I'm no icon maker, but I did feel the urge to create some icons for my latest mini fandom, depicting some of its dramatis personae. Meaning cahn and mildred_of_midgard, but if anyone else wants to have them, you're very welcome, as long as you credit.

Wilhelmine, Princess of Prussia and Margravine of Bayreuth:



As you can see, the first one is from what is probably the most famous of her portraits, with her spaniel Folichon and a book. The last one is from the mid 1750s, i.e. France and Italian journey time, just a few years before her death.

( More Rococo Prussians and an Austrian under the cut )

Dear Yuletide Writer,

thank you so much for creating a story for me! I hope you'll enjoy the experience and appreciate the work you're doing - writing a story in a tiny fandom we share is absolutely lovely, and I'm guaranteed to be pleased by your gift, so don't fret. My prompts are just that, prompts, not absolutes; if you have an idea that doesn't fit with any of them, but features the characters I asked for, I'll love it with added joyful surprise.

Some general do's and don'ts:

Canon: generally I prefer stories to adher to it. Now some AUs are fascinating and great ways to examine a character further, and I love the "Five things" format both as a writer and reader, so if you're struck by an idea which necessitates a departure from canon, don't let that stop you. It's just that if the story needs a long note explaining all that is different in this AU as an introduction, it's probably too far from canon for me. After all, I feel in love with this particular fictional universe and the characters in it for a reason.

Sex: whatever works best for you when writing the story. None at all, i.e. gen, slash, het, poly, I'm good either way as a reader. If there are any pairings I absolutely don't want to read about, I'll mention them in the prompts. No A/B/O in any case, though.

Character bashing: is a strict do not want. Though let me clarify a bit, because some of the characters in the fandoms I've requested hate other characters' guts, and it would be downright ooc for them to suddenly feel fair-minded and friendly towards them. So: in such a case, if, say, the pov character is canonically full of ire towards X, I wouldn't call this character making negative statements about X either in dialogue or in thoughts bashing. Otoh, if all the characters in the story follow suit and declare how much X sucks, while X never gets a positive word out, I'd call that bashing. If you yourself loathe a character - and it happens, to me, too - who'd usually be present in the story and feel uncomfortable writing them in a non-negative manner, I'd rather you declare that character absent from canon for whatever reason works best.

Character death: if it serves the story, go for it. It wouldn't be a problem for me.

( 18th Century Frederician RPF )

( Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly )

( I Medici/ Medici: Masters of Florence )


( The Last Kingdom (TV) )

Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Würzburg, one of the last German cities to be firebombed in WWII before the surrender. The assumption on the German side had been it wouldn't be, since it didn't have any big industries and a lot of hospitals, but a) by March 1945, there were hardly any German cities left to bomb, and bombing was still deemed essential for demoralizing the population, b) Würzburg had an almost intact medieval city center full of timber buildings, which meant it would be ideal for a firestorm (and in fact 90% of it was burned) and c) it still was a transport hub for trains (such as were still going in March 45). (BTW, this is still true - Würzburg is a central junction for switching trains even today.)

Now, most of the citizens of Würzburg were not by any definition of the word resistance fighters, or even neutral. In 1930, three years before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, a Jewish-Russian theatre troup was supposed to perform the play The Dybbuk in the local theatre, and the local Nazis were so successful in organizing riots against the performance that anyone visiting the theatre anyway that evening had to be escorted by the police. The Nazis came to power in January 1933; by March 1933, the Mayor was forced to leave office and make way for an NSDAP member, leaving an undisputedly Nazi-led city behind. Everything that happened in the rest of Germany - book burnings, boycotts, progroms, and then, starting in 1941, deportations of the remaining Jewish citizens - happened in Würzburg, too.

But here's the thing. Today, Würzburg, like Dresden, is part of the Community of the Cross of Nails, started in and by Coventry, where after the 1940 bombardment three large nails were found in the destroyed Cathedral. In today's anniversary concert in Würzburg, they will sing Dona Nobis Pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and they will recite the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation at the Marienkapelle. And every time I think about how absolutely toxic the endless WWII cult in Britain has become, how much it has contributed to the currrently unfolding disaster, I also remind myself that in Britain, you had parliamentary debates the justification of "area bombing" and "morale bombing" throughout the war. You had people saying that no, the dead of Dresden and Würzburg were not justifed by the dead of Coventry and London. Okay,so it was just Bishop George Bell in the House of Lords and two Labour MPs in the House of Commons, but still. In Britain, during a war against an undisputably evil foe who had demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt what his aims were, you had voices saying that no, even fighting Nazis, the end does not justify all means, and you had them in one of the branches of government.

