The Lives of Others

In a key scene from the 2006 German movie The Lives of Others, the playwright Georg Dreymann plays a piece of music called Sonata for a Good Man to his girlfriend Crista-Maria Sieland, and comments, "how can anyone listen to music like this and be a bad man?" It's a lot of weight to hang on music (admittedly haunting and effective music) composed specifically for the film by Gabriel Yare. (The original story that the film-maker, Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, took as his inspiration for this scene referred to Beethoven's Sonata Appassionata.)  That audacity is typical of the film, which tells the story of the conversion of an agent of the East German secret police (the Stasi), Gerd Wiesler, through the power of art and empathy.

Wiesler, splendidly acted by Ulrich Muhe (who in real life had himself been the victim of surveillance by the Stasi and claimed that his own wife had been one of the informants), is a buttoned-down, quietly intense officer whom we first see interrogating a prisoner and then using recording of the interrogation to instruct students. When a student protests that the sleep deprivation method Wiesler uses is "inhumane," Wiesler responds by proving that, in fact, the prisoner was lying and arguing that only such extreme methods can break down the arrogance of the "enemies of the state." The picture is clear: this is a person capable of recognizing the moral problems with what he is doing ,but convinced that the ends justify the means--a true believer whose sensitivity and intelligence make him all the more chilling. When he first sees Dreymann, he immediately comments that Dreymann displays the arrogance typical of "enemies of the State" and ought to be put under surveillance, even though he appears to be a model Communist whose poetic dramas glorify East Germany as "the best country in the world." Wiesler's concerns find a receptive ear with the loathsome government official Bruno Hempf, who desires Dreymann's girlfriend and wants to get Dreymann out of the way. And so the main action of the film begins, as Wiesler bugs Dreymann's apartment and sits day after day with earphones on his head, monitoring what goes on inside.

In the course of the film, Dreymann does become the dissident Wiesler suspects him to be. But in the process, Wiesler comes to have empathy for his victim, so that when the time comes to tighten the noose, he can't bring himself to do it. In the process, like Dreymann and Hempf in their own very different ways, Wiesler falls in love with the fragile, troubled Sieland, or at least comes to have deep compassion and admiration for her. (Sieland is somewhat of a sexist stereotype, though a fascinating and well-acted one--the doomed, flawed woman who functions both as guardian angel and Achilles' heel to the man she loves. The way in which all the men in the story are defined by their reactions to her is rather reminiscent of Hugo's Esmeralda.) After initially manipulating Dreymann into discovering Sieland's affair with Hempf (though given the level of coercion involved, it might better be called rape), Wiesler later approaches Sieland to assure her (as an anonymous fan) of his respect for her art and of her worthiness as a human being. Later, when called on to interrogate her, he will deliberately use some of the same language he had employed in that earlier conversation in an apparent attempt to reassure her covertly that he is on her side and she need not despair. Tragically, she fails to recognize him.

I will respect our culture's silly superstition about "spoilers" enough to avoid giving away any more details of the plot. It is a highly melodramatic (though well-constructed) one, but the most unrealistic and often criticized element is the key point on which the whole story turns--the possibility of a Stasi agent softening toward his victims and becoming an agent of hope and compassion. The director of the museum now housed in the former Stasi headquarters refused to allow the movie to be filmed there because he believed that it whitewashed the subject, pointing out that there is no record (among all the meticulous records they kept) of any Stasi agent softening toward his victims, and that even if one had he would have been instantly caught because of the many levels of double-checking in place.

The Lives of Others, for all its careful, rich detail about life in Communist Germany, is fundamentally a fantasy, more like Lord of the Rings than the grim realistic drama I rather expected it to be. It turns on what Chesterton rightly pointed out long ago was perhaps the most fantastic of Christianity's supernatural claims: that human beings have free will.

The best response to the critics, perhaps, is the story of a 29-year-old captain in the Israeli intelligence service "Unit 8200" who, in 2014, joined 42 of her colleagues in refusing to participate further in the surveillance of Palestinians.  She cited The Lives of Others as the trigger that finally convinced her that her job was immoral:

“I felt a lot of sympathy for the victims in the film of the intelligence,” the captain said. “But I did feel a weird, confusing sense of similarity, I identified myself with the intelligence workers. That we were similar to the kind of oppressive intelligence in oppressive regimes really was a deep realization that makes us all feel that we have to take responsibility.”

The film has frequently been cited in other contexts relating to intrusive surveillance efforts by governments, including the NSA program that prompted Edward Snowden's massive leaks. It may well be unrealistic to imagine that a Stasi agent could have acted as Wiesler does in the film. But as the Israeli intelligence officer's story demonstrates, the power of the film to create empathy both with Wiesler and his victims can be transformative in the real world. The film may not describe the behavior of Stasi agents, but it may play some role in preventing others from turning into Stasi agents. It witnesses to the hope that, in Tolkien's words, "in the armour of fate there is ever a rift, and in the walls of doom a breach"--that the poets and the lovers have the last word after all, and that music has the power to create the goodness of which it sings. When men like Minister Hempf once again hold positions of power, we need stories like that. We always need stories like that.

