FEUCHTWANGEN, Germany — After Amy Gutmann’s father fled the Nazis in 1934, he swore by no means to set foot in Germany once more. For the remainder of his life, he boycotted German items and solely spoke English to his daughter. Germany, he impressed on her when she was rising up, was “very dangerous.”
Almost a century later, Ms. Gutmann, a revered democracy scholar, has moved to Germany — as the brand new U.S. ambassador. With antisemitism and far-right ideology as soon as once more resurgent, and with Russia waging battle on Ukraine shut by, her new function isn’t a job, she says: “It’s a mission.”
That mission is private in addition to geopolitical.
Earlier this month, Ms. Gutmann was striding up a cobbled alleyway in Feuchtwangen, the sleepy Bavarian city the place generations of her German ancestors had dwelled earlier than a Nazi mayor burned down the native synagogue and declared his city “Jew-free.”
When the present mayor got here to greet her, Ms. Gutmann pulled out the small black-and-white {photograph} of her father that she all the time carries together with her.
“You’ll forgive me for talking not solely because the U.S. ambassador to Germany, however as Amy Gutmann, the daughter of Kurt Gutmann,” Ms. Gutmann, 72, instructed a crowd of native dignitaries. “I might not be right here at present have been it not for my father’s farsightedness and braveness.”
The timing of her official arrival as ambassador on Feb. 17, Ms. Gutmann mentioned in an interview, felt significantly poignant, coming one week earlier than the invasion of Ukraine by a revisionist Russian president who has been accused by her personal boss of committing “genocide” in his quest for empire.
Seventy-seven years after America and its allies defeated Hitler’s Germany, the 2 international locations at the moment are united towards Russian aggression. A giant a part of Ms. Gutmann’s job will likely be to maintain it that manner.
“Germany and the U.S. at present are extraordinarily robust allies they usually’re allies in protection of human rights and in protection of the sovereignty of democratic societies,” she mentioned. “It closes a loop, whereas main us ahead into an period that my father by no means had the chance to witness.”
When President Biden referred to as her in April 2021, she was the longest-serving president of the College of Pennsylvania, a arithmetic main turned political thinker who had written greater than a dozen books about democracy.
“Do you need to be my ambassador to Germany?” Mr. Biden requested her.
Ms. Gutmann was sworn in on the Hebrew Bible her German grandmother Amalie, for whom she was named, had introduced together with her from Germany.
Germany has welcomed Ms. Gutmann not simply as a consultant of a brand new administration however of the American ally of outdated — earlier than it turned fickle and abrasive throughout the Trump years. Ms. Gutmann’s predecessor, Richard Grenell, threatened to cease sharing intelligence with Germany and posed for selfies with lawmakers of the far-right Various for Germany social gathering.
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Repairing America’s alliances was considered one of President Biden’s major overseas coverage targets and Germany was central to this effort, making Ms. Gutmann an ideal candidate, mentioned Julianne Smith, a longstanding Biden adviser and now the U.S. ambassador to NATO.
“The president believes that Germany is an indispensable associate for us and he wished to ship somebody that he knew properly,” Ms. Smith mentioned.
(Earlier than Mr. Biden supplied her the job, Ms. Gutmann had supplied him one in 2017 as a lecturer at her college, a proposal that got here after he misplaced his son Beau and “saved” him, as he as soon as described it.)
“It was simply apparent in his thoughts that she was the precise individual on the proper time,” Ms. Smith mentioned. “She is a confirmed chief and she or he is an mental large.”
When her father died in 1966, Ms. Gutmann was solely 16 and Germany was nonetheless crammed with former Nazis.
Within the three many years since reunification, the nation has labored laborious to come clean with its historical past — and apply the teachings of that historical past.
But it surely took the arrival of over 1,000,000 refugees from the Center East below former Chancellor Angela Merkel, in 2015-16, for Ms. Gutmann to completely belief Germany’s transformation.
“I used to be deeply moved by Merkel’s welcoming of refugees,” she mentioned. “It made a robust, maybe decisive distinction in my sense of Germany’s dedication to human rights.”
She added, “Germany at present is a mannequin of acknowledging the previous.”
That acknowledgment was on show in Feuchtwangen, the place the director of the native museum guided Ms. Gutmann by an exhibition on 800 years of Jewish life within the city that additionally described in unsparing element the persecution of Jews below the Nazis.
