Dirk Zöllner is trying to process a dispute that he recently triggered on Facebook
In autumn 89 I read out the resolution of the rock musicians on the stages of the GDR. It was about the renewal of the old system. So basically it’s a renovation. It annoyed a part of the band, some of my fellow musicians just wanted to make music. But every word was absorbed by the audience, and after the concerts there were endless discussions. I also remember the doubts that came over me when I read it out, because the topic was not reflected in the East German media. I believed in what I had signed, but was it perhaps outside society?
Now I’ve signed the Manifesto for Peace and I’m promoting my beliefs on Facebook and at concerts. Not many artists do that, and West Germans hardly at all. There’s “Rock for Peace” again in the East, and I announce my fears as announcements of appropriate titles. “Käfer auf’m Blatt”, a pacifist song from the Cold War, is gaining importance again after 35 years. Also “New Paths” whose text I wrote around 2009, in what felt like the final stage of capitalism. “Bleifrei”, with a text by Werner Karma, which was written for the refugee crisis.
“Soldiers are murderers!” Kurt Tucholsky wrote in a commentary for the “Weltbühne” in 1931. This sentence became a slogan of the peace movement. Many legal proceedings have been conducted about it, but in 1995 the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that this use of quotations was permissible. But although I’m a “pacifist rascal”, I still have problems with the relevant statement, because such a soldier may not have found another job with which he can support the family. And at the end of reason there is no choice anyway, since the simple man has to serve for the bickering of the money and power people. For people and fatherland, it is claimed.
I got a little overheated during the night and instead of the soldier, I called the board of directors of the armaments companies and the politicians who allow their product range for export as murderers on Facebook. And all the supporters of arms deliveries as accomplices. I looked at my son sleeping peacefully and a tear fell onto the keyboard. The next day, outrage erupts, I’m unfriended, and an ex-boyfriend threatens legal action. So I trust in the competence of the Federal Constitutional Court! (dzo)