Christmas Decorating With the Nazis: Literary Tree Ornaments

The Nazis were nothing if not culturally acquisitive. Although harshly critical of modernist art and literature, they portrayed themselves as the heirs and custodians of the great European and German national cultural traditions (the mirror image of the German Marxist claim). In some cases, the appropriation was easy. In others, a certain amount of manipulation or disingenuous treatment was required.

In the literary realm, the great Weimar Classicist writers and friends Goethe (1749-1832) and Schiller (1759-1805) stood at the center of the effort, though not all the works of these humanistic authors readily lent themselves to the messaging of a racist and dictatorial regime. Although Goethe's "Faust" could, with some gymnastics, be held up as the portrait of the archetypal "Germanic" soul, Schiller's drama Don Carlos proved awkward when audiences applauded the line, "Sire, give us freedom of thought!" And in 1941, Hitler requested that Schiller's anti-tyrannical drama Wilhelm Tell no longer be performed. Be that as it may, a general emphasis on the Nationalliteratur, reinforced by selective quotation, remained an effective overall policy.

The glorification of the national cultural tradition extended to Kitsch and collectibles. These small glass Schiller Christmas ornaments (c. 30 x 35 mm) were given to donors at street collections for the Winter Relief Work effort in March 1941.

Some recipients may actually have used them as tree decorations, but the Winterhilfswerk also offered an album for collectors.

Source: Antiquariat Wolfgang Friebes, Graz

The series,"Heads of Famous German Men," included Hitler (featured on the album cover above), historical military leaders, and artists and composers from Dürer to Wagner. Goethe and Schiller were, along with philosopher Immanuel Kant, the only literary figures.

It was a travesty of the German intellectual tradition. On the other hand: if only other countries took their literary heritage so seriously that they felt the need to co-opt and distort it.




[updated images]

18 December 1916: Battle of Verdun Ends

The Battle of Verdun, which had begun on 21 February 1916, at last came to an end on 18 December. The meat-grinder, as it came to be known, occasioned some 700,000 to 900,000 French and German casualties--among them at least 300,000 dead.

The medal below was issued by the city to the defenders. As historian and security expert John Schindler notes in a piece written on this week's centennial: because of the French system of rotating units in and out of Verdun, "virtually every division in the French army fought at Verdun at some point in 1916."

Details in the post from the February anniversary.

* * *

Resources

"The Butcher’s Bill of 1916: Europe’s Blood-Drenched Year of Horror:
A century ago, Europe was busy killing itself—a nightmare we still live with today," Observer, 17 Dec. 2016

John Schindler (@20committee) places the Battle of Verdun in the context of other bloody operations of 1916, including the Somme (intended to relieve the pressure on France arising from Verdun), and the lesser known battles in other theaters: Isonzo, on the Italian Alpine front, and Russia's Brusilov offensive against Austria-Hungary.

21 February 1916: The Battle of Verdun Begins

This month's artifact of the moment:

A century ago began one of the fiercest battles of a war that has come to stand for unprecedented slaughter. When the fighting on the western front during the Great War changed from the anticipated war of movement to the unexpected war of position, military leaders on both sides in vain sought a way out of the stalemate.


Operation Judgment

As 1915 drew to a close, German Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn presented a plan to the Kaiser:

The strain on France has reached breaking point--though it is certainly borne with the most remarkable devotion. If we succeed in opening the eyes of her people to the fact that in a military sense they have nothing more to hope for, that breaking point would be reached and England's best sword knocked out of her hand.

A massive assault against the right target would "compel the French to throw in every man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death."

That target was the fortified area around the Verdun, a city with great symbolic resonance in French history. An ancient Roman fortress, it also lent its name to the treaty that in 843 divided the empire of Charlemagne among his successors. The fall of the fortress during the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792 had exposed Paris to the threat of capture. By contrast, in 1870, it was the last fort to fall to the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War. Despite the presence of new outlying fortifications built in the wake of that defeat, it was weakly defended in 1916: the garrison was small, and its guns had been removed for use on other fronts.

The Germans assembled overwhelming force and began "Operation Gericht" (Judgment) on 21 February with a massive assault. In the words of John Keegan:

Among the 542 heavy guns were thirteen of the 420mm and seventeen of the 305mm howitzers that had devastated the Belgian forts eighteen months earlier, and to supply them and the medium artillery a stock of two and a half million shells had been accumulated. The whole of the French defensive zone on a front of eight miles--one German division and 150 guns to each mile--was to be deluged with preparatory fire, so that 'no line is to remain unbombarded, no possibilities of supply unmolested, nowhere should the enemy feel himself safe.' Falkenhayn's plan was brutally simple. The French, forced to fight in a crucial but narrowly constricted corner of the Western Front, would be compelled to feed reinforcements into a battle of attrition where the material circumstances so favored the Germans that defeat was inevitable. If the French gave up the struggle, they would lose Verdun; if they persisted, they would lose their army.

