by omniagallia

Rotting Remnant of Berlin Wall:

CONTEXT: I am working on a couple of larger projects for this blog now, but meanwhile, will repost a few lightly revised items from my 2016 visit to Europe. Starting with some more from Berlin, the lynchpin destination, from my historian’s perspective, of that journey.  

To my great surprise, the actual Wall (or at least this part of it) was relatively flimsy, just concrete a couple inches thick.  It had disintegrated in spots, exposing rusting steel re-bar within; in some places it had crumbled away entirely, leaving a hole clear through to the other side.  When it was intact, it may have appeared impregnable, but a few sledgehammer swings could have bashed holes right through it.

However, it didn’t have to be massive, just a solid barrier.  Probably few East Berliners knew how insubstantial it really was, let alone had implements that could punch through its apparent muscle.  When the Wall was new, simpler methods might still breach it.  For example, a few fugitives drove large trucks straight into it, successfully battering into West Berlin, where the Wall guards dared not shoot or pursue. (Presumably Moscow, which usually had the last word on regime actions in Eastern Europe, ordered such restraint, unwilling to provoke the NATO powers over issues of non-critical strategic importance.)

The Wall complex was gradually enhanced by watch towers along its length with machine guns and total visibility firing lines. Eventually, the wide “Death Strip,” guard dogs, land mines, trip alarms were all added in response to the desperation and ingenuity of Ossies (East Germans/“Ostdeutscher”) to bypass it.

Communism in practice met neither its ideals nor promises, so during the 1950’s, a hemorrhage of East Germans, especially skilled, educated and energetic ones, crossed from their Workers’ Republic into West Berlin, then the easiest crossing point between the two Germanies.  Aside from the embarrassment of masses of its people ‘voting with their feet’ thus, East Germany was hurt by the loss of many of its most gifted citizens.  To put a halt to that outflow, in 1961, the boundary between east and west Berlin was temporarily closed with barbed wire while the Wall was built.  (Harsh barriers had already been put at the East-West German border, ostensibly to prevent invasion by NATO.  In fact, they were as much, if not more, to keep East Europeans behind the so-called “Iron Curtain,” the western edge of the nations of the Warsaw Pact, the post-war Soviet sphere of influence.)

Other parts of the Wall may have been more robust than this bit looked.  But I wonder if, when it was first built, the East German authorities sincerely thought it would only be needed temporarily – and thus not need to be terribly sturdy – till their citizenry became lulled into loving Communism, and no longer wanted to flee to the wicked, decadent West.  If they really believed that, it is a measure of how deep delusion can be: Why would anyone love a state that might kill them if they didn’t return its ‘affection’?  And how could its rulers not realize how unrealistic that was? 

Those questions are just rhetorical.  More likely, they made the Wall just enough of an obstacle to slow down would-be escapees till they drew the attention of the guards and their machine guns.  Rather than delusion, it was probably the hardest cynicism, the Regime knowing full well most people would never really want to live in a state that could give them no better than semi-poverty, watched and harangued them constantly – and could be murderous to retain control.

The Wall’s frailty, as shown here, proved an apt metaphor for the inherent weakness of Soviet-style Communism, or of any regime that can only survive by coercion, an ostentatious pretense of invincibility, and propaganda that is obviously in conflict with lived reality.  

Surely, bondage by intractable doctrine cannot have been what Marx intended when he proposed Communism – communal ownership of means of production – to protect ordinary workers from the abysmal depredations laid on them by the raptor Capitalists of the 19th century (Labor unions, often demonized now, were instrumental in preventing outright Communism from arising in the West, but that’s another story). Nowhere was this perversion of initially benign intentions more starkly and brutally manifest than by the Berlin Wall. 

But also, nowhere was it more splendidly overturned, as East Germans forced the Wall open, then hammered it down late in 1989.  For Berlin, liberation was personal; for the World, that stepping back from the chilling peril of the Cold War caused a collective sigh of relief so great it felt as if it had blown away much of the 20th century’s fear, chronic anxiety, and basis for despair. Believe me; I remember feeling just that way then.

by omniagallia

Sweet Sorrow, for Good Friday

In observance of Good Friday, here is an excerpt from J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, his monumental music depicting the grim, inexorable path of Jesus from the last supper to crucifixion. Anyone wishing to meditate on the traditional sacredness of today may find this gentle, caressing melody helpful to do so.

Many of the Passion’s segments use mighty choral and orchestral forces, but this one is small in scale, yet vast in scope. Bach’s original version has lyrics, but to me, his matchless, free-form abstraction here is so affecting by itself that any accompanying words reduce its impact, so the posted one uses only flute and piano. However, knowing its opening sentence prepares a listener for the sentiment that served as Bach’s inspiration: ‘Out of love, my sinless Savior accepted death’ for my sake.

For Bach, that was no pious banality, but the true nectar of salvation, and the implications of those words are eloquently conveyed by the loveliness of his artistic invention here. The piece meanders, suggesting a dazed, stricken soul wandering in lamentation, even as it is awed by the ‘Agapé’ – selfless love of the ‘Other’ – that Jesus displayed, and that enabled Him to endure the cross. In fact, this music may even represent Christ’s own personal consciousness; sweet and gentle, but perplexed – if not surprised – by the unprovoked cruelty befalling Him. When I first heard this, it seemed too moving to be from this side of eternity. It is a diaphanous Shade, benign, but seemingly beyond our familiar reference.

Bach put this exquisite melancholia between Pilate’s bewildered assertion that he found Jesus utterly innocent, and the dissonant bellow of the mob demanding His death. The crevasse between Christ’s preternatural goodness and the convulsive savagery it was to perversely set in motion was a virtual rip in the fabric of objective reality, but with this aria, Bach contributes greatly to mending that rip. He bestows a creation of such paralyzing beauty as to help offset the ugliness and evil to which it reacts – and thereby, help console the very sorrows it evokes.

by omniagallia

A Defining Dilemma:

This image shows the defaced statue of Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, Air Marshall of the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War 2, outside London’s church of Saint Clement Danes. An ironic name for the location of such a monument, as will be noted below.

In 1942, Harris was appointed head of RAF Bomber Command, from which position he helped devise and implement ‘Area Bombing,’ the targeting of general vicinities of industrial and military significance in Nazi Germany. This strategy replaced ‘Precision Bombing,’ which was highly risky and relatively ineffective, given the coarse aiming technology of the time.

But Area Bombing also killed a horrendous toll of German civilians, which Harris more or less admitted was at least part of its intention. In addition to attempting to destroy legitimate targets like materiel depots, airfields, rails, munitions plants etc., this tactic kept ordinary citizens of German cities in a semi-permanent state of disrupting fear. It also meant to keep the Nazi regime concerned about domestic unrest, and obliged to devote resources to detecting and suppressing it.

Harris was forthright about his wish to inflict terror on the German masses to keep them as unproductive and discontented as possible so as to shorten the war. For example, RAF archives hold horrifying (in my view) maps and tables showing the composition of major German towns in terms of how flammable their building stock was. That is, how well it would burn, for at the time a great deal of urban Germany still consisted largely of wood-framed/roofed structures from the Renaissance and earlier. Harris explicitly directed high-explosives and incendiaries to be dropped on such pyres-in-waiting to consume them, any people inside them at the moment, and as much as possible, any sense of order and personal security among survivors.

Yet German civilian morale never substantially cracked, and military historians – which I am not – have argued about whether the impact of Area Bombing on Hitler’s ability to continue the war was worth discarding Britain’s cherished, integral self-image of decency and fair play, given its appalling cost in non-combatant lives. Compared to about 40,000 Britons who died in the Blitz (although far more throughout conquered Europe), some 500,000 German civilians were killed by Allied airstrikes. Many of those ‘Huns’ surely just wanted to live unmolested, but were trapped between the fear of the bombs, and the terror of their own government’s Gestapo and other security services.

