Laura Freeburn Translations LLC

Category: Translations

My own hobby translations

  • Escape to Catania

    I’m pleased to report that a novel I recently translated is available on Kindle: Escape to Catania

    And yes, even though the book takes place in Italy and the author’s name is Italian, it was written in German.

    It’s the story of a woman police officer rebuilding her life after a personal betrayal. She requests a transfer to Sicily, where she learns more about the mafia and the European migration crisis. This volume is the first in a series, so it introduces characters and situations that will develop over time. If that sounds interesting to you, check it out at the link above.

    A lot of my translation work is fairly dry and academic, so working on a novel with day-to-day life situations and dialogue was a fun opportunity. Many thanks to the author for selecting me to introduce her story to English-speaking readers.

  • “Wo zu finden?”

    Wenn ein Liebes dir der Tod
    Aus den Augen fortgerückt,
    Such es nicht im Morgenrot,
    Nicht im Stern, der abends blickt.

    Such es nirgends früh und spät,
    Als im Herzen immerfort.
    Was man so geliebet, geht
    Nimmermehr aus diesem Ort.

    — Justinus Kerner

    Where to be found?

    If Death’s come to take away,
    Push a loved one out of sight,
    Look not to the dawning day,
    Nor a watchful star at night.

    Look not in the sky above,
    Morn or night, but in your heart.
    From that place of such great love,
    What you’ve loved will ne’er depart.

  • Crow vs. Raven

    Die Krähe

    Eine Krähe war mit mir
    Aus der Stadt gezogen,
    Ist bis heute für und für
    Um mein Haupt geflogen.

    Krähe, wunderliches Tier,
    Willst mich nicht verlassen?
    Meinst wohl bald als Beute hier
    Meinen Leib zu fassen?

    Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr gehn
    An dem Wanderstabe.
    Krähe, lass mich endlich sehn
    Treue bis zum Grabe!

    Reflecting on this song from Winterreise, I had what I thought was a pretty good insight: namely, that even though the bird in it is a crow, you should translate “Krähe” as “raven” because they have the same number of syllables and the same vowel sounds.

    In particular, it totally takes care of this measure:

    “Ra-ven,” — that’s perfect.

    “Anyway,” I thought, “Who can even tell the difference between a raven and crow?” And then of course I googled “raven vs. crow” and it turns out that in addition to being smaller, crows “like being in human populated areas” and are “more social and audacious” whereas ravens are aloof and cautious. Crows make that high-pitched “caw, caw” sound but ravens make a “low and hoarse” sound. And ravens (“Raben”) are mentioned elsewhere in Winterreise. Presumably the poet had his reasons for choosing one or the other.

    So even though my primary motivation for translating this poem was to fit the word “raven” neatly into it, I decided to maintain the original crow. Here is a crow-based version:

    As I set off through the snow
    Leaving town forever
    Round my head there flew a crow
    And it leaves me never.

    Strange bird, following my way,
    Will you not depart?
    Surely, you intend to prey
    On my broken heart?

    Not much longer now, my friend
    Till my walk is over,
    Crow, be with me at the end,
    My one faithful lover.

    But then I was out for a drink on New-Year’s-Eve Eve and thought what the heck, let’s do one with a raven too. I jotted down a first draft with a Moscow Mule (thanks go out to my drinking buddy for rhyme suggestions) and refined it this morning. Here you go:

    One dark raven came with me
    As I left the silent town
    Still it keeps me company
    Flying round and round.

    Raven, strange uncanny thing,
    Will you never leave me?
    After all my wandering
    Will your talons claim me?

    Now have patience, soon I’ll lay
    Down my staff with one last breath
    Raven, only you will stay
    Faithful unto death.

    Which of my versions do you prefer – raven or crow? Or do you have a better version of your own? If so, paste it in the comments.

    Incidentally, when I translate these Lieder I think more about whether they can be sung to the tune than whether they match the number of German syllables. Which means sometimes you’d be singing a one-syllable English word on two notes where the German has a different syllable on each note, and vice versa.

    Song:

  • Watch out for strange women in forests (Waldgespräch)

    Poor old Robert Schumann. Was I too hard on him in a previous post? He wrote a lot of good stuff, including a fine setting of Eichendorff’s Waldgespräch:

    Waldgespräch means “forest conversation.” But I just did my own translation and I’d like to call it…

    Waldgespräch Meeting in a forest
    Es ist schon spät, es wird schon kalt,

    Was reit’st Du einsam durch den Wald?