After early German gains, the French rallied to the defense, desperately resupplying the city via what became known as the "sacred road" (Voie sacrée) and subjecting the German attackers to devastating artillery fire. The fight thus ground on for nearly a year, bleeding both armies rather than merely the defenders. Combined casualty estimates for the two sides range from around 714,000 to 936,000. Finally, in late October, the French recaptured the key fortress of Douaumount, and by mid-December, they completed the counter-offensive.


To "The heroes, known and unknown, both dead and living"

In November, the municipal council of Verdun (meeting in Paris) ordered a medal struck to honor the heroic defenders. Each 37-mm bronze medal came in a small leather pouch stamped with the name of the city and holding a certificate.

The certificate, which depicted the medal and bore the hand-stamped seal of the city, read:

TO THE HIGH CHIEFS,
OFFICERS, SOLDIERS,
TO ALL,
    
     The heroes, known and
unknown, both dead and living,
who have triumphed over the
barbarians' onslaught and im-
mortalised her nam[e] throughout
the world and for ages to come,
the Town of Verdun, inviolate
and standing on her ruins, dedi-
cates this medal in token of her
gratitude.

The obverse of 37-millimeter bronze medal designed by Émile Vernier (1852-1927) depicts a defiant Marianne (symbol of the Republic) wearing a military uniform and the new army helmet, one fist clenched in defiance, the other holding a sword, poised for the offensive. Around the rim is the watchword of the defenders, "They shall not pass."

The obverse depicts the Porte Chaussée of Verdun between palms, with the word "Verdun" above and the starting date of the battle, 21 February 1916, below.
 

This unofficial medal was eventually issued in a variety of forms and sizes for all who had fought in the Verdun sector, broadly defined, at any point during the war.


"sacrifices . . . made in a most promising cause"?

Falkenhayn summarized his achievements:

The enemy nowhere secured any permanent advantages; nowhere could he free himself from the German pressure.  On the other hand, the losses he sustained were very severe.  They were carefully noted and compared with our own which, unhappily, were not light.

The result was that the comparison worked out at something like two and a half to one: that is to say, for two Germans put out of action five Frenchmen had to shed their blood. But deplorable as were the German sacrifices, they were certainly made in a most promising cause.

History has begged to differ. Falkenhayn had to relinquish his position as Chief of Staff, replaced by Paul von Hindenburg, the hero of Tannenberg who would go on to become President of Germany under the Weimar Republic and reluctantly appoint Hitler as Chancellor. And that is not the end of the ironies. Among the French soldiers captured in the battle was a young Charles de Gaulle. His commander was Philippe Pétain, who achieved fame for his defense of Verdun. In 1940, following the fall of Dunkirk, they briefly served together in the war cabinet before becoming archenemies, as Pétain took the reins of the collaborationist Vichy regime, while de Gaulle led the Free French from London.

* * *

Source of quotations:  John Keegan, The First World War (NY: Vintage Books, 1998), 277-86

Artifact of the Moment: "Souvenir de la Libération": France, 1944

As the anniversary of the start of World War II draws near, time to squeeze in one more piece on the endgame. Recently, it was Okinawa and Hiroshima in the spring and summer of 1945.

This time: the liberation of Paris, August 25, 1944.

Dia.: 40 mm. Rim dia: 61 mm. Length: 311mm

It is a British brass shell casing, decorated and inscribed, "Souvenir de la Liberation." I bought it from an English antique dealer couple who were visiting a colleague here in the US and had brought a few items to sell during their trip. I haven't researched is as thoroughly as I would like, but unless I am way wide of the mark, it is a shell from a 40 mm Bofors L60 gun (1 , 2) which was widely used by both sides.

As a piece crafted to celebrate and recall the "Liberation," it presumably dates from sometime between D-Day and August 27, when De Gaulle told the Resistance that their work was done, or soon thereafter.

Many would term it "trench art," which Paul Cornish's photo essay on the Imperial War Museum website defines as "objects made from the debris and by-products of modern warfare": originally applied to works by soldiers of the First World War, but now even beyond that period. He further notes,  "Many examples of trench art were also made by local civilians for sale to soldiers" and "after the war. . . for sale as souvenirs to the visitors to battlefields and cemeteries." Given that this one is French, and taking the inscription into account, I would assume that it falls into that latter category of works made by civilians for the general market. That said, the fact that the word, "Liberation" lacks the appropriate accent aigu on the "e" (é) could perhaps (though probably not?) suggest a foreign origin.

a flower

the dove and dawn of peace

Although it was sold as a topical item tied to the events of the day, it has somehow survived for over 70 years, thus indeed preserving the memory of a moment that seemed to herald the dawn of a new world.

