Sué González Hauck

Here is the column I wrote on the theme "What I Would have liked to Know About Germany Earlier," along with the additional reflections I provided at Zeit Magazin's request. -A society governed by regulations, yet lacking individual moral judgement, is more dangerous than one with none at all. -A society that values obedience without questioning authority is destined to become corrupt. -A society that admits to error but refuses to reflect on its origins possesses a mind as stubborn and dull as granite. -Here, at a deserted street, people stop dutifully at a red light. Not a car in sight. This, I once thought, is the mark of a highly evolved society. -At the heart of bureaucracy lies a collective endorsement of power's legitimacy, and therefore, individuals surrender their moral judgement–or perhaps never developed one. They abandon challenge. They relinquish dispute. -When conversation becomes avoidance, when topics must not be mentioned, we are already living under the quiet logic of authoritarianism. -When the majority believe they live in a free society, it is often a sign that the society is not free. Freedom is not a gift; it must be wrestled from the hands of banality and the quiet complicity with power. -When people sense that power is beyond challenge, they redirect their energy into trivial disputes. And those trivialities, collectively, are enough to erode a society's very foundations of justice. -When public events of great consequence–such as the Nord Stream Pipeline bombing–are met with silence from both government and media, the silence itself becomes more terrifying than any atomic bomb. -Facts are acknowledged partially, forgotten deliberately, or swallowed by collective silence. And so we repeat catastrophe–against and again, in cycles. -When the media becomes a servant of public opinion, or avoids conflict to maintain favour with existing powers, it becomes an accomplice to authority. What we call lies are not always distortions of fact.

-Political leaders make decisions steeped in fallacy & failure. This reflects the broader political condition of a society in which most people have surrendered their awareness & even their basic agency–allowing such leaders to enact their mistakes on their behalf -When a society uses linguistic difference or cultural misunderstanding as excuses for exclusion, it has crossed into a more insidious form of racism. This is not a political opinion–it is an attitude, a stain in blood, passed down like genes -Bureaucracy is not merely sluggish. It is a cultural scorn. It rejects the possibility of dialogue. It insists that ignorance, codified into policy, no matter how wrong & inhumane it is, remains the best resistance against social mobility, against moral motion. In such a society, hope is not misplaced. It is extinguished -In the surrounding atmosphere, one sees not culture, but self-congratulation; not art, but insularity & collective reverence for power. What is missing is sincerity–honesty of emotion & of intention. In such an environment, art that grapples with true human feeling or moral reckoning is nearly impossible to produce. -A place that routinely discards self-awareness & erases individual agency is one that lives under iron walls of authoritarianism -I have no family, no fatherland, never known what it is to belong. I belong only to myself. In the best of circumstances, that self should belong to everyone. I still do not know what art is. I only hope that what I make might touch its edges while it seems unrelated to anything. & in truth, in the best of circumstances it is unrelated to me, for the "I" already melts into everything -Those things found in galleries, museums, & collectors' living room–are they art? Who has declared them so? On what basis? Why do I always feel suspicion in their presence? -Works that evade reality, that shy away from argument, from controversy, from debate–be they text, painting, or performance–are worthless.

-I understand now: people crave power and tyranny as they crave sunshine and rain, for the burden of self-awareness feels like pain. at times, even like catastrophe. -Under most circumstances, society selects the most selfish, least idealistic among us to take on the work we call "art" because that choice makes everyone feel safe. Additional reflections -In Berlin, I encounter the ever-present Schweinshaxe and Schnitzel, and I can hardly believe that such a highly developed, industrialised country offers such a monotonous selection of ingredients. Even more baffling is the sudden proliferation of Chinese restaurants–most of them noodle-based, and operating at a culinary level that any Chinese person could easily achieve at home. The variety of food and cooking methods is so limited here that people form all over the world feel compelled to open restaurants: Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish–you name it. -But the truly horrifying part? The sheer number of Chinese restaurants. I can only assume they believe that no matter what ends up on the plate, German customers will come running. In front of some of these establishments, there are even long queues–yet the food they serve bears little resemblance to anything recognisably Chinese. My favourite food in Germany is the bread and sausage–you simply can't find ones with such distinctive character anywhere else. -I'm puzzled by why so many people would willingly cram themselves into a small bar just to have a long conversation. Since I don't speak the language, I can only imagine that the young people coming to Berlin would talk about clubbing. This sort of thing was all the rage in the U.S. back in the '70s and '80s. -The Germans might be the only people who are truly the furthest from a sense of humour. This could be the result of their deep reverence for rationality. Just look at Berlin Airport or the advertisements for Mercedes-Benz cars–you start to feel that their lack of humour has become a kind of immense humour in itself

