Better scientist than military expert

After decades of dealing with the topic of violence, the Hamburg social and literary scientist Jan Philipp Reemtsma does not want to present himself as a regular strategist for the Ukraine war. When asked whether it was right to provide military support to Ukraine, Reemtsma, who turned 70 on Saturday, replied: "Yes, of course, because it is right to support a near-neighbouring country that has been attacked in violation of international law."

In his opinion, however, the debate about the goal of military support is leading to fruitless discussions. Words such as "defend", "win" or "lose" are signal words that indicate who is where in these discussions. But they meant no reasonable statements on the matter. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) declared in May: "Russia must not win this war." Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) said in June: "Of course Russia must not win this war, but must lose it strategically."

Reemtsma also declined to comment on how Ukraine should be helped. "Even worse are the answers to the 'support with what' questions, which regularly bring out the inner regulars' strategist in the interviewees. I'm not involved in that," says the former head of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research he founded. "Furthermore, I'm not the military expert I would need to be if I wanted to get involved."

In the 1990s, the Institute for Social Research caused heated debates with an exhibition on the crimes of the Wehrmacht in World War II. The show also dealt with theaters of war in Ukraine such as Kyiv and Kharkiv. According to historian Bogdan Musial, the exhibition contained numerous serious errors and manipulations. Reemtsma himself later admitted in a balance sheet that photos of a pogrom in Ternopil also showed murder victims of the Soviet secret service NKVD.

In November 1999 Reemtsma stopped the exhibition and had a new version worked out. In retrospect, despite all the criticism, he rates the project positively: "After the two exhibitions about the crimes of the Wehrmacht, hardly anyone will talk about the German Wehrmacht in the way they did before 1995. You can't achieve more."

Reemtsma briefly explains the current war crimes that the Russian troops in Bucha and other places in Ukraine are accused of: “The cause of such acts of violence is always the military leadership, which does not prevent it – or deliberately bring it about through direct or interpretable orders or by allowing it to happen. "

Reemtsma, who sold his inheritance from his late father's tobacco company at the age of 26, has spent many years studying the manifestations of violence and campaigning for victims of persecution. On March 25, 1996, the multimillionaire himself became a victim of violence. Kidnappers kidnapped him on his property in Hamburg-Blankenese and held him in a basement dungeon near Bremen for 33 days. After paying a ransom equivalent to around 15 million euros, he was released on the night of April 27, 1996.

Two years later, the leader of the gang, Thomas Drach, was arrested in Argentina and later sentenced to over 14 years in prison in Hamburg. Drach is currently on trial again for three robberies in Cologne. When asked whether he was following the process or had been contacted by someone involved in the process, Reemtsma replied: "No".

The violence researcher wrote the book “Im Keller” about his kidnapping. In it he vividly describes the 33 days he spent chained and in fear of death. His son Johann Scheerer wrote two books about how he experienced his father's kidnapping at the age of 13 and the years that followed. The film adaptation of the book "We are then probably the relatives" can be seen in the cinema. What does his father think of the work? "I haven't seen the film, and I probably won't see it," says Reemtsma. But that shouldn't seem like distancing. The matter is not easy for him.

The literary scholar has devoted himself very intensively to ancient myths and Weimar Classicism for several years. His main interest is in the works of the writer Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813). A new edition of Wieland's novel "Aristipp and some of his contemporaries" will be published shortly.

Reemtsma raves about the work, which was published between 1800 and 1802 and was already the subject of his doctoral thesis: "The epistolary novel set in Socrates' time is a philosophical, a political, a psychological, an erotic novel and many other things: intellectual poetry." the patron Reemtsma celebrates his idols, he probably doesn't like being the center of attention himself: "I never celebrate my birthdays," he asserts before his 70th anniversary.