Emigrant and Immigrant
I am an Emigrant and an Immigrant, both. As a 22-year old Emigrant from Germany, I carried with me to America my mother tongue, my history, all the concepts, beliefs, experiences, spoken and unspoken, conscious and unconscious. I unquestioningly belonged to that country. My ancestors had been baptized, married and sent to their graves from the church that had been started in Charlemagne’s time and with its high steeple had been a guidepost for the people of my town for hundreds of years. The habits, beliefs and customs that I grew up with had been so deeply anchored in my consciousness that they took on the character of unquestioning truth. One thing especially, though, was the very strong feeling that everybody, being an integral part of it, had a certain duty and responsibility towards the country and State. You would not litter, follows the laws, drove within the speed limit, and did nothing that would obviously damage the welfare of the whole. The “Volk”, the people, was the primary concern.
That certainty ended one day when, as a newly married Immigrant accompanied by my German husband, our ship entered New York Harbor and sailed past the Statue of Liberty – a truly humbling moment! From then the history of my people sank out of sight, a new language had to be learned, new customs arose and holidays were celebrated differently. I became a German-American which in itself made clear my tenuous existence in this country,
surrounded by Black-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, South Americans whose mother language was Spanish and people from 65 different countries surrounding me who all, like me, tried to put down roots while raising children with some knowledge of their “heritage”, yet also needing to put down their own roots in this country which after all was their “home”. From the morning when I passed by the Statue of Liberty, the most important words became “freedom”, “choice” and “opportunities”.
I immigrated to the United States in 1956, became a citizen, lived in different towns and different houses, had friends of different religions, races and homelands, but in all these years, while prospering modestly, I remained a stranger in this country. I was always silently comparing all experiences with those I knew from Home, looked for other Germans and most easily made friends from Home, and sometimes, after all these years, comes a day of sad longing for the past when I truly belonged.
And there were questions. Why were there in this rich country thousands of homeless people in every town, sleeping under bridges and on park benches, begging on street corners, eating charity meals in church basements? And at the same time thousands of obscenely rich people, owning several luxury homes, boats, horses and large properties, who pay a pittance or, due to the laws passed by the rich, even no taxes at all? And how could it be that a new President is elected and as his first act gives billions/trillions of Dollars to the rich? And not a ripple of anger among us, The People? And what is the role Capitalism plays in all of this?
One thing my husband used to say was: In America you have the freedom to become rich, but you may also fail and die in the gutter. One thing that gave me some problem early on was hearing people say: “This is America – I can do anything I want!” and “I have the freedom to choose anything I want!” and even “What is in it for Me, and the hell to everyone else!” I saw the apparent selfishness of my neighbors. They seemed to think only of themselves, littered with abandon, made noise into the night, jaywalked, quite visibly, disregarded traffic signs, etc., and quite often I said to my husband that I missed a certain feeling of responsibility towards other people and to society as a whole. I noticed incidences, but could not find explanations.
When I was 42 years old I had my own personal opportunity: I was accepted as a student to the Queens branch of the University of the City of New York, and there, very early on, I came across the philosophies which my home country and my adopted country were built on, and that gave me answers and explanations regarding the differences.
1. Atomism. This philosophy was started by John Locke and Thomas Hobbes in England. They extended social atomism to the political realm with the result that England as well as other English-speaking countries in the world like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and of course the United States follow the philosophy that human beings represent the primary parts and their freedom and wishes are of primary importance. What is an atomised society? When placed into the field of sociology, atomism assigns the individual as the basic unit of analysis for all implications of social life. This theory refers to "the tendency for society to be made up of a collection of self-interested and largely self-sufficient individuals, operating as separate atoms".
One aspect of atomistic individualism is that all individuals should succeed on their own and all government help for people should be minimal. While government help is discouraged, charity giving by individuals is encouraged. One example are the many buildings and wings in hospitals and universities that were built with private money and then carry the donor’s name. Another are the FundMe Campaigns, asking for charitable funds to be collected for people who have run into difficult times.
However, those participating in society should sacrifice a portion of their individual rights to form a “social contract” with the other persons in society. The problem with that is that the necessity to remember the obligation to observe a social contract needs to be learned and remembered and applied diligently. Atomism is often associated with policies of the Republican party and was widely used by the Republican Presidents Reagan and Hoover. Both of them frowned on government oversight committees and laws benefiting the people and they ruled for the benefit of the wealthy.