    Der Wald ist lang, Du bist allein,

    Du schöne Braut! Ich führ dich heim!

    		 The hour is late, the air grows cold,

    Why ride forsaken through the wood?

    The wood is long, thou art alone,

    O lovely maid, I’ll lead thee home!
    “Groß ist der Männer Trug und List,

    Vor Schmerz mein Herz gebrochen ist,

    Wohl irrt das Waldhorn her und hin,

    O flieh! Du weißt nicht, wer ich bin.”

    		 “False and deceitful are all men,

    My heart is rent with bitter pain,

    The hunting horn has led thee astray,

    O flee! Thou knowest not my name.”
    So reich geschmückt ist Roß und Weib,

    So wunderschön der junge Leib,

    Jetzt kenn ich Dich – Gott steh’ mir bei!

    Du bist die Hexe Loreley.

    		 So richly adorned are lady and steed,

    So beautiful and young indeed,

    I know thee now – God be my guide!

    The witch thou art, the Loreley.
    “Du kennst mich wohl – von hohem Stein,

    Schaut still mein Schloß tief in den Rhein.

    Es ist schon spät, es wird schon kalt,

    Kommst nimmermehr aus diesem Wald!”

    		 “Thou know’st me well – my silent keep

    Looks down into the Rhine so deep.

    The hour is late, the air grows cold,

    Shalt never leave this evil wood!”

    I could spend paragraphs justifying my choices here, but wouldn’t that be dull? Instead, put your quibbles in the comment box. I know there are some. Every literary translation walks around with a horde of quibbles carrying its train.

    On the plus side, this English version should fit the music quite well. The first line of stanza 3 is a little awkward but you can make it work.

    In conclusion, here’s an unusual and very pleasant recording of Schumann Lieder where a cello takes the singer’s part. This song starts at 24:29.

     

  • American girls won’t get up early to shine your shoes

    Deutsch für Amerikaner, my mom’s old German textbook (copyright 1960) is an interesting social-history artifact. Here’s a passage where a university student from Germany discusses the American family he’s staying with. (All these people are fictional of course, but intended to be representative of their time and place.)

    WHO IS HEAD OF THE HOUSEHOLD?

    The day before yesterday Prof. Welliver, who is an enthusiastic hunter, took a day off to go pheasant hunting. A neighbor who also hunts came at 6:30 in the morning to pick him up. At six he was in the kitchen frying himself a couple of eggs for breakfast. I was also up early doing a term paper and he invited me to have breakfast with him. I was surprised that neither Mrs. Welliver nor one of his daughters had gotten up to help him.

    He must have read my thoughts because he said: “Yes, my wife and daughters don’t think much of hunting and they think my enthusiasm for hunting is a bit queer.

    So I can’t expect that they’ll get up at 5:30 in the morning. Where you’re from in Germany a professor can afford to hire a maid. But I can’t do that. Our American girls and women would rather work in factories and offices than in other people’s houses. That’s understandable. And then, of course, maids can charge so much money that a university professor can’t afford to keep one.”

    Then I asked him: “May I ask a personal question?”

    “Shoot!” he laughed.

    “I can imagine your wife is tired,” I said, “but why did neither of your two daughters get up to make you breakfast?”

    Prof. Welliver laughed: “They are also too tired. The life of an American girl in high school is more strenuous than you think.”

    I looked at him with astonishment, because I knew that high school students here did not work nearly as hard as we do. He said his daughters were very popular and that meant they had to be at everything. Then Prof. Welliver saw that I had nothing left on my plate. “More toast, Karl, another egg?” Before I could answer, he had already put the bread in the toaster and cracked an egg into the pan. How friendly and affectionate it sounds when this professor with gray hair who specializes in the Reformation calls me Karl! And what a charming host he is! On such occasions I always feel something of the warm-heartedness and true humanity that could only have developed in democratic America.

    And who is Prof. Welliver’s hunting partner? A dean? A colleague? An academic? Not at all! The neighbor is the manager of a grocery store in the center of our little university town. But the two men called each other by their first names, as I noticed when the professor got into the gleaming car.

    Kolonialwarengeschäft!

    I had offered to wash the dishes. How quickly one gets used to the American way of life! In Germany I would not have dared to offer a professor my help in his house, because it would have embarrassed him even if he didn’t have a maid. The thing about the maid is not so tragic, by the way. Mrs. Welliver does not have a maid but she has a refrigerator, a freezer, a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine with automatic dryer, an electric dishwasher, in other words everything that American technology has to offer the housewife.

