The Theater-Maker

Last Wednesday, Red Baron saw Der Theatermacher by Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard at Freiburg's City Theater. This comedy, written in 1984, belongs to the Theater of the Absurd category.

Bruscon arguing with the innkeeper (©Theater Freiburg)

Staatsschauspieler* Bruscon has collated a comedy, The Wheel of History, comprising all other comedies according to him. The premiere shall take place at the depraved dance hall of "The Black Stag," an inn in a small Austrian village called Utzbach. Bruscon's wife, son, and daughter are serving as co-actors.
*a title the government awards to deserving actors

The guy is a creep tyrannizing both the innkeeper and his family. The first one is because he wants to eat Frittatensuppe, a bouillon with strips of pancake, in the early afternoon while the innkeeper and his family are busy making blutwurst (blood sausage). When Bruscon asks him, "Do you have your blutwurst day once a week?" the answer is, "No, but always on Tuesdays."

Frittatensuppe (©Wikipedia/RobertK)

Bruscon complains to the innkeeper about the room's sultriness, fears that the floor will break through, and finds the village of Utzbach far too small for his "outstanding" work. He then starts a fuss about the emergency lighting. He requires total darkness for the last scene of his concoction, a condition conflicting with fire protection regulations. Here he is categorical, "Without complete darkness, there will be no performance." So Bruscon sends the busy innkeeper to fire chief Atwenger asking for a derogation.

During rehearsals of the play with his children, he drives out their love of acting. In recurring phrases, he alternately "cleans" their acting talent, while always highlighting himself as a great "state actor" and demanding servant behavior from his children. He often gets entangled in contradictory statements without realizing it, saying to his son, "You are my greatest disappointment, you know that, but you never disappointed me; you are my most useful."

The eerie scene where Lady Churchill meets Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister at the time of Napoleon, takes half an hour to rehearse: "Naturally, her hat pin must get loose before the hat falls to the ground."

Bruscon eating Frittatensuppe in the presence of his family (©Theater Freiburg)

Bruscon's wife, an apparently cold woman ("your mother invests all her talent in her illnesses"), enters the scene for the first time while he is eating the previously ordered Frittatensuppe, keeping him quiet for a moment. Later, he continuously attacks his wife, but she never speaks a word.

In the end, with Atwenger's derogation granting a maximum of ten minutes of darkness, the theater group, in costumes, peeks through the curtain, daring covert glances as the spectators arrive. A heavy thunderstorm passes, and the audience leaves the dance hall following a great crash of thunder. A flash of lightning has set the parish house on fire. Good for them, for the roof above starts to drip, leaving Bruscon disappointed on stage in the rain.

I wish you all a Happy* New Year.

* My German friends will read "Healthy."

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Maryam and Īsā ibn Maryam

 i.e., Mary and the son of Mary, key figures in the New Testament, are also important in the Quran. The title page of Der Spiegel even goes so far as to propose: Jesus, the Muslim, although the religious topic in the last edition of 2017 is not at all controversial, contrary to articles in previous years. The title story, instead, is a narrative of shared beliefs and differences between Christians and Muslims.

©Der Spiegel

In Islam, too, Jesus, called Īsā, is born of a virgin as announced by Archangel Gabriel, but leaving out the cuckolded Joseph: And she who guarded her virginity. We breathed into her of Our spirit and made her and her son a sign to the world (Sura 21:91). Maryam is all alone in the desert giving birth to Īsā. When she presents her newborn boy at the Jewish temple, he begins his prophecies, convincing the elderly Zechariah and other attending scribes that he was conceived without a mortal man.

Maryam and her adult baby son (©Der Spiegel)

In contrast, according to the oldest known text of the New Testament written in ancient Greek*, we read in Luke 2:46 how Joseph and Mary were searching for twelve-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem: And it came to pass after three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, both hearing them and asking them questions.

*Called Codex Sinaiticus. It dates back to the 4th century and was discovered at the St. Catherine monastery located on the Sinai peninsula only in 1859

These differences between the stories in the Quran and the Bible are apparent but not decisive.

At the end of his life, Īsā ascends to heaven from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. No mention in the Quran of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. For Muslims, Īsā is just a prophet precursor of Muhammad, the latter outshining all previous prophets. How to explain the crucifixion? God told one of Jesus’s disciples that he would make him look like Īsā and have him crucified? Were both Romans and Jews fooled? The gospel, no glad tidings but fake news?

The article in Der Spiegel continues to describe at length the bloody disputes between Christians and Muslims, the Crusades and the Jihads, the fall of Constantinople, the Reconquista of Granada, the transformation of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, and of the Alhambra into a cathedral. How many lives were lost, and how many art objects were destroyed.