See, to me, this strikes me as something far more impressive than the endlessly hailed "Blitz spirit". Because, as, among other things, the complete lack of intended effect of "morale bombing" in Germany proved, any nation bombed, no matter what its leadership is like, is prone to respond with rallying together. But it's a rare human being who will say "no, the end does NOT justify the means, even against Hitler", and it takes an admirable sense of democracy to have these voices heard instead of forbidding them during a crisis and/or a time of war. In any nation, helping each other's neighbours when they lose their home is thankfully something more prevelant than the opposite. But to reach out to a suffering enemy after one's own suffering, to offer to become twin cities as Coventry did to Dresden in the mid-1950s (when in addition to everything else, Dresden was behind the Iron Curtain and thus part of the Eastern bloc) - that takes a generosity of spirit and a human decency which we should all strive to.

I watch the Brexiteers with their ridiculously inappropriate WWII comparisons, see the millionth WWII era tale (featuring Plucky Hero(ine) Fighting Evil Nazis) announced, and wonder: if pop culture had adopted this other heritage from WWII to even a third of the degree, might that have made a difference?

Talking to shadowkat reminded me again of the Chequers Affair, by which I don’t mean Theresa May’s Brexit plans but Margaret Thatcher summoning various historians and politicians in March 1990 to brood on the German national character and the dangers reunification would pose. The Powell memorandum from said day put it thusly:

We started by talking about the Germans themselves and their characteristics (…): their insensitivity to the feelings of others, their obsession with themselves, a strong inclination to self-pity, and a longing to be liked. Some even less flattering attributes were also mentioned as an abiding part of the German national character: in alphabetical order, angst, aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality. Two further aspects of the German character were cited as reasons for concern about the future. First, a capacity for excess, to overdo things, to kick over the traces. Second, a tendency to overestimate their own strengths and capabilities.

*looks at the current state of Britain after two years of Brexit madness*
Boy, was someone projecting or what?

More seriously, I don’t believe in „national character“. (Of either nation.) I do think, however, such portraits are always instructive regarding the painters, in this case, a bunch of influential Tories reflecting a widely shared mind set (and not just among Tories). And I suspect most, though not all, of the characteristics named are shared by two thirds of politicians in any given nation.

On the other hand, I also believe, current messy state of the world not withstanding, that we (as in we, human beings) can do better. Today (December 7th) is also the anniversary of what I still think is one of the most powerful gestures any politician ever made: Willy Brandt’s kneefall at the Warsaw memorial in 1970. Since I suspect many younger readers aren’t aware of what happened anymore, here it is, in an English language report:



I can’t think of a speech that could/would have conveyed what Brandt did with a gesture here. And it needed to be done – not as an ending, mind, but as something driving acknowledgment and repentance forward. The historical constellation is also important – if it had been any other post war Chancellor but Brandt, the meaning would not have been the same. He, who had been a resistance fighter and exile during the Third Reich, was without personal guilt. He wasn’t trying to wash away the blood from his own hands by assuming a general responsibility. He was really kneeling as the embodiment of the nation here, in a way heads of government rarely are when it comes to a nation’s responsibilities, as opposed to celebrations.

Brandt was anything but perfect. But, looking around the world right now, I wish we had more politicians in government who are capable of what he was, at his best.

Yesterday was our not-national holiday which nonetheless is one of the most poignant of days if you’re German, because so much of German history, both the terrible and the good, seems to have happened on November 9th. (BTW, this is also why November 11th usually has less impact in German as opposed to other nations, WWI-related; it’s overshadowed by November 9th. This year is something of an exception because of the centennary.)

