Arbeit Macht Frei - Origin of the Phrase

The phrase "Arbeit macht frei" ("work makes free" or "will make you free") appeared over the main entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps, and still appears over some.  According to Wikipedia, the phrase originated in the title of Lorenz Diefenbach's (1873) book, Arbeit Macht Frei.  The title concept was apparently borne out in the plot of the book - in which, Wikipedia says, work turns bad guys good.

Primo Levi (2005, p. 8), a Holocaust survivor, says this:  "It is more likely that the meaning [of "arbeit macht frei," as it appeared over the entrances to concentration camps] is ironic, springing from the heavy, arrogant, funereal wit to which only Germans are privy."  Perhaps the greater irony is that Levi, a victim of racism, would express himself in such racist terms.  His personal anger - obviously, a very understandable anger - seems to have distorted his judgment.  Not that he is alone in that.  Others similarly throw around such adjectives as "maniacal" (Chatman, 2009, p. 52) and "grotesque" (Schoenbaum, 1997, p. 75; Welch, 2004, p. 221) when speaking of "arbeit macht frei" and related values.

Contrary to Levi, there is a more plausible explanation for the use of the phrase.  A number of sources reiterate, without citation, that the Weimar government adopted "Arbeit Macht Frei" in 1928, as a slogan in support of a job program.  Be that as it may, the phrase plainly had deep roots in German culture.  Certainly Germans have been known to consider themselves hardworking (Reigrotski, 1959).  Before Diefenbach's Arbeit Macht Frei, Spielhagen's Hammer and Anvil expressed the concept in several forms, including "Only work can make us free!" (1870, p. 668).  Indeed, starting as early as 1763, according to Kloberdanz (1975, p. 212), Volga Germans commonly said, "Arbeit macht das Leben süss" (work makes life sweet).

Consistent with that cultural self-image, Rees (2006, p. 9) states that Rudolf Höss, who was responsible for putting the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign over the gate at Auschwitz, was thoroughly convinced of the positive benefits of work.  Nazi concentration camps plainly were places in which people were worked very hard (Roth, 1980).  Friedrich (1994, p. 3) likewise does not question Höss's sincerity, but suggests rather that he intended it as "a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom"; he quotes Höss as saying, "All my life, I have thoroughly enjoyed working."  Schoenbaum (1997, p. 76), too, quotes Höss as referring to "the blessed effectiveness of work" by which criminals "can still be rescued from criminality."

The concept of hard work being good for a person is familiar enough; the idea that it would be good for a person who is being worked to death is less so.  Possibly a sort of explanation, if not precursor, appears in Kafka's (1914) In the Penal Colony, where a machine inscribes the "sentence" conveying a criminal conviction into the convict's skin until he dies.

In the case of at least some Jewish prisoners, it is not hard to surmise the nature of the criminality from which Höss seems to have offered work as a purifier. According to Wegner (2002, p. 142), Nazi stereotypes of Jews circa 1938 "suggested in no uncertain terms that Germans 'worked' while the Jews 'rested.'"  Wegner finds that contrast in, for example, depictions of a Jewish banker as compared to a German farmer.  This financially oriented stereotype was not new.  Ahamed (2009, p. 180) notes that, during a food panic in Berlin in 1923, a mob had chanted, "Kill the stock exchange Jews."  Indeed, Chazan (1997, p. 106) cites stereotypes regarding exploitation by Jewish financiers from as long ago as the 12th century.

The phrase itself - "arbeit macht frei" - can be, and has been, translated into English as "work shall set you free," in a clear echo of John 8:32 ("You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free").  It is quite likely that, as one source suggests (without citations), "arbeit macht frei" originated in the Protestant work ethic.  While that ethic has its drawbacks as well as its strengths (see Beatty, 2003), it is not intrinsically malevolent, much less murderous.  To the contrary, according to Lewis's (1994, p. 19) article on German literature of the time, when Spielhagen (1870) invoked the liberatory powers of work, he was expressing an ideal of "democratic innocence."

Despite events like those cited above, it appears that, until 1933, Germany may actually have been less hostile to Jews than were other countries in its vicinity (Koonz, 2003, p. 9).  Even on into the 1940s, the mass extermination of Jews was not a publicly promoted and popularly supported national policy in Germany.  Instead, the Nazis seem to have appealed to a popular impression that "arbeit macht frei" indeed.  In other words, it appears that an ordinary German of the time might have looked at that slogan with approval, and might even have felt that Jews in particular were in need of some exposure to an honest day's work.  (I say they "might" have felt this.  In quickly researching this brief essay, I have not been able to uncover readily available sources on some points.)