Ai Weiwei was invited to contribute short reflections on “What I would have liked to know about Germany earlier" for an upcoming issue of Zeit Magazin. His submission was first shortened and edited, then immediately cancelled after a review by the Executive Editor. Ai shared his reflections anyway:

Das BVerfG hat eine Verantwortlichkeit Deutschlands für die Drohneneinsätze von der US-Air-Base Ramstein verneint.

SUÉ GONZÁLEZ HAUCK und JENS THEILEN sagen: Trotz Lücken in der Maßstabsbildung ist das Urteil auch für die umstrittenen Waffenlieferungen an Israel von hoher Bedeutung.

Vertrauen und Vertretbarkeit

@jtheilen.bsky.social und ich haben für @verfassungsblog.de das Ramstein-Urteil analysiert.
Trotz der sehr hohen Hürden, die das Gericht für staatliche Schutzpflichten aufstellt, wird klar: Bei Waffenlieferungen an Israel muss eine solche Pflicht greifen.

We are receiving desperate messages of starvation from #Gaza, including from our colleagues.

Food prices have increased 40 fold.

UNRWA has enough food for the entire population for over three months, stockpiled just outside Gaza.

Lift the siege and let aid in safely and at scale.

A person standing at a desk in front of a slide reading "an existential conception of combatant authenticity in the battlefield"

Had the pleasure of listening to Ka Lok Yip from Hamad bin Khalifa University and discussing all things existentialism and IHL with her.

What a fantastic start to the new Law in Context Lecture Series at HSU Hamburg, organized by @jtheilen.bsky.social, Sigrid Boysen, and me

#48: Geschichten des Völkerrechts: Von Grotius zu kritischen Ansätzen

🎙️ PODCAST: @erik.d-64.social und ich sprechen in der neuesten Folge des Völkerrechtspodcasts (@voelkerrechtsblog.org ) über Völkerrechtsgeschichte(n)

Unsere Gäst:innen sind Prof. Dr. Miloš Vec (Wien) sowie @gonzalezhauck.bsky.social (Hamburg).

voelkerrechtsblog.org/de/48-geschi...

Mindestlohn für Erntehelfer: Bauernverband für weniger Lohn an Aus­länder als Deutsche Landwirte sollten ausländischen Saisonarbeitern nicht den normalen Mindestlohn zahlen müssen, verlangt der Bauernverband. Gewerkschafter protestieren.

Rassismus hat so viele Gesichter.

CfP Popular International Law Workshop Call for Papers Popular International Law Workshop International law has a vibrant life as a popular and public language. From the mass protests about an ‘illegal war’ in Iraq in 2003, to the multifa...

CfP: Popular International Law Workshop, docs.google.com/document/d/1...

A groundbreaking report by Israeli journalist Itay Mashiach exposes how Germany’s antisemitism monitoring mechanisms are being exploited to stigmatize migrant communities, minimize the threat of the far-right, & delegitimize human rights activism. Now in English. diasporaalliance.co/wp-content/u...

Now published open access in the current issue of @ejiltalk.bsky.social — in wonderful company including @kalokyip.bsky.social on the right to life during hostilities and @gonzalezhauck.bsky.social on systematicity in the liberal internationalist ethos

🔗 academic.oup.com/ejil/issue/3...

