10 April 2022 21Today, some of that
generation’s beneficiaries
display less embarrassment
than others. In 2019 Verena
Bahlsen, 26-year-old heiress to
a vast biscuit empire buoyed
by Nazi-era forced labour,
made a defiant platform
appearance at a marketing
conference. “I am a capitalist,”
she said. “I own a quarter of
Bahlsen and I am happy about
it too. It should continue to
belong to me. I want to make
money and buy sailing yachts
from my dividend and stuff.”
What about the Nazi
connection? She shrugged to
the tabloid Bild: “That was
before my time and we paid
the forced labourers exactly
the same as the Germans and
treated them well. Bahlsen has
nothing to feel guilty about.”
This travesty of reality —
Verena’s grandfather and
great-uncles were Nazi Party
members who donated to the
SS and mercilessly exploited
Hitler’s victims — caused a
public storm in Germany. It is
doubtful, however, whetherthe heiress regretted anything
save rashness in proclaiming
her lack of shame.
It is impossible to fault de
Jong’s fierce indignation in
this book. He must be right, to
urge that the descendants of
Hitler’s tycoons should admit
their ancestors’ criminality, as
some do not. But what else
does he want? For them to
surrender their ill-gotten
inheritances to good causes?
There are relatively few
exceptions to Balzac’s
assertion that behind every
great fortune lies a great crime.
Today’s British aristocracy is
rich in upstanding stately
home owners whose forebears
paid the builders’ bills out of
profits from oppressing the
weak. Although slavery is back
in the news, with the passage
of centuries and collapse of
historical education, we forget
most of the misdeeds of earlier
generations.
The important truth about
the Nazi billionaires is that, in
the immediate postwar era,
the western Allies were feebleabout rooting out Hitler’s
associates in horror, including
the industrialists in this book.
In the post-1945 climate of
moral exhaustion, the Allies
lacked the stomach for the
thousands of executions that
would have been necessary to
punish all the guilty. Moreover,
as the Cold War got under way
German economic revival
was deemed a vital western
interest. To achieve this, such
horrible people as the Flicks
and Quandts were needed.
Finally, depressing as is
this admission, the rich can
almost always buy their way
out of trouble, and even war
crimes. It is not realistically
possible, in 2022, to exact
retrospectively the retribution
that was not imposed in 1945.
St Moritz and St Tropez,
together with the nasty and
absurdly expensive Mayfair
members’ dining clubs, will
continue to be thronged with
the heirs and heiresses to evil,
jostled by their modern kin,
children of the Kremlin
oligarchs. cThe grandson Friedrich Christian Flick and girlfriend, 1984
THOUGHT
Laura Hackett
Bittersweet How Sorrow and
Longing Make Us Whole
by Susan Cain
Viking £20 pp352Do you cry at John Lewis
Christmas adverts? Are you
moved to goosebumps several
times a day? Do you react
intensely to music or art?
If so, you might inhabit
what Susan Cain calls “the
bittersweet state”. That is,
you have “a tendency to states
of longing, poignancy and
sorrow; an acute awareness
of passing time; and a
curiously piercing joy at the
beauty of the world”. We
should all be more bittersweet,
she argues, as it allows us
to transcend pain and
transform it into creativity.
Cain’s 2012 book Quiet sold
more than two million copies.
It called for practical changes
in schools and workplaces to
embrace introverts who don’t
feel able to shout their way
to success. Cain thinks
bittersweet people are also
marginalised — perhaps more
so in her American context,
where appearing happy is
practically essential, but in
Britain too, where it might be
all right to be a bit miserable,
but no one wants you to start
crying about your childhood
in the office (except Cain, who
in one chapter advocates for
more melancholy workplaces).
What makes Bittersweet a
trickier and ultimately less
successful project than Quiet
is that the central concept is
not so simple or clear-cut.
Cain does try to simplify
things for us. Similar
questions to those
above make up a quiz
for readers, to help
them figure out how
bittersweet they
are. On a scale of
one to ten, you area “true connoisseur” of the
bittersweet state if you get
above 5.7. For full disclosure,
I got 7.4: I’m an ad weeper.
Cain introduces us to many
forms of the bittersweet state.
We meet Pete Docter, creator
of Pixar’s huge box office hits
Up, Monsters, Inc and Inside
Out, who realised that sadness
was an essential part of
a good children’s movie.
We hear from scientists who
discovered that sad music
helps our bodies to self-
regulate. And Cain speaks to
many Holocaust survivors and
their descendants — she is
one herself, and wants to
uncover the science behind
generational trauma, a kind
of genetic bittersweetness.
The stories are very
moving, of course. But the
advice on how to actually deal
with persistent melancholy is
unclear. Cain is on her own
journey, coming to terms with
her relationship with her
mother — idyllic in her early
childhood, but increasingly
strained throughout
adolescence and irrevocably
damaged when she left for
college. To cure her longing
for that perfect bond, she tries
Sufism, a mystical branch of
Islam, Metta, the Buddhist
practice of loving-kindness
meditation, and the Hindu
belief in non-attachment.
None of them seems to fully
heal her wounds.
But perhaps that’s the
point. The bittersweet state
is something we live with for
ever: it can make us more
compassionate and more
artistic, she argues eloquently,
and perhaps that’s worth the
price of the pain. Cain’s
mother now has advanced
Alzheimer’s. She recognises
her daughter, but has
forgotten their falling
out. They love each
other simply and
freely, but both know
their remaining time
together is short.
That acceptance
is what all of my
fellow John Lewis
ad-cryers
should
aim for. cIs your life
‘bittersweet’?
If so, it’s good news — it makes you more
compassionate and more creative
Price of pain
Susan Cain
embraces
sadnessKIMBERLY WHITE/GETTY IMAGESWOLFGANG KüHN, ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES