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“一切都不应一成不变”
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2019/05/commencement-angela-merkel
德国总理安格拉·默克尔向2019届毕业生发表演讲。
作者：Marina N. Bolotnikova 和 Lydialyle Gibson 2019年5月30日
在开始毕业典礼演讲的主体部分——关于现在、未来以及2019届毕业生即将继承的这个令人恐惧的世界——之前，德国总理安格拉·默克尔回忆了她在苏联统治下的东德的生活。除了简短的引言和结束语外，她主要用德语讲话，并由翻译逐句翻译。在三百周年纪念剧院，她向众多观众讲述了一个故事，这个故事为她接下来的演讲定下了基调，并引导观众思考想象力，以及过去难以想象的快速变革的可能性。整个下午，默克尔都沉浸在这样的思考中。 “我在东德长大，在民主德国——我的祖国，那是一片不自由的土地……人民饱受压迫，处于国家监控之下。政治异见人士遭受迫害。东德政府害怕人们逃亡寻求自由。于是，他们修建了柏林墙，一道钢筋水泥筑成的墙。任何试图翻越这堵墙的人都会被逮捕或枪毙。这堵墙把柏林一分为二，分裂了一个民族，也拆散了一个个家庭。”
安格拉·默克尔的翻译，多萝西·卡尔滕巴赫
“我大学毕业后的第一份工作是在东柏林科学院担任物理学家，”她继续说道。“我住在柏林墙附近。每天从研究所回家，我都朝着它走去。墙的后面是西柏林，自由的天地。每天当我快要走到墙边时，我都不得不在最后一刻转身，回到我的公寓。每天我都不得不在最后一刻背弃自由……柏林墙限制了我的机会；它简直就是我的拦路虎。”然而，在那些年里，这堵墙有一件事却做不到。它无法限制我的内心世界。我的个性、我的想象力、我的梦想和渴望——任何禁令或胁迫都无法限制这一切。1989年，对自由的共同渴望在整个欧洲释放出不可思议的力量。在波兰、匈牙利、捷克斯洛伐克以及东德，成千上万的人敢于走上街头。人们示威游行，推倒了柏林墙。包括我在内的许多人都认为不可能发生的事情，变成了现实。”
因此，她总结道：“30年前的这几个月里，我亲身体验到，一切都必须一成不变。亲爱的毕业生们，这段经历是我今天想与你们分享的第一个想法……任何看似一成不变或不可改变的事情，实际上都是可以改变的。” 这句话深深地触动了听众；她继续说道：“我父母那一代人以极其痛苦的方式发现了这一点。我的父亲和母亲分别出生于1926年和1928年。当他们和今天在座的大多数人一样老的时候，纳粹大屠杀和第二次世界大战——对所有文明价值观的背叛——刚刚结束。我的祖国德国给欧洲和世界带来了难以想象的苦难。战胜国和战败国之间本可以轻易地长期不和。但欧洲却战胜了长达数个世纪的冲突。一个基于共同价值观而非所谓国家实力的和平秩序由此建立……而德国人和美国人之间的关系也展现了昔日的战时敌人如何成为朋友。乔治·马歇尔在1947年于此地举行的毕业典礼上宣布的计划，为此做出了至关重要的贡献。
默克尔自2005年起担任德国总理，将于2021年任期结束后卸任。她在35岁，也就是两德统一后，放弃了科学家的职业，进入政界。在余下的演讲中，她广泛地探讨了毕业生们如何面对他们所面临的世界，并触及了一些与大学毕业日演讲者阿尔·戈尔和肯尼迪学院毕业日演讲者胡安·曼努埃尔·桑托斯相同的主题，例如气候变化以及“智能”设备已成为监视和影响行为工具这一日益明显的现实。她以历史感、她一贯的对妥协和建立共识的关注，以及一种信念，即跨越差异与他人建立联系不仅是可能的，而且是富有成效和至关重要的。
“气候变化对我们地球的自然资源构成了威胁； “气候问题及其引发的危机都是人类造成的，”默克尔说道。“因此，我将竭尽全力确保我的国家德国在2050年实现气候中和。”这一承诺赢得了热烈掌声。“如果我们共同应对，就有可能实现更好的改变……因此，我想与大家分享的第二个想法是，我们的思维方式和行动比以往任何时候都更需要多边合作，而非单边行动。”
“全球化而非国家主义。外向型而非孤立主义。”她提供的与其说是一个像1947年欧洲所需要的方案，不如说是对当代美国国内、欧洲许多国家内部以及近来它们之间的政治话语的严厉批判。
“亲爱的毕业生们，你们未来将拥有与我们这一代截然不同的机会——毕竟，你们的智能手机的处理能力可能比我1986年被允许用于论文的苏联制造的IBM大型计算机的复制品要强大得多，”她开玩笑地说。科技似乎提供了无限的可能性，但她问道：“是我们为科技制定了规则，还是科技决定了我们如何互动？我们是否将人视为具有人类尊严及其多面性的个体？还是我们仅仅将人视为消费者、数据来源和监视对象？这些都是难题。我认识到，如果我们始终尝试通过他人的视角看待世界，即使是难题也能找到好的答案。”如果我们尊重他人的历史、传统、宗教和身份认同。如果我们坚守自身不可剥夺的价值观，并据此行事。
“如果我们不总是冲动行事，即使面临仓促决定的压力——而是停下来，静下心来，思考，暂停，”她补充道。（观众似乎对这句话感到好笑——或许是文化差异在作祟。）
“让我们用行动来证明一切可能，让自己感到惊讶，”她说道，这与她首次当选德国总理后在德国议会发表的讲话如出一辙。让我们展现自己的能力，让自己感到惊讶。就我个人而言，近30年前柏林墙的倒塌让我得以走向光明……那是一个激动人心、充满魔力的时刻，正如你们的人生也将如此激动人心、充满魔力。但我也经历过怀疑和担忧的时刻。因为在那个时候，我们都知道过去会发生什么，却不知道未来会发生什么。或许，这也多少反映了你们今天在欢庆这一时刻的感受。”
她最后想留给毕业生们的是：“走向光明的那一刻，也是冒险的时刻。放下旧有的，是新开始的一部分……我相信，我们需要一次又一次地做好准备，不断终结过去，才能感受到新起点的魔力，并充分利用机遇。这是我作为一名学生、一名科学家所学到的，也是我现在在政治生活中所经历的。”对开端的反思，让她想起了演讲一开始引用的德国作家赫尔曼·黑塞的名言：“一切开端都蕴藏着一种神奇的力量，守护着我们，帮助我们活下去。”
