Prague and Germany

The nation of the Czechs reaches farthest to the West of any of the Slavs. Their capital, Prague, is quite close to several major German cities: 91.2 miles from Dresden according to Google Maps, a drive of 1 hour and 55 minutes. Leipzig is a 158 mile drive, Munich is 238 miles away, Berlin 217 miles, Vienna -- the usual capital of the Holy roman Empire since the 15th century -- 207 miles. Other major Slavic cities are considerably farther: Prague to Warsaw is 396 miles, Dubrovnik 794 miles, 556 miles, Kiev 881 miles. 

The Slavic regions between Western Europe and Russia have been ruled by foreign powers for much of their history. Prague has the distinction of having been the capital of a foreign empire, in the 14th century under the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, and then again from 1576 to 1612 under the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.

 

The Czechs were, and are, situated between Protestant and Catholic Germany: most of Germany north of Prague was, and is, majority Ptotestant. Most to the south was, and is, majority Catholic. From the time of Jan Hus onward -- he was burned at the stake for heresy in 1415 -- Protestantism among the Czechs tended to go with anegative view of the German Empire, and those Czechs who worked for the Empire tended to convert to Cathollicism. 

When the Prague defenestration is mentioned, most people think of the incident in 1618, but there have actually been three defenestrations in Prague, in 1419, 1483 and 1618. In German, the 1618 defenestration is called the Fensterstuerz, with the result that people actually know what is meant. Defenestration means being thrown out of a window. In all three Prague defenstrations, Protestants, followers of Hus, threw representatives of the Catholic Imperial occupation out of high windows, killing all of them in 1419 and 1483.

In 1618, surprisingly, the Emperor's representatives survived the 70-foot fall from a window in the Hradcany, the Prague Castle. However, the incident marked the beginning of the Thirty Year's War, in which millions died all over central Europe.

Prominent authors who lived in the Czech region and wrote in German range chronologically from Johannes von Tepl, who published der ackerman aus boehmen around 1400, to a remarkable amount of the very best German literature which was written in Prague in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by authors such as Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Max Brod, Franz Werfel, Rudolph Fuchs, Egon Erwin Kusch and many others.

The Nazis led up to their invasion of Poland and the beginning of WWII with a series of smaller-scales crimes including the occupation of Czechia in 1938 and 1939.

In 1989, Czechoslovakia opened its borders, and ten of thousands of East Germans per day went through Czechoslovakia into West Germany, one of the major factors which forced the end of East Germany and German reunification.

Dream Log: Lost in Germany, Then Concerned About a Cat

Last night I dreamed I was lost in an unfamiliar part of Germany. For some reason I had left all of my money behind somewhere else. It was the middle of the night and I was exhausted. I was walking on a patch of grass which narrowed down to a wedge where two busy streets merged. I was so tired that I almost laid down right there on the grass to sleep; instead, I turned around, and saw a building which looked like it might be part of a university. White neon images of a 19th-century German poet and his most famous line flickered on and off in various places on the side of the building. I couldn't remember the poet's name. His famous line was familiar to me in the dream. German people were always quoting it with great enthusiasm, but I didn't understand what was so great about it.

I went into the building, went up a broad flight of stairs and came upon a large dark room in which many people were sitting on folding chairs. It was still not clear whether this was a university, or some sort of headquarters of a political party, or something else. The gathering did seem to resemble a casual sort of academic class. I took a seat near the edge of the room as quietly as I could, but the woman seated near the edge of the room, who would've been the teacher it this was a class, turned to me and asked, "And you? How would you describe fame?"

I answered in German that I didn't have any definitions of fame to offer other than the everyday usual ones. The woman didn't say anything more to me, just turned away with a slightly disappointed air and continued the discussion with the others.

After the class, or the discussion or whatever it was, after it wrapped up, I got the feeling that all of the others, although it seemed that most or all of them were Germans, had been speaking in English. I wasn't completely sure about it, but I think the discussion had been all in English except for my brief contribution in German. I wondered whether the woman had been disappointed in whole or in part because I had spoken in English. (I have seen many discussion on Facebook which were mostly or all in English even though the participants were mostly or all Germans.)