Dear Protestants, Here's Why I Didn't Sign the Reforming Catholic Confession, and Other Dispatches From Living Among Catholics as a Protestant Priest

My wife said yesterday, "I'd like to post this on my blog, but it isn't in any way about the theology of work." I said, "You could put it on my blog."--Edwin

By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

Yesterday, I got into a discussion about the Reforming Catholic Confession and why I, despite having been given an opportunity to do so, had not signed it. The reasons are several, but one of the most salient is that I am married to a Roman Catholic. In fact, I am a female Episcopal priest married to a Roman Catholic. I can’t imagine that there are that many people in this position, which I find roughly analogous to being in about the third round of a session of youth-group Twister. It is perhaps worth dwelling on what I have learned after five months of playing ecumenical Twister (Edwin was received into the Catholic church in April).

My main acquaintance with large groups of Catholics since Edwin became one has been the blogosphere, which I realize warps my perspective. (Edwin assures me that the average Roman Catholic in the pews knows no more about their faith than the average Protestant, perhaps less.) But here is my #1 dispatch from the front after five months of ethnographic observation:

Dear Protestants, Catholics do not care if you exist.

I don’t mean that they don’t care that you, as individual children of God and rational humans, exist. I mean that they don’t care that you collectively exist. If Catholics disappeared tomorrow, Protestants would notice. Wherever they are on the spectrum from “Catholics are the antichrist” to “Catholics are valued ecumenical partners whom we secretly envy for their really cool hats,” they would notice. (Edwin grew up towards the former end of that spectrum, I the latter. In fact I spent quite a number of years as a ferocious post-Vatican-II liturgist of the “what’s the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist” joke type.)

But if every Protestant denomination was wiped off the face of the earth, Catholics would go on having the same conversations they do now as if nothing had happened, except that eventually Edwin would notice that I had stopped doing the laundry. Protestants are haunted by Catholics. Catholics are haunted too, but not by Protestants. If I had to put a finger on it, I would say they are haunted by the desire to catch the vanishing tail of unplumbable deep mysteries. But they are not haunted by me.

When Edwin was discerning whether or not to become Roman Catholic, he met with a trusted Methodist pastoral advisor and friend. The friend said “Ask Jenn what you need to do to support her in ministry.”

When Edwin came to me and asked, I knew that it was in my power to say “Don’t become Catholic.” I knew that he is the most honest, respectful, and chivalrous person I know. I also knew I couldn’t take advantage of that. What I actually said was “I need to know that you have my back.”

So Edwin went to the lay catechist in charge of RCIA and then eventually to the priest. He said “I will still consider my wife a priest and I will not break communion with Protestants to be in communion with you.” He expected they would say no. They said yes. Which brings us back to ecumenical Twister.

Edwin will explain his position to people by saying that he is not claiming to believe that what happens in Protestant Eucharists, and in the setting apart for ministry of Protestant pastors, is the same thing that happens when the Roman Catholic church makes Roman Catholic priests and they make Roman Catholic Eucharist. He is only claiming that he cannot deny the presence of grace in Protestant sacraments.

The only place I am not haunted by Catholics is the place you think I would most be, and that is in Protestant sacraments. I became a priest, in large part, out of a devotion to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. For this I endured a complex discernment process that took me out of Methodism and into Anglicanism and ultimately took 23 years. (I began discernment in 1992. I post this on the second anniversary of my ordination as a deacon on the Eve of Holy Cross in 2015.)  

As a former Methodist, people found such a devotion awkward. Despite a rich history of Eucharistic reflection by the Wesleys, the accepted reason for becoming a Methodist pastor is “Because I want to help people.”  I do want to help people, but I have always felt chiefly called to help them by offering the grace of the sacraments and getting out of the way. Someone else can hold hands and sing Kum Bah Yah.

I once got asked by Edwin to bless a tent that had previously had a hard life. I was actually not feeling well, but I went out to our backyard in my bathrobe, placed a stole around my neck, consecrated a teacup full of water, asperged the tent in the name of the Trinity, took off my stole, and went back to bed. So much of being a Protestant in dialogue with Catholics is being made to feel, through benign neglect if not through actual apologetic argument, that you are simply playing church. I was not playing church that day. I was in deadly earnest.

As I am every time I stand at the altar, the table of the Lord, with the bread and wine. Quite a lot of doing the liturgy--especially for someone like me who was raised on Methodist folksiness and has a difficult time picking up choreography--is simply remembering what to pick up, what to set down, and what not to bump into.

But it never fails that when I lift the bread and lift the cup, and when I say “Sanctify these gifts,” that I am caught up in the thought “This is Jesus. This is the vanishing tail of unplumbable mysteries.”

Except for this tiny moment the mystery isn’t vanishing. He’s right there.