinger holds a rally. I must hassle him in the street, outside his hotel, forcing him to be surrounded by police wherever he goes.
March 12—Kiesinger is in Paris on an official visit. I invite a few friends from Berlin. On Wednesday evening, as the five of us are walking in the street, a dozen men rush toward us. They are plainclothes policemen, and they put us in three cars. I am driven to the station in La Muette and released around midnight. But my friends are held overnight and, the next day, are taken to the border and expelled from French soil.
All day long, Serge and I are escorted by police, who wait outside our building in two cars when we are at home. We engage them in conversation; they show us the photographs they have of us. Lots of police have our pictures, presumably because they fear we may try to assassinate the chancellor. One of the policemen jokes with Serge: “We need a new photo of you, because you’re a lot thinner in this one!”
April—We work like crazy. For forty-eight hours, I barely sleep. In ten days, I type up the German text of Kiesinger, or Subtle Fascism, a pamphlet that Serge and I wrote in conjunction with the historian Joseph Billig. It describes the organization of the Nazis’ foreign propaganda broadcasts and defines very precisely what Kiesinger’s role was in this capacity. Kiesinger, oder der Subtile Fascismus is my weapon for this trial; it receives widespread publicity, and the public realizes that Kiesinger has not published the documentation that he promised, on April 22, 1968, to bring into the open. I, on the other hand, the slapper, have kept my promise and exposed the truth about that past.
April 15—The first day of my appeal proceedings. In front of seven hundred people, I appear once again before my judges for having slapped the chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Kriminalgericht in the Moabit quarter of Berlin is a large, dark prewar building, encircled by police vans.
Arno, Serge, and Professor Billig are here, along with more than thirty photographers, dozens of journalists, and a few young Germans wearing yellow stars on their chests.
The trial begins with a request for the recusal of the presiding judge, Taegener. My defense team reveals that this judge told a journalist, over coffee in the cafeteria, that the trial would be “over and done with in three hours.” After a brief deliberation, the court rejects our request.
I spend a long time on the stand. The judge tries to catch me out, but I manage to evade his traps. One of my replies, which comes to me spontaneously, changes the direction of the trial:
“Mrs. Klarsfeld, why did you decide to use violence against the chancellor of our country?”
“Violence, Your Honor, is when a Nazi chancellor is imposed on German youth.”
I talk so much about Kiesinger’s past that Taegener, growing impatient, interrupts me with a phrase that the journalists scribble happily in their notebooks: “That’s enough. You have already demonstrated that Kiesinger was active in the Nazi regime.”
Very soon, the debate becomes political. Joseph Billig is called to the bar, and the dossier on Kiesinger is the sole focus of his testimony.
Joseph Billig was accepted as a witness thanks to Serge, who came up with an original strategy to bring him into the courtroom. Before slapping the chancellor, I went to see Billig—an expert on National Socialism—to find out if Kiesinger’s role and actions in the Third Reich gave me the moral right to slap him. After examining the dossier, Billig said yes—and he is in court to explain that response.
When Judge Taegener asks if the witness can prove that Kiesinger was informed about what was happening in the concentration camps, I know I have won: the chancellor is now on trial, not me.
The next morning, my lawyers have not even settled in their seats before the judge announces the adjournment of the trial. He blames this on a lack of time and Kiesinger’s unavailability to testify.
The judge and his assessors are gone before we can even react. And so the trial ends in farce. Nevertheless, for us, it is a victory. The newspaper headlines all tell the same story: the chancellor retreats from his battle with Beate Klarsfeld.
May 10—I leave for Stuttgart, where the neo-Nazi NPD is holding its congress this weekend. Serge meets me there.
The NPD’s thuggish security staff forms a human barrier around the Palace of Congress; dressed in lederhosen, these burly men hold hands and are bound together by a long chain.