Naive, we may think. Barbarism and intolerance have not disappeared. Europe was powerless in the face of the genocide committed against Bosnian Muslims and has also failed in the face of subsequent horrors. And yet, as this stamp issued for the 50th anniversary of the end of the war reminds us, something of that hopeful moment did become a reality.

[updated images]

The (elegant brass) Christmas Box--Anno 1914

Whenever possible, I like to use images and objects in teaching. They can provide insights into specific aspects of life in the past in the past or simply help to make tangible a world that can seem irredeemably distant and alien to students.

One of the favorite objects in my collection is this one. It's not terribly rare (you can still find them fairly easily, and they don't cost a fortune), but it is special.

hinged embossed brass box, 37 x 125 mm (click to enlarge)

The Imperial War Museum calls this brass box, created as a Christmas gift for British troops in1914, "one of the most enduring mementos of the First World War."

In the center, enclosed in a circle within a wreath, is a profile of Britain's Princess Mary facing left, flanked by the cursive initial "M." Above, center, in a cartouche in the decorative border, the words "Imperium Britannicum" (British Empire) set over a garlanded sword. Below, center, a cartouche with the words "Christmas 1914." flanked by the bows of warships.

The names of the major allies, France and Russia, are set within circles over tripods of banners at left and right, respectively. In the four corner cartouches, diagonally facing the center of the lid, are the names of the other allies. Clockwise: Belgium, Japan, Montenegro, and Servia (sic).

The story is as intriguing as the box is beautiful. The War Museum, which holds the documentary and material record of the undertaking, provides the fullest recounting on its website, but here are the essentials.


'every Sailor afloat and every Soldier at the front'

The story began in the early months of the war, when Britain's Princess Mary (Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary; 1897-1965), daughter of King George V, wanted to do something to honor and cheer the troops.

The undertaking proved far more complex than anyone had anticipated, and indeed, can serve as an illustration, on a microcosmic scale, of the challenges of morale-building efforts and industrial activity in the era of nascent total war. Virtually every aspect of the project, from concept, funding, and contents, to manufacturing and distribution, had to be modified.

Although the Princess's original plan had been to make a true personal gift from her own resources, it soon became apparent that a public effort and fundraising appeal were required, so in October, she wrote:

I want you now to help me to send a Christmas present from the whole of the nation to every sailor afloat and every soldier at the front. I am sure that we should all be happier to feel that we had helped to send our little token of love and sympathy on Christmas morning, something that would be useful and of permanent value, and the making of which may be the means of providing employment in trades adversely affected by the war. Could there be anything more likely to hearten them in their struggle than a present received straight from home on Christmas Day?

The gift was to consist of the hinged and embossed brass box, "one ounce of pipe tobacco, twenty cigarettes, a pipe, a tinder lighter, Christmas card and photograph [of the Princess]." The Executive Committee then decided to produce several variant versions for those for whom the smoking-oriented contents might be inappropriate. For the non-smokers, "a packet of acid tablets, a khaki writing case containing pencil, paper and envelopes" took the place of the tobacco and related products. Nurses at the front received chocolate instead. As for the Colonial troops: "The Gurkhas were to receive the same gift as the British troops; Sikhs the box filled with sugar candy, a tin box of spices and the Christmas card; all other Indian troops, the box with a packet of cigarettes and sugar candy, a tin box of spices and the card."

the smoker's version (Imperial War Museum)

the nonsmoker's version (Imperial War Museum)

The fundraising campaign was so successful--bringing in nearly £ 163,000, most of it from small donations--that it allowed for boxes to be given to all troops, but this proved to be a mixed blessing, given the sheer number of recipients, estimated at some 2.6 million. The Executive Committee thereupon decided to do a sort of triage, aiming to reach recipients in Class A--essentially, the Navy, frontline troops, nurses, prisoners and internees, and families of the deceased--by Christmas, and those in Classes B (British, Colonial, and Indian troops outside the UK), and C (troops within the UK borders) later on. Because these latter were distributed after Christmas, the card proffered New Year's greetings instead.

As it happened, just fabricating the box proved more than challenge enough. The manufacturers were not eager to take on the task in the first place, but the largest problem consisted in the shortage of appropriate brass metal, even after the Committee was forced to intervene and supply it directly. In the event, there proved to be enough for the Christmas issue, but the Committee struggled to find the remainder, even turning to American sources. Nice bit of historical trivia: most of the US shipment was aboard the Lusitania, famously torpedoed by the Germans in 1915.

426,724 boxes were distributed by Christmas 1914. This meant that 1,803,147 still had to reach the other two classes, a daunting number that prompted the Committee to streamline things yet again by settling upon a uniform gift consisting of only the box, New Year's card, and pencil. After the final accounting was done in 1919, the surplus went to Queen Mary's Maternity Home, which aided the wives and newborns of men in the service.

