Outlines of a Rhenish Philosophy

I. A Basic Law Compiled by a South Tyrolean

The Rhineland has a basic law. It has eleven articles, was never adopted by anyone, and is in force all the same. It begins with “Et es wie et es” – it is what it is – and ends with “Do laachs de disch kapott” – you’ll laugh yourself silly. Nobody knows who wrote it. The sayings grew over generations in pubs, kitchens and on building sites. They were first collected by Konrad Beikircher, in 2001, in a book entitled “Et kütt wie et kütt – Das Rheinische Grundgesetz” (What comes, comes – the Rhenish Basic Law).

Beikircher died on 28 July this year at the age of 80. The broadcaster WDR said of him: “Nobody looked so deeply into the Rhenish soul.” What is remarkable is that he was not a Rhinelander by birth. He was born in 1945 in Bruneck in South Tyrol and came to Bonn to study in 1965. For many years he then worked as a psychologist at the Siegburg youth prison before going on stage. The man who wrote the Rhinelanders their basic law was an incomer.

This is no coincidence; it is already the first lesson. One is Rhenish not by origin but by attitude. My own family came to the Rhineland from Hungary around 1815, five generations of smiths. I was born in Much, in the little convent hospital there where nobody is born any more, and am therefore a “Mücher”. Whoever merely lives there is a “Mucher”. I have not lived in the Rhineland for a long time, and yet the Rhenish has remained my real identity, more than any country. An attitude can be taken along. A border cannot.

II. What the Eleven Articles Say

Read closely, the eleven sentences add up to a theory of knowledge that could hardly be shorter. At the beginning stands “Et es wie et es”: see things as they are, not as one would like them to be. Then “Et kütt wie et kütt”: what comes, comes – one cannot influence everything. “Wat fott es, es fott”: what is gone is gone; mourning does not help. And “Et bliev nix wie et wor”: nothing stays as it was.

Immediately afterwards comes article six: “Kenne mer nit, bruche mer nit, fott domet.” We don’t know it, we don’t need it, away with it. It contradicts the fifth almost word for word. One says everything changes; the other fends off the new. A philosopher would want to resolve the contradiction. The Rhinelander lets both stand, because both are true, depending on the situation. There is more wisdom in this than in many a doctrine that knows only one half.

Article nine reads “Wat soll dä Käu?” – what is all this chatter for? – and is perhaps the most important question of all. It is addressed to every sermon, every party programme, every doctrine of salvation. Article eleven, finally, “Do laachs de disch kapott”, turns laughter into a means of knowledge. Whoever can laugh about a thing has distance from it. Whoever cannot laugh about it has fallen under its spell.

Beside them stand two sayings that are not in Beikircher’s collection and belong to it all the same. “Jeck loss Jeck elans”, fool, let the fool pass: everyone may be mad in his own way as long as he lets the other pass. That is tolerance without theory. And “Mir sin jot katholisch – mer glöven an nix”, we are good Catholics – we believe in nothing. More on that in a moment.

III. The Cardinal from the Moselle

The Rhenish also has a learned form, and it is older than one might think. In 1401 Nikolaus Krebs was born in Kues on the Moselle, later known as Nicholas of Cusa or Cusanus, one of the most important thinkers of his time and a cardinal of the Roman Church. In 1440 he wrote a book entitled “On Learned Ignorance”.

It contains an image that I perhaps understand better than most who have written about it. For more than forty years I have been working with polygons and with the question of how to manufacture them economically.

The human intellect, writes Cusanus, relates to truth as a polygon to a circle. The more corners one gives the polygon, the closer it comes to the circle. But it never becomes a circle, not even with infinitely many corners. We can approach the truth, ever further, but we never possess it.

Mechanical engineering knows a second reading that Cusanus could not have known. A polygon in drive technology is not round and has no corners. It is a continuously curved line, a trochoid, that deviates only relatively little from the circle. It is precisely this deviation that makes it useful.

Such profiles are made by superimposing circular motions that are as perfect as possible: the workpiece turns, the tool circles, and from two or three circles something emerges that is not a circle. That is the coincidence of opposites, in steel. And every machinist learns the rule: as precise as necessary, not as precise as possible. Whoever claims perfection deserves great scepticism.

And Cusanus taught the coincidence of opposites: what appears as a contradiction on our level may belong together on a higher one. That is articles five and six of the Cologne Basic Law, only in Latin. One need not decide the contradiction in order to live with it.

That this thought comes from a cardinal is decisive for our subject. The sentence “Nobody possesses the whole truth” is no invention of the Church’s critics. It stands in the middle of the Church, with one of its cleverest minds.

IV. We Are Good Catholics – We Believe in Nothing

The saying sounds like blasphemy, but it is an exact description. Rhenish Catholicism was always more home than doctrine: the procession, the parish fair, the marksmen’s club, the baptism, the funeral, the carnival before Lent. One belongs, one celebrates along, and one takes dogma as an offer, not as a command.

