Canada Slim and the Author’s Apartment 3: The Diplomat

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 8 September 2020

It must be difficult for followers of this first of two blogs to remain faithful and patient with the Chronicles of Canada Slim as they are not as often written as those of Building Everest.

 

 

 

To those who are new to the Chronicles, these posts are accounts of travels prior to the calendar year and have followed an alphabetical sequence of:

• Alsace
• Italy
• Lanzarote
• London
• Porto
• Serbia
• Switzerland

 

 

 

This post in the sequence is focused on Serbia and is the continuation of my story of a remarkable man and the museum in Belgrade that commemorates his achievements and prolongs the memory of the only Serbian (to date) to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature:

Ivo Andric.

 

 

 

 

Ivo Andrić (1892 – 1975) was a Yugoslav novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961.

His writings dealt mainly with life in his native Bosnia under Ottoman rule.

Born in Travnik in the Austrian Empire, modern-day Bosnia, Andrić attended high school in Sarajevo, where he became an active member of several South Slav national youth organizations.

 

 

Above: The house in which Andric was born

 

 

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Andrić was arrested and imprisoned by the Austro-Hungarian police, who suspected his involvement in the plot.

 

 

Above: The first page of the edition of the Domenica del Corriere, an Italian paper, with a drawing of Achille Beltrame depicting Gavrilo Princip killing Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo

 

 

As the authorities were unable to build a strong case against him, he spent much of the war under house arrest, only being released following a general amnesty for such cases in July 1917.

After the war, he studied South Slavic history and literature at universities in Zagreb and Graz, eventually attaining his Ph.D. in Graz in 1924.

 

 

 

 

He worked in the diplomatic service of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1920 to 1923 and again from 1924 to 1941.

In 1939, he became Yugoslavia’s ambassador to Germany, but his tenure ended in April 1941 with the German-led invasion of his country.

 

 

Above: Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia

 

 

Shortly after the invasion, Andrić returned to German-occupied Belgrade.

He lived quietly in a friend’s apartment for the duration of World War II, in conditions likened by some biographers to house arrest, and wrote some of his most important works, including Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge on the Drina).

 

 

Above: Ivo Andrić monument in Belgrade, Serbia

 

 

Following the war, Andrić was named to a number of ceremonial posts in Yugoslavia, which had since come under communist rule.

 

 

 

 

In 1961, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, selecting him over writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck and E. M. Forster.

The Committee cited “the epic force with which he traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from his country’s history“.

 

 

 

 

Afterwards, Andrić’s works found an international audience and were translated into a number of languages.

In subsequent years, he received a number of awards in his native country.

 

 

Above: Front cover art for The Bridge on the Drina written by Ivo Andrić

 

 

Andrić’s health declined substantially in late 1974.

He died in Belgrade the following March.

 

 

 

 

In the years following Andrić’s death, the Belgrade apartment where he spent much of World War II was converted into a museum and a nearby street corner was named in his honour.

It is this author’s apartment, this Ivo Andric Museum in Belgrade which I visited in the spring of 2018.

 

 

Above: Ivо Andric Museum Building, Belgrade, Serbia

 

 

A number of other cities in the former Yugoslavia also have streets bearing his name.

 

 

 

 

In 2012, filmmaker Emir Kusturica began construction of an ethno-town in eastern Bosnia that is named after Andrić.

 

 

Above: Main entrance of Andrićgrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina

 

 

As Yugoslavia’s only Nobel Prize-winning writer, Andrić was well known and respected in his native country during his lifetime.

 

 

 

 

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, beginning in the 1950s and continuing past the breakup of Yugoslavia, his works have been disparaged by Bosniak literary critics for their supposed anti-Muslim bias.

 

Above: Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina

 

 

In Croatia, his works were long shunned for nationalist reasons, and even briefly blacklisted following Yugoslavia’s dissolution, but were rehabilitated by the literary community at the start of the 21st century.

 

Above: Flag of Croatia

 

 

He is highly regarded in Serbia for his contributions to Serbian literature.

 

 

Above: Flag of Serbia

 

 

I have aspirations of becoming a published writer and I have always been fascinated by the lives of other writers and how those lives led to the fine literature that these literary legends produced.

 

In parts one and two of the Author’s Apartment, I wrote of Andric’s life from his birth and childhood to his studies and suffering (1892 -1920).

 

 

 

 

In 1920, after a time as a civil servant with the Ministry of Religion in Belgrade, Andric was taken into diplomatic service and a new chapter of his life began.

 

 

Above: Church of St. Sava, Belgrade

 

 

On 20 February 1920, Andrić’s request was granted and he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry’s mission at the Vatican.

 

 

Above: Flag of Vatican City

 

 

The post of Ambassador was occupied by the famous linguist Lujo Bakotic.

 

 

Above: Lujo Bakotic

 

 

(Lujo Bakotić (1867 – 1941) was a Serbian writer, publicist, lawyer, lexicographer and diplomat.

Though he was Roman Catholic, Bakotić considered himself Serbian, as had his father.

He completed his high school (gymnasium) education in Split, and jurisprudence in Vienna and Graz.

He was a lawyer by profession who was also politically active, representing the Serbian Party in the Diet of Dalmatia.

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Dalmatia

 

 

Owing to his party’s ideals he had to flee to Serbia in 1913.

With the start of the Great War, he left Belgrade for Niš and then went to Paris and finally Rome, where he was made a secretary in the Vatican to work on a mission, preparing a Concordat between Serbia and the Vatican (which never materialized).

After the war, he was Yugoslavia’s envoy at the Vatican from 1920 until 1923.

 

 

Above: St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City

 

 

He represented the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at The Hague, and later he was sent by the Serbian government to Moscow.

 

Above: Kurhaus, The Hague, The Netherlands

 

 

He retired as a civil servant in 1935.

Classically educated, Bakotić spoke several languages fluently, including: French, Italian, German, English, Latin and a number of Slavic languages and dialects.)

 

 

Above: Lujo Bakotić

 

 

Andric enthusiastically read the works of Francesco Guicciardini.

 

 

 

 

(Francesco Guicciardini (1483 – 1540) was an Italian historian and statesman.

A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance.

 

 

Above: Niccolò Macchiavelli (1469 – 1527)

 

 

In his masterpiece, The History of Italy, Guicciardini paved the way for a new style in historiography with his use of government sources to support arguments and the realistic analysis of the people and events of his time.

 

 

 

 

The History of Italy stands apart from all his writings because it was the one work which he wrote not for himself, but for the public.

In his research, Guicciardini drew upon material that he gathered from government records as well as from his own extensive experience in politics.

 

His many personal encounters with powerful Italian rulers serves to explain his perspective as a historian:

“Francesco Guicciardini might be called a psychological historian—for him the motive power of the huge clockwork of events may be traced down the mainspring of individual behavior.

Not any individual, be it noted, but those in positions of command: emperors, princes and popes who may be counted on to act always in terms of their self-interest—the famous Guicciardinian particolare.”

 

 

Above: Villa Ravà, Arcetri, the former home of the Guicciardini family, where Francesco Guicciardini wrote The History of Italy

 

 

In the following excerpt, the historian records his observations on the character of Pope Clement VII:

“And although he had a most capable intelligence and marvelous knowledge of world affairs, yet he lacked the corresponding resolution and execution.

For he was impeded not only by his timidity of spirit, which was by no means small, and by a strong reluctance to spend, but also by a certain innate irresolution and perplexity, so that he remained almost always in suspension and ambiguous when he was faced with those deciding those thing which from afar he had many times foreseen, considered, and almost revealed.“

 

 

Above: Pope Clement VII (né Giulio di Guiliano de’ Medici)(1478 – 1534)

 

 

Moreover, what sets Guicciardini apart from other historians of his time is his understanding of historical context.

 

His approach was already evident in his early work The History of Florence (1509):

“The young historian was already doubtlessly aware of the meaning of historical perspective; the same facts acquiring different weight in different contexts, a sense of proportion was called for.”

 

 

Above: Guicciardini Family Crest

 

 

In the words of one of Guicciardini’s severest critics, Francesco de Sanctis:

“If we consider intellectual power, the Storia d’Italia is the most important work that has issued from an Italian mind.“)

 

 

Above: Francesco de Sanctis (1817 – 1883)

 

 

Andric travelled through Tuscany with Milos Crnjanski.

 

 

Above: Miloš Crnjanski, 1914

 

 

(Miloš Crnjanski (1893 – 1977) was a Serbian writer and poet of the expressionist wing of Serbian modernism, author, and a diplomat.

 

 

 

 

Crnjanski was born in Csongrád, Hungary, to an impoverished family which moved in 1896 to Temesvár (today Timișoara, Romania).

He completed elementary school in Pančevo and grammar school in Timișoara.

 

Above: Images of Timisoara, Romania

 

 

Then he started attending the Export Academy in Rijeka in 1912, and in the autumn of the following year he started studying in Vienna.

 

 

Above: Harbour, Rijeka, Croatia

 

 

At the beginning of World War I, Crnjanski was persecuted as part of the general anti-Serbian retribution of Austria to Princip’s assassination in Sarajevo.

Instead of being sent to jail, he was drafted to the Austro-Hungarian Army and sent to the Galician front to fight against the Russians – where he was wounded in 1915.

Crnjanski convalesced in a Vienna war hospital, although just before the end of the war he was sent to the Italian front.

 

 

 

 

After the war, he graduated in literary studies from the University of Belgrade.

After graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy in 1922, he taught at the Fourth Belgrade Grammar School and espoused “radical modernism” in articles for periodicals including Ideje, Politika and Vreme – sparking “fierce literary and political debates“.

 

 

Above: University of Belgrade logo

 

 

He entered the diplomatic corps for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and worked in Germany (1935 – 1938) and Italy (1939 – 1941) before being evacuated during WWII to England.

 

 

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918 – 1941)

 

 

He took odd jobs and eventually became the London correspondent of the Argentinian periodical El economist.

During this period he wrote Druga knjiga Seoba (The Second Book on Migration) and Lament nad Beogradom (Lament over Belgrade).

 

 

Above. Tower Bridge, London, England

 

 

He returned to Belgrade after 20 years of exile in 1965 and shortly after published Sabrana dela u 10 tomova (“Collected works in 10 volumes”).

In 1971, he received the prestigious NIN award for Roman o Londonu.

 

 

Above: NIN Award logo

 

 

Crnjanski, aged 84, died in Belgrade on 30 November 1977.

He is interred in the Alley of Distinguished Citizens in the Belgrade New Cemetery.

He is considered a classic of Serbian literature by scholars as well as the public.

 

 

 

 

Crnjanski first books portrayed the futility of war.

He laid the foundations of the early avant-garde movement in Serbian literature, as exemplified by his 1920 Objašnjenje Sumatre (The Explanation of Sumatra):

“The world still hasn’t heard the terrible storm above our heads, while shakings come from beneath, not from political relations, not from literary dogmas, but from life.

Those are the dead reaching out!

They should be avenged.“

 

 

 

 

The Journal of Carnojevic is a lyrical novel by Miloš Crnjanski, which was first published in 1920.

 

 

 

The narrator of the novel is Petar Rajic, who tells his story in which there is no clearly established narrative flow, nor are events connected by cause and effect.

The protagonist of the book is a young Serbian soldier who lived in Vojvodina, now northern Serbia, which was, at the time, a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

When WW I began, he was, along with thousands of other young Serbs, recruited to the Austro-Hungarian army, and the war completely obliterated his image of the world.

Crnjanski himself had such a destiny, and he wrote the book right after coming back from the war – still as a young man.

The book is a combination of the present, the past and the future, strangely intertwined.

We can’t even say who he is – because of his alter ego, the sailor.

Just like the borders between the periods of life, the borders between persons are blurred and unclear.

 

“Autumn, and life without meaning.

I drag myself around taverns.

I sit by the window and stare at the mist and the yellow, wet, scarlet trees.

And where is life?”

 

“All they were doing, he said that somewhere, far away, on some island, was leaving a mark.

And when he would tell her that now, from her passionate smile, a red plant on Ceylon Island is drawing its strength to open, she would gaze at the distance.

She didn’t believe that all our actions could reach that far and that our power is so endless.

And that was the last thing he believed in.

Under the palm trees, in the hotel lobby, he told her that he didn’t believe someone could be killed, nor made unhappy.

He didn’t believe in the future.

He said his fleshly passions depended solely upon the color of the sky, and that life is being lived in vain – no, not in vain, but for the sake of a smile, with which he smiles to both plants and clouds.

He said that all his actions depended on some scarlet trees that he had seen on Ios Island.

She giggled.

Ah, he was funny and young.

So young.”

 

 

“I will go past borders and cities and villages and forests and waters and there will be nothing left on me but dust on my feet, silence in my heart and on my face a mild smile meaningless and burning.

So many are the places where something had been left, ripped out of my torn apart soul and my ragged life.“)

 

 

Above: Portrait of Milos Crnjanski

 

 

Andrić left Belgrade soon after, and reported for duty in late February.

At this time, he published his first short story, Put Alije Đerzeleza (The Journey of Alija Đerzelez).

 

 

 

 

(Gjergj Elez Alia or Đerzelez Alija is a popular legendary hero in epic poetry and literature in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gora and in northern Albania.

Muslims from Bosnian Krajina modeled the poetic image of Alija Đerzelez after the image of Serbian (Christian) Prince Marko, based on the historic person Ali Bey Mihaloğlu.

 

 

 

 

Marko Mrnjavčević  (1335 – 1395) was the de jure Serbian king from 1371 to 1395, while he was the de facto ruler of territory in western Macedonia centered on the town of Prilep.

He is known as Prince Marko and King Marko in South Slavic oral tradition, in which he has become a major character during the period of Ottoman rule over the Balkans.

 

 

Above: Portrait of Prince Marko

 

 

Marko’s father, King Vukašin, was co-ruler with Serbian Tsar Stefan Uroš V, whose reign was characterised by weakening central authority and the gradual disintegration of the Serbian Empire.

Vukašin’s holdings included lands in western Macedonia and Kosovo.

 

 

Above: King Vukasin

 

 

In 1370, he crowned Marko “young king“:

This title included the possibility that Marko would succeed the childless Uroš on the Serbian throne.

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Serbia

 

 

On 26 September 1371, Vukašin was killed and his forces defeated in the Battle of Maritsa.

About two months later, Tsar Uroš died.

This formally made Marko King of Serbia.

 

 

Above: Maritsa Valley

 

 

However, Serbian noblemen, who had become effectively independent from the central authority, did not even consider to recognise him as their supreme ruler.

Sometime after 1371, he became an Ottoman vassal.

 

 

Above: Ottoman Empire logo

 

 

By 1377, significant portions of the territory he inherited from Vukašin were seized by other noblemen.

King Marko, in reality, came to be a regional lord who ruled over a relatively small territory in western Macedonia.

 

 

 

He funded the construction of the Monastery of Saint Demetrius near Skopje (better known as Marko’s Monastery), which was completed in 1376.

 

Above: Marko’s Monastery

 

 

Marko died on 17 May 1395, fighting for the Ottomans against the Wallachians in the Battle of Rovine.

 

 

Above: Battle of Rovine

 

 

Although a ruler of modest historical significance, Marko became a major character in South Slavic oral tradition.

He is venerated as a national hero by the Serbs, Macedonians and Bulgarians, remembered in Balkan folklore as a fearless and powerful protector of the weak, who fought against injustice and confronted the Turks during the Ottoman occupation.

 

 

Above: A Herzegovinian sings with a gusle in an 1823 drawing.

Serbian epic poems were often sung, accompanied by this traditional instrument.

 

 

South Slavic legends about Kraljević Marko or Krali Marko are primarily based on myths much older than the historical Marko Mrnjavčević.

He differs in legend from the folk poems:

In some areas he was imagined as a giant who walked stepping on hilltops, his head touching the clouds.

 

He was said to have helped God shape the Earth, and created the river gorge in Demir Kapija (“Iron Gate“) with a stroke of his sabre.

This drained the sea covering the regions of Bitola, Mariovo and Tikveš in Macedonia, making them habitable.

 

 

Above: Demir Kapija

 

 

After the Earth was shaped, Marko arrogantly showed off his strength.

God took it away by leaving a bag as heavy as the Earth on a road.

When Marko tried to lift it, he lost his strength and became an ordinary man.

 

Legend also has it that Marko acquired his strength after he was suckled by a vila.

King Vukašin threw him into a river because he did not resemble him, but the boy was saved by a cowherd (who adopted him, and a vila suckled him).

 

 

Above: Serbian epic heroes Prince Marko and Miloš Obilić, and the vila Ravijojla

 

 

In other accounts, Marko was a shepherd (or cowherd) who found a vila‘s children lost in a mountain and shaded them against the sun (or gave them water).

As a reward the vila suckled him three times, and he could lift and throw a large boulder.

An Istrian version has Marko making a shade for two snakes, instead of the children.

In a Bulgarian version, each of the three draughts of milk he suckled from the vila‘s breast became a snake.

 

 

 

 

Marko was associated with large, solitary boulders and indentations in rocks:

The boulders were said to be thrown by him from a hill, and the indentations were his footprints (or the hoofprints of his horse).

He was also connected with geographic features such as hills, glens, cliffs, caves, rivers, brooks and groves, which he created or at which he did something memorable.

They were often named after him, and there are many toponyms (place names) — from Istria in the west to Bulgaria in the east — derived from his name.

In Bulgarian and Macedonian stories, Marko had an equally strong sister who competed with him in throwing boulders.

 

 

 

 

In some legends, Marko’s wonder horse was a gift from a vila (a mountain nymph).

A Serbian story says that he was looking for a horse who could bear him.

To test a steed, he would grab him by the tail and sling him over his shoulder.

Seeing a diseased piebald foal owned by some carters, Marko grabbed him by the tail but could not move him.

He bought (and cured) the foal, naming him Šarac.

He became an enormously powerful horse and Marko’s inseparable companion.

 

 

 

 

Macedonian legend has it that Marko, following a vila‘s advice, captured a sick horse on a mountain and cured him.

Crusted patches on the horse’s skin grew white hairs, and he became a piebald.

 

 

 

 

According to folk tradition Marko never died:

He lives on in a cave, in a moss-covered den or in an unknown land.

 

 

 

 

A Serbian legend recounts that Marko once fought a battle in which so many men were killed that the soldiers (and their horses) swam in blood.

He lifted his hands towards heaven and said:

“Oh God, what am I going to do now?”

God took pity on Marko, transporting him and Šarac to a cave (where Marko stuck his sabre into a rock and fell asleep).

 

 

 

 

There is moss in the cave.

Šarac eats it bit by bit, while the sabre slowly emerges from the rock.

When it falls on the ground and Šarac finishes the moss, Marko will awaken and reenter the world.

Some allegedly saw him after descending into a deep pit, where he lived in a large house in front of which Šarac was seen.

Others saw him in a faraway land, living in a cave.

 

 

 

 

According to Macedonian tradition Marko drank “eagle’s water“, which made him immortal.

He is with Elijah in heaven.

 

 

 

Mihaloğlu Ali Bey or Gazı Alauddin Mihaloğlu Ali Bey, (1425—1507) was an Ottoman military commander in the 15th century and the first sanjakbey (provincial governor) of the Sanjak of Smederevo (the territory of Belgrade).

He was one of the descendants of Köse Mihal, a Byzantine governor of Chirmenkia and battle companion of Osman Gazi.

 

 

 

 

I am not certain of why Ali Bey is so honoured, for it seems he was continuously defeated in almost every military campaign he was involved in.

 

 

 

Songs about Đerzelez Alija were transmitted by bilingual singers from South Slavic milieu to northern Albanian milieu, where he is known as Gjergj Elez Alia.)

 

 

The year 1920 was a year of great changes:

• the First Red Scare, a widespread fear of far left extremism in the United States, continues, as do the Palmer (after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer) Raids:  on one day alone (2 January) 4,025 people were arrested in several cities across the country – mostly Italian and Jewish immigrants were targeted.

 

• the Russian Civil War still raged

 

• the League of Nations began sessions in Paris before moving to Geneva

 

• the Netherlands refused to extradite exiled German Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859 – 1941)

 

• Prohibition in the United States began

 

• the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded and women’s suffragism realized in the US

 

 

• the victorious Allies carved up the former Ottoman Empire and Hungary lost 72% of its pre-WW1 territory

 

Above: The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, by Sir William Orpen

 

• the German Workers Party renamed itself the Nazi Party

 

• Estonia, Lithuania and Syria all gain their independence this year

Above: Flag of Estonia

 

• the world’s first peaceful establishment of a social democratic government took place in Sweden

 

• the US Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles claiming that it was too harsh on the defeated participants of WW1

 

• the Summer Olympics opened in Antwerp, Belgium

 

• the Mexican Revolution ended

 

• the Polish – Russian War ended in a Polish victory

Above: Five stages of the Polish-Soviet War

 

• Albanian PM Essad Pasha Toptani (1863 – 1920) was assassinated in Paris

 

• the US Postal Service ruled that children cannot be mailed

 

• three African American circus workers were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota

 

• Arthur Meighen (1874 – 1960) became the 9th Prime Minister of Canada

 

• the Irish War of Independence still raged, including “Bloody Sunday“

 

• the HIV / AIDS pandemic began in Léopoldville (today’s Kinshasa)

 

 

With the end of World War I and the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires the conditions were met for proclaiming the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in December 1918.

The Yugoslav ideal had long been cultivated by the intellectual circles of the three nations that gave the name to the country, but the international constellation of political forces and interests did not permit its implementation until then.

However, after the war, idealist intellectuals gave way to politicians, and the most influential Croatian politicians opposed the new state right from the start.

It was not certain through much of 1920 whether the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) would survive its own internal divisions.

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

 

 

As for the Vatican, the Roman Question was still unresolved.

On 9 February 1849, the Roman Republic took over the government of the Papal States.

In the following July, an intervention by French troops restored Pope Pius IX to power, making the Roman Question a hotly debated one even in the internal politics of France.

 

 

 

 

In July 1859, after France and Austria made an agreement that ended the short Second Italian War of Independence, an article headed “The Roman Question” in the Westminster Review expressed the opinion that the Papal States should be deprived of the Adriatic provinces and be restricted to the territory around Rome.

This became a reality in the following year, when most of the Papal States were annexed by what became the Kingdom of Italy.

 

 

Above: the Italian peninsula, 1796

 

 

The Vatican is the religious centre of Catholicism, but the question raged as to whether it should also continue to have its own territory.

This question was not resolved until 1929.

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of the Bishop of Rome (aka the Pope)

 

 

In the midst of all this, Andric began his diplomatic career.

 

 

 

 

Andric complained that the consulate was understaffed and that he did not have enough time to write.

All evidence suggests he had a strong distaste for the ceremony and pomp that accompanied his work in the diplomatic service, but according to Hawkesworth, he endured it with “dignified good grace“.

Around this time, he began writing in the Ekavian dialect used in Serbia, and ceased writing in the Ijekavian dialect used in his native Bosnia.

 

 

 

Andrić soon requested another assignment.

 

In November, he was transferred to Bucharest.

Once again, his health deteriorated.

Nevertheless, Andrić found his consular duties there did not require much effort, so he focused on writing, contributed articles to a Romanian journal and even had time to visit his family in Bosnia.

 

 

Above: Flag of Romania

 

 

The Treaty of Bucharest was signed between Romania and the Entente Powers on 17 August 1916 in Bucharest.

The treaty stipulated the conditions under which Romania agreed to join the war on the side of the Entente, particularly territorial promises in Austria-Hungary.

The signatories bound themselves to keep secret the contents of the treaty until a general peace was concluded.

 

 

Above: Treaty of Bucharest

 

 

Romanians!

The war which for the last two years has been encircling our frontiers more and more closely has shaken the ancient foundations of Europe to their depths.

It has brought the day which has been awaited for centuries by the national conscience, by the founders of the Romanian State, by those who united the principalities in the war of independence, by those responsible for the national renaissance.

It is the day of the union of all branches of our nation.

Today we are able to complete the task of our forefathers and to establish forever that which Michael the Great was only able to establish for a moment, namely, a Romanian union on both slopes of the Carpathians.

For us the mountains and plains of Bukowina, where Stephen the Great has slept for centuries.

In our moral energy and our valour lie the means of giving him back his birthright of a great and free Rumania from the Tisza to the Black Sea, and to prosper in peace in accordance with our customs and our hopes and dreams. 

Part of the proclamation by King Ferdinand, 28 August 1916

 

Above: King Ferdinand I of Romania (1865 – 1927)

 

 

The concept of “Greater Romania“ materialized as a geopolitical reality after the First World War.

Romania gained control over Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania.

As a result, most regions with clear Romanian majorities were merged into a single state.

It also led to the inclusion of sizable minorities, including Magyars (ethnic Hungarians), Germans, Jews, Ukrainians and Bulgarians — about 28% of the country’s population.

The borders established by the treaties concluding the war did not change until 1940.

The resulting state, often referred to as “România Mare” or România Întregită (roughly translated in English as “Romania Made Whole“), was seen as the ‘true’, whole Romanian state, or, as Tom Gallagher states, the “Holy Grail of Romanian nationalism“.

The Romanian ideology changed due to the demographic, cultural and social alterations, however the nationalist desire for a homogeneous Romanian state conflicted with the multiethnic, multicultural truth of Greater Romania.

From 1918 to 1938, Romania was a monarchy whose liberal Constitution was seldom respected in practice.

 

 

Above: Greater Romania (1920 – 1940)

 

 

In 1922, Andrić requested another reassignment.

He was transferred to the consulate in Trieste, where he arrived on 9 December 1922.

 

 

Above: Flag of Trieste

 

 

At the beginning of the 20th century, Trieste was a bustling cosmopolitan city frequented by artists and philosophers such as James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Sigmund Freud, Zofka Kveder, Dragotin Kette, Ivan Cankar, Scipio Slataper, and Umberto Saba.

The city was the major port on the Austrian Riviera, and perhaps the only real enclave of Mitteleuropa (i.e., Central Europe) on the Mediterranean.

Viennese architecture and coffeehouses dominate the streets of Trieste to this day.

 

 

Above: Images of Trieste

 

 

Italy, in return for entering World War I on the side of the Allied Powers, had been promised substantial territorial gains, which included the former Austrian Littoral and western Inner Carniola.

Italy therefore annexed the city of Trieste at the end of the war, in accordance with the provisions of the 1915 Treaty of London and the Italian-Yugoslav 1920 Treaty of Rapallo.

 

 

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Italy (1861 – 1946)

 

 

The Treaty of Rapallo was a treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929), signed to solve the dispute over some territories in the former Austrian Littoral in the upper Adriatic and in Dalmatia.

The treaty was signed on 12 November 1920 in Rapallo, near Genoa, Italy.

 

Above: Rapallo

 

 

Tension between Italy and Yugoslavia arose at the end of World War I, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved and Italy claimed the territories assigned to it by the secret Treaty of London of 1915.

According to the treaty signed in London on 26 April 1915 by the Kingdom of Italy and the Triple Entente, in case of victory at the end of World War I, Italy was to obtain several territorial gains including former Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia and notably Zadar, Šibenik, and most of the Dalmatian islands (except Krk and Rab).

These territories had an ethnically mixed population, with Slovenes and Croats composing over the half of the population of the region.

The treaty was therefore nullified with the Treaty of Versailles under pressure of President Woodrow Wilson, making void Italian claims on northern Dalmatia.

The objective of the Treaty of Rapallo was to find a compromise following the void created by the non-application of the Treaty of London of 1915.

 

 

 

 

While only a few thousands Italians remained in the newly established South Slavic state, a population of half a million Slavs, including the annexed Slovenes, were cut off from the remaining three-quarters of total Slovene population at the time and were subjected to forced Italianization.

Trieste had a large Italian majority, but it had more ethnic Slovene inhabitants than even Slovenia’s capital of Ljubljana at the end of 19th century.

 

 

 

 

Andric’s Trieste assignment meant he was representing Slovenes in a predominantly Slovene-populated territory now under Italian control.

 

 

Above: Peter Kozler’s map of the Slovene Lands, designed during the Spring of Nations in 1848, became the symbol of the quest for a United Slovenia.

 

 

The Italian lower middle class—who felt most threatened by the city’s Slovene middle class—sought to make Trieste a città italianissima, committing a series of attacks led by the Black Shirts against Slovene-owned shops, libraries, and lawyers’ offices, even burning down the Trieste National Hall, a central building to the Slovene community.

On 13 July 1920, the building was burned by the Fascist Blackshirts, led by Francesco Giunta.

 

 

 

The act was praised by Benito Mussolini, who had not yet assumed power, as a “masterpiece of the Triestine Fascism“.

It was part of a wider pogrom against the Slovenes and other Slavs in the very centre of Trieste and the harbinger of the ensuing violence against  Slovenes and Croats.

 

 

Above: Fascist logo

 

 

By the mid-1930s several thousand Slovenes, especially members of the middle class and the intelligentsia from Trieste, emigrated to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia or to South America.

Among the notable Slovene émigrés from Trieste were the author Vladimir Bartol, the legal theorist Boris Furlan and the Argentine architect Viktor Sulčič.

The political leadership of the around 70,000 émigrés from the Julian March in Yugoslavia was mostly composed of Trieste Slovenes: Lavo Čermelj, Josip Vilfan and Ivan Marija Čok.

 

 

Above: Flag of modern Slovenia

 

 

In 1926, claiming that it was restoring surnames to their original Italian form, the Italian government announced the Italianization of German, Slovene and Croatian surnames.

In the Province of Trieste alone, 3,000 surnames were modified and 60,000 people had their surnames amended to an Italian-sounding form.

The psychological trauma, experienced by more than 150,000 people, led to a massive emigration of German and Slavic families from Trieste.

Despite the exodus of the Slovene and German speakers, the city’s population increased because of the migration of Italians from other parts of Italy.

Several thousand ethnic Italians from Dalmatia also moved to Trieste from the newly created Yugoslavia.

 

 

 

 

The city’s damp climate only caused Andrić’s health to deteriorate further.

On his doctor’s advice, he transferred to Graz in January 1923.

 

 

Above: Hauptplatz, Graz, Austria

 

 

Graz is the capital city of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna.

 

 

Above: Graz

 

 

Emerging from the war, Austria had two main political parties on the right and one on the left.

 

 

Above: Flag of Austria

 

 

The right was split between clericalism and nationalism.

The Christian Social Party, (Christlichsoziale Partei, CS), had been founded in 1891 and achieved plurality from 1907–1911 before losing it to the socialists.

Their influence had been waning in the capital, even before 1914, but became the dominant party of the First Republic, and the party of government from 1920 onwards.

The CS had close ties to the Roman Catholic Church and was headed by a Catholic priest named Ignaz Seipel (1876–1932), who served twice as Chancellor (1922–1924 / 1926–1929).

While in power, Seipel was working for an alliance between wealthy industrialists and the Roman Catholic Church.

The CS drew its political support from conservative rural Catholics.

In 1920 the Greater German People’s Party (Großdeutsche Volkspartei, GDVP) was founded from the bulk of liberal and national groups and became the junior partner of the CS.

 

 

 

On the left the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs, SDAPÖ) founded in 1898, which pursued a fairly left-wing course known as Austromarxism at that time, could count on a secure majority in “Red Vienna” (as the capital was known from 1918 to 1934), while right-wing parties controlled all other states.

The SDAPÖ were the strongest voting bloc from 1911 to 1918.

 

 

Between 1918 and 1920, there was a grand coalition government including both left and right-wing parties, the CS and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs, SDAPÖ).

This gave the Social Democrats their first opportunity to influence Austrian politics.

The coalition enacted progressive socio-economic and labour legislation, such as the vote for women on 27 November 1918, but collapsed on 22 October 1920.

 

In 1920, the modern Constitution of Austria was enacted, but from 1920 onwards Austrian politics were characterized by intense and sometimes violent conflict between left and right.

The bourgeois parties maintained their dominance but formed unstable governments while socialists remained the largest elected party numerically.

Both right-wing and left-wing paramilitary forces were created during the 20s.

The Heimwehr (Home Resistance) first appeared on 12 May 1920 and became progressively organised over the next three years and the Republikanischer Schutzbund was formed in response to this on 19 February 1923.

 

 

 

 

From 2 April 1923 to 30 September there were violent clashes between Socialists and Nazis in Vienna.

On 2 April, referred to as Schlacht auf dem Exelberg (Battle of Exelberg) involved 300 Nazis against 90 Socialists.

Further episodes occurred on 4 May and 30 September 1923.

A clash between those groups in Schattendorf, Burgenland, on 30 January 1927, led to the death of a man and a child.

 

Above: Schattendorf

 

 

Right-wing veterans were indicted at a court in Vienna, but acquitted in a jury trial.

This led to massive protests and a fire at the Justizpalast (Palace of Justice) in Vienna.

In the July Revolt of 1927, 89 protesters were killed by the Austrian police forces.

Political conflict escalated until the early 1930s.

