American emigré: Author Michael Luick-Thrams has gone "home"

MICHAEL LUICK-THRAMS, AN author, historian, and public speaker from Saint Paul, Minnesota, called it quits last year. At age forty-eight, bidding farewell to a successful mobile museum program he founded and an alternative farming colony in the Midwest, along with a mother, two siblings, and a fashionable condo in Saint Paul, he gave it all up to become a middle school teacher in a Swabian village in southwest Germany, just ten miles from his ancestral home. He has been speaking about his “immigration” to local audiences ever since. I was intrigued by his undertaking, so with Independence Day approaching I decided to call him up and find out what could have moved him to take a step that many other Americans celebrating this holiday over beer and fireworks would regard as unthinkable: Declaring his own independence from the Land of the Free.

Mr. Luick-Thrams, a year ago you boarded a train from the Twin Cities to New York and a ship from there “back” to Europe, much as some of your ancestors did centuries earlier, although in reverse. Like them, you didn’t buy a return ticket. How long are you intending to stay?

I don’t see this as a temporary situation. My intention is to stay here for the rest of my life. This isn’t a party excursion. I work here, I pay taxes, I have a job. I’m building a relationship. I’ve got friendships. I’ve become fluent in the language. I’m not just living in an enclave, in a bubble, like so many other Americans abroad. So I’ve emigrated. I’ve left. I have no desire to remain in the States anymore.

I see no positive changes in the US 

But people leave their countries all the time. There’s travel, there’s tourism. People go study at universities abroad, they work abroad, they take sabbaticals abroad. What’s the difference between normal travel or overseas work and what you’re doing?

People who travel or who study abroad have limited engagements. Others may be working for an American corporation somewhere, but they have the long-term goal of returning to the United States to live, because they like it there and have a home there. I no longer feel comfortable living in the US, I don’t want to live there long-term. I don’t think the developments there are healthy or sustainable, and I don’t think the future is very rosy. While I know Europe isn’t perfect, here in Germany there’s a multi-party parliament, so it’s not just Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee like we have. There is more of a real democracy. Everyone has healthcare. You can’t live in the country without health insurance. They’re discontinuing nuclear power, they’re insulating houses, and are instituting other energy-saving measures. Things are happening, changing. I don’t see any such positive changes in the United States. I want to live here and be part of this.

As you said, thirteen months ago I took a train to New York and caught a freighter to Bremerhaven. I needed that time to think, to watch the whales break the surface in front of the ship, to observe the schools of dolphins and put my thoughts together. It was a big deal.

I had flown over the Atlantic many times. Well, this time the voyage was open-ended. I could do this, whereas others want to but can’t. I was single, I had the time, I had the money to pay the passage. My family gave its blessing – they understood very well why I wanted to leave. Other people have children or have jobs they can’t even think of leaving, because they need the security. Or they have homes. I myself own a condo, but I wouldn’t stay in place just because of a piece of property. I’m turning fifty this year, so I’m hardly a spring chicken, but I saw my opportunity and I seized it.

We were no longer living in the same country 

Independence Day is coming up. What was the actual cause or motivation that compelled your own personal declaration of independence from the United States?

It’s a belief that we no longer live in the same country as before 9/11. I’m not at all pleased about the changes we’ve seen since then. I think that in many ways we have become the things we claim to hate: We hate terrorism and we hate indiscriminate violence. Unfortunately, over the past ten years we have been consistently practicing just that. Invading countries, kicking in the doors of innocent people. We know that soldiers acting in our name have raped and tortured. I thought at first that hopefully this would pass. But it keeps going on. We’ve had ten years of war, and I suspect that if we had the money we would wage even more war elsewhere. It has become a way of life.

I don’t like the way the country is going domestically, either. I’m very conscious of the development in Wisconsin, stripping workers of collective bargaining rights. At some point I decided I’d had enough. I’m not going to pay taxes to subsidize this madness. I’m not going to devote part of my income to building guns and tanks and fighter jets, paying to place soldiers abroad to rape people, to kill and terrorize them. I’m not going to be a part of that. 

If I thought things could be changed, I would have stayed 

Some people might hear what you say and respond that these are all good reasons to stay home and fight for a better society. Somebody like Martin Luther King had excellent reasons for leaving the States, but decided to remain and paid the supreme price for it. Other activists such as Noam Chomsky have also stayed put and keep writing and speaking. So even if what you say is accurate, why leave the country rather than remain within it and fight against what you perceive is wrong?

I’m reading the signs. In Nazi Germany there came a point when people said, “I can’t stay here and fight. I have to leave, I’m in danger.” Now I never thought I was in danger in the States, but I saw no future for myself. If I thought things could be changed, I would have stayed.

For ten years I operated an antiwar museum [the TRACES Center for History and Culture in downtown Saint Paul] and took mobile exhibits all across the Midwest. It was a museum that showed the effects of war, using World War II as a case study. Ironically, I think that in some ways conditions in America are not bad enough. Like Nazi Germany, America maybe has to fall to its knees before people will be able to change. What will it take for people to realize that “Hey, it doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have to have Wall Street meltdowns and let corporations dictate public policy. We don’t have to let morally corrupt judges rule that corporations are people and can pay for political campaigns.” I don’t think America is salvageable at the moment, largely because people aren’t awake.

"American Progress" by John Gast (1872)

In the pocket of Goldman Sachs 

But there have been some positive signs lately. There was President Obama’s recent statement in favor of gay marriage, and his healthcare reform plan passed through the Supreme Court, so change is definitely possible. Do you really think the country is a hopeless cause?

