Japanese American Day of Remembrance, 2016 (and unintended consequences)

Serendipity is an interesting thing. As noted in last night's post, a Minneapolis paper just ran an editorial about plans to restore historic early nineteenth-century Fort Snelling. Stressing the opportunity that the site provided to teach residents about later history with relevance to the present, the article observed inter alia: "For example, the fort’s use as an intelligence training center for Japanese-American troops during World War II led to the state’s first sizable Japanese-American settlement." The situation was similar in neighboring Wisconsin where, for example, the capital city of Madison had only one Japanese-American family until the war. And here's another connection: after we moved from the Twin Cities area to Madison, I went to school with the daughter of one of the soldiers who had received his intelligence training at Fort Snelling.

Today is the anniversary of notorious Executive Order 9066 of 1942, which mandated the internment of not only Japanese enemy aliens but also Japanese-American citizens. Although, on what has become Japanese American Day of Remembrance, we rightly stress the injustice of that act, the Minneapolis news story reminds us that the wartime experience of the Japanese American population proved in the long run to be transformative in more ways than one.

This 1942 book epitomized the atmosphere that led to the internment order.

* * *

Past stories on the Interment and Japanese American Day of Remembrance.

Save the Fort: a textbook illustration of how historic preservation can link past and present

It was a distinctive sight: early nineteenth-century fortifications overlooking the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers on what was once the frontier. The greatest and most iconic remnant was the great Round Tower, said to be the oldest surviving building in Minnesota. It was moreover a sight I saw every week as a child, when my parents drove from suburban Bloomington to Saint Paul.

The Tower was so iconic in part because it was one of the few well-preserved parts of the original Fort. Added to and used continuously through World War II, the site deteriorated thereafter. Although designated a National Landmark, the Upper Post was, as I noted some years ago, placed on the list of "most endangered" historic sites in 2006.

There is a new call to restore and rehabilitate the Fort in time for its bicentennial in 2020, and the reasons are powerful. The editors of Minneapolis Star Tribune this week made a good case for this major effort and expenditure, citing, as I did several years ago, the striking range of historical episodes that the site witnessed, though these associations are unfortunately anything but common knowledge. It is logical for preservationists and public historians to concentrate on early history--the firsts--but if we do so at the expense of all that came afterward, we do both history and the present an injustice:

But representation of what came before and after the fort’s first decade would be added. There’s a rich story to tell: the long Dakota ties to the spot and the tragedy of the 1862 Dakota War; the fur trade of the 17th century; the fort’s significance to U.S. westward expansion; the presence of African-American slaves, including Dred Scott, and the contributions to two world wars. Attention would be paid to the fort’s role in diversifying Minnesota’s population, society CEO Stephen Elliott promises. For example, the fort’s use as an intelligence training center for Japanese-American troops during World War II led to the state’s first sizable Japanese-American settlement.

Telling more of Fort Snelling’s story should allow more people to see themselves in Minnesota’s past. That in turn should deepen their connection to this state and its future. The Legislature must act this year to make that vision a reality in time for the fort’s 2020 bicentennial. They shouldn’t let that chance slip away

This is exactly what historic preservation should be about.

What first prompted me to write about the Fort back in 2010 and 2011 was another childhood memory--or rather, a romantic legend. I had learned that Count Zeppelin made his first balloon ascent from Fort Snelling's Round Tower while serving as an observer with the Union troops during the Civil War. According to that scenario, he was hooked on aeronautics and the rest, as they say, is history. Or was it? Read on.

h.t. National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The Best Columbus Bio You Never Read (and it's German)

Every year, as Columbus Day rolls around, it seems that the critique of the explorer and reluctance to celebrate his holiday grow. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, though if carried to an extreme, it can lead to a rather impoverished understanding of what is in fact a very complex history. It's a complex historiography, too: appraisals of Columbus's actions and importance have fluctuated. His elevation to true heroic status is a relatively recent development. What is more, even in that phase, not all biographies were hagiographies.

A mid-century modern German Columbus bio

It therefore seems a good moment to recall one of the more intriguing books on Columbus, today largely forgotten. In 1929, German novelist and journalist Jakob Wassermann (1873-1934) published his Christopher Columbus: the Don Quixote of the Seas [thus, the English translation; the German original uses: Ocean], the result of more than two decades of attempting to penetrate the mind and character of the explorer.

In developing his portrait, Wassermann assiduously studied all the contemporaneous published sources. The opening of the book is a subtle meditation on the challenge of taking the historical past on its own terms. As he explains, our natural instinct is to impute to the character all the traits and accomplishments that become visible only in retrospect, when he has achieved fame--whereas he can in fact only be understood through the constraints of his own time and existence. Fame, Wassermann said, is "a process of crystallization," in which much "dross" is necessarily removed. He also likened judgments on historical persons and epochs to badly worn old coins, whose value we only rarely pause to investigate.

The age is revealed to the reader in all its splendor and horror

In a review of multiple authors, under the heading, "Imaginative Biography from Germany," the New York Times wrote:

Jakob Wassermann frequently stresses the fact that we of today are quite unable to conceive how great the Genoan's imagination must have been, how enormous the courage which enabled this man and his companions to venture out into dreadfully mysterious wastes of the sea with a few ships and inadequate instruments. Whether his character study of that extraordinary man, a study based on modern psychological methods, is even approximately accurate, Wassermann modestly points out, it is impossible to determine. But from the description given by this expert prober of souls the reader gains a clear picture of Columbus. He must have borne a close relation to Don Quixote -- a magnificently imaginative dreamer and yet narrow-minded, stubborn and quarrelsome, absolutely unshakeable in his pursuit of his life's aim, but often losing in a moment because of the disagreeable traits of his character, everything he had gained. Thus Jakob Wassermann describes him, not as an unsullied hero and a martyr to his great idea, but as a human being with all the failings of humankind, with all the narrowness and lack of understanding of his age; and this, coupled with his immortal deeds, brings him closer to us. The age is revealed to the reader in all its splendor and horror, in its mad desire for gold, in its childlike piety and the terrible but also childish cruelty which enabled its people to massacre a nation as a boy pulls off the legs of a frog.

Not so dumb, then, after all.

The book does not seem to be in print or available online in the 1930 English translation, so you'll have to inquire at a good library. If you read German, it's not only in print, but also available online via Spiegel. Check it out.