This article is an excellent summing up of all that happened, and how it continues to impact. Speaking of anniversaries, this year it’s 80 years for the night of the progroms - Kristallnacht - and 100 years for the November Revolution and the first German Republic. (Also 100 years of votes for German women; something all the anniversary stuff has reminded me off that the declaration of the Republic included a declaration of immediate votes for women (from age 24 onwards), no more delays.) Our current day politicians more often than not aren’t that quotable, but I must say I thought both our head of state (Steinmeier) and our head of government (Merkel) really came through this year, not least because their speeches powerfully went for the present day threats to democracy, both within Germany (read: the AFD) and abroad (take your pick among all the authoritarianism and right extremism) in addition to looking at the past. In the case of the progrom night anniversary, they both pointed out that nothing started in 1938, that all the normalisation of hate - by law, by custom, by speech - that had gone before it had made it possible. And regarding the start of the Weimar Republic, that to dismiss it as doomed for the start was ignoring lhow actively people were working against it; the Nazis weren’t somehow inevitable, it needed a great many people in all institutions ignoring, supporting and handwaving. Also, not to honor the people who were working for a republic, who had been struggling for equal rights for years and would continue to do so, is to buy into the propaganda of Hitler & Co. as well, not to mention that of the current bunch with their love of strongmen and disregard for democratic process.

100 Years for the first German Democracy Speech by President Steinmeier (the German original, but an English translation link is there as well)
80 Years Reichskristillnacht Speech by President Steinmeier (again, English trnaslation linked)

80 Years Kristallnacht Speech by Chancellor Merkel; alas, no English translation yet, linked, which is a double pity because as our journalists commented, in many ways it’s also her declaration of guiding principles in general. She gave this speech yesterday in the Berlin main Synagogue in the memorial service held there. (To which, btw, representatives of all German parties save one were invited. As the head of the leading German-Jewish organisation said, ilt would have been unbearable to have a party there which actively works against our Erinnerungskultur, our culture of remembrance, trivializes the Holocaust and employs demagogery in that awfully familiar style. (Wouldn’t you know it, the AFD of course declared themselves insulted. Because any antisemitism in Germany does of course not come from them but exclusively from Muslim refugees. Bah.) As part of the service, young people also read excerpts from letters and diaries written in that November 1938, and it struck me, again, that ensuring those voices keep getting heard - and listened to! - is the best way to honor them.

In the past weeks, I've been majorly distracted from US and British political crazy by our own, homegrown German political crazy, and thus I want to share the dubious joy. Also because I just read yet another article (which was about a different subject altogether, to wit, Macron) managing to get just about everything wrong about the current govermental situation in Germany in terms of who is who, and I admit it can be confusing if you're not familiar with the backstory. Thus, some (utterly biased) backstory.

Currently governing conservative parties in Germany: these are the CDU and the CSU. ("Christian Democratic Union" and "Christian Social Union" respecticely. The names, btw, are much cause for ridicule these days, not least because the CSU isn''t displaying signs of behaving Christian, social or in a union and hasn't for some years.) Together, they're known as "die Union". Per an agreement hammered out many a decade ago in post war Germany, they've been in a coalition for said decades. The CDU is on the ballots in all German states except Bavaria. Notable chancellors from the CDU: Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and currently Angela Merkel.

CSU: is on the ballots in Bavaria and Bavaria only. With one exception, has held the absolute majority in Bavaria for decades without having to form a coalition with another party to govern said state, which is why CSU leaders tend to behave with some megalomania. (Yes, they are in a coalition with the CDU on a national level, but not, and this is important, with anyone on a state level. Remember, we are a Federal Republic.) The previous one exception to the CSU's experience of one party rule within Bavaria happened when Edmund Stoiber after many a year of absolute rule over party and state made the mistake of announcing he wanted to continue as governor for yet another legislative period. This caused a bunch of other CSU head honchos to realise that they'd soon be too old to have a shot at the top job themselves, and lead an inner party revolt against Stoiber, who never forgave or forgot. Since no one schemes like a dethroned conservative party leader, Stoiber promptly started his own campaign against his successor, Beckstein. This was helped by the fact that the open power struggles led to the irritated Bavarian electorate for the first time foregoing to give the CSU an absolute majority within Bavaria. So they had to govern the state in a coalition with the FDP for one term. They're still traumatized by this experience. (Which is normal for any other party in any of the other German states.) Anyway, this together with Stoiber's scheming led to Beckstein being dethroned in turn and replaced by Stoiber's protege Horst Seehofer. Who got the absolute majority back, which resulted in him becoming even more megalomaniac than the avarage CSU boss, which was a huge factor in the current 2018 situation, where the CSU is currently at a historic low of 35 % at the polls (and it's state election time in October).