As people were getting up to leave, I said that I was in a predicament, lost with no money. I thought it couldn't hurt to say this, and that maybe someone would offer me a couch for the night.

Instead, I learned that, whatever else this building was or wasn't, it also provided communal living for anyone who showed up. The people in the room were going to another large room, this one filled with beds. I was welcome to sleep there.

I woke up the next morning and saw that my clothes were not where I had left them, on a little shelving unit next to my bed. It seems that they had been gathered up, like everyone else's clothes, to be communally laundered. The other people were picking out clean outfits from big piles of clean clothes.

The only thing I had had with me the night before which had been really important to me was an amulet. It contained precious metal and a large jewel. I could have sold it for badly-needed money, but it was priceless to me because it had been given to me by a woman whom I held in great esteem. I carried it on a chain, in the key pocket of my blue jeans, with the other end of the chain fastened to my belt loop. All I saw on the shelf beside my bed was that chain.

I went to the piles of clothes and picked out some pants and a flannel shirt and some socks. I came back to my bed, and now I saw that on a lower shelf there were the sneakers I had been wearing the night before. One of the sneakers was stuffed with the kind of paper with which new shoes are often stuffed. I took this paper out and saw that the amulet had been put into the toe of the shoe. I put the amulet back onto its chain. The pants I was wearing had no key pocket, so I put the amulet into one of the chest pockets of the flannel shirt, and fastened the other end of the chain to one of the shirt's buttonholes.

Then I was on a steep hillside in a forest of birches, with strong sunlight shining down between the trees. I was holding a full-grown cat in my arms and it was purring. I climbed down the hill; at its foot, a multi-lane road full of fast-moving traffic intersected the forest. On the near side of the road was a Porsche dealership. On the near side of the dealership, where it was still woodsy, there were several other cats. My cat began to struggle to get loose of me. I let it go -- then, I became worried, because my cat, unlike the others, was unfamiliar with this place. I was worried that it might wander into the Porsche dealership's lot, or into the road, and be run over.

Then I woke up.

MAKE FACT-CHECKING GREAT AGAIN

Accentuate the positive! I'm really glad I saw this picture. Just a moment before, it was only with some difficulty that I had not replied to a German gentleman on Facebook who said he simply couldn't understand how Amurrka could fall for someone like Trump, and that he was just about through with us --

It was only with great difficulty that I stopped myself from replying, with heavy sarcasm and in polished, elegant German, that he was completely right, and how great it was that Germany had never let itself be taken over by a gang of right-wing thugs --

But instead of sarcastically stirring some Scheisse, I moved on, and I saw this picture, and I reminded myself to accentuate the positive.

Facts. Facts are great. And Hillary's got so much more of them than Donald does.

We're in the home stretch! Let's get pumped up and do this!

And remember -- SOME Germans are being positive and helpful and not taking the opportunity to throw stones in their glass house. So yeah for them too! And for all the rest of the people all around the world who just love us Murrkins to bits and are pulling for us!

As Alec Baldwin sang when he was doing an impression of Tony Bennett on "Saturday night Live," and then the real Tony Bennett joined in, so that it was the ultimate Tony Bennett duet:

I like things that are great!
I don't care about the things that I hate

Solar panels by the hundreds of millions! Expansion of the social safety net! More money for education! Minimum wage bumped up to somewhere between $12.50 and $15 an hour! Hillary!

LET'S MAKE GERMANY PROUD OF MURRKA SOME MORE!

1841. And Latin. And Germany

In 1841 there wasn't a single Germany as there is today. When someone said "Germany" back then, they may well have been referring to those people in central Europe who spoke German, who lived in a variety of different political entities.