Resources


Past posts on Columbus Day:

• Removing Columbus from the Calendar (2014)
• My Two Cents' Worth for Columbus Day. A Postage Stamp as Metaphor (2012)

‘This is a good Jap–a dead one" - "The armed forces disapprove strongly of this sort of thing."

Lest one conclude, from recent posts, that the emphasis here should be exclusively on Japanese atrocities and fanaticism: on the contrary. The intensity of the animosities and combat also elicited behaviors from US forces that we nowadays find hard to contemplate.

For example, the previous post dealt with the rescue of civilians--including a child--from mass suicide attempts that the Japanese military either encouraged or compelled. But as combat dragged on and intensified, US forces became less cautious in the application of force. The Wikipedia entry for the battle of Okinawa--a site from which a great many Americans will presumably get their information--cites this recollection by a soldier:

There was some return fire from a few of the houses, but the others were probably occupied by civilians – and we didn't care. It was a terrible thing not to distinguish between the enemy and women and children. Americans always had great compassion, especially for children. Now we fired indiscriminately.

Earlier this year, I noted here a piece posted on the tumblr about one of the most notorious images of US World War II photojournalism. Because we are now marking the anniversary of the atomic bomb and the end of the Pacific War, I'll reproduce it here:

The Bloodiest Battlefield Mementos: Even the “Good War” Had Its Bad Side

Although all war is terrible and we may recoil at the scenes that we see on our televisions and computer screens, the shock is the result of both greater moral sensitivity and continual and less inhibited flow of information (including that from nongovernmental and nonprofessional sources). As I noted in the previous post, we therefore find it all the more difficult to imagine the wars of the past, which were often both more bloody and less explicitly reported.

Even during World War II–the so-called “Good War”–US troops at times engaged in behavior that would by our standards (or even those of that day) be considered barbaric.

Occasionally, the façade cracked. Consider, for example, the May 22, 1944 issue of Life Magazine (the leading US photojournalism periodical). The typical American man or woman settling in for a spell of leisure reading found on its cover a heartwarming tale of professional success and domesticity.

 

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As the title story on page 65 explained, photogenic young women were finding no contradiction–and indeed, many rewards–in combining motherhood with modeling. (This was apparently the 1940s privileged version of “having it all.”).

 

 [enlarge]

If that reader passed too quickly over page 35, he or she might have been forgiven for assuming it was part of the title story. It, too, featured a photograph of a similarly attractive young woman. It’s just that, rather than holding her baby, she happens to be holding a pen while contemplating a human skull. The homemaker as Hamlet–but evidently without the self-scrutiny.

 

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The caption of this “Picture of the Week” read:

When he said goodby two years ago to Natalie Nickerson, 20, a war worker of Phoenix, Ariz., a big handsome Navy lieutenant promised her a Jap. Last week Natalie received a human skull, autographed by her lieutenant and 13 friends. and inscribed: ‘This is a good Jap–a dead one picked up on the New Guinea beach.’ Natalie, surprised at the gift, named it Tojo. The armed forces disapprove strongly of this sort of thing.

As John Dower wrote in his War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1987), “Life treated it as a human-interest story, while Japanese propagandists gave it wide publicity as a revelation of the American national character.” (65) It was the more ironic given that American propagandists made much of the sixteenth-century Japanese Hideyoshi’s “ear mound” of 40,000 pickled noses and ears in the wake of war with Korea. (20, 28, 65) As Dower says, Japanese atrocities accounted for some of the behavior of the US forces, though not all. In his words:

     On the Allied side, some forms of battlefield degeneracy were in fact fairly well publicized while the war was going on. This was especially true of the practice of collecting grisly battlefield trophies from the Japanese dead or near dead, in the form of gold teeth, ears, bones, scalps, and skulls… . [64]
  Despite the attention given in Allied propaganda to Hideyoshi’s three-and-a-half-century-old ear mound, in the current war in Asia it was Allied combatants who collected ears. Like collecting gold teeth, this practice was no secret. “The other night,” read an account in the Marine monthly Leatherneck in 1943, “Stanley emptied his pockets of 'souvenirs’–eleven ears from dead Japs. It was not as disgusting, as it would be from a civilian point of view. None of us could get emotional over it.” Even as battle-hardened veterans were assuming that civilians would be shocked by such acts, however, the press in the United States contained evidence to the contrary. In April 1943, the Baltimore Sun ran a story about a local mother who had petitioned authorities to permit her son to mail her an ear she had cut off a Japanese soldier in the South Pacific. She wished to nail it to her front door for all to see. On the very same day, the Detroit Free Press deemed newsworthy the story of an underage youth who had enlisted and 'bribed’ his chaplain not to disclose his age by promising him the third pair of ears he collected. [65]

Dower goes on to say that “Scalps, bones, and skulls were somewhat rarer trophies, but the latter two achieved special notoriety in both the United States and Japan” in two cases: first, when a soldier sent FDR a letter opener made from Japanese bones (the President rejected the gift), and the second, the aforementioned picture in Life. As Dower further explains:

     Most combatants did not engage in such souvenir hunting, and Leatherneck itself published a cartoon which expressed contempt and pity for all scavengers of the dead. At the same time, most fighting men had personal knowledge of such practices and accepted them as inevitable under the circumstances. It is virtually inconceivable, however, that teeth, ears, and skulls could have been collected from German or Italian war dead and publicized in the Anglo-American countries without provoking an uproar; and in this we have yet another inkling of the racial dimensions of the war. [66]

War is still hell, but at least this is a circle that we visit less frequently.

Recalling the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

In arguing in favor of the nuclear deal with Iran, President Obama cited President Kennedy and moreover copied his predecessor by choosing to make his principal statement on the agreement at American University where, in June 1963, Kennedy had delivered a major address on foreign policy and nuclear arms control.  In that address, Kennedy announced the resumption of negotiations over arms control.

In the tense era of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and new Berlin crisis, both the US and USSR had resumed nuclear testing. The narrow avoidance of war during the Cuban Missile Crisis prompted them to reconsider.

The result was the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which, as  summarized by the Kennedy Presidential Library:

    prohibited nuclear weapons tests or other nuclear explosions under water, in the atmosphere, or in outer space
    allowed underground nuclear tests as long as no radioactive debris falls outside the boundaries of the nation conducting the test
    pledged signatories to work towards complete disarmament, an end to the armaments race, and an end to the contamination of the environment by radioactive substances.