But before I get back to the national level, some more Bavarian stuff. One thing particular to Seehofer was that he abused members of his own cabinet in the press, which was something even previous CSU leaders had never done. (Abused each other in private, and per carefully launched indiscretions, sure. But not in authorized interviews with the press.) And there was none he abused more than his future successor, as of this year, Markus Söder. Söder was secretary of finances in Seehofer's Bavarian cabinet and has been gunning for the top job since the last decade. He's alsao incredibly thick skinned (at least in public) not just about Seehofer's insults but being the butt joke of just about every Bavarian comedian's sketch during the last decade either. Bascially, he's Uriah Heep. Last year in autumn, his hour finally came, when Seehofer was weakened by his two years feud with Angela Merkel and the disastrous fallout of the national elections, and thus Söder dethroned Seehofer, who was more or less forced to resign as ruler of Bavaria (but not as head of the party, officially he's still that). Now both Söder and Seehofer tried to combat the emergence of our current bunch of Neonazis, the AFD, as a political party making it in the parliaments by adopting their right extremist rethoric and beating the anti refugee drum non stop. This, however, did not pay off at the polls within Bavaria. People prone to fall for the right wing extremist rethoric still vote for the AFD while the CSU lost all the moderate centrists that used to go to them by default. Hence them going from absolute majority into freefall, as of yesterday 35%, while the Greens, who managed to gain much of the moderate votes the CSU lost, are currently at 17% and rising at polls. Unless a miracle (from the CSU's pov happens), they WILL have to govern in a coaltion within Bavaria after the October election. In a belated attempt to woo back moderate voters, they've sworn never to govern with the AFD, but they also said they'd never govern with the (very pro immigrant) Greens, which leaves them with the FDP (Liberals in the European, not the US sense, used to be pro business moderates in the 70s and 80s, have moved a lot to the right in the last years, weren't donig badly in the last national election but then behaved like asses and have been losing voters since), which might or might not make it into parliament at all, the SDP (also in a freefall due to being in a coaltion with the Union on a national level, constantly arguing with the CSU on said national level, too), or the Freie Wähler ( right wing Bavarian party not campaigning on a national level at all, but also not doing very well within Bavaria since they lost a lot of the right wing protest voter types to the AFD). So it'll be either CSU + two or three other parties or CSU + their arch enemy in a state they regarded as their absolute fiefdom since decades, and they are in a (well deserved) panic. Bear this in mind as motivation for current events.


Now, back to the national level. The CDU/CSU coalition agreement on said national level had remained more or less solid throughout the Bonn republic, whether or not they are in government. There was one major crisis, when the then CSU boss and ruler of Bavaria, Franz Josef Strauß, had it out with Helmut Kohl (then CDU boss but not yet chancellor; this was when the conservatives were in opposition on a national level while the SDP was governing in a coalition with the FDP), because Strauß thought he'd make the better future Chancellor, and wanted to end die Union for about give minutes. After Kohl's retort that if the CSU did that, the CDU would campaign within Bavaria, Strauß gave in. (Because he knew this would have ended the CSU's absolute majority within Bavaria. Remember, this is the CSU's holy grail.) Bear in mind here that the CDU/CSU coalition had actually, in order to fulfill their coalition obligation, run campaigns with a CSU candidate for chancellor on a national level. Twice. Once with Strauß (was defeated, never got over it,especially when Kohl was the Union's candidate in the next elections and won), and later once with Edmund Stoiber (who lost as well and had to give way to Angela Merkel who won the next national campaign). So far, no CSU leader ever became Chancellor, but that hasn't stopped any of them thinking they could have done better than whoever was the CDU-originated Chancellor. Which brings us at last to the Seehofer versus Merkel struggle which has been a disaster on just about every level in the last three years. Before 2015, all Seehofer (still basking in having rewon the absolute majority for the CSU within Bavaria) had to argue with Merkel about were whether or not there should be taxes for non German users of the highways, which was a CSU pet subject, and no one paid much attention.And then came the so called "refugee crisis".

(Which, no, did NOT start with "Merkel opening the borders". The borders were already open and had been since the mid 1990s, by EU law, as anyone who travelled from and to Germany by land from any other country could attest. (No border controls within EU countries adhering to the Schengen Agreement.) "Merkel opened the borders" is a lazy journalistic shorthand originated by the AFD which I wish people would stop using. What she did back in 2015 was saying that Germany would accept more refugees in response to the (btw still continuing) horrible situation, as opposed to clinging to the Dublin Agreement (which said that refugees should stay in whichever EU country they first entered, which basically dumps most of the refugees on the Mediterranean countries with a shore.)