I cannot find enough people to mount a real protest against the NPD, so I decide to take another tack: we will protest the passivity of the Stuttgart mayor in allowing such a gathering. The press is there, and it has to illustrate its stories on the congress, so the likelihood is that it will publish photographs of the neo-Nazi leader Adolf von Thadden onstage. We decide to give the newspapers another, better photo opportunity, one that will push our agenda, rather than that of the neo-Nazis. I suggest that we hang a huge Nazi flag over the city’s main square and solemnly declare that Stuttgart is Germany’s first Nazi city. It’s no mean feat, getting hold of the necessary materials and making the flag ourselves, but in the end we succeed. The photograph of the swastika and our group shouting at the citizens of Stuttgart will be seen all over Germany and the rest of the world with the caption: “Germans protest against the neo-Nazi congress.”
May 12–15—Düsseldorf and Mannheim. I become slightly aggressive in the electoral meetings, driven crazy by the tendency of some left-wingers to endlessly split hairs. But the campaign is making progress, all the same: everywhere Kiesinger goes, taunts of “Nazi” follow him.
May 28–30—East Berlin to Frankfurt to Lebenstedt to Hanover … and then to Paris, where I collapse, exhausted. How will I keep going at this pace until October?
June 21—In the Potsdam archives, I put the finishing touches on my manuscript on Kiesinger. Back in Paris, I discover that the World Peace Council in East Berlin has awarded me the Grigoris Lambrakis Medal “for her courage and the campaign she is conducting for national independence.” That is certainly not the reason for the campaign I am conducting. Still, I am proud to be recognized as a German.
July 5—After several meetings in the north, I arrive in Oldenburg, where Kiesinger is due to hold a large rally for Christian Democrat supporters. I have managed to mobilize about three hundred young people in this town of civil servants and retirees. We have blocked the main door of the Weser-Ems-Halle. The chancellor’s helicopter lands in a patch of wasteland surrounded by a high fence just behind the hall. Kiesinger smiles and waves as he emerges, presumably thinking that we must be there to support him. When he realizes his mistake, he continues to wave at us ironically, in order to save face. Serge and I are standing on a car parked next to the fence. Kiesinger approaches us, to a soundtrack of boos and jeers. There he is, right in front of me, only a few feet from where I stand. He sees me and his jaw tenses, his smile vanishes. He stops and stares at me. My arm is raised and, like all the others, I am shouting what I was once the only one to shout: “Sieg heil” and “Kiesinger Nazi!” He looks as if he would like to say something to me, but then he makes a weary gesture with his hand that seems to express the impossibility of a dialogue. Shaking his head, he walks past us and enters the hall through a back door.
A journalist with access to the chancellor’s office in Bonn told me: “Kiesinger’s friends have often said to him: ‘Let us organize a meeting with this woman; there must be a compromise you can make with her.’ Kiesinger always replied: ‘No compromise is possible with that woman.’”
July 24—Frankfurt, where I am present for a fierce brawl between the NPD’s thugs and some student protesters. I get out unharmed, but others are not so lucky. The injured are mostly students, their noses and jaws broken by bike chains or lead pipes. Faced with Hitler’s direct descendants, those brave anonymous young people did their duty as Germans. It is from them that I draw my strength, my determination. Stern publishes dozens of photographs showing the brutal aftermath of the violence, and this surely has an effect on public opinion: the neo-Nazis receive only 4.6 percent of the vote, and so they will not have a representative in the Bundestag.
August 14—I take Arno with me on an electoral campaign in my precinct because Kiesinger will be campaigning here next weekend. I try to find a group with a car so that we can follow the chancellor around. We drive in an Opel Kapitän at first, then use a Volkswagen bus lent to us by a sympathetic cheesemonger; it transports six students, lots of leaflets and posters, and tomatoes and eggs, which we plan to throw at Kiesinger.
First stop: Uhlingen. This little village is so sweet and simple-looking. The stage in the little village square is hung with flags and garlands. For the seven hundred inhabitants, today is a celebration.
Kiesinger gets out of his helicopter and is greeted by young girls in regional costumes, each carrying a bunch of flowers.
