Note from the author: The following open letter is addressed to the generation of the 1960s in Germany who revolted against the German society as a whole, against its educational system, its Christian morality, against its political system. It might be that this cultural revolution was more thorough in Germany than in other western countries, but in general, its effects were everywhere the increase of divorce rates, the introduction of abortion, the lowering down of education, and the spread of relativism.
I myself was born in 1972 and thus was affected in many areas of my childhood by these revolutionary changes. Since this year 2018 is the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Cultural Revolution in Germany and since those who were in the leadership and at the front lines of that revolution still are proud of what they have achieved, I thought it was time to speak the truth about the effects of that revolt on many children of that generation.
It is my hope that this open letter could be of benefit also for some of our U.S and Canadian readers and that it might help us in the deeper reflection upon the question of how we got to where we are today.
I thank Giuseppe Nardi for first publishing this text in the original German on the German website Katholisches.info.
October 11, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – It is enough. Just now, I read yet another autobiographical report of someone who praises herself for having broken with the rules of bourgeois society. It is time to shake out this pride and to resist the resisters.
I know that you yourself did not have an easy youth. Born in the war, or just afterward, most of you knew hunger which we, as your children, never knew. But we are hungry for something else that you have taken from us, even when it was not necessary: protection and security, family, education, culture, and, most of all, the Christian faith.
All of this was still given to you, even though the war had torn huge gaps. Most of your parents remained loyal to one another, also toward their own parents. They did not burden you – nor their parents – with their selfish escapades, in the wake of which nothing remained together that belonged together.
You were proud destroyers who thought you would do many things much better than many people, and the generations before them. You flatly rejected the whole culture, with all its beauties, rules, and all of its protections, and you called it a bondage. Did you ever look back and critically examine your own fruits? Did you really create something more beautiful?
Understandably and rightly, you despised the war, but how does it look today? How many wars has the West already once again started, without that many really [crying] out against them? Of course, the victims now are far away. But perhaps they will soon come back into our neighborhood, directly to be seen. Perhaps we ourselves will soon be part of those who are suffering.
You expected from your parents that they should have stood up against Hitler, behind whom loomed the weapons. Do you not, then, see the danger that comes from your own politicians? Or why are you silent today? Perhaps you now realize how difficult it is to build up a real and sustained resistance? For example, when something indispensable is at stake? Or do you think – now that you yourselves are in positions of power – that it is nice to make use of that power and to silence others who oppose your own public opinions?
And education? Do you look at what the youth are still capable of? Do they have the knowledge and the broad education which you still received in your schooling, which you then largely insulted as being backwards? Are the younger ones still capable of writing, as you yourself are? Why did you take it from them, with your wild ideas of new reform schools which only promoted a dimming down and an inflicted equalization? Now you are at the end of your careers and shrug your shoulders when the schools are being “bertelsmannized” [subjected to economic criteria of efficiency and its competition]. An economization of the school which you could not have dreamed of in the 1960s when stiff and highly educated, authoritarian teachers – as you saw them – passed through the classrooms? They, however, as I believe, still had more dignity.
And your children? How many divorces and breaches did they already go through? Can you still keep in mind who currently is the partner of whom and from whom stems which of your grandchildren? You have torn down a dam which stood for centuries, and now the water flows everywhere, ruthlessly. You mocked the old sexual morality and freed yourself from it, and with it also from that God who instituted it, without that you even understood or sought to understand what perhaps was right and good and uplifting in it. Today, you regret that women have been degraded to objects of sexual pleasure, but it was you who tore down the protective mantle of the woman. You troubled your children already in their most tender age with such topics, even though it was of no interest to them, and you thus took away their naïveté and innocence. You women of 1968 were the first, after all, who undressed yourselves.
Do you not shiver? How much is destroyed in your lives? How many “life partners” did you so far have, with whom you visit the Italian Tuscany region and enjoy your life instead of being grandparents for the little ones who so much yearn for stability, protection, love, and orientation? You yourself then still had it; the grandparents who were always there, who remained together, who lived out family traditions. Our children do not have that anymore. Much is in ruins and in a sorry state, because nobody wanted to make a sacrifice and everybody thought only of one's own apparent good. Certainly nobody thought of the little ones. The little ones now also are supposed not to need anymore a mother at home who cooks something delicious and healthy for them, makes crafts with them, goes for a walk with them and sings songs. No, there is not time for that. After all, the mother has to self-actualize herself, has to have her own profession.
However, there is nothing more dignified and beautiful than to help a young life to grow, to flourish, and to be happy. Did you ever, when you divorced your spouse, look into the eyes of your children who now had to give up one of their parents and possibly had to accept quickly a new mommy or a new daddy – whom they perhaps did not even like? Did you think of your children who suddenly had to celebrate Christmas at three different locations? Who had no family, no harmony, no protection?
Can children who grow up in such a way have a strong, virtuous character – in spite of the lack of support and the lack of love in the family? Or are they not most of the time broken and thereby more open to manipulation, especially through the mass media?
