About the symposion
Program of the 32nd Soyfer Symposion
Jura Soyfer Edition 2012 (Edition in German)
Edition in English
This page serves as an introduction to a polylogue on complex topics within the framework of the 32nd Soyfer Symposion: scientific lectures, presentations, theatrical performances, interactive participation within the framework of the Jura Soyfer Channel. It goes back to an education in Germanistik (not only German, but at this time very new: Austrian Literature and Language) and History at the University of Salzburg, which broke with the traditions of trivializing Austrofascism and National Socialism, despite the disadvantages for the careers of the teachers (Rudolf G. Ardelt, Gerhard Botz, Hans Haas, Ernst Hanisch, Hans Höller, Karl Müller, Herbert Steiner, Erika Weinzirl, Walter Weiss, Klaus Zelewitz and others), archival studies in 12 countries, study of historical literature since the 1970s.
The shocking aspect about the terror of National Socialism is the rationalism with which the industrial murder („gassing“) of millions of people was prepared and carried out. It is true that a core element of the ideology of National Socialism is irrationalism. (1) Racism led to arrogance towards other states, which led to a crushing military defeat, which also had to do with the technological superiority of the economy, the weapons of the opponents, the conduct of war.
However, it is known from the Wannsee Conference of 20.1.1942 that masses of people were killed because they were no longer profitable, and the National Socialists were also unable to feed them. They had their forced laborers from the East.
Today’s strategies of violence also have their rationality. The driving forces are profit, power. After 1989, not everyone shared Gorbachev’s optimism, although the possibilities for a culture of peace seemed tangible. In the song The Future (LP: 1992) by Leonard Cohen you will find the following lines:
I’ve seen the future, brotherIt is murder
Through the media, the Internet, the images of the brutal terror of Hamas (2) can reach us (if we allow this poisoning). The UN report from March 2024 is only based on officials of Israel, not on testimonies. The UN, partly the EU, presidents, mass demonstrations also criticize the closure of the Gaza Strip, the bombardments, the expulsion to the south, the collective punishment. A criticism that led the Israeli ambassador to demand the resignation of the UN Secretary-General. President Biden is likely to have succeeded in ensuring that the ground offensive does not take place, or rather not as an announced collective vendetta that would force Netanyahu in a political trap. Of course, despite U.S. concerns that the conflict is escalating, Netanyahu says: do or die. And it seems the perspective may be do and die. Netanyahu, a prime minister of Israel who pushed his country to the brink of civil war this year to avoid prison. Many in Israel want him to resign now, or at the latest after the war, because they want to free the hostages, they blame him for the catastrophe Israel has fallen into. Actual in March 2024: Ehud Barak: Israel Must Decide Where It’s Going—and Who Should Lead It There (foreignaffairs.com)
The fight against anti-Semitism will have to be waged in a new way after these acts of violence. Anti-Semitism is currently exploding. The fight against anti-Semitism has actually always had to be waged differently, as the installation on communication structures at the Frankfurt am Main Book Fair 2023 wants to show (3). The construction of evil is not enough to justify one’s own crimes. A world judiciary with which some countries elevate themselves above the world is doomed to failure and entails conflicts and violence. This kind of injustice brought down for example feudalism.(4) What the majority of the states of the world wants, shows the actual UN resolution on Gaza.
One element in the context of anti-Semitism, of acts of violence, is Hate, which Heinrich Mann perceived as a historical phenomenon as early as 1933. In 2023, hatred is once again linked to nationalism. Those who break with the anti-nationalist EU founding acts are also those who prepared wars, are waging wars. The words of Heinrich Mann (see link to a source in German) have a very contemporary meaning. Even the link to National Socialist traditions is no longer shunned (see the invocation of Bandera, the applause for an SS criminal in the Canadian Parliament).
But it is not easy to face this frightening social reality in all its ugliness. Soyfer already shows with his poems in the Arbeiter-Zeitung that he faces up to horror (cf. Arlt on horror in German in the context of (military) violence, „I have seen the horror.“, Jura Soyfer. Vol. 9, No. 2/2000). Leonard Cohen, whose contemporary work is used to make the change in approach in the present – especially in the analysis and representation of feelings – understandable, includes the album (LP) Songs of Love and Hate (1971). The political dimension, the influence of Garcia Lorca is not really legible, but the connection with Jewish tradition in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War is. There are rudimentary descriptions of the connections to this Jewish tradition – also in the context of propaganda sites. This connection to Jewish tradition is particularly evident in Cohen’s last song, You want it Darker.
This album Songs of Love and Hate was preceded by the 1969 single The Partisan. The pictorial elements with which this song is later linked are historicized. Later, historical echoes become evident (also in connection with Vienna): Leonard Cohen – Take This Waltz The poet Garcia Lorca is standing at the bar in Vienna. He was sentenced to death and murdered by the „Blues“ (in this case the Spanish Fascists).
At the end of the carnage in Richard Wagner’s opera „Der Ring der Nibelungen“ is the love motif in the music. In the song The Future by Leonard Cohen it says:
I’ve seen the nations rise and fallI’ve heard their stories, heard them allBut love’s the only engine of survival
In Soyfer’s multi-layered play The End of the World, it is love that saves the world. A world of contradictions:
This earth is full of hunger and bread,
Full of life and full of death is this earth,
Boundless in poverty and wealth.(5)
Soyfer hoped for the revolution that would resolve these contradictions. Evidently, he relies on the popular fronts against fascism and National Socialism in Europe. They are also an alternative to Stalin’s policy (see Peter Weiss: The Aesthetics of Resistance). Despite Austro-fascist censorship, this is indirectly verbalized in his 1936 play. The attempted revolutions appear on the scene through reports.
In 1945 came the liberation from the National Socialist dictatorship. Soyfer didn’t live to see it. As is well known, he died on 16.2.1939 in the Buchenwald concentration camp. The documentary: Jura Soyfer (1912-1939) in memory (in German). But he had contributed to the survival of some of his friends, comrades. And his proposals for changing the world are quite alive. Changes that Leonard Cohen also saw as necessary: Democracy.
(1) A lot of important critical literature exists not yet translated only in German.
(2) In the German version I take articles from media in German and some in English. The quotes in English stay, but for the articles in German I take articles in English. Unfortunately, the articles in German are often influenced by war propaganda (not only in terms of content, but also in terms of style, did not break with the past). For example, an article in Standard about a position paper of the Social Democrats shows that discourse is not possible now.
(3) Jura Soyfer (1912-1939) died with 26 years in concentration camp Buchenwald on 16 February 1939. But as the performances of today, the 32nd Soyfer Symposion shows his texts are contemporary texts. The National Socialists were not successful.
(4) There is another installation in the context of the bookfair in Frankfurt 2023 and the project The Iron Age. Poems 1973-2023. In November 2023, the poems Narration and The Evil will be also available in English. At the end of December 2023, the file book The Iron Age shall published.
(5) Translated by Arlt. In the translation of Jarka the verse Boundless in poverty and wealth is missing.