This led to Seehofer openly quarelling with Merkel (with whom, again, he was officially in a governing coalition) for two solid years and calling her every name in the book (not surprising coming from the guy who thinks nothing of ridiculing his own subordinates to the press), and then, for the 2017 national elections, performing a U-Turn and telling his CSU voters to vote for her. As absolutely everybody had predicted for two years as well, not many of them listened. Never one to seek fault in himself, Seehofer then proceeded to drag out negotiations for the next governing coalition for nearly half a year, continuing to beat the anti refugee drum and talking about little else in the expectation this would secure the absolute majority for the CSU within Bavaria again in the upcoming state elections. Instead, see above, the opposite happened and is still happening. Now, since Seehofer in between got dethroned by Söder as governor of Bavaria, see above, and is now serving instead as secretary of the interior in Merkel's cabinet (which he resigned from for four or five hours on public tv some months back, claiming "I cannot work with this woman!" and then to great regret for many a German resigned from his resignation), you'd think he'd see the benefit of changing course once in a while and doing something actually constructive, but no such luck. Not our Horst Seehofer, who like all his predecessors excells at vengeance. He knows he's living on borrowed time, having lost the governorship, since undoubtedly after the Bavarian elections in October Söder will blame him from the CSU's loss of the absolute majority, hoping Seehofer as a scapegoat for that impending disaster will prevent his own demise. Then he'll be replaced as the CSU's secretary of the interior as well. (The CSU has never been kind to anyone who can't deliver the absolute majority.) So basically 2018 is the ending of his political career, one way or the other. But he wants REVENGEEEE, and thus according to unkillable rumors he's declared he'll drag Söder and Merkel, the two people he hates most, with him.

Currently, he's doing this via supporting the most loathed head of the German FBI or MI5 in post war history and refusing to dismiss him. Backstory: modelled on the CIA for foreign shores, FBI for the interior spying, we have the BND as our out of Germany spy service and the Verfassungsschutz (literally: "Protection of the constitution") for acting within the country. The Verfassungsschutz' image has never been stellar; one of its most notorious failings happened in the 1990s. When our Supreme Court had to decide whether or not to forbid the NPD (which has now faded into oblivion because its clientele wandered off to the AFD), then the German Neonazi party, it turned out that so many top NPD officials were secretly double agents for the Verfassungsschutz that it couldn't be done. Now, this wasn't the current guy's fault (in the 1990s, he was still busy writing his doctoral thesis aboiut "the dangers of asylum seeker immigration", I kid you not); the Verfassungsschutz being notoriously arch conservative as well as not that able to do anything about right wing terrorists predates him. But he certainly fit right in. Also, to be fair, he was appointed by Seehofer's predecessor as secretary of the interior (as opposed to the FBI, the Verfassungsschutz doesn't resport to the justice department but to the one of the interior). But Seehofer was his boss during the last year, in which the following gems happened: Maaßen (that's the spy chief's name) first denied to an enquiry by parliament that he had an agent anywhere near Amri (the terrorist responsible for the attack at the Breidscheidplatz christmas market in Berlin), but now it turns out he did have an agent in Amri's mosque; the Verfassungsschutz also had an agent near the NSU terrorists (= right wing terrorists responsible for a murder (of people with a migrant background) series in the first decade of the millennia; the interminable trial against the surviving members finally ended last year), once even during an attack, who also didn't stop anything, and Maaßen has those files about the agent in question closed for the next 120 years, I kid you not; and then an AFD (remember, current bunch of Neonazis) deserter revealed Maaßen has repeatedly met and chatted with top level AFD party leaders, coaching them how to avoid being under investigation by the Verfassungsschutz.

Maaßen of course denied the later and at first also kept mum about the former, then modified this to "meeting of functionaries of all political parties represented in parliament is part of my job", never mind he already met the AFD guys before the last national election put them into parliament for the first time. While this made for a slow brewing angry stew of public opinion, things then suddenly changed gear into a bad headline every five hours last week. Two weeks ago, something happened which was reported on an international level, so you may have heard about it. An argument in Chemnitz, Saxony, escalated into one man getting knifed by two migrants. Never mind the irony that the victim was Cuban-German, tending to the left (and liking Facebook groups like "FUCK AFD"), i.e. the very kind of person the AFD bashes when they're alive; in death, he was immediately declared the pure German victim of immigration policy, with right extermists rallying thousands of people to march within hours. (In the following days, there were also counter demonstrations, but not until three days later did these equal the "Identitarian" demonstrations in numbers. One of the most disturbing things the entire event demonstrated was how well organized right wing extremists have become.) Cue people not just shouting slogans but several giving Hitler salutes (which is illegal in Germany, and punishable by months in prison), attacks on people with visible migrant background by members of the demonstrations, and one Jewish restaurant owner (and his restaurant) being beaten up. Cue most German party leaders and upper functionaries expressing outrage and shame immediately. (With the obvious exception of the AFD.)Horst Seehofer, though as secretary of the interior the fact the police had not managed to contain the demonstrations on the first tday fell squarely into his job ressort remained silent for days.