This attitude has a history. The left bank of the Rhine belonged to France for twenty years, and until 1900 the Code civil, the French civil code, remained in force there. After 1815 the Rhineland became Prussian, and the Rhinelanders mockingly called themselves “Musspreußen”, Prussians because they had to be. The Cologne carnival, reorganised in 1823, made fun of the military, with uniforms and drill as a fools’ game, and the new Prussian masters were included in the joke. Whoever may laugh at authority need not overthrow it. He merely strips it of its consecration.

Carnival is thus an institution that thrives above all in Catholic regions: the permitted mockery of power, ecclesiastical power included, with the blessing of the Church. A Church that tolerates this does not take itself quite as seriously as its doctrine would require. That is its best Rhenish side.

V. My Attitude to the Church

I left the Catholic Church in 1968. How that came about, and why it was not the only doctrine I took leave of, is told in “Why I Did Not Become a Leftist”. This site also contains sharp texts about the Church, such as “The Case of Giordano Bruno and the Credibility of the Catholic Church”.

That is why I want to say clearly here where the line runs. I am no enemy of the Church. I reject on principle every form of claim to absolute truth, whether it comes from a church, a party, the Watchtower or an economic doctrine. I do not criticise the Church as a community, as a place where people find comfort, order and one another. In Colombia, and in Germany as well, I was and still am in conversation with many people of the Church who embody exactly this side of it.

What I criticise is the claim to possess the truth and to defend it against dissenters by every means. In the Bruno case the Church in the year 2000 regretted the method and confirmed the verdict. That is the claim to absolute truth in its purest form. And the strongest objection to it was formulated by a cardinal, five hundred and sixty years earlier: nobody possesses the truth; one only approaches it, as the polygon approaches the circle.

VI. Burning Words

Part of the Rhenish attitude is also a relaxed relationship to words. In Germany a growing number of terms are considered burnt. Whoever uses them makes himself suspect, whatever the context. Behind this lies an idea older than any enlightenment: if one avoids the word, the thing will not come back. “Wenn man den Teufel nennt, kommt er gerennt” – name the devil and he comes running.

That is magical thinking. The devil does not come because one names him, and he does not stay away because one is silent. He only becomes invisible. We therefore deliberately gave a working paper the title “Die Linien fest geschlossen” (The Lines Closed Tight), echoing a line everyone knows and nobody likes to quote. The Rhinelander would say: “Wat soll dä Käu?” Name the thing, and then you can deal with it.

VII. The Reverse Side

An unsparing look must also show the dark side, and the Rhenish has one. It is called Klüngel. “Man kennt sich, man hilft sich” – we know each other, we help each other – a sentence attributed to Konrad Adenauer, describes the easygoing manner that turns into cronyism: things are settled among friends, over a glass of Kölsch, and nobody asks too closely whether everything is above board.

And “Et hätt noch immer jot jejange”, it has always turned out fine, is composure but also carelessness. It turns out fine until it doesn’t. In March 2009 the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne collapsed during the construction of an underground railway; two people died and irreplaceable holdings sank into the mud. Whoever relies on things turning out fine no longer checks whether they can.

This is the same attitude we described in “Heart Disease. And Nobody Operates.”: everyone knows the diagnosis, and nobody acts, because somehow it has always worked so far. Rhenish composure can become wisdom or complacency. The difference lies in whether one still does something after the laughter.

VIII. What the Rhenish Attitude Can Achieve

This summer Hans-Werner Sinn said that the Germans tend to glorify ideas religiously instead of testing pragmatically whether they work. Against this tendency the Rhineland has developed an antidote: it takes no doctrine entirely seriously, not even its own. Whoever has learned to laugh at the bishop, the mayor and the Prussian lieutenant is less likely to fall for the next prophet.

This is exactly the attitude Karl Popper described for science: every theory holds only until it is refuted. There is no right answer, only a more right one. Popper needed books for this. The Rhineland needs four words: “Et es wie et es.” One looks, takes reality seriously, and no doctrine that contradicts it.

But the attitude is only enough if it does not stop at a shrug. “Wat wells de maache?”, article seven, can mean: nothing can be done. But it can also be a real question: what do you want to do? Rhenish philosophy is worth something when it chooses the second reading.

IX. Drinks de ejne met?

The Cologne Basic Law does not end with a doctrine but with an invitation and a laugh. Article ten reads: “Drinks de ejne met?” – will you have one with me? Whoever asks this wants not to pass judgement but to hold a conversation. The opponent becomes a guest, the dissenter a partner in conversation.

And when the conversation leads nowhere, the Rhinelander has a sentence for that too: “Da wissen Sie mehr als ich!” – you know more about that than I do. He seems to leave the field to the other. In reality it means: there is no point in arguing with you any further. The dispute is over without anyone having lost. The beer is drunk together all the same, and then one talks about the weather.

Rhenish philosophy can be put in one sentence: nobody has the whole truth, but everyone has a place at the table.