The Nazis got very good at compensating for such attacks by dispersing their war production facilities to multiple smaller, hard to target locations, and other measures. So it is not clear that the practical damage inflicted by Area Bombing was worth the enormous loss of non-military lives; to say nothing of grievously compromising the Western Democracies’ claim to any moral high ground. Also, I have heard expert opinion that the biggest effect of Harris’ campaign – though it was admittedly an immense one – was only indirect. That is, it forced the Nazis to keep anti-aircraft guns in Germany to protect the homeland, instead of sending them to the Eastern Front for use against the Soviet Air Force during combat operations.

This gave the Russians vastly greater freedom to deploy their bombers and fighters as part of ground battles against Hitler’s armies, which they did with devastating effect. That being the case, if Harris had used an approach that did not implicitly victimize the German populace, it might have been just as effective in keeping many anti-aircraft weapons away from the war in the East. But again, I leave it to specialists to settle the practical efficacy of Area Bombing.

Ever since the war (and even during it), there has been debate, especially in Britain, whether Harris’ strategy – of which the joint Anglo-American attack on Dresden may be the ultimate instance – itself amounted to a war crime. After all, his method had similar effects to Nazi air attacks on cities such as Warsaw, Rotterdam, Stalingrad, etc., and to London and other targets in Britain during the Blitz. This fervent controversy led to this splashing of blood-red paint, and writing SHAME on this statue dedicated to his leadership.

Surely conscience should demand that good-hearted people not just shrug and say, ‘War is hell, and Hitler started the savagery.’ While that is true, put another way, it is not (inherently somehow) ‘’different’’ when We do it.

(That ‘We’ must include America, which also helped bomb Germany. Moreover, the U.S. had an analogue to Harris in USAF General Curtis LeMay, a ferocious aggressor who designed techniques to be used against Japan. Those sacrificed even more civilian lives than the air war in Europe, including 100,000 in a single incendiary raid on Tokyo – more than the nuclear strike on Hiroshima.)

On the other hand: Abstract ideals must be weighed against the concrete, paramount need to vanquish an evil like Nazism. At the time of Harris’ campaign, it was not at all clear, or certain, that Hitler would lose, however apparent that may look in hindsight. Given the stakes of this dilemma, I would propose that Harris’ collateral targeting of civilians – unspeakable as it was – might not be radically more shameful than many other deeds committed in wartime for the sake of defeating a ruthless foe.

So perhaps the real disgrace is how the British state saw fit to lionize Harris in this statue, seeming to brush aside all pretense of restraint or mercy (i.e., clemency; hence the indecorous irony of such a memorial being outside St. Clement Danes; there was nothing ‘clement’ about the deeds for which this man is being celebrated). Tactics like Area Bombing may be necessary to national survival, but even so, should they not be limited to acceptance as dreadful necessity? Instead of appearing to honor them as deeds whose memory should be revered?

In this context, one must draw a distinction between ‘honor’ and ‘gratitude.’ That is, I personally am thankful to all men and women, anywhere, who took harsh steps to ensure that Hitler ultimately lost. But I cannot ‘honor’ – without reflection – all of their actions, more than I lament the human failings that made them necessary.

Applauding carnage unreservedly is something Hitler would assuredly have done. And as is often the case, Hitler can serve as a model for all we should Not want to do, or to be. Can’t he? No qualms of conscience for him, ever: Nor for anyone who values absolutely nothing but winning.

Moreover, here is another perspective to consider: Besides the paint and ‘SHAME’ graffito, please also reflect on the fresh flowers at the base of the statue, presumably left after its defacement; maybe even in reaction to it. Those may have been put there by somebody who lost a loved one in the devastation of Coventry, or one whose mother’s sanity had been about to snap, or innumerable other deep personal concerns. The flowers may be a tribute to Harris’ presumed contributions to halting the Luftwaffe attacks on Britain. And yes, also possible gloating, out of fear or fury.

So is it too facile for those of us living long after the war was over, to whom its terrors are just ‘history,’ to claim that the sentiments of the flower-giver should be disregarded? Does anyone speaking retrospectively – in a world made safe, at incalculable cost, from Nazism – truly have the standing to decry the reactions of those forced to live through the fear, horror, suffering and sorrow it inflicted? Or with tragic family legends of those? The expression ‘Easy for you to say,’ comes to mind; ‘Your flesh and blood weren’t in the line of fire.’

If you had reason to believe that Harris’ bombing had saved you and all that you loved from Hitler’s wrath, would your priority still be a theoretical sense of benevolent equity? I am not in the least sure that mine would. We in the 21st Century view these events from a distance that affords us perspective, but deprives us of immediacy. Do we, today, have the right to dismiss the feelings of all those who actually faced the multi-pronged Nazi onslaught as irrelevant?

Only after saying all of that can I assert that although these may be unanswerable questions, it reflects an underlying humane decency even to be asking them, as British society has, when acting in its best spirit. One can be quite sure that no Totalitarian government, like the Nazis’, would even comprehend, let alone tolerate, consideration and discussion of such issues. Inquiries like these are marks of a society that is not only free, but that may be trying to attain a higher level of Human Evolution; even of Human Nature. The responses this statue has provoked give a stark example of the ongoing conflict between our reactions as organisms, and our aspirations to transcend those. Though of course, it is very far from the only example.

Perhaps the pitilessness of men like ‘Bomber’ Harris – or for that matter of Churchill himself, who could be as nasty in pursuit of triumph as his ancestor, Marlborough – was a terrible, but inescapable necessity to prevent the far worse outcome of Hitler successfully dominating our planet. Feasible moderate alternatives for preventing such a nightmare are not readily apparent; like a mad dog, there was really no way to reason with a biped beast like him. Although in a global war, the mad dog was not the only one that had to die, to eliminate the danger. I understand the need for military force, even if with regret, by nations that would at least try to pursue traditional ‘righteousness’ in a world in which the wicked may gain power and – because they don’t Care who gets hurt – wield it mercilessly.

But bronze effigies glorifying such hideous expedience seem several steps too far. Determination not to be conquered by Hitler was justifiable and understandable, but having sanctioned tactics like Harris’, Britain cannot just revert to a self-perception of virtuous temperance. That soothing image has been marred like this statue; possibly forever.

We can be glad people like Harris did what they did so that Fascism got destroyed. But we should also mourn that it was necessary for them to do so; that the human race can secrete an incubus like Adolf Hitler, even if it can also generate the will, genius and valor to thwart him. In an ideal world, someone like him would not even exist, let alone become leader of a great nation. But he did. So this stern, repulsive reality must be factored into our perceptions and actions.

Perhaps we should move such statues, as memorials to military prowess – particularly in countries truly striving for a better world, and in cases that reflect excessive brutality – to military installations, settings where defending a nation is a right, proper priority. This statue, for example, might be relocated to RAF Base Northolt, near London. Then, such public totems of ‘dreadful necessity’ might be replaced with something else, to remind us of the absence of war, and the contrasting value of peace. Any suggestions?   

In these posts, I usually try to reach some conclusion about my topic, but in this case I would not feel comfortable doing so. Not only can I not agree that there is an easy answer to this quandary of honor vs. abhorrence, but I would distrust any claim that only one conclusion is possible, or valid. The dispute over this statue symbolizes a tension between our most compassionate inclinations, and our equally valid, innate desire for self-preservation. Such tension can never be fully released, and I would suggest that it should not be.

For that tension is the ‘Defining Dilemma’ of my title; a tug to, at least, try to be better than our basest nature.

Presumably we will never lose the reflex to defend our Selves, even if it requires destroying other ‘Selves.’ But neither should we forsake the stalwart ethical impulses whose very existence marks us as so different from other living beings. We must aspire, in the aggregate at least, to be better than creatures whose only involuntary purpose is to cling to life. For us also, that instinct is necessary; but as I have said in other posts and contexts, it absolutely cannot – must not – be sufficient for us.  