The US, UK, and USSR (the only nuclear powers at the time, aside from France, which continued to test) signed the Treaty on August 5, 1963, a day before the anniversary of the Hiroshima attack. The Senate  ratified the treaty on September 23, and President Kennedy signed it on October 7.

On October 23, 1964, the United Nations released this stamp marking the occasion (one  of five commemoratives that year). Designed by Ole Hamann of Denmark, it was issued in a run of 2,600,000 copies.

If one pauses to consider even just the date of the treaty--1963--it was an impressive achievement: only 18 years after the first use of nuclear weapons against Japan, 14 years after the first Soviet nuclear test, and 10 years after the Soviets tested the first deployable hydrogen bomb.

Ironically, though, on October 16, 1964, exactly a week before the stamp was issued, the People's Republic of China tested its first nuclear weapon.

Surprised that people think the Confederate flag is not a symbol of racism? Listen to what they think about slavery.

Southerners can continue to honor their ancestors, but doing so does not necessitate embracing the vile cause for which they fought — just as Germans can honor their ancestors without embracing Nazism and Japanese without embracing militarism.

--Max Boot, Commentary

many Americans don't seem to think slavery was much of a problem in the first place

In the wake of the horrendous massacre at the Charleston African American church by the racist fanatic Dylan Roof, there has been a startling, salutary, and long overdue willingness to challenge the perversely enduring presence of the so-called "Confederate flag" (actually a version of the battle flag) as ensign and emblem. Where else but in the US today--or until today--would the public display of a symbol of treason be not only tolerated but celebrated? And that's not even taking the question of racism and slavery into account.

Some have expressed surprise that otherwise well-meaning people could insist that the flag is simply a symbol of regional and historical pride, which has nothing to do with slavery and should not be seen as an offense and a provocation. That becomes much less surprising when one realizes that a good many Americans don't seem to think slavery was all that much of a problem in the first place.

Yesterday, the South Carolina Senate voted to remove the offending "Confederate flag" from the grounds of the Statehouse, although subsequent necessary approval from the House was far from certain, and even if successful, the measure might just result in replacement of the battle flag by another Confederate flag. Meanwhile, in Texas, schools are preparing to use textbooks "based," in the words of the Washington Post, "on state academic standards that barely address racial segregation" and "also do not mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws." A Republican Board of Education member was quoted as having called slavery a "side issue to the Civil War.”


"earnest but deep misunderstandings about the nature of American slavery"

I tend to use Twitter more for professional than personal purposes, to keep up with news from and network with colleagues in various historical fields, including historic preservation and history museums. One of the accounts that I follow is @AfAmHistFail. The author, Margaret Biser, who for six years gave tours of a historic southern plantation on which the captive Africans outnumbered the whites by three to one, was dumbfounded when visitors "reacted with hostility to hearing a presentation that focused more on the slaves than on the owner." She began to tweet some of their choicest remarks, which range from the offensive and mindboggling to those reflecting "earnest but deep misunderstandings about the nature of American slavery."

Last month, she offered a summary of what she had heard:

1. People think slaveholders "took care" of their slaves out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than out of economic interest
2. People know that field slavery was bad but think household slavery was pretty all right, if not an outright sweet deal
3. People think slavery and poverty are interchangeable
4. People don't understand how prejudice influenced slaveholders' actions beyond mere economic interest
5. People think "loyalty" is a fair term to apply to people held in bondage

As she notes, in many cases, it is probably not so much about an intentional desire to defend slavery as such, and rather, more about the need to defend one's individual or collective national ancestors. (We all saw how Ben Affleck forced PBS to censor the presentation of his ancestry on "Finding Your Roots" because he discovered he had slave-owning forebears--even though no one would seek to visit their sins upon the quintessentially liberal actor.)


How do public historians teach the population about the legacy of slavery and the contributions of African Americans to our collective heritage?

Two African American public historians (among others) are doing brilliant work to teach about the history of slavery and foster understanding by emphasizing a common but not unproblematic American heritage.

Historic preservationist Joseph McGill (@slavedwelling) hit upon the simple but radically original idea of traveling the country to visit every former slave dwelling and, by spending the night in them, calling attention to this lost history and these lost-from-memory historic structures.

The immediate purpose of his Slave Dwelling Project "is to become a clearinghouse for the identification of resources to document and preserve these slave dwellings," but there is also a larger mission:

Now that I have the attention of the public by sleeping in extant slave dwellings, it is time to wake up and deliver the message that the people who lived in these structures were not a footnote in American history.

His work is among the most exciting and innovative efforts of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It has provoked considerable conversation and now inspired two national conferences. Clearly, it no longer suffices simply to mark sites of memory with a sign. We need new ways to engage the public, so that it can understand the place of history as not only the past and memory but also an active contributor to the world that we have inherited.


In a related realm, Michael Twitty (@koshersoul) travels the country to explain our fascinating and tangled foodways. His afroculinaria.com presents his work as "a food writer, independent scholar, culinary historian , and historical interpreter personally charged with preparing, preserving and promoting African American foodways and its parent traditions in Africa and her Diaspora and its legacy in the food culture of the American South." His work is multifaceted, focused on three fronts:

Antebellum Chef emphasizes "the vast number of unknown Black cooks across the Americas that were essential in the creation of the creole cuisines of Atlantic world" and their contribtion to the overall "Southern food heritage. A corollary is the need for “culinary justice” in contemporary African American communities suffering from poor health, food deserts, and other symptoms of inequality.

Kosher Soul explains: "Identity cooking isn’t about fusion; rather its how we construct complex identities and then express them through how we eat.  Very few people in the modern West eat one cuisine or live within one culinary construct."

Finally, The Cooking Gene seeks "to document the connection between food history and family history from Africa to America, from slavery to freedom" as Michael "visits sites of cultural memory, does presentations on his journey, and visits places critical to his family history while conducting genealogical and genetic research to discover his roots and food heritage." It is not only an attempt to recover the Black heritage, but also "a proving ground for racial reconciliation and healing and dialogue" which thus "seeks to connect the whole of the Southern food family."