 

 

Above: the Palace of Justice, Vienna, before the fire

 

 

Whether the violence that Vienna viewed was reflected in Graz was never recorded by Andric during his time there as both vice-consul and student.

 

Andric arrived in the city on 23 January 1923 and was appointed vice-consul.

Andrić soon enrolled at the University of Graz, resumed his schooling and began working on his doctoral dissertation in Slavic studies.

 

 

Above: University of Graz logo

 

 

In August 1923, Andrić experienced an unexpected career setback.

A law had been passed stipulating that all civil servants had to have a doctoral degree.

As Andrić had not completed his dissertation, he was informed that his employment would be terminated.

 

 

 

 

Andrić’s well-connected friends intervened on his behalf and appealed to Foreign Minister Momčilo Ninčić, citing Andrić’s diplomatic and linguistic abilities.

 

Above: Momčilo Ninčić (1876 – 1949), Serbian politician and economist, and president of the League of Nations (1926 – 1927)

 

 

In February 1924, the Foreign Ministry decided to retain Andrić as a day worker with the salary of a vice-consul.

This gave him the opportunity to complete his Ph.D.

 

 

 

 

Three months later, on 24 May, Andrić submitted his dissertation to a committee of examiners at the University of Graz, who gave it their approval.

This allowed Andrić to take the examinations necessary for his Ph.D to be confirmed.

He passed both his exams, and on 13 July, received his Ph.D.

 

The committee of examiners recommended that Andrić’s dissertation be published.

Andrić chose the title Die Entwicklung des geistigen Lebens in Bosnien unter der Einwirkung der türkischen Herrschaft (The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule).

In it, he characterized the Ottoman occupation as a yoke that still loomed over Bosnia.

“The effect of Turkish rule was absolutely negative,” he wrote.

“The Turks could bring no cultural content or sense of higher mission, even to those South Slavs who accepted Islam.“

 

 

 

 

Several days after receiving his Ph.D, Andrić wrote the Foreign Minister asking to be reinstated and submitted a copy of his dissertation, university documents and a medical certification that deemed him to be in good health.

In September, the Foreign Ministry granted his request.

 

Above: Bust of Ivo Andric, Graz

 

 

Andrić stayed in Graz until 31 October 1924, when he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry’s Belgrade headquarters.

 

 

 

 

During the two years he was in Belgrade, Andrić spent much of his time writing.

His first collection of short stories was published in 1924, and he received a prize from the Serbian Royal Academy (of which he became a full-fledged member in February 1926).

 

 

Above: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts plaque

 

 

The reader who takes the collected works of one writer, reads them as a connected whole, despite all the contradictions and breaks that the work of one writer carries within itself. 

He passes through that work as through a well-arranged street in which the facades of houses are interconnected, and everything comes to him as one more or less planned and well-connected whole. 

Because such a reader stands at the end point of the writer’s work, looks in the opposite direction from the one in which those works were created, observes them as a whole and continuity that they could not have when, one by one, they were slowly and difficultly created in long and restless periods of life.

Ivo Andrić
Signs by the Roadside

 

 

 

 

And what is, basically, a story?

How, in the shortest outline, could a story be described rather than precisely defined?

 

One of the most important features of the story is its size, ie the measure of its conciseness.

It depends on the extent of the compression of the form how the writer will arrange his material, how he will construct the plot and how to introduce his theme into it or network more motives, how he will explain his linguistic potential.

There is no doubt that the narrative is based on the categories of selection and summarization, on giving a restrictive, reduced form to the process of narration.

The concentration of attention, conciseness and interestingness of the narration must be in the foreground in order to achieve the impression of a unique whole.

That is why the story relies on a “limited world“, on a clearly emphasized detail, a motivated situation or an emphasized character.

 

 

 

 

But, the core, the essence, the justification of the existence of every story cannot be reduced only to its formal characteristics, because the most important thing is the story, the process of telling, the narration.

 

It gives meaning to human existence and its torment to reach the meaning and reason for the existence of the world.

 

From time immemorial, humanity has been telling stories, stories about heroism, love, suffering, betrayal, loyalty and friendship, the story is inherent in man, an integral part of his position in an interactive relationship with the world.

 

 

 

 

And it is no coincidence that Andrić put the words of his “uncle“, the late Fr. Rafa, into the mouth of his hero, Fr. Petar, who always joked:

“I could still do without bread, but without talking I can’t.“

 

 

 

 

In a thousand different languages, in various living conditions, from century to century, from ancient patriarchal stories in huts, by the fire, to modern narrators who are coming out of publishing houses in major world centers at the moment, the story of human destiny is being told, which people tell people without end and interruption.

The way and forms of that story change over time and circumstances, but the need for storytelling and storytelling remains, and the story flows on and the storytelling has no end.

So sometimes it seems to us that humanity, from the first flash of consciousness, through the centuries, tells itself, in a million variants, along with the breath of its lungs and the rhythm of its being, constantly the same story.

And that story seems to want, like the story of the legendary Scheherazade, to deceive the executioner, to postpone the inevitability of the tragic accident that threatens us, and to prolong the illusion of life and duration.

 

 

Above: Scheherazade, painted in the 19th century by Sophie Anderson

 

 

Perhaps the goal of that story is to light up, at least a little, the dark paths that life often throws us on, and to tell us something more about that life, which we live but which we do not always see and understand, than we, in our weakness, can know and understand.

Often only from the words of a good narrator do we learn what we have done and what we have missed, what we should do and what we should not.

Perhaps these stories, oral and written, also contain the true history of mankind, and perhaps one could at least sense, if not find out, the meaning of that history.

And that regardless of whether they are dealing with the past or the present.

Perhaps one could at least infer from them, if not find out, the meaning of that history.

 

 

Above: History by Frederick Dielman (1896)

 

 

Andrić in his imaginary “Conversation with Goya” in 1935, Andrić’s hero Goja, the narrator’s interlocutor, sees life and story as creatively intertwined.

Because without a story there is no real life.

And how to get to the story, that key to everything that “happened and is happening“, which is repeated in countless different forms?

Legends should be listened to:

“Those traces of collective human efforts through the centuries and the meaning of our destiny should be deciphered from them as much as possible”, says Andrićev Goja in one place, and further adds that the meaning should be sought “in those layers of humanity. ”

 

 

 

 

In 1924, the same year when he defended his doctoral dissertation in Graz, The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia under the Influence of Turkish Rule, Andrić published his first collection of stories under the simple title Pripovetke (Tales) in the Belgrade Serbian Literary Association.

 

 

 

 

In his dissertation, Andrić himself points out that “in its content and in its basic idea, this discussion is related to other works” that he prepared “in another form and on other occasions.”

We cannot help but wonder what that connection is.

What works does Andrić’s statement refer to?

How much did the research of the history of Bosnia in connection with the dissertation help Andrić to see the nature of life in the Bosnian backwater during the Turkish occupation?

Apparently, the research undertaken by the young doctoral student, and the insights he gained, became an inexhaustible source and raw material for his short stories, and not only for those printed in 1924.

“These tales about the Turks and about ours are only a part of one work, which began with the tale ‘The Way of Alija Đerzelez’,” Andrić wrote in the introductory note for Tales.

 

 

 

 

From the moment he went to study in Zagreb and then Vienna and Krakow, Andrić traveled frequently. 

Working as a diplomatic official in the Yugoslav embassies in some European cities, the writer got to know the people and regions of the countries in which he resided well.

 

 

 

 

Andrić published his first travelogue in 1914 under the title “Letter from Krakow” in the Croatian Movement, during his studies at the Jagiellonian University.

 

Above: Jagiellonian University logo

 

 

Living and studying in Graz, in 1923, Andrić translated his impressions of life and the country in the form of “notes from the road” into the text Through Austria.

 

 

 

 

Living in many capitals of interwar Europe inspired Andrić to write down his impressions.

However, he did not rely only on his own senses and observations, but carefully prepared for each trip and wrote in notebooks data from books on the history, culture and traditions of the country.

In his travelogues, Andrić primarily states what makes a country and its way of life specific.

 

Above: Europe, 1923

 

 

This is how I seek to write my travelogues.

 

In October 1926, he was assigned to the consulate in Marseille and again appointed vice-consul.

 

 

Above: Vieux Port, Marseille, France

 

 

On 9 December 1926, he was transferred to the Yugoslav embassy in Paris.

 

 

 

France suffered heavily during World War I in terms of lives lost, disabled veterans and ruined agricultural and industrial areas occupied by Germany as well as heavy borrowing from the United States, Britain, and the French people.

However, postwar reconstruction was rapid, and the long history of political warfare along religious lines was finally ended.

Parisian culture was world-famous in the 1920s, with expatriate artists, musicians and writers from across the globe contributing their cosmopolitanism, such as jazz music, and the French empire was in flourishing condition, especially in North Africa, and in Subsaharan Africa.

 

 

Above: Josephine Baker dances the Charleston at the Folies Bergère (1926)

 

 

Although the official goal was complete assimilation, few colonial subjects were actually assimilated.

Major concerns were forcing Germany to pay for the war damage by reparations payments and guaranteeing that Germany, with its much larger population, would never be a military threat in the future.

Efforts to set up military alliances worked poorly.

Relations remained very tense with Germany until 1924, when they stabilized thanks to large American bank loans.

 

Above: Germany (1919 – 1937)

 

 

France was part of the Allied force that occupied the Rhineland following the armistice.

Ferdinand Foch supported Poland in the Greater Poland Uprising and in the Polish–Soviet War and France also joined Spain during the Rif War.

 

Above: Ferdinand Foch

 

 

From 1925 until his death in 1932, Aristide Briand, as prime minister during five short intervals, directed French foreign policy by using his diplomatic skills and sense of timing to forge friendly relations with Weimar Germany as the basis of a genuine peace within the framework of the League of Nations.

He realised France could not contain the much larger Germany by itself or secure effective support from Britain or the League.

 

 

Above: Aristide Briand (1862 – 1932)

 

 

In January 1923, after Germany refused to ship enough coal as part of its reparations, France and Belgium occupied the industrial region of the Ruhr.

Germany responded with passive resistance, which included printing vast amounts of marks to pay for the occupation, which caused runaway inflation.

That heavily damaged the German middle class, whose savings became worthless, but also damaged the French franc.

 

 

 

 

The intervention was a failure, and in the summer of 1924, France accepted the American solution to the reparations issues, as expressed in the Dawes Plan.

It had American banks make long-term loans to Germany, which used the money to pay reparations.

The United States demanded repayment of the war loans although the terms were slightly softened in 1926.

All loans, payments and reparations were suspended in 1931, and everything was finally resolved in 1951.

 

 

 

 

In the 1920s, France built the Maginot Line, an elaborate system of static border defences that was designed to stop any German invasion.

However, it did not extend into Belgium, and Germany attacked there in 1940 and went around the French defenses.

Military alliances were signed with weak powers in 1920–21, called the “Little Entente“.

 

 

 

 

Domestic politics in the 1920s were a product of unresolved problems left by the war and peace, especially the economics of reconstruction and how to make Germany pay for it all.

The great planners were Raymond Poincaré, Alexandre Millerand and Aristide Briand.

France had paid for the war with very heavy borrowing at home and from Britain and the United States.

 

 

 

Heavy inflation resulted, and in 1922, Poincaré became Prime Minister.

He justified his strong anti-German policies:

Germany’s population was increasing, her industries were intact, she had no factories to reconstruct, she had no flooded mines.

Her resources were intact, above and below ground.

In fifteen or twenty years Germany would be mistress of Europe.

In front of her would be France with a population scarcely increased.

Poincaré used German reparations to maintain the franc at a tenth of its prewar value and to pay for the reconstruction of the devastated areas.

 

 

Above: Raymond Poincaré (1860 – 1934)

 

 

Since Germany refused to pay nearly as much as Paris demanded, Poincaré reluctantly sent the French army to occupy the Ruhr industrial area (1922) to force a showdown.

The British strongly objected, arguing that it “would only impair German recovery, topple the German government, and lead to internal anarchy and Bolshevism, without achieving the financial goals of the French.“

 

 

 

 

The Germans practiced passive resistance by flooding the economy with paper money that damaged both the German and French economies.

The standoff was solved by American dollars in the Dawes Plan.

New York banks lent money to Germany for reparations to France, which then used the same dollars to repay the Americans.

 

 

Above: Wall Street, New York City

 

 

Throughout the early postwar period, Poincaré’s political base was the conservative nationalist parliament elected in 1920.

However, at the next election (1924), a coalition of Radical Socialists and Socialists called the “Cartel des gauches” (“Cartel of the Left“) won a majority, and Herriot of the Radical Socialist Party became prime minister.

He was disillusioned by the imperialist thrust of the Versailles Treaty, and sought a stable international peace in rapprochement with the Soviet Union to block the rising German revanchist movement.

 

 

Above: Édouard Herriot (1872 – 1957)

 

 

Andrić’s time in France was marked by increasing loneliness and isolation.

His uncle had died in 1924, his mother the following year, and upon arriving in France, he was informed that his aunt had died as well.

“Apart from official contacts,” he wrote Alaupović, “I have no company whatever.“

Andrić spent much of his time in the Paris archives poring over the reports of the French consulate in Travnik between 1809 and 1814, material he would use in Travnička hronika (The Travnik Chronicle), one of his future novels.

 

 

 

 

(The Travnik Chronicle (1945) is a historical novel written during the Second World War, based on the model of a European realistic novel. 

It covers the period from 1807 until 1814 and therefore represents a classic novel more than any other Andrić’s novel.

The novel is narrated in the 3rd person and consists of a prologue, epilogue and 28 chapters.

Chronicle of Travnik is a seven-year fiction chronicle that deals with the stay of foreign consuls in that vizier’s city.

It begins with the arrival of the French consul, and ends with the departure of the second-appointed Austrian consul.

The novel is turned to history.

In the process of creating the Travnik Chronicle, Andrić used rich documentary material from the field of the history of civilization, ethnology and authentic writings about historical figures that are presented in the novel.)

 

 

Above: Travnik Fort

 

 

In April 1928, Andrić was posted to Madrid as vice-consul.

 

 

Above: Gran Via, Madrid, Spain

 

 

Spain’s neutrality in World War I spared the country from carnage, yet the conflict caused massive economic disruption, with the country experiencing at the same time an economic boom (the increasing foreign demand of products and the drop of imports brought hefty profits) and widespread social distress (with mounting inflation, shortage of basic goods and extreme income inequality).

 

 

Above: Flag of Spain

 

 

A major revolutionary strike was called for August 1917, supported by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the UGT and the CNT, seeking to overthrow the government by means of a general strike.

The Dato government deployed the army against the workers to brutally quell any threat to social order, sealing in turn the demise of the cabinet and undermining the constitutional order.

The strike was one of the three simultaneous developments of a wider three-headed crisis in 1917 that cracked the Restoration regime, that also included a military crisis induced by the cleavage in the Armed Forces between Mainland and Africa-based ranks vis-à-vis the military promotion (and ensuing formation of juntas of officers that refused to dissolve upon request from the government), and a political crisis brought by the challenge posed by Catalan nationalism, whose bourgeois was emboldened by the economic upswing caused by the profits from exports to Entente powers during World War I.

 

 

 

 

During the Rif War, the crushing defeat of the Spanish Army in the so-called “Disaster of Annual” in the summer of 1921 brought in a matter of days the catastrophic loss of the lives of about 9,000 Spanish soldiers and the loss of all occupied territory in Morocco that had been gained since 1912.

 

 

 

 

This entailed the greatest defeat suffered by an European power in an African colonial war in the 20th century.

 

 

Above: Images of the Rif War

 

 

Spanish King Alfonso XIII tacitly endorsed the September 1923 coup by General Miguel Primo de Rivera that installed a dictatorship led by the latter.

 

 

Above: Spanish Alfonso XIII (1886 – 1941)

 

 

The regime enforced the State of War all over the country from September 1923 to May 1925 and, in permanent violation of the 1876 Constitution, wrecked with the legal-rational component of the constitutional compromise.

Attempts to institutionalise the regime (initially a Military Directory) were taken, in the form of a single official party (the Patriotic Union) and a consultative chamber (the National Assembly).

Preceded by a partial retreat from vulnerable posts in the interior of the protectorate in Morocco, Spain (in joint action with France) turned the tides in Morocco in 1925, and the Abd el-Krim-led Republic of the Rif started to see the beginning of its end after the Alhucemas landing and ensuing seizure of Ajdir, the heart of the Riffian rebellion.

The war had dragged on since 1917 and cost Spain $800 million.

The late 1920s were prosperous until the worldwide Great Depression hit in 1929.

 

 

Above: Miguel Primo de Riviera (1870 – 1930)

 

 

While in Madrid, Andric wrote (though did not then publish) essays on Simón Bolívar and Francisco Goya.

 

Above: Simón Bolívar (1783 – 1830)

 

 

Above: Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828)

 

 

That year he published the stories “Olujaci”, “Ispovijed” (Confession) and Most na Žepi (Bridge on the Žepa).

 

 

Bridge on the Zepa describes the construction of the bridge on Žepa, a river that often swells, and which the inhabitants have not yet managed to tame with the bridge.

So far, the river has taken away several wooden bridges (a similar theme, 20 years later, is dealt with in the Nobel Prize-winning novel On the Drina Bridge, so the story on the Bridge on the Žepa is considered an overture to the novel.

The narrator tells us the whole story in clear sentences.

The different segments of the story are firmly connected, although the vizier, as a narrator, often returns to the past and recalls his childhood in retrospect.

 

 

 

 

In Most na Žepi, Ivo Andrić describes many values, but also universal truths. 

He emphasizes the efforts of man to adapt the world to himself and to fight against the forces of nature that sometimes destroy everything in front of him.

In a story such as The Bridge on Zepa, the symbolism of the bridge is reflected in the emphasized human urge to subdue the world and nature around it, but also to bring order to oneself – which the Grand Vizier Yusuf failed to do.

In the story, we can also see how art outlives the man who creates it, so it seems to overcome death itself.

On the other side of the story, we have a builder who does not seek friendship, praise or help from anyone.

He does not even crave material things, but lives for his work.

He did not ask for much, but with his work he provided a lot and made life easier for many people.

 

 

 

The story describes a number of difficulties encountered by the builder in the construction of the bridge, but in the end the successful outcome is successful. 

The bridge was built, but the two characters end tragically.

Neymar dies of the plague, and the vizier suffers from the traumas experienced during his captivity, which lead him on a path of self-destruction.

In a figurative sense, the narrative is about man’s search for meaning.

Even after the goal was achieved (the construction of the bridge was completed), the characters did not achieve a sense of life satisfaction.

The story is written in the 3rd person.

 

 

 

 

Andric began work on the novel Prokleta avlija (The Cursed Court).

In Andrić’s novel, The Cursed Court is the name of the famous Constantinople dungeon, which Fr. Petar from Bosnia came to for unjustified reasons, when they sent him to Istanbul to do some monastic work.

It happened that the Turkish authorities caught a letter addressed to the Austrian internment in Constantinople, in which the persecution of the faithful by the Turkish authorities was described and the suspicion fell on Fr. Peter.

He was arrested and imprisoned in the pre-trial prison – “the Cursed Court“, where he remained for two months until he was sent on.

In The Cursed Court, Fra-Petar meets several people, who in this novel turn into a gallery of interesting characters.

There is the warden of the “Cursed Court” of Latifaga called Karadjoz , a prisoner of Chaim, a Jew from Smyrna, and then the central character from this novel is the prisoner Ćamil-effendi, a rich young Turk from Smyrna.

Fra-Petar learns from Haim, a young man’s fellow citizen, that he was imprisoned on suspicion that his study of consciousness was aimed at a rebellious plot against the sultan’s court, which was completely untrue.

Young Camil, the son of a rich Turk and a Greek woman, devoted himself to science and the solitary and ascetic way of life from an early age, which was especially emphasized by an unhappy and unhealthy love.

Namely, Camil fell in love with the daughter of a young Greek merchant, but for nationalistic and religious reasons, he did not want to give her to a Turk for a wife, but forcibly married her to a Greek outside Smyrna.

After that event, Ćamil completely closed himself in and became a kind of individual.

He surrounds himself with books and throws himself into science, showing a special interest in the consciousness of the Turkish Empire, of which he is particularly interested in one particular period – the time of Bayezid II and Jam-Sultan, his brother, whom Bayezid defeated twice in battle for the throne.

Then Jam sought refuge on the island of Rhodes, where Christian knights ruled.

From then on, the odyssey of Cem begins, who as a prisoner passes from the hands of various European rulers, and even the Pope himself, and they all use him as a trump card against the Turkish Empire, that is they threaten Bayazit that he will release him if he does not satisfy their various demands.

Ćamil is suspected of studying precisely that historical period, because it has similarities with the current situation at the court, where the sultan also has a rival brother, whom he declared insane and holds him captive. Jamil was sent to the Cursed Court, where he met Fr. Peter and told him about the life of Jam-Sultan, claiming that his life was identical with Jamil’s and that their destinies were the same.

After a while, they took him to a special prison, and one night during the interrogation, a fight broke out between him and the police.

It is not known whether the camels are taken out – alive or dead.

Fra-Peter never saw him again.

 

 

 

 

In June 1929, Andric was named secretary of the Yugoslav legation to Belgium and Luxembourg in Brussels.

 

 

Above: Images of Brussels, Belgium

 

 

Belgian King Albert returned from exile as a war hero, leading the victorious army and acclaimed by the population.

 

 

Above: King Albert I of Belgium (1875 – 1934)

 

 

In contrast, the government and other exiles came back discreetly.

Belgium had been devastated—not so much by combat, but rather by German seizure of valuable machinery.

Only 81 operable locomotives remained, out of the 3,470 available in 1914.

46 of 51 steel mills were damaged, with 26 destroyed totally.

More than 100,000 houses had been destroyed, as well as more than 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres) of farmland.

 

 

Above: Flag of Belgium

 

 

Waves of popular violence accompanied liberation in November and December 1918 and the government responded through the judicial punishment of collaboration with the enemy conducted between 1919 and 1921.

Shop windows were broken and houses sacked, men were harassed, and women’s heads were shaved.

Manufacturers who had closed their businesses sought the severe repression of those who had pursued their activities.

Journalists who had boycotted and stopped writing called for harsh treatment of the newspapers that submitted to German censorship.

Many people stigmatized profiteers and demanded justice.

Thus in 1918, Belgium was already confronted with the problems associated with occupation that most European countries only discovered at the end of World War II.

 

 

 

 

However, despite the status quo, Belgium recovered surprisingly quickly.

The first postwar Olympic Games were held in Antwerp in 1920.

In 1921, Luxembourg formed a customs union with Belgium.

 

 

 

 

German reparations to Belgium for damage incurred during the First World War was set at £12.5 billion pounds sterling.

 

In 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles the area of Eupen-Malmedy, along with Moresnet was transferred to Belgium.

“Neutral Moresnet” was transferred to Belgium, as well as the Vennbahn railway.

 

 

Above: Map of the route of the Vennbahn

 

 

An opportunity was given to the population to “oppose” against the transfer by signing a petition, which gathered few signatures, in large part thanks to intimidation by local authorities, and all regions remain part of Belgium today.

Belgian requests to annex territory considered as historically theirs, from the Dutch, who were perceived as collaborators, was denied.

 

 

 

 

Between 1923 and 1926, Belgian and French soldiers were sent to the Ruhr in Germany to force the German government to agree to continue reparation payments.

The Occupation of the Ruhr led the Dawes Plan which allowed the German government more leniency in paying reparations.

 

 

 

 

The League of Nations in 1925 made Belgium the trustee for the former German East Africa which bordered the Belgian Congo to the east.

It became Rwanda-Urundi (or “Ruanda-Urundi“) (modern day Rwanda and Burundi).

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of Ruanda-Urundi

 

 

Although promising the League it would promote education, Belgium left the task to subsidised Catholic missions and unsubsidised Protestant missions.

As late as 1962, when independence arrived, fewer than 100 natives had gone beyond secondary school.

 

 

Above: The Cathedral of Our Lady of Wisdom at Butare (formally Astrida) in Ruanda

 

 

The policy was one of low-cost paternalism, as explained by Belgium’s special representative to the Trusteeship Council:

“The real work is to change the African in his essence, to transform his soul, and to do that one must love him and enjoy having daily contact with him.

He must be cured of his thoughtlessness, he must accustom himself to living in society, he must overcome his inertia.”

 

 

 

 

On 1 January 1930, Andric was sent to Switzerland as part of Yugoslavia’s permanent delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva, and was named deputy delegate the following year.

 

 

Above: Geneva, Switzerland

 

 

The League of Nations, abbreviated as LON (French: Société des Nations, abbreviated as SDN or SdN), was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.

It was founded on 10 January 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War.

In 1919 US President Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.

The organisation’s primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.

Other issues in this and related treaties included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.

The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920.

The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920.

The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years.

The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious First World War Allies (France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan were the permanent members of the Executive Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed.

The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so.

Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them.

 

 

 

 

Following accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation.

The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the League, the United States, and Liberia.

In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence of slavery and forced labour.

The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and his vice-president.

The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for American help in social reforms.

 

 

Above: Flag of Liberia

 

 

The Mukden Incident, also known as the “Manchurian Incident“, was a decisive setback that weakened the League because its major members refused to tackle Japanese aggression.

Japan itself withdrew.

Under the agreed terms of the Twenty-One Demands with China, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between the two countries, in the Chinese region of Manchuria.

In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria.

The Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to orders from Tokyo) occupied all of Manchuria.

They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 Japan set up a puppet government, with Pu Yi, the former emperor of China, as its executive head.

 

 

 

This new entity was recognised only by the governments of Italy, Spain and Nazi Germany.

The rest of the world still considered Manchuria legally part of China.

The League of Nations sent observers.

The Lytton Report appeared a year later (October 1932).

It declared Japan to be the aggressor and demanded Manchuria be returned to China.

 

 

Above: Chinese delegate addresses the League of Nations after the Mukden Incident in 1932

 

 

The report passed 42–1 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League.

In the end, as British historian Charles Mowat argued, collective security was dead:

The League and the ideas of collective security and the rule of law were defeated; partly because of indifference and of sympathy with the aggressor, but partly because the League powers were unprepared, preoccupied with other matters, and too slow to perceive the scale of Japanese ambitions.

 

 

Above: The Mukden Incident Museum (literally, “September 18th History Museum“) in Shenyang, China

 

 

The League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region.

Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River, which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum.

Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio López at Lake Pitiantuta.

Paraguay appealed to the League of Nations, but the League did not take action when the Pan-American Conference offered to mediate instead.

The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million.

It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster.

By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by the 1938 truce.

 

 

Above: Paraguayan soldiers at Alihuatá, 1932

 

 

In 1933, Andrić returned to Belgrade.

Two years later, he was named head of the political department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On 5 November 1937, Andrić became assistant to Milan Stojadinović, Yugoslavia’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.

 

 

Above: National Assembly, Belgrade

 

 

Yugoslavia was a country in Southeast Europe and Central Europe for most of the 20th century.

It came into existence after World War I in 1918 under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (it was formed from territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire) with the Kingdom of Serbia, and constituted the first union of the South Slavic people as a sovereign state, following centuries in which the region had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary.

Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign.

The kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris.

The official name of the state was changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929.

 

 

 

 

On 20 June 1928, Serb deputy Puniša Račić shot at five members of the opposition Croatian Peasant Party in the National Assembly, resulting in the death of two deputies on the spot and that of leader Stjepan Radić a few weeks later.

 

Above: Punisa Racic (1886 – 1944)

 

 

On 6 January 1929, King Alexander I got rid of the constitution, banned national political parties and assumed executive power and renamed the country Yugoslavia.

He hoped to curb separatist tendencies and mitigate nationalist passions.

He imposed a new constitution and relinquished his dictatorship in 1931.

However, Alexander’s policies later encountered opposition from other European powers stemming from developments in Italy and Germany, where Fascists and Nazis rose to power, and the Soviet Union, where Joseph Stalin became absolute ruler.

None of these three regimes favored the policy pursued by Alexander I.

In fact, Italy and Germany wanted to revise the international treaties signed after World War I, and the Soviets were determined to regain their positions in Europe and pursue a more active international policy.

Alexander attempted to create a centralised Yugoslavia.

He decided to abolish Yugoslavia’s historic regions, and new internal boundaries were drawn for provinces or banovinas.

The banovinas were named after rivers.

Many politicians were jailed or kept under police surveillance.

The effect of Alexander’s dictatorship was to further alienate the non-Serbs from the idea of unity.

During his reign the flags of Yugoslav nations were banned.

Communist ideas were banned also.

 

Above: King Alexander I (1888 – 1934)

 

 

The king was assassinated in Marseille during an official visit to France in 1934 by Vlado Chernozemski, an experienced marksman from Ivan Mihailov’s Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization with the cooperation of the Ustaše, a Croatian fascist revolutionary organisation.

Alexander was succeeded by his eleven-year-old son Peter II and a regency council headed by his cousin, Prince Paul.

 

 

Above: The funeral of King Alexander at Belgrade

 

 

The international political scene in the late 1930s was marked by growing intolerance between the principal figures, by the aggressive attitude of the totalitarian regimes and by the certainty that the order set up after World War I was losing its strongholds and its sponsors were losing their strength.

Supported and pressured by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Croatian leader Vladko Maček and his party managed the creation of the Banovina of Croatia (Autonomous Region with significant internal self-government) in 1939.

The agreement specified that Croatia was to remain part of Yugoslavia, but it was hurriedly building an independent political identity in international relations.

The entire kingdom was to be federalised, but World War II stopped the fulfillment of those plans.

 

 

Above: Vladko Macek (1879 – 1964)

 

 

On 1 April 1939, Andrić was appointed Yugoslavia’s ambassador to Germany, presenting his credentials of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler on 19 April. 

This appointment, Hawkesworth writes, shows that he was highly regarded by his country’s leadership.

 

 

Above: Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)

 

 

As previously mentioned, Yugoslavia’s King Alexander had been assassinated in Marseille in 1934.

He was succeeded by his ten-year-old son Peter, and a regency council led by Peter’s uncle Paul was established to rule in his place until he turned 18.

Paul’s government established closer economic and political ties with Germany.

 

 

Above: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (1893 – 1976)

 

 

In March 1941, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact, pledging support for Germany and Italy.

Though the negotiations had occurred behind Andrić’s back, in his capacity as ambassador he was obliged to attend the document’s signing in Berlin.

Andrić had previously been instructed to delay agreeing to the Axis powers’ demands for as long as possible.

He was highly critical of the move, and on 17 March, wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking to be relieved of his duties.

 

 

Above: Signing ceremony for the Axis Powers Tripartite Pact

Seated at front left (left to right) are Japan’s Ambassador Saburō Kurusu, Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Galeazzo Ciano and Germany’s Führer Adolf Hitler.

 

 

Ten days later, a group of pro-Western Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers overthrew the regency and proclaimed Peter of age.

This led to a breakdown in relations with Germany and prompted Adolf Hitler to order Yugoslavia’s invasion.

 

 

Above: King Peter II of Yugoslavia (1923 – 1970)

 

 

Given these circumstances, Andrić’s position was an extremely difficult one.

Nevertheless, he used the little influence he had and attempted unsuccessfully to assist Polish prisoners following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939.

 

 

Above: Images of the German invasion of Poland

 

 

Prior to their invasion of his country, the Germans had offered Andrić the opportunity to evacuate to neutral Switzerland.

He declined on the basis that his staff would not be allowed to go with him.

 

Above: Ivo Andric

 

 

On 6 April 1941, the Germans and their allies invaded Yugoslavia.

The country capitulated on 17 April and was subsequently partitioned between the Axis powers.

 

 

Above: The invasion of Yugoslavia

 

 

In early June, Andrić and his staff were taken back to German-occupied Belgrade, where some were jailed.

Andrić was retired from the diplomatic service, but refused to receive his pension or cooperate in any way with the puppet government that the Germans had installed in Serbia…..

 

 

 

 

The greatest part of the interwar period, Andric had spent abroad.

Living in Europe’s capital cities broadened his views and offered him the opportunity to improve his language skills, to meet men of letters and have an immediate access to literature of the countries in which he served as a diplomat, as well as to gather materials for his future novels and stories.

 

 

 

 

Inside the Ivo Andric Museum, the years of the writer’s diplomatic service are documented by original archival material – appointment and government decrees, certificates, acts of the Ministries of Religion and Foreign Affairs, issued to Andric as a civil servant and a chargé d’affaires.

The exhibited archival materials are arranged so as to illustrate, year by year, his advancement in the civil service, transfers and appointments, vacation and sick leaves.

Photos taken of him in Bucharest in 1922, Marseilles in 1927, Geneva in 1931, and Belgrade in 1937, capture visitors’ attention because they show not only an officer in the diplomatic service of the Kingdom, but also a rising writer and a newly elected member of the Serbian Royal Academy.

Andric’s diplomatic passport, issued for 1939 to 1941, is particularly interesting both as an exhibition item and a historic document.