The most appropriate shade to tint Harris may lie somewhere between the intrinsic darkness of his deeds – the deadly Nazi menace notwithstanding – and the white of those blossoms left at the base of his statue; lovely, delicate and fragrant. Everything that war is not.

by omniagallia

Lesson Learned, Appeasement Averted.

CONTEXT: Today marks one year since ‘Operation Barbarous’ – the criminal (in multiple senses), cruel invasion of a peaceful sovereign state, Ukraine, by a larger overbearing neighbor – began. Russia, the aggressor, is led by Vladimir Putin, a man who seems to be guided by a bizarre blend of KGB cynicism and 19th Century Czarist national Chauvinism. By an arrogant megalomaniac who cannot accept that Might does Not make ‘right.’

Beyond the perennial horrors of war and the anachronistic indifference to (along with outright targeting of) civilians and their well-being, this state-sponsored felony has been both a terrible spectacle and an economic shock for a world still reeling from a Pandemic. But my post below finds optimism that we are not wholly unable to learn from the mistakes and tragedies of the past; at least, not if we have wise, proportionate leadership. Something Russia has now been lividly proven to lack; and not for the first time.

President Biden’s age is often cast as a liability, but at the moment, its accompanying frame of reference may prove to be a priceless advantage.

Born in 1942, he can have no memory of the Munich Conference of 1938, from which the accompanying black and white image of British Prime Minister Chamberlain comes. But Biden grew up in world a still shattered, reeling and heartbroken from World War 2, set in motion in no small part by wishful thinking like Chamberlain’s, of believing that a palpable brute like Adolf Hitler could be ‘appeased’ by capitulating to his outrageous blackmail in forlorn hope that he would refrain from further, and worse ones.

But ruthless men, like Hitler, Stalin and now Putin – seemingly closer in nature to wild animals than to humans – will, like wild animals, interpret appeasement (mercy, kindness, generosity, moderation, etc.) as signs of weakness and/or irresolution, and exploit them savagely.

In the famous image here, Chamberlain waves a piece of paper signed by himself and Hitler, on which the latter promised he has ‘no further territorial ambitions in Europe,’ in return for the British and French having just ceded him Czech territory (that was not theirs to give). In any case, Hitler’s promise was a cynical lie, and his ‘territorial ambitions in Europe’ were just getting started. A few months later, in March 1939, Hitler would absorb the rest of Czechoslovakia, in sneering contempt for his vow not to do any such thing.

After caving in at Munich, the western democracies began to prepare madly for war, but the Nazis had too great a head-start on them. Besides which, military conquest was by then the main preoccupation of German society, industry and economy, a focus that any peace-loving and sensible people – like the French or British – would be loath to accept. 

In September of that year, Hitler invaded Poland, finally provoking the western democracies to declare war on Germany.  He could have been stopped with relative ease when he re-occupied the Rhineland in 1936, had the French and British governments of the day recognized, or admitted, what a fiend they were dealing with. Several other such brazen tests of will were committed later, but after the Czech Sudeten Crisis was ‘resolved’ at Munich in 1938, it was no longer possible to ignore Hitler’s actual doctrine: ‘Winning’ is all that matters, and justifies any evil done in its pursuit. 

(Chamberlain gets a partially bum rap on appeasement; he was not just some foolish sap who couldn’t see what Hitler was, as simplistic versions of these events imply. But he didn’t want to divert revenues from civil functions to massive war preparation until it was unmistakable that Nazism was an existential threat to Britain, for every penny spent on rearming had to be taken from needs like roads, education, hospitals, etc.; proper priorities of any regime serious about serving its citizens. Besides; only a madman, like Hitler, would Not move Heaven and Earth to avoid another war like the 1914-1918 nightmare.)

So now, President Biden, having grown up in a world that had just paid a ghastly price for not confronting villains before their power peaked, has the experience, wisdom and resolution to recognize Hitler-like deeds and attitudes when he sees them, only this time, coming out of Moscow. And to reject Chamberlain’s well-meaning, but catastrophic strategy of yielding to a thug, hoping he’ll stop acting like a thug. Why would a jumped-up gangster do that, when ‘thuggery’ keeps getting him what he wants?

‘Sieg Heil’ translates to ‘Victory, Hail,’ and lying is the least of the crimes someone like Hitler would commit to come out on top. Brutes in suits like him think ‘Just weaklings and fools will play by the rules.’

(A rarely-voiced observation: Too many business people have parallel ‘win-no-matter-how/rules-are-for-suckers’ attitudes. I consider that mindset ‘Fascism lite.’ They may seek cash instead of conquest, but slow poison is still poison, warping our world.)

Much later, Churchill said of prewar efforts to indulge Hitler, ‘The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.’ I cannot consider attributes like mania to avoid repeating the horror of the Great War – as any sane, righteous person would do – as ‘weakness.’ However, I will grant that the danger Nazism posed should have been recognized much sooner than it was.

Moreover, the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Putin, in addition to exploiting any decency and rationality of their opponents, had another advantage, whose import we should never underestimate:

The wicked don’t give a damn who gets hurt. The righteous must do so.

Thus today, Putin is just fine with sacrificing the lives of his own soldiers and Ukrainian ones (as well as civilians) because, as always for such feral personalities, self-interest and ‘saving face’ are far more important than preserving lives. In this, Putin has more in common with his idol Stalin than with Hitler, for whom German blood was sacred, to be spent sparingly (though of course, he felt other peoples’ blood was worthless).

In contrast, Stalin, after Hitler invaded the USSR in June of 1941, threw masses of Soviet youth into the gears of the monstrous Nazi war machine to slow, and eventually jam it, with Asiatic callousness. Soviet victory came at a profligate price in lives – 20 million at least, soldiers and civilians – that no free society would have tolerated (although this toll was kept secret for decades). Especially because prewar miscalculations by Stalin, like his paranoid purging of his best army officers, had made his land look, to the Nazis, so temptingly vulnerable. As indeed it was.

Sadly, the Russian populace today still seems to assume heartlessness, brutality and criminal pride are, and should be, how rulers think and act.

Fortunately however, one thing Hitler and Putin don’t have in common are capable armed forces. Whereas by 1939, the German Wehrmacht was the best-led, most efficient, technologically advanced military in the world, ambient Russian culture today seems to allow the most beast-like men to attain power, less by brains or competence than by willingness and cunning to crush rivals.

This mindset is incompatible with successfully running a 21st Century nation, or economy – or army. Those activities now demand finesse, forethought, abstract conceptualization – all things that Monomakh-niacal apes like Putin grasp barely, if at all. Let alone practice expertly.

This is being written immediately after President Biden’s surprise 2/22/23 visit to Kyiv, shown in the bright color photo adjacent to the one of Chamberlain. Biden made this determined gesture to demonstrate America’s practical and spiritual solidarity with Ukraine’s sacred task of thwarting the Counter-Evolutionaries – Putin firstly, but all who assume the rest of us should just bow to them like we are lesser wolves and they are our bigger, fiercer Alphas – of the world. And by defending and saving their nation, preserving, in the largest sense, a path forward for our whole species, rather than our reversion to rule by brute force alone; as Hitlerist dogma advocated.

It should be born in mind that Kyiv at the time Biden went there was by no means entirely safe from sudden assault by (civilian/ infrastructure targeting) Russian missiles, so such a visit took considerable personal courage. Regardless of what risk mitigation strategies were used to protect him, Biden had to walk into a place still liable to ferocious, indiscriminate attack. Fortunately none materialized, but there could be no guarantees against them.

Perhaps Biden was willing to accept such a hazard because – having grown up with the consequences of not pushing vicious tyrants back – he decided that helping to protect America and the West (both by his brave gesture and by providing Ukraine first class military hardware) was his duty as unofficial ‘Leader of the Free World.’

A duty worth compromising his own security, and if need be even losing his life. In that case, remembering that his sacrifice was made trying to help achieve a world in which peace, not the exercise of raw power, is the Status Quo would be his finest memorial.