The nation's history, good and bad, black and white, is our collective history. The sooner we recognize that, the better off we will all be. As the foregoing examples show, historic preservation and public history have a crucial role to play here--and the individual with a vision can make difference.

April 13, 1943: Nazis Announce Discovery of Mass Grave of Murdered Poles at Katyń

In April-May 1940, the security services of Stalin’s Soviet Union, which had concluded a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939 and then occupied the eastern part of Poland after the Germans invaded from the west in September, murdered some 22,000 Poles--soldiers, intelligentsia, and other suspect classes--at Katyń forest near Smolensk and other locations.

On April 13, 1943, the Nazis, acting on rumors from locals, announced the discovery of one mass grave at Katyń forest near Smolensk. The Soviets emphatically denied the charges. The incident led to a break in relations between the London Polish Government-in-Exile and the Soviet regime.

The incident long remained controversial, as the Soviets insisted that these were the victims of German occupiers. In fact, I recall my father saying that, while he was serving with the US occupation forces in Germany (OMGUS), he found Germans testifying to "terrible crimes" they had committed in that area, which no one was willing to address.

The forensic evidence seemed contradictory, as the victims were killed with German bullets but tied with Russian ropes, but eventually, the weight of the evidence clearly tipped the scales in favor of a Soviet crime. It was only half a century later, in the Gorbachev reform era, that the Russian government acknowledged responsibility for the crime


This illustrated magazine, produced by the Nazi regime, conveyed the news to the occupied Polish population in May, 1943. The cover is a harmless depiction of the lobster harvest in Martinique (which was then under the control of the Vichy French regime).

Without warning, the next page reveals the horror of the Katyń massacre--conveyed through a Nazi propaganda lens.

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?

Fall of the Wall Disclaimer

Today of course marks the 25th anniversary of the opening/fall of the Berlin Wall.

It was a striking event for those of us who watched the scenes play out across our television screens, the more so for those of us with personal or professional connections to Germany and German history.

However, because every major news organization will be covering the anniversary in full--indeed, ad nauseam, I've decided to limit my own posting here and just follow the conversation. Be prepared: most of the commentary will not be from the most sophisticated perspective (expect lots of triumphalism, sweeping generalization, and banalities that pass for profundity, but amidst all the empty chatter, there will be a few morsels of insight.

I will post a few smaller items, some serious, others--not so much.

Meanwhile, keep an eye on the tumblr for images associated with the event (#fall of the wall; #Mauerfall)


[updated image]

A Tip for You: My Penis Piece

Those of you who were focused on the Olympics or the presidential campaign over the summer may be excused for having missed the other dramatic contest of the season: the great circumcision controversy.

A German regional court, considering a case involving a Muslim family, ruled that circumcision, as a form of grievous "bodily injury," violated the physical "integrity" of the child, and was thus a punishable offense. A legal expert expressed the hope that the verdict might now lead Islam and Judaism to reform their atavistic rituals. As attempts to extend the ruling throughout Germany and even other nations increased, Muslims and Jews came together to protest what they saw as an assault on their fundamental religious liberties and identities. (And they did so peacefully: no buildings were burned, no death threats issued.)


You want me to cut off my what?

Now, circumcision is indeed a peculiar custom, certainly worth considering from the detached standpoint of modern science and human rights. My former colleague, Len Glick, has written a provocative book detailing the history of the practice and arguing for its abolition (1, 2, 3).

Still, for better or worse, the reality is that our society accords non-rational religious beliefs and practices a deference that it would never extend even to less peculiar or problematic ones in the secular realm. Witness the daily and cretinous assaults on established scientific truths by powerful politicians. On a purely pragmatic level, religious beliefs are the subject of great sensitivity on the part of adherents, and the conflicts that arise from "offenses" against them at times threaten the social peace. (Just look at the reaction by outraged believers to the vulgar anti-Muhammad film, and the rush of western religious and political leaders to condemn it as well as the resultant violence.) Above and beyond that, the objective right to free debate of ideas may be tempered by the awareness of historical prejudice and risk of misappropriation of legitimate criticism by contemporary bigots (1, 2).

Even if some reactions to the circumcision verdict were intemperate, you therefore just knew it could not be a good thing when Muslims and Jews charged that it was becoming impossible for them to live in Germany and the Chancellor had to declare, "I do not want Germany to be the only country in the world in which Jews cannot practise their rites." Talk about a public-relations disaster.

Circumcision of Christ (1466)

[source: Wikimedia Commons]

I followed the unfolding controversy for several months. Finally, when a Norwegian children's ombudsman helpfully suggested that Muslims and Jews just devise a new nonsurgical ritual (damn! now why didn't Moses and Muhammad think of that?), I decided to share a few thoughts on the topic in my Times of Israel column: "The most unkindest cut of all? A modest proposal for the circumcision crisis."

Every possible angle of the question had already been thoroughly debated, so, rather than going again into the details of law and human rights, or the medical arguments for or against the practice (though new studies tip the balance in favor), I thought I would merely contemplate the wisdom of the secular authorities' precipitous and quixotic attempt to correct the centuries-old doctrines of religious communities, especially communities that are or have been the object of discrimination.

Basically, I just wanted to ask what would happen if we pursued the reasoning of the zealous secular reformers to its ultimate conclusion (maybe even ad absurdum) and applied it across the board.


Not Too Swift

Judging by the talkbacks and other responses, most people understood the piece in the spirit in which it was intended and found it reasonably amusing. The notable exception was one British dullard who accused me of engaging in an illogical argument, and above all, of attacking Christianity.

As anyone who knows me can tell you, this is ludicrous. I spend a good deal of time in the classroom attempting to teach students to take religion—and Christianity, in particular—seriously as intellectual traditions and forces in the history of world civilization rather than condemning them out of hand according to modern standards of intellectual sophistication and political correctness.

In any case, this otherwise amiable fellow must be "as thick as a whale omelette" not to have seen that the piece was intended humorously and satirically. The words, "a modest proposal," should have been a dead giveaway to the culturally literate. (I was freshly returned from a conference in Dublin, where I had made a pilgrimage to Jonathan Swift's cathedral and grave, so the phrase just came to naturally to mind.)

As for logic, that was exactly my point, and one that would presumably have been sympathetic to my critic: seen from the outside, many religious doctrines and practices seem (or can be made to appear) ridiculous or harmful. Taking seriously the charge that they are not compatible with our modern values, where would that lead? Those who applauded the outcome in the case of circumcision might not be so sanguine in others.

