hearing the news. The reporter didn’t ask any further questions during that television report. Did the reporter know that Dr. Roman Herzog had been an academic assistant to the same Professor Theodor Maunz, already as a young senior law student and later became his colleague for many years? Did the reporter know that the most used commentary of the German “Grundgesetz” (Constitution) carries the names Maunz-Herzog as authors and that all constitutional experts in the Federal Republic of Germany still keep Theodor Maunz in high esteem? How many top „media“ people know that Theodor Maunz was also one of the most renowned constitutional experts in Adolf Hitler’s “Third Reich”? He contributed to the establishment of the primacy of the “Fuehrer–Prinzip” (principle of absolute leadership) overriding the Constitution. Despite all this, one of the top German reporters was content with that hypocritical reaction of Roman Herzog posing on television that he “was about to explode” on getting the news of Maunz meeting the Chairman and Financier of the Neo–Nazi–Party (DVU). Assuming that the reporter did not know much about the “Mr. Hyde” side of Dr. Maunz, shouldn’t he have at least enquired, tried to find out whether Roman Herzog was still fit to continue as the topmost Watchman of the Constitution, since he had miserably failed to detect the real political conviction of his mentor and colleague, Theodor Maunz, for so many years? Naturally no public pressure was put on Roman Herzog, the uppermost guardian and protector of the Constitution of the new German Republic. We won’t know whether there would have been public pressure against Herzog if all facts were made public. Anyway. Roman Herzog himself left this high office soon. Voluntarily. Only to become the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. No, we do not wish to raise all these issues. They are so out of date. Who would be interested in chronicles like these?
But we have to raise a few more questions in the context of „might-media-manipulation“. What is the correlation between the expansion of „media“ and the progressive decrease of our memory? Should we overlook the monotony every morning, when we see the same kind of headlines in our dailies despite the diversification of media institutions? Can we just ignore the disappointment that more media did not lead to more detailed and varied information and news? Just accept it that all newspapers, magazines, the radio and television are fed by the same agencies, same sources? But then, if all “eaters” are cutting their share from the same cake – advertisement budgets or multinational corporations – where could any alternate programmers with a different and fresh line of thinking come from? Why would anyone risk veering away from the status quo in the media? No wonder that the “Guinness-principle” holds – more rapid, more thrilling, more entertaining and better in technical quality. All that counts is the ratio of consumers. Is there a demand for complicated historical background of events? Are such (hi)stories also entertaining? And, are we not addicted to entertainment? Entertainment does not need memory. Memory only burdens. Don’t we spend enough time already on our fight to overcome the travails and tedium of daily life?
We may also not recall the “freedom of the press” during the Gulf War. We hope, we have not completely forgotten, how powerful those daily press conferences from NATO headquarters were, while the “humanitarian action in Kosovo” was on. We were to believe that the “military action” was inevitable if human civilisation was to be saved and that NATO was only dropping “bomb–carpets”, which were intelligent, sophisticated and civilised enough to distinguish between “Milosevics” and innocent Yugoslav children and women. We may still remember those press conferences from the “White House” during the “Campaign” against international terrorism in Afghanistan, another “unavoidable military attack” to destroy the evil. There too we were to believe that US bombs do not kill human beings, but only the “bin Ladens”. Well, there were a few “collateral damages”. Collateral damages? Moreover, the civilised “international community” never drops bombs. Those were only punishing “air-strikes” to restore freedom and peace. Enduring peace. And what has really been achieved? This will become evident later in Iraq or in Syria, in Somalia or in Sudan or in Iran or in North Korea. And then?
Do we still remember what happened in the “Gulf War”? Do we remember its end? Our “mind–memory” does not seem to have any capacity left for the “Gulf War”. This has apparently been deleted as trash. Today we may be prejudiced enough to think at best that the Iraqi children born after 1990 are responsible for Saddam Hussein still being in power. In spite of the “Gulf War”. How are we otherwise to understand the continuous missile and bomb attacks on Iraq by the British and US forces? Are these attacks approved by resolutions of the United Nations or by any proforma decisions of the “civilised International Community”?
Can we still recall what happened on the Falkland Islands? Or the military coup in Chile? Or the defoliation of the Ho–Chi–Min–path, dropping tons of dioxin because democracy and humanism in Asia were at stake? Who was behind the ”Six-Days-War”? What happened in the Congo and how was the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjoeld, killed? Who killed the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after he had nationalised the oil industry in Iran? Who was John Foster Dulles and which policies did he pursue? From which blue sky did the fugitives in Palestine fall, who are confined in camps even today since 1948? What happened in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki? Who fought the second and the First World War? What happened in the so-called colonies? Why is “America” called America? How was the name of this continent before it was named “America”? What was the name of the people there before the Christian-European butchers did the whole job? Or in “Australia”, or in “New Zealand”? Do we still know how many “fugitives” left Europe in the last 500 years and what they did do in the whole world? Were they refugees? If we had had answers to all these questions, would we have looked at the “modern pioneers of a campaign” against world evil with different eyes?
Does anyone still remember the following anecdote? A journalist asked the Foreign Secretary of the “USA” John Foster Dulles, if he had only one wish, what would that be? “Free flow of information” was the answer. The journalist did not ask for further clarifications. But we are mulling over the answer. What did John Foster Dulles really mean? Is it not a well-known fact that anything that flows, flows in one direction only? Don’t we have too many of these “John Foster Dulles”? They have successfully erased our memory on the long and elaborate UNESCO–discussions on media–monopoly. Those years in the seventies and early eighties.
Well, never ending questions arise whenever we reflect upon the interrelationship between “media growth” and “collective amnesia” in “modern societies”. Reflect upon high-level-politics as well as upon the vagaries of everyday life. And we know: We are, what we know. And we only know what we have been told.
If the tale is consistent, if it does not cause uneasiness, if it does not obviously contradict our previous experiences, we accept it, categorise and save it on the “hard disk” of our mind. Naturally stories from far afield are accepted more willingly. And if the stories are new? We get accustomed to them. Mostly we do not even have enough time to ask, who the narrator is, how the narrator got hold of his story, how he earns his living, what could be the after-effects of the story, who will benefit, whom it will harm, and a lot more.
These are the reasons, these are the backgrounds that made our search for answers to our rather harmless questions so difficult, so complicated: who the “Aryans” are, the “Indogermans” and the “Indoeuropeans”? Who they are, since when has their existence been known, how has it become known that they existed, who discovered them, and how, why and for what purpose? But we have made progress in our search. With the help of our unusual questions. And as it seems, we have banged on Pandora’s Box and it is open now.
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