Putin is furious at getting the kind of forceful pushback Hitler never got till after Munich, by which time he was already too powerful to be defeated except at unspeakable cost. So now we are watching while he writhes in outraged pride. And it is Biden’s mature, equitable version of ‘manhood’ that may help save us from domination by Putin’s primitive, violent variety of it.

by omniagallia

Living Memory? Holocaust Memorial, Berlin:

CONTEXT:  Below is a re-post about Germany’s national monument to the Nazis’ murder of 6 million Jews, from my 2016 visit to Europe. Memorials should not just be passive reminders, they should help us grasp the gravity of events we did not personally experience; an urgent function of ‘History.’

To give an example of the importance of this which directly impacted many people reading, in 1933 Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act in response to behavior that caused the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and Great Depression. It restricted the activities of banks and financial firms many of which had been reckless, gambling with the money of unsuspecting investors.

G.S.A. helped moderate Wall Street for decades, but by the late 1980’s most people actively involved in the ‘29 Crash had died, and such legislation began to seem (to a new generation) as useless impediments to free markets. So the financial industry got G.S.A. partly suspended, re-authorizing profitable but risky trading. Sure enough, by 2008, such gambles wrought another economic calamity. G.S.A. might not have prevented the Great Recession of 2009 but had it still been fully in force, financial firms might have been constrained from some reckless activities – and attitudes – which blew up then.

The adulterating of Glass-Steagall displayed how we may fail to apprehend the full import of events we did not witness ourselves. An infinitely more dire example is the Holocaust, which can show how lives – and our own worthiness as human beings – may be at stake for failure to learn lessons from the past.

As the last survivors of Hitler’s ethnic slaughter (and those who watched it happen) are now dying, the urgency of recognizing the implications – mass murder to solve some alleged problem like a ‘Jewish Question’ – of this hideous atrocity, along with the indifference or complicity that facilitated it, ceases to be a duty of memory.

It becomes instead a test of posterity’s moral conscience. Can we register, viscerally, horrors that are not in Living Memory? If we cannot or will not, can we ever advance beyond repeating them? This Memorial presents that as a challenge to our ability and willingness to recognize evil as an abstraction, then confront it before it hardens into harsh, concrete reality.

Holocaust Memorial (Claustrophobic view): Formally called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, this maze-like battalion of multi-sized concrete blocks (“stele”) occupies a three football-field size site near the Brandenburg Gate on space left vacant after the Berlin Wall and its Death Strip were removed.  As other land nearby got developed during the ‘90’s, it was decided that this area should be set aside for a fitting national shrine to the most massive criminal undertaking – of which there were many – by the Third Reich.

There is a superb information center here, but personally all I needed was awareness of the memorial’s subject to be impacted by my encounter with it.  Some 2700 of these blocks, sightless, soulless sentinels whose function is to constrict and menace, mark aisles like this one. Many form canyons high enough to isolate visitors, visually cutting them off from the cityscape around them and from each other.  Even more unsettling, the foot surface is deliberately not level, detectably undulating; walking through it was disorienting and subtly, but unmistakably, disturbing. 

A visitor feels severed from all typical sensations, caught in an oblique world in which anything – no matter how horrific or contrary to basic assumption – can happen.  That vaguely jarring dynamic is certainly what I felt, although the site’s architect (Peter Eisenman, an American) denied his design was meant to have any specific “limiting” interpretation.

Emerging from these chasms of grim, anti-organic monoliths (as I had to do after a short time, so sinister was their grip), hard and inhumane as Hitlerism itself, one may look differently at the normal world, if only temporarily so.  As Europe’s Jews, relying on the rule of law, reason and the basic decency of their fellow beings found out, “normalcy” is not inevitable.  It can be overtaken by a madhouse in which the very Earth one walks on – on which one’s foot does not quite fall where one expects – is suddenly not dependable. Even malevolent, treacherous.

Words must fail to capture the scope of crimes so infernal as to crowd out ordinary perception, or of the primitive hatred that propelled them. To try to convey those non-verbally, the memorial’s oddly disquieting environment prods visitors to confront how tenuous life may sometimes be.  It calls to mind a situation in which all that is good is suddenly at risk, and where even supposedly neutral surroundings abruptly become hostile – even potentially lethal.

If ever there was an outrage whose implications we need desperately never to forget nor disregard as irrelevant just due to the passage of time, it was surely the Holocaust. That word came to be applied to Hitler’s Jewish genocide because it originally meant ‘burnt offering’; in this case human sacrifice, often by literally burning victims – dead or alive – to feed a madman’s frenzied visions.

A few years after this monument opened, in a noble effort to expand the definition of the “Holocaust” beyond just the Jews to anyone the Nazis targeted to achieve their ghastly conception of a pure Germany, smaller satellite exhibits were added to it commemorating their mass killing of Gypsies and homosexuals.  The former were considered racially inferior larcenous vagrants, and the latter were pronounced morally repugnant.  Can you imagine Nazis describing anyone else as ‘morally repugnant’?  Now that’s what I would call truly perverted.

Finally (speaking of messages underfoot), I should note a more modest but inescapable form of remembrance of the Holocaust found throughout Berlin and increasingly in towns and cities across Europe, wherever people were killed for being proscribed by Nazi ideology.  These are “Stolpersteine,” ‘stumbling stones,’ small brass plates engraved with the name and birth-death dates of Nazi prey (mostly Jews, but also Gypsies, Homosexuals, Communists etc.) cemented into the sidewalk outside their last known residence or workplace.  These are randomly located – appearing wherever a murdered one happened to live or labor – and so are sporadic but recurrent perpetual reminders of Europeans seized by the jaws of a fiendish enterprise.  Pedestrians come upon them unaware, as intended.

Powerful as large, central Memorials may be, the Stolpersteine, by their presence literally underfoot in daily life, tug viewers’ attention to the void left by each person whose life they commemorate and keep from being forgotten.  Because they can be located anyplace routinely associated with a victim, they disallow complacency, serving as chilling evidence of the reality that evil can lurk and arise anywhere.

by omniagallia

Cologne, Germany; Roman Ruin with Artifacts:

CONTEXT: This photo accompanied my post, below, from my 2016 Europe visit. It shows remarkable archeological treasure about 10 feet below Cologne’s present street level.

After central Cologne (‘Koln’ in German) was largely bombed to rubble in World War II, choices were needed about which structures to rebuild and which to consign to history, to save scarce restoration resources. Previously, the ‘Spanischer Bau’, ‘Spanish Pavilion’ for diplomatic activity when Cologne was a self-ruled Free City of the Holy Roman Empire, stood above the site shown here. The venerable Bau had been destroyed in the air attacks and was not rebuilt, replaced by new government offices (their floor slab is this ceiling).

Cologne was originally ‘Colonia,’ a provincial capital of the Roman Empire, its furthest north major city in continental Europe. The destruction of its urban fabric in Hitler’s war exposed remnants of many Roman structures (some known, some long forgotten) concealed for generations by later construction.

One such was the site shown here, foundations of the ‘Praetorium,’ palace of the local Imperial governor. Cologne had long been most renowned for its astonishing Gothic Cathedral, but when rebuilding the devastated city, it was decided to reveal many of its long-hidden antique vestiges into the public sphere, as the bomb wreckage over them got cleared.

For the Praetorium beneath the vanished Bau, the arrangement shown here was devised. The new municipal facility was built over the Imperial remnants, but designed to preserve them, while keeping them accessible to the public.

Cologne’s Roman beginnings are a fascinating part of its heritage, many physically re-emerging as a result of destroying Hitler’s Reich, the Teutonic heartland he rightly boasted the Empire had never effectively conquered. But as alluded to in my post below, Nazi Germany – showing barbarism akin to that for which the Romans had such contempt for Germans of long ago – was overcome, in part, by other forces that Classical culture consciously deployed: Rule of law, and much more channeled reason than unleashed passion.

