Political Reflections on November 9th

 

 

I. 

 

I'm sure there are reasons why November 9th might resonate within the British memory and cultural imagination; events that took place on this date include, for example, the birth of Edward VII (1841) and the murder of Mary Keller at the hands of Jack the Ripper (1888). The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, also died on this date, in 1953. 

 

However, November 9th means far more for the Germans than it does for us Brits. For November 9th was the date of two fatally significant events in modern German history: the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and Kristallnacht in 1938 ...

 

 

II. 

 

The Beer Hall Putsch was a failed coup d'état led by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler (in collaboration with the famous German general and War hero Erich Ludendorff).

 

Inspired by the Fascist March on Rome the year before, around 2000 Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in Munich city centre. Here they were confronted by an armed police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of sixteen Nazis, four police officers, and one bystander.

 

Hitler escaped and hid out in the countryside for a couple of days before being arrested and charged with treason. Although things had not gone to plan, the putsch brought Hitler to the attention of the entire German nation for the first time and generated front-page headlines in newspapers around the world. 

 

His subsequent trial, which lasted for over three weeks, was also widely publicised and gave him an opportunity to promote his National Socialist ideology. Found guilty of treason, Hitler was sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison (where he dictated his autobiography-cum-political manifesto, Mein Kampf). 

 

After serving only nine months in jail, Hitler was released on Christmas Eve, 1924. Having learned from his mistaken attempt to seize power through revolutionary force, he immediately set about transforming the NSDAP from a paramilitary organisation into a modern political party that could garner popular support and secure him victory at the ballot box.

 

In 1933, the Nazi Party won 44 per cent of the vote, which gave them 288 seats in the Reichstag. Hitler, as Chancellor, passed the Enabling Act in March of this year, which gave him the plenary powers to make laws without the Reichstag's approval. This also allowed him to destroy all opposition to his rule and by the autumn of 1934 - following the death of President Hindenburg in August of that year - Hitler was now in complete control as Führer of the German Reich.  

 

In 1939, Hitler declared that November 9th would henceforth be an official public holiday, on which to commemorate the martyrs of the Nazi movement who were killed during the Munich Putsch.

 

 

III.

 

There is, of course, another reason to remember this date: Kristallnacht - or the Night of Broken Glass - a planned and coordinated pogrom against the German Jews carried out by members of the Nazi Party's paramilitary forces (the SA and SS), in 1938.

 

Shamefully, a number of German citizens also actively participated in the orgy of violence and destruction, although most, like members of the civil authorities, simply stood by looking on (some with horror some with glee) as Jewish stores, houses, schools, and synagogues were ransacked and smashed. Even Jewish graves were violated.  

 

In all, 267 synagogues were destroyed throughout Greater Germany; over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. Estimates of fatalities caused by the attacks have varied. Early reports claimed that 91 Jews had been murdered, but more recent analysis of German sources puts the figure much higher and when deaths from post-arrest maltreatment and subsequent suicides are included, the death toll reaches well into the hundreds. 

 

The world was shocked at this widely reported event; The Times declared - rightly - that it had disgraced the entire German nation. The Daily Telegraph correspondent spoke of a nauseating mix of racism and hysteria. But no one really did anything other than voice their outrage at what was, we now know, a prelude to or foreshadowing of the Final Solution and the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.   

 

 

IV.

 

When people today wonder why they should be concerned with the surge in antisemitism and anti-Israeli hate speech following the events of October 7th and the subsequent war in Gaza, this is why. 

 

To be perfectly honest, as much as one may feel sympathy for the Palestinians, I really don't want to hear calls for Jihad and/or intifada on the streets of London; nor chants of from the river to the sea. 

 

And nor, come to that, do I think it anything other than outrageous that the Anne Frank day care center for pre-school children in the small German town of Tangerhütte - which has operated under that name since the 1970s - may be renamed after a number of migrant parents complained.

 

Apparently, these parents find the name (and story of) Anne Frank problematic - presumably in much the same way that posters featuring the faces of Jewish children kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas are said to be problematic and provocative.  

 

For officials, including the mayor, in Tangerhütte to agree to this act of historical erasure is profoundly depressing. Didn't Germany promise to never forget what had happened in the twentieth-century and never allow such things to happen again ...?

 

Predictably, however, they justify the name change on the (woke) grounds that it is important to celebrate the diversity of the children attending and not oblige them (or their parents) to have to deal with complex political issues arising from a past about which they know nothing and care even less.

 

If these officials get their way - although following a huge backlash this now seems very unlikely - Kita Anne Frank will soon become known as the World Explorer [Weltendecker] day care centre; a name that is as vacuous as the people who came up with it.   

 

 

In Memory of the One and Only Adolf Brand

Portrait of Adolf Brand (1874 - 1945) 

based on an engraving by Arnold Siegfried 

Der Eigene, Vol. 7 (1924)

 

 

Adolf Brand was a German writer, anarcho-egoist, and a pioneering queer campaigner. He is perhaps best known today for publishing the first openly homosexual periodical in the world - Der Eigene - which ran from 1896 until the early 1930s, when the Nazis eventually put a stop to it [1]. 

The title - usually translated into English as The Unique - betrays the influence of the philosopher Max Stirner upon Brand's thinking and refers to Stirner's concept of radical individuality [2]. The small number of subscribers to the magazine were treated to essays of a scholarly nature on various cultural and political themes, as well as nude photographs of young men. The threat of censorship was, of course, a constant concern.

