Finding Buried Treasure
From Vergangenheitsbewältigung to the Moral Energy of Schatzwiederentdeckung
I was enriched last month at the Jeju Reparations Conference at the University of North Carolina Law School, when Professor Robert Westley mentioned a word that he had learned in Germany, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which he translated as “memory work.” I remembered, or thought I did, seeing “memory work” in an article that I had read some months ago, and as soon as I returned to my books and papers in Michigan in late May of 2017, I took up the task of finding that reference. I found two articles that used the phrase “memory work,” but they did not match the specific memory that I had of this term. My memory was that the term “memory work” had been coined by a woman. Neither of the articles that I found confirmed this memory. So perhaps my memory that “memory work” was coined by a woman is a false memory. Needing to better understand the history of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, I learned after some cursory research that the word means something like “working through a difficult past,” i.e., working through traumatic memories, the extreme version of which I sometimes refer to as “atrocity history.” The Wikipedia page for Vergangenheitsbewältigung explains: The German Duden lexicon defines Vergangenheitsbewältigung as "public debate within a country on a problematic period of its recent history—in Germany on National Socialism, in particular This fact that Vergangenheitsbewältigung connotes difficult and traumatic history struck me. First, the meaning of this term resonates with Carl Jung’s notion of the ‘shadow’ and the need for every individual to “make the darkness conscious” in order to ascend to a higher level of consciousness. To be sure, it is not simply making the darkness conscious that is our task. Crucial indeed is accepting and befriending the darkness in ourselves. The clasped hands on the Pro Concordia Labor flag can remind us that in order to ascend, we must labor and partner with our own shadow in order to move forward into light. The making of the darkness conscious is one of the core values of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. We must bear witness to the depth of our darkness in order to transcend it.
But no less important is bearing witness to what the Quakers called our “inner light.” For the past few years, I have been writing and speaking about the importance of what I call “Positive History” – stories of inspiration and cooperation which are illustrative of specific virtues, including, but not limited to, the four Cardinal Virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance). Aristotle noted that not all virtues have names, but yet:
We must try … .to invent names ourselves so that we may be clear and easy to follow. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 7)
Following Aristotle, when I created the course The Virtues of Untold Stories: The Peace History of the United States and Korea (which I will to teach as part of my Fulbright Grant at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies at Kyunghee University in the Fall of 2017), I named – for the first time - some of the virtues that I had noticed in my reading of Peace History. Among them, transnational fellowship and transgenerational fellowship. When Lenore Selenka of Germany worked with May Wright Sewall of the United States to harness the network of the International Council of Women to support both the 1899 and 1907 Hague Peace Conferences, transnational fellowship was at work. And when we continue the work that these women started, we partake in transgenerational fellowship. Personally, I have found it useful to name the different constructive moral energies that comprise a “red thread” throughout history through which we can see the working of the inner light. I am always renewed when I bear witness to the spinning of that thread.
Observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
As you might imagine, the fact that Vergangenheitsbewältigung denotes the “trauma history” of the shadow, forced in me the question of whether there exists a single German word that denotes working with the memory of the “positive history” of our “inner light”; “remembering inspiring stories,” or, thinking more metaphorically, “finding a buried treasure.” After consulting with one of my German translators, the answer was nicht! There is no such word. So, laboring together with him, we set out to create the word. After 7 or 8 rounds of back-and-forth, we settled on the word Schatzwiederentdeckung. Interestingly, google translate recognizes the English equivalent of this word, whereas it does not recognize (at least not yet) Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I now have my word, Schatzwiederentdeckung. And now I must bring it to life. I do that through ostention – by pointing to specific examples. It is a basic and primitive task. Sometimes these examples are objects which are a sort of “visual shorthand” for a longer story, for instance, that of the Pro Concordia Labor flag. Sometimes these examples are events. But now, the word needs to be brought to life through basic task of enumerating examples. Exploring the philosophical, psychological and sociological questions about Schatzwiederentdeckung are also needed to breathe life into the word. For instance, how do specific examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung affect the development of the self? Are there variations on the efficacy of Schatzwiederentdeckung depending on one’s stage of life? Do examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung within one’s own culture affect the psyche differently than do examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung from another? Speaking anecdotally, I can say that beholding a rich example of Schatzwiederentdeckung during mid-life had a profound effect on me. That example was my encounter with the Peace Palace in 2011. The Peace Palace opened in the Hague, The Netherlands on August 28, 1913. The building, which is home to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice and the largest international law library in the world is the symbolic foundation stone for the normative framework of International Peace and Justice that has its roots in the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907. When I was within this historic building, amidst so many beautiful unknowns, I felt the yearning to connect with it in a deeper way. What is this beautiful mystery that I know absolutely nothing about? So opened a Treasure Box, with a bounty of examples of Schatzwiederentdeckung: Bertha von Suttner, the work of Cora di Brazzà, The American School Peace League and the work of E.C. Warriner, the March 1, 1919 movement of Korea. There are so many, and scattered throughout the world. This “scattering” remains a worry. Bertha von Suttner noted that poets and philosophers are the “engineers, mechanicians, and technicians” of “moral forces.” Jane Addams used the term “moral energy”. Let’s combine the two insights and say that Bertha noted that “moral energy” can be engineered, harnessed, and used to propel. This, incidentally, is a substantive claim and a definite position within the debate with ancient Greek philosophy about whether virtue can be taught. Bertha von Suttner: yes. But, she notes, the engineers of moral energies – which, she says, are thoughts and ideas are “scattered through the centuries, scattered in space.” This scattering remains a worry. Although she did not have the word Schatzwiederentdeckung, I do believe Bertha would have acknowledged the moral energy of these stories, and would have issued a plea for collecting examples of them in order in order to leverage their collective moral energy. For she writes in When Thoughts Will Soar (1914, p. 65): How much more powerful their work would be if it were coordinated, if the knowledge of their doctrines, the glory of their names, the magic of their art, proceeding from one central point, should radiate in all directions. Motors and propellers have taught us that power must be concentrated and compressed, in order by explosions to drive the vehicle. Stories that illustrate virtue have moral energy. They help us to drive “our vehicle” upward and forward. This is an old idea. It was expressed by Aristotle when he reminded us that the development of virtue requires bearing witness to actual examples of virtue, i.e., role models. The idea is also expressed by Marcus Aurelius who, at the beginning of his Meditations, enumerates a cast of characters to whom he is grateful. Why? They all modeled various virtues, thereby enabling Marcus to sculpt himself into righteousness. Interestingly, related to the idea that actual examples of virtue have moral energy is something that was posted recently by Humans of New York on its Facebook page:
This young man is clearly influenced by the fortitude of Forrest Gump, who we all know is a fictitious character. Are there no actual examples of fortitude on which this young man can call on for motivation? Wouldn’t actual examples be able to better withstand the doubt that will inevitably arise when marching forward into light? If you are familiar with the opening chapter of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, imagine how almost comical that text would appear if Marcus enumerated not the virtues actual persons, but the virtues of fictitious characters. Actual examples, moreover, provide a response to the “its just a movie” counterargument that we may utter to ourselves when picking ourselves up after the nth failure. Anyway, as I am now breathing life into Schatzwiederentdeckung, let me limn its contours by stating that the story of Forrest Gump is not an example of Schatzwiederentdeckung, though it does have moral energy. Indeed, the etymology of Schatzwiederentdeckung – rooted in the notion of a ‘buried treasure’ – seems to preclude any instance of pop culture from being an instance of this term. Just as there is value in bringing to consciousness repressed traumatic memories, so too is there value in bringing to consciousness untold stories of positive history. I leave it to the readers of this post to formulate another word for stories of pop culture, which are ‘open and obvious’ rather than ‘buried,’ and which, like the story of Forrest Gump, have moral energy that propels us forward and upward.
© 2017 hope elizabeth may