Still, could it be that the fault of these zealous reformers lay not in having gone too far, and rather, in not having gone far enough?

Anyway, you can see for yourself where I ended up.


Updates

Of course, the story just keeps growing.

• Even before the appearance of the latest reports supporting claims for the hygienic advantages of circumcision—especially in the fight against AIDS in the Third World: it is said to cut the risk by fully 70%—fringe opponents of the practice vented their ire on a book about HIV prevention that essentially blamed European imperialism for the problem (the discussion of circumcision accounted for only 10% of the content) and "launched a smear campaign to discredit the book and its authors by spreading misinformation on Amazon." Namely, in a concerted effort, they posted ultra-negative reviews and then rated one another's reviews as "helpful" in order to drive down the book's ratings.

Joya Banerjee, "Amazon Warfare: How an anti-circumcision fringe group waged an ideological attack against AIDS scholarship." Slate, 24 Sept. 2012.  (hat tip: Evgeny Morozov)

• And, as chance would have it, we appear to be ahead of the game. Writing on the eve of the first great matchup of the Presidential election, journalist and pop culture critic Virginia Heffernan's provocative and witty piece declares: "Obama and Romney should get a circumcision question at he debate. Really." (Yahoo! News, 2 Oct. 2012). Citing the aforementioned pieces on the foreskin controversy, she says,

For starters, neither candidate will mention it—ever. As long as he’s in politics. As long as he lives.

Circumcision is repressed as a subject because, at this very moment, it’s that hot to the touch.

and

What a tangled psychosexual web we weave. As with abortion, transvaginal this and that, or the dozen issues surrounding sexual orientation, what seems natural to one side horrifies the other. Religion and ethnicity come into play, and ancient rivalries, and lizard-brain subjects involving physicality and sex and death and what disgusts you and what makes you feel free

She moreover legitimately asks whether it is a right- or left-wing issue, a feminist or religious or human-rights issue, an ethnic or anti-ethnic issue, and so forth (even manages to work in Ron Paul and crypto-Nazi hostility to the pricks of the Federal Reserve).

Curiously, she has nothing to say about the European controversy that is the subject of this post. (I'll give her a pass on that one. We all have our areas of particular interest.) Still, she has a rather narrow view of what should be an expansive topic. It is therefore perhaps more curious that she frames the question as: "is circumcision a religious and ethnic issue, one that divides Jews and Americans from the rest of the world . . . ?"

Kudos and all that, but I guess an English literature degree gets you only so far. It is, as they say, a teachable moment, and not only regarding quantitative skills. There are approximately 14-15 million Jews in the world, and nearly 312 million Americans (though their circumcision rate has dropped considerably in recent years.) There are in addition, however, some 2.1 billion Muslims, whose religion also mandates circumcision.

A little multiculturalism, anyone? 

9-11 and Amherst: Why Do They Hate Us? (part 1)

Amherst, September 10

Let's just get a couple of misconceptions out of the way.  Contrary to what has been reported in the press and widely believed (mainly, though not exclusively outside the borders of our quaint hamlet):

1) Amherst does not refuse to fly the American flag. It flies every day from the pole on the Common in front of our Town Hall, as well as from police and fire stations. Here's a picture from this afternoon.

Of late, we have also restored the small holder for the flags of the United States and the Commonwealth on the face of the Town Hall's west stair tower.

2) Amherst also marks the anniversary of the 9-11 jihadi terrorist attacks every year:

a) by lowering all flags on major public buildings to half-staff. Here's a photo of the Police Station from last year.

b) with a ceremony at the central Fire Station.

Last year, on the tenth anniversary, there was a larger official commemoration, involving police and firefighters as well as Town officials, on the Common.

Tomorrow, we solemnly mark the occasion at the Fire Station, as usual.

Those are the facts, and no one here denies them.

So why all the lies and misconceptions?

Although the local press for some reason basically ignored the 9-11 ceremony last year, every debate and deliberation about just how to mark the anniversary does seem to get covered. These are then sometimes picked up and distorted by the outside media. . . and thereby hangs a tale. For 11 years now, the question of 9-11 and flags has been the ugly scab that everyone likes to pick at.

The ugly scab that is never allowed to heal

Those who follow Amherst politics are all too familiar with the sequence of events, but to recap in brief:

Over a decade ago, the veterans' agent purchased a set of commemorative flags and proposed to fly them from downtown utility poles at the end of the summer, after the last of the holidays normally marked in this manner. Because, under our Town Government Act, the Select Board has control over the public ways (streets, in common parlance), the issue came before that august body one fine September evening.

Public comment turned not just on the question at hand, but also on attitudes toward "the flag" in general. Some residents spoke favorably of the flag. Some made some rather unfortunate remarks about their view of America and what the flag stood for. The Select Board, as was its right, voted against the additional display of flags. What was most unfortunate was that all this just happened to occur on the evening of September 10, 2001. In the coming days, the media were filled with stories not just about the terrorist attacks, but also about Amherst's alleged refusal to fly the flag, as such—this, at a time when flags became ubiquitous symbols of community and social solidarity.

In response to the catastrophe, residents put up the flags themselves. In fact, in October, the Select Board unanimously voted to leave the flags up till Veterans' Day and then return to the existing policy. Thereafter, the display became the subject of debate. (summary of flag policy, 2001-3) Fifth-generation Amherst native (as he describes himself) and blogger Larry Kelley has made commemoration of 9-11—in particular, through the flying of these flags—his cause célèbre. In 2007, Town Meeting voted down, by a margin of more than 2:1, his article proposing that the Town eternally mark the anniversary in this manner. In 2008, the Select Board approved a compromise policy of flying the flags only every third year, reflecting the split Town Meeting vote. Undaunted, Mr. Kelley has kept his promise to bring the issue up year after year.

Fast-forward to 2010 and the present Select Board, none of whose members, it should be stressed, was in office at the time of the 2001 controversy. Some of us were satisfied with the existing policy as a compromise reflecting the town's divided political opinion, some members found it illogical, and some found the raising of additional flags an inappropriate symbol of mourning. In the end, the only motion seconded and passed was one mandating the flying of the additional flags only on "milestone" anniversaries, that is, every five years. When Mr. Kelley again asked us to take up the issue last month, we held a sustained discussion, in the course of which it became clear that there was not enough support for a revision. No motion was made, so the existing policy remained in place.

