On 11 October 1998, Martin Walser received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. In his acceptance speech he spoke of the Moralkeule, the moral club, and of the Monumentalisierung der Schande, the turning of the shame into a monument. The audience rose to applaud. Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and his wife Ida stayed seated. Bubis called the speech geistige Brandstiftung, intellectual arson. Bubis later withdrew the word. Walser refused to accept the apology, but after some hesitation he agreed to a public discussion with him.
Theses for Debate
Martin Luther’s 95 Theses of 1517 carry the Latin title Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum, a disputation to clarify the power of indulgences. They were meant as a basis for discussion among expert theologians. Their preamble begins: Aus Liebe zur Wahrheit und im Verlangen, sie zu erhellen, sollen die folgenden Thesen in Wittenberg disputiert werden … (Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following theses shall be debated in Wittenberg …) Luther asked those who could not come to debate in person to take part in writing instead. The debate he hoped for never took place. Instead, a heresy trial began in 1518, and in the end Luther was excommunicated.
Fridays at Helmut Schmidt’s
In 1985 the former chancellor Helmut Schmidt founded a Freitagsgesellschaft, a Friday Society, in Hamburg. Its 25 members met during the winter semesters, on the second Friday of each month, at Schmidt’s house in Hamburg-Langenhorn. Each evening had a lecture followed by a discussion. Party membership did not matter. Until her death, his wife Loki Schmidt took care of the guests’ dinner herself. Over 175 lectures were held. The society was dissolved at the end of the winter semester 2014–15. Schmidt gave up the role of host for reasons of age, and no successor could be found.
The Wednesday Society
The Berlin Mittwochsgesellschaft, the Wednesday Society, was officially founded on 19 January 1863. It called itself a freie Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Unterhaltung, a free society for scholarly conversation. It had 16 members, at most 17, each a leading expert in his field, and it met every second Wednesday. Each member invited the others to his home twice a year and gave a lecture, which the group then discussed. In its last years its members included Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Werner Heisenberg and Ludwig Beck. After the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944, Beck was shot on 21 July without trial. The society’s last session, the 1,056th, took place on Wednesday 26 July 1944, at the home of Paul Fechter.
Stammtisch
der Stammtisch — the regulars’ table. The same group meets at the same pub on a regular day. Duden defines it as a table in a restaurant where a circle of regulars meets regularly, and which is usually reserved for them. Traditionally, a sign on the table marks the reservation. The word also has a dismissive use. Stammtischpolitik, Stammtisch politics, means simplified political talk.
Sunday at Noon
Every Sunday around noon, six journalists from different countries discussed politics with Werner Höfer in the Internationaler Frühschoppen, the international morning drink. The program began on radio in 1952 and moved to television in 1953. Until 1970 it started at 11:30. When it was moved to 12:00, viewers protested, above all women. The series reached 1,874 broadcasts. It ended suddenly in 1987. It had emerged that in 1943 Höfer had written approvingly of the execution of the pianist Karlrobert Kreiten, and he was forced out. Just one week later, an almost identical program, the Presseclub, started in the same slot.
The Hot Seat
Der heiße Stuhl, the hot seat, first ran on RTL on 15 January 1989 and was produced until 1994. Each episode began with one guest and his or her usually very provocative thesis. The guest sat on the hot seat, facing five people who held a completely different opinion. The source that describes the show also notes its weakness. Oft wurde die sachliche Diskussionsebene schnell verlassen und es wurde laut, polemisch und zum Teil auch persönlich. The discussion often left the factual level quickly and became loud, polemical and partly personal.
The Effort to Find the Truth
In 1778 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was in a public dispute with Johann Melchior Goeze, the chief pastor of Hamburg. That year Lessing published 15 polemical writings against him. The duke then withdrew Lessing’s exemption from censorship and banned him from publishing on religion. In the same controversy, in Eine Duplik, a reply to the theologian Johann Heinrich Reß, Lessing wrote: Nicht die Wahrheit, in deren Besitz irgendein Mensch ist oder zu sein vermeinet, sondern die aufrichtige Mühe, die er angewandt hat, hinter die Wahrheit zu kommen, macht den Wert des Menschen. Not the truth that a person possesses, or believes he possesses, but the honest effort he has made to get to the truth makes the worth of a person.
The Critic Who Left
From 1988 to 2001, ZDF’s Das Literarische Quartett showed critics arguing about new books, dominated by Marcel Reich-Ranicki and known for his devastating verdicts. In June 2000 the critics discussed Haruki Murakami’s novel Gefährliche Geliebte. Reich-Ranicki accused the critic Sigrid Löffler of always complaining about novels about love, and said she regarded love as something anstößig Unanständiges, offensively indecent. On air, Löffler rejected this as a persönliche Unterstellung, a personal insinuation. After the episode she announced that she would leave the program.
Sides Drawn by Lot
Jugend debattiert, Youth Debates, is a school debating competition, an initiative of the federal president and under his patronage. It grew out of a Hamburg school debate first held in 1999. In each debate two speakers argue for a proposition and two against it. Die Positionen, Pro und Contra, werden den Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmern kurz zuvor zugelost. The positions, for and against, are assigned to the participants by lot shortly before. The jury scores four things: Sachkenntnis, Ausdrucksvermögen, Gesprächsfähigkeit und Überzeugungskraft, knowledge of the matter, power of expression, ability to engage in discussion, and persuasiveness. In the closing round a debater may change position, but only on the basis of the debate just held.