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Thursday July 30 2009
In memoriam: Michaël Zeeman by Steve Austen
Michaël Zeeman passed away at the age of 50 in Rotterdam on Monday 27 July.
Michaël Zeeman, who has been a member of the permanent cast of A Soul for Europe for several years, will no longer be able to see the results of the successful rejuvenation process that this pan-European civil initiative has undergone. Right from the start, he closely followed this process, which has taken less than two years, with great enthusiasm and interest. As a representative of the in-between generation, he felt completely at home in the conferences, forums, brains trusts and closed consultations in which it was not uncommon for major writers, intellectuals and well-known politicians in their seventies to engage in discussion with young cultural types in their early twenties and everything in between. It soon became clear that Michaël had an insatiable hunger for meetings of this kind, especially when he was given a free rein to chair the debates.
His first appearance for ASfE was at Forum Belgrade in 2007. It was to a certain extent a reunion of old friends. It was not just the first of a growing number of similar meetings, all modelled on Forum Belgrado; it was in a certain sense a follow-up to earlier activities that Felix Meritis had been organising all over Europe under the name Gulliver since 1987.
It was thus hardly surprising that Michaël, who had been involved in Gulliver from the first, clearly enjoyed seeing so many old and new friends again - not just Nele Hertling, who with the present writer launched Gulliver (based on an idea and with the full cooperation of Günter Grass), but also the Amsterdam ‘partners in crime' Linda Bouws and Joanneke Lootsma from Felix Meritis, the international centre which had been his second home for years. Others, especially the younger generation, such as Levan Kethaguri, director of the Caucasus Foundation in Tbilisi, had already met Michaël in connection with the Gulliver Connect placement and training programme for young cultural professionals. As a result of these and similar contacts, Michaël knew the centre of Tbilisi like the back of his hand.
The same is true of St Petersburg, Budapest, Istanbul and Bucharest, to mention just a few of the cities to which the Gulliver caravan travelled.
From 2001 on this touring circus more or less tread water in Amsterdam. You can imagine with what enthusiasm old and young members of Gulliver reacted when Richard von Weizsäcker, Volker Hassemer and Nele Hertling launched their ideas for a new European platform during the Berlin Conference in 2004. The idea of regarding the European unification process first and foremost as a cultural process was so successful that A Soul for Europe was born on the spot. It was very encouraging for me to observe that the critical and versatile talent Michaël Zeeman immediately grasped its significance.
That sums up in a sentence what Michael has meant, at least to me. I came to know him as the personification of the archangel whose name he bore. I realised intuitively that a person who fulfils such an important role between the higher and the mundane regions should not be bothered with insignificant trivialities. On the other hand, you can rest assured that he was always there when necessary. For someone like me with a Catholic upbringing, his physical appearance was completely what one would expect.
Granted, the archangel in my Catholic children's bible had big feathery wings, but I understood that Michael could not take those everywhere with him. As long as he did what was expected of him it did not really bother me. Looking back, it has to be acknowledged that his view of his task was beyond reproach. The archangel Michaël performs a sacred role in every monotheistic religion; for Muslims, Jews and Christians, he is the one who weighs souls in the balance, combats chaos, and conquers the forces of evil. Regrettably, there are not so many archangels and, as we are now forced to admit, they are less immortal than we supposed. His passing will not fail to leave its mark. I would not be surprised if, after the funeral on Saturday, a woodland giant of the forest crashes inexorably to the ground somewhere in Europe. The moaning and rustling sound of the young branches in its crown will be heard as far away as Rustavelli Boulevard in Tbilisi. In the heart of Europe, in the triangle between Berlin, Amsterdam and Rome, the trunk wrenched violently from the ground will leave a big hole behind.
Fortunately, the Soul is alive and kicking. Michaël was there in Lyon when, after an intensive foundation meeting, the young dogs of ASfE meeting for the first time in the Strategy Group invited him to join them. He declined the offer. After all, the culture of meetings and implementing plans was not his metier. It was best to leave him up to his own thing. That was a wise decision. He wished everyone success and hoped to be able to participate often in the months and years ahead. But now he really had to leave to catch his plane. So off he went and he saw that it was good...
Steve Austen, Amsterdam, 29 July 2009
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