The same applies to the photos of Andric taken in Berlin in 1939, because they remind us of times and events in the eve of World War II fateful for the Kingdom – the Tripartite Pact and demonstrations in Belgrade on 27 March 1941.

Andric’s career as a diplomat ended prematurely in the Third Reich Germany and was accompanied with his unsuccessful attempts to help prominent Polish intellectuals exiled from Krakow after the occupation of Poland in 1939 using his position as an ambassador and diplomatic channels.

Ivo Andric’s diplomatic uniform with gold embroidery, a feathered hat and a sword in an elaborately decorated scabbard, as well as his travel case with leather and wooden reinforcements – a witness to the diplomat’s journeys to Europe’s capitals and back to Belgrade – occupy the central, open area of the Museum’s exhibition room.

 

 

 

 

It is very important to point out that throughout this period of life and diplomatic service Andric was involved in literary work, gathering historical evidence in foreign archives, intensive cooperation with Yugoslav literary reviews and publishers, and correspondence with writers and friends from Zagreb, Sarajevo and Belgrade, including Zdenko Markovic, Julije Benesic, Tugomir Alaupovic, Borivoje Jevtic, Isak Samokovlija, Isidora Sekulic, Jovan Ducic, Milos Crnjanski and Dr. Miodrag Iborvac.

 

 

Above: Bust of Ivo Andric, Ivo Andric Museum, Belgrade

 

 

(Tugomir Marko Alaupović (1870 – 1958) was a Yugoslav professor at First Grammar School ,Sarajevo, as well as a poet, storyteller and politician.

In addition to his rich political biography, he was also Minister of Religion in the government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

He has written several literary works that have been translated into French, German, Czech and Italian.

He was one of the initiators of the Croatian Society for the “Setting up of Children in Crafts and Trade” in Sarajevo and later initiated the change of the society name to Napredak.

He was a member of the Main Board of the Serbian St. Sava Society in Belgrade.

On 16 January 1934, after a serious operation, in a letter to Tihomir Djordjevic, a prominent Serbian ethnologist, he said:

“Unfortunately, my hopes have not been fulfilled and I will have to stay long or maybe even definitely in Zagreb.

It hurts and I’m sorry that for these reasons, I have to resign as a member of the Main Board of the St. Sava Society.

But rest assured that for the rest of my life, I will remain faithful to that beautiful and noble saying:

‘Everyone is my dear brother, be he any religion’“.)

 

 

Above: Tugomir Alaupovic

 

 

(Isak Samokovlija (1889 – 1955) was a prominent Bosnian Jewish writer.

By profession he was a physician.

His stories describe the life of the Bosnian Sephardic Jews.

 

 

Above: Isak Samokovlija

 

 

Samokovlija was born into a Sephardi Jewish family in Goražde, Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time of the Austro-Hungarian occupation.

While one side of his family came from Spain after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, “his great-grandfather moved to Bosnia from the town of Samokov in Bulgaria“, which led to the surname Los Samokovlis in Ladino or Samokovlija in Bosnian.

 

 

Above: Samokov Historical Museum with the statue of Zahari Zograf

 

 

After completing primary school Samokovlija went to Sarajevo.

He attended high school with Ivo Andric, the first Yugoslav to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

Above: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina

 

 

After graduating high school in 1910, he receive a scholarship from local Jewish charity La Benevolencija to study medicine in Vienna.

Later he worked as a doctor in the towns Goražde and Fojnica (1921–1925) before beginning a regular job at Sarajevo’s Koševo hospital in 1925.

 

 

 

 

At the beginning of the Second World War, he was a department head at the Koševo hospital.

In April 1941 he was discharged from service as well as other Jews, but soon he was mobilized as a medical doctor fights against a typhus epidemic.

It was not until 1945, he managed to escape Yugoslavia and hide until the country was liberated.

 

 

 

 

After the end of World War II, he held various positions in the Bosnian and Yugoslav literary circles.

From 1948 to 1951 he edited the magazine Brazda, and then, until his death he was an editor at the publishing company Svjetlost.

His first short story Rafina avlija was published in 1927 and two years later his first collection of stories, Od proljeća do proljeća, came out.

 

Several of his stories were made into television films and his book Hanka was made into a film of the same name directed by Slavko Vorkapić in 1955.

He did not live to see the film, dying at age 65 in January 1955.

 

 

 

He was buried in the old Jewish cemetery on the slopes of Trebević mountain, near Sarajevo.)

 

 

 

 

(Isidora Sekulić (1877 – 1958) was a Serbian writer, novelist, essayist, polyglot and art critic.

She was “the first woman academic in the history of Serbia“.

 

 

 

 

Sekulić was born in Mošorin, a village of Bács-Bodrog County, which is now in the Vojvodina.

Apart from her studies in literature, Sekulić was also well versed in natural sciences as well as philosophy.

She graduated from the pedagogical school in Budapest in 1892, and obtained her doctorate in 1922 in Germany.

 

Above: View of Baudapest, Hungary

 

 

Her travels included extended stays in England, France and Norway.

Her travels from Oslo through Bergen to Finnmark resulted in Pisma iz Norveške (Letters from Norway) meditative travelogue in 1914.

 

 

Above: Flag of Norway

 

 

Her collection of short stories, Saputnici, are unusually detailed and penetrating accomplishment in self-analysis and a brave stylistic experiment.

She also spoke several classical as well as nine modern languages.

Sekulić’s lyrical, meditative, introspective and analytical writings come at the dawn of Serbian prose writing.

Sekulić is concerned with the human condition of man in his new, thoroughly modern sensibility.

 

Above: Isidora Sekulić

 

 

In her main novel, The Chronicle of a Small Town Cemetery (Кроника паланачког гробља), she writes in opposition to the usual chronological development of events.

Instead, each part of the book begins in the cemetery, eventually returning to the time of bustling life, with all its joys and tragedies.

Characters such as Gospa Nola, are the first strong female characters in Serbian literature, painted in detail in all their courage, pride and determination.

Isidora Sekulić also wrote critical writings in the areas of music, theatre, art, architecture and literature and philosophy.

She wrote major studies of Yugoslav, Russian, English, German, French, Italian, Norwegian and other literature.)

 

 

Above: The Chronicles of a Small Town Cemetery (Serbian original)

 

 

(Jovan Dučić (1871 – 1943) was a Herzegovinian Serb poet-diplomat.

He is one of the most influential Serbian lyricists and modernist poets.

Dučić published his first collection of poetry in Mostar in 1901 and his second in Belgrade in 1908.

He also wrote often in prose, writing a number of literary essays, studies on writers, letters by poets from Switzerland, Greece and Spain and the book Blago cara Radovana for which he is most remembered when it comes to his writing.

Dučić was also one of the founders of the Narodna Odbrana, a nationalist non-governmental organization in the Kingdom of Serbia and he was a member of the Serbian Royal Academy.

 

 

Above: Jovan Ducic

 

 

Jovan Dučić was born in Trebinje, at the time part of Bosnia Vilayet within the Ottoman Empire.

In Trebinje he attended primary school.

 

Above: Jovan Ducic Monument, Trebinje, Bosnia and Hercegovina

 

 

He moved on to a high school in Mostar and trained to become a teacher in Sombor.

He worked as a teacher in several towns before returning to Mostar, where he founded (with writer Svetozar Ćorović and poet Aleksa Šantić) a literary magazine called Zora (Dawn).

 

 

Above: Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina

 

 

Dučić’s openly expressed Serbian patriotism caused difficulties with the authorities – at that time Bosnia and Herzegovina was de facto incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire – and he moved abroad to pursue higher studies, mostly in Geneva and Paris.

 

 

 

He was awarded a law degree by the University of Geneva and, following his return from abroad, entered Serbian diplomatic service in 1907.

 

 

 

 

Although he had previously expressed opposition to the idea of creating a Yugoslavia, he became the new country’s first ambassador to Romania (in 1937).

 

 

 

 

He had a distinguished diplomatic career in this capacity, serving in Istanbul, Sofia, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Madrid and Lisbon.

Dučić spoke several foreign languages and is remembered as a distinguished diplomat.

 

 

Above: Images of Lisbon, Portugal

 

 

It was as a poet that Dučić gained his greatest distinctions.

He published his first book of poetry in Mostar in 1901 and his second in Belgrade, 1908.

He wrote prose as well: several essays and studies about writers, Blago cara Radovana (Tsar Radovan’s treasure) and poetry letters from Switzerland, Greece, Spain and other countries.

 

 

Above: Tsar Radovan’s Treasure by Jovan Ducic (Serbian original)

 

 

Dučić’s work was initially heavily influenced by that of Vojislav Ilić, the leading Serbian poet of the late 19th century.

 

 

Above: Vojislav Ilic (1860 – 1894)

 

 

Ducic’s travels abroad helped him to develop his own individual style, in which the Symbolist movement was perhaps the greatest single influence.

In his poetry he explored quite new territory that was previously unknown in Serbian poetry.

He restricted himself to only two verse styles, the symmetrical dodecasyllable (the Alexandrine) and hendecasyllable—both French in origin—in order to focus on the symbolic meaning of his work.

He expressed a double fear, of vulgarity of thought and vulgarity of expression.

 

 

Above: Death and the Grave Digger (La Mort et le Fossoyeur) (c. 1895) by Carlos Schwabe is a visual compendium of symbolist motifs.

The angel of Death, pristine snow, and the dramatic poses of the characters all express symbolist longings for transfiguration “anywhere, out of the world“.

 

 

In the autumn of 1893, during the party in the newly built Hotel Drina in Bijeljina, a young and ambitious teacher Dučić met recent School of Commerce graduate Magdalena Živanović.

 

 

Above: Assembly Building, Bijeljina, Bosnia and Hercegovina

 

 

They got engaged with on 5 November 1893, and their correspondence continued even Dučić’s departure from Bijeljina to Mostar to teach from 1895 to 1899.

A part of the correspondence is kept safe up to this day, as well as the letter which Dučić’s friend and poet Aleksa Šantić redirected to Magdalena on 6 April 1901, asking for help in collecting a subscription for his songs.

 

 

Above: Aleksa Santic (1868 – 1924)

 

 

Ljiljana Lukić, a retired professor, keeps a personal copy of the correspondence between Dučić and Magdalena.

Professor Ljiljana Lukić states that Dučić lived for a short time in the house of Magdalena Nikolić who lived with her sister.

After her break up with Dučić, Magdalena shouted that she would never leave home again.

 

Above: Zivanovic and Ducic

 

 

“Like a novel heroine, she lived by her memories and the only happy moments she had was in reading the letters and songs of the man she loved“, as Professor Lukić concludes.

Dučić’s secret fiancé left the following words to be written after her death on her monument, which can still be read today on the Bijeljina graveyard:

Maga Nikolić-Živanović, 1874–1957,

the poet herself and first inspiration of poet Jovan Dučić.

 

 

 

Twenty years before Magdalena’s death, while Dučić was the authorized minister of Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a request was received that testifies of the deep trace which Dučić left in Bijeljina.

Singing society Srbadija asked the minister to help in building a home for the needs of the society.

 

 

Above: Museum of Semberija, Bijeljina

 

 

The Embassy of Serbia in Hungary is in the house which Jovan Dučić received from a Hungarian woman, and then donated it to the state.

 

 

Above: Embassy of Serbia in Hungary, Budapest

 

 

Dučić went into exile in the United States in 1941 following the German invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia, where he joined his relative Mihajlo (Michael) in Gary, Indiana.

 

 

 

From then until his death two years later, he led a Chicago-based organization, the Serbian National Defense Council (founded by Mihailo Pupin in 1914) which represented the Serbian diaspora in the US.

 

 

 

 

During these two years, he wrote many poems, historical books and newspaper articles espousing Serbian nationalist causes and protesting the mass murder of Serbs by the pro-Nazi Ustaše regime of Croatia.

In Yugoslav school anthologies immediately after WWII he had been declared persona non grata and widely viewed as a Serbian chauvinist.

He died on 7 April 1943.

His funeral took place at the Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Gary, Indiana and he was buried in the Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Monastery cemetery in Libertyville, Illinois.

He expressed a wish in his will to be buried in his home town of Trebinje, a goal which was finally realized when he was reburied there on 22 October 2000 in the newly built Hercegovačka Gračanica monastery.

His Acta Diplomatica (Diplomatic Letters) was published posthumously in the United States and in the former Yugoslavia. )

 

 

Above: Dučić’s grave site in the Hercegovačka Gračanica monastery in Trebinje

 

 

(Miodrag Ibrovac (1885 – 1973) was a Serbian and Yugoslav literary historian, novelist, academic and professor at the University of Belgrade.

He graduated from college in 1907, and from 1911 he taught at the Belgrade Lyceum.

From 1924 to 1958, Ibrovac was a full professor at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade in the Department of French Language and Literature where he succeeded Bogdan Popović.

He was a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1968 and a full professor in 1970.

He was a member of the Serbian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference that brought an end to the Great War with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

The delegation from Serbia consisted of Nikola Pašić, Slobodan Jovanović, Milenko Radomar Vesnić, Miodrag Ibrovac and others.

He is one of the founders of the Serbian PEN Center.

He was president of the Society for Cultural Co-operation Yugoslavia-France.)

 

 

Above: Miodrag Ibrovac

 

 

Andric’s years-long correspondence with Svetislav B. Cvijanovic, a Belgrade publisher, bookseller, writers’ great patron and Andric’s first publisher in Belgrade, is of particular significance.

 

There is much I learned from my visit to the Ivo Andric Museum, especially from his years as a diplomat:

• the importance of travel
• the importance of networking
• the importance of lifelong learning
• the importance of maintaining writing ambitions despite the demands of gainful employment
• the significance of the individual, especially in positions of persuasion

 

 

Above: Ivo Andric in his study in Belgrade

 

 

Andric, from penniless origins to highly educated academic, from obscure contributor to vice-consul to Nobel prize winner, is an inspiration.

 

Truly the record of a man is worthy of note.

 

 

Above: Ivo Andric

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Belgrade Memorial Museum of Ivo Andric / Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside

 

Canada Slim and the Land of Oblivion

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Monday 17 February 2020

There is only one certainty in life:

Nothing is certain in life.

I have an ever-growing amount of writing projects that I wish to complete, but they are often delayed and sometimes replaced by other priorities that demand my time and attention.

One such unfinished self-assigned task is the writing (and continued incomplete exploration) of Alsace in France on the border with Germany and Switzerland.

In two previous installments in this blog…..

(Please see Canada Slim and the City at the Crossroads & Canada Slim and the Swedish Pinot of this blog.)

…..and a previous blogpost in my other blog (https://buildingeverest.wordpress.com)…..

(Please see Canada Slim and the Burning King in the Building Everest blog.)

…..I wrote of travelling along Alsace’s Wine Route, a winding ribbon of flower-bedecked villages stretching 170 kilometres from Cleebourg in the north to Thann in the south.

In the three aforementioned blogposts, I wrote of my travels between Wissembourg to Drachenbronn-Birlerbach and including Strassbourg.

Above: Wissembourg

Above: Strasbourg

Where most sensible folks would drive or take public transportation I attempted last summer (17 – 24 June 2019) to walk part of the length of the Bas-Rhin (lower Rhine) Département from Wissembourg to Saverne.

Above: Château des Rohan, Saverne

Improper footware resulted in blistered feet before my week’s journey ended, but I did my best at the start to walk as much as I could.

On Monday 17 June 2019, I travelled by train from Landschlacht to Wissembourg via Romanshorn, Zürich, Basel and Strasbourg.

On Tuesday 18 June 2019, I journeyed from Wissembourg to Seltz.

I have already described my walk from Wissembourg to Drachenbronn-Birlerbach.

What followed is what follows below…..

Seltz, Alsace, France, Tuesday 18 June 2018

While Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was trying to assure America that “Iran will not wage war against any nation.” after being accused by the United States of attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman…..

Above: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani

While 41 people were being killed in an attack in the Yoro and Gangafani villages in Mali…..

While Google announced that it was setting aside $750 million in land and $250 million in financing to encourage developers in the San Francisco area to build and rehabilitate housing in order to ease the homeless crisis in a region where Google has 45,000 employees…..

While Boeing was selling 200 of its 737 MAX planes…..

While Columbian authorities were deporting Venezuelan refugees from the border town of Cúcuta…..

Above: Cúcuta

While US federal appeal court judges from the 9th Circuit were hearing arguments concerning the holding of undocumented immigrant children in unsafe and unsanitary conditions…..

While Donald Trump’s speech at a rally in Orlando was being billed as the official launch of his re-election campaign for the 2020 US presidential election…..

While Britain’s Conservative Party was in the midst of their leadership election…..

While Patrick Shanahan resigned as US Secretary of Defense…..

Above: Patrick Shanahan

…..I was walking the Maginot Line.

The Maginot Line (French: Ligne Maginot), named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, is a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany and force them to move around the fortifications.

Constructed on the French side of its borders with Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg, the line did not extend to the English Channel due to French strategy that envisioned a move into Belgium to counter a German assault.

Based on France’s experience with trench warfare during World War I, the massive Maginot Line was built in the run-up to World War II, after the Locarno Conference gave rise to a fanciful and optimistic “Locarno spirit“.

From left to right, Gustav Stresemann (Germany), Austen Chamberlain (Great Britain) and Aristide Briand (France) during the Locarno Conference

After the bitter experiences of the First World War, from which France had emerged victorious, but in the course of which large areas in the north and east of the country were devastated and 1.4 million dead and 3.5 million wounded were mourned, the decision was made to to protect the border against Germany and later also against Italy.

Above: Scenes of World War One

The defense system was planned by the Minister of War, Paul Painlevé, and was built under his successor André Maginot between 1930 and 1932.

Above: André Maginot (1877 – 1932) was a French civil servant, soldier, and Member of Parliament.

He is best known for his advocacy of the string of forts known as the Maginot Line.

After Hitler came to power, the system was expanded.

For a total of 700 km, 200 of them on the Alsatian-German border, ground-level, but mostly underground forts, artillery, infantry casemates, large shelters, observation bunkers, etc. were lined up, between which tank blocks and mine fields were built.

The individual facilities were not connected by corridors.

The larger fortresses, around so-called combat blocks with extendable turrets, ran through an often kilometer-long network of passages in which rails were laid in order to be able to transport the ammunition with wagons.

Their own power plants provided the necessary energy.

Up to 1,000 soldiers could be stationed here.

Dormitories, showers, canteen kitchens, medical wards and even wine cellars were set up for them.

The smaller casemates were occupied by up to 20 soldiers.

Above: The view of the village of Lembach in Alsace (northeast), taken from the combat unit number 5 of the fortress ouvrage Four-à-Chaux

French military experts extolled the Line as a work of genius that would deter German aggression, because it would slow an invasion force long enough for French forces to mobilise and counterattack.

The Maginot Line was impervious to most forms of attack, including aerial bombings and tank fire, and had underground railways as a backup.

It also had state-of-the-art living conditions for garrisoned troops, supplying air conditioning and eating areas for their comfort.

Above: Combat block 1 at the ouvrage Four à Chaux, showing signs of German testing of explosives inside some fortresses between 1942 and 1944

Instead of attacking directly, the Germans invaded through the Low Countries, completely bypassing the Line to the north.

French and British officers had anticipated this:

When Germany invaded the Netherlands and Belgium, they carried out plans to form an aggressive front that cut across Belgium and connected to the Maginot Line.

However, the French line was weak near the Ardennes forest.

Above: Location of the Ardennes

Above: View of the Meuse in the French Ardennes

Marshal Maurice Gamelin, when drafting the Dyle Plan, believed this region, with its rough terrain, would be an unlikely invasion route of German Forces.

Above: Maurice Gamelin (1872 – 1958) was a French army general in the French Army.

(Gamelin is remembered for his disastrous command (until 17 May 1940) of the French military during the Battle of France (10 May–22 June 1940) in World War II and his steadfast defence of republican values.

The Commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces at the start of World War II, Gamelin was viewed as a man with significant intellectual ability.

He was respected, even in Germany, for his intelligence and “subtle mind“, though he was viewed by some German generals as stiff and predictable.

Despite this, and his competent service in World War I, his command of the French armies during the critical days of May 1940 proved to be disastrous.

Historian and journalist William L. Shirer presented the view that Gamelin used World War I methods to fight World War II, but with less vigor and slower response.)

(The Dyle Plan or Plan D was the plan of the Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, Général d’armée Maurice Gamelin to defeat a German attempt to invade France through Belgium.

The Dyle (Dijle) river is 86 km (53 mi) long, from Houtain-le-Val through Flemish Brabant and Antwerp.

Gamelin intended French, British and Belgian troops to halt a German invasion force along the line of the river.

The Franco-Belgian Accord of 1920 had co-ordinated communication and fortification efforts of both armies.

The Belgian government let the accord lapse after the German Remilitarization of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936, to adopt a policy of strict neutrality, with the German Army (Heer) on the Belgian border.)

If the Ardennes were traversed, it would be done at a slow rate that would allow the French time to bring up reserves and counterattack.

The German Army, having reformulated their plans from a repeat of the First World War-era plan, became aware of and exploited this weak point in the French defensive front.

A rapid advance through the forest and across the River Meuse encircled much of the Allied forces, resulting in a sizeable force being evacuated at Dunkirk leaving the forces to the south unable to mount an effective resistance to the German invasion of France.

Above: Allied evacuation of Dunkirk

Opinions differ on the effect of the Maginot Line, which is sometimes even compared to the Great Wall of China.

Above: The Great Wall of China at Jinshanling

In 1940 the Germans simply bypassed it.

They disregarded Belgium’s neutrality and invaded France from the north.

Many of the fortifications, however, could not be captured despite the most violent bombing.

Their crews surrendered only days after the armistice came into force on the orders of the French High Command.

The Line has since become a metaphor for expensive efforts that offer a false sense of security.

After the war the line was re-manned by the French and underwent some modifications.

With the rise of the French independent nuclear weapons by 1960 the line became an expensive anachronism.

Some of the larger ouvrages were converted to command centres.

When France withdrew from NATO’s military component (in 1966) much of the line was abandoned, with the NATO facilities turned back over to French forces and the rest of it auctioned-off to the public or left to decay.

A number of old fortifications have now been turned into wine cellars, a mushroom farm and even a disco.

Besides that, a few private houses are built atop some of the blockhouses.

Ouvrage Rochonvillers was retained by the French Army as a command centre into the 1990s, but was deactivated following the disappearance of the Soviet threat.

Above: Bloc 5 of the Ouvrage Rochonvillers

Ouvrage Hochwald is the only facility in the main line that remains in active service, as a hardened command facility for the French Air Force known as Drachenbronn Air Base.

Above: Maginot Line – Ouvrage Hochwald (Lower Rhine, France), Block 6. Artillery casemate block for 3 75mm model 29 guns

In 1968 when scouting locations for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, producer Harry Saltzman used his French contacts to gain permission to use portions of the Maginot Line as SPECTRE headquarters in the film.

Saltzman provided art director Syd Cain with a tour of the complex, but Cain said that not only would the location be difficult to light and film inside, but that artificial sets could be constructed at the studios for a fraction of the cost.

The idea was shelved.

Today, the military is no longer interested in the facilities, some casemates serve as storage rooms for farmers, mushrooms are grown in some forts, grenade launcher turrets have been removed, and the metal is often recycled for other purposes.

Few of the once 2,000 buildings in Alsace have been restored by the Association des Amis de la Ligne Maginot d’Alsace and are now accessible to interested visitors:

• the Esch (near Hatten) infantry casemate
• the Schoenenbourg artillery
• the Four à Chaux fortification near Lembach
• the casemates Dambach-Neunhoffen and Marckolsheim.

I had walked from Wissembourg that morning to Drachenbronn and was still quite distant (in walking terms) from my pre-arranged hotel accommodation in Seltz.

But I was determined, I was gung-ho, I had gumption.

I would reach Seltz before darkness descended if I was not distracted en route.

I would be distracted….

For the Maginot Line would remind me of how Alsace has been, for generations, a battlefield.

Ouvrage Schoenenbourg is a Maginot Line fortification.

It is located on the territory of the communes of Hunspach, Schœnenbourg and Ingolsheim, in the French département of Bas-Rhin, forming part of the Fortified Sector of Haguenau, facing Germany.

At the east end of the Alsace portion of the Maginot Line, its neighbour is the gros ouvrage Hochwald.

It is the largest such fortification open to the public in Alsace.

Officially recorded as an historical monument, it retains all its original structural elements.

Above: The main entrance to Ouvrage Schoenenbourg

In 1938, soldiers were bored guarding the Maginot line, against the Germans who were not coming.

Two generals sponsored a subscription to flower the casemates.

In a few months, 10,000 roses were planted.

The Germans continued to make cannons.

Their tanks did not respect flower beds.

Schoenenbourg was heavily bombarded during the Battle of France in 1940, receiving more enemy ordinance than any other position in France, with no significant damage.

The fortification at Schoenenbourg is the one that saw the most combat between September 1939 and June 1940.

Over this period, over 17,000 shells were fired from the fort, and it was itself the target of over 3000 shells and 160 bombs.

Schoenenbourg was in action against the German 146th Infantry Division, which applied pressure along the Line.

On 19 June 1940, German Stukas attacked Schoenenbourg and other ouvrages, returning on the 20th and 21st.

The attacks on 21 June were joined by a bombardment with 420 mm siege mortars, lasting three days.

The bombardment cracked walls, but did not disable the position.

Schoenenbourg fired during this period in support of nearby casemates, not seriously affected by the bombardments.

Schoenenbourg’s turrets were retracted to receive the heavy shells, and raised during the lengthy reloading period for counter-battery fire.

The inventory of German ordnance fired against Schoenenbourg was assessed after the armistice, and found to comprise 160 aerial bombs, 50 42 cm shells, 33 28 cm shells, and approximately 3000 smaller projectiles, the most ammunition used against any fortification in France.

The Ouvrage de Schoenenbourg was one of the most fought in June 1940.

From 3 September 1939 to 25 June 1940, the Guardians of Schoenenbourg shot 15,792 grenades of 75 mm caliber and 682 of 81 mm caliber.

That was a total of 16,474 grenades in 10 months, of which 13,388 in 10 days (from June 14 to 25), including 723 120mm-sized grenades.

During this time, the plant received 56 hits from 420 mm grenades, 33 from 280 mm grenades, 160 from aerial bombs and 3,000 from 105 or 150 mm grenades.

The final surrender of Schoenenbourg was effected on 1 July 1940, in accordance with the terms of the Second Compiègne armistice.

Above: Hitler (hand on hip) and German high-ranked Nazis and officers staring at WWI French marshall Maréchal Foch’s memorial statue before entering the railway carriage in order to start the negotiations for the 1940 armistice at Rethondes in the Compiègne forest, France.

The armistice will only be signed the next day (June 22), Hitler being absent, by General Keitel on the German side and by General Huntziger on the French side.

Screenshot taken from the 1943 United States Army propaganda film Divide and Conquer (Why We Fight #3) directed by Frank Capra and partially based on news archives, animations, restaged scenes and captured propaganda material from both sides.

Above: Ferdinand Foch’s Railway Car, at the same location as after World War One, prepared by the Germans for the second armistice at Compiègne, June 1940

Following the surrender Schoenenbourg was used as a backdrop for propaganda films and as an indoctrination center for Hitler Youth.

Above: Flag of the Hitler Youth

In 1945, retreating German troops used explosives to destroy much of the ouvrage.

No fighting took place in the area of Schoenenbourg during the American advances of 1945, but the retreating Germans of the 245th Infantry Division caused extensive damage in March, using explosives to wreck the entrances and turrets, along with a number of nearby casemates.

The US 36th Infantry Division took possession of the damaged ouvrage on 20 March 1945.

Above: Ensignia of the US 36th Infantry

After the War it was fully repaired and placed back into service as part of a programme to use Maginot fortifications to resist a potential Warsaw Pact advance through Europe.

Above: Logo of the Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance

In the 1950s interest in the Maginot Line was renewed.

In 1951, Lembach, Four-à-Chaux, Hochwald and Schoenenbourg were designated the Môle de Haguenau, a point of resistance against a potential invasion by forces of the Warsaw Pact.

Lembach was repaired and put in a state of readiness in 1951-52.

Above: Four à Chaux, Lembach

Wartime damage was repaired.

The reconstructed entries took on a form that was modified from the original design, using the old foundations.

By the late 1950s interest in fixed fortifications was waning after France developed a nuclear deterrent.

The money needed to maintain and upgrade the fortifications was diverted for the nuclear programs.

Schoenenbourg was not manned or maintained after the early 1970s.

By the 1970s the plan had lost favour and funding.

Schoenenbourg was abandoned.

In 1987 a local organisation undertook Schoenenbourg’s preservation and today it is open to public visitation.

In 1987 the French Army allowed the Association des Amis de la Ligne Maginot d’Alsace (Alsace Association of Friends of the Maginot Line) to conduct tours of the fortification.

From 1987 the group has worked to restore Schoenenbourg.

The gallery system was used by the army for training until 2001 and the surface hosted three field emplacements for anti-aircraft missiles.

On 4 September 2001, Schoenenbourg was the first gros ouvrage to be sold by the Ministry of Defense to a local community.

And it is the local community of nearby Schoenenbourg village that determines when the Ouvrage is open.

Above: The Village of Schoenenbourg

Tours, for safety reasons, are no longer self-guided.

Prepared with warm clothing, the Visitor should be also prepared to be impressed by the underground facilities, once garrisoned by 620 soldiers at any given time.

The Fort with its three kilometres of underground galleries, equipment, infrastructure, casemates and towers, kitchens, machine rooms, the infirmary and all the living quarters have been restored in graphic detail.

Mannequins in uniform sleep in the dormitories or gorge themselves on local produce.

The huge underground fortress belonging to the Ligne Maginot is very close to the village of Schoenenbourg.

A staircase takes you about 30 meters down, first you visit the supply bunker with a fully equipped team kitchen (there was even a potato peeling machine), barracks and power station and then walk about one kilometer along the rails to one of the battle bunkers with a retractable armored turret.

The Fort is open every day for organized groups.

Individual visitors are admitted from 1 April to 31 October.

As the right cornerstone of the Maginot line, the Schoenenbourg group is a typical medium-sized artillery group (size class 2).

The shell was built from 1930 to 1933.

In 1935 the interior and armament were installed.

They were further improved and would have been expanded beyond 1940.

Most parts of the plant are 17 to 30 m underground.

Only the two factory entrances and the battle bunkers are on the surface of the earth.

The two entrances, one for the crew and one for the material delivery, are on the opposite side of a hill.

Shafts with stairs and elevators lead from the entrance structures to the underground parts of the factory.

There is a barracks with a kitchen and a hospital, a power plant, workshops, ammunition depots and command posts.

There was a narrow gauge railway in the plant that transported the material from the material entrance through a tunnel over 1 km long to the combat blocks.

The battle bunkers on the enemy side in the hill consist of two side-flanking infantry casemates (blocks 1 and 6), a retractable MG tank tower, two retractable tank towers with cannons and a retractable tank tower with a grenade launcher.

Above: Cross-section of a 75mm combat block showing the operation of the turret

The crew consisted of about 20 officers, 70 non-commissioned officers and 500 team ranks.

The crew size often fluctuated between 510 and 630 men. 183 of the crew, including about eight officers, were infantry, 230 men including ten artillery officers and 133 men including two to three officers were pioneers and members of the utility services.

Some of the crew were handed over to the Hoffen, Aschbach and Hatten observation bunkers as artillery observers.

The work group was commanded in 1939/40 by Major Reynier, who was supported by Captain Cortasse as the commander of the factory artillery, Captain Kieffer as the commander of the infantry and Captain Straw as the pioneer commander.

The individual systems of the work group and their armament:
– Block 1: Infantry Casemate North. 1 × 4.7-cm-Pak (Canon de 47 mm AC modèle 1934), 2 twin MGs, 2 MG armored domes.
– Block 2: MG tank tower. 1 twin machine gun in tank tower, 1 machine gun dome.
– Block 3: Panzerturm. 2 × 7.5 cm howitzer (model R 32), 1 MG armored dome.
– Block 4: Panzerturm. 2 × 7.5 cm howitzer (model R 32), 1 observation dome, 1 MG armored dome.
– Block 5: tank tower. 2 × 8.1 cm grenade launchers, 1 grenade launcher dome, 1 MG tank dome.
– Block 6: Infantry casemate south. 1 × 4.7 cm pak, 1 twin machine gun, 1 machine gun dome.
– Block 7: Ammunition entrance. 1 × 4.7 cm pak, 1 twin machine gun, 2 machine gun domes.
– Block 8: Team entrance. 1 × 4.7-cm-Pak, 1 twin machine gun, 1 grenade launcher dome, 1 MG tank dome.

The original planning had planned two artillery casemates, each with two 7.5 cm howitzers, which were to act as flanks, and an artillery armored turret as a frontal defense.

Because of the flat terrain, the two mighty gun casemats were replaced by armored turrets and their number was reduced from three to two.