Not visible from outside, this site is well worth following public markers to find. Not only for its artifacts but its intimations, as my post below tries to suggest.

Ruins with Suspended Artifacts:  This view of the foundations of the Praetorium shows a flock of ceramic and clay pottery fragments, seemingly hovering in mid-air.  These were artifacts discovered during the excavations of the site, now artfully suspended to show their exact positions in relation to the ancient stone and mortar when they were found. This was to illustrate the reality of archeology, in which items lost or discarded long before are uncovered in random disarray, unlike the tidy displays in museums.

Another section of this wall (not shown here) had a large, semi-circular gash like some monster had swooped from the sky to tear a bite out of it.  This was identified as damage caused by a bomb that pierced the now lost Spanischer Bau above, then exploded down at this level. 

The Nazi era is not my main focus for Cologne, but this detritus, seeming to float across time, moved me to meditate on Roman daily life.  And I reflected how unlike their Colonia, this city today is the work of free people, not largely of slaves – another aspect of “Roman daily life” – to sustain the comfort of their owners, but whose own lives, let alone wishes, merited little sincere concern.

But not so very long ago, the Nazis tried to reverse the long momentum towards consigning slavery to evil memory by reviving it to support their war economy.  Some 8 million people from their conquered territories, mainly from ethnic groups Nazi doctrine branded sub-human, were shipped to the Reich and forced to do jobs performed in peacetime by Aryan German workers or farmers, now off fighting Hitler’s wars; or dangerous weapons/munitions production under terrible conditions and violent supervision, for little or no pay, and dismal food and shelter. 

(I don’t know if many such slave workers – “Sklavenarbeiter” – were made to work in Cologne itself or its near environs, but many surely toiled in the factories of the Ruhr area to the north.  And a great many were killed, all over Germany, in the bombing of the strategic facilities in which they were forced to labor; innocent, collateral victims who didn’t even want to be there, much less to help Hitler.)

The real “sub-humanity” in all this was the Nazis’ hyena-like pressing of their (temporary) advantage.  But that seemed only proper to true-believer National Socialists in thrall to the idea that Fate favored the ruthless wielding of power by anyone fierce and strong enough to snatch it. They tried to create a Teutonic version of Roman cultural values beyond whose inherent cruelty the Western world had largely long since evolved. 

The British and Americans held that such attitudes were anathema to all progress of legitimate civilization, so repugnant that they had to be defeated regardless of the costs or means.  So it seems a macabre irony that Cologne, former German locus of warlike Roman practices the Nazis sought to partly emulate, was thoroughly flattened in the horrendous struggle to thwart them from doing so.

Such observations are not directly connected to this picture of old rubbish, but the latter is an allegory for how fragile and transitory our species’ improvement – like so much busted crockery, though far more precious – can prove to be. Due to brutish efforts to push the world backward toward a grimmer reality, and to what it might have become again, had they been allowed to prevail.  Slavery would not be merely a hateful footnote of a benighted past but, consistent with the Nazi concept of Germans as Earth’s ‘master race,’ a scourge revived on a vast scale.

The Romans, even rich, powerful ones, dwelt in a milieu of such omnipresent harshness (average life expectancy then was apparently about 35 years) that it was, arguably, unsurprising they might be hard-hearted enough to exploit their fellow men to make their own lives less generally dreadful.  This does not excuse their callousness, but may at least help explain it.  Besides, slavery was hardly unique to Rome; most pre-industrial societies practiced some form of it. 

But Germans by the 1930s, the Nazi era, had myriad advantages people in antiquity lacked; superior medicine, safer food supplies, sanitary housing, greater knowledge of the natural world, the empathy commended by the 18th Century Age of Reason, etc. To say nothing of ages of exposure to the theoretically pervasive Christian ethos of “Love thy neighbor.” 

Thus, unlike the Romans, 20th Century Germans – it seems to me – deserve no benefit of partial indulgence due to their own inescapably miserable circumstances, or to the social norms of their time.  And unspeakable as World War I was, the Nazis’ crazed resentment at their country’s defeat in it doesn’t come close to excusing the bestial kill-or-be-killed theory of life they devised to avenge it, nor their attempted forced march backwards towards many evils – of which slavery was but one – of darker eras past.

It would be understandable if most ordinary Germans were unwilling to brave the the Third Reich’s ghastly terror apparatus, and tacitly accepted Hitlerism mainly out of fear.  I myself wouldn’t have been nearly courageous enough to actively oppose it.  But beyond the committed Nazis was a large cohort of Germans (if not a majority) who gladly overlooked Nazism’s overt monstrosity – at least while they were winning – in return for Hitler’s reviving the nation’s economy, for telling them that as Germans they were better than anyone else, and for showering them with booty like foodstuffs from conquered lands.

Such folk may have had private misgivings about Hitler, but put them aside for near-term advantages (many of them unethical at a glance). As such, they failed to show a shred of the generosity they might have, if only in gratitude for the good fortune of living amid the gentler realities of a gentler epoch.

Unlike ancient Romans, they should have known better; they should have sensed better.  They had no persuasive rationalization for being witting accomplices to such profound malevolence.

Full stop.  

by omniagallia

Embracing Hope: Relics of the Magi, Cologne, Germany

CONTEXT: Today, January 6, 2023, is the second anniversary of the attempt to disrupt America’s lawful governance by mob violence. It is also – ironically – the Twelfth and last day of Christmas, and supposed date the Three Kings (Magi/Wise Men) reached Bethlehem to adore the newborn Jesus, an encounter called the ‘Epiphany,’ the revelation of Christ to the world.

That word also connotes realization, and as regards the anniversary, though American democracy survived that day, we all got a ‘realization’ of its fragility: We saw a self-absorbed U.S. President try to cling, criminally, to power with the help of legions of fanatical supporters. That barbaric spasm failed, but the fact it even happened implies the extent to which brute power may still be what ultimately rules our squalid plane of mortal being.

In contrast to which, my re-post below from 2018 references a source of personal affirmation very different from the motives of Americans willing to release primal passion (which suggests lesser, not greater humaneness) to uphold their longstanding supremacy, which they see as an entitlement.

That Riot and Epiphany were not connected, but are related by opposition. That is, if the Rioters practiced the outlook that underlay Epiphany, they would not serve a vain, foolish, cruel Narcissist who told them what they wanted to hear about their alleged grievances. If their status as Christians – as many rioters thought themselves – had been actual, not mere ‘identity,’ they would not have wanted what they did; nor behaved as they did. 

As my blog Introduction says, ‘I try to articulate things that many people likely privately think, feel or simply need to believe. Such as the premise that life is worthwhile and benign, despite all evidence that it is not. To give substance to perceptions held by people who rarely speak of them aloud, and may even feel conflicted to admit to themselves. Even if they might benefit from them personally, and even consequently help make a better World.’

All of which my re-post here presumes to do: to suggest a basis in which personal worth need not come only from individual status or achievement – which are often as much about opportune circumstance as personal virtue. To point out a foundation on which we might build trust that our lives matter, regardless of whether or not we have ‘opportune circumstances.’ To draw attention to an expression of faith which may surpass self-aggrandizing appetites for domination and privilege.

Many rioters probably lacked significant real life advantages, which stoked their resentment at the erosion of their only (and bogus) one – traditional class and gender power – which they tried to claw back violently. My essay reconsiders a worldview in which that type of self-validation is unnecessary.

In our era, religion no longer seeks to explain the physical world. Reason has deciphered much of that sphere, and also greatly softened its harshness. But reason alone cannot satisfy desires like a widespread, integral sense that Life must have an ultimate purpose greater than increasingly comfortable longevity. That sense is not about what can be proved, but about where to repose sustaining reliance: Faith.