Serge, Arno, and I are standing, with seven friends, on a bench so we can see what is going on. As soon as Kiesinger begins to speak, we shout out: “Nazi!” Arno, standing next to me, yells the word at the top of his voice. Suddenly, some thugs rush up behind us and tip over the bench. We are thrown to the ground. Kiesinger, watching this, says angrily, “It’s always the same faces that we see … I have nothing against the opposition, but if these people wish to destroy the state, we won’t let them get away with it.”
On the way to Waldshut, where the day’s last electoral rally will take place, we stop in a little village to stock up on old eggs and crates of rotten fruit, which we pile up in the car. The town of Waldshut has been beautifully decorated, and the inhabitants are all dressed in their best clothes. We arrive separately and stand here and there in the crowded town hall. The security guards look nervous.
As soon as Kiesinger opens his mouth to speak, about forty people stand up, arms raised, and boo him.
Kiesinger is surprised by the number of protesters. The audience seems too shocked to react: nothing like this has ever happened before in this traditionally right-wing town. Kiesinger stammers a few sentences that no one can hear and, red-faced, goes back to sit down.
When the meeting ends, I am harassed by the locals.
“It’s shameful,” one woman tells me, “bringing up your child to be a fanatic. He should be asleep now, the poor thing. He must be exhausted.”
A crowd gathers around us.
I say, “It’s strange how, during the war, you never took pity on all those Jewish children who were crammed onto trains before being murdered at Auschwitz…”
The woman does not respond. She beats a quick retreat, and the others slowly disperse.
“Oh, these Jews!” says one man, in a rage. “It’s a shame we didn’t exterminate all of them!”
The press covers these incidents, which are repeated day after day. Arno becomes a celebrity: the “youngest politician in Germany.” I am now the mother who campaigns against the chancellor, with her son in her arms.
August 19—Berlin. A press conference, Arno beside me. My book on Kiesinger, with a preface by Heinrich Böll, has just been published, six days before my second appeal trial.
After I meet with Karl Gerold, the owner of the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau, a friend of Willy Brandt and a longtime anti-Nazi, he gives me an entire page of his paper for an article on Kiesinger and the Final Solution. Gerold himself publishes a powerful editorial, under the headline “Kiesinger—Never Again.” “We write in the conviction that our people will remember the dead, victims of Nazism. Those dead whom Kiesinger supposedly knew nothing about. What is certain is that the ex-Nazi Kiesinger must never be chancellor again.”
Kiesinger, meanwhile, has asked several historians to write his side of the story, but they have all refused: Gerhard Schulz, from Tübingen, and Eberhard Jäckel, from Stuttgart, as well as the writer Golo Mann. Hans Buchheim, a professor at the University of Mainz, at first agrees and then pulls out, citing the unacceptable working conditions: the chancellor wanted him to work only with the documentation he himself would supply and not to consult other sources.
August 25—The day of the second appeal trial. First, we must find out whether Kiesinger is going to testify in person, as he is the plaintiff and the victim and as this is, at last, his chance to publicly refute my accusations so close to the elections. Judge Taegener reads out a letter from the chancellor in which he explains that his electoral campaign leaves him no time to appear in court.
The judges know they cannot send me to prison, because it would cause a scandal if the chancellor’s electoral opponent were locked up, so they must prove themselves generous in order to undermine my pugnacity. I have already decided to make short work of this trial, which no longer offers me any advantages. I declare that, in the chancellor’s cowardly absence, I refuse to answer any of the judge’s questions: “I will not go on with this farce. For me, the trial is over.” My lawyers also refuse to plead. After that, it is all wrapped up very quickly. The court delivers the verdict everyone expected: a four-month suspended sentence.
On September 8, Georges Pompidou, the new French president, will go to Bonn on an official visit, so Serge and I pack a suitcase full of the newly printed French edition of my Kiesinger book and distribute copies to all the high-ranking political staff who will accompany Pompidou to Germany.
