Uneasy but necessary bedfellows: history and politics

A book I read in the old East Germany, by a dissident called Heinz Knobloch, had a catch phrase running through it, ‘mistrust the green spaces’. A green space was often a spot where once a building stood that represented something the regime would rather not publicise, but which was too important to be built over completely. A major office of the Nazi regime, or of the Weimar Republic it overthrew, or even of the German Empire that preceded both.

Perhaps the best example of this fiddling with historical monuments concerned not a building but a statue. The imposing equestrian statue of Frederick the Great of Prussia, with its frieze of significant people of his time around the plinth, originally stood on the grand boulevard of Berlin, Unter den Linden.

The Frederick the Great statue in 1920

The Socialist Unity Party (SED) that ruled East Germany weren’t going to have that symbol of royalist and aristocratic elitism standing in the capital’s most prestigious avenue. For a time it vanished altogether. But, hey, Berlin was the capital of Prussia, and Prussia was the heartland of East Germany. After a while, the statue reappeared, but not in the capital, instead in the Charlottenhof Palace in Potsdam. On display, but not in too public a way.

Then came another rethink. In the 1980s, the SED changes its historical memory policy. East Germany was a state but not a nation. To make it a nation, it needed cultural roots and therefore a history. Frederick II was one of the greatest figures of its past, and the SED decided that, after mature reflection, and taking all things into consideration, it was important to bring him out of his relative obscurity and set him back up somewhere with a bit of class about it.

So the statue reappeared on the Unter den Linden. Where it stands to this day.

Politics makes history. And history matters to politics.

That’s as true in Spain as it is in Eastern Germany. Around the corner from where we’re living in Valencia is a thoroughfare that proclaims itself to be ‘Democracy Street’. However, the sign also tells us that it was formerly ‘Castán Tobeñas Street’.

Democracy Street. Formerly Castán Tobeñas

‘Aha,’ I thought when I saw it, ‘might this be a leading figure of the Fascist period deemed better forgotten than commemorated?’

So it seems. He was a jurist who rose to the position of President of the Spanish Supreme Court, a post he held for nearly 25 years under Franco, until just before his death. Seems open and shut. A major figure of Franco’s regime, far better consigned to the dustbin of history than commemorated by a street in Spain’s third city.

The reality is far more complex. But when is reality anything but complex? Why else does Donald Trump avoid it altogether?

Pascual Marzal is a Professor of the History of Law at Valencia University, and served as a member of the City Commission on the application of the Historical Memory law under which the street name was changed. He says he’s fully on board with the law, but opposes its application to Castán Tobeñas.

He points out that Tobeñas was also a leading judge under the second Republic, the one that Franco overthrew. He was, indeed, tried by a court martial of the Fascist regime, which acquitted him on the grounds that the previous government had appointed him exclusively for his legal skills, not for any particular political position. Such were those skills, indeed, that they decided to make use of them too. Hence his promotion to the Supreme Court.

Apparently, Tobeñas wrote some seminal texts on civil law and is regarded to this day as a major scholar in the field.

As Marzal asks, who can say with certainty that they would have behaved better under an autocratic regime? Would we resist? Or would we, like Tobeñas, come to terms with the regime and accommodate with it in order to make a living?

It’s an excellent question.

My wife comes from Alsace, in Eastern France. With the adjoining department of the Moselle, it is the region of the country that lost most men during the Second World War. The problem is that, because Germany regarded Alsace not as occupied France but recovered national territory, young men were subject to German conscription. So those Alsatian dead were above all wearing German grey not French blue. Few wanted to serve, but the consequences of a refusal were dire, not just for the individuals but for their families too.

These were the ‘despite ourselves’ (malgré nous) and a lot of them died in Russia. France has little reason to be proud of what they did, but Alsace has every reason to mourn their loss. So the region has its war memorials, though they say little about what uniform the men they commemorate were wearing when they died.

Tobeñas seems similar. He was unfortunate to live under a regime he could not serve with honour.

Unfortunate indeed. But though he couldn’t serve it with honour, he chose to serve it anyway. Why then should he be honoured today with a street name? After all, he was a judge. An authority of the law. And he served a regime that came to power illegally and ruled with little legal restraint. A jurist, above all others, must have found that particularly lamentable.

I’m glad the malgré nous have their monuments in Alsace. But I’m equally glad that the law on historical memory has deprived Tobeñas of his street. And I love the fact that it’s become Democracy Street instead, a lovely dig at Fascism.

History is complex. Sometimes it makes judgements that are perhaps too black and white. But they have to be made.

This one strikes me as have got more right than wrong.