My post invokes the ancient Christian premise of individual worth: Every last one of us is loved by a gracious deity. Accepting such a datum point may enable us to complete a process arising from great rational achievements: Letting empathy seep like divine breath into our being, and making us willing to share more fully the abundance of an Earth that science has made capable of providing sustenance and dignity to ‘every last one’ of her children.

That premise may help us discover our best Selves, defining and enhancing the value of our personal time on this Earth – of our own humanity – at least as much as the alternative of fiercely focusing on priorities such as pride and dominion may diminish it.

An alternative so terribly displayed in our temple of Democracy, two years ago today.  

Cologne Cathedral, Reliquary of the Magi (the Three Kings): This gold, crystal and enamel cabinet, one of the most glorious artifacts of the entire Medieval world, took some of the best artisans in Northern Europe more than a generation to create, between the 12th and 13th Centuries.  Nothing less than its intricacy and rare materials would have seemed suitable to honor the relics it contains, traditionally held to be bones of the three Kings who adored the newborn Jesus in the stable in Bethlehem.  The irreducible preciousness of these objects has been an integral part of Cologne’s self-image since the era of the Crusades, and a major part of the reason it has so long retained its status as a place of great importance.  Three crowns, representing the Kings, still appear in the city’s coat of arms.

This vessel definitely does contain human bones, and while it seems unlikely that they could actually be the Magi, their pedigree cannot be dismissed out of hand.  They have a well-documented history, unbroken for more than 1600 years. I don’t know when they first entered the historical record, but Constantine gave them to a church in Byzantium (now Istanbul) in the Fourth century, then they were sent to Milan, in the Seventh.  500 years later, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa took them from Milan and gave them to Cologne in appreciation for its archbishop’s military assistance (to this day, some Milanese lament their loss).  Several decades later, plans were begun to build this current church to house them in reverent resplendence; it has been their home ever since.

Today’s Kolner Dom was designed to be a suitable shrine, as evocative of Heaven itself as possible, for such objects of saving grace.  Cologne became a major site of pilgrimage to venerate them, attracting economic activity that contributed greatly to its long term vibrancy.  Although the cathedral was only finished to its original plans in the late 19th Century (by Prussian kings largely interested in the political advantage they might derive by doing so), the devotion that called it into being was fully Medieval.  Its exuberant, yet solemn aesthetic had been meant to inspire beholders in a quest for Salvation, then assumed to be everyman’s ultimate goal, and deepest desire.

I don’t know a lot of details of the reliquary’s 800-year history, but suppose that it survived the tumult of the Reformation, during which uncountable pieces of ancient Christian religious art were destroyed as idolatrous by iconoclastic Protestants (a major heritage of Western creativity lost forever, owing to one of many violent passions of that time which we may no longer fully comprehend) because Cologne was in a part of Germany that stayed largely Catholic. 

French Revolutionary troops attacked the still incomplete cathedral in 1794 and did damage to the reliquary that was later repaired.  The Nazis extolled it mainly as a specimen of German genius (actually, master artisans from several lands – working when the cultural frame of reference was principally Christendom, not linguistic identity – contributed to its making), and removed it for safekeeping when Cologne became acutely liable to Allied bombing in the early 1940s.  After peace returned, it was restored to its traditional sanctuary behind the main altar. 

It is easy to see how things like this extravagant cabinet and its alleged contents may, to people of the 21st Century, chiefly suggest superstition, and exploitation of the gullible.  And there is some truth in that, in terms of the general ignorance and unsophistication of most Europeans and their society at that time, and of the willingness of some church and secular authorities to profit financially from them. 

But unconsidered disparagement of a past era (to the benefit of one’s own) is an historical snare against which I have cautioned before: Presentism.  That often involves much oversimplification, of people from one age adversely judging an earlier one, without reflecting on why its outlook and resulting choices might in fact have been appropriate – or at least the best feasible option – for its own multifaceted context.  Men who were simply stupid could never have conceived nor executed this sumptuous treasure, let alone devised the spectacular structure that would house it (nor similar ones completed all over Western Europe in the same era).  The nature of their motivations – which were admittedly based on less knowledge of the physical world than our own – is surely more nuanced. 

We in the 21st Century should not view Medievals and their deeds exclusively at a superficial level, simplistically attributing their priorities to wrong-headed ignorance.  Doing so may whiff of un-self awareness, for any sense of our own having neared true enlightenment is belied by the global havoc in the 20th Century by mechanized warfare, for which science was harnessed – as well as ongoing human misdeeds in our own century.  In fact, we really have far less excuse for folly than Medieval people had, yet are making Earth uninhabitable, overtaxing it to feed voracious consumerism.  We are better informed, but not incontestably wiser.

Thus, if one wishes to be accurate (and fair) about where the truth may lie, one must look deeper.  We should consider the sincerity of Medieval efforts to seek greater significance for human life than just prolonging the flesh, or hyper-focus on individual actualization. That is, on defining some significant purpose for it, in which everyone might share and from which everyone might benefit.

As acknowledged before, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to live when the Dom was first being built, and not just because of the era’s appalling medicine, hygiene, etc.  As one born in the 20th Century, and heir to the Catholic church’s Second Vatican Council’s seismic reconsiderations of religious doctrine and practice, I would have been repelled by the destructive parochial tribalism of Medieval Europeans, their tendency to validate themselves by devalidating others as heretics or infidels, treating other beliefs as loathsome, intolerable affronts. Such attitudes now seem to be misreadings of perceived divine intent, irreconcilable with the idea of God as love. 

But they were not the whole story of that culture.  Most peoples’ lives then were a relentless ordeal by our standards, of discomfort, filth, hunger, sickness, and manifold omnipresent perils.  Many might have committed suicide to escape such unremitting burdens had they assumed they would just be extinguished by the grave anyway.  Instead, their way of contending with those struggles was not wrought just in the masonry of their churches, but by the immaterial wealth they also presented: A faith in Divine affirmation, believed to offset extinction at death.  For this, their individual deeds, and how they faced the adversities of this world (seen as parallels to the sorrows of the Crucifixion, itself endured to pierce the bounds of human frailty) determined merit for the reward of Paradise. 

Such a faith may appear nebulous, or even irrational to us, but it enabled them to withstand hardships of which we might despair. They relied on it, as many now do on science (despite all its unintended consequences) ‘to save us.’  What may seem exaggerated reliance, or superstitious delusion, to one era or person, may be indispensable, sustaining grace to another; hope that makes life worth enduring.

A pilgrim trembling with devotion or ecstasy before the Magis’ relics believed that undertaking a journey to them brought him closer to One through whom Heaven might be opened to him.  Such solace must have softened the jagged edges of his own very hard existence, and proffered some promise – in ways material security alone never could – for being free of want and sorrow, and of evanescence.  

Spurious relics were an open scandal of life in the Middle Ages, used to pry money from trusting souls, and a legitimate grievance of Martin Luther.  Many such objects were mistakenly attributed; others were undoubtedly deliberate fraud.  But in their highest instances – the Kolner Dom’s Magi relics were one such, St. Mark’s in Venice (with the supposed bones of the Evangelist) was another – they were more plausibly what they presented to be. And they brought forth trenchant ingenuity, used to shelter them (like the Dom); then the masses of heartfelt meditations they evoked; and finally the great aura of longings, both awakened and fulfilled, with which they gradually, and almost tangibly, became lustered. 

Such veneration was a part of the aspirations of a civilization in its quest – one that logic, alone, might never still, nor appease – for a fundamental reason for conscious life beyond its grim, visible character as “nasty, brutish, and short.”  To the faithful who came here to ponder the Three Kings – especially to those who were not rich and powerful, nor brilliant and talented, just the common children of God – these objects helped to hallow and illuminate their lives, no matter how miserable, nor ultimately meaningless all rational evidence might suggest they were. 

For at base, they asserted an absolute and universal benevolence for all men and women, everywhere and forever, through Christ’s incarnation. 

