Martin Pollack
A note in the FAZ this week made me conscious of the legacy of the Austrian historian and Polonist Martin Pollack. I was struck by the way he predicted, a decade ago, much of today’s European political reality, an outcome almost bound to follow, he maintained, if we stayed hellbent on making decisions based on an ‘unhappy mixture of arrogance and ignorance’. I read Christoph Ransmayr’s noble obituary of Pollack from January this year. Then two long drives gave me time to listen to some of Pollack’s lectures and public conversations: a fascinating one on the ‘Myth of Galicia‘; another on living with ‘The Long Shadow of a Sinister Past‘; a lively interview with Markus Müller-Schinwald; and a podium discussion with Timothy Snyder on the ‘East-Europeanisation of politics‘ (the last two items are in German). Though my acquaintance is recent, this exposure to Pollacks’ learned, humane perspective makes me appreciate what Paul Ingendaay meant when he wrote: ‘We’d have a pressing need for courage like his here and now.’