* * *

One of the things that is so fascinating about the rise of the web and social media in museum and historical work is the possibility for dialogue, among members of the public, and between the public and professionals. There is a nice representative collection of responses--from Massachusetts and the UK to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India--on the web page of the box from Museum Victoria in Australia. Some of the commenters knew what the box was, some were learning for the first time about this mysterious object that they had in their homes. One collector and writer used the opportunity to add to his knowledge base prior to issuing a new publication. One of the most intriguing and laconic posts seems to come from a British soldier who found one in an abandoned house in the course of the current war in Afghanistan.

This sort of engagement (though presumably lacking the direct personal connection) is what I hope to bring out when I show the box in class. One can begin the conversation via any one of multiple avenues:

The striking elegance of the design and quality of the product, for example. Do they reflect a soon-to-be antiquated aesthetic?

What of the relationship between monarchy, state, and public? How do the texts and images of the box feature in the construction of a patriotic ideal?

Are students surprised to see Japan featured on the box? Why?

What do the design of the box, along with the production and distribution problems, tell us about expectations of the course of the war? Were the initiators of the project naive?

What do the contents such as tobacco and writing products tell us about the culture of the era and the daily life, hopes, and fears of the soldier in the trenches?

And what about the substitution of spices and sweets in the boxes destined for Indian troops? How did the Empire understand cultural diversity and pluralism? Why has the significant presence of Colonial forces failed to become part of our popular image of the war? (1, 2)

And then there is the now-fabled "Christmas Truce" of 1914 in which the soldiers of the opposing sides climbed out of their trenches, and for a day, at least, met face to face as friends rather than foes. Among the gifts they exchanged were cigarettes. What if this box was there? What if this box could talk?

Going Postal in Gaza

Artifact of the Moment:

Not necessarily what you think. An arcane and quotidian piece of history. Over on the Tumblr:

Would You Wear Jewelry Commemorating a War or Battle? (The Somme of All Fears)

A pretty pin marking the proverbial bloodiest day in British military history. Would you consider it strange to wear jewelry commemorating a contemporary war or battle, say, the Iraq or Afghanistan wars? the battle of Falluja? Or maybe 9-11.

Probably. But when we stop to think about it, is it really so foreign to us? The American penchant for populism has produced countless t-shirts and bumper stickers marking military campaigns and national tragedies--including 9-11. Military veterans often sport baseball caps noting their units, ships, or the wars they served in. President Clinton and other dignitaries even wore rather incongruous-looking commemorative baseball caps at the signing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty.

 

Over on the Tumbler, a look at this Artifact of the Moment involving World War I and soldiers' gifts to loved ones:

Battlefield Bling From the Bloodiest Day in British Military History: The Somme

Prosit Neujahr! The Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army railroad engineers wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

As I pondered which historical Christmas or New Year's artifact to share this year, I managed to settle on a modest one that addresses both holidays and moreover anticipates the course on twentieth-century Europe that I am teaching this spring.

It is a combined Christmas and New Year's military Field Post greeting card from the 11th Railroad Company of the Imperial and Royal (k.u.k.) Austro-Hungarian army, from 1915. An elf, using the railroad emblem as his wheelbarrow, trundles a tiny snow-covered sign denoting the Company down the track.

The address side depicts the leader of the chief allied state, a fiercely martial German Emperor Wilhelm II.

The card thus seems to differ from the typical commercial card of the era in that it has prominent graphic content on both sides. Early postcards reserved one side for the image and the other exclusively for the address. Senders therefore scribbled any message on the image side, which seems strange to modern sensibilities. After the advent of the "divided back" postcard in 1907, senders could use one side for both address and message, in the manner familiar to us (or which was familiar, until the rise of mobile electronic communication), although some of the more verbose correspondents allowed their prose to overflow onto the "picture" side.


The card, dated Christmas Eve, 1915, and postmarked 26 December, is from one Lieutenant Hugo Mischek to his wife Bertha in "Ober Erlitz," a small town (1930 population: 374) within the larger precincts of Grulich, Bohemia: today, Olomoucký Kraj in the Pardubice region of the Czech Republic. (The mixture of German personal names and Slavic family name—though in Germanized spelling—reminds us that the relation between nominal ethnic ancestry and personal identity was often complex in the multiethnic Danube Monarchy.)

The address and inscription are written in the purplish indelible pencil typical of the era: in that context, a sort of "predecessor to the ball-point pen", very useful in the field. Lt. Mischek wishes his wife "a most lovely Christmas celebration," with "warmest greetings." Immediately beneath this, a comrade adds, "Hugo is doing quite well" and the Austrian salutation, "I kiss your hand!" while other members of the unit simply add their signatures. Presumably, the men came from the same region. The intimacy suggested by the use of the first name may also be in part a matter of cultural style. The Berlin-born historian Felix Gilbert recalled being "highly astonished," "almost shocked" to hear Austrian officers, upon meeting one another for the first time, promptly slip into the informal address, "Du," which the reserved and punctilious Prussians would never countenance.