September 7—In Bonn, two young women from the ADF and I distribute a crate of red books to about a hundred journalists who are waiting for a press conference. The door is ajar, and no one pays us any attention. To speed things up, we leave five copies at the end of each row of seats. By the time the security staff realizes that what we are handing out is not an official document but an anti-Kiesinger pamphlet, it is already too late: most of the journalists are reading it. We are removed from the room, followed by a few correspondents who have yet to receive a copy.
On our way out, we pass Günter Diehl. Pleased with our success, I hand him a copy of the pamphlet, which he pushes away. “Diehl Nazi!” I yell. Surprised, he turns around, and at first cannot think of anything to say. Then, finally, he shouts, “Kommunisten, Bolschewisten!”
Günter Diehl was one of Kiesinger’s closest collaborators during the war. This spokesman for the chancellor’s office was also a Nazi with expertise in psychological warfare and subversive propaganda.
My action in Bonn makes the Germans smile, but it also makes them think: now they know that the French leaders are aware of their chancellor’s wartime activities.
September 20—Karlsruhe. With hundreds of young protesters, we lay siege to the Gartenhalle, where Kiesinger will speak. I can no longer discreetly enter any hall in order to contradict him. There is always someone who recognizes me and shouts “Kiesinger’s enemy!” and shows me the door.
Ravensburg, Waldshut, Rheinfelden, Esslingen …
September 26—Serge joins me, along with Petia, our cocker spaniel, who will act as my bodyguard during the final two days of the election campaign. In Waldshut, we are passing a crowd of Kiesinger supporters when a woman holding an ice cream launches herself at me. First, she plants the ice cream in my face; then, while I am temporarily blinded, she begins punching me. Petia starts barking very loudly. Serge turns around, drops his pile of leaflets, and comes over to push the woman away.
Albbruck, Waldshut, Dogezn, Unterbruckringen, Trengen, Säckingen, Görwihl, Hochsal … All day long, we visit these villages, where Kiesinger gives speeches, and we protest against him. Sometimes Serge and I are alone in the front row, constantly interrupting the chancellor. The gorillas from Kiesinger’s Junge Union are furious that they cannot intervene; but the press is there, and it would damage the chancellor’s image if anything untoward were to happen to us.
September 28—Election Day. As a candidate, I am entitled to be present at the assembly for the counting of votes and announcement of the results. Two or three security guards keep an eye on me, and I am surrounded by journalists. They ask me what I expect, and I am honest: the ADF, my party, will not win more than 1 percent of the vote.
I feel a hand on my shoulder: it is the chief of police in Bonn. He expresses his reservations about my opinions but offers me his “personal congratulations” for my “courage.” A few Christian Democrats make the same remark to me that evening. I have often noticed the almost-exaggerated respect that right-wing German men have for a woman who stands up for her beliefs.
The ADF ends up with only 0.7 percent of the national vote, but I don’t care. The results that matter to me all go our way: the NPD does not get its 5 percent, so there are no neo-Nazis in the Bundestag; Willy Brandt is the new chancellor; and Kiesinger, blamed for the failure of the Christian Democrats, loses his place as the party’s federal president to his younger rival Rainer Barzel.
* * *
WILLY BRANDT’S ARRIVAL in power brought me a serene joy, a satisfaction that nothing could disturb. It was the confirmation that I had not fought in vain, that my cause was not locked in the past but oriented toward the future. Kiesinger, defeated, was instantly forgotten. For me, at any rate, the page was turned.
I felt certain that I had played my part—modest but tangible—in this victory for the forces of progress. Would I have had the strength to keep fighting against Kiesinger if he had been reelected? I doubt it. Weariness would have overcome me.
I was anonymous again, to my great happiness. I had time to be a mother to Arno, a wife to Serge. My husband and I would go to the local movie theater two or three times a week and devour two films in a row. I felt rejuvenated in the glow of having accomplished this great task.
And that memorable handshake between Kiesinger and Brandt during the handover … how I savored that! The fallen Nazi’s tense smile as he forced himself to put a brave face on defeat, as he gave way to another and very different German—from a Germany that Nazism had not managed to destroy.