Contrary to Levi's (2005) view, then, it does not appear that signs reading "Arbeit Macht Frei" were posted primarily as a cynical joke at the expense of Jews and other concentration camp inmates.  Once posted, of course, there was ample reason for knowledgeable persons to contrue those signs as cynical in the extreme; but for purposes of public relations, the signs seem to have conveyed a familiar and acceptable message.

In that sense, the real joke may have been on the ordinary Germans who were successfully manipulated by such slogans.  They, too, were starved, raped, and killed by the millions, in the course of the war into which their era's clueless leader led them; but unlike the concentration camp inmates and staff, the joke passed them by.  They, too, were the butt of it; but unlike the people the camps, they didn't get it.  They evidently tended to believe that "arbeit macht frei," and other Nazi propaganda, for a very long time.

To express it in today's terms, ordinary Germans seem to have been sufficiently unhappy with the Goldman Sachs of their time - with, that is, the perceived Jewish financial elite (see Feingold, 2008, p. ix) - that they were willing to accept retaliation against Jews of every type.  In the present day, fortunately, we are not burdened with the need for a strong leader who will promise to bring us out of the financial depths, as Hitler did for Germany, and who will do so partly by making Jews the scapegoats, either deliberately or as an inadvertent result of his policies.  Let's hope it stays that way.

Maybe It's Time for the Next Crisis

The received wisdom on the New Deal -- the wisdom as I've received it, anyway -- is that Roosevelt's efforts helped some people a lot, but what really yanked the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression was the advent of World War II. So maybe that's the kind of solution we need now, or maybe that's what will ultimately end the current economic crisis. If that's possible, then it might make sense to try to select the crisis that will pull us out of the current economic funk. Another global war is a possibility, but is there something comparably extreme -- something that people can and would die for -- that might be capable of stimulating extraordinary commitments by large masses of individuals? No comparable candidates spring to mind. People might somehow become united or energetic in the face of a global epidemic, but it is hard to see how the prospect of a few billion people being killed by disease would call for superhuman efforts by the remainder. Moreover, wars are competitive; are people apt to exert themselves to the maximum, without regard for their own ease and comfort, only when they are competing against others? A different sort of constructive scenario might emerge if World War II were instead construed as an excuse and opportunity for large numers of people to work together to build something remarkable out of great deprivation. In that way of looking at it, a period of tremendous growth could result if, say, the social, political, and economic map of the U.S. were suddenly scrambled, such that people were no longer locked into what may be outmoded forms and structures. If, hypothetically speaking, people were free to take off westward in covered wagons, to found new settlements in remote regions, they might well display the same industry and determination now as did those white settlers who went westward in the 1800s. But what, precisely, is the modern equivalent?

Veterans Day

I have never been too interested in Veterans Day. I think we can blame some of that on the state of affairs in our household when I was a teenager. Dad was among the worst right-wing idiots on the subject of the Vietnam War. He never did quite catch on that the hippies, peaceniks, and protesters were right – that we were wasting tens of thousands of American lives on a struggle that would not have begun if the French had not colonized Southeast Asia, which they had no right to do; if President Johnson had not lied to the American people about the events of Tonkin Gulf; if corporate money in America had not been so terrified of anything resembling socialism. We got a horrendous backlash on all points – in the socialistic steps of LBJ’s Great Society, for instance, and in riots and the growth of factions promoting violent overthrow of our government.

If we were going to fight in Vietnam, we should have fought to win. Otherwise, we should never have started. Same thing in Iraq. I see these generals making a hash of things – not counting Petraeus, who seems to be playing a bad hand very well – and I think Veterans Day is one more occasion when those who send kids (but not their own!) to die can pretend that they really do realize it is a matter of life and death. So when Dad would hold forth on his ideas (e.g., that we should just line up the peace protesters and shoot them), I think it was understandable that I would not merely reject his views, but would to some extent reject the American military too. It seemed to me that he did not understand what America was all about. I wanted no part of him and his Army, and I had some justification for that attitude.