In the end, Andrew Thomson, pastor of the Anglican church in Abu Dhabi, formulates an allegory: “It is the same God, but there are different entrance doors.”

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Body and Soul

It is a tradition for Germany's weekly magazines to cover religious topics around Christmas. So Die Zeit titled, "Where does the soul reside ?" We are searching for it.

©Die Zeit

Greek philosophers located the soul, which only humans are supposed to possess, in the heart, the brain, or even in our blood. That is what Mephistopheles meant when he said in Goethe's Faust, "Blut is ein ganz besonderer Saft" (Blood is a pretty peculiar juice).

For the monotheistic religions, the human soul is God's Odem (breath of life) that we receive when we are born, and that will leave our bodies at the moment of our deaths. More poetically said, "the soul is a droplet of a divine nature," a definition acceptable for those with problems with a personal, fatherly god. In nearly all cultures, the individual soul will stay beyond death.

The soul is where we experience love, perceive happiness, discover beauty, and have hope, pity, and desire for another person. We suffer together with others, donate on Christmas or for victims of an earthquake, and love our pets. May robots be more intelligent in solving problems or perfect in producing goods; they do it mechanically and are only wise electronically; they are without a soul.

Maybe we should consult Goethe on the meaning of the soul. He wrote the following poem in 1779 while contemplating the Staubbach Falls at Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland:

Gesang der Geister über den Wassern Des Menschen Seele Gleicht dem Wasser: Vom Himmel kommt es, Zum Himmel steigt es, Und wieder nieder Zur Erde muß es, ewig wechselnd. Und Goethe lässt sein Gedicht enden: Seele des Menschen, Wie gleichst du dem Wasser! Schicksal des Menschen, Wie gleichst du dem Wind!

Song of the Spirits Over the Waters The soul of man It is like water; From Heaven it cometh, To Heaven it riseth, And then returneth To earth, forever alternating. And Goethe ends his poem: Soul of man mortal, How art thou like water! The fate of man mortal, How art thou like the wind!

Did our national poet believe in transmigration?

On the lighter side, here are some pictures of this year's Christmas Market. Due to the poor light conditions, I employed the HDMI technique for the first time.

The Market is seen from my dentist's practice on a late and somewhat foggy morning.
Veterans of the Parnerschaftsmarkt know the site well.
In the back, from right to left: St. Martin's church and the two town halls,
built in Renaissance and historicist styles, respectively.

In the background: St. Martin's church

Mulled wine in a simple and a fancier cup

Santa and I wish you a Merry Christmas.

See also this.

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Atoms for Peace

Red Baron happened to be in Geneva when the United Nations hosted the Atoms for Peace Conference and Exhibition in 1958. During semester breaks, I used to serve my father as a driver on his business trips. So we visited the exhibition, and we were both impressed.

When I was looking for an illustrating picture - the slides I took at that time have long since faded - I came across a citation by Frederick Reines. He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in physics for detecting the neutrino in experiments he had conducted with Clyde Cowan in 1956. So he indeed had given a paper in Geneva in 1958. In 1996, following his Nobel Prize award, Reines came to CERN and gave a lecture that Red Baron attended.

Atoms for Peace began with President Eisenhower's speech at the United Nations in New York on December 8, 1953, expressing the conviction that, from then on, atomic energy would be used solely for peaceful purposes under the auspices of an atomic energy agency.

He said, "The atomic energy agency could be made responsible for the impounding, storing, and protecting the contributed fissionable and other materials. The ingenuity of our scientists will provide special safe conditions under which such a bank of fissionable material can be made essentially immune to surprise seizures.

"The more important responsibility of this atomic energy agency would be to devise methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind. Experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine, and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world."

How far did we get? Concerning the first paragraph, the checks and inspections of fissionable material by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)* in their member states are thorough and efficient.
*established in 1957

Red Baron still remembers the nuclear inspectors visiting CERN to check the quantity and quality of the tons of depleted uranium (DU) the organization kept on its premises. Due to its high density, the material is still used as an absorber or shielding material in particle detectors. Proudly, the inspectors demonstrated their ingenuity, showing that the degree of  ²³⁵U depletion was lower in DU acquired from Russia than in material from the States, proving that the extraction of fissionable ²³⁵U from natural uranium was more efficient in the US.

These inspections were peanuts and fun for the men from Vienna, but what about inspections in countries operating nuclear power reactors that breed fissionable plutonium as a by-product? Some states meticulously grant IAEA inspectors access to all their nuclear stock, but a few countries are less open. Although the government agreed to inspections, the situation does not look so bright with Iran, but is absolutely somber with North Korea openly building the hydrogen bomb.

