Karlen Vesper wrote:

[this left-hand coulumn contains the original questions and Peter's answers in English]

1. Die Grosse Weigerung - ein leidenschaftliches Plädoyer von Herbert Marcuse. Es scheint heute wieder aktuelle Relevanz bzw. Realisierung zu erfahren, denkt man allein an die weltweiten Proteste gegen Kriegsabenteuer und Hegemonialbestrebungen der gegenwärtigen US-Regierung? Sind Sie zufrieden?
   Certainly not satisfied. The great refusal my father had in mind was the decision not to participate in the economic, political, and cultural circuits that composed late capitalism: consumerism, the drive to accumulate, the work ethic, the instrumentalisation of the aesthetic, the repression and exploitation of love. We have certainly not seen such a refusal spreading; on the contrary, the system is absorbing ever further reaches of the globe. But there are smaller refusals gathering strength: the opposition to really existing globalization, the worship of markets over public activities, the resistance to the war on Iraq. There is not much visible grounds for hope, but the spark of refusal is not dead.
   
    
2. Wie werden von den US-Bürgern die sich formierenden Staatenbündnisse innerhalb und ausserhalb der Europäischen Union und der NATO gegen einen Irakkrieg sowie die Friedensdemonstranten in Europa bis Afrika wahrgenommen?
   No one I know supports the war. Even many who voted for George W. Bush have serious doubts. But many people -- most people, according to the polls -- see the issue of war as secondary, the issues of the economy as primary. Their energies do not go into questioning the rationale for war, scrutinizing the evidence, challenging the explanations we are given. To do so would require substantial energy, and would raise uncomfortable questions in many other areas. There is, in the United States, I believe, a much greater separation between the private and the public than in Europe; many people simply do not trust what is done by politicians in the public sector, and write the whole thing off as a lost cause; they rather concentrate on their own private lives, their successes and insecurities and worries.
   As I write this, we are about to leave for the big anti-war demonstration in New York; similar demonstrations will take place throughout the United States, as throughout the world. But we are not much listened to in Washington. We are happy to know the 70% of all people in almost all European countries are also against the war; many of their governments (Spain, Italy, Britain) do not listen to their voices either. We, certainly, most thinking Americans concerned with the war, do not see the anti-war positions of so many Europeans as anti-Americanism, but as anti-a particular policy and a particular regime in America. We welcome such positions in Europe, and hope they will have some effect on European governments and on our own.  
   
   
3. Dustin Hoffman hat gerade bei der Berlinale davon gesprochen, dass ihm die gegenwärtigen Ereignisse an Vietnam erinnern. Ist zu erwarten, dass sich die Proteste in den USA zu einer machtvollen Antikriegsbewegung wie seinerzeit gegen den Vietnamkrieg ausweiten?
   Not yet. One lesson of Vietnam is that one should question war before it starts, and many are doing that, but a full-blown anti-war movement will probably only take place when the specific concrete costs to Americans become visible. Vision unfortunately does not go very far into the future, under pressure of day-to-day concerns, and concerns for others that one does not see or hear directly takes a while to penetrate the consciousness and preoccupations of everyday life.
    
4. Herbert Marcuse gilt als geistiger Vater der Neuen Linken und Urheber der studentischen Rebellion der End-60er Jahre des vorigen Jahrhunderts. Unterstellt wrd ihm aber auch, verantwortlich zu sein für die Radikalisierung und Brutalisierung des Protestes gegen rassistische (USA) oder autoritäre und restaurative Strukturen (Bundesrepublik Deutschland). Er habe Gewalt und Terror in seinem viel zitierten Aufsatz "Repressive Toleranz" rechtfertigt. Ist dem so? Oder ist er nur nicht richtig gelesen und missbraucht worden?
   My father never advocated terror, and, for instance, condemned the Baader-Meinhof group as using a tactic that would only be appropriate if there were in fact no other possible means of protest or change, a situation not reached even in liberal democracy. It was of course different under fascism, but none of the developed countries, he held, were fascist now. He did indeed believe in a radicalization of protest, a hope that the criticism of, for instance, racism, would see it as coupled with deep structures of capitalism and the prevailing order as a whole. His criticism of "repressive" tolerance was of those views that held all points of view as equally valid, that failed to discriminate between truth and falsity, humanity and real terror. Force against persons, as he saw it, was overwhelmingly an instrument of repression, to be condemned, not an instrument of liberation.
   
