1945

[Otto Sell]

> 154 "old second Reich"

Must be the Weimar Republic, the only real democratic tradition today's
Germany can look back at. Unsuccessful in defending against the rising
fascism which had deeper roots in the German people than the young democracy
which just survived from 1919-1933 could develop. The first Reich then was
from 1870-1919 (Kaiser Bill).

But I've never heard of the expression before I read it here in GR, so I
take it for Pynchon's invention. It's anachronistic in the way that nobody
used the expression "first" or "second" Reich back then. The nazis weren't
the first to use the expression "Drittes Reich" in the twentieth century,
took it from the national-conservatives and those have stolen it from
Joachim de Floris - yes, the one who founded the Illuminati in the 11th
century (no worldwide-conspiracy discussion intended here from my side).
There of course it was a religious term (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and no
national-konservative expression, had nothing to do with Germany.

In our history lessons we've learned that this "second Reich" had been torn
apart between the antagonistic powers of left and right, that the left had
split up (social-democrats and kommunists) while the right (the big
landowners) could reach a unification with industry and money.

> 154 ""death wish, rocket mysticism--Franz is just the type
> they want
>

Yeah, the lost war and the feeling of having failed nationally,
historically, as a people. And then - all or nothing - bis alles in Scherben
fällt - 'till all falls apart.

> just a note here while it comes to me: I thank for that post
> on the Black power Olympian fist.
> [154 "Die Faust Hoch" (who knows?, but Weisneburger suggests
> that this could be an allusion to the American radicals--and
> especially dissident blacks--of the sixties,). Why would
> Weisenburger think this? As I noted during our GRGR, the
> fire hoses, the "crowd hydrodynamics" the "Leftists and
> Jews" (GR.399-401) again, as you noted also, the Jews and
> Leftists hung on the hooks of the city slaughterhouses in
> Stettin" is a history, facts, but these also call up
> memories, or Prairie reels turning,  ghosts, bruised and
> battered, Jews buried in the bogs of Mississippi,
> Revolutionaries bludgeoned by police, black children sliding
> along the cobblestones of Harlem nights while German
> shepherds gnaw their brothers in arms on the docks of
> Detroit's dying democracies.]

Yes, interestingly enough Weisenburger says it's "a fictional leftists
magazine" (p. 90) while Fowler calls it "an historical radical paper"
(Douglas Fowler, A Reader's Guide to Gravity's Rainbow, Ann Arbor, 1980, p.
127). If it's fictional (what I assume) than it could be a pun on "Die Fahne
hoch," the beginning of the Nazi-Hymn (Horst-Wessel-Song).

Otto