One may think that at least Eisenhower's hopes expressed in the second paragraph were fulfilled, i.e., applying atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine, and other peaceful activities. Today the euphoria of 1958 has considerably faded. Yes, there are powerful diagnostic tools in treatment based on radioactive tracers. Still, radioactive materials in cancer therapy are already increasingly replaced by effective and more specific chemotherapies.

Finally, nuclear power has become a significant problem for future generations. The energy is not clean, producing radioactive waste for which we cannot guarantee safe storage in the far future. Red Baron has reported on this.

Three weeks ago, the University of Chicago celebrated the 75th anniversary of Enrico Fermi's first successful nuclear reactor experiment in a structure beneath the viewing stands of a football field on December 2, 1942.

Enrico Fermi's reactor set up.

During my professional life visiting Fermilab, I made a pilgrimage to the site that is honored by a Henry Moore sculpture symbolizing an atomic mushroom - and a skull.

©UChicago

This mushroom, the portent of the atomic age, that Cai Guo-Qiang, a 59-year-old Chinese artist living in New York, stages ephemeral art based on fireworks and gunpowder, wanted to simulate. About the event we read in the press:

Cai Guo-Qiang said: "In the 1990s, I used black gunpowder to create mushroom clouds, humankind's most iconic visual symbol for the 20th century. These mushroom clouds formed part of my Projects for Extraterrestrials. Today, the color mushroom cloud symbolizes the paradoxical nature of employing nuclear energy: Who is it for?"

"The work dramatizes the creative and destructive forces of nuclear fission," said Steward*. "It takes the iconic shape of nuclear energy's most destructive form and animates it with color as a profound symbol of creativity and peace."
*Laura Steward, curator at the Smart Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Chicago

Wosh ... (©UChicago)

Ah ... (©UChicago)

The mushroom (©UChicago)

Sorry, this event was just macabre and not at all colorful!

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Shielding Democracies?

A selfie of Red Baron in front of the Carl-Schurz-Haus
 perturbed by the poster announcing the lecture

On Monday, Red Baron went to the Carl-Schurz-Haus to listen to a luncheon talk by Laura Daniels, "Shielding Democracies From Hacking and Disinformation."

The Director of the CSH, Friederike Schulte, introduced the speaker. Laura is currently the German Chancellor Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPI) in Berlin.

Here is the first paragraph of her abstract: States have long tried to influence one another, at times through subversive means. Today, reports of hacking and leaking, "fake news" propagated by bots and false accounts, rumors of foreign funding to extremist parties, and other similar tactics have caused alarm in Western democracies. These methods have elicited comparisons to Soviet "active measures"—or subversive operations—which appear to be back in business and benefiting from a technological upgrade.

While Laura was reminding us about Soviet subversive activities during the Cold War, giving many examples of Russian interference in recent years, and elaborating on her research on the present situation when Russia has possibly influenced US, German, and French elections, my thoughts strayed.

Do not our own governments blur the information we are entitled to? For me, Afghanistan is one of the continuing bad examples. As an ancillary to the US forces, German troops were sent to the Hindu Kush to educate local forces in their fight against the Taliban. Have we seen any progress? Let's face it. Over the years, the military situation in Afghanistan has not improved; it has remained stable at best.

The Obama administration slowly started withdrawing troops from the region in 2011, but this was insufficient for Donald Trump, who tweeted in January 2013: Let's get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghans we train, and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA.

In December 2014, he became more aggressive: Now Obama is keeping our soldiers in Afghanistan for at least another year. He is losing two wars simultaneously.

One year later, he tweeted: A suicide bomber has just killed US troops in Afghanistan. When will our leaders get tough and smart? We are being led to slaughter!

Wikipedia reports: In the middle of June 2017, newly elected US President Donald Trump gave the US military decision-making authority over troop numbers for US military operations in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The new authorization includes increasing the current troop level cap beyond the 8,400 US troops authorized as of July 2017.

POTUS confirmed his about-turn in August 2017, tweeting: Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders. Many decisions were made, including on Afghanistan.

Germany wholeheartedly followed in the wake of the US reduction of its troops; it will now be challenging to increase the German quota again, particularly when we still have no government.

Why does nobody officially tell us that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won? Remember, the British moved out the first time in 1842, came back later, and definitely left in 1919. The Soviet Union moved in 1979 and gave up in 1989, leaving Afghanistan in turmoil. When the Taliban eventually took over the region, the US, later reinforced by NATO troops, intervened in 2001, but they will not stay either. So why not regard the Education Mission "Democracy" as finished and bring our troops home?