Ironically, this year's calm and brief conversation, which simply allowed the previous policy to stand and did not even result in a debate or a vote, got much more attention than the policy under discussion when it was voted in.

It's hard to say exactly why this non-event became such big news, but it doesn't take much to start an avalanche of this sort once the snowball is rolling.

Full press court

Some people legitimately disagreed with the policy (as is their right), while others clearly misread the articles or read too much into what they saw, simply projecting all of their poison and prejudices onto Amherst, and its residents, and above all, its government (thanks; you have a nice day, too). Frankly, poor judgment and wording on the part of the press played a role in the debacle.

For example, local reporter Scott Merzbach's typically careful and balanced story in the Hampshire Gazette began with the accurate statement, "The anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will be marked in Amherst with a solemn ceremony at the central fire station and the lowering of town flags," before turning to the latest deliberation on the additional flags. The equally careful Diane Lederman of the Springfield Republican offered a similarly nuanced piece.
But a casual reader who looked only at the titles of those pieces (usually the creation of the paper or editor, not the reporter)—"Amherst select board rejects September 11 flag display" and "Amherst officials offer perspectives on decision not to fly American flags on 9/11"—might easily leap to the wrong conclusion. And leap mightily many did.

Conor Berry's report in the Springfield Republican gave them a veritable springboard for just such a leap of logic. Taking the "inverted pyramid" model of journalism to its extreme conclusion, it led with the current deliberations (only fair), but left the explanation that Amherst did indeed commemorate 9-11 until the very last sentence. The in principle accurate but in practice entirely misleading headline was like a red flag to a bull (or a right-winger): "Amherst says 'No' to annual downtown flag display to commemorate 9/11 terrorist attacks on America."

It was downhill from there. A turning point was probably Mr. Kelley's interview on Fox News. Although he calmly presented his passionately held views, the interview revived the subject of the rather rancid comments about the American flag from 2001, which have nothing to with the current controversy or the current Select Board, none of whom held office at that time and none of whom holds those views. And the network, which boasts of its "fair and balanced" coverage, fanned the flames of popular anger with the (as Mr. Kelley, to his credit, acknowledged) misleading title, "Town won't fly American flags on 9/11," and equally manipulative subtitle, "Amherst: flags fly only 6 days of the year."




That Fox segment itself in turn became the subject of news coverage, just further feeding the feeding frenzy.

Further distortions followed, including a hopelessly addled piece of what passes for reporting by Anaridis Rodriguez of WWLP-TV. Although she proudly describes herself as a practitioner of "multi-platform journalism," she only managed, in the space of a very few lines, to make multiple errors, for example, claiming that Town Meeting rather than Select Board had crafted the current flag policy, and above all, quoting Mr. Kelley as impugning the patriotism of the Town Manager and Select Board (which he never did). The story has since been taken down and replaced with a cleaned-up version (though it still contains bizarrely irrelevant emphases in its coverage of the 2010 debate). In both cases, again, an inflammatory headline did neither the Town nor the truth a service: "Amherst won't fly flags this 9/11."

So, let's recap.  Look at a sample of those headings:

• "Amherst select board rejects September 11 flag display"
• "Amherst says 'No' to annual downtown flag display to commemorate 9/11 terrorist attacks on America"
• "Amherst officials offer perspectives on decision not to fly American flags on 9/11"
• "Town won't fly American flags on 9/11"
• "Amherst: flags fly only 6 days of the year"
• "Amherst won't fly flags this 9/11"

Is it any wonder that people hate us? that so much of the commentary was hostile, even vicious?

To be sure, Select Board Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe issued a thorough explanation of the Town policy and moreover responded personally to every complaint or query that we received.

"Never mind!"

Surprisingly, perhaps, some of the outraged epistolarians, upon learning the truth, suddenly became more contrite versions of Gilda Radner's famed "Saturday Night Live" character Emily Litella, who would go off on a total rant based upon a complete misunderstanding, and upon being corrected, simply said: "Never mind." Others continued to disagree with the current policy (as is their right), but admitted that they now understood it better and had been hoodwinked by bad reporting or succumbed to sloppy reading.

For example:

Thank you for your kind attention to my “epistle” of the other day. I want to apologize to you and the Select Board, I very obviously “jumped the gun” on reading a report from a “rabble rouser” . Sadly, there are lots of so-called “journalists” who are taking advantage of our present tumultuous time, in order to sway the public’s opinion (and sell newspapers)

and

OMG!!! Stephanie I am so sorry I wrote that letter to you. Word was that you were not flying the American flag. After some research of which I should have done in the first place I now find that not to be the case. 

Yep, same instructions I give to my students: do the careful research and reading in the first place—then tell me your opinion.

Clearly, the town remains divided over the issue of the—how many: 25? 26? 28? 29?—commemorative flags (the press can't even agree on the number). Yet I think almost all of us would agree with Larry Kelley's recent statement:

Now this flying-the-25-commemorative-flags-on-9/11-once-every-five-years story has taken on a life of its own.  And the real loser is the town.

Hard to argue with that.

March 7: A Date That Will Live in Irony

[revisions underway; back up soon]

On Martin Luther King, Monuments, & Drum Majors (and: Heinrich Heine)

I wasn’t able to attend the town’s annual scholarship breakfast in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Saturday, but I was thinking about him a lot this weekend, as I always do on this occasion.

Fate has not been kind to Martin Luther King’s birthday. First, the creation of a national holiday on that date met with persistent and perverse resistance from a wide variety of reactionaries (some of whom now try to swim in the mainstream). But with most of those battles far in the past, who would have thought that his monument in Washington (once it was finally authorized) would prove controversial? And that this controversy would come to a head on the eve of the next celebration of that holiday?

Fate may have been even less kind to the monument than the birthday. At least the latter reflected the ideological struggle over the ideas at the heart of the man and his legacy. The problems surrounding the monument are the result of pure dumb luck, or, as the case may be, just a whole lot of dumb.