 

Brand contributed a significant number of his own poems and articles alongside those from a range of contributors, that included many German and Jewish intellectuals of the time. Der Eigene wished to see modern homosexual culture develop as a model inspired by ancient Greek pederasty and the heroic warrior ideal of Sparta. 

 

For Brand and his fellow members of a group formed in 1903 known as the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, the love of an older man for a youth was seen as a perfectly natural expression of male sexuality. They vehemently rejected medical theories of homosexuality put forward by those who promoted the idea of an intermediate sex, for example, or saw gay men as essentially feminine in nature.  

 

Eventually, the GdE evolved into a kind outdoors society, involving camping, trekking, and nudism (or Nacktkultur as it was known) - all good clean (manly) fun. Perhaps rather less attractive was their misogny, elitism, and ideas of beauty rooted in race. 

 

Some might also question their militant strategy of outing well-known men as homosexuals. If this caused some of these men and their families great suffering - and even pushed a few towards suicide - Brand and company insisted that was a price worth paying; the way into the future, they said, followed a path over corpses [Weg über Leichen]. 

 

It's perhaps not surprising to discover that Brand was imprisoned multiple times for his activities. But whilst even in court he refused to apologise for his promotion of homosexuality, in his later life he gave up his activism, married a nice girl, and settled down (only to be killed by an Allied bomb in February 1945).        

 

 

Notes

 

[1] When Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, Brand's house was searched and all the materials needed to produce the magazine were either seized or destroyed.  

 

[2] Der Eigene clearly refers to Max Stirner's classic anarchist text Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1844). 

      Stirner, for readers unfamiliar with the name, was a 19th-century German philosopher associated with a highly individualistic form of anarchism known as egoism (his key text above is usually translated into English as The Ego and Its Own). 

      For Stirner, no state, party, or social institution, should have any power or authority over the individual, who must be free to live out their own lives in their own way, in a loose non-systematic association with other egoists. His thinking has influenced many within the anarcho-communist and libertarian circles.    

Autobiographical Fragment: Eine Schöne Romanze

A lover of mine / From down on the Rhine

Whilst for most of the time in 1987 I was holed up in Blind Cupid House reading poetry, assembling Pagan Magazine, painting t-shirts, and endlessly listening to Killing Joke, some of my happiest days were spent in Germany in the company of deutsche girl Carolin Loerke ...

For although Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government would win an historic third term in this year, it was actually a golden age in which to be voluntarily unemployed (i.e. free). Having signed on on the Tuesday, I would cash my giro on the Thursday, and then Interrail it all the way to Mainz and the arms of Fräulein Loerke.

Carolin was a good friend of a London-based punkette called Angelika Mischling, whom I was very keen on at the time. Unfortunately, the latter was romantically unavailable, living as she did with her English boyfriend who sang in a band and looked a bit like a young Dave Vanian. And so, Angelika decided to play Cupid and arranged for me to stay with Carolin, whom she insisted was sehr nett ...

And, to be fair, she was very nice: a physiotherapist who loved existentialism, Joy Division, and making fresh pesto sauce. Her English was excellent and, as well as having a cheeky smile, she had what many would describe as perfect breasts; i.e. slightly fuller below the nipple meridian than above, so that the nipple points upwards at a 20 degree angle. 

Her apartment, I remember, was close to a zoo or wildlife park of some kind; at night you could lie and listen to the animals calling out. During the day, I would wander around the town and see the sights, although most of the historical buildings were destroyed in air raids during the War. Sometimes, I would take a stroll by the River.

Alternatively, I would visit nearby cities including Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Cologne, and Heidelberg where I met (and shared a hot chocolate with) an extraordinary American, Laura Carleton, who would later find fame as Berlin's Singing Mermaid and is today better known as the artist Miss LaLaVox.

Still, that's another story. All that remains to ask here in closing is: Was ist mit Carolin Loerke passiert? Sadly, I cannot say; we fell out of contact as quickly as we had fallen into bed. But I've never forgotten the curls of this Deutsche girl.

Play: Adam and the Ants, 'Deutscher Girls', from the Jubilee soundtrack album (Polydor Records, 1978): click here. The track was later re-recorded and released as a single on E.G. Records in Feb. 1982, but with slightly altered lyrics: click here. 

Let Them Sing Carols

Ding dong merrily on high ...

The phrase Let them eat cake may never have passed the lips of Marie Antoinette, but it's still commonly attributed to her and has significantly helped tarnish her reputation within the popular imagination. 

Similarly, Angela Merkel's suggestion this week that German citizens address their growing anxiety over the perceived threat posed by Islamism to their way of life - be it secular-liberal or Christian-conservative in character - by singing a few Christmas carols accompanied by someone playing a flute, is likely to prove something she'll never live down and which will be remembered long after her disastrous Chancellorship has ended.

Admitting there are very real concerns - and very real grounds for concern - over her policy of admitting over a million Muslim refugees into Germany last year alone, Merkel told an emergency congress of CDU members in Wittenberg that the way to counter terrorism, rising crime and the creeping Islamisation of European culture, was for German families to gather round and break into a rendition of Silent Night.

Unfortunately, however, all isn't calm and all isn't bright and we can none of us afford to sleep in heavenly peace whilst the barbarians are at the gates and the enemy is already within ...