Oh, for the days that we have seen

There’s this lovely old gentleman I know, Edgar Feuchtwanger, nephew of Lion Feuchtwanger the novelist I wrote my thesis about. Edgar F left Germany age 14 as part of the Kindertransport, which probably saved his life. He became a British citizen, married, had children, taught as a historian at Winchester university, published books on various subjects (with a speciality to Victorian times), most recently memoirs of his boyhood. Whenever I visit Britain, I try to see him, and since he still (occasionally, he’s physically fragile now) participates in some conferences on the subject of Lion Feuchtwanger or other exiles, I sometimes see him on these conferences as well. He’s kind, wise, and I only wish that when I age, it will be with his grace and dignity.

Now, because the mail in December isn’t the most reliable, I sent him my present early on. Yesterday, he emailed me to say it arrived safely, and in his mail he also mentioned that he, all his children and their children have just claimed and been granted the German citizenship which in Germany is the right of anyone who lost it due to the Third Reich (and their descendants).

It makes me feel so - I don’t know how. On the one hand, I’m glad he can do this. That he sees Germany today, with all its flaws, as a nation to be citizen of again. On the other hand, the obvious reason why he and his family did this makes me so sad. In the grotesque horror that the Orange Menace spreads, it’s easy to lose sight of the geographically (to me) closer grotesque insanity that is Brexit and the change of mentality in a country whose literature, pop culture, landscapes etc. I’ve always loved, and where I have so many friends. But I relate to Britain as a visitor. For Edgar Feuchtwanger, it was and is home. It was a safe harbor from the worst point of German history. It was where he made a life. And of course his children (all older than yours truly) are as English as they come.

Now Edgar Feuchtwanger is over 90 years old. This is so not how anyone’s life should come full circle.

Moving from fact to fiction (and fictionalized history) again: this review of THE POST, aka Steven Spielberg’s movie about the publication of the Pentagon Papers, mentions that besides the leading duo of Tom Hanks (of course) as Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katherine Graham, it stars ‬Bob Odenkirk as reporter B.  Bagdikian,  and Matthew Rhys as Daniel Ellsberg. Which means both my inner Better Call Saul and The Americans fan needs to see it. (If either fandom had more fanfiction-writing people in it, I’d expect crazy crossovers, but alas, the tales where a time travelling Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill works for the Washington Post or Richard Nixon belatedly is proven right by the revelation that Daniel Ellsberg really worked for the KGB won’t be written.

Sidenote I: it wasn’t until yesterday and a certain tweet [Bad username or unknown identity: “likeadeuce”] retweeted that it occured to me Philip and Elizabeth in The Americans have the same names as the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and might even have been named after them, i.e. their cover identities, on either a Doylist (the producers wanting an in-joke?) or Watsonian (one KGB official in charge felt whimsical) level.

Sidenote II: I saw an interview with Daniel Ellsberg somewhere last week where he mentions it’s odd that Spielberg chose to focus on the WP, when it was the New York Times who did all the work in that particular case, with the Post only coming in at the tail end. The same articles mentioned a few disgruntled NYT veterans who do feel this movie should have been their “All the President’s Men, and why give the glory fo the Post again. At a guess, because Spielberg liked that other movie a lot. And unfortunately, that’s all too often how historical drama (be it movies, tv shows, or theatre) works - people get edited out or reduced to minor roles when in reality they were the major players. (If they don’t get villainized. In Spielberg’s last historical movie, Bridge of Spies, this happened to the German lawyer of the American whose freedom the movie’s hero and his American lawyer, played by Tom Hanks (of course) was negotiating. In Spielberg’s movie, Vogel is a glib and sinister (in turns) Stasi apparatchik. Meanwhile, quoth the real life Frederic Pryor (i.e. the captured American in question): “The portrayal of Wolfgang Vogel, my East German lawyer who was negotiating the communist side, was unfair. They made him out to be a total apparatchik, and one of the villains. He wasn’t. He was a quiet, well-spoken man. The movie made it out to be a political thing, him trying to get the U.S. to publicly recognize the East German government. But it was more a waiting game the East Germans played to show the Russians they had the upper hand. Vogel was actually a very nice guy, whom I later visited several times.") (In this interview.
 
Back to the review of The Post I linked above. Key quote in is 70s nostalgia:
 
An American president who is evil but not stupid. People who publish leaked documents without winding up barricaded in London’s Ecuadorian embassy. People who publish leaked documents without winding up endorsing a president who is evil and stupid. And to add to this gorgeous period detail, Spielberg reproduces some of the characteristic middle-distance sound design and overlapping dialogue of his film work from the 70s.

Says something about the present day, doesn’t it, when the part of the 70s you want back isn’t the music but the non-stupid villains.

Lastly, I still have free slots for themes of your choice to ramble about in January, here.