by J.L. Heldring (1917-2013)
Sometimes, I must confess, I feel some sympathy for the infamous statement made by a person in Hanns Johst’s play Schlageter: “wenn ich “”Kultur”” höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning.” After all, there is a lot of bitching about culture. The least we can do in order to bring some clarity is, before we add to the confusion of speech, to define what we mean by culture.
Well, when I talk about culture here, I do not use what Minister d’Ancona calls the “narrow conception of culture”: the arts, media, literature and libraries sectors and the field of cultural heritage: museums, monuments and archives. I use the “broad, almost anthropological view of culture,” the view that equates culture with society, way of life, if you will, identity. I would also like to explain why I prefer the latter view: culture-in-engere sense does not involve the whole society, but only an elite, and often such an elite has more connection with elites in other countries than with its own population. This in itself is not at all bad or objectionable, but when we talk, for example, about Dutch culture, it sometimes becomes very difficult to indicate the typically Dutch of such an elite culture. Culture created by a Dutchman is not necessarily typically Dutch. By this I am not making a condemnation; I am merely observing that when we adopt the narrow view of culture, we have difficulty in arriving at a definition of Dutch culture (I say Dutch now, but can observe this just as well of other cultures).
If, on the other hand, we occupy the broad conception of culture, it becomes easier. Dutch culture – if we may stay with the Netherlands – is by definition everything that distinguishes the Dutch (I know I have to be careful with that article de, since a fellow commentator tripped over it the other day), in thought and action, taste and intercourse, from others. This includes, for example, the food culture that immediately distinguishes us from our Flemish-speaking compatriots. These expressions of culture play a much greater role in the life of a nation than the expressions of culture-in-genre, which are therefore – and for that reason alone – more superficial. The expressions of culture-in-engere-sense often have to do, without our knowing it ourselves (or wanting to know it), with the nation’s religious past, which is different from others. They form a set of feelings and sensibilities in which one recognizes each other. Accordingly, Andre Malraux once gave this definition of culture: “un accord des sensibilités.” (1)
Culture-in-the-broad sense, of course, is no more a constant factor than culture-in-the-environment. With the emergence of film, it has become increasingly subject to outside influences, influences that have been considerably magnified by television and travel opportunities (the result of greater affluence). In my youth you could immediately recognize German children by their clothes or hairstyle, that is no longer possible now. There is a youth culture that encompasses the entire West – and soon Eastern Europe. But that in itself does not mean that the “accord des sensibilités” has become greater. Thus anti-German feelings, for whatever reasons, currently seem to be stronger among young people than among older ones. And so Dutch – and German, for that matter – tourists still drag along their potatoes and other native foods on their annual trek to Mediterranean campsites. Incidentally, because of their behavior and digestive habits, they are immediately recognized as Dutch in more southern regions – and these begin as early as Belgium. The internationalization of culture has only just begun. It has not yet affected the deeper layers of national cultures. Even a culture finds its reason for existence in its difference from others. And even the bearers of an elite culture are not free from the “sensibilities” of their national environment and background.
All this is important when we talk about international cultural cooperation. First of all, then, let us put an end to the talk about a European culture. That does not exist – at least not in the sense of a culture in which only Europeans – from Norwegians to Portuguese – participate, but non-Europeans, such as Americans and Australians, do not. Such a culture does not exist, if only because, for example, Dutch culture has more in common with non-European North American culture than with European Spanish culture. And can we speak of a European Culture when, as a former director of the Maison Descartes in Amsterdam rightly observed, Amsterdam is no further from Paris than Lyon, but belongs to a totally different cultural circle, indeed to a different world? (2) In short, this talk of a European culture is intellectual environmental pollution. Then it would be better to speak of an Atlantic culture (which André Malraux does, by the way, in that 1945 interview). But then the definition must be so inclusive that it becomes unusable in intellectual discourse.
We may even wonder if there is a Dutch culture that encompasses the actual Netherlands and the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, now called Flanders. Certainly, Dutch and Flemish people speak and write the same language. That is an important condition for a culture. But also a sufficient one? (Maybe not even a necessary one – think Switzerland). In any case, the Netherlands and Flanders have been subject to totally different influences over the last four centuries (roughly: the Reformation and the Counter Reformation, respectively). Moreover, for those four centuries the Netherlands has been an independent nation, for a time even a great power, while Flanders has actually completed its emancipation only in the last few decades. This difference in background, with the political separation, has led to different cultures. So Minister d’Ancona was not so very wrong when, on April 28, 1990, she had one of her officials say in Brussels that the Netherlands and Flanders formed a linguistic but not a cultural community. In doing so, she aroused the anger of many Flemish people, but Jozef Deleu, as editor-in-chief of Ons Erfdeel, was not the first to agree with her. “Talking about Dutch culture only troubled the relationship between Flanders and the Netherlands,” he said in an interview in the Cultural Supplement of NRC Handelsblad on November 2, 1990.
There is enough to do in the area of culture-in-a sense for the Netherlands and Flanders together (although, curiously enough, Minister d’Ancona initially wanted to hold off on that very area – later she changed her mind). In any case, a community of culture-in-the-broad sense is not necessary for cooperation in the field of culture-in-the-sense. Cooperation with Flanders is then, by virtue of our language community, the most obvious choice. But if it is true that the European Community, besides the economic and political, also affects in principle the cultural autonomy of the member states – which the small cultural units would come to feel more than the large ones – then cooperation with Flanders is not sufficient. Then it will be necessary to bring other smaller cultural units into the fold of cultural autonomy as well. So: political cooperation to that end with countries like Denmark, Portugal and Greece, with whose cultures we may have little in common. This is all the more necessary because Belgium’s foreign policy is still a matter for the central government, in which the Walloon members cannot immediately be expected to stand up for the interests of an autonomous Flemish, let alone a great Dutch culture.
It has not yet appeared that the Dutch Foreign Ministry has much understanding of the importance of culture for foreign policy. When it thinks about it, it is at best in terms of painting exhibitions and musical performances, i.e. culture-in-engere sense (and then also as a key item). But culture is more than that. Culture is identity, and it may well be that, when the economy and politics will indeed all one day be transferred to Brussels, there won’t be much left for Foreign Affairs to do but defend Dutch cultural autonomy. But then it will have to prepare for that task now anyway.
- In the Swiss monthly magazine Labyrinthe, Feb. 15. 1945.
- Jean-Clarence Lambert in The Guide, Mar. 1987.