Among the many reveals have been gadgets from Ms. Gutmann’s family. {A photograph} of her grandfather. A postcard written by her grandmother. As a present, Ms. Gutmann was handed copies of her father’s report playing cards. “German was not his energy it appears,” she mentioned, laughing.
“All people will get report playing cards, however to see one thing through which there have been semi-normal occasions for him was a excessive level,” she mentioned later. “I solely knew my father after he was traumatized.”
Her father, an Orthodox Jew who fled Germany when he was 23 and later organized the escape of his dad and mom and 4 siblings, barely spoke to Ms. Gutmann about his personal previous, however he taught her in regards to the Holocaust.
“He clearly didn’t need me as a toddler to know — not to mention to hold ahead — his emotional trauma, however he undoubtedly wished me to hold the teachings of ‘by no means once more’ ahead,” Ms. Gutmann recalled.
Raised within the small city of Monroe, N.Y., Ms. Gutmann mentioned she felt like “a wierd child,” as she put it, her Jewishness and mental curiosity making her a double outsider.
Her mom urged her to do properly at school. After profitable a scholarship, she grew to become the primary in her household to go to school and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard earlier than instructing at Princeton for almost 30 years and changing into president of the College of Pennsylvania in 2004.
Her e-book “Democratic Training,” which reveals why democracies want a strong public training system, is a normal within the area.
“One purpose I wrote about democracy and training was that it’s a path out of tyranny,” she mentioned. “The very first thing the Nazis did was to shut down the press and burn books.”
The Gutmann home in Feuchtwangen, the place her father grew up, has develop into a bookstore, which delighted her. “Oh my God! If this have been a Hollywood script, it could be a bookstore,” she mentioned, earlier than buying half a dozen books for her grandchildren.
Her father had been an apprentice with a metallurgist in close by Nuremberg, dwelling to the largest Nazi Celebration rallying floor, the place he boarded with a Christian household that handled him properly. However when he watched them flash the Hitler salute at a passing Nazi march, he knew it was time to go away.
“He fled when he may as a result of he noticed what was occurring,” Ms. Gutmann mentioned. “One among my missions is that folks must understand how vital it’s to talk up early.”
For all Germany’s efforts to use the teachings from its previous, one nice leap stays, she mentioned: Lengthy reluctant to spend on its army, not to mention deploy it, Germans need to belief themselves to guide on army issues.
“Diplomacy is the primary recourse — nevertheless it typically doesn’t work towards brutal tyrannies,” Ms. Gutmann mentioned.
That, too, is a lesson from World Conflict II, she mentioned: “Had been it not for the army power of the allies, Hitler would have gained.”
“And now now we have Putin,” she added. “With out army power, there is no such thing as a manner Ukraine can defend its sovereignty. At this second, as in lots of different moments within the historical past of democracies, now we have to haven’t solely the army may, however the willingness to make use of it.”
In Germany, that realization remains to be sinking in. The federal government has dedicated to a 100-billion euro rearmament program in what Chancellor Olaf Scholz dubbed a “Zeitenwende” — or historic turning level — however Berlin has been criticized for dragging its toes on delivering heavy weapons to Kyiv.
“I imagine the Zeitenwende is actual,” Ms. Gutmann mentioned. “If there’s anyone who’s not disposed to be tender on Germany, it’s me. However I do suppose now we have to acknowledge what a historic second that is, and we are going to proceed to induce Germany to do extra.”
Ms. Gutmann fearful that each Germans and Individuals “overestimated how enduring democracies are — they’re not, except you combat for them,” she mentioned, including, “Every part we do makes a distinction. And the whole lot we don’t do makes a distinction.”
For all her eagerness to go to Feuchtwangen, the night time earlier than she traveled there, Ms. Gutmann barely slept.
“I used to be fearful sick that I might go there and really feel they hadn’t actually come to phrases with the previous,” she recalled, “that I might be upset and I wouldn’t have been in a position to disguise it — and it could have been only a horrible second.”
By the point she left the city, she was reassured.
Addressing the small {photograph} of her father in her palms, she mentioned, “You’ll be so happy with not solely your daughter, however of your nation, america, which grew to become your nation, and the nation that you just needed to go away — and what they’ve develop into: Two of the best allies nonetheless preventing what you’ll inform me is a combat that might by no means finish.”