A tank tower with two 13.5-cm howitzers, moved as combat block 9 to the second construction phase, was never built because the outbreak of the war meant that the second construction phase was not realized.

During normal operation, the Maginot Line plants were supplied with 22,000 volts from the outside via an underground cable.

Because an interruption in the external power supply had to be expected in the event of war, all plants were equipped with their own power plants.

Many functions of a Maginot plant depended on the supply of electricity:
– Lighting (approx. 2000 lamps)
– Transport (six elevators, two electric locomotives)
– Message transmission (radio, telephone, machine telegraph)
– Ventilation (35 fans)
– Water supply (ten pumps)
– Operation of the turrets
– Kitchen (electric stove, boiler, etc.)

There were four diesel generators in the machine room of the power plant.

Two generators were sufficient for normal operation.

When the plant was in a fight, a third generator was switched on to compensate for the increased energy requirements due to the lifting, lowering and turning of the armored turrets, the more frequent ammunition lifts, the increased traffic of the electric narrow-gauge railways and the increased use of ventilation.

The fourth generator was in reserve.

In the event of a sudden power failure, a small emergency generator was available in the power plant for a black start, which could be started manually and only supplied the power plant with power until the large diesel generators could be started.

These units were diesel engines from Sulzer with four cylinders each and a total output of 117.68 kW with a consumption of 20 liters of fuel per hour.

They were started using compressed air.

Each engine drove a generator that delivered 115 kVA in 440 volts.

All four generators could optionally be coupled together.

The very robust engines came from submarines and were dismantled by the German Wehrmacht for this purpose after the plant was abandoned.

The power station also has a transforming and transformer station that spans the 440 volt alternating current into 110 volt alternating current for the lighting network, 600 volt direct current for the electric locomotives and 3000 volts for the supply of the combat blocks.

Due to the higher voltage, the transmission losses were reduced, in the combat blocks the 3000 volts were switched over again according to your own needs.

In addition to the machine room and the forming station, the power plant also includes workshops, offices, spare parts stores and large storage tanks for 96,000 liters of diesel oil, 184,000 liters of cooling water and 6,000 liters of lubricating oil.

The main ventilation of the plant with a filter room is also housed here.

In an emergency, all of the plant’s electrically operated facilities could also be operated by hand.

Because of the dramatic events that forced the surrender of Fort Vaux during the First World War, because the garrison was close to dying of thirst, special attention was paid to the water supply of the Maginot works.

Above: Fort Vaux, Verdun

Above: The exhausted defenders of Fort Vaux

The Schoenenbourg plant had 263,000 liters available in 14 reservoirs.

These reservoirs were fed from a 117 meter deep well that guaranteed the independence of the plant.

Also, when the tunnel was driven, three water veins were cut, which were caught and added to the water supply.

The barracks are located near the team entrance and not far from the power station.

It housed accommodation for crews and officers, the kitchen, the hospital, washrooms and showers, the clothing store, and food and drinking water supplies.

There were toilets in every battle block.

In the main command center, all communications came together.

The reports from the individual combat blocks and also from other bunkers and plants were recorded and evaluated here.

Here was the fortress commander’s room and the telephone exchange, which was also in constant communication with the radio room, which was in the ammunition entrance for technical reasons.

Once the reports received had been evaluated and there was an overview of the situation, the fire control center of the artillery issued the commands to the combat blocks.

The commands were issued from here via machine telegraphs directly to the gun turrets.

So it often only took a few minutes from a reported enemy sighting to opening  fire.

It was the local community volunteers who encountered a certain tall, thirsty Canadian hiker that horribly warm Tuesday afternoon.

When I arrived all tired and thirsty, hot (high 20°s) and bothered, as Google Maps and poor signage had been distinctly unhelpful in navigating through the Outre Fôret, I was informed that I was too early for a guided tour and that the tour would last two hours and that the warren labyrinth of tunnels required a guided tour.

Having to wait two hours for a tour and being still four hours’ walking distance away from Seltz and my pre-booked hotel room, I regretably had to give the Fort a pass.

The voluntary guides were obliging enough to allow me to drink a belly full of cold water and to refill my water bottle, but I was deeply saddened not to be able to have the opportunity to hear the human side of these fortifications beyond the facts I had previously garnered.

A few kilometres away from the Fort I see a sign at the entrance to the town of Hunspach (population: 700) which informs the visitor that he has arrived in one of the most beautiful villages in France.

Hunspach can be rightly proud of their blossom-white plastered half-timbered houses from the 18th and 19th centuries with characteristic gable canopies and large courtyards.

Together they form a picturesque ensemble.

Still one of the most attractive villages that I have seen, Hunspach was rebuilt by the Swiss after the ravages of the Thirty Years War (which perhaps explains this solemnity and cleanliness of the place).

Some curious details to note:

Several residences have curved panes which formerly allowed residents to see outside while preserving their privacy.

The village is a member of the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (The most beautiful villages of France) association.

Hunspach has retained much of its traditional architecture.

The houses are white and in the Alsatian half timbered style.

Open central yards offer glimpses of the working farms within.

Hunspach really deserves attention.

Without being particularly spectacular, it exudes a great sweetness of life.

Above all, it is not a village museum, unlike many listed villages.

It is a village that lives!

Everywhere in the village, old draw wells remind us that water once had to be laboriously brought into the houses by hand.

The Hunspacher are also tradition-conscious when it comes to eating.

For Sunday breakfast, the thick cake, a yeast pastry, is served almost everywhere, and every housewife has her family recipe for the village specialty Flaaschknepfle (meatballs in white sauce).

The only famous personality that Hunspach seems to have produced is Hans Adam Rott.

Hans Adam Rott (1876 – 1942) was a German historian, especially an art historian.

He was the director of the Baden State Museum in Karlsruhe for many years.

Above: Baden State Museum (Badisches Landesmuseum), Karlsruhe

After attending grammar school in Weissenburg, Hans Rott initially studied law at the University of Freiburg, where he obtained his PhD.

Subsequently, he studied history, art history and church history at the University of Heidelberg, where he earned another doctorate in 1904 with a thesis on Friedrich II.

Above: Friedrich II (1482 – 1556), also known as Frederick the Wise, a member of the Wittelsbach dynasty, was Prince-Elector of the Palatinate from 1544 to 1556.

In 1906 Rott undertook a trip through Asia Minor to research the Christian monuments there.

Rott succeeded Max Wingenroth as assistant to the director at the Badisches Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe in 1909, where he also worked on the inventory of Baden art monuments.

From 1919 until his retirement in 1938, he was director of the State Museum.

He was awarded the title of Professor for his services.

He researched and published primarily in the field of art history in Baden and southwestern Germany at the time of the transition from late Gothic to the Renaissance, for which he mainly evaluated archival sources.

Above: Hunspach, Rott’s birthplace

The next village (population: 1,200) I visited first appears in surviving records in 1052 as Hoffen.

Hof is a Germanic word denoting a farm, a homestead or a settlement.

The village coat of arms comes from the Trautwein family who founded Hof: the family died out in 1664.

The story of Hof has been a turbulent one.

In the 14th century there were two settlements: Hoven comprised a dozen farms and Buren just four houses.

These were the property of St Peter the Younger in Strasbourg.

Above: Church of St. Peter the Younger, Strasbourg

However, in 1450, the villages were surrendered to the lords of Hohenbourg and Fleckenstein.

Above: Château de Hohenbourg, Alsace

Above: Chateau de Fleckenstein, Alsace

Then from the end of the 15th century possession of these settlements passed into the hands of the Counts of Zweibrücken.

During the 17th century Hoffen became attached to the Bailiwick of Cleebourg.

Above: Cleebourg, Alsace

The Thirty Years War (1618 – 1648) was devastating for many villages in Alsace, and in 1633 the hamlet of Buren disappeared following the passing of Imperial Catholic troops.

Above: Illustration from Jacques Callot’s Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre (The Great Miseries of the War), 1632

There were further destructive wars for much of the 18th century, but 1748 probably marked the end of the most deadly of them all for Alsace.

Many villages were left depopulated and were subsequently resettled by migrants from Switzerland, higher up the river Rhine or from other parts of France which emerged from the war in possession of most of the major towns and cities in Alsace, and controlled the whole province by the time of Louis XIV’s death in 1715.

In September 1939 the population of Hoffen was evacuated to Haute Vienne as the government reluctantly planned for another territorial struggle with Germany.

In 1974 the communes of Leiterswiller, Hoffen and Hermerswiller merged.

Hoffen is a typical and charming village with its flowering houses of geraniums, its portals and its wooden balconies.

I like the main square and the old half-timbered town hall, with an elegant wooden gallery on columns.

Next door, I see a majestic lime tree planted during the Revolution.

Above: City Hall, Hoffen

By the time I leave Hoffen I find myself feeling worried.

I am still, according to my calculations, three hours’ walking distance from Seltz, and the sun will be setting soon.

I really don’t wish to be walking in darkness in unfamiliar territory and as it seems that my slow ambling at the Fort and in the picturesque hamlets of Hunspach and Hoffen, I decide to chance getting a lift with a driver to Seltz.

His name is Thierry Labbé.

He is a phys-ed teacher at a high school in Hagenau heading home to Hatten and welcomed the distraction of a Canadian hitchhiker on this oft-travelled commute.

Above: Hagenau, Alsace

(He knew I was Canadian as I sported my flag on my backpack.

Subsequent questioning and my ability to speak French confirmed my status.)

Thierry volunteered to drive me right to the door of my hotel outside Seltz even though this was several kilometres away from his original destination.

Our journey took us right through Hatten and past Esch.

Hatten marks the start of the Outre Fôret in the north of the Bas-Rhin, at the northern edge of the Haguenau forest.

The town, although located in the plain of Alsace, has a hilly type relief.

A collection of Neolithic objects has been unearthed beneath the town hall.

The Hatten chariot tomb attests to the geographical belonging of the tumuli culture of middle Europe.

However, it is necessary to consider globally the extensive site of the Hatten forest and the Bois de l’Hospital, a necropolis of more than 300 mounds identified.

The first cartular occurrence of the temporal possessions of Wissembourg Abbey mentions this village-domain for a few scattered properties.

The village initially belonged to the county of Alsace and was in the Hattgau.

In 1332 the Lords of Lichtenberg bought it together with a number of other villages and rights.

The office had developed in the 14th century and was an office of the Lichtenberg rule, from 1480 Hanau-Lichtenberg county, from which it passed to Hesse-Darmstadt county in 1736.

Hatten Castle was built by the Lichtenbergers before 1354.

It was handed over to the Kurpfalz by the Lichtenbergers and received back as a fief.

The local farmers saw themselves as free farmers. So they had no need to get urban liberties.

They were already free.

That is why Hatten was never granted city rights – in contrast to other larger places under the Lichtenberg rule.

Anna von Lichtenberg (1442 – 1474) married Count Philipp I the Elder of Hanau-Babenhausen (1417 – 1480) in 1458.

The county of Hanau-Lichtenberg was formed through the marriage.

After the death of the last Lichtenberger, Count Jakob, an uncle of Anna, Philipp I ruled Hanau-Lichtenberg, which also included Hatten.

This remained under the authority of the Landgraves of Basse-Alsace before being sold to the powerful lords of Lichtenberg in 1332.

They bequeathed it to their heirs, the Hanau-Lichtenberg in 1448, then the Hesse-Darmstadt in 1736.

Count Philip IV of Hanau-Lichtenberg (1514-1590) consistently carried out the Reformation in his county after he took office in 1538, which now became Lutheran.

Around 1680 parts of the county of Hanau-Lichtenberg in Alsace fell under the sovereignty of France, including Hatten.

In 1736 Count Johann Reinhard III, the last male representative of the Hanau Family died.

Due to the marriage of his only daughter, Charlotte (1700 – 1726), to Prince Ludwig (1691 – 1768) of Hesse-Darmstadt.

Before the Revolution, Hatten was the capital of a bailiwick grouping ten villages.

It was animated by an almost negligible commercial life, apart from three big annual fairs.

As a result of the French Revolution, the part of Hanau-Lichtenberg on the left bank of the Rhine – and thus also Hatten – fell to France.

Above: Storming of the Bastille

During the demographic peak in 1849, with 2,139 inhabitants, the town hosted various houses of trade in fabrics, iron, wood and wine, in addition to a notary and a collector of direct contributions.

The village was even the seat of a small Protestant consistory of the Augsburg Confession, since it counted among its population 1,131 Protestants and 22 Anabaptists for 765 Catholics and 222 Jews.

Above: Europe, 1618

From 1871 until the end of the First World War, the municipality belonged to the German Empire as part of the Empire of Alsace-Lorraine and was assigned to the district of Weissenburg in Lower Alsace.

During the German Belle Époque, a brigade of gendarmes, three doctors, a pharmacy, a bookstore, a savings bank, a public cash register, grain wholesalers, hops, cattle, wood and charcoal were added.

In 1939, Hatten was on the Maginot Line, so as a precaution the 1,500 inhabitants of the village were evacuated to Château Ponsac in Limousin by the French authorities.

They left behind everything that didn’t fit in a suitcase.

But luckily, the village did not suffer then.

So in 1940, the inhabitants of Hatten were able to return to Alsace, then annexed by the Germans.

On 13 December 1944, after 4 years of occupation, the village was liberated without fighting by the Americans and the inhabitants then felt safe.

But on 1 January 1945, the Germans launched one of their last war offensives, Operation Nordwind, which aimed, among other things, to reconquer Strasbourg.

Hatten was then a must for the German tanks and, during the tank battles between Germans and Americans between 8 and 20 January, the village was almost entirely destroyed by a succession of tank fighting, with the enormous power of American artillery fire completing the destruction operation.

Indeed, after 12 days of fighting, of the 365 houses in the village then, 350 were destroyed.

2,500 soldiers and 83 civilians were killed there.

After the war, the martyred village was rebuilt.

A bunker museum and a commemorative plaque in the center of the church testify to the losses.

The town of Hatten is actually an unassuming residential village, but if you are interested in military history and the Ligne Maginot, you will see a lot here.

The Cour de Marie is a delightful and atypical museum which pays homage to village traditions with agricultural equipment, Raynal dolls, baby carriages, 19th century sewing machines, gallery radio sets….

Not forgetting the hairdressing salon and the grocery store from the 1950s.

In the west of the village, an open-air museum has been set up on the site of a former large shelter.

This shelter museum (Museé de l’abri) is set up in a large bunker, which the French military built in 1930 as a defensive structure against the German Empire and which was given to a volunteer association for use in the 1990s.

The museum is not subsidized by the state and is financed by donations and entrance fees.

Their exhibition concept is unusual:

It sees itself as a museum against oblivion.

Therefore, relics from the Second World War have been gathered from everywhere, including from Germany.

Among other things, models illustrate the devastating tank battle at Hatten in January 1945.

The documents on everyday life during the Second World War are particularly impressive.

To the east of the village you can also visit the Casemate d’Esch with two restored original rooms and a small exhibition.

Built in 1931, Casemate Esch was occupied by the 23rd Fortress Infantry Regiment, which assisted in combat in June 1940 during the enemy attack on the Aschbach and Oberroedern casemates.

In January 1945, Esch was successively taken and retaken by the Germans and Americans and was the scene of fierce fighting of which it still bears traces today.

Above: Casemate Esch

After a pleasant drive and conversation where he explained to me the sites we passed, Thierry left me at my hotel, asking me to befriend him on Facebook.

The Hôtel des Bois in Seltz is a quiet resting place near the German border with:

• 15 rooms
• 4 studios
• 1 apartment

All are on offer for an overnight or a longer stay.

The Hôtel did its best to provide for my comfort.

The front desk is open 24 hours and free Wi-Fi access is provided in the entire hotel.

Bicycle storage and free private parking are possible on site.

All the rooms were renovated in 2017.

Though they would offer breakfast in a well-lit dining hall, supper had to be catch-as-catch-can from the Super U mall besides Autoroute A35.

The A35 autoroute is a toll free, 137 km / 116-mile long highway in northeastern France.

It is also known as the Autoroute des cigognes (storks) and the Voie Rapide du Piémont des Vosges.

It connects the German border in the Rhine valley with the Swiss frontier via Strasbourg.

The road forms part of European routes E25 and E60.

At the northern end, where the road reaches the German frontier, it becomes a single carriageway road controlled by a speed camera.

On the German side of the frontier, plans to build a final stretch of Autobahn to connect the French A35 directly with the German A65 at Kandel were not implemented during the 1990s when the focus of Autobahn construction switched to the eastern side of the country.

The project remains unimplemented:

It is contentious because of the ecological impact it could have on the Bienwald (wooded area) through which the road would run.

My hotel was on the western end of town.

What was worth exploring was to the east.

And the subject of a future post…..

Above: Flag of Alsace

Canada Slim and the City at the Crossroads

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Saturday 6 July 2019

In previous posts in both my blogs I have written about the quiet majesty and remarkable beauty of the French region known as Alsace.

 

 

As evidenced by the post you are reading, I continue to wax poetically about this region, simply because I find myself consistently drawn to exploring it every opportunity I have, even though I no longer live as close to the French border as I once did in the days when I lived in Freiburg im Briesgau, in southwestern Germany’s Black Forest, with my wife.

The easiest, and perhaps inevitable, introduction to Alsace is to first begin your explorations with the departmental capital, Strasbourg, for it is here that not only does the explorer develop a sense of what it means to be Alsatian, French and European, but as well it is here where the visitor finds a sense of what it means to be human, for better and for worse.

This particular travel description will differ from others in that I will not be prefacing it with datelines as I usually have done with other places I have visited, because I have visited Strasbourg on so many occasions that my actual moments stand out less significantly than the overall impression that the city has given me.

This city is one of those places where each visitor must discover and claim Strasbourg as their own in their own personal way.

I have visited Strasbourg on my own without any financial resources.

I have visited Strasbourg alone, with friends, and with my wife, flush with funding.

Each experience was entirely unique and original in itself.

I doubt there will ever be a time when I will ever say that I know Strasbourg, for Strasbourg is like the nearby Rhine….

You can never step into it the same way twice, for that what was of yesterday is a world alien to that of today and what will be tomorrow is unimaginable today.

 

 

Strasbourg is situated at the eastern border of France with Germany.

This border is formed by the Rhine, which also forms the eastern border of the modern city, facing across the river to the German town Kehl.

The historic core of Strasbourg however lies on the Grande Île in the river Ill, which here flows parallel to, and roughly 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) from, the Rhine.

The natural courses of the two rivers eventually join some distance downstream of Strasbourg, although several artificial waterways now connect them within the city.

 

Above: Gare de Strasbourg (rail station)

 

The city lies in the Upper Rhine Plain, at between 132 metres (433 ft) and 151 metres (495 ft) above sea level, with the upland areas of the Vosges Mountains some 20 km (12 mi) to the west and the Black Forest 25 km (16 mi) to the east.

This section of the Rhine valley is a major axis of north–south travel, with river traffic on the Rhine itself, and major roads and railways paralleling it on both banks.

 

Above: Notre Dame Cathedral, Strasbourg

 

The city is some 397 kilometres (247 mi) east of Paris.

The mouth of the Rhine lies approximately 450 kilometres (280 mi) to the north, or 650 kilometres (400 mi) as the river flows, whilst the head of navigation in Basel, Switzerland, is some 100 kilometres (62 mi) to the south, or 150 kilometres (93 mi) by river.

 

 

The city has warm, relatively sunny summers and cool, overcast winters.

Precipitation is elevated from mid-spring to the end of summer, but remains largely constant throughout the year, totaling 631.4 mm (24.9 in) annually.

On average, snow falls 30 days per year.

 

Above: Palais Rohan, Strasbourg

 

The 2nd highest temperature ever recorded was 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) in August 2003, during the 2003 European heat wave.

This record was recently broken, on 30 June 2019, when it was registered 38.8 °C (101.8 °F).

The lowest temperature ever recorded was −23.4 °C (−10.1 °F) in December 1938.

 

 

Strasbourg’s location in the Rhine valley, sheltered from the dominant winds by the Vosges and Black Forest mountains, results in poor natural ventilation, making Strasbourg one of the most atmospherically polluted cities of France.

Nonetheless, the progressive disappearance of heavy industry on both banks of the Rhine, as well as effective measures of traffic regulation in and around the city have reduced air pollution.

 

Above: Palais du Rhin, Strasbourg

 

Strasbourg is the capital and largest city of the Grand Est region of France and is the official seat of the European Parliament.

Located at the border with Germany in the historic region of Alsace, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin department.

Strasbourg is the 9th largest metro area in France and home to 13% of the Grand Est region’s inhabitants.

 

 

Strasbourg is the seat of over twenty international institutions, most famously of the Council of Europe and of the European Parliament, of which it is the official seat.

Strasbourg is considered the legislative and democratic capital of the European Union, while Brussels is considered the executive and administrative capital and Luxembourg the judiciary and financial capital.

 

 

Strasbourg is the seat of the following organisations, among others:

• Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine (since 1920)
• Council of Europe, with all the bodies and organisations affiliated to this institution (since 1949)
• European Parliament (since 1952)
• European Ombudsman
• Eurocorps headquarters,
• Franco-German television channel Arte
• European Science Foundation
• International Institute of Human Rights
• Human Frontier Science Program
• International Commission on Civil Status
• Assembly of European Regions
• Centre for European Studies (French: Centre d’études européennes de Strasbourg)
• Sakharov Prize

Above: Hemisphere, European Parliament, Strasbourg

 

It is the second city in France in terms of international congress and symposia, after Paris.

 

Success did not come at the head of a city that had passed almost without transition from a quiet regional capital to a European city.

It has not frantically thrown itself into the hands of promoters for a 21st century concrete facelift, even if its new status as a metropolis in a wider region is now pushing it to develop new neighborhoods, along the Rhine or at the gates of the old city.

It is no coincidence that its historic center, a real big island restored to life by a well-studied traffic plan, from which the car was largely driven out, was the first urban center in France in to be listed by UNESCO as World Heritage.

The former imperial German district Neustadt is also UNESCO-honoured since July 2017.

Strasbourg is immersed in Franco-German culture and although violently disputed throughout history, has been a cultural bridge between France and Germany for centuries, especially through the University of Strasbourg, currently the second largest in France, and the co-existence of Catholic and Protestant culture.

It is also home to the largest Islamic place of worship in France, the Strasbourg Grand Mosque.

 

Above: Strasbourg Grand Mosque

 

But do not believe, discovering the impressive number of monuments and neighborhoods waiting for your visit, that it is a city frozen in history that welcomes you.

Strasbourg, which has managed to put at its head women of character as well as skilled men, sailing skillfully between right and left, is a city that has also demonstrated its industrial and commercial dynamism.

Strasbourg proved that it knew how to win:

• The TGV Est Europe is there, putting Paris at 1h50 from the Alsatian capital
• The tram has reorganized the entire city center and brought some places to life:

All old Strasbourg is largely pedestrian now, and cyclists reign there as masters.

In short, in addition to its rich architectural heritage, you will discover a city with exceptional quality of life, which has found a rare commodity: silence and singing birds!

And if the sacrosanct winstubs, believed to be eternal, have disappeared for the most part after the retirement of those who made their reputation (they have kept their name but have become tourist restaurants essentially), tea rooms, terraces, trendy places, and even today’s trendy winstubs are opening up neighborhoods that have not been seen before.

 

 

Economically, Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as a hub of road, rail, and river transportation.

The port of Strasbourg is the 2nd largest on the Rhine after Duisburg in Germany, and the 4th largest river port in France after Nantes, Rouen and Bordeaux.

Above: The port of Strasbourg

 

Yet despite all of this, Strasbourg rarely receives the admiration and attention that greater-sized metropolises do, especially in popular culture.

 

Musically, Strasbourg is a sidenote.

 

Several compositions have specifically been dedicated to Strasbourg Cathedral by church componists Franz Xaver Richter, Ignaz Pleyel and John Tavener.

 

Above: Notre Dame Cathedral, Strasbourg

 

Strasbourg pie, a dish containing foie gras, is mentioned in the finale of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats.

 

 

On their 1974 album Hamburger Concerto, Dutch progressive band Focus included a track called “La Cathédrale de Strasbourg“, which included chimes from a cathedral bell.

 

 

British punk band The Rakes had a minor hit in 2005 with their song “Strasbourg”, featuring witty lyrics with themes of espionage and vodka and a cleverly inserted count of “eins, zwei, drei, vier” even though Strasbourg’s spoken language is French.

 

 

Havergal Brian’s Symphony #7 was inspired by passages in Goethe’s memoirs recalling his time at Strasbourg University.

Brian’s work ends with an orchestral bell sounding the note E, the strike note of the bell of Strasbourg Cathedral.

 

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart called his 3rd Violin Concerto (1775) the Straßburger Konzert because one of its most prominent motives, is based on a Strasbourg minuet dance that had already appeared as a tune in a symphony by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf.

 

Above: Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739 – 1799)

 

In literature, Strasbourg is a footnote.

 

A sole chapter, albeit a long one, of Laurence Sterne’s 1767 novel Tristram Shandy, “Slawkenbergius’ Tale” takes place in Strasbourg.

 

Above: Laurence Sterne (1713 – 1768)

 

(Hafen Slawkenbergius is a fictional writer referenced in Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy.

Slawkenbergius was “distinguished by the length of his nose, and a great authority on the subject of noses“.

Sterne gives few biographical details relating to Slawkenbergius, but states that he was German and that he had died over 90 years prior to the writing and publication (in 1761) of the books of Tristram Shandy in which he appears — i.e., circa 1670, although Slawkenbergius’ tale includes a reference to the French annexation of Strasbourg in 1681.

Slawkenbergius is primarily known for his scholarly writings in Neo-Latin, particularly his lengthy monograph De Nasis (“On Noses“), purporting to explain different types of noses and their corresponding significance to human character.

The second book of De Nasis is said to be filled with a large number of short stories illustrative of Slawkenbergius’ characterizations of noses.

Only one of these stories is reproduced in Tristram Shandy.

Slawkenbergius is first referred to in Volume III, Chapter XXXV.

Volume IV opens with the relatively lengthy “Slawkenbergius’s Tale.”

This tale recounts the journey of a courteous gentleman, Diego, who was endowed with a massive nose.

Diego attempts to pass inconspicuously through Strasbourg on his way from the “Promontory of Noses“, but the sight of his giant nose sends the Strassburgers, especially the nuns, into a restless frenzy.

The tale relays the results of the upset in Strassburg and the travels of Diego to his admirer Julia.)

 

 

A solitary episode of Matthew Gregory Lewis’ 1796 novel The Monk takes place in the forests that once surrounded Strasbourg.

 

 

(Baptiste is a robber living outside of Strasbourg.

He lets travellers stay in his house so that he may rob and murder them.

His two sons by a previous wife, Jacques and Robert, assist him to this end.

He then forced Marguerite to marry him.

Marguerite, however, is disgusted by his life of crime.

Marguerite is first introduced as a short and unwilling hostess and wife of Baptiste.

Her first husband dies after receiving wounds from an English traveller.

The group of banditti do not trust Marguerite to keep their secret and she becomes the property of Baptiste.

She has two sons, Theodore and a younger unnamed boy.

She saves Don Raymond’s life by revealing Baptiste’s true intentions through mysterious bloody sheets and significant glances.

She stabs and kills Baptiste as Don Raymond tries to strangle him, allowing them both to escape.

Don Raymond is the son of the Marquis and is also known as Alphonso d’Alvarada.

He takes the name Alphonso when his friend, the Duke of Villa Hermosa, advises him that taking a new name will allow him to be known for his merits rather than his rank.

He travels to Paris, but finds the Parisians “frivolous, unfeeling and insincere” and sets out for Germany.

Near Strasbourg he is forced to seek accommodations in a cottage after his chaise supposedly breaks down.

He is the target of the robber Baptiste but with help from Marguerite, he is able to save himself and the Baroness Lindenberg.

Grateful, the Baroness invites Don Raymond to stay with her and her husband at their castle in Bavaria.)

 

Above: The Monk (2011 French film)

 

Sadly, these are books rarely read today by our generation of techno tots.

 

In film, Strasbourg is merely backdrop.

 

The opening scences of the 1977 Ridley Scott film The Duellists take place in Strasbourg in 1800.

 

 

(Fervent Bonapartist and obsessive duellist Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) of the French 7th Hussars, nearly kills the nephew of the city’s mayor in a sword duel.

Under pressure from the mayor, Brigadier-General Treillard (Robert Stephens) sends a member of his staff, Lieutenant Armand d’Hubert (Keith Carradine) of the 3rd Hussars, to put Feraud under house arrest.

As the arrest takes place in the house of Madame de Lionne (Jenny Runacre), a prominent local lady, Feraud takes it as a personal insult from d’Hubert.

Matters are made worse when Feraud asks d’Hubert if he would “let them spit on Napoleon” and d’Hubert doesn’t immediately reply.

Upon reaching his quarters, Feraud challenges d’Hubert to a duel.

The duel is inconclusive.

d’Hubert slashes Feraud’s forearm but is unable to finish him off, because he is attacked by Feraud’s mistress.

As a result of his part in the duel, d’Hubert is dismissed from the General’s staff and returned to active duty with his unit.

The war interrupts the men’s quarrel and they do not meet again until six months later in Augsburg in 1801.)

 

 

The 2007 Spanish film In the City of Sylvia is set in Strasbourg.

 

 

(In the City of Sylvia (Spanish: En la Ciudad de Sylvia) is a 2007 film directed by José Luis Guerín.

The film follows a young man credited only as ‘Él‘ (English:’Him‘) as he wanders central Strasbourg in search of Sylvia, a woman he asked for directions in a bar six years earlier.

 

 

Guerín, born in Barcelona, is a prolific and original documentary filmmaker who has made only a handful of fiction features, averaging one per decade.

He is often characterized as “inquisitive”, is never seen without a flat cap tucked over his forehead, and is fascinated with silent film, meta-fictional conceits, journals, and the relationship between person, place, and memory.

 

 

Sylvia may represent a real person from Guerín’s past (like his experimental companion piece, Some Photos In The City Of Sylvia) or she could be someone he made up, a purely rhetorical figure.

She is the girl with the white parasol remembered by Bernstein in Citizen Kane, a movie that’s all about the way fleeting moments stick like splinters in memory.

(“Rosebud”)

 

 

Or she is Madeleine, Vertigo’s woman that never was.

 

 

José Luis Guerín’s 2007 film In The City Of Sylvia doesn’t have much plot beyond what’s implied in the title.

An unnamed young man (French actor Xavier Lafitte) is visiting Strasbourg, a picturesque city just off the border between France and Germany.

He remembers a woman named Sylvia or Sylvie, whom he met very briefly at a bar called Les Aviateurs while visiting Strasbourg six years earlier.

She drew him a map on a beer coaster.

Perhaps he hopes to run into her again.

The movie is broken up into chapters (identified as “1st night“, “2nd night” and so on), which presumably correspond to the length of the young man’s stay in Strasbourg, during which he doesn’t appear to do anything except look, draw, and – in a series of scenes that takes up a third of the film – follow a woman that he may think is Sylvia or Sylvie.

It’s something of a masterpiece, filled with beguiling intangibles and apparent contradictions.

Part of what makes the film so elemental is the way it uses elementary techniques, be it close-ups, reverse angles or natural light.

There is nothing fancy about it, but, as is often the case, the simplest steps lead to the most sophisticated results, building to the crescendo of the final sequence, in which glimpses of strangers at a Strasbourg tram stop – alone or in groups – suggest a world of mystery, possibility and unacknowledged beauty.

Guérin romanticizes looking, by taking something completely mundane and, by breaking it down on film, makes it seem extraordinary.)

 

 

The opening scene of the 2011 movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows covers an assassination bombing inside Strasbourg Cathedral.

 

 

(“The year was 1891.

Storm clouds were brewing over Europe.

France and Germany were at each other’s throats, the result of a series of bombings.

Some said it was nationalists, others the anarchists, but as usual my friend Sherlock Holmes had a different theory altogether.”

“Strasbourg bombing.  Read all about it.  Anarchists suspected in Strasbourg bombing.”)

 

 

Before the 5th century, the city was known as the Roman camp of Argantorati, first mentioned in 12 BC.

That Gaulish name is a compound of -rati, the Gaulish word for fortified enclosures, and arganto(n)-  the Gaulish word for silver, but also any precious metal, particularly gold, suggesting either a fortified enclosure located by a river gold mining site, or hoarding gold mined in the nearby rivers.

 

 

After the 5th century, the city became known by a completely different name Gallicized as Strasbourg (Lower Alsatian: Strossburi; German: Straßburg).

That name is of Germanic origin and means “town at the crossing of roads“.

Gregory of Tours was the first to mention the name change:

In the 10th book of his History of the Franks, written shortly after 590, he said that Egidius, Bishop of Reims, accused of plotting against King Childebert II of Austrasia in favor of his uncle King Chilperic I of Neustria, was tried by a synod of Austrasian bishops in Metz in November 590, found guilty and removed from the priesthood, then taken “ad Argentoratensem urbem, quam nunc Strateburgum vocant” (“to the city of Argentoratum, which they now call Strateburgus“), where he was exiled.