Now, last weekend, Maaßen saw it fit to given an interview to our equivalent of the Daily Mail in Britain, or of the National Enquirer in the US (or maybe Fox News in print form?), the BILD, in which he said that one of the videos showing how migrants were harrassed (as in, both verbally abused and people running towards/after them) was not "authentic", that there had been no proof of any attacks against foreigners in Chemnitz, that it was wrong to speak of people being "hounded" iin Chemnitz that day (which had been the expression Angela Merkel's spokesman, Seibert, had used in his statement for the Chancellor on the day in question), and that the whole thing was in his opinion a tactic to distract from the true outrage of Chemnitz, "the murder" of a German. (I'm putting "murder" in quotes not because the poor guy in question is less dead but because the police is actually charging the two men arrested with manslaughter.) This interview, it later turned out, had been cleared with Seehofer, and Maaßen had even added his "no proof the video is authentic" remark when authorizing the original quotes.

Given that the two men harrassed in the video in question had actually gone to the police to charge the people harrassing them, that this video was one of several showing such incidents, that there had been verbal reports about attacks from 126 (and rising) sources, you might say this caused an explosion all over Germany. AFD and its sympathizers cried with joy, of course (proof that any attack on a migrant was just fake news and part of the big conspiracy, according to the leader of one of the two major spy organizations in Germany). Since, however, renewed detailed investigation of the video Maaßen had singled out failed to produce any evidence it was anthing but the genuine article, Maaßen then revised his statement to claiming he hadn't meant the video was faked but that it had been put online with manipulative intent, that was had he'd meant with "not authentic"', and in any case it was up to the video producers to prove they weren't liars, not to him. And he'd denounced the use of the word "houndings" not to attack the chancellor but to support the governor of Saxony, who'd declared there'd been "no houndings in Chemnitz" (never mind that by now, the police report of that day which the governor in question must have had available before making that statement, and of course Maaßen must have read as well, has been leaked (on national tv, no less) and yes, it describes attacks and houndings with the except hour and minute).

By now, nearly all parties are demanding Maaßen's resignation as head of the Verfassungsschutz. (You can guess the obvious exceptions.) Since one of the parties demanding the resignation happenes to be the SPD, which is in government together with the CDU and the CSU, this means we have a stalemate since Seehofer has declared Maaßen has his complete support. Supposedly, on Tuesday there will be news. A favored guess is that everyone will spend the weekend trying to make Maaßen resign in order to save everyone's faces. Fair chance, since nobody comes out of this well, whatever happens. (Merkel should have fired Seehofer ages ago, even at the price of having to lead a minority government if the CSU had then withdrawn from the Union; Seehofer has been loathsome throughout; Maaßen ditto; and the SPD which only got dragged back into the so called "Groko" (for "Große Koalition" = "Big Coalition" = the two conservative parties and the Social Democrats, who used to be the big left wing party until the last five years when their free fall started in earnest, governing together) when the FDP after the last election refused to form a government with the Greens and the Union), can't do anything right in most voters' eyes right now, no matter whether they stick to their guns and leave the coaltion because of Maaßen or whether they stay with Maaßen or whether Maaßen is dismissed/resigns and they stay.

It's a bitter consolation price that whatever happens, Seehofer is finished on a personal level, and the CSU's absolute rule in Bavaria is over for at least the next four years.