(Laughs.) I do, actually. I campaigned for Obama in 2008. I went door-to-door and made phone calls. I actually had tickets to the inauguration. I was a big supporter of the “change we can all believe in.”

The problem is that it’s now clear that Obama sits in the pocket of Goldman Sachs. Even though I’m sure he’s a very pleasant fellow and would be a great guy to have a conversation with in a beer hall, he is beholden to the people who finance his expensive campaigns. So we’re screwed: The man who was supposed to deliver massive change can’t do it because he has to pay the fiddler.

As far as gay marriage is concerned, as a gay man I resent what I see as a cynical move on Obama’s part. Five years ago, he could have said the same thing on his way to the White House, namely that all Americans had the right to protect their unions. He has only had his epiphany in the last couple of months? Gimme a break. It was an obvious political ploy. It cheapens and renders tawdry the entire issue.

But why move to Europe, of all places? Aren’t Germany and the EU just playing good cop to America’s bad cop around the world?

Europe’s not perfect, but it has a few things going for it. For one thing, you’ve got over two thousand years of recorded European history. These are deep cultures. Our culture is much younger. We’re a young country, and we don’t have the depth to navigate a huge crisis. I don’t think we have the staying power to bring about real changes.

Part of the problem in the States is that we tend to believe our own propaganda: That we’re the best country in the world, that we’re the most democratic country. But we aren’t the most democratic country. When it’s a question of getting one’s needs met, other countries do a much better job. Just look at northern Europe, at Scandinavia and Germany, when it comes to healthcare and other indicators of a decent life.

One common argument you may have heard from your critics is “what if everybody did it?” Do you think everybody who feels like you do should leave the US? Or is this a very personal step for you?

Everyone will have to make his or her own decision. I made mine after very, very long and studied deliberation, weighing all the options and asking myself some extremely hard questions. But I think we have a fascist climate in the United States. We should stop pretending we’re a democracy. Most people have very little influence on their elected officials. So, what if everyone left? Well, that would certainly be sending a message, wouldn’t it now? The educated class should leave. What would that say to the people left behind pulling the strings? I had to leave because I could no longer stomach the nasty things I saw going on all around me. Not just the politics, but the way the political situation mirrors the kind of people we are becoming. The values we are adopting, our disengagement from one another, a deteriorating culture. Europe isn’t perfect, but in America there is simply no counterweight to mitigate all these developments.

Fascism is a very strong word. You yourself are a historian, and back in the 90s you wrote your doctoral dissertation in Germany, about refugees who fled the Nazi regime for America. You also founded a museum and drove portable exhibits about POWs around the Midwest for many years. Do you really think the word “fascism” is applicable to America under George W. Bush and Barack Obama?

If we define fascism as rule by corporate interests, by the business elite, then it certainly is. Add in militarism, constant warfare, surveillance and the suspension of basic human rights, then we clearly live in a fascist society, in spirit if not in name.

I've come home 

While your family has been in the USA since the 1630s, some came over from Germany in the early nineteenth century. How does it feel to be the first member of your family to move back?

Like my ancestors, I’ve cut my roots and decided to start a new life somewhere else. But it feels odd to be going in the opposite direction. At the same time, I’ve been living for the past year in Swabia, just ten miles away from Esslingen on the Neckar, where my father’s side of the family once lived before heading to the Midwest in the 1830s. I’ve met relatives and I’ve walked the streets where my family lived for hundreds of years. My European roots are thousands of years old. I feel like I’ve come home. I feel like I belong here.

I’m glad my family moved to America back then. It has been an enriching experience for us. But I think the country is taking a very sinister turn. It isn’t the country we were born into, the country we wanted to have. I don’t want to spend my life there.

No one ever heard of an American emigrating 

What would have to happen in the US for you to reverse your decision?

There would have to be real changes, not just a few dissidents saying “wouldn’t it be nice if…?” It’s not right that people like the Kochs, with their deep pockets, can dictate public policy. There’s nothing democratic about that.

You’ve been speaking and writing about your decision ever since you arrived here last year. How do the Germans in your audience respond when you say you have immigrated here because you believe the US is going fascist?

They are very surprised. Hardly anyone has heard of an American emigrating anywhere. Before I left, I stopped in the Saint Paul library looking for books on Americans who have done so. There were thousands of books on people immigrating, but none on people emigrating. That said everything. It has happened, of course. Many immigrants in the early twentieth century moved on elsewhere, or else returned to Europe. Up to a third or more. But people in the US cannot imagine how anyone could ever turn up the opportunity to live in God’s Own Country. I don’t see it that way. I appreciate the opportunity to choose.

Despite all of this, is there anything you miss about America?

I miss my family. I miss my friends. I miss Mexican food. I miss the Midwest.

You don’t miss freedom?

I don’t think America is as free as Germany is. Freedom is the ability to make choices, to get your needs met. Look at the situation in America – the unemployment, the unaffordable college tuition, the unresponsive government. How can you be free if you can’t choose? There is freedom of speech in theory, but it doesn’t mean much if people don’t use it. The country has been shanghaied by moneyed interests. Where are “We the people”? Where is the outrage? I don’t want to live in a country where most people are passive and just muddle through.

So what are your plans for this Independence Day?

I will be spending the day quietly, but also thoughtfully, aware of the contradictions behind not only the date and what it's supposed to represent, but also of the turn the country is taking.

Mr. Luick-Thrams, thank you for this discussion.

Born and raised on a farm in northern Iowa, historian and author Michael Luick-Thrams now lives in southern Germany, where he teaches, lectures, and writes. His traveling exhibition on the survival strategies of German and American POWs during World War II, part of his TRACES program, is currently on display at the German-American Institute in Tübingen. For more information, you can visit his website at www.TRACES.org.