Thirty years without the green Alex. Langer, between genius and humanity

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Myth and revenant, since the 1990s, of Italian and European parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics of the green area, of the Catholic left and of various radicalism (nonviolent first and foremost), Alexander Langer is one of those names that, when pronounced, immediately ignites a carousel of nostalgia, reflections and various regrets : for his thoughtful activism in a political context to which we retrospectively attribute a certain nobility, for the range of his interests and the spiritual grace with which he carried out his battles, for his European and open gaze, for his attention to the least, for vintage concepts such as solidarity and systematic recourse to dialogue, interreligious but not only, for his having spoken about the habitability of the planet already half a century ago, choosing political practice over ideology, showing each time what could be done, written, thought instead of defining oneself through clashes, a long-term trend that today, on the social gallows, is seeing all its emptiness consecrated. Langer's story has been voluntarily interrupted on July 3, 1995, on an apricot tree in Pian dei Giullari in Florence, with a final note from which Alessandro Raveggi draws inspiration in his accurate Continuate quello che è giusto (Bompiani, 240 pp.), a profound reflection on Langer's legacy and the relevance of his method, as well as an attempt to bring this figure - a kind of very nice saint, according to the testimonies of those who knew him - to the new generations, who find themselves reliving the same problems, from war to the climate crisis, with different tools, ideologically poorer, but which may even prove more effective, who knows. Because in Langer optimism never fails, Raveggi reminds us, and his are reflections constantly turned towards the future and the possibility of influencing reality .

“Continuate quello che è giusto” by Alessandro Raveggi, not only a biography, but an attempt to bring Alexander Langer's ideas into the present

You can't talk about the South Tyrolean politician without feeling questioned, without hearing a profound question - but are we doing something, are we doing enough? - and wanting to pick up the thread of a conversation, that of a generation but also that, specifically, of a MEP halfway between various identities, Jewish origins but Catholic, who passed through Lotta Continua and then landed at the European Greens under the benevolent gaze of Marco Pannella, absent for thirty years, who has become a prismatic and very solid icon of all progressivism . With a reactive and elegant pen, Raveggi questions the imperishable essence of Langer, that something that doesn't go away, to which we continue to return as if we hadn't yet fully understood what he had to tell us. Or maybe we have understood it very well, only that it takes a huge effort to make it our own, that of overcoming generational disenchantment - "many of us have replaced militancy with Vipassana, or mass yoga in a mobile phone application" - to return to asking ourselves what kind of world we want to live in, choosing "active politics" despite the bitter disappointments of recent decades and the desolate schematisms to which Langer is a very powerful antidote.

He who, for example, saw a "space between Savonarola and Berlusconi", between the "plaintive catastrophism and the pre-printed and reassuring smile of the director of the Titanic orchestra", while we, after his death, never looked for that space again , ending up bounced between two extremes that in the long run proved to be very sterile, if not downright harmful. He who did not simplify anything and who had a pre-ideological idea of ​​politics, which led him to reflect on every situation, on every case, without fearing any possible contradictions. Positions of a politician, or of an antibody of politics? He is the pacifist who in the Balkans is forced to invoke a peacekeeping force to guarantee international law, even with weapons, the progressive friend and close to many women's causes and then skeptical about abortion and even capable of supporting a document by Joseph Ratzinger from 1987, Donum Vitae, ending up being targeted by criticism from feminists, the Greens and Rossana Rossanda, only to then point out that "brandishing the fight against the decriminalization of abortion as an ideological club - as is done by certain Catholics and certain exponents of the so-called "pro-life movement" - is just as unacceptable as hiding behind legal non-punishability to avoid addressing the ethical question". No bigotry but an invitation to debate, once again, that thing from which one must never shy away, faithful to the idea that a course correction is always possible, but only through "a decisive cultural and social refoundation of what is considered desirable in a society or community".

He saw a “space between Savonarola and Berlusconi”. After his death, we bounce between two sterile, if not downright harmful, extremes.

For him, who as a boy seems to have wanted to become a Franciscan friar, this refoundation passes through a return to a wise frugality, "the passage from a civilization of "more" to one of "it can be enough" or "maybe it's already too much", and Langer as an example of life, between ugly sweaters and hair that is too long and a melancholic and absorbed smile, is the furthest thing from what we have become and risks remaining in the empyrean of certain very high untouchables left there to gather dust. Raveggi does not allow this and in his Continuate in quello che è giusto he questions him on the great questions of contemporaneity, on the activism that is right to teach children, on what can be done at demonstrations, on the slogans to write and the behaviors to adopt, the wars of today and those of yesterday, on which Alex's conscience has wavered so heavily. And perhaps precisely in this wavering conscience lies the secret of this "prismatic diamond that sheds light even today".

