During the hyperinflation in Germany of 1920s, the country's currency, the mark, went crazy. The government of the Weimar Republic may have been able to clear its debts, but it came at the cost of the citizens' savings. It's an era that is still part of the national psyche today.
Editor's note: During the global economic crisis, politicians and economists in the United States and Britain often criticized Berlin for its reluctance to initiate the kinds of expensive stimulus programs promoted by Washington. One of the most oft-cited reasons in Germany for racking up more debt than necessary to revive the economy was the fear of hyperinflation. From 1922-1923, hyperinflation plagued Germany and helped fuel the eventual rise of Adolf Hitler. The following article about this national trauma has been translated from a special issue of SPIEGEL on the history of money.
You could say journalist Eugeni Xammar had a stroke of reporter's luck when the Barcelona daily La Veu de Catalunya sent him to Berlin in the fall of 1922, a pivotal moment in the country's history. In the months that followed, it was the most exciting place in the world to report from. Germany's financial structures collapsed, and the mark began its descent into near worthlessness. (...) >>>
For Armistice Day we have attempted to collect a few edifying morsels of interest.
This is a lot less easy than it sounds. Most of what is available are isolated video snippets; or there's a choice of the pacifist anti-war stuff, of either the hefty Gothic, or of the sentimental tear-jerk variety.
However, given the current upsurge of interest - primarily in the US - we've unearthed some intriguing, if highly emotionally charged footage on the Weimar Republic, and the German Revolution that followed the chaos of World War I. It's got some rare historical material, as well as background information on whatever fateful constellation of events led to such a profound and total collapse of morality. (For more reading here's the Wiki on Christopher Isherwood.)
The music would certainly not have been our initial choice; we felt however as its message grew, that it serves the purpose of conveying some of the nihilism and the obsession with surreal horror that is so typical for the period, and that led to its inevitable outcome in World War II.
From the cultural angle, we proudly present a collection of World War I propaganda posters from all countries involved in the Great War. The entire site is rather a gem and worthy of further exploration. For example, Prose and Poetry reads ...
"More than any other conflict, the Great War inspired writers of all generations and classes, most notably among combatants. (...) This section profiles the more renowned authors and contains samples of their work. Also available in this section are extended features, including a profile of Robert Graves - and, more unusually but nevertheless intriguing, a piece on literary ambulance drivers... There are also two articles written about the author of the war's most famous poem: In Flanders Fields. The 1917 collection of wartime poetry The Muse in Arms has also been republished here in its entirety. (...) >>>
Wall Street Journal has a reality check for the US. "Soldiers of the Great War" lays an provocative link with the present: "(...) the victors failed to prevent the rise of the totalitarian regimes in Russia and Germany, the fascists in Italy and the militarists in Japan (...) the U.S. withdrew from its global responsibilities. (...) Now we are at a similar pass in Iraq, where the U.S. has effectively defeated Sunni and Shiite insurgents on the battlefield. But whether this costly achievement will hold depends largely on our willingness to support the Iraqi government and steel it against its own fascistic challengers, particularly Iran. If there's one lesson to be learned on this Armistice Day, it's of the price that's paid when we allow victory to slip from our grasp. >>>
One of the blessings of living part of one's life in cyberspace is the human connection one gets with people you will never know on a personal level. Following document was made by someone who remains anonymous, in commemoration of his great grandfather Aaron Kennett who fought in the Great War. He flourished from 1887 to 19187. May God bless them both, and all who fought and continue to fight for freedom, against barbarism and oppression.
The music accompanying the touching family document is the hymn "I Vow to Thee my Country", created in 1921 when a poem by Cecil Spring-Rice was set to music by Gustav Holst. It expresses the unconditional love, loyalty and self-sacrifice that was once unquestioningly devoted to one's country. It is a victory of the Postmodern One Worlders that these words - while warm and patriotic only a few years back when played at my father's funeral - now sound strangely surreal.
But make no mistake: whereas giving one's life for a state in Europe today seems unthinkable and alien, a renewed fight for individual freedom against neotot pocket potentates is certainly not. The same forces taunting national colours and hymns also whisper of collectives and the redundancy of democracy, suggesting that the value of 'enlightened dictators' is somewhat underrated. Ignore them at your peril ...
The Pablo Ducrós Hicken Film Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina has found in its archives a copy of the movie “Metropolis” directed in 1927 by Fritz Lang, with lost footage. The silent film was one of the most expensive ones (around $200 million dollars) and was cut heavily to make it more accessible. It was initially thought as a movie that would last two and a half hours. The footage that was found will add around 25 minutes to the film, but there will still be around five minutes missing. (...)
Metropolis is a science fiction film created by the Austrian-German director Fritz Lang. It was produced in Germany in the Babelsberg Studios and released in 1927. The screenplay was written in 1924 by Lang and his then wife, Thea von Harbou, and novelized by von Harbou in 1926.
It is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film is set in the year 2026, in the extraordinary Gothic skyscrapers of a corporate city-state, the Metropolis of the title.
Society has been divided into two rigid groups: one of planners or thinkers, who live high above the earth in luxury, and another of workers who live underground toiling to sustain the lives of the privileged. The city is run by Johann 'Joh' Fredersen (Alfred Abel). >>>
The German interbellum, also known as the Weimar Republic, was initially dominated by Leftist revolutionary activities inspired by Russian Bolshevism. The terrified pragmatist 'third way' Governments of the time - which were characterized by ineffective compromizing and amoral pragmatism - thought they could cancel out Spartacist Leftist collectivist brutality by unleashing on it Rightist collectivist brutality, the Freicorps - remnants of the former Imperial paramilitaries.
A posting dated 8th February pictures the surrealism of the German Revolution that was the basis of German society at the time the film was produced, the chaos and decadence that shot the Hitler's National Socialist Workers Party to power just six years later.
The theme of the film is typical of the Marxist dialectic: the paranoid bipolar division of humanity in oppressors and oppressed, in this case the proletariat against a caste of city planners.
Objectivist author Leonard Peikoff in "The Ominous Parallels" has made a dramatic effort to collate the current cultural and political constellation with that of the Weimar Republic. He maps the underlying philosophical currents, which indeed partly overlap:
the peculiar paradox of relativist pragmatism with absolute dogmatism, and mystical subjectivism coupled with sexual permissiveness, all blanket-covered by the deeply ingrained sense of ethics in which individual sacrifice to the collective is the highest standard of human achievement. Pending ominous developments related to anti-human animal rights and its consequences for values, the parallel stops short at this moment in time.
Postmodernism is about demoralization with a view to establish Marxist order:
"Postmodernism seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change." Frank Lentricchia, 1983
The Postmodern Principle
If reason makes no sense to your argument as reality clearly shows otherwise, attack reason as pernicious and superficial, and persuade the world that reality doesn't exist. Yours truly, 2007
Relativism described
"Relativism ... becomes a dogma that believes itself in possession of the definitive knowledge of human reason, with the right to consider everything else merely as a stage in human history that is basically obsolete and deserves to be relativized".
Joseph Ratzinger, "Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures (2006) Ignatius Press
Aristotle, Metaphysics
"But, we have now posited that it is impossible for anything at the same time to be and not to be, and by this means have shown that this is the most indisputable of all principles".
During the hyperinflation in Germany of 1920s, the country's currency, the mark, went crazy. The government of the Weimar Republic may have been able to clear its debts, but it came at the cost of the citizens' savings. It's an era that is still part of the national psyche today.
Posts