   
   
   Property damage, I belive he saw as quite different from violence against persons, and, in very limited and directed form, as a possible symbolic means of conveying a message, but one which, if exercised, carried with it inevitable penalties. I don't think he ever thought of violence in any form as desirable action.
   
    
5. In diesem Kontext sprach Herbert Marcuse mal vom �Vatermord�, den er in seinem Falle zu akzeptieren bereit sei. Wie hat der Sohn dieses Bekenntnis aufgenommen?
   I certainly never took it personally! He discussed the subject only in the psychoanalytic framework pioneered by Freud as part of the dynamic underlying historical developments at their origin.  
    
6. Wie bewerten Sie solch erstaunliche Entwicklungen, wie die des deutschen Aussenministers Joseph Fischer, der den atemberaubenden Weg vom 68er Systemgegner zum Repräsentanten der Bundesrepublik zurücklegte? Und der im übrigen den Nato-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien noch mit Verweis auf Auschwitz sanktionierte und auch den Afghanistan-Feldzug mittrug?
   My father supported the development of the non-parliamentary opposition in Germany (the APO), and had serious doubts about the advisability of the Greens forming a political party; I remember his discussions with Rudi Dutschke on the point. What he feared, and I think Joschka Fischer is an exact example, is that once a movement enters into the game of exercising power and the politics needed to maintain it, it loses -- or must at least be willing to compromise -- its principles. My own view would be that some playing in the field of power politics are better than others, but that at some point the compromises that need to be made to stay in the game go too far, and one has to get out. I suppose I would rather have Joschka Fisher as Foreign Minister than some others, but I would rather see a Green Party, and its leadership, in a position bluntly and directly to criticize bad policies and speak as a matter of principle, than one that has to internalize compromises of principle in order to stay on the margins of power.
    
7. Wann und inwieweit ist das "Naturrecht auf Widerstand" (Herbert Marcuse) politischer, ethnischer oder religiöser Gruppen heute noch legitim bzw. sankrosankt? Wo ist die Grenze zwischen berechtigter oder gar notwendiger Gewalt/Widerstand und unverantwortlichen, illegitimen Terror zu ziehen?
   See 4. above.
    
8. An der Schwelle zum 21. Jahrhunderts erfüllt sich der Wunsch des US-Chefanklägers beim Nürnberger Kriegsverbrecherprozess, Robert H. Jackson, eine Institution zu schaffen, die es ermöglicht, dass das Recht auch diejenigen erreicht, die ihre Macht dazu ausnutzen, �um ein Unheil auszulösen, das kein Heim in der Welt unberührt lässt�. Doch gerade die Bush-Administration verweigert sich dem Internationalen Strafgerichtshof in Den Haag. Wird dieses selbstherrliche Verhalten in den USA diskutiert?
   I think there is deep discomfort with the Bush administration�s position on the International Court of Justice. There is a tension between wanting to protect one's own and wanting to see all misdeeds punished, including possibly one�s own. The USA is by and large a nation whose citizens believe in law and order, and respect their judicial system. I think the Bush decision is largely unpopular, but there has not been focused political debate on it in Congress.
    
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. 1966 hat Herbert Marcuse die Unvermeidbarkeit des American way betont und seine Überzeugung bekräftigt, dass sich in den kapitalistischen Ländern "amerikanische Tendenzen später oder früher durchsetzen werden". Ist hier der grosse Prophet nicht widerlegt worden? Denkt man an die instinktiven wie bewussten Schutzmechanismen der französischen Gesellschaft vor einer Amerikanisierung ihrer Sprache und Kultur oder an die trotz fortschreitenden Neoliberalismus in westeuropäischen Industriestaaten noch (mehr oder weniger) behauptete Sozialstaatsidee etc.
   The French resistance to the "Americanization" of French culture can be seen either as a tribute to the strength of French independence or a tribute to the threat that Americanization poses for it. It is of course both. If I look at the countries of eastern Europe, I am shocked at how quickly the desire for a better way of life becomes converted to the desire for the American way of life.
    
10. Sie sind Stadtplaner. Nach dem Anschlag auf das World Trade Center schrieben Sie in einem Aufsatz "Our City will change" u.a., dass nunmehr der Wahn nach immer höheren Gebäuden gestoppt sei. Doch die zur Neubebauung von Ground Zero konkurrierenden Vorschläge, u.a. von Libermann, warten jetzt sogar mit über 500 Meter hohen Skyscrapers auf? Wie ist das zu verstehen?
    You mean Libeskind? Both of the two preferred alternatives have very high structures, but both propose they only be occupied to the 60th or 70 floor; everything above that is symbol. The real estate developer who is most likely to build there holds there is no market for very high-lying office space. There is in fact today no market for anything like rebuilding the World Trade Center or its concentration of office space.
     
