This video is only available in German. Below you will find an English translation of the audio track.
Interview with Prof. Dr. Helmut Böhme, long-time President of the TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt 2006
“When I think of Georg Iggers, the first thing I have to say is it’s not so much the scientist, it’s an admiration for a man who never divided science and political commitment. So I really think of George Iggers when I think of Georg Iggers, Little Rock, Arkansas, civil rights, the fairer state, and personal involvement.
I think most of all that he took me to the various bodies of the African-American civil rights movement, the Congress of which he is still a member today, the sensibility that he now implemented as a Jew and a displaced person.
The second thing I think of is that in his life’s destiny, he has this extraordinary degree of wanting to understand and seeking to understand, and in such a way that one is always surprised. So I personally, I punch, if you will, first of all such theses and then look for reasons.
He is rather the moderator of the conversation, he seems to yield, to listen and suddenly one feels, aha, from behind comes very crystal clear and very sharply a very well founded and convinced position, founded by a lot of knowledge and by comparison, which gives up nothing, but also nothing of what drives him in his life, from which he is at all able to actually be a bridge builder.
The third thing I think of is openness, and human commitment to others. Once you get into the clutches of Mr. Iggers, you can’t get out, and in a good sense. He is guided, there is demand, there is a great interest, and just now Wilma Iggers told me, it is not only from us, but we have benefited a lot from the Darmstadters, but also from the others.
Or finally, where he then felt himself, and told me, so Böhme, your time is not here yet. These top dogs will clearly tell you that you don’t have a chance. Yes, but I was completely knocked off my feet when I suddenly got a call from Buffalo, and from Chicago, where there is someone for me, whom I, yes if you will 5 phone calls, 2 afternoons, and suddenly he is there. Of course, that lasts now 40 years, a lifetime.
And the fifth, I admire his way of focusing. He doesn’t get into the temptation to now suddenly go into the mudslinging of the detail interpreters, but he actually sticks to his theme. And this subject is the criticism, if you will, actually of criticism. Thinking about the preconditions, about the seductions of opinion formations that are not looked into further.
For me, he is someone who, as he also said this afternoon, he clearly stated that he himself is working on German idealism and the hope that Jewish science, in particular, associated with it. In this respect, when I think of him, I think of him as someone who does not intensify the fronts, but tries to go through the fronts without dissolving the fronts.
At the moment, for example, when we stir the different multicultural or multiethnic, as it is all so buzzword-like called, into a stew, then it is of no use at all. We need clear fronts, and the basis is called education, the basis is called information and knowledge, and the promotion of individual achievements. And not with such bent words as Leitkultur and other bullshit.
And that’s where he stands for me, last of all, because of building bridges. His wife Wilma, she lived in Canada, and he, he’s not that sporty, he in America, but he couldn’t get over the bridge, he had to get over the ice floes at the bottom, and of course customs and the police caught him immediately. But the way he then managed to build the bridge to Canada after all, and both of them then realized their studies in Chicago, yes, that is Iggers for me.”