Just as the era of apologies and of sending bills for the past should end, so too should an era of objective debate on the subject begin; it is time for monologues and isolated proclamations to give way to dialogue. Actually, dialogue has already begun among the people, local self-government bodies, historians and even politicians. I am an advocate of its constant expansion and intensification. However, it has to be a genuine dialogue. That means we have to exchange information, experience, knowledge, analyses, suggestions and programs, compare them, seek agreement and put into practice whatever good things we shall agree upon, without either of us feeling – not even by way of insinuation – like a hostage of the other, or like a hostage of our sinister history.
In other words: the era of confrontation must end once and for all, and be replaced by an era of cooperation. The more clearly the parties to such joint efforts commit themselves to the idea of a civil state and civil society, the better equipped they will be to work together. Germany is way ahead, not only economically but also because at least its Western part was able to live for years in freedom and build a liberal democratic state based on all the time-tested values of Western civilization while pursuing a truly European course; that is, it subscribed to the ideal of Europe as a political body governed by the principle of equality of large and small alike and their peaceful cooperation on the basis of equal rights and in the spirit of their shared respect for human rights and liberties, democracy, rule of law, the market economy and the concept of civil society. In the Czech Republic, time stood still for many years, but we certainly can make up for the delay quickly, especially if we draw on the potential of our good prewar traditions, which even 57 years could not completely eradicate. Thus, the preconditions for good cooperation are there. If disturbing tones, voices or sentiments should make themselves felt, much more energy should be devoted on both sides to efforts aimed at dealing with them. On the German side, the former take the form of voices, fortunately rather rare and isolated, that try to rehabilitate the intellectual roots of the past German catastrophe, voices of secret nostalgics who are unable to part with the concept of a national state as the zenith of all human endeavor and with the feeling that Germany has been entrusted with a special mission that entitles it to a position of superiority vis-à-vis other nations. On the Czech side, we find an awkward, essentially provincial combination of fear of Germans and servility to them, and also the inability of part of our population to cast off the straitjacket of prejudices that were nurtured in our society for so long. Sometimes it seems to me as if the state of mind that characterized the immediate postwar period somehow persisted here, strangely counterbalanced by a desire to "get something out of the Germans." Thus, we can meet people who, in the spirit of Communist propaganda, frighten those around them with talk about the German threat but at the same time hang "Zimmer frei" signs on their homes and collect rent in Deutschmarks, even from Czech tenants. On the one hand, strong words marked by a nationalistic blindness and xenophobia, on the other, a total lack of elementary civic pride.
It is the same thing again: the desire to replace Communist collectivism with national collectivism, to escape one's own civic responsibility and take refuge in the anonymity of a pack that barks at all those who do not belong to it; this is one of the variations of the phenomena that we must systematically combat. The occasional signs of subconscious belief in an infallible voice of blood, of fate, of providence and of national myth, and in a right to demand the impossible, that is, the correction of a history that is perceived as a continuous series of wrongs against one's own tribe; these are other variations of the same misconception.
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