11. Wie sollten Ihrer Ansicht nach die Städte der Zukunft aussehen? (Und welchen Eindruck machten auf Sie eigentlich die Städte in der DDR?)
    The cities of the DDR were far behind modern standards in technology and infrastructure, but had certain advantages, in terms of social planning and lack of commercialization, that one misses today. But the policies that undervalued the preservation and use of inner cities in favor of a conception that only the new and manufactured developments on the outskirts made sense produced serious harm to the values of urbanism.
     
12. Sie sind als Kind in die USA gekommen. Welche Erinnerungen haben Sie an Deutschland vor 1933. Inwieweit hat Sie das Deutschlandbild Ihres Vaters geprägt? Was bedeutet Ihnen das Land, in dem Ihre Wiege stand?
    Explicit memories I really have none. But I have absorbed a good bit of that way of looking at things from my father and mother and their household and friends, and that remains. And I still feel a kinship with Germany, a pleasure in its language and a feeling for its culture, that sometimes surprises me. I think I am rather thoroughly an American, and would never deny that, but I think I also still have some feeling of participation and comfort as one born there when I am there to visit.
    
    Question: By the way, where is your father buried?
    Answer: Actually, he isn�t. When he died, in Starnberg in 1979, we had a very small ceremony of mourning with only a few friends standing in a circle in the woods. His body was cremated and flown to a funeral home in the U.S. It sat there for many years; my father was not sentimental about such things; he knew that the ashes were neither the person nor the spirit. My son Harold, who teaches modern German history, and has done a great book on the post-war history of Dachau, has put up a very informative web site on my father (www.marcuse.org). A couple of years ago someone raised the question of where he was buried, and we began thinking something more than an urn in a funeral parlor might be appropriate. We debated, and decided Berlin was the appropriate resting place for the urn. We�ve now gotten a grave site at the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin, and we will bring the ashes there with a small ceremony on the anniversary of his birth in July, this summer. The Berlin Senate may designate the grave as an honorary gravesite of the city of Berlin. We think that�s appropriate, given everything that�s happened.
     
13. Die Grosse Weigerung scheint sich nicht nur gegen imperiale Herrschaftsambitionen zu entwickeln - sie ist bereits zu einer sehr realen und vitalen Kraft in der Antiglobalisierungsbewegung geworden. Wäre diese nach dem Geschmack Ihres Vaters gewesen?
    Yes, I think it probably is flowering there more broadly than anywhere else at this moment -- if not always more deeply.
     
14. Sie beklagen, dass es keinen Konsens zwischen den Globalisierungskritikern gibt. Wie kann ein solcher erreicht werden? Wie können der landlose Bauer in Brasilien und der aus den ostdeutschen Leuna-Werken �wegrationalisierte� Arbeiter zu einer gemeinsamen Sprache finden? Wir haben es ja hier nicht mit einem wissenschaftlichen Debattierklub zu tun, wo man sich erst einmal auf Begriffsinhalte und Definitionen per Analyse, Rede und Gegenrede einigt.
    A very difficult question, with which of course the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre that was just finished also wrestled. I have no easy answer as to strategies. The fundamental principled unity is of course against the injustices and maldistribution and alienation created by capitalism, but that is not at this point the explicit position of the anti-really-existing-globalization movement (it�s not anti-globalization as such; there are many forms of globalization that could be imagined). Whether it could ultimately emerge as the glue that holds it together I don't know.
     
15. Gesellschafts- bzw. Sozialwissenschaftler sind heute vorsichtig mit Prognosen. Denn nur eines scheint gewiss: das Ende der Gewissheiten. Nur wenige trauen sich gleich Ihrem Vater "eine notwendige neue Wirklichkeit als Realisierung des ganzen Menschen" einzuklagen und vorzudenken. Sind die Intellektuellen in Ohnmacht gefallen?
    Intellectuals were never "in" power, but I don't think its their inner uncertainty that's the problem; I think it is rather the real-world power of the establishment that tends to make critical thought and critical intellectuals ineffective.
     