Then again, it's not as if there is 1 political entity today in Central Europe where German-speakers live: besides Germany itself, German is the native language of Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, about 2/3 of Switzerland; and about 1 million people in the French area of Alsace-Lorrain, which borders Germany and has passed back and forth between French and German control quite a few times; and about 1 million more in South Tyrol in northern Italy, bordering on Austria and Switzerland.

Also, there are millions of people who live in Germany whose 1st or 2nd language is Turkish. They've been there for decades, and gradually the German media and government have stopped ignoring their existence.

And of course today Germany is welcoming more refugees from Syria than any other country.

In 1841, the political make-up of Germany involved many different states. Here's a map of the German Bund, which existed from 1815 to 1866:

And it existed very uneasily, above all because of the rivalry between Prussia, the blue on this map in the north-east and again in the west, and Austria, the orange-brown... orange-tan... orange-yellow... I don't know how to describe the color of Austria on this map, but it's the large area predominating in the south-east on this map. In 1841 Prussia was busy annexing more and more of northern and western Germany, turning more and more of it blue on the map, while Austria was annexing more and more non-German territory east of the area which is colored and surrounded by the red line on this map: the German Bund. For example, the territory 3/5 of the way down the right-hand edge of this map, not colored in, labeled KGR UNGARN -- that's the so-called Kingdom of Hungary, which belonged just as entirely to Austria as the orange-brown-tan-yellow area. Hungary, despite its misleading name at this time, didn't have a monarch of its own: the King of Hungary was the Austrian Emperor. If you look close, you'll see that Prussia also has extensive territory east of the Bund. On this map it's colored very light blue.

There was a lot of discussion going on between 1815 and 1871 about whether Germany was going to adopt a "kleindeutsche Lösung" ("Lesser German solution") with Germany united without the Austrian lands, or a "grossdeutsche Lösung" ("Greater German solution"), including Austria-Hungary, and with the Prussian monarchy in Berlin sharing a lot of the power with the Habsburgs in Vienna. Sometimes such things were discussed with words and sometime they were discussed with guns.

"Lesser German solution" it was: in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War -- and 2 wars against Denmark, the First War of Schleswig (1848–51) and the Second War of Schleswig (1864), and the Austro-Prussian War (1866) -- the map of this region suddenly became much less colorful: all of Prussia plus everything inside the red line which wasn't Austrian was now one solid color, and was Germany, and most of it was now dominated to some degree or other by Prussia -- the Prussian King became the German Emperor in 1871 -- "Kaiser" is the German word for "Emperor" -- while Austria now called itself and all of its territories Austria-Hungary, and usually didn't bother to use more than one color on maps to indicate all of itself, which extended much farther to the east than does this map. For example, at this time there was no Poland on the map. All of Poland was divided between Prussia, Austria and Russia. All of south-east Europe belonged either to the Austrian (or Austro-Hungarian) Empire, or the Russian Empire, or the Ottoman Empire.

Hey, Steve, what you're saying, it's all -- yawn -- this is all really, really interesting and all -- yawn. stretch. blink -- but what does it have to do with Latin?

Lots and lots, actually. In 1841, in Prussia and in areas about to be swallowed up by Prussia, prestigious universities in Berlin and Heidelberg and Leipzig and Bonn and elsewhere were international centers of Classical scholarship; while in Austria, the Emperor and his family, the Habsburgs, were very, very Catholic, and Latin was going to remain the official language of the Catholic Church until 1962. By 1962 Austria had become much smaller than it was in 1841, having shrunk down to, oh, about 1/5 of the brown-orange-tan-yellow area on the map. Much of that shrinkage had to do with non-German people in the Austrian Empire wanting to rule themselves. Much of it also had to do with people in the Empire being Protestant or Orthodox or Muslim.

So how much of that tension between the German Catholic Habsburg dynasty and non-German and non-Catholic people also ended up in opposition to the Latin language? That's a very interesting question, and I don't know the answer. But in the rest of Germany, the part which was eventually more or less conquered and swallowed up by predominantly-Protestant Prussia, the Latin language had always had more academic and less religious and political associations, and so I'm guessing that it was much less affected by all of the political upheaval and change.