| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Karsten Voigt Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
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The next step in your career was to run for Parliament. You served in the Bundestag for more than twenty-five years. Tell us about your decision to go into politics beyond the student activities, and the decision to run for Parliament.
Actually, when I became Chairman of the Young Socialists, the youth organization of the SPD, it was already an influential position. The organization had, at that time, more than 300,000 members, and it was a power inside the Social Democratic Party. And I was running [for Parliament], actually, for the first time in '69 in parallel to my chairmanship in the youth organization. I was running against our defense minister at that time, Georg Leber. And I got one-third of the vote in the constituency, in the primaries, which was very much, but it was not enough. And in '76, I was so strong in that constituency -- I was really working on the graduate level -- that he decided not to run against me anymore in that constituency. I took that constituency, which I then kept until '98.
This was, again, as I'm saying, an early decision to go into politics and to be there full-time. But in parallel, I had to jump into adult education, by the way, into a institution where I was also responsible for a theater. A theater, which at that time, was led by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. So I had always tried to have a position where I could go back out of the politics into a normal job.
What contribution did being a parliamentarian have on your way of thinking? As a member of Parliament, for example, you had to work your constituency. Former President Lyndon Johnson used to call this "pressing the flesh." What affect did being in touch with your constituents have on your understanding of foreign policy and of the need to articulate positions and elevate public consciousness about foreign policy issues?
I was, from '76 onwards, always on the Foreign Relations committee. It was always very difficult to translate foreign policy priorities into the language and experience of people in my constituency, who normally were blue-collar workers, trade unionists. So, I had to relate their experience, which was an experience about World War II in their generation. Most of them remembered World War II, or there was a memory of the Vietnam War. So there was a foreign policy attitude resulting from these memories or experiences. But there were often other elements. Most people understood that if we couldn't keep peace, if the tensions would grow, then their very existence -- not only as a nation, but as individuals -- would be in danger. Most people had that memory in Germany because of their life experience. So this was the easy part. Many of the people in my constituency were highly motivated on moral grounds.
The more difficult part was to make them understand how international structures function and how the accommodation of different interests works in international policy. And the most difficult part was, always, to translate the instincts of other nations for Germans who grew up under far different instincts. To give you an example: the French instincts after World War II were never to be weak again. The German instincts were never to be militarily strong again. And, therefore, the Germans never understood the French desire for an autonomous military capability, including nuclear components, especially when it was supported by French Socialists. And the French never understood that the Germans always wanted to be part of the Peace Movement -- to be soft, in many respects. It was very difficult to translate.
So really, a back and forth between the necessities of the strategic situation and the peoples' concerns. But then, going back to the people, with a constant effort at translation and elevating and understanding. In what way did the information come back? You know your constituents' concerns. You hear them. Did that, then, affect the kinds of positions you could take as a legislator, when you were dealing with foreign policy?
In many cases, not. In many cases, it was simply that because I was sharing the view on trade union issues, on social issues, they respected me and re-elected me, even if I differed on foreign policy issues. But the basic trust was created because of my support for their daily needs. And this led them to accept my views in foreign policy even when I was differing with them, with exceptions. When they were very active on a specific subject and they differed from my view -- this was the case during the "dual tracks" in East-West relations, and in certain degrees, this was the case during the Bosnian crises, where I was in favor of military intervention, but this was much, much later -- in those cases when they had a very specific view, I was running into difficulties and had to fight.
In the legislature or with your own constituents?
Both.
In the series, we've interviewed a number of American legislators -- Ron Dellums, Alan Cranston -- who as legislators had to turn the country around in terms of its thinking on foreign policy -- on the Vietnam War, on South Africa, and so on. Have similar situations confronted you as a member of parliament in Germany?
There were several elements of that, but in the first stage I had not been involved. At least, I'd not been involved in Parliament. The first stage was the movement towards détente in '69. At that time I was chairing the youth organization, but I was not in Parliament. The next stage, which I think was very important, was the dual track decision, which was a challenge to the détente policy; but we were talking about deploying missiles against Russia. This was more or less a crisis of détente. This was much more complicated because the détente instinct of the party was running against the Western concept of opting for more missiles.
The third component was during the period of German unification. It was a very emotional situation in which I was very pro-unification, in which many people in my party had fears of the revival of German nationalism. I thought [there was a] chance of 1848 repeating itself, but we could combine democracy with unity. They feared the repetition, many of them, of German nationalism.
Later on, the last stage was German military engagement in Bosnia and Kosovo. You simply have to understand that the Social Democrats, since the foundation of the party in the nineteenth century, never -- with one exception -- never voted in favor of participation in a war. They did vote once in favor in 1914; they split. So there was a deep, deep instinct not to do that. And to tell these people that now those instincts were wrong, that they should do it differently, was very, very difficult. I succeeded, but it was a very risky undertaking and I partially suffered from it.
I hear you saying that from your perspective, democracy and foreign policy have to be inextricably linked in your country. And that if they are not linked in the right way, there is a fear that democracy might fail. I'm not suggesting that there's a great fragility, but you have a great sensitivity to the connection of these two phenomena.
I think you always, as a legislator, need to maintain your base. And this means that your constituents respect you even if you differ with them in specific cases. So it's not that you always have to follow public opinion by simply doing what they ask for. But that -- and this is also a task that you have as a legislator -- you have to explain why you are doing it, and you have to respect that if you no longer are capable of explaining it, that you then have to go. I think that this is part of the democratic process. But in Germany, because of the two World Wars, these foreign policies always played a bigger part [in the translation work] than normally they do in the American constituents, with the exception of the Vietnam debate.
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