Simon James
When pondering what reconciliation means for me in the context of German citizenship I view it largely through the prism of my late father’s experience as a first-generation refugee from Nazi oppression, and secondly my own reaction to his oppression together with the zeitgeist of current affairs.
My father Karl Rakowski had several things in common with his best friend, the fellow refugee – the Austrian poet and political activist Erich Fried. Like Erich, Karl was impoverished when he arrived in London. My father fled from Germany, whist Erich fled Austria, both believing what Fried wrote that “Only the man with an icy heart stays in a burning house”. They were right.
Like Erich, Karl lived with the ghost of his olden days, and like Erich he also from a young age found himself as Erich described it as “swimming in the wake of communism”. Their experiences leaving their old countries and becoming exiles in Britain made both Karl and Erich sceptical, with no regard for sacred cows. They both recognised that they found a paradise lost, a safe refuge in North London.
Importantly they both preserved a form of sardonic humour, from a meld of two cultures and languages. They both were critics of both their home counties and also Britain, but regarded themselves as what Erich described as “intermediaries between friends, letting people have their say, even if you disagree with them”. As Erich later wrote “Anyone who has no compassion for those he must denigrate and fight in order to be healthy. He is sick.”
My father managed to escape from Germany in July 1939, and found himself an enemy alien in the U.K. interned in the Isle of Man and then Canada, amongst other places. Arriving in London in 1943, he was instantly attracted to the North West London areas of Swiss Cottage, Belsize Park and Hampstead – a filly paid-up member of Finchleystrasse you might say. In my early years our family lived a few doors up from what had been the H.Q. of the Freie Deutsche Kulturbund in Upper Park Road NW3. In the 1960s our flat in number 24 Upper Park Road was a hub for German and Austrian refugees, who met there and conducted endless political arguments in German over strong coffee. He, and many of his fellow refugees, regarded themselves as exiles from Germany or Austria, and felt a huge debt of gratitude to Great Britain for providing refuge.
After the war my father found it very hard to integrate into the U.K. He found it very difficult to get work and really struggled. Reading his letters from that time written he was extremely miserable in many ways, and was very seriously contemplating a return to Germany. However, with some financial sponsorship from his fellow refugees he stayed the course and became a British Naturalised Subject in March 1950.
Erich always said that he was “not poisoned by irreparable loss” and could move forward with his life even after the Shoah. I am not sure my father was in the same mind, and think that his own experiences caused irreparable damage to his mental health that was unfortunately lifelong. Their lives diverged in this respect, and while both men regarded themselves as exiles, my father was steadfast in having nothing to do with his former homeland.
Reconciliation for my father for many years was not thus possible due to the irreparable damage caused by events both political and personal. However my father did, with time, mellow and lean towards a more reconciliatory view.
In the 1970s felt he could he return to Germany to visit relatives. It was a kind of reconciliation that had been a long time coming. I visited Hamburg with Karl in 1974, and saw the pleasure his visit gave him. Karl sadly died in 1977, and it is fair to say he both loved his adopted country and Germany by that time.
For many years I struggled with my father’s untimely demise and also a sense that I had lost a deep cultural connection with Germany through him as a result. After his death I stared to reconnect with my father’s relatives in Germany and was delighted by their lovely response. A feeling built that this feeling of German identity was something I should do something about – to claim back an important part of me, if you will. It was not until 2019 that I plucked up the courage and applied for my German citizenship with the help of the 116 Exclusions Group’s Felix and Isabelle Couchman. For years I had been collecting documentary evidence to support such a claim, and I am very pleased to say that due to my father’s wartime oppression I was awarded citizenship in 2020 at a ceremony in the Edinburgh Consulate. The staff there were wonderful.
Obtaining citizenship, was a hugely proud, symbolic and emotional moment for me, and I felt a sense of wholeness publicly recognising my father’s plight and my own German roots and identity. In 2023 I travelled to Germany and met with some of my relatives in Hamburg, this time entering the country as a German citizen. The warmth of my relatives was, as always, amazing, as was their delight at my new citizenship. I have always felt at home in Germany, the pull of Heimat probably, and the pleasure of being a citizen of such a great country. I took time in Hamburg to visit the many Stolpersteine in St Georg and Winterhude, and to pause for a long time at each and think about and recognise the past. The past spoke to me as if it was yesterday.
But it is just that, the past. Germany today is a wonderful, vibrant, and hugely successful country with a massive amount to be proud of – and from which the United Kingdom can and should learn from and strengthen its bonds with. It is a mature and serious democracy that recognised the past and embraces the future. But democracies are fragile and must be guarded jealousy, and the rise of the far-right, populism and manufactured social division threaten it. Such movements pose an existential threat to democracy – which is why learning the lessons from the past and reconciliation with it are so vital right now, and always. We must be vigilant.
Erich Fried, somewhat controversially, was all too aware how many young people in Germany and Austria were warped by the Nazi system before they could think for themselves, and consequently supported the regime or undertook or supported barbaric acts in its name. This must never be allowed again.
My memories of the two men are a blessing to me, and their lifelong behaviour in upholding democracy, their tolerance and their challenging the politically unacceptable will remain with me forever.