The modest artifact is noteworthy in at least two ways.

First, it reminds us that this was a new kind of war. Almost since the inception of the railroad, governments sensed its military usefulness, but it took them some time to put this insight into practical effect. The success of the Prussian army in rapidly bringing 370,00 troops to bear against the 240,000 of France in 1870 was a wake-up call. "Build no more fortresses, build railways," was the advice of General von Moltke, and other nations began to heed the lesson. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Austro-Hungarian army, which had itself fared poorly against the more mobile Prussians in 1866, had 12 Railroad Companies, a number that would soon increase.

More than any other conflict, the Great War has come to be associated with the railroad. Historians have long noted that the mobilization of the immense new mass armies raised logistics and timing to an unprecedented level of importance (a policy that reached its logical conclusion—or reductio ad absurdum—in the "launch on warning" stance during the thermonuclear doomsday scenarios of the Cold War). The late great military historian John Keegan, taking as his point of departure Wellington's observation that "In military operations, time is everything," wrote that space as well as time played a crucial role in the German and Austrian calculations involving railroads and mobilization schedules vis-à-vis Russia. And Stephen Kern devotes an entire chapter of his provocative The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 to "The Temporality of the July Crisis," in which both the railroad and the telegraph, as well as more psychological or metaphysical notions of "national" time play a prominent role.

Second, we are reminded that the Great War did not take place only on the Western Front, whose static "war of position" epitomized by trench warfare has come to define our image of the entire conflict. The fighting in the east, by contrast, was a traditional "war of movement," made possible in part by the bungling as much as the successes of the two sides. The city of Czernowitz, capital of the Bukovina, the easternmost district of Galicia, is said to have changed hands 15 times in the course of the war. The German forces scored great initial successes against the Russians in the north, establishing the fame of Hindenburg. To the south, the Austrians did not fare as well: by the fall of 1914, the Russians had advanced to the hinterlands of Kraków. In December, the Austrians turned the tide, and none too soon. They had lost 1,268,000 killed, wounded, or captured. A year later, at the end of 1915, the combined German and Austrian forces, supported by the Bulgarians, took Belgrade and pushed the Serbs into Albania, but none of the great powers had lost its fighting capacity, and victory was in sight on neither front. As Keegan writes, "The coming year of 1916, all parties recognised, would bring crisis on land, east and west, and at sea also. It would be a year of great battles between armies and fleets."

The elf on the postcard looks businesslike rather than particularly cheerful, for which he might be excused, given the circumstances.



Postscript

A website devoted to the history of a local Austrian railway station lists a certain Hugo Mischek who was involved with railway administration in the vicinity of Olomouc (thus, the home region of the sender of this postcard) but who is then described as having been sent through retirement relocation to Vienna in 1915-15 and in retirement there, 1915-1918. This does not seem to fit the description of a Lieutenant apparently in active service, but one wonders whether there might not be some family connection. A later Hugo Mischek was a leading builder and developer in post-World War II Vienna. The full history behind our little postcard remains to be explored.

International Women's Day--and Portaits of Twentieth-Century European Feminists

Let a joyous sense of serving the common class cause and of fighting simultaneously for their own female emancipation inspire women workers to join in the celebration of Women's Day.

 –Alexandra Kollontai, "Women's Day" (1913)

Down with the world of Property and the Power of Capital!
Away with Inequality, Lack of Rights and the Oppression of Women – The Legacy of the Bourgeois World!
Forward To the International Unity of Working Women and Male
Workers in the Struggle for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
– The Proletariat of Both Sexes!

–Alexandra Kollontai, "International Women's Day" (1920)

To many today, these words of the Russian socialist and feminist may well seem stilted and the categories and concepts outmoded, and yet they can serve as a powerful reminder in several regards:  First, that women's rights were once an idea as radical as gay rights were for many people a generation ago. (Let us remind ourselves that it was only in 1920 that women received the vote in the United States, through the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.) Second, that it was thus the "radical" or fringe groups that were the most consistent advocates for women's rights, arguing that even formal-legal equality through suffrage would not bring about true equality between the sexes. Third, and consequently, that they also saw an intimate connection between (though not absolute identity of) issues of gender and class, long before these became part of the obligatory (and, truth be told, sometimes far less conceptually sophisticated) "mantra" of "race, gender, and class" in the academic culture of our own day.