 

Above: Statue of Gregory of Tours (538 – 594), Louvre Museum, Paris

 

Strasbourg celebrated its 2,000th anniversary in 1988.

 

Between 362 and 1262, Strasbourg was governed by the bishops of Strasbourg.

Their rule was reinforced in 873 and then more in 982.

In 1262, the citizens violently rebelled against the bishop’s rule (Battle of Hausbergen) and Strasbourg became a free imperial city.

 

Above: Battle of Hausbergen, 8 March 1262

 

It became a French city in 1681, after the conquest of Alsace by the armies of Louis XIV.

 

Above: King Louis XIV of France (1638 – 1715)

 

(Marguerite LePaistour was born in 1720 in Cancale.

Hated by her stepmother, she rebels against her family, runs away, and to go unnoticed, dresses as a man.

Under the name of Henri, she became a servant, soldier, and executioner in Strasbourg and Lyon.

Unmasked, she ends up behind bars, gets married on leaving prison.

And everything returns to normal!)

 

 

In 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War, the city became German again, until 1918 (end of World War I), when it reverted to France.

After the defeat of France in 1940 (World War II), Strasbourg came under German control again.

Since the end of 1944, it is again a French city.

In 2016, Strasbourg was promoted from capital of Alsace to capital of Grand Est.

 

 

Strasbourg played an important part in Protestant Reformation, but also in other aspects of Christianity, such as German mysticism, Pietism, and Reverence for Life.

Delegates from the city took part in the Protestation at Speyer.

 

Above: Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses that sparked the Reformation

 

It was also one of the first centres of the printing industry.

 

 

(Johannes Gutenberg, fleeing Mainz for political reasons, took refuge in Strasbourg and there developed his brilliant invention, but in developing the printing press, he went bankrupt.

And yet it was the most important invention of the time.

It must be said that Bibles of 1,200 pages were complex to manufacture and complicated to sell.

And yet, today, they are worth more than $30 million each!

He must be spinning in his grave.)

 

Above: Place Gutenberg, Strasbourg

 

Among the darkest periods in the city’s long history were the years 1349 (Strasbourg massacre), 1793 (Reign of Terror), 1870 (Siege of Strasbourg) and the years 1940–1944 with the Nazi occupation (atrocities such as the Jewish skeleton collection) and the British and American bombing raids.

 

Above: The Strasbourg Massacre

 

The Strasbourg massacre occurred on 14 February 1349, when several hundred Jews were publicly burnt to death, and the rest of them expelled from the city as part of the Black Death persecutions.

It was one of the first and worst pogroms in pre-modern history.

 

 

The Reign of Terror, or The Terror (French: la Terreur), refers to a period during the French Revolution after the First French Republic was established.

Several historians consider the “reign of terror” to have begun in 1793, placing the starting date at either 5 September, June or March (birth of the Revolutionary Tribunal), while some consider it to have begun in September 1792 (September Massacres), or even July 1789 (when the first lynchings took place), but there is a consensus that it ended with the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in July 1794.

Between June 1793 and the end of July 1794, there were 16,594 official death sentences in France, of which 2,639 were in Paris.

 

Above: Siege of Strasbourg (14 August to 28 September 1870), Franco-Prussian War

 

(During the siege of Strasbourg in 1870, the Prussian authorities allowed the wounded to communicate with their family, provided that the writings were readable by censorship, therefore without envelope.

Thus, no military secret could be disclosed.

The postcard was born.)

 

Above: Bombardment of Notre Dame, Siege of Strasbourg

 

Above: Plaque in memorium of the 86 victims of the Jewish Skeleton Collection, Université de Strasbourg

 

Some other notable dates were the years 357 (Battle of Argentoratum), 842 (Oaths of Strasbourg), 1538 (establishment of the university), 1605 (world’s first newspaper), 1792 (La Marseillaise), and 1889 (the discovery of the pancreatic origin of diabetes).

 

Above: The Oaths of Strasbourg

 

Above: The world’s first newspaper, Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenkwürdigen Historien (Account of all distinguished and commendable news), published by Johann Carolus (1575 – 1634), Strasbourg

 

Above: Rouget de Lisle sings “La Marseillaise” for the first time at the home of Strasbourg Mayor Philippe-Frédéric de Dietrich, 25 April 1792

 

(It is said that Rouget de Lisle imagined the national anthem in a single night in Strasbourg.

Not so complicated, when we see strange similarities with “Esther“, an oratorio of a certain Grisons, composer in Saint Omer.

Note for note.

To listen on the Internet is edifying.

It must be said that Rouget de Lisle was captain of the garrison at Saint Omer.

Well, well.

No wonder he composed “La Marseillaise” in one night!)

 

Above: Marseillaise volunteers, Arc de Triomphe, Paris

 

Strasbourg was also the home of a bizarre epidemic, the Dancing Plague of 1518, where hundreds of citizens danced for several days, some even dying of exhaustion.

 

Above: The Dancing Plague of 1518

 

The dancing plague (or dance epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg in July 1518.

Around 400 people took to dancing for days without rest and, over the period of about one month, some of those affected collapsed or even died of heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.

 

Strasbourg has been the seat of European institutions since 1949: first of the International Commission on Civil Status and of the Council of Europe, later of the European Parliament, of the European Science Foundation, of Eurocorps, and others as well.

 

 

Those are the facts.

They speak little of beguiling intangibles and apparent contradictions.

They do not offer glimpses of this strange world of mystery, possibility and unacknowledged beauty.

They offer no romance and no hint of the extraordinary connection between people, places and memories.

 

City with many faces – the often strained phrase really hits the spot here.

In the center of the Alsatian capital, the majestic Gothic cathedral towers like a memorial of permanence in the sky, surrounded by medieval romantic slices, and not far away, ultramodern glass palaces testify to the spirit of the 21st century.

In the vibrant economic center with a cozy Winstub flair – a bit of a metropolis, a bit of a small town – enjoyable Alsatian ways of life complement well with cosmopolitan European government institutions and German neatness with French esprit.

If you walk through the streets of the old town, it seems hard to imagine that in the Greater Strasbourg area live about 470,000 people.

 

 

In addition, there are numerous guests, such as the MEPs, who come to town once a month, like locusts, and disappear just as quickly after a week.

During the parliamentary sessions, many hotels are fully booked, taxis are constantly on the move, and there is hardly any free space in the better restaurants.

The presence of these institutions, rich with well-off elected officials and their collaborators who are not less, represents a sacred manna for the city.

In some sectors, real estate prices rival those of the beautiful Parisian or Nicois neighborhoods.

The economic difficulties that the new Europe is experiencing daily have brought the city to more humility in recent years.

Even if it is more than difficult to stay here during the parliamentary sessions (it is then necessary to push up to Kochersberg), one can find accommodation at reasonable prices, especially if one knows how to play specials at certain periods.

 

Above: Logo of the European Parliament

 

As a long-term guest one can designate the overwhelming majority of nearly 50,000 students enrolled at the various colleges of the city.

In the cafés and pubs they prefer, there is the typical atmosphere of a university town.

 

 

Important guests for Strasbourg are, of course, the tourists who visit the city in large numbers – far more than four million a year.

To seduce a public who, more and more numerous, come here for a weekend in love or a few days with family, Strasbourg has no shortage of assets, winter and summer, by the way.

From traditional markets to the ever-popular Christmas market through the Musica festival, Strasbourg knows how to charm you.

And they are offered something truly extraordinary:

The picturesque Old Town island enclosed by the Ill, a unique district of Wilhelmine monumental buildings, the European Mile, a large number of important museums, just to name a few worth mentioning.

All sights are comparatively close to each other and are within walking distance.

In addition, there are some other ways of exploring the city by boat, a ticket, even by taxi or – very sporty – by bike.

And of course you can take a pleasant break: romantic on the banks of the Ill, in beautiful squares, in lively street cafes, quaint Winstubs or fine gourmet restaurants.

They are places of rest welcome between two visits of museums or churches, a walk on the quays or in the parks.

Strasbourg can be visited, it will never be said enough, first on foot, nose in the air, at one’s own pace.

Even in the evening, there is no boredom.

Various theaters, the opera, bars full of variety, music bars and discos provide entertainment.

 

 

Strasbourg also includes tens of thousands of people from the former French colonies in Africa.

Only a few of them are guests, most of them now own a French passport, their descendants have already been born in Strasbourg.

The visitor will usually encounter only a few of them as dealers near the tourist attractions.

Most live in run-down suburban neighborhoods, e.g. in Neuhof or in Elsau, where the social problems have led to more violence for years – this too is one of the many facets of the Alsatian capital.

 

 

Strasbourg is a unique destination filled with special eccentricities.

Take the Cathedral for example.

Unique in France, the building became Protestant in 1529, and was so until 1681, when Louis XIV took Strasbourg.

Even today, ecumenical services are held regularly in the Saint-Laurent Chapel (entrance, left side).

On this occasion, Protestants and Catholics pray together.

 

Above: Rose window, Notre Dame Cathedral, Strasbourg

 

There is so much to see and do in Strasbourg that one blogpost will not suffice.

Among the variety are:

• Strasbourg Cathedral
• Notre Dame Museum
• Pharmacie du Cerf
• Kammerzell House
• Place du Marché aux Cochons de Lait
• Chateau Rohan
• Museum of Decorative Arts
• Archaeological Museum
• Place de l’Homme de Fer
• Place Kléber
• Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
• Place Gutenberg
• St. Thomas Church
• Petite France
• Rhine Palace
• St. Paul’s Church
• The Council of Europe
• Human Rights Building
• Palais de l’Europe
• Parliamentary Assembly
• Museum of Fine Arts
• Museum of Engraving and Drawing
• Tomi Ungerer International Centre of Illustration
• Le Vaisseau Science and Technology Centre
• The Rhine Navigation Museum
• The Strasbourg Bar Association Museum
• The Zoological Museum
• The Gypsothéque / Adolf Michaelis Museum
• Museum of Seismology and Magnetism
• Pasteur Museum of Medical Curiosities
• Mineralogy Museum
• Egyptology Museum
• The Star Crypt
• The Museum of Chocolate Secrets
• The Pixel Museum

 

Above: Strasbourg Observatory

 

Europe’s Crossroads lies at the very heart of western Europe, closer to Frankfurt, Zürich and Milan than it is to Paris.

Strasbourg is the seat of internationally renowned institutions of music and drama.

 

 

It also has a long history of excellence in higher education at the crossroads of French and German intellectual traditions.

The University has attracted eminent students such as Goethe, Metternich and Montgelas.

Its people have been awarded 19 Nobel prizes, thus making Strasbourg University the most eminent French university outside Paris.

The Université de Strasbourg includes:

• The IEP (Institut d’études politiques de Strasbourg), the University of Strasbourg’s political science & international studies center.
• The EMS (École de management Strasbourg), the University of Strasbourg’s Business School.
• The INSA (Institut national des sciences appliquées), the University of Strasbourg’s Engineering School.
• The ENA (École nationale d’administration). ENA trains most of the nation’s high-ranking civil servants. The relocation to Strasbourg was meant to give a European vocation to the school and to implement the French government’s “décentralisation” plan.
• The ESAD (École supérieure des arts décoratifs) is an art school of European reputation.
• The ISEG Group (Institut supérieur européen de gestion group).
• The ISU (International Space University) is located in the south of Strasbourg (Illkirch-Graffenstaden).
• The ECPM (École européenne de chimie, polymères et matériaux).
• The EPITA (École pour l’informatique et les techniques avancées).
• The EPITECH (École pour l’informatique et les nouvelles technologies).
• The INET (Institut national des études territoriales).
• The IIEF (Institut international d’études françaises).
• The ENGEES (École nationale du génie de l’eau et de l’environnement de Strasbourg).
• The CUEJ (Centre universitaire d’enseignement du journalisme).
• TÉLÉCOM Physique Strasbourg,(École nationale supérieure de physique de Strasbourg), Institute of Technology, located in the south of Strasbourg (Illkirch-Graffenstaden).

 

 

The Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire (BNU) is, with its collection of more than 3,000,000 titles, the 2nd largest library in France after the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

It was founded by the German administration after the complete destruction of the previous municipal library in 1871 and holds the unique status of being simultaneously both a student and a national library.

 

Above: The BNU, Strasbourg

 

The municipal library Bibliothèque municipale de Strasbourg (BMS) administrates a network of ten medium-sized librairies in different areas of the town.

A six stories high “Grande bibliothèque“, the Médiathèque André Malraux, was inaugurated on 19 September 2008 and is considered the largest in Eastern France.

 

 

As one of the earliest centers of book-printing in Europe, Strasbourg for a long time held a large number of incunabula – documents printed before 1500 – in its library as one of its most precious heritages.

After the total destruction of this institution in 1870, however, a new collection had to be reassembled from scratch.

 

Above: The Nuremburg Chronicle incunabula, 1493

 

Today, Strasbourg’s different public and institutional libraries again display a sizable total number of incunabula, distributed as follows:

• Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire
• Médiathèque de la ville et de la communauté urbaine de Strasbourg
• Bibliothèque du Grand Séminaire
• Médiathèque protestante
• Bibliothèque alsatique du Crédit Mutuel

There is a great longing within me to have you, gentle readers, discover this city for yourselves.

I want you to feel as I have felt and understand as I have understood why Strasbourg once experienced compels a person to want to return.

There are places to explore and tales to be told.

We shall return…..

Sources: 
- Wikipedia
- Google
- The Rough Guide to France 
- Antje and Gunther Schwab, Elsass 
- Le Routard Alsace (Grand-Est) 
- Marie-Christine Périllon, Alsace 
- Michèle-Caroline Heck, The Golden Book of Alsace 
- Patrick Schwertz, Alsace: 100 lieux pour les curieux
- Ignatiy Vishevetsky, "An overlooked masterpiece about looking", The AV Club, 22 March 2016

 

Canada Slim and the Swedish Pinot

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 20 April 2019

The Norwegians find them insufferably puffed up.

The Danes consider them to be party poopers.

The Brits see them as sexy but cold.

The Americans think they are Swiss!

 

Above: Flag of Sweden

 

Author Sven Linquist summed it up thus:

The Swedes look at the world through a square frame nailed together by Martin Luther, Gustav Vasa (the founder of the Swedish state), the Temperance Movement and 100 years of socialism.

Luther contributed the Swedish taste for simplicity.

Vasa gave the Swedes a national identity.

The Temperance Movement gave rise to the Swedish tendency to be sanctimonious.

Socialism gave the Swedes a mentality of work as necessary but not everything.

 

 

Foreigners living in Sweden find the natives socially impenetrable, as neighbours mind their own business and colleagues go straight home after work.

The Swedes themselves don’t actually dislike any nation in particular, because they are quietly confident in Swedish superiority.

Foreigners are good news, because with their funny faces and horrific habits they remind Swedes how wonderful it is to be Swedish and normal.

 

 

I have vacationed in Sweden with my wife and I have worked with a Swede in Switzerland and I find very little that is objectionable about the Swedes.

I find them less puffed up than Parisians, more party hardy than my fellow Canadians, as sexy as teenage voyeurism once suggested but not tempting enough to test my marriage vows, and I see in them more similarities with their Scandinavian neighbours than they would care to admit.

 

 

Simple?

Maybe the architecture and IKEA furniture is, but a Swedish woman is no less and no more complicated than her international counterparts.

Patriotic?

Certainly, they are not more patriotic than Canadians or Swiss.

Though they display their national flag everywhere as the Americans do theirs, the Swedish are far more secure in their superiority than the Americans are.

 

The Swedes don’t need to boast.

They simply and quietly know their own value.

 

Above: The coat of arms of Sweden

 

Sanctimonious?

Perhaps the women are, for the Swedes believe that they are the first in the world to achieve total equality between the sexes, thus a man who isn’t taciturn and submissive is a threat to that uneasy balance between the sexes.

I feel that in the quest to be emancipated the Swedish female feels threatened if the male requests the same.

Only a woman dares tell a man how wrong he is.

A man dares not do the same to her without serious conflict and consequence.

 

 

As for the work ethic, I can only say that the Sweet Suede that I once worked with was a hardy and competent and well-respected worker beloved by both staff and customers.

 

 

I never thought that I would even think about Sweden and Swedish women during my visit to the Alsace Wine Route.

I was wrong.

 

 

Alsace, France, 2 January 2019

Alsace is the smallest region in France as regards area, but the most highly populated as regards density.

Alsace has 1,734,000 inhabitants – 209 inhabitants per square kilometre, whereas the average number of inhabitants per square kilometre in Metropolitan France is 108.

This is by no means the only peculiarity of this region….

 

 

Officially the Alsace Wine Route is broken into two sections: the one most folks travel and the northern section most don’t.

The northern section begins in the town of Wissembourg.

 

 

I have written about Wissembourg before.

A monastery town and former garrison, Wissembourg offers numerous attractions such as the Abbey Church of St. Peter and St. Paul with its gigantic representation of St. Christopher, the Fritz House built in 1550, and the Bruch – the town’s old quarter.

 

 

(Please see Canada Slim and the Burning King of my other blog Building Everest for more on Wissembourg.  https://buildingeverest.wordpress.com)

 

Far away from the traditional half of the famous Alsatian wine route between Marlenheim and Thann, quite competitive wine is also being produced near Wissembourg at the base of the first foothills of the northern Vosges in heavy, fat clay soil.

 

 

Viticulture here has a long tradition.

Introduced by the roamin’ Romans, later promoted by the monks of Wissembourg, today 200 sideline wine makers cultivate some 175 hectares of all sorts of grape varieties like Graubünden, Pinot Blanc and Gewürztraminer, from the five villages of Rott, Oberhoffen, Steinseltz, Riedseltz and Cleebourg.

 

 

Private wine sales are not common as the wine makers deliver almost all of their grapes to the Cleebourg Wine Cooperative which wine lovers should not miss.

 

 

In the lovely hilly countryside around the five villages with their vineyards and numerous fruit trees you can also go for a walk and then stop in at the Ferme Auberge Moulin des 7 Fontaines (Mill of the Seven Fountains) in the area – a particularly beautiful place.

 

 

A 47 minute, 3.5 kilometre stroll south west of Wissembourg finds the pedestrian in the village of Rott (population: 473) where one finds a barrel that the enterprising Mayor Louis Andres Rott turned into a bar, engraved with the worthy maxim:

“If you drink, you die.

If you don’t drink you die, so….“

 

Above: Rott, Alsace, France

 

Rott is one of 50 Alsatian communities with a simultaneum (or shared church) with different Christian denominations meeting at different times and presided over by different clergy.

Above the village on the Col de Pigeonnier stands the electric tower, the Émetteur de l’Eselsberg.

 

 

The Cleebourg vineyard is at the northernmost point of the Alsatian winemaking area and covers all its communes as well as Wissembourg, the main town in the canton.

The vineyard stretches from Rott, with its belfry / clock tower overlooking the cemetery that doubled as a defensive hideout in the 18th century, to Riedseltz on the banks of the Rhine.

Planted mainly with hybrids or fallen into disuse until the end of the Second World War, the vines were uprooted and the vineyards replanted with the now-famous classic Alsace varieties since the 1950s.

The local wine producers belong to the Cleebourg cooperative, which has an excellent reputation for all things Pinot, including a blanc de blanc crémant, the Prince Casimir.

 

 

Follow the signs of the small rural routes to the village of Oberhoffen lès Wissembourg.

With about 300 inhabitants, Oberhoffen-lès-Wissembourg is one of the smallest communes in the community of communes whose main resource comes from the communal forest.

 

 

Orchards and vineyards surround the village.

The vines that contribute to the development of the Karschweg, the Pinot gris (formerly Tokay pinot gris) local vinified by the Cleebourg cooperative cellar.

 

 

The discovery of the village can also be done by taking the tree path that crosses the town.

 

Located at the foot of the Vosges hills, Oberhoffen-lès-Wissembourg was first attached to the bailiwick of Cleebourg, then passed under the influence of Puller de Hohenbourg to finish as the Duchy of Deux-Ponts where it will remain until the revolution.

It was not until 1927 that the town became known as Oberhoffen-lès-Wissembourg because of its geographical proximity to Wissembourg.

 

 

Close by is the equally small village of Steinseltz by the River Hausauerbach in the region known as Outre-Forêt (“beyond the forest“).

 

 

The origin of the history of Steinseltz is closely linked to that of the Abbey of Wissembourg, founded in the 8th century by the monk Dagobert of Speyer.

Locals still bear witness to this distant time like that of Auf der Hub.

A hub was a plot of land rented by the convent to private individuals against a well-defined tenancy.

In 1401, after the decline of the Abbey of Wissembourg, the lords of Hohenbourg, seized the village as well as those of Cleebourg, Oberhoffen-lès-Wissembourg and Rott.

His successor Wirich II built Castle Cleebourg in 1412.

 

 

In 1475, Wirich III allied with Duke Louis de Deux-Ponts against the Elector Palatine Frédéric.

Victorious, the latter annexed the village of Steinseltz.

 

In 1504, Maximilian of Habsburg attributed the village of Steinseltz to the Duchy of Zweibrücken, which thus exercised a right of collation.

They integrated Steinseltz to the Bailiwick of Cleebourg, which they held until the Revolution.

 

On 4 August 1870, the Imperial Prince Frederick William went to the locality of Schafbusch to bow before the remains of Abel Douay.

 

In Steinseltz, every August in odd years, there is a feast in honor of the geranium, a symbol of Alsace.

 

 

At the heart of the village, Ferme Burger welcomes, every first Wednesday of the month, a market of local and organic products.

There are food products (breads, vegetables, fruits, oils, chocolate, honey) as well as aesthetic products such as essential oils, soaps or herbs.

 

 

And Steinseltz produced Marie….

 

Marie (Trautmann) Jaëll (17 August 1846 – 4 February 1925) was a French pianist, composer and pedagogue.

 

 

Marie Jaëll composed pieces for piano, concertos, quartets, and others.

She dedicated her cello concerto to Jules Delsart and was the first pianist to perform all the piano sonatas of Beethoven in Paris.

She did scientific studies of hand techniques in piano playing and attempted to replace traditional drilling with systematic piano methods.

Her students included Albert Schweitzer, who studied with her while also studying organ with Charles-Marie Widor in 1898-99.

Her father was the mayor of Steinseltz in Alsace and her mother was a lover of the arts.

 

She began piano studies at the age of six and by seven, she was studying under piano pedagogues F.B. Hamma and Ignaz Moscheles in Stuttgart.

Marie’s mother served as her advocate and manager.

A year after she began lessons with Hamma and Moscheles, she gave concerts in Germany and Switzerland.

In 1856, the ten-year-old Marie was introduced to the piano teacher Heinrich Herz at the Paris Conservatory.

 

 

After just four months as an official student at the Conservatory, she won the First Prize of Piano.

Her performances were recognized by the public and local newspapers.

 

The Revue et gazette musicale printed a review on 27 July 1862 that read: “She marked the piece with the seal of her individual nature.

Her higher mechanism, her beautiful style, her play deliciously moderate, with an irreproachable purity, an exquisite taste, a lofty elegance, constantly filled the audience with wonder.”

 

On August 9, 1866, at twenty years of age, Marie married the Austrian concert pianist, Alfred Jaëll.

 

Above: Alfred Jaell (1832 – 1882)

 

She was then known variously as Marie Trautmann, Marie Jaëll, Marie Jaëll Trautmann or Marie Trautmann Jaëll.

Alfred was fifteen years older than Marie and had been a student of Chopin.

The husband and wife team performed popular pieces, duos, solos, and compositions of their own throughout Europe and Russia.

As a pianist, Marie specialized in the music of Schumann, Liszt, and Beethoven.

They transcribed Beethoven’s “Marcia alla Turca Athens Ruins” for piano.

The score was successfully published in 1872.

Alfred was able to use his success and fame to help Marie meet with various composers and performers throughout their travels.

 

In 1868, Marie met the composer and pianist Franz Liszt.

A record of Liszt’s comments about Marie survives in an article published in the American Record Guide:

“Marie Jaëll has the brains of a philosopher and the fingers of an artist.“

Liszt introduced Marie to other great composers and performers of the day—for example, Johannes Brahms and Anton Rubinstein.

 

By 1871, Marie’s compositions began to be published.

With the death of her husband in 1881, Marie had the opportunity to study with Liszt in Weimar and with Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck in Paris.

She also had composition lessons with César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns, who dedicated his Piano Concerto No. 1 and the Étude en forme de valse to her.

Saint-Saëns thought highly enough of Marie to introduce her to the Society of Music Composers—a great honor for women in those days.

 

After struggling with tendonitis, Jaëll began to study neuroscience.

The strain on her playing and performing led her to research physiology.

Jaëll studied a wide variety of subjects pertaining to the functioning of the body and also ventured into psychology:

“She wanted to combine the emotional and spiritual act of creating beautiful music with the physiological aspects of tactile, additive, and visual sensory.“

Dr. Charles Féré assisted Jaëll in her research of physiology.

 

Her studies included how music affects the connection between mind and body, as well as how to apply this knowledge to intelligence and sensitivity in teaching music.

 

Liszt’s music had such a tremendous influence on Jaëll that she sought to gain as much insight into his methods and techniques as possible.

 

This research and study lead to Jaëll creating her own teaching method based on her findings.

Jaëll’s teaching method was known as the ‘Jaëll Method‘.

Her method was created through a process of trial and error with herself and her students.

Jaëll’s goal was for her students to feel a deep connection to the piano.

An eleven-book series on piano technique resulted from her research and experience.

Piano pedagogues have since drawn insight into teaching techniques of the hand from her method and books.

In fact, her method is still in use today.

As a result of her studies, Jaëll was able to compile her extensive research into a technique book entitled L’intelligence et le rythme dans les mouvements artistiques.

This text is used by pianists and piano pedagogues as a reference, specifically with hand position and playing techniques.

She died in Paris.

 

 

Walk out of Jaell’s Steinseltz and head west and then south following signposts to Cleebourg.

Cleebourg is a quiet village, with some half-timbered winemakers’ houses built on sandstone bedrock.

Cleebourg’s vineyards are the northernmost point of the Wine Route and though they are planted with the classic varieties, Pinot Gris is indisputably the most successful wine made here.

The grapes, grown on a rocky volcanic soil, produce crisp wine with a characteristically smoky aroma with lily undertones.

Cleebourg used to belong to the Palatin Zweibrückens, but a curious love story in the 17th century brought it under the Swedish crown….

 

 

John Casimir, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken-Kleeburg (1589 – 1652) was the son of John I, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken and his wife, Duchess Magdalene of Jülich-Cleves-Berg and was the founder of a branch of Wittelsbach Counts Palatine often called the Swedish line, because it gave rise to three subsequent kings of Sweden, but more commonly known as the Kleeburg (or Cleebourg) line.

 

 

In 1591 his father stipulated that, as the youngest son, John Casimir would receive as appanage the countship of Neukastell in the Palatinate.

Upon their father’s death in 1611, however, the eldest son, John II, Count Palatine of Zweibrucken, instead signed a compromise with John Casimir whereby the latter received only the castle at Neukastell coupled with an annuity of 3000 florins from the countship’s revenues (similarly, John Casimir’s elder brother, Frederick Casimir, received the castle at Landsberg with a small surrounding domain, instead of the entire Landsberg appanage bequeathed to him paternally).

On 11 June 1615, Casimir married his second cousin Catherine of Sweden, and their son eventually became King Charles X of Sweden.

Five of his children with Catherine survived infancy:

• Christina Magdalena (1616–1662)
  • married Frederick VI, Margrave of Baden-Durlach.
  • King Adolf Frederick of Sweden was her great-grandson.
• King Charles X Gustav of Sweden (1622–1660)
• Maria Eufrosyne (1625–1687)
  • married Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie
• Eleonora Catherine (1626–1692)
  • married Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Eschwege
• Adolf John (1629–1689)

 

Catherine of Sweden (Swedish: Katarina) (1584 – 1638) was a Swedish princess and a Countess Palatine of Zweibrücken as the consort of her second cousin John Casimir of Palatinate-Zweibrücken.

 

 

She is known as the periodical foster mother of Queen Christina of Sweden.

 

Catherine was the daughter of King Charles IX of Sweden and his first spouse Maria of the Palatinate-Simmern.

Her personality was described as “a happy union of her father’s power and wisdom and her mother’s tender humility“.

Her mother died in 1589 and Catherine was placed in the care of the German Euphrosina Heldina von Dieffenau, whom she praised much later in life.

 

In 1592, her father remarried to Christina of Holstein-Gottorp.

She reportedly got along well with her stepmother and was close to her half siblings, especially her eldest brother, the future King Gustavus Adolphus, who is noted to have been very affectionate toward her.

In later letters to her consort, however, it seems that she was not always as much in agreement with her stepmother as she gave the impression to be.

 

Her father became regent in 1598 and was crowned king in 1607.

 

In 1611, her brother succeeded her father as King Gustavus Adolphus.

Her brother found Catherine sensible and wise and she is reported to have acted as his confidante and adviser on several occasions.

 

Catherine married late for a Princess of her period.

Although she was a great heiress, her status on the international royal marriage market was uncertain because of the political situation in Sweden after her father had conquered the throne from his nephew Sigismund.

Her parents’ marriage had been an alliance with the anti-Habsburg party in Germany, which in turn was allied with King Henry IV of France and the French Huguenots.

 

 

In 1599, there were plans to arrange a marriage between her and the Protestant French Prince Henri, Duke of Rohan, leader of the French Huguenots.

Henry married Marguerite de Béthune in 1603.

After the Treaty of Knäred in 1613, her status became more secure.

 

With the support of her stepmother Queen Dowager Christina, the queen dowager’s brother Archbishop John Frederik of Bremen arranged the marriage between Catherine and her relative (Count Palatine) John Casimir of Palatinate-Zweibrücken.

Though relatively poor, he had contacts which were deemed valuable to Sweden, though Count Axel Oxenstierna opposed the marriage.

The marriage took place on 11 June 1615 in Stockholm.

 

Above: Stockholm Royal Palace

 

Catherine was, by the will of both her parents as well as by the law regarding the dowry of Swedish Princesses, one of the wealthiest heirs in Sweden.

As the economic situation at the time was strained, she remained in Sweden the first years after her marriage to guard her interests.

 

In January 1618, she left for Alsace.

There, the couple was given the Kleeburg Castle as their residence.

The year after, John Casimir started to build a new residence, the Renaissance Palace Katharinenburg near Kleeburg.

 

 

In 1620, the Thirty Years’ War forced them to flee to Strasbourg.

In 1622, her brother King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden asked her to return to Sweden with her family.

The death of her younger brother in Sweden, as well as the lack of heirs to the Swedish throne was evidently the reason why the monarch wished to move her to safety away from the Thirty Years’ War.

Catherine accepted the invitation and arrived to Sweden with her family in June 1622.

At her arrival, the birth of her son Charles immediately strengthened her position.

 

In Sweden, she and her consort were granted Stegeborg Castle and a county in Östergötland as their fief and residence and as payment of her dowry:

Catherine was styled Countess of Stegeborg.

Catherine and John Casimir settled in well at Stegeborg, where they maintained a royal standard of living:

They kept a court with 60 formal ladies-in-waiting and courtiers and an official table.

 

 

Catherine actively engaged herself in the management of the estates, and was in 1626 given Skenas Royal Estate as her personal fief.

 

Catherine was on very good terms with her brother King Gustavus Adolphus, who is known to have asked her for advice.

During his trips, he often asked her to try to console and control his consort, Queen Maria Eleonora.

 

Catherine was exposed to certain intrigues at court with the purpose of blackening her name in the eyes of the royal couple, but she managed to avoid these plots.

She was on good terms with the dynasties of Pfalz and Brandenburg, with whom she corresponded and who considered her to be wise and to have good judgment.

 

In 1631, Catherine was given the custody of her niece, Princess Christina, the heir to the throne, when the queen was allowed to join the king in Germany, where he participated in the Thirty Years’ War.

Christina remained in her care until Maria Eleonora returned to Sweden upon the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632.

 

After the death of King Gustavus Adolphus, the couple came in conflict with the Guardian Government of Queen Christina over their position and rights to Stegeborg.

When John Casimir broke with the royal council in 1633, the couple retired from court to Stegeborg.

Catherine did not show any interest in participation in state affairs.

 

In 1636, however, Queen Dowager Maria Eleonora was deemed an unsuitable guardian and deprived of the custody of the young monarch, and Catherine was appointed official guardian and foster mother with the responsibility of the young queen’s upbringing.

The appointment was made upon the recommendation of Count Axel Oxenstierna and she reportedly accepted the task with reluctance.

This appointment destroyed her relationship with Maria Eleonora.

 

The years in Catherine’s care are described by Christina as happy ones.