First, as a result of the summer earthquake, the dedication was postponed from August until October. And, as soon as the monument was revealed to the public, criticism poured in. For me, the first problem was aesthetic: It was not that the image of Rev. King emerging from the rock was too gray, stern or forbidding, as some critics said. (That’s just philistinism.) Rather: the whole thing just seemed too cautious and tame. First, it just isn’t very well done. Second, and more important: Is there really a point to a conventional, representational portrait sculpture in an age in which the most powerful (and eventually popular) monuments: the Vietnam Memorial, the new 9-11 memorial site, and the Berlin Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe draw upon a more modern language of abstraction? The King monument, its very real appeals notwithstanding, could fit perfectly well in a neo-Stalinist sculpture garden or political cemetery.  (Philosopher Cornel West went even further, though in a very different direction, declaring that King would have wanted a “revolution,” not a monument.)

To be fair, however, the monument does make more sense if one understands and sees it in context. Although still photos tend to depict only the controversial portrait sculpture itself, it is in fact part of a much larger complex, truly “monumental” in proportion and with a logic and even narrative or movement of its own.

 As the official website describes it:

At the entry portal, two stones are parted and a single stone wedge is pushed forward toward the horizon; the missing piece of what was once a single boulder. The smooth insides of the portal contrast the rough outer surfaces of the boulder. Beyond this portal, the stone appears to have been thrust into the plaza, wrested from the boulder and pushed forward – it bears signs of a great monolithic struggle.
On the visible side of the stone, the theme of hope is presented, with the text from King's famed 1963 speech cut sharply into the stone: "Out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." On the other side are inscribed these words: "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness”, a statement suggested by Dr. King himself when describing how he would like to be remembered.

The boulder is the Mountain of Despair, through which every visitor will enter, moving through the struggle as Dr. King did during his life, and then be released into the open freedom of the plaza. The solitary stone is the Stone of Hope, from which Dr. King’s image emerges, gazing over the Tidal Basin toward the horizon, seeing a future society of justice and equality for which he encouraged all citizens to strive

It turns out that the greatest controversy focuses on that “drum major” quotation. I should clarify: there are in fact many quotations in the memorial. In order to reach the portal, visitors pass along a whole wall of quotations (“Inscription Wall”), derived from Rev. King’s entire career: from the Montgomery bus boycotts of 1955 to the last sermon he delivered in 1968, just days before his death. As the designers further explain: (1) the quotations are not in chronological order, so that readers may begin wherever they choose, rather than being forced to proceed in linear fashion. (2) anticipating the most obvious question: they omit the “I have a dream” speech because it is well known (to the point of trivialization), but also because the whole monument—being placed on the mall where that speech was delivered—in a sense commemorates it and its message.

The “drum major” quotation is perhaps not an ideal choice, but the real problem is that this is not even a statement that Rev. King actually made in so many words.

The explanation is about the lamest thing one can imagine. As outraged critics soon figured out, “suggested” is a very vague and subjective term and takes a hell of a lot of liberties with the facts. Poet Maya Angelou did not mince any words: the quotation made him sound like an “arrogant twit.” 

The Washington Post’s Rachel Manteuffel explained the issue first and more clearly than anyone by doing what anyone with a brain should have done. First she applied her critical reasoning to the text itself. To begin with, it made King look stupid and verbally clumsy. Both the subject and the tone stood in jarring contrast to his famous biblically inspired sermons and speeches: “To me, silly hats and King just did not compute.” Worse still, it made him look shallow and self-centered: “akin to memorializing Mahatma Gandhi with the quote, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’” She was puzzled and taken aback.

Second, then, she went to the source. The quote came from a sermon entitled, “The Drum Major Instinct,” in which he criticized the natural but immature and selfish desire--on the part of individuals, groups, and entire nations-- “to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade.” (As in many other cases, the image was not original; he borrowed it from a liberal white minister.) It was early in 1968, but (though he did not know it) late in his life, and he spoke of how he would like to be remembered: as someone who helped others, who fought for justice and against war. So:

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to say.

As Manteuffel put it,

An “if” clause is an extraordinarily bad thing to leave out of a quote. If I had to be a type of cheese, being Swiss is best.

What makes this tragic is that King had the ability to say precisely what he meant, with enormous impact.

The culprit? Not, as she notes, the scholars consulting on the project, who employed the full quotation. She had no answer at the time, and simply called for correction: “I say, let’s undo the mistake. Let’s get the chisels back out.”

The architects at first stonewalled (so to speak), refusing to make changes.

It turned out that the architects and designers had shortened the quotation on their own initiative, simply because the whole text would not easily fit. (This raises a host of issues regarding accuracy, authority, aesthetics, and public history and memory, which I merely mention and would not presume to address here.)

The complaints refused to subside and, predictably, rose again as the holiday approached. On Friday, for example, the Boston Herald demanded: “Carve MLK’s words in stone—accurately.”  Out of their mouth into God’s ear, as the saying goes. Sure enough, early in the evening, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar demanded that the Park Service come up with a fix within thirty days. The lead architect replied that the full text still would not fit, but that a compromise abridgement was possible. (Again, one can only wonder: what in the world were they thinking?)

And so, the embarrassing episode will at last come to a close.

I have to say: First, I thought even the full quotation not a good choice: It is not among King’s greatest remarks (others of which likewise are not absolutely original). Above all, though, unlike many others, it does not stand well on its own and really loses a great deal without the context of the sermon.

In the second place, though, and more positively, I fully understood Rev. King’s use of the drum major image because it reminded me of something from my own field of study and one of my favorite authors, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856).

At first sight, the two men could not appear more dissimilar: the one, a modern Black Protestant minister and civil rights leader from the American south, the other, a nineteenth-century German-Jewish poet and journalist known for speaking frankly—and cynically—about sex, religion, and politics (the three subjects one was famously told to avoid in polite conversation).

And yet there are some surprising connections or parallels.

Both, growing up in eras of discrimination, fought with their pens for the emancipation of their own people, which they moreover saw as inextricably linked with the emancipation of all people and nations. Both were masters of their respective languages and drew naturally and freely upon the imagery of the Bible that underlay the educated vernacular of the times. Both were controversial in their day, rejected by chauvinists and racists, but eventually lionized by the majority of the population, who perhaps valued their achievement but underestimated their radicalism. (Heine has the unusual distinction of having managed to become an icon for both the nineteenth-century liberal German middle class and Marxist East Germany.) In both cases, attempts to memorialize their careers in the public sphere proved controversial: for Rev. King, making his birthday into a national holiday; for Heine, attempts to name spaces as diverse as the Düsseldorf University and a street in Tel-Aviv in his honor.

