Europe and Its Refugees: Arendt on the Politicization of Minorities

Wolfgang Heuer Europe and Its Refugees: Arendt on the Politicization of Minorities IN JANUARY 1940, A FEW M ONTHS BEFORE HER INTERNM ENT IN FRANCE, Hannah Arendt wrote in a very distinct and programmatic letter to her friend Erich Cohn-Bendit that “All minority policies, not only those affecting the Jewish minority, are doomed to failure as a result of the continued existence of state sovereignty” (Arendt, 2000: 231). “W ith the beginning of Russian mass migration,” she continued, at the latest in 1923/24, . . . we can see the emergence of a completely new European class of people: the state­ less. If we consider European history as the development of European nations or as the development of European peoples into nations, then the stateless are the most significant product of recent history. Since 1920, almost all European states have hosted huge masses of people who have no right of residence anywhere, no consular protec­ tion anywhere—modern pariahs. . .. The impossibility of absorbing this mass of people clearly shows that the very fact of assimilation has lost its significance to an enormous extent. Assimilation no longer exists in Europe, nations are too developed and too old. Assimilation is no longer possible for Jews either. The opportunities to assimilate in the 19th century... were in fact the result of a new consti­ social research Vol 74 : No 4 : Winter 2007 1159 tuting of peoples caused by the French Revolution and their development into nations. However, this process is now over. Nothing else can be added. In fact the opposite is taking place: the outsourcing of huge masses of people and their depravation to pariahs. Now the pariahs, although Europeans, are cut off from any interests that are specifi­ cally national, they are the first to be interested in panEuropean politics (Arendt, 2000: 231). Under these conditions, Arendt wrote, minority rights are completely inadequate, and can only mean cultural autonomy. But “culture with­ out politics, that is, without a historical or national context, becomes featherbrained folklore and folkish barbarism” (231). Hannah Arendt’s letter culminates in a plea for a “new European federal system.” “It doesn’t seem utopian to me to hope for the possiblity of a union of nations with a European parliament,” where the Jewish people would also be recognized and represented as a European nation (231). This letter could be described as Arendt’s political manifesto and is reflected in the rest of her work. In the second volume of The Origins of Totalitarianism she presents a more detailed analysis of what she calls the decline of the nation-state and the end of the rights of man, and the emergence of the nation of minorities and the stateless people. Her letter already contains the idea of a federation as an alter­ native to the sovereign nation state, an idea she is encouraged in by her encounter with the United States, which was to become her second country of exile. Moreover, the letter includes a move toward politi­ cal action. Minorities and the stateless deprived of their rights, the insecure and the faceless, all victims stepping out of the darkness of lawlessness and facelessness into the light of politics: as pariahs they become actors. During the 1930s, Hannah Arendt finished her book on Rahel Varnhagen’s failed attempts at assimilation, describing the latter’s conscious rejection of assimilation and her decision to live the 1160 social research life of a pariah. In 1943, she also published a disturbing article in the MenorahJournal entitled “We Refugees,” in which she pleaded that refu­ gees demonstrate political self-confidence as pariahs. A year later “The Hidden Tradition” appeared, promoting the pariah rebellion as the sole chance of survival. These texts undoubtedly refer to the specific situation after World War I, which saw the emergence of vast numbers of stateless people and refugees following the dissolution of the Russian, Austrian, and Ottoman Empires. It was at this time that totalitarian movements, particularly that of Germany, began to look for a “final solution” to their insecure existence. Although the situation in Europe is now differ­ ent—after all, we have the European Union so favored by Arendt and, like her, are aware of the...