Old joke from my university days: German folklore owes most of its existence to the Romantic Age. (And the ones immediately before and after, but English-speaking folk lump all those writers and professors together under the label "Romantic", so for the purposes of this entry, let's stick with that, otherwise the post will be over by the time I've explained about Sturm und Drang, Klassik, Vormärz und Biedermeier in addition to Romantik.) This is because in the last few decades of the 18th century, when our literature started to explode on the European scene, so to speak, one of the ways German-speaking writers got over the the long time inferiority complex which could be titled "The French Are Better At Everything" was to discover folk songs as "natural poetry". (Another was chucking out Corneille and Racine out of the window as literary models in favour of Shakespeare, but let's not get distracted.) Not only was it suddenly en vogue to collect Lieder, but to write them (and make them sound as if they were folk songs). This was also part of an attempt to establish a national identity, because there wasn't one in geographical terms. There was no Germany, there were a lot of German principalities. There was also first the French Revolution, and then Napoleon, who came, saw, and put the nominally still existing Holy Roman Empire out of its misery, reordering the various German states and establishing the Code Napoleon as law while he was at it. (This last one, btw, was not a bad thing, because it was a far more modern and equal civil code than anything our various principalities had to offer at that point.) So all that sudden interest in folk songs as a form of artistic expression, in medieval epics such as the Nibelungenlied and medieval poetry per se, and then, a generation later, also in folklore, with the Brothers Grimm the foremost (though neither the first nor the last) champions of collecting and publishing same came with a heavy dose of national identity searching (including wondering whether there was such a thing, and whether shared folklore and songs could contribute to define it).

However, as opposed to modern day anthropologists, all those German writers didn't exactly "collect", as in, hunt down songs and stories and transcribe them. It would be more accurately to say that a great many of them tried their hands and, well, writing their own. This is what happened with a famous three volume supposed collection of folk songs and folklore by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Armin, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which was hugely influential, but even critics at the time could tell most of the stories and songs weren't centuries old but had sprung from the imagination of the two authors and were how they imagined folk songs and folk lore should sound like. Now, Brentano and Armin were a poet and a writer respectively. The Brothers Grimm, on the other hand, were scholars. They had gotten a taste of folklore collecting when Brentano & Arnim asked them to help out with the third volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn. But as it turned out, Brentano especially was so productive with his own stuff that what the Grimms had collected wasn't needed. They'd caught the bug, though, and decided to publish their own collection. That one, thought they, would follow the scholarly ideal of tracing down folklore in various villages across the countryside and transcribing it,thus securing German oral tradition for posterity.

Fat chance. For starters, these were two librarians (and future university professors) we're talking about. They hardly knew any "simple villagers". And while Wilhelm was more socially inclined than the sharp-tongued Jacob, they had, in pratical terms, not much of an idea of how to communicate with the idealized German peasant they'd imagined. (There were some very awkward and fruitless encounters indeed.) Which meant that most of the fairy tales that ended up in the famous collection didn't hail from old, wise villagers in Hesse or other German principalities, they came from mostly young women out of the Grimms' social circle (meaning they were well-read middle class and in two cases even nobility), several of whom came from French emigré families (Protestants who had fled France when Louis XIV had revoked the edict of Nantes, several generations earlier). The sources closest to the "wise old peasant" ideal were a) a middle aged female pub owner, Dorothea Viehmann, who accordingly was the only fairy tale source named by the Grimms in the foreword to the first edition, and b) two old soldiers. (If you're wondering why several of the fairy tales feature soldiers coming home from the wars and out of a job...) But, like I said: the majority of fairy tales were contributed by well-read young women who were, of course, very much influenced by their education. And then Wilhelm Grimm took editing up to a new level so those fairy tales at least sounded like they had a shared tone. It's Wiilhelm who invented that tone, who came up with "Es war einmal..."/"Once upon a time" at the beginning and "und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute" at the end (wich doesn't mean "and they lived happily ever after, btw; the German ending, literally translated, means "and if they didn't die, they're still alive today". If you compare, say, the fairy tale "The Princess and the Frog" (or, as it is known in German, "The Frog King") in the first edition to the second and then to the last edition published during Wilhelm's life time, the single opening paragraph evolves into one and a half pages in the last version (which is the one most often reprinted today), and incidentally, it's a showcase for Wilhelm's poetic gifts and some of his best choices of phrase. "In einer Zeit, in der das Wünschen noch geholfen hat...'" "At a time when wishing still helped..." Not a centuries old oral tradition, though. Pure 19th century Wilhelm Grimm.

However, all those songs and fairy tales then most definitely became folklore. To the point where I'm willing to bet not many people when first hearing or singing it are aware that Sah ein Knab ein Röslein stehn was written by the young Goethe. And there is the probably most famous and infamous example of all: Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten aka the Loreley song, originally written as an untitled poem by Heinrich Heine for his second poetry collection, Das Buch der Lieder. A composer named Friedrich Silcher then came up with an earworm of a melody for it, and it got enthusiastically sung as a folk song by Germans thereafter to this very day. Chances are that if you've ever heard a German folk song, it will be this one. (Well, okay, this one and "Muß I denn", but the later is Elvis' fault.)