Sorry, this was not the topic of Laura's talk. In the last part, she elaborated on the application of modern methods and techniques used to interfere with democratic elections (US?) and political decisions (Brexit?). From experience, it seems that the "attacker "is always one step ahead of the "defender. "

The ensuing discussion was lively, and the curry luncheon opened the way to many individual conversations.

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Lead Us Not into Temptation

Our Lord's Prayer is something all Christians have in common. In Germany, Catholics and Protestants pray the same text, "und führe uns nicht in Versuchung "(and lead us not into temptation).

Already as a kid, I felt uneasy, "How is it possible that Our Father in Heaven leads us into temptation?" Year in, and year out, I am saying the text in German, English, and French, in Catholic messes, Protestant services, at funerals, and baptisms almost mechanically, but I am still hesitating when it comes to "and lead us not into temptation."

A better translation into modern Lower German?
"Let us not come off your law and make us free from all that hurts us." (©Wikipedia)

This is why I was electrified by Pope Francis's praise for the French bishops when they changed the text "Ne nous soumets pas à la tentation" into "Et ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation" (And let us not fall into temptation).

Francis's argument goes like this, "God does not tempt you. The Lord only tries you with good gifts to draw you to Himself. You misinterpret the words when you think God leads you to the temptation to test you. No. The gracious Father in heaven admits evil, but he does not create it. He is good, from which all goodness springs forth. But there is evil. It has existed since the moment Lucifer rose up against God. It is up to you to make good out of evil by defeating it and asking the divine Father for the power to beat it."

"I am the one that falls, but it is not Him who leads me into temptation. A father does not do such a thing. A father helps you to get up again. The one who leads you in temptation is Satan."

What a Protestant view! Luther would have been delighted, for he was obsessed with Satan. The devil was fighting him whenever something went wrong in his reformatory drive. The revolting farmers had Satan in them, and the obstinate Jews were young devils and therefore condemned.

So finally, from now on, we will pray to the Lord, "make that we do not fall into temptation and deliver us from evil. Amen."

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Sein Kampf

You are reading correctly: His Struggle and not My Struggle. Why this is so will become apparent below. Red Baron wrote about Hitler‘s Mein Kampf before. In Germany, it was forbidden to print this infamous book until 2015.

Following my retirement in 2000, I decided to read Hitler’s book because I wanted to understand why my people had been following such a rabble-rouser. I found an electronic copy in German on an American website and read the downloaded text.

I was disgusted, but part of Hitler‘s writing remained incomprehensible since I did not understand the historical context. I remember being in the same situation as a student when I read an un-commentated copy of Bismarck‘s autobiography, Gedanken und Erinnerungen. Even worse was my experience with Goethe‘s Dichtung und Wahrheit. Much of the text in all these books remains cryptic, lacking footnotes or comments from competent historians or literary scholars.

This was the reason that, in 2010, the Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich, financially supported by the Freistaat Bayern, decided to publish a commented and critical edition of Mein Kampf, assuming that only libraries and historians would acquire this book. The result of the work was two volumes, priced at 135 euros, which the institute published on January 8, 2016. Red Baron immediately ordered a copy but had to wait three months before the second edition was printed. In the meantime, the institute has sold 85.000 copies of the 2000-page volumes. The revenues benefit victims of National Socialism.

Last Saturday, the Badische Zeitung titled Affirmation of Antisemitism related to the contents of a book by Jeremy Adler, scholar and professor emeritus at London’s King’s College, “The Absolute Evil.” The author violently criticizes IfZ’s editing work of Mein Kampf, e.g., for not commenting on negative sentences regarding the Jews.

For me, Hitler’s phrases, “Jews belong to a race and are not defined by their religion, they pillage their fellow human beings, and are driven by naked egoism,” are clear statements of hate and clearly prove Hitler’s brutal antisemitism. These statements need not be commented on even for today’s readers, and this does not compromise the careful work of the IfZ.

Adler continues his struggle (seinen Kampf), “In Mein Kampf, Hitler mixes the theory of state with Darwinism, Enlightenment with political Romanticism, and the ideal of education with racism in an unbearable way.” This is precisely what makes Hitler’s book so indigestible and what the IfZ has focused on in its meticulous source study.

Adler culminates in the statement, “Absolute evil cannot be edited.” This remark only shows that Adler has not understood the work of the IfZ. Its task was not to evaluate Mein Kampf, as hundreds of historians have done before, but to comment on the book so that future generations will still find access to its contents.

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