The permanent error of Harald Welzer

You have to give Harald Welzer credit for one thing: since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the prominent sociologist has not only talked about reason and decency, he has also done so openly. After Serhij Zhadan was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, Welzer criticized the long standing ovations that the Ukrainian writer and musician received in Frankfurt's Paulskirche - which, by the way, I was there, were actually extraordinarily long and fully deserved.

Germany is not a war party, Welzer commented at the LitCologne literature festival, "but a third party with all the possibilities that this opens up for the benefit of Ukraine". "This permanent confusion" but leads to an "ethical overexertion". Welzer's thing, on the other hand, is the intellectual underexertion and callous lack of spirit, with which he himself constantly confuses something: that Ukraine is not waging a war against Russia, but is defending itself against an aggressor. Or, to paraphrase Zhadan: "We don't support our army because we want war, but because we absolutely want peace."

For Welzer, this is "not a contribution to civilisation, but part of a decivilizing process". For a German intellectual like him, civilization means admonishing wolf and lamb alike to be peaceful – and telling the victims of a war of annihilation what they have to do. For their own “good”, of course. Because what serves the well-being of Ukraine, not just any Ukrainians know, Harald Welzer knows that.

But he is not a closeted Putin supporter, just like Jürgen Habermas or Alice Schwarzer. Their peers only have a grudge against the Ukrainians for not capitulating, so that the Germans no longer have to worry about the world war and the price of gas. That they will not allow themselves to be slaughtered and driven out without a fight in order to receive the crocodile-tearing care of immoral moralists. That they are not as cowardly as themselves. The Welzers will not forgive the Ukrainians for this war.