GRGR (8) 158.9-159.27

[Michael D. Workman]

158.9 "President, in the middle of asking the Bundestag" (GRC): "Paul von
Hindenburg, Germany's president for the years until Hitler became dictator
in 1934, was known (and satirized) for such a voice. His addressing the
Bundestag, or lower house of the parlaiment, in this way is Leni's fantasy
of a bloodless revolution." Here is some information on Hindenberg from
http://209.1.224.13/Athens/Olympus/5011/hndnberg.html: "Serving as a
soldier of the German Empire, Paul von Hindenberg had attained the rank of
general by 1905, and had retired by 1911. Even this would make a not
unimpressive career, but fate was not done with Paul von Hindenburg. In
1914, at the outbreak of World War I, he was asked to take command of the
German Eighth Army, on the eastern front with Russia. Hindenburg accepted.
With the aid of his chief of staff, a brilliant strategist named Erich
Ludendorff, he triumphed over the numerically superior Russians at
Tannenberg. Promoted to field marshal and by 1916 the commander of all
German troops, he set up the "Hindenburg line," a system of trenches along
the western front which the allies did not succeed in breaking until
October 1918. After the war, in 1919, he retired again. In his memoirs, Out
of My Life, he claimed that Germany had lost the war due to the civil
unrest which overthrew the Empire and set up the Weimar Republic.
Ironically, Paul von Hindenburg was elected president of that republic in
1925, its second. Although he promoted German unity, he also aided the
Junkers, the landed Prussian aristocracy. In 1932, he ran for president
again as the only candidate capable of beating the National Socialist
candidate, Adolf Hitler. He managed to win the election, and perhaps as an
attempt at halting his popularity or satisfying his ambitious dreams, made
Hitler the chancellor of Germany. If he intended to stop Hitler, it
backfired; from his position as chancellor,  Hitler had the Reichstag give
him dictatorial control on March 25, 1933, after which Hindenburg remained
only as a figurehead. Upon his death on August 2, 1934, he was not replaced. 

Two years later, the luxury zeppelin Hindenburg was named in his honor. Its
crash in 1937 killed 36 people, and precipitated major changes in airship
construction from then on.

And, from: http://www.bundestag.de/btengver/e-index.htm: 

"Every polity needs firm rules according to which it can exist and
peacefully develop further. It should be possible for the innumerable
different wishes, ideas and interests of citizens to evolve and materialize
in freedom - not at the expense of someone else or of someone weaker, but
in a regulated manner alongside and in harmony with his or her freedom and
interests. There must therefore be universally valid rules which are
binding on every citizen but also binding on authorities in the action they
take." 

"What are these rules and who draws them up? The most important are
contained in the constitution, which in our country is called the Basic Law
for the Federal Republic of Germany. It lays down the basic rights, some of
which are rights protecting citizens from state intervention - such as the
right to life and to physical integrity, to self-fulfilment, freedom of
faith and conscience or the right freely to choose and practise an
occupation or profession -, and some of which are political participatory
rights,  such as freedom of assembly and freedom of association, freedom of
expression or the right freely to establish political parties. The Basic
Law contains such important guarantees as universal equality before the
law, equality of men and women and, right at the beginning, in the first
sentence of Article 1, paragraph (1), the duty of all public authority to
respect and protect the inviolable dignity of man."

158.21-158.23 "Incredible joy at the baths, among the friends. True joy:
events in a dialectical process cannot bring this explosion of the heart.
Everyone is in love..." Too true, too true. And interesting in context with
the next paragraph, where violence and "street tactics is "argued." Here is
the dialectical process, alright. 

 158.34-158-36 "What'll we do with Ilse? What if there's violence?" If
there's violence, what'll we do with Franz? 

159.8 "She even tried, from what little calculus she'd picked up, to
explain it to Franz as Dt approaching zero, eternally approaching, the
slices of time growing thinner and thinner, a succession or rooms each with
walls more silver, transparent, as the pur light of the zero comes nearer..."

159.19 "Nibelungen" (GRC): "Franz Pökler dozed off during the second part
of Fritz Lang's 1924 epic. Entitled Kreimhild's Revenge, it shows the
marriage of Atilla to Kreimhild (whose first husband, Seigfried, has been
killed). She encourages the Hun to sweep in on the Burgundians and massacre
them, a scene Kracauer...describes as an "orgy of destruction," in which
the violence unfolds as a carefully orchestrated sequence of "causes and
effects" where "nothing is left to chance. An inherent necessity
predetermines the disastrous sequence of love, hatred, jealousy, and thirst
for revenge." 

Also on Wagner's tetralogy: _Der Ring des Nibelungen_ which is made up of a
prologue (Das Rhinegold) and three operas (Die Walkure, Siegfried, and
Gotterdamerung), we have (from:
http://www.users.interport.net/~wotan/ring1.html): "From the depths of the
earth comes the Nibelung, Alberich. He approaches the three Rhinemaidens
swimming in the Rhine. He tries to woo each of them to love, but they mock
his ugliness and swim away from him. Finally, as they are taunting him the
Rhinegold awakens under the water and they sing its praises. Alberich is
puzzled why they would care for such a thing. They start to tell him about
the golds and the potential power it has. For in the water the gold is just
a plaything, but if someone were to steal it and rennounce love (minne)
they could learn its secrets and fashion from it a ring to rule the entire
world. One sister reminds the others to be careful of their father has
warned them of, but they do not really worry since Alberich is burning with
love for them."

"But Alberich has other plans... He realizes that these water maidens will
not give him any love, and that if he can't have that he can have power. He
swims to the gold, rennounces love (so verflucht ich die liebe), and steals
it from them. As everything is enveloped in darkness, Alberich makes his
way down to Nibelheim and forges the ring."

159.26-159.27 "Tides, radio interference, damned little else. There is no
way for changes out there to produce changes here." This is Franz on the
cause-and-effect tip again. He has a militant belief in teh epistemological
necessity of things and of their relative influence, which he is convinced
he is capable of adequately mitigating. Are "ides, radio interference" the
extent of his factitious concerns? Bob Dylan: "You don't need a weatherman
to know which way the wind blows."


Cheers,

Michael Workman, Proprietor
Underworld Used Books
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