When I began my introductory historiography class yesterday, I decided to ask my students whether they knew the significance of that date in history. An open-ended question, to be sure, but not unreasonable, given that they would be unlikely to know some of the more minor anniversaries. (I did not expect that they would know, for example that, on that date in 1658, "After a devastating defeat in the Northern Wars, the King of Denmark–Norway was forced to give up nearly half his Danish territory to Sweden to save the rest," much less that, in 1924, "Three violent explosions at a coal mine near Castle Gate, Utah, US, killed all 171 miners working there," or even that in 1978, BBC Radio transmitted the first episode of "The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy." Neither did I, truth be told: one reason that Wikipedia Articles of the Day can be useful.)

What I was looking for, of course, was International Women's Day. A handful actually did know, and I gently teased those who did not (after all, in a "progressive" setting such as Hampshire College, who would or should not know such a thing? For shame, right?). One student actually knew some related details: that it was a demonstration for International Women's Day that was the nominal precipitant of the "February Revolution" in Russia in 1917 (still using the "old" calendar, which placed the date in that month rather than in March as in the west). However, that involved the celebration rather than the origin of the holiday.

The idea behind the celebration, as I explained, originated with nineteenth-century German socialists, who had long been advocates of women's rights. In 1910, at the Second International Conference of Working Women, Clara Zetkin proposed an annual holiday. The original date chosen was March 19, as the anniversary of the (mostly unfulfilled) concessions by the Prussian King to the revolutionaries in 1848. The first celebrations took place in 1911, and in 1913, the date was changed to March 8. Initially, the event was the focus for efforts on behalf of women's suffrage, but the scope has steadily expanded, and the United Nations officially embraced the holiday in 1975.

For this year's contribution, I thought I would share some portraits of modern European feminists and women politicians. In the mid-1920s, one Max Bindernagel, evidently an amateur artist active in Erfurt, produced some 200 sketches of world political and cultural figures: mostly contemporary; a few, historical (mainly marking their birth or death anniversaries). They are done in pen and India ink on cheap paper of about 13 by 20 cm. Most are vertical in orientation, but some are horizontal and contain double portraits. Most bear only the name of the person depicted, the artist's initials, and the date with no explicit connection between the choice of subject and date of work. A few do refer to current events, such as notable activities, honors, deaths, and the like, and contain explanatory captions. One assumes that the sketches were modeled after photographic images. Most are conventionally representational-realistic in nature, though one, of Mussolini, employs a markedly different Expressionist character to convey a message of pointed criticism. Some are rather accomplished, while many betray their amateur character or are downright awkward in execution.

I was struck by the overall range of the enterprise (apparently a purely personal endeavor), and not least, by the inclusion of figures from across the political spectrum and the representation of female subjects. Among the handful of specimens that I acquired a few years ago are the following portraits of notable women.

Pioneering Swedish "difference feminist" Ellen Key (1849-1926), who moved from radical liberalism to socialism, and wrote about issues of family, sexuality, and education, in particular. I first encountered her as a graduate student when I was studying the German socialist periodicals of the late nineteenth century.

Bindernagel's caption:

Ellen Keÿ has died.
(Stockholm, 25 April 1926.) The author Ellen Keÿ, who for some time has been grievously ill, died the preceding night in Strand (on the Vättersee).

The indomitable Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), late in life. The founder of International Women's Day went on to organize women's opposition to the First World War, which earned her several stints in jail. She was a co-founder of both the radical Spartacist League and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), which broke with the majority socialists over their reformist policies and support for participation in the war. Soon afterward, she joined the new Communist Party, serving in a number of its top posts and as a deputy in the Reichstag. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, she went into exile in the Soviet Union, where she died soon thereafter. Zetkin became part of the secular pantheon of communist East Germany.

(Zetkin was certainly one tough character but even she didn't look quite this grim. The artist apparently tried—without quite succeeding—to capture the spirit of this photograph.)

Marie Juchacz (1879-1956): socialist, Women's Secretary in the Social Democratic Party, deputy to the Reichstag. She has a number of "firsts" to her credit:  the only woman on the commission that drafted the constitution of the Weimar Republic, and the first woman to make a speech in a German parliamentary assembly. The  founder of the "Workers' Welfare Organization" (AWO), she emigrated from Germany after the Nazi seizure of power and spent the war in the United States.

Else Lüders (1872-1948) Part of the radical wing of the bourgeois feminist movement. Member of various German feminist organizations, such as the Verband Fortschrittlicher Frauenvereine, which dissolved itself in 1933 rather than accept Nazi cooptation. After the war, she was active in the CDU.

Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952), the great Russian left revolutionary and feminist, still known for her frank writings on women's rights, women's experience, and sexual as well as social equality. As People's Commissar for Social Welfare and founder of the the Zhenotdel (Women's Department), she sought to foster women's education and improve women's status under the new regime in keeping with the commitment to socialist rather than "bourgeois" feminism. The child of a Ukrainian Tsarist general of noble descent (but liberal political views) and a Finnish peasant mother, this former Menshevik-turned Bolshevik was never easy to classify—or control. After being marginalized as a member of the left opposition to Lenin's new order, she occupied various diplomatic posts: beginning with the portfolio for Norway, which made her the first woman ambassador. This "first" was thus a genuine one, but occasioned in part by the regime's desire to put her where it could benefit the most from her status and she could cause the least trouble. (Subsequent posts included the ambassadorships to Mexico and Sweden and service on the League of Nations delegation of the USSR.)