The reason why I said its progression from poem by the sublimely ironic Heinrich Heine to folk song of folk songs is both famous and infamous is this: come 1933, the Nazis set out to eliminate, as you all know, artists from German cultural canon who were Jewish. Heine was. What's more, he also was famous for his biting satire about the German politics and habits of his day, and ended up in French (!) exile. (Being best buddies with Karl Marx. Though he also hung out with the Rothschilds, Parisian branch. Only Heine.) Otoh there was no way you could eliminate the Loreley song from the collective consciousness at that point. So what Goebbels & Co. did was to decree that the song would only be reprinted with the signature "old folk song, writer unknown"). If you think this was immediately revised after 1945, think again. It took a shameful time till "Text: Heinrich Heine" was restored in all reprints. (YouTube still calls it "old folk song", btw, though Heine's name duly given. )

If you're wondering: was Heine using, in his original poem, which is about a fisherman entranced by a mermaid and thus crashing on the Loreley cliff in the river Rhine, a popular fairy tale of his own day? Wellllll. Not really. The first guy who came up with the idea of using the name of the Loreley cliff as the name of a nymph whose beauty lures any man seeing it to his doom was, wait for it, Clemens Brentano (remember him?). Heine read Brentano's version and thereafter created his own.

In conclusion: German folklore: we have it! Straight from the late 18th and 19th century.

The Other Days

Two thoroughly exhausting (but mostly in a good way) weeks are behind me; first the Frankfurt Book Fair, then a workshop (in a splendid environment, but still, it was work from morning till night). Hence no posts; I could only get online very briefly.

( Macron, Merkel, Rushdie, Atwood et all under the cut )

I was born in 1969, which means I was in school and just making the transition from child to teenager when Helmut Kohl became chancellor. By the time he was voted out of office, he’d been Chancellor for sixteen years. (Hence one of his nicknames: The Eternal Chancellor.) He died yesterday, the tributes haven’t stopped coming in, and as when Genscher and before him Helmut Schmidt died, I feel both a bit of history and a part of what formed my life when I was young has gone; I feel my own mortality.

Not because I was a fan. I never voted for him, not being a conservative. I disagreed with various of his policies. But when I look back, it occurs to me that growing up when I did, I internalized at least two of his core beliefs – that the European Union is our future, central to avoiding the horrors of the past (by which I don’t just mean WWII but centuries of European warfare), and that the French-German relationship is central for this. It’s no accident that probably the Kohl photograph included the most in the tributes both national and international was the one depicting him holding hands with Mitterand at Verdun. Of course, no post war German chancellor was likely to neglect France for obvious reasons, but Kohl, hailing from the Palatinate near the French border which during various French-German wars was always likely to be among the first regions to be devastated during those centuries of warfare, really made wooing the French personal. (And kept it up beyond office; till Mitterand’s death, they met at least once a month.)

(My favourite Kohl and Mitterand joke goes somewhat like this: Kohl during a state visit in Speyer inflicts his favourite dish, stuffed belly of pork, on Mitterand , who first looks appalled. Then Kohl whispers something into his ear, and suddenly Mitterand eats with all signs of enthusiasm and finishes the meal. Later, Kohl’s sidekicks want to know what he said, and Kohl reveals: “I said: If you don’t eat up, Francois, you’re getting the Saarland back.”)

Among the many obituaries trying to sum up the man, from chronically underestimated hedgehog to everyone else’s hare outmanoeuvring all rivals to lonely giant incapable of admitting mistakes or accepting criticism, I think this one works best for me, not uncritical (unsurprisingly, since it’s by Der Spiegel, a magazine Kohl saw as the enemy, but also respectful of his achievements. (Whereas, say, the obituary in the Guardian felt downright mean spirited.) I’m still trying to figure out what I feel. Not sadness; both because there would have had to have been affection first, and because he was in a very bad physical state, and had been for years. It is more like what you feel when you see a giant glacier which had been melting for many years at last dissolving into water and earth, and only then you understand that the sight of the glacier, the awareness of it, had been part of the landscape that told you who you were.

Helmut Schmidt has died, and jo_lasalle wrote a fantastic post saying very much what I feel, which you can read here. That sense of public duty, yes.

It wasn't unexpected at all, but it's the type of death that makes you feel a big part of your life has just become history.