But today, on this Veterans Day 2007, I am willing to make an exception. The immediate reason is that I just watched a tear-jerking Veterans Day commemoration video. A related reason is that Dad died two days ago, and he was a dad for whom few things in life were as important as the years that he spent in the military.

There is no denying that the miliary is what keeps the country safe. The military has been the vehicle of horrible and atrocious behavior, from the war with Mexico to My Lai to Abu Ghraib; but this is what you get – it is what all armies get, at some point or other – when you train people to kill and destroy. It’s awful stuff to learn how to do, and it needs to cease as soon as there is no longer a threat that other people want to do the same to you. The military’s excesses may stoke that desire on their part, and that prospect needs intensive attention; but there are always going to be freeloaders, abusers, and megalomaniacs who will think that subjugating the people of another country is a fine idea.

This morning, I went for a run in the park. I felt wonderful. It’s because I got eight or nine hours of sleep; and I did that, I think, because I was just worn out at the end of the day yesterday. I can’t say that Dad’s death was the sole reason, but it was clearly a weight that I carried with me for the day. Today, some things seemed to have fallen into place.

It was fitting that I went on that run, and that I felt wonderful doing so, because the Army was not Dad’s only preoccupation. His book, which I have been annotating for some time, is a testament to his years in World War II, but also to his years in the Civilian Conservation Corps. As a CCCer, he planted trees and, as I was thinking on my run this morning, he helped to build a state park somewhat like the place I was running in. He loved trees; and while his taste in books did tend toward warfare and historical battles, his behavior over the past 50 years was much rather in the direction of CCCish trees, stonework, and parks.

Dad fought in a war. The Army impressed him because, I think, it told him exactly where he stood. There were (to him, anyway) none of the picayune, Byzantine politics and innuendoes that would so often ensnare him in civilian life; he was free just to be a man, as he understood the term: to destroy things, to run over things that got in the way, to replace them with the things he preferred, and to build on that basis. In that sense, for him the best of civilian life (both in the CCC and after the war) was that which allowed him to just bust in, ram ahead, and get it done.

So he built a park; he cut trees; he grew and trimmed trees; he took the family on vacations, predominantly to national parks; and he built a home, insofar as he was able to construct a sense of what that might mean, that was surrounded on all sides by sawdust, wood blocks, gardens, trees, bees, stonework, raspberry vines, flowers, and grass, laid out in the way he wished. There, he found a refuge from the outside world, for which he shared a passion with his wife for some 55 years, until they finally gave it up as requiring more work than they could manage in their old age.

In those regards, the house and the war against Japan ran together. There were these outside forces that needed to be repelled, mostly by blood and steel, and there was a vision of better things, done in the American way, that could be constructed on a new beginning. For while I fault Dad’s book as focusing overmuch on his wartime years, as though that were the main thing in his life, I also recognize, within that focus, a preference for telling about the positive, helpful things that one can do within the hell of war. One can pour sulpha into the wound on the leg of a prisoner of war; one can have a conversation with a Japanese person, even though one will be unable to stomach dinner in a Japanese restaurant a half-century later.

Those GIs who gave chewing gum to kids in WWII, who are now embarked on armed social work in Afghanistan and elsewhere, were not originally there to be nice. But they discovered, as Dad did, that the larger purpose behind war is peace. You can train your soldiers to kill, but you cannot necessarily prevent them from crossing the lines to join the Germans in singing hymns on Christmas Eve. I saw some research, recently, in which they seemed to have found that an unbelievable number of soldiers will not be able to make themselves shoot straight at the enemy, even when their failure to do so leads to their own death. We may have an image of what war is, but it ain’t always what it’s supposed to be, and it wasn’t with Dad either.

So my dad built a park, fought a war, built a home, and nursed his trees. I resisted against a war, left that home, and, this morning, ran in a park that someone, probably someone like him, built. I can’t quite piece together all the threads that run in and out, among such observations. But I can tell you that I felt great on my run; that I am aware it is Veterans Day; and that I am sorry for what the world’s veterans have had to experience, and am glad for what they have been able to achieve nonetheless. I am sorry they have had to shoot at each other, and I am glad for all the times when their shots have missed. That may not be a suitably morose reaction from someone whose father has died, nor is it a very rah-rah kind of Veterans Day sentiment. But I can’t help that. That's just the way it seems to me.