Princess Catherine personally enjoyed great respect and popularity in Sweden as a member of the royal house and as the foster parent of the monarch:

 

However, this respect did not include her consort, who was given no task or position at court whatsoever.

John Casimir was himself careful to point out her rank as a Royal Princess, but he was himself exposed to some humiliation because of their difference in rank.

One example was at the opening of Parliament in 1633, when Catherine in accordance with the wish of the Royal Council followed Queen Christina in the procession, while John Casimir was given the choice to stand and watch the ceremony from a window or not be present at all.

 

Catherine died in Västerås, where the royal court had fled from an outbreak of plague in Stockholm.

At her death, Axel Oxenstierna said, that he would rather have buried his own mother twice, than once again see “the premature death of this noble Princess“.

After her death, the royal council appointed two foster mothers for the queen to replace her: Countess Ebba Leijonhufvud and Christina Natt och Dag.

The Katarina kyrka in Stockholm is named after her.

 

 

The marriage of John and Katarina reminds me of two other marriages: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and my own.

 

 

Victoria and Albert were, like John and Katarina, cousins.

The Princes Consort were considered less worthy of respect than their lady heiresses to major kingdoms’ thrones.

Both royal couples gave birth to children who would rise to great power.

 

My wife and I are not cousins nor nobility of any sort, but, like Katarina, my wife is considered sensible and wise.

She, like many women, could certainly have married a man far more appropriate for her and her ambitions, and yet we, like John and Katarina, like Victoria and Albert, have remained together despite our inequalities.

Like John and Katarina, my wife and I lived apart from one another for years despite our union.

I, like John, followed my bride to her home country.

 

 

(Less than 4 kilometres south of Cleebourg is the municipality of Drachenbronn-Birlenbach, where one can find both the original site of Katharienburg as well as the Musée Pierre Jost.

The Pierre Jost Museum is situated near the Ouvrage Hochwald, one of the major fortifications of the Maginot Line in France, which documents the story of the fortifications before, during and after World War II.

The Ouvrage Hochwald fortification was built in the Hochwald massif between 1929 and 1935 and was the strongest in Alsace.

It was capable of housing 1,200 men.

It had eleven blocks, with turrets, casemates to house the infantry, three entry blocks and an anti-tank ditch.

 

 

Construction of the Museum in honor of the builders and defenders of the Maginot Line began in 1972, led by Pierre Jost.

The Museum was set up in the old M1 magazine.

The original museum was closed in 2009 since it no longer met public safety standards.

On 12 September 2011 the museum was re-opened in building T4 at airbase 901 in Drachenbronn-Birlenbach.

The new premises, opened in time for Heritage Day on 18 September 2011, has more than 350 square metres (3,800 sq ft) of space.

 

 

The first room has some artillery pieces, in use until 1940, and press clippings of the early days of liberation towards the end of World War II.

The Museum has rooms for exhibits that cover each period in the life of the fortification:

• Construction in 1930–1935
• Occupation by the French in 1935–1940
• Occupation by the Germans in 1940–1945
• The Cold War, when the fortification was viewed as defense against Soviet tanks advancing towards Paris.
• The room for the 1935–1940 period has the equipment, arms and personal effects of soldiers of that period.
• The 1940–1945 room has German propaganda posters and relics from the liberation.
• Part of the Museum also tells the story of the airbase.
• There are many photographs showing the daily life of the soldiers during the different periods.

Sadly, the Musée Pierre Jost is open only during the Journées des Patrimoine, three days each September.)

 

Alsace is wine-growing country.

 

 

It has long been so and will probably long be so, but Sweden, on the other hand….

 

 

Sweden is well north of the area where the European vine, Vitis vinifera, occurs naturally.

 

There is no tradition of wine production from grapes in the country.

 

Some sources claim that some monastic vineyards were established when the Roman Catholic church established monasteries in Sweden in medieval times, when Sweden’s climate was milder, but traces of this supposed viticulture are much less evident than the corresponding activities in England, for example.

Small-scale growing of grapes in Swedish orangeries and other greenhouses have occurred for a long time, but the purpose of such plantations were either to provide fruit (grapes) or for decoration or exhibition purposes and not to provide grapes for wine production.

 

Towards the end of the 20th century, commercial viticulture slowly crept north, into areas than the well-established wine regions, as evidenced by Canadian wine, English wine and Danish wine.

This trend was partially made possible by the use of new hybrid grape varieties and partially by new viticultural techniques.

 

The idea of commercial freeland viticulture in Sweden appeared in the 1990s.

Some pioneers, especially in Skåne (Scania), took their inspiration from nearby Denmark, where viticulture started earlier than in Sweden, while others took their inspiration from experiences in other winemaking countries.

 

Perhaps surprisingly, the first two wineries of some size were not established in the far south of Sweden, but in Södermanland County close to Flen (in an area where orchards were common) and on the island of Gotland, which has the largest number of sunshine hours in Sweden.

Later expansions have mostly taken place in Scania, though.

 

There are also small-scale viticulturalists who grow their grapes in greenhouses rather than in the open.

 

Small quantities of a few commercial wines made their way into the market via Systembolaget from the early 2000s.

Only a handful of Swedish producers can be considered to be commercial operations, rather than hobby wine makers.

In 2006, the Swedish Board of Agriculture counted four Swedish companies that commercialized wine produced from their own vineyards.

The total production was 5,617 litres (1,236 imperial gallons; 1,484 US gallons), of which 3,632 litres (799 imperial gallons; 959 US gallons) were red and 1,985 litres (437 imperial gallons; 524 US gallons) white, and this amount was produced from around 10 hectares (25 acres) of vineyards.

The Association of Swedish winegrowers estimates 30-40 vinegrowing establishments in Scania, but this number includes hobby growers with a fraction of a hectare of vineyards.

 

 

And here’s the thing, the point I am trying to make….

 

Sometimes things, sometimes people, thrive where no one thinks they will.

Sometimes places, sometimes people, have a past never imagined by others.

 

There is absolutely no reason to imagine that this quiet obscure section of the Alsace Wine Route could produce anything or anyone worthy of attention.

And yet the wine is very fine and the region has fostered both talent and royalty.

 

 

There is absolutely no proof in my possession that John and Katarina ever inspired Swedish wine production through their Alsatian experiences, but nonetheless I am seduced by the possibility.

 

There was no reason why the Maginot Line should not have defended France for centuries to come.

Unless invading Germans simply go around this line of walled fortifications.

 

(Trump could learn from the Maginot Line that a border wall is useless if desperate folks use desperate tactics like simply flying over the thing.)

 

There is no just cause why Alsace should be considered either French or German despite centuries of struggle and bloodshed, for even the smallest of walks through the Alsatian countryside reveals that these people are neither French nor German but are instead indefatiguably, eternally, proudly and uniquely Alsatian.

 

Is life in this tiny corner of France simple?

It is no less fascinating, no less complicated, than anywhere else humanity has chosen to settle.

 

 

Are Alsatians proud French patriots?

In the sense of defending their homes against the destructiveness of invasion, Alsatians are patriotic, but this patriotism is reserved for Alsace alone.

 

 

For here the visitor hears both French and German spoken, and sees le francais and Deutsch written everywhere.

Alsace once upon a time was conquered by the French, was then conquered by the Germans, then liberated once more by the French.

But it is a long way, both geographically and philosophically, from Berlin and Paris.

 

 

Could one suggest that Alsatians are sanctimonious?

Perhaps.

But only because they quietly know their own value and sense their own superiority.

 

 

Today is Saturday and all of this conversing about wine has given me a craving for a fine glass of pinot.

I wonder whether the wine shop between Starbucks and the train station in St. Gallen will be still open after my shift ends.

I wonder whether I will buy a bottle of the Alsatian or the Swedish.

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Peter Berlin, Xenophobe’s Guide to the Swedes / Marie-Christine Périllon, Alsace: A Tourist Guide to the Entire Region / Jacky Bind & Jean Claude Colin, Alsace: The Wine Route / Michèle-Caroline Heck, The Golden Book of Alsace / Antje & Gunther Schwab, Elsass / Rough Guide France / Lonely Planet France

Canada Slim and the Family of Mann

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 12 August 2018

Perhaps I should have been recovering from yesterday’s Street Parade in Zürich, at present the most attended techno-parade in the world.

Officially it is a demonstration for freedom, love and tolerance attended by up to one million people.

In reality it has all the character of a popular festival, despite (technically) being a political demonstration.

The streets are packed, the music is loud and live, electronics throb and flash, dancing till dizziness, alcohol flows, drugs dispensed….

Somehow the message is we should all live together in peace and tolerance.

In my experience a mob of drunken stoned revellers doesn’t suggest peace and tolerance.

Instead I quietly celebrated a sad anniversary today.

 

On this day in 1955 the Nobel Prize-winning German author Thomas Mann died.

 

Kilchberg, Swizerland, 12 August 2018

German author Thomas Mann and his family made their home in Kilchberg near Zürich overlooking the Lake of Zürich, and most of them are buried here.

As well, Swiss author Conrad Ferdinand Meyer lived and died in Kilchberg and is honoured by a Museum here.

(Today was my third and finally successful attempt to visit this Museum.

More on this in a future blog….)

The chocolatier David Sprüngli-Schwartz of the chocolate manufacturer Lindt & Sprüngli died in Kilchberg, now the headquarters of the company.

(More on Lindt in a future blog….)

 

Prior to moving to Switzerland in 2010, I had never met nor heard of anyone named Golo, which to my mind sounds like an instruction….

“I’ll take the high road. 

You, go low.”

In this region, Golo is associated with, among other things, Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955), the Nobel Prize (1929) winning author of Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, and his brood.

Above: Thomas Mann

Thomas and his wife Katia (1883 – 1980) had six children:

• Erika (1905 – 1969)
• Klaus (1906 – 1949)
• Golo (1909 – 1994)
• Monika (1910 – 1992)
• Elisabeth (1918 – 2002)
• Michael (1919 – 1977)

With the notable exception of Klaus who rests in peace in a cemetery in Cannes (France), Thomas lies buried with his wife and their other children in the same final resting ground of Kilchberg Cemetery just south of the city of Zürich.

 

Thomas, Katia, Erika, Monika, Elisabeth and Michael all share the same gravesite in the Kilchberg Cemetery.

Though Golo is in the same cemetery, his grave stands separated away from the rest of his Kilchberg-interred family, in fulfillment of his last will and testament.

There is no denying that Golo’s desire to be buried separately from his family made me curious….

 

During my convalescence in Klinik Schloss Mammern (19 May – 15 June) I took a day trip across the Lake of Constance to the German village of Gaienhofen with its Hermann Hesse Museum’s exhibition: “The Manns at Lake Constance“.

Above: Hermann Hesse Museum, Gaienhofen, Germany

(More on Hermann Hesse in future blogs…)

 

Also, I have long known that Golo Mann brought his family, in the summers of 1956 and 1957, to Altnau (the next town east on the Lake from Landschlacht).

Above: The guesthouse Zur Krone where Golo worked on his German History of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Altnau, Switzerland

 

In this day and age where many of us forget what we ate for supper without a photo on Instagram, many people (predominantly German speakers) still recall the name of Thomas Mann, but, as is common with the passage of time, we rarely recall the obscure names of the children of the more-famous parents.

 

Pop Quiz:

What were the names of the children of world famous William Shakespeare (1584 – 1616) or Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)?

Give up?

So did I.

I had to search on Wikipedia.

 

William’s:

Above: William Shakespeare

Susanna (1583 – 1649), Hamnet (1585 – 1596) and Judith (1585-1662)

 

Albert’s:

Above: Albert Einstein

Lieserl (1902 – 1903), Hans (1904 – 1973) and Eduard (1910 – 1965)

 

This is not to suggest that these six individuals are not worth remembering but rather that their memory is overshadowed by the fame of their fathers and the passage of time.

 

(To be fair, famous children have also been known to overshadow their progenitors.

Who knows the names of Sammy Davis Sr., Martin Luther King Sr., or Robert Downey Sr. without the fame of their sons?)

Above: Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin, Air America, Iron Man)

 

So, I confess, my repeated encounters with the name of Golo Mann made me curious about him and his famous father.

 

Paul Thomas Mann (full name) was born in Lübeck, Germany, the second son of Lutheran Thomas Mann (grain merchant/senator) and Brazilian-born Roman Catholic Julia da Silva Bruhns.

Mann’s father died in 1891 and his trading firm liquidated.

Julia moved the family to Munich, where Thomas studied at the University of Munich to become a journalist.

Thomas lived in Munich until 1933, with the exception of a year spent in Palestrina, Italy, with his elder brother Heinrich.

Above: Heinrich Mann (1871 – 1950)

 

Thomas’s career as a writer began when he wrote for the magazine Simplicissimus, publishing his first short story “Little Mr. Freidemann” in 1898.

In 1901, Mann’s first novel Buddenbrooks was published.

Based on Mann’s own family, Buddenbrooks relates the decline of a merchant family in Lübeck over the course of three generations.

 

That same year, Mann met Englishwoman Mary Smith, but Mann was a friend of the violinist/painter Paul Ehrenberg, for whom he had feelings which caused Mann difficulty and discomfort and were an obstacle to marrying Smith.

By 1903, Mann’s feelings for Ehrenberg had cooled.

 

In 1905, Mann married Katia Pringsheim (1883 – 1980), daughter of a wealthy, secular Jewish industrial family.

Above: Thomas Mann and Katia Pringsheim-Mann

 

Erika was born that same year.

Above: Erika Mann-Auden (1905 – 1969)

Mann expressed in a letter to Heinrich his disappointment about the birth of his first child:

“It is a girl.

A disappointment for me, as I want to admit between us, because I had greatly desired a son and will not stop to hold such a desire.

I feel a son is much more full of poetry, more than a sequel and restart for myself under new circumstances.”

 

Klaus was born the following year, with whom Erika was personally close her entire life.

Above: Klaus Mann (1906 – 1949)

They went about “like twins” and Klaus would describe their closeness as:

“Our solidarity was absolute and without reservation.”

 

Golo (remember him?) was born in 1909.

Above: Golo Mann (1909 – 1994)

 

In her diary his mother Katia described him in his early years as sensitive, nervous and frightened.

His father hardly concealed his disappointment and rarely mentioned Golo in his diary.

Golo in turn described Mann:

“Indeed he was able to radiate some kindness, but mostly it was silence, strictness, nervousness or rage.”

Golo was closest with Klaus and disliked the dogmatism and radical views of Erika.

 

Monika, the 4th child of Mann and Katia, was born in 1910.

Above:(from left to right) Monika, Golo, Michael, Katia, Klaus, Elisabeth and Erika Mann, 1919

 

Mann’s diaries reveal his struggles with his homosexuality and longing for pederasty (sex between men and boys).

His diaries reveal how consumed his life had been with unrequited and subliminated passion.

In the summer of 1911, Mann stayed at the Grand Hotel des Bains on the Lido of Venice with Katia and his brother Heinrich, when Mann became enraptured by Wladyslaw Moes, a 10-year-old Polish boy.

Above: Grand Hotel des Bains, Venezia

This attraction found reflection in Mann’s Death in Venice (1912), most prominently through the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the 14-year-old Polish boy Tadzio.

Mann’s old enemy, Alfred Kerr, sarcastically blamed Death in Venice for having made pederasty acceptable to the cultivated middle classes.

Above: Alfred Kerr (né Kempner)(1867 – 1948)

 

That same year, Katia was ill with a lung complaint.

Above: Wald Sanatorium, Davos

In 1912, Thomas and Katia moved to the Wald Sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, which was to inspire his 1924 book The Magic Mountain – the tale of an engineering student who, planning to visit his cousin at a Swiss sanatorium for only three weeks, finds his departure from the sanatorium delayed.

In 1914, the Mann family obtained a villa, “Poshi“,  in Munich.

Above: The Mann residence “Poshi“, Munich

By 1917, Mann had a particular trust in Erika as she exercised a great influence on his important decisions.

“Little Erika must salt the soup.” was an often-used phrase in the Mann family.

Elisabeth, Mann’s youngest daughter, was born in 1918.

That same year, Mann’s diary records his attraction to his own 13-year-old son “Eissi” – Klaus:

5 June 1918: “In love with Klaus during these days“.

22 June 1918: “Klaus to whom I feel very drawn“.

11 July 1918: “Eissi, who enchants me right now“.

25 July 1918:  “Delight over Eissi, who in his bath is terribly handsome.  Find it very natural that I am in love with my son….Eissi lay reading in bed with his Brown Torso naked, which disconcerted me.”

 

In 1919, the last child and the youngest son, Michael was born.

 

On 10 March 1920, Mann confessed frankly in his diary that, of his six children, he preferred the two oldest, Klaus and Erika, and little Elisabeth:

“….preferred, of the six, the two oldest and Little Elisabeth with a strange decisiveness.”

(Golo and Michael are not mentioned.)

17 October 1920:  “I heard noise in the boys’ room and surprised Eissi completely naked in front of Golo’s bed acting foolish.  Strong impression of his premasculine, gleaming body.  Disquiet.”

 

Klaus’s early life was troubled.

His homosexuality often made him the target of bigotry and he had a difficult relationship with his father.

 

In 1921, Erika transferred to the Luisen Gymnasium (high school).

While there she founded an ambitious theatre troupe, the Laienbund Deutscher Miniker and was engaged to appear on the stage of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin for the first time.

The pranks she pulled with her Herzog Park Gang prompted Mann and Katia to send her and Klaus to a progressive residential school, the Bergschule Hochwaldhausen in Vogelsberg, for a few months.

Increasingly sensing his parents’ home as a burden, Golo attempted a kind of break-out by joining the Boy Scouts in the spring of 1921.

Sadly, on one of the holiday marches, Golo was the victim of a sexual violation by his group leader.

 

New horizons opened up for Golo in 1923, when he entered the boarding school in Salem, feeling liberated from home and enjoying the new educational approach.

There in the countryside near Lake Constance, Golo developed an enduring passion for hiking through the mountains, although he suffered from a lifelong knee injury.

 

Klaus began writing short stories in 1924, while Erika graduated and began her theatrical studies in Berlin, which were frequently interrupted by performances in Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, Bremen, and other places in Germany.

In 1925 Klaus became drama critic for a Berlin newspaper and wrote the play Anja und Esther – about a group of four friends who were in love with each other – which opened in October 1925 to considerable publicity.

Actor Gustaf Gründgens played one of the lead male roles alongside Klaus while Klaus’s childhood friend Pamela Wedekind and Erika played the lead female roles.

Above: Gustaf Gründgens (1899 – 1963)

During the year they all worked together, Klaus became engaged with Pamela and Erika with Gustaf, while Erika and Pamela and Klaus and Gustaf had homosexual relationships with each other.

That same year Golo suffered a severe mental crisis that overshadowed the rest of his life.

“In those days the doubt entered my life, or rather, broke in with tremendous power.

I was seized by darkest melancholy.”

 

For Erika and Gustaf’s honeymoon in July 1926, they stayed in the same hotel that Erika and Pamela had used as a couple, with Pamela checking in dressed as a man.

 

In 1927, Golo commenced his law studies in Munich, moving the same year to Berlin, switching to history and philosophy.

Klaus travelled with Erika around the world, visiting the US in 1927, and reported about this in essays published as a colloborative travelogue, Rundherum: Das Abenteuer einer Weltreise (All the Way Round) in 1929.

 

Klaus broke off his engagement with Pamela in 1928.

Golo used the summer of 1928 to learn French in Paris and to get to know “real work” in a coal mine in eastern Germany, abruptly stopping because of new knee injuries.

Erika became active in journalism and politics.

 

Golo entered the University of Heidelberg in 1929.

Erika and Gustaf divorced.

Meanwhile Mann had a cottage built in the fishing village of Nida, Lithuania, where there was a German artists colony, spending the summers of 1930 – 1932 working on Joseph and His Brothers.

(It took Mann 16 years to complete this.)

Above: Joseph the Provider, the 4th and last volume of the Joseph and His Brothers tetralogy (1943)

(Today, the cottage is a cultural centre dedicated to him.)

Above: Thomas Mann Cultural Centre, Nida, Lithuania

Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929.

That same year, Klaus travelled with Erika to North Africa, where they made the acquaintance of Annemarie Schwarzenbach, a Swiss writer and photographer, who remained close to them for the next few years.

Above: Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908 – 1942)

 

In 1930, Mann gave a public address in Berlin (“An Appeal to Reason“) strongly denouncing National Socialism (Nazis) and encouraging resistance against them by the working class.

Golo joined a socialist student group in Heidelberg.

Meanwhile, Monika, after boarding school at Schloss Salem, trained as a pianist in Lausanne and spent her youth in Paris, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin.

 

In 1931, Erika was an actor in the Leontine Sagan film about lesbianism, Mädchen in Uniform (Maidens in Uniform) but left the production before its completion.

With Klaus, she published The Book of the Riviera: Things You Won’t Find in Baedekers.

 

In 1932, she published Stoffel fliegt übers Meer (Stoffel flies over the ocean), the first of seven children’s books.

That year, Erika was denounced by the Brownshirts after she read a pacifist poem to an anti-war meeting.

As a result she was fired from an acting role after the theatre concerned was threatened with a boycott by the Nazis.

She successfully sued both the theatre and a Nazi-run newspaper.

She had a role, alongside Therese Giehse, in the film Peter Voss, Thief of Millions.

In January 1933, Erika and Klaus and Therese Giehse founded a cabaret in Munich called Die Pfeffermühle (the pepper mill), for which Erika wrote most of the material, much of which was anti-Fascist.

The cabaret lasted two months before the Nazis forced it to close and Erika left Germany.

She was the last member of the Mann family to leave Germany after the Nazi regime was elected.

She saved many of Mann’s papers from their Munich home when she escaped to Zürich.

 

Heinrich, Mann’s brother, was the first person to be stripped of German citizenship when the Nazis took office.

When the Nazis came to power Mann and Katia were on holiday in Switzerland.

While at Sanary-sur-Mer in the southeast of France, (where Monika joined her parents) Mann learned from his children Klaus and Erika in Munich that it would not be safe for him to return to Germany due to Mann’s strident denunciation of Nazi policies.

Above: Sanary-sur-Mer, France

Golo looked after the Mann house in Munich in April, helped Monika, Elisabeth and Michael leave the country and brought most of his parents’ savings via Karlsruhe and the German embassy in Paris to Switzerland.

On 31 May 1933, Golo left Germany for the French town of Bandol.

He spent the summer at the mansion of the American travel writer William Seabrook near Sanary-sur-Mer and lived six weeks at the new family home in Küsnacht.

Above: List of literary celebrities who fled the Nazis and once lived in Sanary-sur-Mer (Not mentioned are Jacques Cousteau, Frederic Dumas and Ernest Blanc – oceanographers Cousteau and Dumas lived and invented the aqualung here while native Blanc was a famous opera performer.)

In November Golo joined the École Supérieure at Saint-Cloud (near Paris) as a German language teacher and wrote for the emigrants’ journal Die Sammlung (The Collection) founded by Klaus.

 

In 1934 Monika studied music and art history in Firenze, where she met Hungarian art historian Jenö Lányi.

In November 1934 Klaus was stripped of German citizenship by the Nazi government.

He became a Czechoslovak citizen through Czech businessman Rudolf Fleischmann, an admirer of Mann’s work, who arranged Klaus’ naturalization to his Bohemian town of Prosec.

Golo wanted to take the opportunity to continue his studies in Prague, but soon stopped the experiment.

 

In 1935, when it became apparent that the Nazis were intending to strip Erika of her German citizenship, she asked Christopher Isherwood (1904 – 1986) if he would marry her so she could become a British citizen.

Above: Christopher Isherwood (left) and W.H. Auden (right)

He declined but suggested the gay poet W.H. Auden (1907 – 1973) who readily agreed to a marriage of convenience.

Erika and Auden never lived together, but remained on good terms throughout their lives and were still married when Erika died in 1969, leaving him with a small bequest in her will.

In November, Golo accepted a position to teach German and German literature at the University of Rennes.

Golo’s travels to Switzerland prove that his relationship with his father had become easier as Mann had learned to appreciate his son’s political knowledge.

But it was only when Golo helped edit his father’s diaries in later years that he realized fully how much acceptance he had gained.

In a confidential note to the German critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Golo wrote:

“It was inevitable that I had to wish his death, but I was completely broken heartedly when he passed away.”

 

In 1936, the Nazi government also revoked Mann’s German citizenship.

Mann also received Czechoslovak citizenship and passport that same year through Fleischmann, but after the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia, he then emigrated with Klaus to the United States where he taught at Princeton University.

Klaus Mann’s most famous novel, Mephisto, a thinly-disguised portrait of Gustaf, was written this year and published in Amsterdam.

Die Pfeffermühle opened again in Zürich and became a rallying point for German exiles.

Auden introduced Erika’s lover Therese Giehse to the English writer John Hampson.

Above: Therese Giehse (1898 – 1975)

Giehse and Hampson married so she could leave Germany.

Above: Howard Castor as John Hampson (1901 – 1955)

 

In the summer of 1937, Klaus met his partner for the rest of the year Thomas Quinn Curtis.

Erika moved to New York where Die Pfeffermühle reopened its doors again.

There she lived with Klaus, Giehse and Annemarie Scharzenbach, amid a large group of artists in exile.

 

In 1938 Monika and Jenö left Firenze for London, while Erika and Klaus reported on the Spanish Civil War.

Erika’s book School for Barbarians, a critique of Nazi Germany’s educational system, was published.

 

Mann completed Lotte in Weimar (1939) in which he returned to Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).

Katia wrote to Klaus (in Princeton) on 29 August that she was determined not to say any more unfriendly words about Monika and to be kind and helpful.

 

Monika was NOT her parents’ favourite.

In family letters and chronicles, Monika was often described as weird:

“After a three-week stay here (in Küsnacht) she is still the same old dull quaint Mönle (her nickname in the family), pilfering from the larder….”

 

Klaus’s novel Der Vulkan (Escape to Life), co-written with Erika, remains one of the 20th century’s most famous novels about German exiles during World War II.

Early that year Golo travelled to Princeton where his father worked.

Although war was drawing closer, he hesitantly returned to Zürich in August to become the editor of the migrant journal Maß und Wert (Measure and Value).

Monika and Jenö married on 2 March 1939.

On 6 March 1939, Michael married the Swiss-born Gret Moser (1916 – 2007) in New York.

With her he would have two sons, Frido and Toni, as well as an adopted daughter.

The outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939 prompted Mann to offer anti-Nazi speeches in German to the German people via the BBC.

Erika worked as a journalist in London, making radio broadcasts in German, for the BBC throughout the Blitz and the Battle of Britain.

Monika and Jenö left for Canada on the SS City of Benares, which on 17 September was sunk by a torpedo from a German submarine.

Above: SS City of Benares

Monika survived by clinging to a large piece of wood, but Jenö drowned.

After 20 hours Monika was rescued by a British ship and taken to Scotland.

Also in 1939, Elisabeth married the anti-Fascist Italian writer Giuseppe Borgese (1882 – 1952), 36 years her senior.

Above: Giuseppe Borgese

As a reaction to Hitler’s successes in the West in May 1940, Golo decided to fight against the Nazis by joining a Czech military unit on French soil.

Upon crossing the Swiss border into Annecy, France, he was arrested and brought to the French concentration camp of Les Milles, a brickyard near Aix-en-Provence.

Above: Camp des Milles, Annecy, France

In August, Golo was released through the intervention of an American committee.

On 13 September 1940, he undertook a daring escape from Perpignan across the Pyrenees to Spain with his uncle Heinrich, Heinrich’s wife Nelly Kröger, Alma Mahler-Werfel and Franz Werfel.

They crossed the Atlantic from Lisbon to New York in October on board the Greek Steamer Nea Hellas.

Once in the US, Golo was initially condemned to inactivity.

He stayed with his parents in Princeton, then in New York.

Monika reached New York on 28 October 1940 on the troopship Cameronia and joined her parents.

They showed little sympathy for her.

Monika’s traumatic loss of her husband and her attempts at a new beginning were ignored.

In October 1940, Mann began monthly broadcasts (“Deutsche Hörer“- “German listeners“), recorded in the US and flown to London where the BBC broadcasted them to Germany.

In his eight-minute addresses, Mann condemned Hitler and his “paladins” as crude Philistines completely out of touch with European culture.

“The war is horrible, but it has the advantage of keeping Hitler from making speeches about culture.”

During the war, Klaus served as a Staff Sergeant of the 5th US Army in Italy.

 

In 1941, Elisabeth became an American citizen.

 

Mann was one of the few publicly active opponents of Nazism among German expatriates in America.

In 1942, the Mann family moved to Los Angeles, while Golo taught history at Olivet College in Michigan.

Between 1942 and 1947 Michael was a violinist in the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

 

Klaus became a US citizen in 1943 as Golo joined the US Army.

After basic training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, Golo worked at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)(forerunner of the CIA) in Washington DC.

Above: OSS insignia

As intelligence officer, it was his duty to collect and translate relevant information.

From 1943 to 1952 Monika lived in New York.

After attempts to renew her career as a pianist she turned to employment as a writer.

 

In April 1944, Golo was sent to London where he made radio commentaries for the German language division of the American Broadcasting Station (ABS).

On 23 June 1944, Thomas Mann was naturalized as a citizen of the United States.

After D-Day, Erika became a war correspondent attached to the Allied Forces advancing across Europe, reporting from recent battlefields in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

 

For the last months of World War II Golo worked for a military propaganda station in Luxembourg, then he helped organize the foundation of Radio Frankfurt.

During his journeys across Germany he was shocked at the extent of destruction, especially that caused by Allied bombing.

In the summer of 1945, Klaus was sent by Stars and Stripes to report from postwar Germany.

Erika entered Germany in June and was among the first Allied personnel to enter Aachen.

As soon as it was possible, she went to Munich to register a claim for the return of the Mann family home.

Arriving in Berlin on 3 July 1945, Erika was shocked at the level of destruction, describing the city as “a sea of devastation, shoreless and infinite.”

She was angry at the complete lack of guilt displayed by some of the German civilians and officials that she met.

During this period, as well as wearing an American uniform, Erika adopted an Anglo-American accent.

She attended the Nuremberg Trial each day from the opening session on 20 November 1945 until the court adjourned for Christmas.

Above: Nuremberg Courthouse where the Trials were held

She interviewed the defense lawyers and ridiculed their arguments in her reports and made clear that she thought the court was indulging the behaviour of the defendants, in particular Hermann Göring.

Above: Nuremberg Trial – Hermann Göring (far left, 1st row)

When the court adjourned for Christmas, Erika went to Zürich to spend time with Klaus, Betty Knox and Giehse.

 

Erika’s health was poor and on 1 January 1946 she collapsed and was hospitalized.

She was diagnosed with pleurisy.

After a spell recovering at a spa in Arosa, Erika returned to Nuremberg in March 1946 to continue covering the war crimes trial.

Above: Arosa

In May 1946, she left Germany for California to help look after Mann who was being treated for lung cancer.

That same year, Golo left the US Army by his own request, but nevertheless kept a job as civil control officer, watching the war crimes trial at Nuremberg in this capacity.

Also in 1946, Golo saw the publication of his first book of lasting value, a biography of the 19th century diplomat Friedrich von Gentz.

Above: Friedrich von Gentz (1764 – 1832)

Mann completed Doktor Faustus, the story of composer Adrian Leverkühn and the corruption of German culture before and during World War II in 1947.

From America, Erika continued to comment on and write about the situation in Germany.

She considered it a scandal that Göring had managed to commit suicide and was furious at the slow pace of the denazification process.

In particular, Erika objected to what she considered the lenient treatment of cultural figures who had remained in Germany throughout the Nazi period.

Her views on Russia and on the Berlin Airlift (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) led to her being branded a Communist in America.

In the autumn of 1947, Golo became an assistant professor of history at Claremont Men’s College in California.

In hindsight he recalled the nine-year engagement as “the happiest of my life“.

On the other hand he complained:

“My students are scornful, unfriendly and painfully stupid as never before.”

 

With the start of the Cold War, Mann was increasingly frustrated by rising McCarthyism.

As a “suspected Communist“, Mann was required to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) who accused him as being “one of the world’s foremost apologists for Stalin and company“.

Both Klaus and Erika came under an FBI investigation into their political views and rumoured homosexuality.

 

On 21 May 1949, Klaus died in Cannes of an overdose of sleeping pills, though whether he committed suicide is uncertain, but he had become increasingly depressed and disillusioned over postwar Germany.

He is buried in Cannes’ Cimetière du Grand Jas.

Klaus’s death devastated Erika.

In an interview with the Toledo Blade (25 July 1949), Mann declared that he was not a Communist, but that Communism at least had some relation to the ideals of humanity and of a better future.

He said that the transition of Communism through revolution into an autocratic regime was a tragedy, while Nazism was only “devilish nihilism“.

Being in his own words a non-Communist rather than an anti-Communist, Mann openly opposed the HUAC allegations:

“As an American citizen of German birth I finally testify that I am painfully familiar with certain political trends.

Spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions and declining legal security, and all this in the name of an alleged ‘state of emergency’….

That is how it started in Germany.”

As Mann joined protests against the jailing of the Hollywood Ten (ten individuals working in Hollywood cited for contempt of Congress and blacklisted after refusing to answer questions about their alleged involvement with the Communist Party) and the firing of schoolteachers suspected of being Communists, Mann found “the media had been closed to him“.

In 1950, Mann met 19-year-old waiter Franz Westermeier, confiding in his diary:

“Once again this, once again love.”

(In 1975, when Mann’s diaries were published, creating a national sensation in Germany, the retired Westermeier was tracked down in the United States.

He was flattered to learn that he had been the object of Mann’s obsession, but was shocked at its depth.)

 

Due to the anti-communist red scare and numerous accusations from the McCarthy Committee, Mann was forced to quit his position as a consultant in Germanic literature at the Library of Congress in 1952, the Mann family left the US and moved back to Switzerland .

Erika began to help her father with his writing and became one of his closest confidantes.

Monika was granted US citizenship, but she had already planned to return to Europe.

In September she travelled with her sister Elisabeth’s family to Italy.

Elizabeth’s husband Giuseppe died that year and she would raise their two daughters, Angelica (b. 1941) and Dominica (b. 1944) as a single parent, though she would live with a new partner, Corrado Tumiati, from 1953 to 1967.

After a few months in Genoa, Bordighera and Rome, Monika fulfilled her desire to move to Capri, where she lived in the Villa Monacone with her partner, Antonio Spadaro.

In Capri she blossomed.

During this period she wrote five books and contributed regular features to Swiss, German and Italian newspapers and magazines.

Monika would remain in Capri for 32 years.

 

In March 1954, there were finally prospects of progress that Thomas Mann could buy a house in the old country road in the municipality of Kilchberg.

Above: Mann residence, Alten Landstrasse 39, Kilchberg

Kilchberg is an idyllic place, surrounded by meadows, vineyards and flower gardens.

The church on a hillside, with views over the Lake, dominate the place.

Mann would not live long to enjoy the home that was finally his.

Thomas Mann died on 12 August 1855, at age 80, of arteriosclerosis in a hospital in Zürich and is buried in Kilchberg.

 

Katia was not just the good spirit of the family, but the connection point that kept them all together.

She taught her children, was her husband’s manager, and was the family provider.

Katia outlived three of her children (Klaus, Erika and Michael) and her husband.

She died in 1980 and is buried in Kilchberg.

 

Erika died in 1969, age 63, of a brain tumor in a hospital in Zürich and is buried in Kilchberg.

 

Golo, after years of chronic overwork in his dual capacities of freelance historian and writer, died in Leverkusen in 1994, age 85.

A few days prior to his demise, Golo acknowledged his homosexuality in a TV interview:

“I did not fall in love often.  I often kept it to myself.  Maybe that was a mistake.  It also was forbidden, even in America, and one had to be a little careful.”

According to Tilman Lahme, Golo’s biographer, he did not act out his homosexuality as openly as his brother Klaus but he had had love relationships since his student days.

His urn was buried in Kilchberg, but – in fulfillment of his last will – outside the communal family grave.

 

Monika, after her Capri partner Antonio died in 1986, spent her last years with Golo’s family in Leverkusen and died in 1992.

She is buried in the family grave in Kilchberg.

 

Elisabeth was in the mid-1960s the executive secretary of the board of Encyclopedia Britannica in Chicago.

At the age of 52, she had established herself as an international expert on the oceans.

Elisabeth was the founder and organizer of the first conference on the law of the sea, Peace in the Oceans, held in Malta in 1970.

From 1973 to 1982, she was part of the expert group of the Austrian delegation during the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

At the age of 59, in 1977, Elisabeth became a professor of political science in Canada’s Dalhousie University.

She became a Canadian citizen in 1983 and was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1988 at age 70.

Elisabeth kept up her teaching duties until age 81.

She died unexpectedly at the age of 83, during a skiing holiday in St. Moritz in 2002, and is buried in Kilchberg.

 

Michael, the youngest, made concert tours as a viola soloist until he was forced to give up professional music due to a neuropathy.

He then studied German literature at Harvard and later worked as a professor at the University of California in Berkeley.

Michael suffered from depression and died from the combined consumption of alcohol and barbituates in Orinda, California, in 1977.

He too lies in Kirchberg Cemetery, by the church on a hillside, with views over the Lake of Zürich, that dominates the town.

Kilchberg, 27 November 2017

It all began with an impulse.

As regular followers (both of them!) of my blogs (this one and Building Everest) know, I have, over the last year, retraced the “steps” of and written about the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli using the literary travel guide, Zwingli-Wege: Zu Fuss von Wildhaus nach Kappel am Albis – Ein Wander- und Lesebuch, by Marcel and Yvonne Steiner.

(See Canada Slim and…. the Privileged Place, the Monks of the Dark Forest, the Battle for Switzerland´s Soul, the Thundering Hollows, the Road to Reformation of this blog.)

For various reasons, I have not always been able to follow the Steiners’ suggested itineraries religiously.

Their 8th itinerary (Wädenswil to Zürich) has the hiker travel above the hills of Kilchberg rather than visit the town itself, which I felt remiss of the Steiners.

I went off-book and decided to explore the town.

Though Kilchberg may lack Zwingli connections, it is both an aestically pleasing and historically significant place worth lingering in for an afternoon.

A windswept day finds me asking a black cemetery caretaker for the location of the Mann burial plot and the English teacher/wordsmith in me sees the irony of the English word “plot” being both the chronology of a story and a final resting place.

I marvel at the history of this remarkable family and see irony in Thomas’ first real success as a writer was based on the fictional retelling of his own family’s past in Buddenbrooks, when his own family’s real history was equally, if not more, fascinating post-Buddenbrooks.

I am also left with many other reflections:

• I ponder the individual dilemmas Thomas, Erika, Klaus and Golo underwent in the expression of their sexual natures, and though in many Western nations in 2018 there is far greater openness and permissiveness towards non-heterosexual relationships, I can’t help but feel that there still remains stigma, confusion and miscommunication in mankind’s navigation of sexuality, gender and other boundaries towards loving relationships.  (Perhaps a new Buddenbrooks of Thomas Mann and his offspring needs to be written to explores this ageless dilemma that keeps so much of humanity lost and alone.)
• I also wonder: What makes one person LGBT and another not?  Thomas and Katia produced six children: two openly gay, one a closet gay, the other three – to the best of what is known – probably straight.  So, what then determines a person’s sexual orientation? Genetics? Environment? Choice?
• And then there is the wonder of individuality where six children all grew up together yet lived very different lives from one another.  How do we each develop our own separate personalities?
• I ask myself whether Thomas and Golo were right to conceal their hidden selves, yet when I see how imperfect the lives of the demonstrative Erika, Klaus and Monika were, I wonder if being themselves truly made them happier.
• I think of the Mann family and what comes to mind is conflict.  Conflict between what they desired and what they were allowed.  Conflict between their own expectations and the expectations of others. Conflict that results when speaking truth to power whether defying Nazis or HUAC.  Conflict against disease, both physical and psychological. Conflict between their changing values and the inflexibility of old hierarchies being challenged.

The Manns were a restless family living in relentless times.

Though they now rest in peace, the world they helped create remains conflicted.

Sources: Wikipedia / Facebook / Ursula Kohler, Literarisches Reisefieber / Padraig Rooney, The Gilded Chalet: Off-piste in Literary Switzerland / Steffi Memmert-Lunau & Angelika Fischer, Zürich: Eine literarische Zeitreise / Albert Debrunner, Literaturführer Thurgau / Manfred Bosch, Die Manns am Bodensee / Thomas Sprecher & Fritz Gutbrodt, Die Famille Mann in Kilchberg / Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Haus, Kilchberg / Friedhof Gemeinde Kilchberg

Canada Slim and the War of the Oranges

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 6 August 2018

Back a few days ago from my third trip to Portugal, my first to Porto and the north of the country.

The most western nation of continental Europe, Portugal shares the Iberian Peninsula with Spain, but this land of foggy fishing villages and tiny hamlets set deep in cork forests has a quarter of Spain’s population, is less than a fifth of Spain’s geographical size and in Portugal they don’t speak Spanish, they speak Portuguese.

Above: Flag of Portugal

 

Loud, exuberent Spain is paella and bullfights.

Reserved Portugal is the mournful wailing of fado and legendary sightings of the Virgin Mary.

The Spanish are fiercely proud of their past accomplishments.

The Portuguese are quietly proud of their future potential.

Disregard the critics who will gleefully tell you that Portugal is the graveyard of ambition, a kingdom of mediocrity where the national hobby is complaining and the ambitious leave.

Instead….

Picture Portugal as a land of resilience.

An earthquake may have cost them an empire, but Portugal still stands.

Dictators may have halted their progress for decades, but Portugal still stands.

Imagine a land that was economically isolated and politically smothered now striving to overcome an international reputation that suggests that the Portuguese are unproductive, unfit, unhealthy and unattractive.

Spend time with them and realize that though there are some that fit these negative descriptions, the vast majority of the people are simply and quietly going about their business.

They don’t lack self-esteem.

They simply haven’t practiced self-marketing as successfully as their European counterparts, for why tout your superiority when you know who you are and what you can do?

 

To be fair, judging Portugal by one’s impressions of Porto is a lot like judging America from only a visit to Chicago or England from time spent exclusively in Birmingham.

Just as New York and London overshadow hard-working Chicago and Birmingham so does Lisboa (Lisbon) dominate people’s minds over Porto.

Above: Images of Porto

 

Traditionally Portugal’s wine distribution centre, the scenic city of Porto – Portugal’s second biggest city – straddles the Douro River and is a lively transport hub, in part due to its famous export, port.

If the adage “Lisbon plays, Porto pays, Coimbra prays” can be believed, then Porto is the hardest working place in Portugal.

Historically (and practically) Porto puts the Portu in Portugal as the name dates from Roman times, when Lusitanian settlements straddled both sides of the Rio Douro.

The area was briefly in the hands of Moors but was reconquered by the year 1000 and reorganized as the County of Portucale with Porto as its capital.

Henri of Burgundy was granted the land in 1095 and it was from here that Henri’s son and Portuguese hero Afonso Henriques launched the Reconquista (Christian reconquest), ultimately winning Portugal the status of an independent kingdom….part of the Iberian Peninsula, but not part of Spain.

Above: King Afonso I Henriques of Portugal (1106 – 1185)

 

The Portuguese are akin to Canadians, Swiss and New Zealanders in that they do not care to be mistaken for being a countryman of their more powerful and prominent neighbour.

When addressed in Spanish by a foreigner, a Portuguese would rather answer in English or French.

Spain is the loud neighbour with the big house and the trees that block out the light.

To get to Portugal the rest of Europe passes through Spain, leaving tourist revenues and business investment on Spanish shores.

The Spanish are not the neighbours from Hell, but they are neighbours the Portuguese resent.

“Neither good winds nor good marriages come from Spain.” goes the well-known Portuguese saying.

Over 400 years ago Spain relinquished occupation of Portugal, but distrust runs deep after a bloody history of wars and border skirmishes.

Even now, many Portuguese claim the town of Olivenca in Spanish Extremadura as their own invoking a treaty of 1815 which Spain continues to conveniently forget.

Portugal’s economy hangs on the coat tails of Spain much as Canada’s economy is dependent on American trade and Switzerland’s upon trade with Germany.

We all look with alarm when German companies take over slices of Switzerland’s economy or Americans financially invade Canada or the Spanish seize Portuguese banks or real estate.

Yet for the Swiss to go to Germany or Canadians to go to America or  Portuguese to go to Spain is a certain sign that you’ve entered the Big Time.

“Big time.  I’m on my way. I’m making it….big time.” (Peter Gabriel)

Many of Portugal’s top footballers leap at the chance to play for Real Madrid, much like Canadian hockey players jump for joy when recruited by American teams.

Above: Real Madrid Football Club logo

 

(The world is strange.

How are hockey teams in two nations considered part of one National Hockey League?

Why is the finale in North American baseball called the World Series when only (with rare exception, Canada’s Toronto Blue Jays) American teams compete?

I am so confused.)

 

Nobel Prize winning author José Saramago (The History of the Siege of Lisbon / Blindness) left Portugal to live in Spanish Tenerife, much like Wayne Gretzky and Jim Carrey left Canada to live in LA.

Above: José Saramago (1922 – 2010)

 

Like the British and Canadians are cynical about Americans, like Austrians and Swiss are cynical about Germans, the Portuguese too are cynical about the Spanish.

And like Anglos with America and Swiss with Germany, the Portuguese secretly hanker to be like the Spanish.

The first day of my third Portuguese adventure was a reminder of this problematic relationship with Spain.

Above: The Iberian Peninsula

 

Porto, Portugal, 24 July 2018

I have nothing against the Spanish.

Above: Flag of Spain

I enjoyed my two previous visits to Spain’s San Sebastian (let’s leave questions of Basque independence aside at this time) and Barcelona (ditto for Catalona).

I am emotionally unaffected by the planning that resulted in flying two Spanish airlines (Iberia and Vueling) from Zürich to Porto and return.

The flights booked through the Internet, which might not have been the least expensive method, was at least the most efficient way to go.

 

(Most Internet travel agencies work by connecting a website to a computerized reservation service (CRS) that in turn is linked to the airlines.

Because the airlines and the CRSs only list official, published fares in their databases, most Internet travel agencies only sell tickets at published fares and have no discounts.

Most international air ticket prices are not shown in any CRS, are not available directly from the airline, and are not available from any Internet site that depends on airlines and/or CRSs as a source of fares.)

 

Still I may not have had a choice as TAP, Portugal’s national airline, flies only to the western Swiss city of Genève rather than that most convenient airport of Zürich in eastern Switzerland.

So, can Spanish airlines be blamed too harshly for taking up the Portuguese slack?

Iberia flight 1077, Zürich (ZUR) to Porto (POR) with a stopover in Madrid (MAD), is aboard an Airbus A319 plane named the Ciudad de Baiez.

Intercom announcements and seat pocket literature are in English and Spanish.

Unlike Swiss teacher Raimund Gregorius of Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon, (begun to be read during this flight) there were no chance encounters with mysterious suicidal Portuguese bridge jumpers or tomes of philosophical enigmatic aristocrats found in dusty corners of antiquarian bookshops to inspire this trip to Portugal.

A vacation was needed and Porto had not yet been explored.

I did not impulsively leave Switzerland as Gregorius left his job.

There was a plan, organization, flight and hotel reservations.

Like Gregorius, I would have preferred to travel to Portugal slower than flying, but like most tourists I am limited by constraints of time, money and responsibility.

The Ronda, Iberia’s seat pocket magazine, distracts me from the haunted journey of Gregorius.

I read about the Bloop Festival of Ibiza, Brunch in the Park in Barcelona, and recommended explorations of Japan with their 40 sumo wrestling training gyms, 3,000 public thermal baths and 21 UNESCO World Heritage sites.

I read of Barcelona and the Lavender Road of Provence, of the paradise that is Patagonia and the temptations of Tenerife, of summer flights to Croatia and of “somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember“.

I am flying to Portugal, but there is no whisper about the place aboard the flight.

The gluten-free muffins, the Linda limonada, the MIOS patatas are all Spanish.

Above: Aeroporto Porto

After touchdown at Porto Airport, taxi into town and check-in at the Casa de Cativo in the Batalha district of central Porto, we find ourselves drawn to explore.

My eyes are immediately drawn to the Sé – Porto’s Cathedral.

This Roman Catholic Cathedral is one of the most relevant and oldest monuments of the city.

Located in the heart of the historical centre the Sé rises from the landscape as an eye-catching icon atop a rocky outcrop a couple of hundred metres from Sao Bento Station and commands a fine view over the rooftops of Porto.

In front of the Cathedral, a lone sentinel on horseback, Vimara Peres (d. 873), the first King of the County of Portugal, stands watch over the city in stone silence.

The Sé is flanked by two square towers that stretch like arms reaching for Heaven.

Each tower is supported by two buttresses and crowned with a cupola.

On the North Tower (the one with the bell) look for the worn bas-relief depicting a 14th century ship – a coca – a reminder of the earliest days of Portugal’s maritime epic when sailors inched tentatively down the west Saharan coastline in fear of monsters.

The facade lacks decoration and yet is not lacking in beauty.

The Baroque porch and the delicate Romanesque rose window under the crenellated arch lend the Sé the impression of a fort, a sort of setting suited for the commencement of some holy quest or mighty crusade.

Inside, the blend of Baroque, original Romanesque and Gothic architecture – a kind of structural bouillabaisse – is a strange marriage of prevading gloom.

But maybe gloom – an uneasy spectre of death – was what was sought after when the Sé was being designed.

Around 1333 the Gothic funerary chapel of Joao Gordo was added – his tomb decorated with his recumbent figure and reliefs of the Apostles – the Beatles of the New Testament in regards to their creativity.

Gordo was a Knight Hospitalier who worked for King Dinis I (1261 – 1325).

Above: Flag of the Knights Hospitaller

(The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, also known as the Order of Saint John, Order of Hospitallers, Knights Hospitaller, Knights Hospitalier or Hospitallers, was a medieval Catholic military order, headquartered in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, on the island of Rhodes, in Malta and St Petersburg.)

(King Dinis I, also called the Farmer King and the Poet King, was King of Portugal (1279 – 1325) for over 46 years and is remembered by the Portuguese as a major contributor to the formation of a sense of national identity and an awareness of Portugal as a nation-state.

He worked to organize his country’s economy and gave an impetus to Portuguese agriculture.

He ordered the planting of a large pine forest (that still exists today) near Leiria to prevent soil degradation that threatened the region and as a source of raw materials for the construction of the royal ships.

Above: Leiria Castle

Dinis was known for his poetry, which constitutes a major contribution to the development of Portuguese as a literary language.)

(More on Dinis in a future post….)

 

In 1387, the Cathedral was embellished to celebrate the wedding of Portuguese King Jaoa I with the English Princess Philippa of Lancaster (reinforcing the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance).

Above: Wedding of Portuguese King Joao I and English Princess Philippa of Lancaster, Porto Cathedral, 11 February 1387

It was this matrimonial bond of man and wife, this Alliance of Portugal and England within this Sé that would witness within those same walls that which was a celebration of the newly-wed would become a commiseration of the bloody dead.

 

On 29 January 1801, an ultimatum from Spain and France forces Portugal to decide between France and Britain, even as its government has tried to negotiate favorable relations with the two powers rather than abrogate the Treaty of Windsor (1386).

The French sent a five-point statement to Lisbon demanding that Portugal:

• Abandon its traditional alliance with Great Britain and close its ports to British shipping;
• Open its ports to French and Spanish shipping;
• Surrender one or more of its provinces, equal to one fourth part of her total area, as a guarantee for the recovery of Trinidad, Port Mahon (Menorca) and Malta;
• Pay a war indemnity to France and Spain;
• Review border limits with Spain.

If Portugal failed to accomplish the five conditions of this ultimatum, it would be invaded by Spain, supported by 15,000 French soldiers.

The British could not promise any effective relief, even as Prince Joao VI appealed to Hookham Frere, who arrived in November 1800.

Above: Joao VI “the Clement” (1767 – 1826)

In February, the terms were delivered to the Prince-Regent.

Although he sent a negotiator to Madrid, war was declared.

At the time, Portugal had a poorly trained army, with less than 8,000 cavalry and 46,000 infantry troops.

Its military commander, João Carlos de Bragança e Ligne (2nd Duke of Lafões), had barely raised 2,000 horse and 16,000 troops and was compelled to contract the services of a Prussian colonel, Count Karl Alexander von der Goltz, to assume command as field marshal.

The Spanish Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief, Manuel de Godoy, had some 30,000 troops at his disposal, while the French troops under General Charles Leclerc (Napoleon’s brother-in-law) arrived in Spain too late to assist Godoy, as it was a short military campaign.

On May 20, Godoy finally entered Portugal.

This incursion was a precursor of the Peninsular War that would engulf the Iberian Peninsula.

The Spanish army quickly penetrated the Alentejo region in southern Portugal and occupied Olivença, Juromenha, Arronches, Portalegre, Castelo de Vide, Barbacena and Ouguela without resistance.

Campo Maior resisted for 18 days before falling to the Spanish army, but Elvas successfully resisted a siege by the invaders.

An episode which occurred during the siege of Elvas accounts for the name, “War of the Oranges“:

Godoy, celebrating his first experience of generalship, plucked two oranges from a tree and immediately sent them to Queen Maria Luisa of Spain, mother of Carlota Joaquina and supposedly his lover, with the message:

I lack everything, but with nothing I will go to Lisbon.

Manuel de Godoy

The conflict ended quickly when the defeated and demoralized Portuguese were forced to negotiate and accept the stipulations of the Treaty of Badajoz, signed on 6 June 1801.

As part of the peace settlement, Portugal recovered all of the strongholds previously conquered by the Spanish, with the exception of Olivença and other territories on the eastern margin of the Guadiana and a prohibition of contraband was enforced near the border between the two countries.

The treaty was ratified by the Prince-Regent on 14 June, while the King of Spain promulgated the treaty on 21 June.

A special convention (the Treaty of Madrid) on 29 September 1801 made additions to that of Badajoz whereby Portugal was forced to pay France an indemnity of 20 million francs.

This treaty was initially rejected by Napoleon, who wanted the partition of Portugal, but he accepted once he concluded a peace with Great Britain at Amiens.

Above: Napoléon (1769 – 1821)

 

Portugal divides itself into 18 districts.

Porto is the capital city of the Porto District, which is itself divided into 18 municipalities.

Of these municipalities the close-by city of Amarante lies to the northeast of Porto.

 

During this War of the Oranges (20 May – 9 June 1801) while a battle raged in Amarante, a group of Spanish soldiers briefly took control of the Porto Cathedral before being overcome by the locals of the town.

A marble plaque hangs behind the altar in memory of those who lost their lives regaining control of the chapel.

The plaque has a magnetic backing that was chosen to order to remind those travelling near the Cathedral to orient themselves in the direction their compasses have been altered towards.

I can´t help but wonder what Hollywood would have done with a story like this:

Soldiers seize a church.

Locals battle to regain it.

But details are hard to come by here in distant Landschlacht and there is a tragic lack of ability in my reading Portuguese.

But I can imagine it.

 

Sunday 31 May 1801, Porto, Portugal

It was the perfect opportunity.

A full moon week meant the soldiers could ride in the Saturday night moonlight and lie in wait inside the Cathedral until the faithful showed up the following morning.

The Cathedral would have gold and the parishioners – faithful tithe-givers to the last – would have money.

The soldiers simply sought profits but they would be ignored if the parishioners didn’t believe that the soldiers would slay them if they did not obey.

The locals outside the church would be half-mad with grief and worry and would do anything to ensure the safety of their loved ones within.

The Bishop would be outraged at the sacreligious nature and audacity of the soldiers’ act.

 

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 6 August 2018

At this point of planning the plot of this historical drama I would require the aforementioned details that language and long distance deny me.

Was blood shed?

By whom upon whom?

History records the soldiers were unsuccessful, but what was their fate?

Who were these people: the Bishop, the faithful, the townsfolk, the soldiers?

Do I actually need historical facts and actual accuracy to tell their story?

Take the movie Braveheart about the Scottish hero William Wallace.

Many liberties were taken and the plot is filled with historical inaccuracies but is it a damn good movie?

Absolutely.

 

I am reminded again of Portuguese author José Saramago – a writer damnably difficult to read for his deliberate determination not to use punctuation or paragraphs but a fine storyteller nonetheless.

In his The History of the Siege of Lisbon, Saramago asks:

What happens when the facts of history are replaced by the mysteries of love?

“When Raimundo Silva, a lowly proofreader for a Lisbon publishing house, inserts a negative into a sentence of a historical text, he alters the whole course of the 1147 Siege of Lisbon.

Fearing censure he is met instead with admiration:  Dr. Maria Sara, his voluptuous new editor, encourages him to pen his own alternative history.

As his retelling draws on all his imaginative powers, Silva finds – to his nervous delight – that if the facts of the past can be rewritten as a romance then so can the details of his own dusty bachelor present.”

Saramago suggests so many scenarios one could use and have been used by other authors in the past:

What if you had the power to change the past? (time travel)(Time Cop)

What if you had the power to enter the world of literature? (fantasy)(Inkheart)

What if you deliberately altered the record of the past to better reflect and justify the present? (George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four)

 

Telling the tale of the taking of Porto Cathedral also carries with it some responsibility.

I don’t wish to glorify the Portuguese, for their history is not a bloodless nor innocent one in regards to their colonialism or dark dictatorship days.

I don’t wish to increase the innate antagonism between the Portuguese and the Spanish, for, in my humble opinion, writing should seek to unite humanity rather than divide it, even if history is truly horrific.

 

Still I smell a story just begging to be written, replete with drama and suspense – a kind of Die Hard meets Braveheart scenario, maybe mixed with a dash of Timeline and Timecop.

 

Maybe this is all just idle musings, for my mind is much like the late comedian Robin Williams’ observations of former US President George W. Bush’s span of attention:

“My fellow Americans….

Oh! Look at the baby!

Squirrel!”

Above: Robin Williams (1951 – 2014)

 

What I am left with when I consider the taking of Porto Cathedral is not so much that an extraordinarily beautiful house of worship was seized or a symbol of a religious affliation defiled.

Rather I find it interesting that the very church where the English-Portuguese Alliance came into being would become a battlefield in maintaining that alliance.

The whole story has the feel of witnessing a bully at a wedding seize one of the guests and threaten to kill him if the couple continues on with the nuptial ceremony.

Couples may not always co-exist harmoniously but nothing unites a couple more than someone else trying to separate them.

Though Portugal may have lost the War of the Oranges, Portugal’s defiance of bullying Spain ensured Britain’s assistance a few years later and strengthened Portuguese resolve to maintain their own alliances on their own terms.

I don’t see prevailing gloom within the Sé of Porto but rather my mind escapes up from the shadows and into the cloisters of magnificent azulejos and ascends the grand staircase to the dazzling chapterhouse with its sweeping views from the windows.

It is all a matter of perspective.

The Spanish seized a Cathedral and lost it.

The French and the Spanish defeated Portugal and later were defeated by the very alliance they tried to destroy.

Red may have spilled from soldier wounds and the faithful injured, but red is also half the colour of the Portuguese flag: combative, hot, virile.

A singing, ardent, joyful colour ever reminding of victory despite the high cost.

I don’t hear the lamentations of the frightened nor the murmuring of prayers and exhortations to God, but rather the fever and fervour of the resilient and determined.

As the words ring out strong and clear the Portuguese national anthem proudly proclaims:

“Unfurl the unconquerable flag in the bright light of your sky!

Cry out all Europe and the whole world that Portugal has not perished.

Your happy land is kissed by the ocean that murmurs with love.

And your conquering arm has given new worlds to the world!”

Two centuries, four months and a matter of weeks later, America would on 11 September 2001, suffer an attack far more devastating and tragic than the now-and-long forgotten taking of Porto Cathedral, but nothing strengthens a nation more than adversity or unites it into determined defiance against those who would seek to diminish it.

Like the United States, no one bothers or bullies Portugal any more.

Of the trials and tribulations Portugal, like the United States, has endured, much has been created by itself and resolved by itself.

To be blunt, the Sé, this Cathedral of Porto, to this world weary traveller is quite forgettable.

What Porto Cathedral represents, isn’t.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / The Rough Guide to Portugal / Porto and Northern Portugal: Journeys and Stories

Canada Slim and the Right Man

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 6 December 2017

Is there such a thing as an indispensable man?

This is a question I have often asked myself when considering both my life and the lives of the famous.

I ask myself this question recently as I am, once again, forced to remain at home in bed with, yet another cold that has made both barista work and teaching impractical as I have been reduced to a coughing, sneezing, aching, quivering jellyfish of a man unfit and undesirable for public encounters.

My voice sounds tortured and hoarse as if it is painfully emerging from a long tunnel.

My appearance is akin to a homeless street person and our apartment reflects this.

The wife mocks the man cold, but hers is a gender that endures menstruation on a monthly basis and usually survives the incredible ordeal of child birth with little hesitation to repeat or memory of the event.

Hers is a mind of multiplicity handling every moment and memory simultaneously, while my mind is a series of boxes which are opened only one at a time, so when illness strikes all my focus is upon how truly horrid I feel.

A woman with a cold is simply a woman with yet another complication in her life, for she will incorporate the cold as part of life´s burdens she must bear and will further complicate her life with tortured emotions about the selfishness of her having a cold keeping her from doing her other duties.

A man, though he is aware of the selfishness of having others assume his duties, will moan and groan impatiently focused on his recovery, even so his conscience is little disturbed about staying at home until he deems himself fit to tackle the world again.

I think about work, of course, and consider what my absence will mean to my students and colleagues.

I know that there are other teachers who could teach in my place and that a barista can be replaced.

But does that mean my presence then is insignificant?

I don´t believe so.

For though I am far from being the most competent or qualified barista or teacher, I possess an entertaining and compassionate personality that I believe my students and colleagues value.

But short of historical accident thrusting me into greatness, I am self aware enough to realise that my eventual absence from existence will not impact history or much of humanity that significantly.

Though the life of my wife might have been greatly different without me in it, would she have been happier or sadder had we never met?

If I had not survived an accident with an axe during my teenage years, or if I had perished on the side of the mountain when I was stranded overnight three years ago, would the world have noticed my absence?

My social circle was and remains small.

I would have been missed by a few people, but I believe they would have found the strength to carry on without me.

I don´t believe I need an angel Clarence to show this George Bailey how It´s a Wonderful Life and how vastly different reality would be had I never existed.

Above: Henry Travis as angel Clarence Oddbody (left) and James Stewart as George Bailey (right), from It´s A Wonderful Life (1946)

Certainly each man leaves his mark on the world by how his actions have affected others.

A man´s greatness could even be said to be measured by how many others his actions affected.

My mind often wonders how reality might be had certain great men never existed or didn´t exist at the time when they were most influential.

The recent resurgence of interest in Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) – with this year´s movies Darkest Hour (starring Gary Oldman) and Churchill (starring Brian Cox) and last year´s Churchill´s Secret (starring Michael Gambon) – have led me to wonder would the world of today be different had Churchill not been present at those moments of yesterday when he made the most impact?

This hypothetical “What If?” exercise is not so far fetched….

On a holiday in Bournemouth in January 1893, Churchill fell and was knocked unconscious for three days.

Churchill saw action as a soldier and war correspondent and risked his life in India, the Sudan and South Africa.

Above: Battle of Omdurman, Sudan (2 September 1898), where Churchill took part in a cavalry charge

It remains uncertain whether Churchill´s life was in any danger when he was present at the January 1911 Siege of Sidney Street when Latvian anarchists wanted for murder holed up in a house and resisted arrest.

Above: Winston Churchill (highlighted) at Sidney Street, 3 January 1911

And it is also unclear whether Home Secretary Churchill gave the police any operational orders during the Siege, though it has been suggested that when the house caught fire Churchill prevented the fire brigade from dousing the flames so that the anarchists burnt to death.

“I thought it better to let the house burn down rather than spend good British lives in rescuing those ferocious rascals.”

On 12 December 1931, during a lecture tour for his writing, Churchill, while crossing New York City´s Fifth Avenue, was knocked down by a car.

Above: The Empire State Building, completed 1931

Had Churchill not survived these events to become Prime Minister (1940 – 1945 / 1951 – 1955), would Britain have remained resolute against Germany during the Second World War?

How indispensable was Churchill to the world?

This question was certainly paramount in my mind when my wife and I visited the Churchill War Rooms six weeks ago….

Above: An external view of the New Public Offices building, the basements of which were chosen to house the Cabinet War Rooms

London, England, 24 October 2017

In 1938, in anticipation of Nazi air raids, the basement of the Treasury building on London´s King Charles Street was converted into “war rooms”, protected by a three-foot-thick concrete slab, reinforced with steel rails and tramlines.

It was here that Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed operations and held cabinet meetings for the duration of World War II.

By the end of the War, the six-acre site included a hospital, canteen and shooting range, as well as sleeping quarters.

Tunnels fan out from the complex to outlying government ministeries.

It is rumoured there are also tunnels to Buckingham Palace itself, allowing the Royal Family a quick getaway to exile in Canada (via Charing Cross Station) in the event of a Nazi invasion.

Above: Buckingham Palace

Walking the corridors of the Churchill War Rooms and exploring its adjacent Churchill Museum are experiences that live long in the memory.

Every corner tells a story.

Today we take for granted the idea of an underground command centre.

How else can political and military leaders run a country and control armed forces, safe from enemy bombardment?

But the Second World War was the first time that Britain faced such a concentrated aerial threat.

Should there be some sort of central war room?

Where should it be?

How should it be protected?

Who should work there?

What space and equipment would they need?

What exactly would they be doing?

Most of these questions began to be answered only in the final fraught months before Britain went to war.