And that premise of universal benevolence – now more generally understood to be fundamentally embraced by the righteous of the whole human family, not just a clique of the doctrinally sound – may still shine with accessible simplicity, burning like the dawn through mists of extraneous erudition or dogmatic encrustation, even through instances when its spirit was horrifyingly absent or misapplied, as in the Crusades.  The potential harm caused by religious faith can undoubtedly be massive, but its potential to release, and even to help form, our better Selves may be just as great; and occasionally, greater.

Unlike excesses of fanaticism such as the Inquisition, Cromwell in Ireland, or our own era’s radical Islamic terror, most private successes of faith – lives quietly consummated by the work of the spirit in humility, meditation, charity, and deliberate efforts to make the world a better place out of gratitude for the gift of existence itself– seem too intimate and prosaic to appear in history books. But they were immense forces in the Europe that spawned this church, and satisfied needs that are still woven deeply into the fabric of human consciousness. 

A desire that baffles and eludes the mind may nevertheless be insistent for the heart.  Some of the most pervasive beliefs offer answers we may all share, because they refer to concerns (especially mortality) in which we also all share. The people who conceived the Dom treated the brevity and coarseness of their own lives as motivations to connect with something limitless, imperishable and perfect.

These may not really be the bones of three west Asian savants, but there was nothing false about the good they must often have done for pilgrims who placed, and found, hope in them.  Whether or not they literally made the lame walk or the blind see, they must have wrought marvels just as vitalizing.  They helped to rescue, with consolation and peace, what might, dispassionately, seem to be the pointless lives of undistinguished people who contemplated them – and found soothing succor in the radiant, redeeming Nativity story of which they were part.

The relic-like display of iconic documents such as the original American Declaration of Independence, or the embalmed remains of Lenin and Mao Zedong, suggest that the craving for visualization may appear even in cultures that consider themselves emphatically reason-driven.  Presumably, this is because most of us ordinary folk benefit from seeing tangible emblems of rarified abstractions – talismanic of forces beyond troublesome, everyday reality – which might otherwise be grasped only by a sophisticated elite. 

Thus, in many times, places and cultures, the appeal of objects held to be ‘sacred’ persists, symbiotic with the refracting power of the great lattice of personal perception and reference.  In the case of the Magi relics, that is because what they simply are – old bones – is so far transcended by what they represent: An enduring, shared joy, glittering as the Star of Bethlehem, in the promise of Life, in defiance of the ephemerality of lives.

by omniagallia

Entrancing –

CONTEXT: This piece from my visit to Cologne, Germany in 2016 doesn’t deal directly with Christmas. But I post it in honor of that holiday, 2022, to respectfully take issue with the premise – which increasingly pervades our outlook – that worthwhile human progress must come, more or less only, through the exercise of human reason. As noted in my ‘Jewish Bride’ essay recently re-posted, however much I praise and benefit from all the understanding, knowledge, technology etc. of our era, I deeply question if all other attributes of our nature should be disregarded or dismissed in its favor.

To cite an axiom of mine: Reason is not the only thing that makes us Human. To starkly illustrate that, I noted the Nazis’ diligent use of science in that recent post, as an instance of what may be called ‘brute Reason’ (as opposed to brute strength). Another example was Hitler’s T4 program, the covert murder of thousands of Germany’s physically and mentally handicapped people as ‘useless eaters’ who could only drain society’s resources and never contribute to them. Admittedly that was so, but despite euthanasia arguably meeting the standard of ‘logic’ as a basis for T4, it led to an unthinkably abhorrent course of action, repugnantly devoid of empathy – a humane quality whose value I propounded in ‘Jewish Bride.’

The following piece about Cologne cathedral speaks to the task to which Christmas calls us, and the wholly legitimate (in my view) human need for validation which may be found by complying with its summons. A need that should not be delegitimized – particularly by fortunate folk who have, or see, no need for consoling, sustaining hope – nor can be fully appeased with science’s gifts to us of greater comfort, more distraction and longer, better physical life.

Those are all marvels, but this essay suggests that many of us cannot find adequate meaning to life through them. It seeks to remind us of alternatives – generally, not feeling bound to seek exclusively rational answers – that will always be there for us if we need strength and comfort that otherwise elude us. And the humility to admit to such needs – to aspire to something unreachable by intellect alone, nor by other personal gifts – can be a first step in letting extra-rational hope ‘console and sustain’ us.

One need not be religious to be empathic, of course. But religious faith can offer a vantage point from which many of us may be inspired (given a last, vital boost) to act thus, piercing limitations that might otherwise keep us from doing so.

Cathedral Entrance: This is the end of the church with the great towers, unfinished until the 19th Century, when this grand portico was also added between them. The Industrial Age sculptors who executed this did their Medieval forbears proud; their carvings looked like they were cut by men who believed their work here might help admit them to Heaven, as their Gothic era predecessors may have exerted themselves to do.

The imagery above this door (in the space called the tympanum) may have some Biblical iconographic message, as art often did when literacy was scarce, but I didn’t even try to interpret it. Instead, I had long been intrigued by photographs of the Tympanum showing it with an unmistakable golden cast, so I looked closely to see if it was stone, rather than bronze, or some form of gilding. It is indeed stone, but clearly of a type different from that surrounding it, presumably chosen for its distinct color.

In a concession to efficiency, modern technology is used at the Dom to admit its 20,000 daily visitors. Its doors are sensor-driven transparent panels that glide back and forth horizontally (rather than swinging on hinges) with a soft whoosh.

The cathedral’s eventual completion during the Gothic Revival of the 19th Century was a rationalized, near-perfect expression of an extra-rational impulse. The skyscrapers of our era may scrape the sky, but they do not reach for Heaven. They are not meant to; their main goal is maximized economic utility.

Churches like the Kolner Dom, however, were meant to stretch for the celestial, connecting to its presumed benevolence in sharp contrast to a tumultuous world whose difficulties might otherwise be despaired of. They resonated of a hope worth enduring seemingly intractable hardships to attain, and sheltered embers of the West’s vitality until, in later times, ‘hope’ began to mean other (and more often, material) things than when this building was begun.

The great leveler mortality, and the right of every Christian to strive for Paradise, were formidable equalizers in the world of the Middle Ages. Inside a church, a prince, lord or knight might rate a better spot for mass, but otherwise, each person was truly “Everyman.” That is, animate dust, never truly, fully in control of his or her ultimate fate in this life. In this setting, a peasant, rough mason, thatcher or fuller might feel brethren to a king in ways they never would or could, elsewhere.

But they would not have considered sharing this most basic of all concerns as “Democratic” – a term and concept as alien to them as the planet Saturn. It was just an understanding among the faithful that all men were largely powerless, most individual concerns of scant import to the great expanse of time. And since Christ evidently held every person worthy of the offer of salvation to resolve the trials and vagaries of this life, it implied that, in the sight of God, no soul was less precious than any other (a seditious idea that would eventually help undermine the custom that high-born men were most entitled to rule, and reap, this world).

Even a Divine right monarch was Death’s subject, his crown and sway no more consequential than the degree of his lowest serf. It must have been a sharp reminder of actual priorities, in a world in which the rich and mighty were accorded such preeminent status, to realize that luminaries could die just as soon and suddenly as the poor and feeble; or be damned. To Medieval Christians, the presence of a deity presumed to be so saturated with love as to have gratuitously conjured the universe out of nothing, and bestowed the further gift on its only actively conscious beings – us, humanity – the option of of a path to escape the shadow of death was one context in which, assuredly, “All men were created equal.”

Conversely, speaking of inequality, it was just outside this portal that I saw the disturbing sight (mentioned in my original Facebook overview of my trip), of two men who seemed to be beggars, arguing, then forcibly grappling with each other. My German isn’t good enough to understand what they were quarreling about; possibly for the most advantageous spot to accost tourists. Their struggle was over quickly and with no visible harm done, but was a reminder that Cologne – wondrous as it may be to visitors – is not unlike most urban areas: Dense concentrations of people where some inhabitants occasionally feel forced to fight just to stay alive.