“正因如此，我想把这个愿望留给你们，”默克尔总结道。“打破无知和狭隘的围墙，因为一切都不必一成不变。”
“Nothing Has to Stay the Way It Is”
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2019/05/commencement-angela-merkel
German chancellor Angela Merkel addresses the class of 2019.
BEFORE SHE LAUNCHED into the main part of her Commencement address—about the present, the future, and the frightening world that the class of 2019 now inherits—German chancellor Angela Merkel recalled her life in East Germany under Soviet rule. Speaking primarily in German (save for a short introduction and conclusion bookending her address), with an interpreter translating sentence by sentence, she told a huge crowd in Tercentenary Theatre a story that would set the tone for the rest of her comments, inviting the crowd to think about imagination, and the possibility of swift, previously unimaginable change, throughout the afternoon. “I grew up in East Germany, in the GDR—the part of my country which was not free....People were oppressed and under state surveillance. Political dissidents were persecuted. The East German government was afraid that people would flee to freedom. And that’s why it built the Berlin Wall, a wall made of concrete and steel. Anyone caught trying to overcome it was arrested or shot dead. This wall, which cut Berlin in half, divided a people and divided families.
Angela Merkel's interpreter, Dorothee Kaltenbach
“My first job after college was as a physicist at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin,” she continued. “I lived near the Berlin Wall. I walked towards it every day on my way home from my institute. Behind it lay West Berlin, freedom. And every day when I was very close to the wall, I had to turn away at the last minute to head toward my apartment. Every day I had to turn away from freedom at the last minute....The Berlin Wall limited my opportunities; it quite literally stood in my way. However, there was one thing this wall couldn’t do during all of those years. It couldn’t impose limits on my inner thoughts. My personality, my imagination, my dreams and desires—prohibitions or coercion couldn’t limit any of that. Then came 1989. A common desire for freedom unleashed incredible forces throughout Europe. In Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, as well as East Germany, hundreds of thousands of people dared to take to the streets. The people demonstrated and brought down the wall. Something which many people, including myself, wouldn’t have believed possible, became reality.”