Many of them were still being answered during the War itself, even as bombs rained down over London and the threat of invasion loomed.

The story of the Churchill War Rooms is therefore one of improvisation in the face of deadly necessity.

After the First World War (1914 – 1918), the British government adopted a “ten-year rule”.

Until instructed otherwise, all departments should assume that the country would not go to war again for at least a decade.

Even so, some thought was given to how a future war might be fought.

In 1924, government experts predicted that London would be bombarded by up to 200 tons of bombs in the first 24 hours of a world conflict.

Casualities would be high and the country´s political and military command structure could be severely disabled.

Partly due to the ten-year rule, little was done to heed this warning until 1933 when a belligerent Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany.

Above: Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)

It came as a complete shock when Hitler declared his intention to have Germany leave the League of Nations, the forerunner of today´s United Nations.

War within the next decade suddenly seemed much more possible and the question of national defence became a priority.

In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, adding to international tension.

General Hastings Ismay, Deputy Secretary of Britain´s Committee of Imperial Defence, immediately organised a search for an emergency working refuge to house the Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff in case of a sudden attack.

Above: Hastings Ismay (1887 – 1965)

Plans were still in a confused state in late May 1938, when the alarming news was received that German troops were massing on the Czechoslovakian border.

There might be war any day, but still no war room.

On 31 May 1938, the site was confirmed, a site conveniently close to both Downing Street (the Prime Minister´s residence) and Parliament.

It was thought that the steel structure of the Treasury building above the War Rooms would provide extra protection against bombs, but a direct hit on the site would have been catastrophic.

From June to August 1938, work on the War Rooms involved clearing rooms, sandbagging alcoves, replacing glass doors with teak, building brick partitions, installing telephone lines and estabishing a connection with the BBC.

As the site was situated below the level of the Thames River, flood doors had to be fitted and pumps installed.

By the end of August, the Map Room was manned and tested and plans were underway for airlocks and steel doors to defend against gas attack.

Above: The Map Room, Cabinet War Rooms

There could be no hesitation or pause in these preparations.

Hitler had sparked a new crisis on the Continent by threatening to annex part of Czechoslovakia.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain attempted to defuse the situation by diplomatic means.

Above: Neville Chamberlain (1869 – 1940), British PM (1937 – 1940)

On 30 September, Hitler signed the Munich Agreement – heralded by Chamberlain as a guarantee of “peace for our time”, but the Central War Room was theoretically ready for use.

Above: Neville Chamberlain showing the Anglo-German Declaration, aka The Munich Agreement. guaranteeing “peace for our time”, Heston Air Force Base, England, 30 September 1938

It would have been desperately uncomfortable for anyone working there, as the ventilation system was poor, there were no overnight accommodations, no bedding, no kitchen, no food, no toilets or washing facilities.

Work continued on the War Rooms.

On 23 August, Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Russia, leaving the way free for him to attack Poland.

Above: Soviet Premier Stalin and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, after the signature of the (Vyacheslav) Molotov – Ribbentrop German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, 23 August 1939

On 27 August the Central War Room was officially opened.

On 1 September, Hitler attacked Poland.

Above: Adolf Hitler reviewing the troops on the march during the Polish campaign, September 1939

Two days later, Britain was at war.

The immediate bombardment of London that had been expected for so long failed to materialise in the first nine months of the War, though the War Rooms were operational.

A botched land campaign in Norway in April 1940 and Germany´s sudden attack on the Netherlands on 10 May caused Chamberlain to resign and Churchill to take his place.

A few days later, as British Forces were driven back towards the French coast, the new Prime Minister visited the Cabinet War Room and declared:

“This is the room from which I will direct the war.”

Above: Cabinet War Room

In the summer of 1940, as the fall of France was followed by the Battle of Britain for aerial supremacy over southern England, Britain stood at risk of imminent invasion.

Above: German Heinkel HE 111 bombers over the English Channel, 1940

On 7 September 1940, Germany launched the Blitz – a sustained bombing campaign against British towns and cities, with London the chief target.

Britain weathered the Blitz for nine long months.

When the Blitz failed to secure victory over Britain, Hitler turned his attention to the east, launching an invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.

Britain was no longer fighting the Nazis alone.

When, on 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbour, the United States entered the War, changing the fortunes of Britain.

Above: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, USA

The War Rooms began deception plans intended to divert enemy resources away from genuine Allied operations.

This would play a crucial role in the success of Operation Overlord – the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944.

The success of the D-Day landings helped to turn the tide of war against the Nazis, but they were not finished in attacking Britain.

On 13 June 1944, the first V1 flying bomb hit London, bringing a new threat to the capital.

Above: A V1 guided missile

Over the winter of 1944 – 1945, the V1 flying bomb attacks were gradually superseded by the more destructive V2 flying bombs.

Above: A V2 rocket

By the end of March 1945, most of the V2 production factories had been overrun by the unstoppable Allied advance towards Berlin.

Adolf Hitler spent the final weeks of the War sheltering in his bunker as  Berlin came under attack from Stalin´s armies.

After the fall of Berlin, the Allies declared victory in Europe on 8 May 1945.

By the time Japan surrendered on 15 August, Churchill was no longer Prime Minister having lost the General Election on 26 July.

On 16 August, after six years of continuous use, the War Rooms were simply and suddenly abandoned.

Their historic value was recognised and were mostly left undisturbed.

The preserved rooms were declared a national monument in 1948, with free guided tours given to people who had written to the Cabinet Office.

This practice continued until 1984 when the Imperial War Museum was asked to turn the site into a formal Museum.

Millions of visitors have since walked its corridors, tracing the steps of Churchill and the many men and women – both military and civilian – who helped run this underground complex.

The Churchill Museum was added to the Cabinet War Rooms in 2005 and this expanded Museum was later renamed the Churchill War Rooms.

It has to be said that the Churchill War Rooms is a fascinating place for it is filled with intimate details that bring home the immediacy of those times…

• The sugar cubes hoarded by a Map Room officer
• The noiseless typewriters that Churchill insisted be used by his staff
• Accounts of what it was really like to eat, sleep and work below the streets of London as German bombs fell all around.
• The coloured lights in the Cabinet War Room that signalled an air raid and the ashtrays positioned within easy reach around the table and the scratch marks on the arms of Churchill´s chair that show how strained the Cabinet Room could become
• The multi-coloured phones where the men of the Map Room could follow every thrust and counterthrust of the War
• The actual door that Churchill walked through at 10 Downing Street
• The tiny Transatlantic Telephone Room where Churchill used to speak in secret to the US President
• Churchill´s famous “siren suit”, a zip-up coverall that Churchill began wearing for comfort from the 1930s onwards
• The Union Flag which was draped over Churchill´s coffin during his State Funeral which was broadcast around the world

Above: Grave of Winston Churchill, St. Martin´s Church, Bladon, England

(“I am ready to meet my Maker – but whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”)

• The weather indicator in the main corridor that would read “Windy” when a heavy bombing raid was in progress
• The story of how one of the women who worked at the War Rooms had a short relationship with James Bond author Ian Fleming and would be the inspiration for the character Miss Moneypenny
• One of the Royal Marines guarding the entrance to the Cabinet War Rooms took up embroidery to pass the time.
• To alleviate the health problems of working underground, staff were made to strip to their underwear and stand in front of portable sun lamps
• Wartime graffiti on a map in the Cabinet Room showing Hitler fallen on his ass
• A cat named Smoky that used to curl up on Churchill´s bed
• A typist who learned that the ship carrying her boyfriend had perished with all lives lost

So, so much to see and learn and discover….

But what of the Great Man himself?

This man of contradictions, this man who took over as Prime Minister when Britain stood alone against the Axis powers, who is remembered for his trademark bowler hat and half-chewed Havana cigars, who is famous for his morale-inspiring speeches and clever wit….

“It is better to be making the news than taking it, to be an actor rather than an critic.”

“I have nothing to offer but blood, tears, toil and sweat.”

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

“….We shall fight in France.  We shall fight on the seas and oceans.  We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.  We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be.  We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds.  We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.  We shall fight in the hills.  We shall never surrender.”

“This is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

An American visitor reported in late 1940 that:

“Everywhere I went in London, people admired Churchill´s energy, his courage, his singleness of purpose.  People said they didn´t know what Britain would do without him.  He was obviously respected, but no one felt he would be Prime Minister after the War.  He was simply the right man in the right job at the right time, the time being a desperate war with Britain´s enemies.”

Without this man´s uplifting spirit, would Britain have surrendered against the overwhelming odds of Hitler´s mighty war machine?

I am convinced that Churchill´s uniqueness of character means that its absence would have lead to Britain´s surrender.

Whether Britain´s surrender would mean Hitler wouldn´t ultimately still turn against Russia, or whether America wouldn´t come to Britain´s aid with or without the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour remains a point of conjecture and the province of alternate history / science fiction writers.

But I think a visit to the Churchill War Rooms is well worth the while, because there are several lessons to be learned here under the streets of London.

We are where and who we are because of what came before.

We need to recall the wars that lead us to where we are today, not to glorify in our victories but rather to somberly recall our losses and learn from them so to avoid future war or at least prepare ourselves for another dark future of bloodshed and destruction.

We are a product of our time and place.

It is doubtful whether Churchill could have accomplished what he did had time and circumstances been different.

In examining Churchill´s past carefully, one can see that he was quite an imperfect man, at times rash, impulsive, egocentric and foolish, sometimes to the cost and risk of others.

Nancy Astor: If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee.

Winston Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I would drink it.

But at a moment when Britain needed a man of courage and conviction, Churchill was indeed in the right place at the right time.

Let us not worship this man, but do offer him our thanks and respect.

Above: Statue of Churchill, Parliament Square, London

As legacies go, this museum and how he is remembered by so many even after so long a time has passed and so many have sacrificed so much blood, tears, toil and sweat then and now, this monument to the dark days of a vicious conflict and a man who steered a nation through them is truly fitting.

This is a living museum, commemorating the lives of those who make our lives possible.

Come to the Churchill War Rooms.

Live the experience.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / The Rough Guide to London / Alan Axelrod, Winston Churchill, CEO / Dominique Enright, editor, The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill / Martin Gilbert, editor, Churchill: The Power of Words / Roy Jenkins, Churchill / Imperial War Museums, Churchill War Museum Guidebook

Above: The Roaring Lion, Yousuf Karsh photo of Winston Churchill, Canadian Parliament, Ottawa, Canada, 30 December 1941

 

 

The Underestimated: The Bold and the Reckless

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 7 January 2017

It is normal to underestimate the Swiss.

In fact other nations generally don´t see and rarely think about the Swiss.

And the Swiss themselves don´t help themselves in this regard.

To the outside world, the French-speaking Swiss to the west of the country seem little different from the French of France.

The Italian-speaking Swiss to the south of the country are easily mistaken for slightly stiff-necked Italians.

The German-speaking Swiss who dominate the country are overlooked as Germans under severe sedation.

Much to the delight and disgust of the Romansh, mostly resident in Canton Graubünden and less than 1% of the Swiss population, the folks of Switzerland´s fourth official language are mostly ignored.

But underestimating the Swiss and seeing them only through clichés tends to be a mistake.

Consider the Swiss military.

And think about these questions…

How does a country located smack dab in the centre of Europe manage to maintain over 500 years of neutrality?

How can a country that is known for being a champion of peace and humanitarianism be also simultaneously armed to the teeth?

Of all the militaries in the world, why are the Swiss called upon to defend the life of the Pope?

To begin a journey into the mindset of the Swiss, first let´s travel back in time and wander northwest of Switzerland…

Nancy, France, 7 January 1477

The Battle of Nancy has been over for two days.

An Italian page has found the body of Charles the Bold (Charles le Téméraire – Charles the Reckless)(Charles Martin, Duke of Burgundy, Count of Charolais, Grand Duke of the West, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Count of Nevers, Seigneur de Croy), naked on a frozen pond, half eaten by wolves, his skull cloven by a Swiss battleaxe.

Only the scars on his body make Charles´ body recognisable.

(Digression Alert: It is this difficulty to identify the body that suggested the fictional hypothesis that Charles survived the battle and was granted asylum in Pimlico, in the heart of London, that was the basis of the plot of the 1949 film Passport to Pimlico.)

(In post-WWII London, an unexploded bomb detonates in Miramont Gardens, Pimlico.

The explosion reveals a buried cellar containing artwork, coins, jewellery and an ancient manuscript.

The document is authenticated by the historian Professor Hatton-Jones as a royal charter of Edward IV that ceded the house and its estates to Charles VII, the last Duke of Burgundy, when he had sought refuge in England after being presumed dead at the 1477 Battle of Nancy.

As the charter had never been revoked, an area of Pimlico is declared to be a legal part of Burgundy.)

(Screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke was also inspired by an incident during the Second World War when the maternity ward of the Ottawa Civic Hospital was temporarily declared international territory by the Canadian government so when Princess Juliana of the Netherlands gave birth, baby Margriet was born on “Dutch” territory (born 19 January 1943) and would not lose her right to the Dutch throne.)

Above: Princess Margriet of the Netherlands

Above: The former Ottawa Civic Hospital, now called the Ottawa General Hospital, a former employer of mine had me work there as a security guard, 1993-1994

(Canadian actor Dan Aykroyd (born 1 July 1952) and current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (born 25 December 1971) were also born at this hospital.)

Above: Dan Aykroyd

Above: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Thus endeth the digression.

 

Back to Charles the Bold and the Swiss.

In 1469 Duke Sigismund of Hapsburg of Austria assigned his possessions in the Alsace as a fiefdom to the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, so as to have these Alsatian territories better protected against the expansion of the Eidgenossen (Old Swiss Confederacy).

For the Swiss were proving to be troublesome…

Until about 1220 no one took much notice of the remote valleys and villages in what is now Switzerland.

Then the route over the St. Gotthard Pass opened.

And everyone wanted to muscle in on the lucrative trade with the Mediterranean.

To do that meant controlling the farmers, whose valleys had sole access to the northern approach to the Pass.

The farmers sought protection from the Holy Roman Emperor himself.

The communities of Uri and Schwyz were granted imperial freedom, meaning that the Emperor was their only boss.

But this semi-autonomy wasn´t enough of a guarantee.

Enter the Austrians of the Hapsburg monarchy.

They sent in bailiffs who threw their weight around to get what they wanted.

All that did was push the Swiss closer together.

Rütli Meadow, Canton Uri, Switzerland, 1 August 1291

Walter Fürst of Canton Uri, Werner Stauffacher of Canton Schwyz and Arnold von Melchtal of Canton Unterwalden met – on a sloping, lumpy meadow with grazing cows and protruding rocks with a splendid lake and mountain view – and swore an oath of mutual support against the Austrians.

They stood in the August sunshine, placed their left hands together, one on top of the other, raised their right hands above their heads in a honour salute and swore to help one another through thick and thin, in peace and war, forever.

Lake Ägeri, Switzerland, 15 November 1315

In 1314 tensions between the Habsburgs and the Swiss heightened when Duke Louis IV of Bavaria and Frederick the Handsome of the Habsburgs each claimed the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor.

The Swiss supported Louis IV because they feared the Hapsburgs would annex their lands, which they had already tried to do in the late 1200s.

War eventually broke out after the Swiss of Schwyz raided the Habsburg-protected Einsiedeln Abbey over access to pasture lands.

Frederick´s brother, Leopold of Austria, led a large army to crush the rebellious Swiss.

Leopold planned a surprise attack from the south via Lake Aegeri (Ägerisee) and the Morgarten Pass, counting on complete victory, for the Swiss lacked both the training as well as the equipment of the Habsburg knights.

The Swiss Confederates of Schwyz were supported by the Confederates of Uri, while the Confederates of Unterwalden erected fortifications west of the village of Arth in anticipation of a Habsburg approach from that direction.

The Confederates of Schwyz and Uri prepared a road block and an ambush point between Ägerisee and Morgarten Pass, where a small path led between a steep slope and a swamp.

The Swiss led by Werner Stauffacher of Schwyz had 1,500 infantry and archers.

The Austrians led by Leopold I had 5,500 infantry and 2,500 heavy cavalry.

When the Swiss ambushed the Austrians from above with rocks, logs and battleaxes, the Austrians had no room to defend themselves and suffered a crushing defeat.

The Swiss, unfamiliar with the custom of battles between knights, brutally butchered retreating troops and anyone unable to flee.

And the Swiss made an important and enduring discovery at this battle.

They learned that displaying greater cohesion than any equal force set against them, the Swiss could defeat anyone.

In March 1316, Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV confirmed the rights and privileges of the Forest Cantons.

However, Leopold proposed another attack against the Swiss Confederacy.

Neither Swiss nor Habsburg prevailed, so in 1318 they negotiated a truce.

By 1323, the Forest Cantons had made alliances with Cantons Bern and Glarus.

Within 40 years, the Cantons of Lucerne, Zug and Zürich had also joined the Confederacy.

By 1384, the expansion of the Swiss Confederacy was colliding with Austrian interests.

The interests of Austria were further undermined in the Pact of Konstanz – a union of Zürich, Zug, Solothurn and 51 cities of German Swabia.

Without formal declaration of war or any form of central organisation, the Swiss attacked the Austrian strongholds of Rapperswil, Rothenburg, Cham, Wolhusen, Entlebuch, Sempach, Meienberg, Reichensee and Willisau.

The Austrians had had enough.

Duke Leopold assembled his troops and declared war on the Swiss.

The Austrians gathered together at Brugg, marched south to Zofingen and Willisau, intending to ravage the Lucerne coutryside, cutting down corn and destroying the harvests along their route.

The town of Willisau was plundered and razed and the Austrian army moved on to Sursee on Lake Sempach, heading towards the town of Sempach.

Leopold´s men taunted those behind Sempach´s walls and an Austrian knight waved a noose at them and promised he would use it on their leaders.

The Swiss Confederation army, assembled at the bridge over the Reuss River at Gisikon, marched towards Sempach, hoping to catch the Austrians still there and press them against the Lake.

Sempach, Switzerland, 9 July 1386

12:00 – The two armies make contact 2 km outside of Sempach, to their mutual surprise for both were on the move and not in battle formation, but both sides quickly form ranks.

The Swiss held the wooded high ground close to the village of Hildisrieden.

Since the terrain was not deemed suitable for a cavalry attack, Leopold´s knights dismounted.

How and at what point the battle turned in favour of the outnumbered Swiss is a matter of debate.

Perhaps it was the midday heat, which wore out the Austrian knights wearing heavy armour much more than the lightly armed Swiss (some of whom had no other armour than a wooden plank tied to their left arms as shields).

Perhaps the Austrians fatally underestimated the Swiss.

The Swiss broke through the Austrian ranks and routed the enemy army completely.

Many Austrian nobles and knights were slain, including Duke Leopold.

The Battle of Sempach came to be seen as the decisive turning point between the foundation of the Confederacy as a loose pact in the 14th century and its growth into a significant and military power during the 15th century.

The Austrians soon signed an armistice and peace treaty.

Sempach had been a severe blow to Austrian interests and the Swiss Confederacy could now expand unchecked.

No Swiss history book is complete without mentioning Sempach, a battle that means nothing to most Europeans, but still commemorated every year by the Swiss.

Sempach secured Swiss independence and their reputation as soldiers to be reckoned with.

Fast forward to 1476.

Burgundy is one of the richest and biggest powers in Europe under its Duke, Charles the Bold.

Above: Charles Martin the Bold, last Duke of Burgundy (1433 – 1477)

Charles rules over a large part of western Europe, from the Netherlands and Belgium through northern France and Alsace down towards Geneva.

With France and England having spent the previous century fighting each other to a standstill, while Germany and Italy remain divided into piecemeal states, the way is clear for Burgundy to rule the Continental roost.

As previously mentioned, in 1469 Duke Sigismund of Hapsburg of Austria had assigned his possessions in the Alsace as a fiefdom to the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, so as to have these Alsatian territories better protected against the expansion of the Eidgenossen (Old Swiss Confederacy).

Charles the Bold´s embargo politics against the cities of Basel, Strasbourg and Mulhouse, directed by his reeve Peter von Hagenbach, prompted these cities to appeal to the Swiss Confederacy for help.

On 30 November 1475, Charles seized Nancy in Lorraine, then marched against the Swiss.

Charles marched to Grandson, recently captured by the Swiss, where he had all 412 men of the Swiss garrison hanged or drowned in Lake Neuchatel despite their capitulation on 28 February 1476.

The shocking and horrible execution lasted four hours.

Charles hoped to fill the Swiss with dread, to break the will of the Swiss by killing any of their countrymen he could apprehend.

Instead he united the Swiss as never before.

The Swiss confederate forces had no news of the fate of the Grandson garrison and assembled their forces in the hope of lifting the siege.

On 2 March 1476, Charles was attacked by the Swiss confederate forces and suffered a shameful defeat.

Charles was compelled to flee, abandoning his artillery along with many provisions and valuables.

At insignificant cost to themselves, the Swiss had humiliated the greatest duke in Europe, defeating one of the most feared armies and taken a most impressive amount of treasure.

Charles succeeded in raising a fresh army of 30,000 men.

Stung by his defeat at Grandson, Charles was determined to recover his territories and fortifications in the Pays de Vaud (in the present day French-speaking parts of Switzerland), then march on and attack the city of Berne, his greatest enemy among the Swiss cantons.

Charles´ first objective was the strategic lakeside town of Morat, on the eastern shore of Lac Morat.

On 22 June 1476, the Burgundians were resoundingly defeated and never truly recovered.

For some three miles along the lakeside many Burgundians died that day.

Charles´ dream of revenge against the Swiss should have ended that day, for his defeat at Morat spelled the beginning of the end for the Duchy of Burgundy, but he would doggedly struggle on against his foes.

Charles escaped to Morges and then to Pontarlier, where he stayed for months, in a deep depression.

On 6 October 1476, Charles lost Nancy to the Swiss who returned it to the Duke of Lorraine.

Making a last effort, Charles formed a new army and arrived in the dead of winter before the walls of Nancy.

Having lost many of his troops through the severe cold, it was only with a few thousand men that Charles met the joint forces of the Lorrainers and the Swiss at the Battle of Nancy on 5 January 1477.

Charles´ body, as abovementioned, was found two days later.

With the death of Charles the Bold, the dynasty of the Dukes of Burgundy died out.

The Flemish territories of Burgundy became a possession of the Austrian Habsburgs.

The French territories of Burgundy reverted to the crown of France.

The victories of the Swiss Confederation over one of the most powerful military forces in Europe at the time gained the Swiss a reputation of near invincibility.

The wars with Burgundy marked the beginning of the rise of Swiss mercenaries on the battlefields of Europe.

One man´s recklessness and his underestimation of the Swiss led to an inglorious and undignified death and ended both a dynasty and an empire.

(To be continued…)

Sources: Wikipedia / Diccon Bewes, Swiss Watching / Xenophobe´s Guide to the Swiss / The Rough Guide to France

 

 

Burkinis on the beach

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 25 August 2016

As I read the headlines of recent newspapers I can´t help but feel a sense of sadness about how much discussion can be generated over themes of relative unimportance while other themes that should be talked about are often marginalized and ignored.

More headlines are devoted to athletes and Hollywood stars then are devoted to destruction and disease.

Most of us are more aware of Kim Kardashian´s measurements than we are of how serious a problem global warming is, more concerned about fashion than famine, more afraid of phantom menaces than actual threats.

As my wife is quick to remind me, your humble blogger is quite possibly the most unfashionable person she knows, but I know if I wait long enough fashion will catch up to me!

I think I am a typically, old-fashioned kind of a man when I say I can´t understand the fuss and hullabaloo that is made over fashion.

If my clothes match the weather, fit the function I need them to do, are somewhat clean and are not offensive to the eye of the beholder, then I am satisfied.

My wife is right when she suggests I may have too many books that threaten to eat up what little space our apartment possesses, but I can counter her arguments by taking a quick stroll to her side of the bathroom or taking a quick peek inside her wardrobe.

How many bottles and tubes of toiletries and make-up does a woman actually need?

How many shoes are “enough”?

Has she even worn all the clothes she owns?

In fairness, we strange humans judge one another, especially the female of the species, by appearance, even going so far as to falsely believe that appearance is an accurate gauge of character, that a beauty can never be a beast.

We pin our perceptions of self based upon how others judge our appearance and feel flattered and complimented when someone approves of our looks.

We spend fortunes on pharmaceuticals and some even go so far as to have surgery to maintain an image of unreal perfection and ageless youth.

We foolishly separate the ideas of intelligence from beauty, stupidly thinking that beauty and intelligence cannot co-exist within the same bodily frame and many of us believe that being beautiful is superior to being intelligent.

Why do we give so much respect and attention to fashion models and ignore the truly intellectual individuals among us?

We believe that age is incompatible with beauty, so many a woman tilts against the windmills of immovable inevitability by buying into the notion that science in a bottle can stave off the signs of aging.

Many believe that the body itself is insufficient and incomplete, so folks add cosmetics, jewellery of one form or another, and even body art.

So much time, so much energy, so much interest, so much money revolves around fashion and appearance.

The world might end tomorrow, but, damn it, we will look good when the final chimes strike.

Take the case of Bethany Mota.

“Since launching her YouTube channel from the humble clutter of her north California bedroom, Mota has gone on to amass a following of nearly 10 million viewers and earns an estimated $40,000 a month for her videos.

Only 20 years old, Mota has won awards for her tips on recipes for packed lunches, back to school and morning routine tips, make-up and fashion tutorials.

This internet personality has through her videos built up her own media and fashion empire with her own clothing line with Aéroporta, JCPenney and Forever 21.

Testimony to the ever-rising reach of social media influencers, Mota was deemed so influential that she was selected to interview President Barack Obama as part of an initiative to branch out to a wider audience.

Mona’s YouTube channel reaches automatically larger audiences than most politicians’ social media accounts.” (Independent, 7 April 2016)

Think about this for a moment…

A 20-year-old whose “expertise” lies in what lip shade goes with what dress is more influential than a politician whose decisions have impact on a country’s economy and ultimately its future.

A 20-year-old makes more money per month than the President of the United States makes per year.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.

No matter how one might belittle the world of fashion, there is no denying its impact and influence upon so many of us.

Fashion makes a statement.

With half the population on the planet obsessed with appearance, there is great potential for profit to be made from this obsession.

“Global brands are waking up to the massive opportunities of the worldwide Muslim market – a burgeoning sector that is young, highly educated and collectively has enormous spending power.

The world´s 1.6 billion Muslims constitute a laregly untapped commercial market, worth $2.1 trillion annually worldwide and increasing by $500 billion every year.

“A huge opportunity is being missed by corporate brands, but the market is being taken by storm by young Muslim start-ups,” said Shelina Janmohamed, vice president of Ogilvy Noor, an Islamic branding agency.

There are recent indications that global brands are beginning to target Muslims.

A decision by Marks & Spencer to sell a range of “burkinis” (full cover swimsuits) in the UK last month prompted heated debate.

H & M, one of the world´s biggest fashion chains, attracted attention with an ad featuring a model in a hijab last year.

But there is still a long way to go.

“One of the complaints we hear is that Muslim consumers feel they are not engaged with, as businesses do not reach out to them.” (Shelina Janmohamed)

Janmohamed´s company´s research has found that more than 90% of Muslim consumers said their faith had some influence on their purchases.

Muslims want food, beverages and personal products to be sharia-compliant, but show more flexibility in products and services, such as finance, insurance and travel.

Although most Muslim consumers want acknowledgement and engagement from global businesses, some worry that corporations are motivated more by the chance to profit from the Muslim market.

According to Janmohamed, Muslim consumers fall broadly into two groups: futurists and traditionalists.

Futurists combine faith and modernity.

“They are proud to express their Muslim identity, but are also brand-conscious and brand-loyal.

They are open to the world, very tech-savvy, and very engaged in social media.”(Shelina Janmohamed)

Futurists, or Generation M, are younger and have influence disproportionate to their numbers.

Navid Akhtar, CEO of the Islamic TV production company Alchemiya calls Janmohamed´s futurists “gummies”(global urban Muslims).

Gummies are hyperdiverse, spiritual rather than Religious with a capital R, educated, transnational, with high disposable incomes and the vast majority are English speakers.

A key subset of gummies are “mipsters” (Muslim hipsters), aged between 16 and 24, obsessed with identity, image, fashion, friendship and education.

Tabish Hasan, CEO of the US-based Muslim Aid Network, compares the failure of major brands to tap into the Muslim market now to a similar disregard of the potential of the Hispanic market in the 1980s.

“Brands can´t afford not to engage with the Muslim market.

The Muslim lifestyle market is moving in the same direction – it´s so big, it has so much spending power.

It´s just a matter of time.”(Tabish Hasan)(Guardian, 8 April 2016)

“France has begun arresting Muslim women for wearing full body swimwear.

What started as a temporary rule brought in by a single resort in France has spread along the French Riviera and beyond and has become a lightning rod for a multitude of divisive issues.

The first city to announce the prohibition was Cannes, where mayor David Lisnard said he wanted to prohibit “beachwear ostentatiously showing a religious affiliation while France and places of religious significance are the target of terror attacks” to avoid “trouble to public order”.

A Cannes bylaw says anyone wearing swimwear deemed not to “respect good customs and secularism” would be barred from visiting the resort´s beaches or swimming.

The second community to announce a burkini ban, Villeneuve-Loubet, was not so direct linking burkinis to terrorism.

V-L´s rule stipulates that only clothing that “is respectful to morality and secular principles, and in compliance with hygiene and safety rules” is allowed.

V-L mayor Lionnel Luca could not give what specific hygiene reasons there were for banning full body swimwear.

A tribunal in Nice ruled that a burkini ban is “necessary, appropriate and proportionate” to prevent public disorder.

Armed police forced a Muslim woman to remove her clothing on the city´s Promenade des Anglais, the location of the lorry attack on 14 July 2016 (Bastille Day) in which 84 people were killed.

Four police officers armed with handguns, batons and pepper spray stood around the woman who was lying on the beach wearing a blue headscarf and matching top and forced her to remove them despite her and her daughter´s crying.

(Think about this for a moment…

Men with guns forcing a woman to undress, with the weight of the law behind them.)

None of the French Riviera orders have directly mentioned burkinis and some people have questioned whether police would enforce the ban for wetsuits, nuns´ habits and other garments.

Dozens of Muslim women have been fined, given warnings, or arrested  for wearing clothing deemed to violate these bans.

Authorities in at least 15 towns and cities have brought in bans, with the most recent being Cagnes sur Mer in Provence.

News of burkini bans has spread around the world, gaining support from right wing politicians.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right Front National, claimed the “soul of France is in question”.

“France does not lock away a woman´s body.

France does not hide half its population under the fallacious and hateful pretext that the other half fears it will be tempted.”(Marine Le Pen)

Critics have compared the enforcement of the ban to repression in Saudi Arabia and Iran, arguing that ordering women what to wear (or not to wear) is a violation of human rights in any context.

The bans are widely perceived to be a response to increased tensions and public fears following the Nice attack and the murder of a Catholic priest by ISIS supporters.

Some rights groups have said the new laws amount to the “collective punishment” of Muslims following the terror attacks and amid friction over immigration and the refugee crisis.

And other incidents continue…

Women are being ordered out of the sea, with onlookers shouting racist abuse.

Don´t misunderstand me…

I am very sympathetic to the victims of terrorism and I understand how sad and angry and afraid events of this type make people feel.

But we must not give in to these emotions nor let these emotions be a justification for acting as injustly as those we condemn.

We must not judge entire groups by the actions of a few.

We cannot prevent expression of religion and claim that this prevention is a secular act.

We cannot use the law against someone´s religious beliefs and then claim that we are ensuring that the law is separate from faith.

Nor need we fear that our beliefs are being supplanted by those who have chosen to bring their beliefs among us.

For if our beliefs are strong then they cannot be threatened by change.

And if our beliefs aren´t strong, then maybe change is necessary.

Terror analysts have warned that the dispute will fuel jihadist propaganda as groups like ISIS attempt to portray France and other Western countries as at war with Islam.

“If the aim of the terrorists who took so many innocent lives in Paris, Nice and elsewhere was to foment hatred and conflict and to provoke the French state into an overreaction, then the French authorities have more than fulfilled their unsavoury ambitions.

Victimising and bullying Muslim women on holiday is not only bad PR, it is wrong in principle and entirely counterproductive.”(Independent editorial)

Germany is separately considering a nationwide ban on full face veils, which is already enforced in Belgium. (Independent, 25 August 2016)

In regards to face covering, I only consider it necessary when there are security issues where a person would be required to remove a motorcycle helmet, such as places like banks or border crossings.

As for swimwear I lean towards a “live and let live” philosophy.

If a woman is comfortable with being fully covered or uncovered then personal liberty and dignity should be paramount over whether I like seeing that woman in a burkini or a bikini.

And if I am uncomfortable with my environment then I have the choice of leaving it.

Fashion is a statement.

How we choose to respond to it is a question of not only the wearer´s character, but as well our own.