16. In seinen "33 Thesen" schrieb Ihr Vater u.a.: "Dass die erste erfolgreiche sozialistische Revolution bisher nicht zu einer freieren und glücklicheren Gesellschaft geführt hat,... hat zur Versöhnung mit dem Kapitalismus unendlich viel beigetragen und die Revolution objektiv diskreditiert." 20 Jahre nach seinem Tod sollten sich diese Worte noch mehr bestätigen. Sie haben das letzte Jahr der DDR, Wende, Mauerfall und Vereinigung live miterlebt. (Sie haben darüber ja zwei Publikationen verfasst.) Was war für Sie am beieindruckendsten, was bedrückend, was beglückend?
    It's not easy to generalize in such terms. We went to the DDR in 1989 after a sabbatical year 6 years before in Frankfurt, to see what the difference would be. It was indeed vast. Much was negative: from the repression of free thought (my father�s books were always subject to restricted access in those libraries that even had them, and never sold in the stores) to the domination of a rigid state party bureaucracy to the technical underdevelopment to the restrictions on travel, all now well known. But there was also a level of inter-human relationships, free of commercialization and competition and greed, that we found quite appealing. And even the technological backwardness had some nice by-products; I remember when we first arrived we had no telephone, and when the telegraph messenger (a woman) came by to deliver our first message, she came in and had a cup of tea with us and chatted and told us much about life there. Not constantly pursuing efficiency is inefficient, but it has some advantages too.
     
17. Sie haben sich mit erstaunlicher Offenheit Anfang der 90er Jahre mit dem Stasi-Komplex in der Bundesrepublik, der "bis zum Punkt der Besessenheit" gehe, geäussert. Rührt diese Ihre differenzierte wie kritische Betrachtungsweise des Phänomens aus der Erfahrung, dass dereinst auch Ihrem Vater geheimdienstliche Tätigkeit angekreidet wurde, war er doch während des Krieges zeitweilig beim OSS beschäftigt?
    Its a misconception that my father had anything to do with spying; he was a political analyst in the OSS, analyzing propaganda, documents psychology, as part of the war effort against fascism. The Stasi was an internal security police force; that's something quite different, for which I don't think my father had any sympathy at all, in Germany or in the United States.
     
18. Ihr Vater hat in einigen Prognosen geirrt, manche seiner Hoffnung hat sich als Illusion erwiesen. Er hat sich deshalb nicht Asche aufs Haupt gestreut oder in den Elfenbeinturm zurückgezogen, sondern, in Anlehnung an Hegel, gekontert: "Wenn die Tatsachen nicht mit der Theorie übereinstimmen - umso schlimmer für die Tatsachen." Spott oder schelmisches Eingeständnis eines ratlosen Theoretikers?
    If things don't turn out as one expects, one tries to understand why not, and act accordingly. I think he did. I'm not so sure his analysis was wrong; history takes its time. It certainly didn't move as quickly in the directions he hoped as he thought it might, but the contradictions and the possibilities remain.
    
    
     
19. "Eine Gesellschaft ohne Krieg, ohne Grausamkeit, ohne Brutalität, ohne Unterdrückung, ohne Dummheit, ohne Hässlichkeit: dass eine solche Gesellschaft möglich ist, daran zweifle ich überhaupt nicht", schrieb Herbert Marcuse. Teilt der Sohn den historischen Optimismus des Vaters?
    "Historical optimism?" Yes.
     
20. Last but not least some short questions which should be answered as short as possible, a world perhaps could be sufficient. The previous interview partners answered the same questions.
    
    a) Empfinden sie es als eine Last, einen berühmten Vater zu haben?
    No, in this case something to be proud of. There are even small practical benefits. I once had my passport stolen in London, and the official at the U.S. Consulate there said, "Oh, you're the son of Herbert Marcuse?", and speeded up the replacement. I'm sure my son's interest in Dachau and the post-war treatment of the fascist past there is related to his grandfather's work. And our daughter, who has just had a detective story translated and published in German (Irene Marcuse: Tod einer alten Dame), finds the publisher identifies her as "Enkelin des Philosophen Herbert Marcuse."
    
    b) Welche Stärken schätzen Sie an Ihrem Vater?
    He was very intelligent, astoundingly well educated and well read, and personally very decent (anstaendig) and engaged.
    
    c) Welche Schwächen von ihm lehnen Sie ab?
    None of your business.
    
    d) Welche seiner Eigenschaft würden Sie gern selbst besitzen?
    All.
    
    e) Welche auf keinen Fall?
    None of your business.
    
    f) Hatten Sie eine glückliche Kindheit?
    Yes.