And so, she concluded, “During these months 30 years ago, I experienced firsthand that nothing has to stay the way it is. This experience, dear graduates, is the first thought I want to share with you today....Anything that seems to be set in stone or inalterable can, indeed, change.” Her audience was stirred by these words; she continued: “My parents’ generation discovered this in a most painful way. My father and my mother were born in 1926 and 1928. When they were as old as most of you here today, the betrayal of all civilized values that was the Shoah and World War II had just ended. My country, Germany, had brought unimaginable suffering on Europe and the world. The victors and the defeated could easily have remained irreconcilable for many years. But instead, Europe overcame centuries-old conflicts. A peaceful order based on common values, rather than supposed national strength, emerged….And the relationship between Germans and Americans, too, demonstrates how former wartime enemies can become friends. It was George Marshall who gave a crucial contribution to this through the plan he announced at the Commencement ceremonies in 1947 in this very place.”
Merkel, who has been chancellor of Germany since 2005 and will step down at the end of her term in 2021, left her career as a scientist and entered politics at 35, after the unification of Germany. She used the rest of her wide-ranging speech to address graduates about confronting the world they face, touching on some of the same themes as College Class Day speaker Al Gore and Kennedy School Class Day speaker Juan Manuel Santos, such as climate change and the increasingly evident reality that “smart” devices have become tools for surveilling and influencing behavior. She did so with a sense of history, with her characteristic attention to compromise and building consensus, and with a conviction that connecting with other people across difference is not only possible, but generative and essential.
“Climate change poses a threat to our planet’s natural resources; it and the resulting crises are caused by humans,” Merkel said. “I will therefore do everything in my power to ensure that Germany, my country, will achieve climate neutrality by 2050”—a pledge that elicited strong applause. But: “Changes for the better are possible if we tackle them together....The second thought I want to share with you is, therefore, more than ever, our way of thinking and our actions have to be multilateral rather than unilateral. Global rather than national. Outward-looking rather than isolationist.” She offered not so much a plan, like the one Europe needed in 1947, but a stern critique of contemporary political discourse, within the United States and within many nations in Europe, and, of late, between them.
“You, dear graduates, will have quite different opportunities to do this in the future than my generation did—after all, your smartphones probably have considerably more processing power than the copy of an IBM mainframe computer manufactured in the Soviet Union that I was allowed to use for my dissertation in 1986,” she joked. Technology might seem to offer limitless possibilities, but, she asked, “Are we laying down the rules for technology, or is technology dictating how we interact? Do we prioritize people as individuals with human dignity and all their many facets? Or do we see in them merely consumers, data sources, objects of surveillance? These are difficult questions. I have learned that we can find good answers even to difficult questions if we always try to view the world through the eyes of others. If we respect other people’s history, traditions, religion, and identity. If we hold fast to our inalienable values, and act in accordance with them.
“And if we don’t always act on our first impulses, even when there is pressure to make a snap decision—but instead take a moment to stop, be still, think, pause,” she added. (The audience seemed amused at this comment—perhaps displaying a cultural difference.)
“Let us surprise ourselves by showing what is possible,” she said, echoing what she told the German parliament after she was first elected chancellor. “Let us surprise ourselves by showing what we are capable of. In my own life, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall that allowed me almost 30 years ago to step out into the open....That was an exciting and magical time, just as your lives will be exciting and magical. But I also experienced moments of doubt and worry. For at that time, we all knew what lay behind, but not what might lie ahead. Perhaps that reflects a little how you, too, are feeling today, amidst all the joy of this occasion.”
The final thought she wanted to leave with the graduates, she said, was that “The moment when you step out into the open is also a moment of risk-taking. Letting go of the old is part of a new beginning….I believe that time and time again, we need to be prepared to keep bringing things to an end in order to feel the magic of new beginnings and make the most of opportunities. That’s what I learned as a student, a scientist, and what I experience now in politics.” The reflection on beginnings recalled her quotation, at the very start of the speech, from German writer Herman Hesse: “In all beginnings dwells a magic force for guarding us and helping us to live.”
“That’s why I want to leave this wish with you,” Merkel concluded. “Tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness, for nothing has to stay as it is.”