Bindernagel's caption:

The only woman diplomat in the world.

Frau A. Kollontaÿ, the Soviet-Russian Ambassador in Oslo (Norway), not only a very elegant but also a very skillful representative of the interests of her homeland.

The great socialist and pacifist artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), celebrated above all for her depictions of social misery and message of political protest. Some have seen in the social thematics, cautious distance from formalistic artistic isms, and emphasis on the "secondary" form of the graphic arts a particular feminine choice or destiny of the era. Although perhaps best known for her drawings and prints in various media, Kollwitz was also a distinguished sculptor, a fact that Bindernagel highlights in his caption (though he seems to err in point of fact, for the one-woman show featured graphic works):

Käthe Kollwitz.
On [the occasion of] her great successes in America.
The famous artist Käthe Kollwitz, whose talent in painting and drawing in particular long ago placed her in the first rank of German creative artists, has now arranged a special exhibition of her works, first and foremost including sculpture, in New York, and enjoyed an extraordinary success. 20 February 1926 M.B.

And finally, to return to our own neighborhood:  As chance would have it, Smith College was in effect created on the date that would become International Women's Day when, "in 1870, a shy but determined woman from Hatfield willed that her fortune be used to establish a women's college in Northampton."


Hereby, selected links on this year's commemorations:

• International Women's Day
• "What is there to celebrate around the world on International Women's Day? – interactive. Women from 11 countries give their thoughts on achievements where they live (The Guardian)
• Kate Freeman, "International Women’s Day 2012 Tweets Flood the Twitterverse" (Mashable)
• John Kennedy, "Google reveals colorful International Women's Day Doodle" (Siliconrepublic)
• "World Marks International Women's Day" (Voice of America)
• "International Women's Day celebrated around the world" (Washington Post)
• Hibaaq Osman, "Arab Women Shaping the Future--Now, More Than Ever" (Huffington Post)
• "Myths and Facts: Women Do Not Have Equal Rights in Israel" (Jewish Virtual Library)
• Women's guided tours: by women, for women, about the women in Friedrich Schiller's family (in German) at the Schiller House in Marbach

Resources

• 2010 post
• 2009 post

Artifact of the Moment: A Book, and a Belief in World Cultural Unity Amidst Diversity

11 February

Beginning a new rubric, which I had been meaning to do for quite some time.  "Artifact of the Moment" (and yes, I did actually agonize quite a bit over "artifact" versus "artefact," since I somehow want to incline toward the former— but even leaving aside the various etymological arguments, this is the United States in the 21st century).

At any rate, it's an excuse to do something else and, I hope, slightly more than just show and tell. Saying that it does not have to be the equivalent of an elementary-school activity does not mean that it has to rise to the level of a museum exhibit, either.  Large institutions themselves have come to realize this; witness the very successful programs of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and Library of Congress. As individual bloggers have likewise shown, there can be value or at least pleasure in the simple sharing of images and brief commentary, for information and stimulation of conversation.  Matthew Battles brought an edgy intellectuality with a popular touch to the discussion of odd objects over at gearfuse.  Among my own nearby blogging friends and "Tweeps," Marian Pierre-Louis regularly posts images of New England gravestones at "The Symbolic Past," while, over at ArchivesInfo, Melissa Mannon shares finds from the world of ephemera and more (this week, appropriately enough, it's a vintage Valentine's Day card).  And friend Anulfo Baez, the ever-interesting "Evolving Critic," introduced readers to the furniture—rather than architecture— of H. H. Richardson (who knew?).

Given the upheavals of recent weeks—and the world-historical events of this very day—in the Middle East, I'm going to start with an object testifying to the European desire for cultural interchange and symbiosis.

frontispiece and title page:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West-oestlicher Divan [West-Eastern Divan] 

(Stuttgart: Cotta, 1819)

556 pages, and 3 unpaginated leaves rare uncut, unbound copy (approx. 11.2 X 19.5 cm)
[=publication 1819 D in the Hagen inventory]

 The engraved frontispiece, in Arabic, reads: "The Eastern Divan by the Western Author," reflecting Goethe's concept of a broad and cross-cultural "world literature" (Weltliteratur) that was the patrimony of all humanity:

“I am more and more convinced,” he continued, “that poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men. . . .National literature is now rather an unmeaning term; the epoch of World literature is at hand, and every one must strive to hasten its approach. But, while we thus value what is foreign, we must not bind ourselves to anything in particular, and regard it as a model. We must not give value to the Chinese, or the Servian, or Calderon, or the Nibelungen; but if we really want a pattern, we must always return to the ancient Greeks, in whose works the beauty of mankind is constantly represented. All the rest we must look at only historically, appropriating to ourselves what is good, so far as it goes.”

