What Does It Mean to Be Human?

Was bedeutet Menschsein? was the title of a musical reading about the exceptional Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla.

Solo artist Cordula Sauter from Freiburg presented this extraordinary man, who always remained true to himself despite enormous resistance, with his accordion solo pieces.

Piazzolla grew up in the Bronx, New York. His life was a constant series of ups and downs, which he drew on and expressed in his music. He developed his Tango Nuevo from the traditional Tango Argentino, incorporating elements of classical music, jazz, and klezmer. In doing so, he shook the foundations of his homeland's musical tradition and only gained recognition there late in life.

American composer John Adams said: "Astor Piazzolla wrote music about the flawed confusion of human beings—music that was steeped in sweat and smoke, as impure as our bodies with their food stains and shame. With its wrinkles, dreams, prophecies, its embellishments of love and hate, stupidity, political convictions, denials, doubts, and affirmations. Music as impure as old clothes that smell of lilies and urine."

Cordula Sauter enriched the one-hour program of Piazzolla's accordion solo pieces with thoughts on being human in literary prose at the time when the respective pieces were written. Food for thought was: "Forgetting," "Freedom/being free," "Heimat," "Dreams," "Aimlessness," "Liveliness," "Fear."

Red Baron has personal difficulties with two of these thought-provoking ideas, while Goethe had his challenges with freedom. In his drama Egmont, the title character asks the Spanish Governor of the occupied Netherlands, Duke Alba, "Who guarantees freedom to the Dutch?" The Duke answers, "Freedom is a beautiful word. Who understands it correctly?"

Rosa Luxemburg thought she understood the "word" when she gave the all-encompassing answer, "Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently."

For Red Baron, freedom is the ability to live my life while living with others.

Cordula's other thought-provoking idea that has always preoccupied Red Baron is "Heimat." The German term is inadequately translated by the English words "home" or "homeland." In German, Heimat means all of the following:

• Place (landscape, city, dialect)
• Time (childhood, memories)
• Relationship (familiarity, recognition)
• Identity ("I am not a stranger here").

Here are two testimonies about Heimat:

Philosopher Martin Heidegger had a deep connection to his Black Forest: "Heimat is the place where language brings the Being into appearance and Being dwells in man."

Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Augstein on their way to Todtnauberg (©Der Spiegel)

I remember that towards the end of his life, Heidegger is said to have remarked that all that remained of his philosophy was his rooted Being in his Heimat, his hut near Todtnauberg.

Martin at the entrance to his hut (©bpk/Digne Meller Marcovicz)

Last Sunday, Red Baron, as a member of the Association supporting the Freiburg Documentation Center on National Socialism, was invited to a pre-tour of the new temporary exhibition Ende der Zeitzeugenschaft (The end of contemporary witnessing).

    

Witnesses who still remember the horrific events of the Third Reich are dying out. This exhibition shows videos of interviews with contemporary eyewitnesses made in the 1990s. 

One of them is Lotte Paepke, who, as a Freiburg resident and Holocaust survivor, recounts her experiences during the Nazi era. When asked about her Heimat, she said that "coming home" to Israel felt good, but when the interviewer continued to cite the final sentence of Ernst Bloch's three-volume work, The Principle of Hope, where "he states that all people are searching for something - and I quote,' which shines into the childhood of all and in which no one has yet been: Heimat. 'Is there a Heimat at the end of your life?"

Thinking of her country of birth, Lotte answered:

As a child, Red Baron was displaced throughout Germany during the last war. Afterward, he attended school in Hamburg for 9 years, studied at the universities of Tübingen, Göttingen, and Munich, worked at CERN in Geneva for 32 years, and has been retired in Freiburg for 25 years. So, I never had a Heimat.

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