| the German Issue |
[Jun. 19th, 2015|07:05 pm] |
Sylviere Lotringer:
[..] You are one of those people who left Germany, but it was West Germany.
Volker Schloendorff:
Yes.
SL: Maybe it happened by chance, but you recognize..
VS: No, it was not chance at all, it was deliberate. In the 1950s, because of these "leaden skies" mentioned before, a lot of young Germans tried to escape the country. On the one hand, they did not like to share the guilt, they did not like to be Germans, but they wanted to be Europeans. It was a way to unload.
SL: Once outside, they often pretended to be Swedish or Norwegian - everything but German. They were a bit like Jews in that respect. They had to hide who they were.
VS: Yes, and America was far away. There were no cheap flights to go there at that time [..], But borders were open. You could go to France or Italy [..]. For me [..] the next logical step was France [..]. And we were attracted to Paris. We thought of "Paris, l'amour", of course, adolescently, but also a freer country, a freer society, unburdened by the past. Well, once I was there, I went to a Jesuit boarding school. I loved it there, especially being Protestant, I did not have to follow all the religious rituals. I was the only Protestant but there were quite a few Islamic youngsters, Moroccans and Tunisians, in that school, and they didn't have to go to mass either. So we sat together and they started introducing me to colonialism. Hence the realization that I had come from a country with a dark past, but as they stated, 'Not everything in France is as bright as you think'. The Indochina war was still going on - the French-Vietnam was - and another one had just started in Algeria. Morocco had just gained its independence and war literally happened in France. So I realized I could neither escape history, nor the fact that politics was part of our lives. [..]
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