(1827) Conversations with Eckermann

Goethe had been working at least since 1814 on poetry inspired by the great fourteenth-century Persian lyric poet "Hafis" (Hafez). However, as he explained to his publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta in 1815, the latter's gift of his edition of Hafis's works in a translation by the prominent Austrian orientalist Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856) lent the effort new impetus.  The goal, Goethe said, was  "to connect, in a cheerful way, the West and the East, the past and the present, the Persian and the German, and to allow the customs and habits of thought of each to overlap."

In writing the Divan, Goethe did not so much try to copy the poetic form of the ghazal (German: Ghasel; rhyming couplets and refrain, in the same meter), as to evoke its spirit and feel. (Contemporaneous German authors of a later generation, such as Friedrich Rückert and August von Platen, pursued the goal of closer poetic imitation.)  The poems also reflect his interest in and respect for Islam.

Some of the pieces appeared separately in various periodicals and serials in the coming years, but it was only in 1819 that the complete collection appeared together. As editor Konrad Burdach put it in the great critical-historical "Weimar Edition" (WA) of Goethe's works, "There is not much to be said in praise of this first edition; although the printing dragged on, it by no means turned out to be particularly accurate." (WA 6:355) The firm of Frommann in Jena  began the work in December 1817 but did not complete it until August 1819, a situation that Goethe finally denounced as irresponsible.

There were all kinds of misprints, from minor typographical errors to garbling of proper names, only a few of which were corrected in the index (for example, rendering "a cygnet" (baby swan) as "a weakening" or "debilitation.")  Of the mistakes that went unnoticed, some were basically harmless but annoying, whereas other garbled names or obscured the intended meaning. There were some corrections. The most significant change was to the title of the fourth poem, "Talismans" ("Talismane"). The printer mistakenly used a far longer early title, "Talismans, Amulets, Abraxas, Inscriptions, and Seals" ("Talismane, Amulete, Abraxas, Inschriften und Siegel").

In the handpress era, text was set by hand (composed) from individual letters, line by line, and then arranged in pages (imposed) and printed on both sides of single sheets of paper, folded together to produce "signatures" (Bogen; Druckbogen) which were then stitched together in gatherings: in this case, "octavo" format, meaning 3 folds of the sheet, to produce a signature of 8 leaves or 16 pages. After the book was given a permanent binding, the page edges were trimmed of excess to remove closed folds and yield a volume of the proper size. (The copy depicted here is rare not only because it is a first edition, but especially because it somehow survived all this time unbound and uncut.)

The typical method of dealing with misprints was simply to add a list of errata (Druckfehler). If the mistakes were caught in time, they might be corrected, though this was not always simple. Corrections that resulted in the addition or deletion of more than a few letters could throw off an entire page, which could in turn affect the rest of the sheet. Circumstances permitting, a middle ground between doing nothing and starting over with a new sheet was to "cancel" and replace just the offending leaf (2 pages) or conjugate pair of leaves (4 adjoining pages). In German, the insert, or cancellans, was referred to as a Carton. This is what happened here, for Goethe ordered the reprinting of the quarter-sheet containing pages 7 through 10.

Here, the translation of the poem , from a late nineteenth-century edition:

God’s very own the Orient!
God’s very own the Occident!
The North land and the South
Rest in the quiet of His hand.

Justice apportioned to each one
Wills He Who is the Just alone.
Name all His hundred names, and then
Be this name lauded high! Amen.

Error would hold me tangled, yet
Thou knowest to free me from the net.
Whether I act or meditate
Grant me a way that shall be straight.

If earthly things possess my mind
Through these some higher gain I fnd;
Not blown abroad like dust, but driven
Inward, the spirit mounts toward heaven.

In every breath we breathe two graces share—
The indraught and the outflow of the air;
That is a toil but this refreshment brings;
So marvelous are our lifes comminglings.
Thank God when thou dost feel His hand constrain,
And thank when He releases Thee again.

(Stanza 1 is a poetic rendering of text from the Qur'an, and stanza 3 is derived from the Qur'an. The closing stanza draws upon the thirteenth-century Gulistan [rose garden] of the great Persian poet Sa'di.)

Speaking of the compass points:  the opening lines from the opening poem, "Hegira," seem most timely today, when the Mubarak government fell, following the collapse of the Tunisian regime and the overwhelming South Sudan vote for independence:

Nord und West und Süd zersplittern,
Throne bersten, Reiche zittern,

North and West and South are crumbling,
Kingdoms tremble, thrones are tumbling;

It sometimes pays to listen to a poet.

Resources:

• German text
• English text