Thank you 💜

The new issue of @ejiltalk.bsky.social is out and in it, you will find articles by my wonderful colleagues @jtheilen.bsky.social & @gonzalezhauck.bsky.social.
Have a look!

Call for abstracts for a collective book project and workshop in Cambridge in Oct 2025 focused on non-dominant feminisms in global governance. Co-designed and edited by Juliana Santos de Carvalho, Dena Kirpalani, Lucia Kula & Bérénice K. Schramm. More details here: drive.google.com/file/d/1RPb3...

Genocide being talked about in terms of bad PR is peak whatever-the-fuck-our-moment-is

"We will look at our children and grandchildren in shame and we will not be able to explain to them why we could not stop this horror."

A screenshot of the title (“Civilizational Hierarchies and the Notion of ‘Europe’ in the European Convention on Human Rights”) and abstract of the paper available at the link above

📄 New article:

Colonialism continues to shape the project of European human rights. In this article I trace the continuity of civilizational hierarchies in the ECtHR’s case-law on extraterritoriality and European consensus

Available in EJIL @ejiltalk.bsky.social: academic.oup.com/ejil/advance...

Cessation is not limited by proportionality; wrongdoing on the part of Palestine or Hamas does not relieve Israel of its own obligation to cease unlawful conduct

What must Israel do, having breached its obligations? Stop, basically. Cessation and non-repetition.

The facts as submitted tend to suggest .... not

I think partly we are hearing a lot of facts about how truly fucking awful it is in Gaza because there isn't a huge amount to be said about the law - it's pretty straightforward and the issue is whether Israel is complying or not

There's a lot going on here

Germany: Thousands protest police shooting of Black man – DW – 04/26/2025 A Black man died due to wounds sustained during a police shooting during an altercation in Oldenburg last weekend. Thousands have taken to the streets calling for justice and condemning what they call...

In Oldenburg, Germany, a young Black man was shot by the police as week. It isn't the first shooting nor will it be the last. www.dw.com/en/germany-t...

Nicht nur sind Emiş Gürbüz und Armin Kurtović auch Hanauer*innen, sondern es gibt dort auch genügend andere, die nicht einfach "nach vorne schauen" wollen. Die Wut über die nicht aufgearbeitete Schuld öffentlicher Stellen teilen übrigens auch unzählige migrantisierte Menschen in Deutschland

Tödlicher Polizeieinsatz in Oldenburg: Drei Schüsse von hinten Ein 21-jähriger Schwarzer wurde in der Nacht zum Sonntag erschossen. Nach der Obduktion sieht auch die Innenministerin „schwerwiegende Fragen“.

Wir wissen bisher wenig, aber könnt Ihr mir sagen, wann das letzte Mal einem weißen Mann von einem deutschen Polizisten aus Notwehr von hinten in den Kopf geschossen wurde, als dieser weglief:
taz.de/Toedlicher-P...

‘If I die, I want a loud death’: Gaza photojournalist killed by Israeli airstrike Fatima Hassouna, who had been documenting war in Gaza for 18 months and was subject of new documentary, killed along with 10 members of her family

“If I die, I want a loud death,” ... “I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

This has to stop. One day everyone will have been against this.

Morgen und übermorgen an der UHH

Gerichtssaal im Landgericht Wuppertal, im Vordergrund hält ein Mann eine Kamera.

Im Prozess zum Brandanschlag von #Solingen am 25.03.24 hat sich heute herausgestellt, dass die Polizei Ermittlungsfotos von rechtem Material, das bei Durchsuchungen gefunden wurde, nicht in die Ermittlungsakte gegeben hat. Auch wurden Daten des Täters nicht ausgewertet. #Thread 👇

Another sharp and necessary intervention by @jtheilen.bsky.social. If we’re serious about dismantling violent border regimes, we need to confront the structural conservatism of human rights law, not just celebrate its occasional victories #migsky #openaccess
brill.com/view/journal...