And the drum motif?

Heine, as a Jew born in the German Rhineland, grew up under the equivalent of segregation, experienced a brief period of emancipation under French Rule during the Napoleonic era, and saw the return of discrimination with the restoration of monarchy: similar to, though of course much milder than, the transition from slavery to Reconstruction and Jim Crow. (Indeed, most Jews in Central Europe received full civil rights only between 1867 and 1871, in other words, at roughly the same time as African-Americans.) One of his minor prose masterpieces (today known mainly to specialists) is Ideas—Book Le Grand. Like other of his early, highly subjective, and unclassifiable works, it ranges freely over a host of topics, from autobiography and food, to romantic love and suicide, and revolution and censorship. The central figure, after whom the work is named, is a French drummer—“who looked a devil and yet had the good heart of an angel”—quartered in the Heine household during the period of Napoleonic rule. The drummer did not create the Revolution, but he embodies it, he is the bearer of its message.

As Heine portrays him, Le Grand is a simple man and knows only a handful of words in German, and yet he speaks through his drum more clearly and eloquently than all the politicians and subsequent generations of professors. For example, he explains the French word for “stupidity” by drumming an old German military march. He explains the complicated concept of “equality” by drumming the revolutionary tune, “Ça ira”: things will go better when we hang the aristocrats from the lampposts. The narrator later acquires the habit of unconsciously tapping his feet to revolutionary tunes, signaling his dissent during boring conservative university lectures; he reaps the appropriate rewards.

The relevant section of the slim book closes when the narrator, years later, identifies Le Grand as one of the miserable French soldiers returning from captivity in Russia, long after the Revolution has been defeated and Napoleon has died in exile. The two recognize each other. The drummer plays the old tunes, conjuring up images of a vanished revolutionary past, only now sorrowfully and mournfully, and then dies, collapsing upon his drum. Heine, the former boy, now a man, knows what to do: the drum “was not to serve any enemy of freedom for their servile roll call; I had understood the last beseeching glance of Le Grand very well and immediately drew the rapier from my cane and pierced the drum.”

It is an interesting variation on the drummer theme. Again, at first, contrast seems to prevail over similarity. Whereas Rev. King referred to the problematic role of the showy and perhaps self-promoting drum major in a parade, Heine chose to speak of the humble drummer in an actual military unit. And yet they are, certainly in this context, closely related. Both are, de facto, the visible and audible embodiment of the cause. Both, by marching at the head of the troops, become natural targets for the enemy.

In the short poem, “Doctrine,” Heine echoed the themes of Le Grand when he portrayed himself as the drummer—pointedly using the French term—on behalf of the new radical Hegelian philosophy. At the same time, he here ironizes rather than romanticizes that role, calling attention (like King) to an element of self-satisfaction and self-aggrandizement. Heine rarely makes it simple for the perceptive reader.

There are exceptions, though. He on several occasions directly addressed the plight of African-Americans and slavery, and here all hint of ambiguity or frivolity is gone. In the late poem, “The Slave Ship," he depicted the cynical cruelty of the Middle Passage. Even earlier, and long before it was fashionable, he had spoken out against slavery and remarked bitterly upon the hypocrisy of the United States, which he called “that monstrous prison of freedom where [ . . . ] all men are equal—equal dolts . . . with the exception, naturally, of a few million, who have black or brown skins and are treated like dogs!”

However, I always find I am equally moved by a minor incident in one of his earliest published works, the “Letters From Berlin” (1822). There, in a seemingly trivial piece of reportage, he describes the excitement of the masked ball at which members of all social groups interact on the basis of anonymity and thus equality. In his enthusiasm, he happens to express himself in fashionable French, which earns him the predictable rebuke of a young chauvinist. He replies:

O German youth, how I find you and your words sinful and foolish in such moments where my entire soul encompasses the entire world with love, where I joyously wish to embrace the Russians and the Turks, and where I wish to collapse, crying, upon the fraternal breast of the enchained African! I love Germany and the Germans; but I love no less the inhabitants of the other portions of the world, whose numbers are forty times as great as those of the Germans. Love gives the human being his value. Praise God! I am therefore worth forty times as much as those who cannot raise themselves out of the swamp of national egoism and love only Germany and the Germans.

King was a Protestant minister, and that vocation defined his career and identity. Heine was a poet and an essayist who said a good many sarcastic things about Christianity, Judaism, credulousness, and religion in general. He converted to Protestantism out of opportunism and always reproached himself for it, but at the end of his life, as he seemed to become more religious, claimed that he had never “returned” to Judaism because he had never in fact left it. Like King, he found both personal and social meaning in the religious tradition.

If there were a world to come in which both men ended up sharing the same space, I could imagine the two of them having a very engaging conversation about the state of the world on this holiday: the one perhaps with a bit more charity, the other perhaps with a slightly malicious wit, but both with an equal and unwavering commitment to justice and the power of the word to bring it about.

* * *

Sources:

Most of the translations come from these two volumes of Heine's writings, edited by one of my former teachers, Jost Hermand, and one of his former graduate students: Robert Holub, currently Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst:

The folllowing are found in Heinrich Heine, Poetry and Prose, ed. Jost Hermand and Robert Holub, The German Library, 32 (NY: Continuum, 1982):

• Ideas—Book Le Grand, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland and adapted by Robert C. Holub and Martha Humphreys, pp. 174-228 (relevant section: 190-204)
• the poem, "Doctrine," translated by Felix Pollak, pp. 44-45
• the poem, "The Slave Ship," translated by Aaron Kramer, pp. 84-93

The following is from Heinrich Heine, The Romantic School and Other Essays, The German Library, 33 (NY: Continuum, 1985):

•  the excerpt regarding American slavery and hypocrisy is found in Ludwig Börne: A Memorial (Second Book), translated by Frederic Ewen and Robert C. Holub, pp. 261-83; here, 263.

 Heine goes on to say, "Actual slavery, which had been abolished in most of the North American states, does not revolt me as much as the brutality with which the free blacks and the mulattoes are treated," which he goes on to describe

Tthe translation from "Letters from Berlin" is my own.