Now we stand here, broken men and women with a broken happiness, not any more prepared for the storms of our time and not well equipped to resist today's sophisticated manipulators. After all, we are still all too busy licking our own wounds and straightening out our disheveled hair; we are occupied with the separated households, the unhealthy food and fast food which makes children overweight and sick; with struggles over finances and child support; with jealousy and with yearning, and often just with fulfilling our own desires.
In light of this situation, a “Bertelsmann” [a company in Germany with inordinate influence over education matters] can easily come by and tell us that the children will become much smarter now when we throw the schools into even greater disorder; and that small children – the best just after they have been born – are to be given into the hands of strangers, just as in the GDR [former Communist Germany]. And nobody notices it? Where is here the resistance of true humanity?
Because your resistance was certainly not human, no. In part, it was even dangerous, life-threatening. But in other ways, it was inhuman. To silence and humiliate the old, wounded soldiers who had been willing to give their lives? To never have let them tell their stories, even if they had been led astray? To silence and ridicule the German post-war refugees and displaced persons who lost everything and who cry still today; those who lost their children on the way, through illness, hunger, and war? All were demeaned, yes, all Germans were said to be equally bad. Only you were better, because you had never been in the situation to prove yourself. And then you did not even realize how much you yourself were being manipulated. You did not know that, in 1981, John Lennon would thank CIA for the LSD drug, and that he would make it public that the CIA has developed this drug for the sake of the control of men. You did not know then that the Frankfurt School was initially financed by Moscow. And that later, during the Second World War and afterwards, Marcuse, Adorno and Horkheimer were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The plan was, after all, to de-christianize Europe and to undermine its moral foundation, so that it could more easily be ruled, dominated. So that it would become more receptive to the materialistic media manipulation which turns us into mere consumers and apolitical sensualists. You ran into something truly terrible, you let yourself be used, and now you are even proud of it!
You trampled upon our culture and dignity and honor. You mocked the beautiful, the true, and the good, and raised us like animals who play in the mud and who learn early on how to rut and procreate like animals, now only supported by some new medications and methods. You did not raise us toward the beautiful, but you lowered us toward the ugly. In part, you did not even want to take care of your own offspring, and then you taught the world how one can simply kill the little ones in the thousands, and before they are even allowed to see the light of the world. How is it, then, that in that supposedly bad bourgeois-Christian society, there were never so many isolated, abandoned, drug-addicted, criminal and suicidal children and youth as there are today?
And we should thank you for this and praise you?
True humanity begins in the small things, not with big words. Humanity starts with the little ones who are vulnerable. Humanity starts by civilizing the little ones and teaching them the rules with which they can measure themselves and others so that they have a human standard with which to assess whether or not a war is just, a law a lie, or the conduct of a politician to be fitting or not. You destroyed all the rules and also the virtues and now are astonished that the politicians lie to you right and left? That they do not know anymore the word common good? Nor the Ten Commandments which still teach us clearly how one can be human?
Are you proud that your grandchildren follow the newest fashion, the newest computer games, and the latest ugly music fashion? Where are the great ideals of the younger generation?
Did you wake up at all when the great member of the 1968 movement, Gerhard Schröder, after laying down his office as chancellor, started to work for the Rothschild financial imperium; and were you awakened when the icon of the 1968 movement Joschka Fischer became a counsellor to the Albright Stonebridge Group? Is this a so-called anti-capitalism under new colors? Does this fit to Karl Marx? Perhaps somehow, since he himself also let himself be funded by a wealthy man – by financial capitalism.
Humanity starts in the small things. And demands loyalty. A man who is not loyal toward himself and others cannot be convincing, but he always appears to be only egoistical. Only in self-sacrifice and in perseverance are great things being created, as one can see in great artists. The lukewarm, in the long run, do not attract. They also do not bear good fruit.
In order to bring forth good fruit, one needs a higher standard, something that pulls us up and that does not turn us into apes.
That is why I say “No.” “No” to all that you have brought us. You pulled me, too, into the mud. And now I return and apologize for my own guilt. And I return to that which you have mocked: the three “Ks”: Kinder, Küche, Kirche [children, kitchen, church], and I do it with much joy. Thus I would still love to have more than our two children, so that we would be a big family. I shall remain loyal to my husband, for my whole life, and I wish to cook well for all of us, and dress our children in lovely clothes so that they have gracious dignity and look lovely. I should have first talked about the Catholic Church, because she civilizes and educates us men and women, already for centuries, and she raises us up to something higher, and often with much success, even if today she has too often allowed herself to be affected by worldliness, indifference, moral disorder and a corruption which your revolt has helped to promote. Perhaps, she even only opened the doors for your insanity, as she did by her own interior revolution in the Second Vatican Council.
Should you now have realized, after all, that your dreams and revolts were illusions and only created damage, then it is not yet too late. For sure, in many of you there were many good intentions. But one always can turn around and also publicly correct what one has once defended. Even if it is perhaps now too late with your own parents, with your own children you still can speak and apologize to them. One can always speak the truth, also when it hurts. But you have to expect that you, too, when you do it publicly, will be dragged through the mud. That is, after all, the aspired-to better world of the Generation of 1968, as you have created it. But, just as you expected it once from your own parents, you are also now called to offer resistance – even if it is directed against yourself!