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Although allergic to dogmatism, Langer arouses the terror typical of morally lofty figures: what if they were right? What if we needed more commitment, more reflection than we are showing? “Alex is a rhythm, then. He appears, he disappears. You get used to it, you get confused in following it”, observes Raveggi, who does not choose the path of biography , which (few) others have already tried with excellent results as in the case of In viaggio con Alex, the beautiful book by Fabio Levi (Feltrinelli), but prefers the form of the “novel of ideas” to try to bring everything into the present, making extensive reference to the series of large and small publications that testify to the feverish reflection that always surrounds the figure of Langer, well represented by the tireless activity of the Langer Foundation of Bolzano. He has only written articles and testimonials, lightning postcards to friends that the writer reports with devotion . “Everywhere I hear Hitler's dog barking,” he writes to Grazia Francescato, and if the beast still barks, as is evident, it is the Langers who are missing, those who want to expose themselves without vanity, write, found magazines, put emphasis on the journey rather than on reaching the goal, “give lots of kisses,” try to live at least once with a refugee or a desterrado or a refugee, be curious, methodically disorganized, as the author reminds us in an amusing decalogue in which many will recognize the infinite, profound humanity of the activist, journalist, teacher, MEP. “Alex knew everyone, he was an extremely human person, empathetic, a cut above the others, much loved, smiling, attentive to people; even though he was always full of things to do and never stopped for long, he always asked others how they were, and listened,” says Massimiliano Rizzo, who had met him as a boy in Bolzano and then met him again at the European Parliament. “You fall in love with someone who is good, and you fell in love with him right away,” and his vision, carried forward by others, also bears the traces of this success of goodness: “In Alto Adige, in the long run, the idea of ​​coexistence prevailed over divisions.”

“He knew everyone.” He only wrote articles and testimonies, lightning postcards to friends: “Everywhere I hear Hitler’s dog barking.”

Alexander Langer was born in Vipiteno in 1946 into a middle-class family – his father was a doctor of Jewish origin, from Vienna, his mother a Catholic pharmacist, the first woman to graduate in Chemistry in Italy – and his youth was shaped by faith, “in the context of that post-conciliar spirituality that characterized the militant and worker priests of the 1960s,” writes Raveggi. With a degree in Law, he attended the Christian Socialists of the Fuci, and then came “the encounter not only with the emblematic figure for him of Giorgio La Pira, but above all with Don Mazzi of the Isolotto community, Father Balducci at the Badia Fiesolana, Don Milani at the little school in Barbiana,” before starting to teach for about a decade in high schools. In the Seventies he was a member of Lotta Continua, perhaps the most complex passage to understand, perhaps driven by the “taste for generous and unrestrained identification, a strong sympathy for every manifestation of rebellious and supportive humanity” and then also by the appreciation “of individual paths that went against the grain, more hidden, more spiritual (from Pasolini to Elsa Morante)”. His companion Valeria Malcontenti notes, in one of the most beautiful and heartfelt chapters of the book, how Lc was “an almost ecumenical cauldron” into which “Langer” threw himself , as he had done with the Catholic Youth and as he would later do as founder of the Greens, because “he only had time to be useful to others” and to talk, look to the future, plan new dialogues and new alliances.

“If I had an audience of boys and girls in front of me, I would not hesitate to show them how beautiful it was, how enviably rich in travels and meetings and knowledge and enterprises, in languages ​​spoken and heard, in love, Alexander's life (…). May they go towards others with his light step, and may God grant that they do not lose hope”, said Adriano Sofri in front of the European Parliament after his suicide , which left a trail of sadness and despair at all levels, from Strasbourg to the editorial staff of Cuore to the beautiful pages of Fabrizia Ramondino. At 49, he left before a label could be stuck on him, with the result that he has been “for many years the candidate of regret, even of those who fought with him in Lotta Continua, of progressive Christians, of ecologists, of disillusioned Greens, of those who instead are fully integrated into politics”, notes Raveggi. Everyone tries to keep a piece of it and to safeguard it from turning into an easy icon of our contemporary age , even though it was a third-worldist, pacifist, anti-capitalist and against the easy cycle of consumption of goods and which now, far from his gaze, has also become a cycle of consumption of ideas, pushed by activists often posing, sometimes not.

The boys "go towards the others with his light step, and may God grant that they do not lose hope", said Sofri after Langer's suicide

“His posthumous fame is more than justified, he was a visionary, with an openness also due to his knowledge of two cultures”, adds Massimiliano Rizzo. “He believed in Europe because for many peoples the sense of the State is inferior to the sense of the region, of the territory”, the Europe-mosaic that allows us to keep identities together, embracing them. It is quite an effect to see where we have arrived, with pacifism and ecology reduced to hashtags of self-styled activists with a thousand planes and immoderate consumption, with the unpopular narcissism that cannot even be hidden anymore. And yet, the Alex-rhythm tells us, as an industrious and perhaps melancholic exemplum, that everything can be recovered, done again. “Finally, we need a lot of idealism. The idealism of youth”, he wrote in 1964 , and we have given him the task of reminding us of this forever, of staying there, stuck in that fixity, in that purity that then gets polluted and that instead must be preserved, with a thousand efforts. For this reason, it is necessary to leave some happy islands, some moments of respite, it is necessary to remember how much "we need free occasions and opportunities in our lives, in the life of the cities and the countryside", even if the world goes somewhere else. "I remember the last time, I accompanied him to the car. He was a genius, but the most important thing was his profound humanity" , concludes Rizzo. As demonstrated by the closing of a letter from Alexander Langer, not to be forgotten: "Kind regards, and best wishes for wisdom and courage".

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