2. Wholism. The professor explained that Europe as a whole (excluding Great Britain) tends to lean towards a wholistic world view which sees the whole as primary and often greater than the sum of its parts. The “Volk” is therefore of primary importance and everything done for its welfare should in the long run not be for individual people alone, but for the benefit of the people collectively constituting the “Volk”. The places of production are in the hands of the Government or supervised by it, and the residents of wholistic countries are dependent on the decisions of the Government working first and foremost in the interest of the State. Socialism and Communism are collectivist systems, both having a bad name in the United States, but are also not known for homeless and poverty-stricken inhabitants.
One interesting difference appears in these hard and disruptive times of the corona virus. While the economy almost stopped completely in the face of Corvid-19, millions of Americans lost their jobs and applied for unemployment, running into technical problems and the inefficiency of an agency unused to this emergency, entering poverty, losing savings, suffering hunger etc.,
It is interesting to see how Germany (a country located in the wholistic-oriented Europe) handles the current virus and economic crisis.
After the war and the end of Hitler’s Fascist Regime, Germany had to agree on and write, with US help, a new constitution. It was said that the American advisors helped set up a constitution that embodied the democratic (atomistic) ideas of the United States, but here had an opportunity to improve on the constitution written for the United States two hundred years ago which is now almost impossible to change even if modern times demand change. An example is the Second Amendment granting the right to own guns “to form a well-armed militia” at a time when the United States did not yet have a federal army. As a result of the new Constitution, the new Germany is a country grounded in democratic rights, yet based on the wholistic model.
When it comes to the economy, the means of production are almost fully in the hands of individual owners. By far most factories are middle-sized and very often owned by families. Even the previous state-owned organizations like the Railroads and Lufthansa have been privatized. All of these entities are taxed at an acceptable rate, with the state income used to benefit the individual people and immediately then benefiting the people as a whole.
Helping in the corona virus crisis is the fact that Germany has a solid and publicly funded health system, with health insurance not anchored and dependent on one’s place of employment, but rather extended to every human being, with or without employment, with or without personal income. The unemployed have access to further education and help to find another job. Healthcare as well as education of the young is state-sponsored, and every young person with the desire to study may apply to universities. Germany has many highly educated young people whose tuition is not burdening their parents nor the students themselves who, in the United States, have often hundreds of thousands of Dollars debt after graduation and are unable to buy their first house or support their own children adequately. This new generation of educated people in Germany cannot help but be of benefit to the people and the country itself.
A solid, state-funded social security system, despite severe cuts a few years ago, provides regular monthly subsistence payments to prevent people from going hungry or becoming homeless.
And how is Germany handling the corona virus crisis? Chancellor Angela Merkel, concerned about the infringement of personal freedoms, asked the German people for their understanding and noted that this was the most serious crisis the German nation had faced since the end of World War II. Strict instructions were given out regarding hoarding, social-distancing, self-isolation etc. Serious warnings, accompanied by stiff fines, were issued to people who were found in violation of these orders.
And how is the economic fall-out handled? A huge state credit and subsidy program has been launched for the self-employed as well as small employers and large corporations. A “short time” system was put in place to prevent a wave of unemployment. This allows companies to pause the unemployment of their workers and has them pay their employees 67% of their wages which are paid through the state unemployment office. These same workers are then entitled to return to their old jobs at their old salaries. The companies can ultimately get back to work quickly because they can rely on an experienced workforce and are not obligated to search for and train a new staff.
It is obvious that these “wholistic” measures benefit the state and country as well.
The corona virus crisis is also damaging to the relationship between my two Homes – Germany and the United States. Instead of working in a common trans-Atlantic strategy to jointly manage and overcome these difficult times, the Trump Government pursues a strategy of every nation for itself and makes decisions without clearing or coordinating them with other countries.
There is, of course, much more to it. Long tracts and scientific examinations have been written on the subject matter and their details have been examined from different viewpoints. But the basic points of Atomism and Wholism give some explanation for different attitudes by different countries.
Inge Etzbach
Inge32@outlook.com