I’ve never seen homeless people in combat like that in my hometown, Chicago, but it probably happens anywhere people are reduced to desperation; an especially depressing, though instructive, spectacle when it happens amid First World prosperity like central Cologne or Chicago. And especially at the entrance to a building dedicated to proclaiming some of our loftiest aspirations.

(It would be interesting to know the back story of that fracas. Germany has a robust social safety net, and I learned that the Archdiocese of Cologne – which surely controls the Dom on whose threshold this struggle took place – also offers extensive charitable services for anyone in desperate need. I must wonder why those two men did not, or could not, seek out the different types of aid that are apparently available.)

Upsetting as that image was, I’m glad to have seen such a display of raw life, a jolting reminder, especially in view of my own relative financial stability, of how broken our world is for so many people.

The Kolner Dom is an awe-inspiring edifice, but ideals such as it betokens cannot be fully represented by the temples raised to enshrine them. Those would lift us higher than other creatures, and so can only really assert themselves by inspiring the quest for a world in which people neither need nor desire to fight, from those two men apparently frantic to stay alive, all the way to World Wars.

That seems to me a crucial duty of any great creed: Not only for most religious faiths, but especially for them, as they appeal to forces and inclinations at the upper limits of our nature. Such faiths exist to offer reason for hope, when Reason – used in isolation from the full panoply of the human spirit – may seem to justify, even to demand, jettisoning anything our minds cannot concretely encompass, as a sort of bloodless sacrifice to be performed in exchange for enjoying the practical benefits of the modern era. As if the wholly human dread of reverting to the darkness were some flaw a modern person should simply be able to suppress with machine-like equanimity.

The semi-feral tussle I witnessed – amid a rich, rebuilt city, laid waste to frustrate the infernal Nazi agenda that people should emulate the kill-or-be-killed behavior of wild animals – at the doors of a place meant to invite us to better things, accentuates that we collectively still have many thresholds to fully cross.

by omniagallia

Blessed Memory:

Before re-posting the first of two items (indirectly related to Christmas) from my 2016 visit to Cologne, I present this one from earlier in that journey, about the renowned, melancholy Jewish graveyard in Prague. Its relevance to Christmas is still more oblique, but I offer it now (having already put it on this blog in July, 2022) to manifest my belief that the charism of Christ’s Nativity was intended to offer benevolence to the whole human family. And most especially to its victimized members – ‘massacred innocents’ – like the Jews of Nazi-controlled Europe.

(Besides: as it explains here, it is delectably satisfying to think that one may, even minutely, help to frustrate part of Hitler’s most dreadful dream.)

Surely, few attitudes could be further from one who transcended the Self to the point of forgiving those crucifying Him, than indifference to the welfare of other people; Any other people. And Christians are meant to believe Christ’s sacrifice (and example) was not for themselves alone, but also for those who do not accept that faith; formally. For as noted before, I believe actions speak louder than words.

Concern for more than just one’s Self is a pillar of classic Jewish ethics, much of which got transmitted to the world via Christ. So I hope it is not unseemly for me to refer, even ‘obliquely,’ to Christmas in the context of this iconic Jewish site. It is also my gesture of respect and gratitude to Judaism, which has so helped to define civilization in general.

Which was surely one reason the Nazis, as enemies of true ‘civilization,’ were so murderously hostile to it.

Jewish Cemetery, Prague: This is a last picture from my visit to Prague, posted separately from all the others to call special attention to the long Jewish presence there. It is my small contribution to helping to thwart Hitler’s dream that not only all of the world’s Jews, but all memory of their very existence, should be obliterated.

Long before the Nazis definitively eradicated it, the ancient Jewish community there had a tempestuous and often violent history. The tale of the “golem,” a mythical monster created to protect Jews from persecution, originated in Prague.

These monuments had a calm dignity that made them very different from the only other cemetery I intentionally visited in Europe, Pere Lachaise in Paris. That place is far newer – its first burials seem to have been from around the time this one accepted no more. There have been no interments at this location for some 200 years, and many of the stones are so old they are slowly sinking into the soil, as if to mimic the “dust to dust” return to Earth of those who lie beneath them.

But many tombs in Pere Lachaise were the virtual opposite, in spirit, of these simple memorials. Most were at least ostentatious, others over-the-top Gallic theatrical. Many Parisian ones made with wrought iron or intricately carved stone are now deteriorating badly, no longer the proud spectacles their owners probably hoped to last forever. These in Prague, much less elaborate (usually just a Hebrew inscription and some image to mark the owner’s work in life, like grapes for a wine merchant) are much less liable to such decay.

I can only speculate on why there was such a stark contrast in how eternity was approached in these two places and eras. It may just have been that the Jews of Prague couldn’t afford anything finer, or that religious authorities there prohibited ostentation. Or it may have been a resignation to mortality that the Parisians refused, trying to resist the anonymity of death with elaborate memorials. No such pretense is apparent among these gravestones of Prague. And ironically, as the monuments at Pere Lachaise now rust and erode, they imply the destructive triumph of time more, not less.

I am still perplexed – though delighted – that the Nazis, who despoiled Jewish culture everywhere they conquered, left this cemetery and venerable synagogues nearby alone. These are all in central Prague so the Germans must have known they were there. Perhaps it was just one of their absurd concerns for “appearances”, of imagining the natives wouldn’t think they were vicious barbarians if they left a few familiar local highlights (but not live Jews) untouched.

If anybody knows why the Nazis spared this cemetery and those adjacent sacred structures, please tell the rest of us.

by omniagallia

‘Oh Come Let Us Reflect Him’

CONTEXT: This is the first piece I will post here in observance of Christmas, 2022. The next two will be re-posts from my 2016 visit to Europe, and later meditations upon it. The second of those will be posted on the Twelfth Day of Christmas – Epiphany – January 6; for which its subject makes it especially appropriate.

I have adjusted the refrain of the carol, ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ by a single word, to re-affirm a core aspect of Christmas which seems increasingly to get obscured: Jesus personified willingness to sacrifice the Self for the Other. Thus any act of loving generosity may be said to ‘reflect’ Him. And I hope anyone who is not Christian will try to accept that striving to act in this way really is supposed to be a defining element of sincerely following Christ.

This, despite the fact that many people who claim to revere Christ often do not act so as to ‘reflect’ a grasp of His intentions, nor apparently recognize any need to do so. Or who may believe lip service is sufficient. This includes any ‘identity/culture warriors’ who assume the Prince of Peace wants them to behave heartlessly in His name.

Further, I would assert that, as the accompanying image suggests, it is more important to follow His example, than merely proclaim one’s adherence to it. Thus, while the man giving his sandals to the poor boy may embrace some other religion, or none at all, I sense that Jesus – presumably preferring hallowing acts to hollow words – would rejoice in his compassion anyway.

Here is another expression of my point in changing that single word:

‘Wherever selfless love is shared,
Know that He is present there.’

(All people of goodwill practice decency and kindness; I do not presume to claim those as uniquely Christian values. Only that they are obligations – of which they should never lose sight, and always strive – for those who do call themselves ‘Christian.’ As one who does call myself such, I acknowledge often failing at those, but accept my lifelong duty to keep trying.)

We humans can use our gift of reason to choose to obey our finest impulses, and thereby deliberately summon the best of our humanity. Particularly when doing so goes against our own immediate interests; like giving away one’s footwear to a brother being who needs it more. The mere existence, and exercise, of such empathy nudges our whole world slightly closer to Paradise for everyone; hence, the dirt that will get on this giver’s feet transfigures as the soil of the Garden of Eden.

So whether you regard Christ as a factor in your life or not, may the loving care this image shows inspire you to ‘summon the best of your humanity’ also. It is the simplest thing that many of us can do – regardless of why – to better this Life. 

Which I would venture to believe must gladden Him, also.