    However, it’s not the case that she has more freedom than a German housewife. She has many social duties. School, church, clubs and the social lives of her two daughters fill her days and some of her evenings.

    I didn’t really like the fact that neither of the two girls had gotten up to help their father. And that they made fun of his hunting seemed to me disrespectful, considering their young age. This lack of paternal authority, or male authority in general, bothers me as a German especially. I know the absolute authority of the man, as was considered a given in Germany – especially Germany before the First World War – is not ideal. I myself know German families where the daughter cleans the father’s and brothers’ shoes on Sunday mornings while the “men” are still peacefully sleeping.

    As a cultural critic, when I see something like that, I shake my head sadly. I do the same when I see Prof. Welliver’s daughters with their “boy friends” here in the house.

    These visits by the “boy friends” are arranged through long telephone conversations. When the girls speak to their young men, neither the professor nor Mrs. Welliver nor I can get on the phone, because these conversations go on for hours. They giggle, and the most trivial things are discussed earnestly, to the point where you could think these girls were not entirely normal. But that’s not true. That’s just how they talk with their young friends. When I talk to them, all at once they become different people, very mature, very intelligent and full of interest in anything that is worth knowing.

    If the “dates” come into the house, they have no consideration for anybody. The young people laugh and scream and dance to loud music from the record player. The fact that their father is sitting in his office upstairs working on one of his publications obviously does not bother them at all and their father doesn’t say anything. I always expect the door to his office to fly open and for him to demand quiet with a thundering voice. But that is a German expectation. The office door opens, but the professor just goes down to greet his young guests and tell them “Have a good time!”

    But there’s one more thing I should mention. The girls’ long telephone conversations prevent me from using the phone, but they’re useful to me nonetheless. I have to listen, because the phone is at the foot of the stairs near my room. This way I can expand my American vocabulary and my list of untranslatable words. But I still don’t know why a certain Bill is “a card,” a certain Joe is “a square,” a certain Bob is “a doll,” and a certain Hank is “a creep”.

     

  • Two songs

    On Sunday I volunteered to sit in a basement for several hours doing very little. I forgot to bring something to read so I jotted down a couple of Lieder and had a go at translating them. The results, after some fine tuning at home, are below. Both of these could be improved – if you think of good alternatives, pop them in the comment box!

    Singability was a priority here, so some choices were based on considerations like which vowels go best with high notes.

    First – because it’s finally spring in Wisconsin – Erstes Grün (First Green) by Justinus Kerner (music by Robert Schumann):

    Du junges Grün, du frisches Gras!

    Wie manches Herz durch dich genas,

    das von des Winters Schnee erkrankt,

    o wie mein Herz nach dir verlangt!

     

    Schon wächst du aus der Erde Nacht,

    wie dir mein Aug entgegenlacht!

    Hier in des Waldes stillem Grund

    Drück ich dich, Grün, an Herz und Mund.

     

    Wie treibts mich von den Menschen fort!

    Mein Leid das hebt kein Menschenwort;

    Nur junges Grün ans Herz gelegt,

    macht, dass mein Herze stiller schlägt.

    		 O young green shoots, O fresh green grass

    Hearts turn to you for cure at last,

    Ailing from winter’s ice and snow,

    How my heart longed for you to grow!

     

    You break out of the sleeping earth

    and fill my weary eye with mirth!

    Silently in the forest glade,

    Green, let me kiss each leaf and blade.

     

    From men I flee, their words are vain!

    No human word can heal my pain;

    With young green things upon my breast

    Ah, only then my heart can rest.

     

    Then there’s Das verlassene Mägdlein (The abandoned girl) by Eduard Mörike (music by Hugo Wolf). Some imprecise rhymes here, but that’s usually better than rhymes that are too cute, especially when the speaker is this miserable:

    Früh, wann die Hähne krähn,

    eh die Sternlein schwinden,

    muss ich am Herde stehn,

    muss Feuer zünden.

    Schön ist der Flammen Schein,

    es springen die Funken;

    ich schaue so darein,

    in Leid versunken.

    Plötzlich, da kommt es mir,

    treuloser Knabe,

    dass ich die Nacht von dir

    geträumet habe.

    Träne auf Träne dann

    stürzet hernieder;

    so kommt der Tag heran

    o ging er wieder!

    		 Up when the rooster crows,

    ere the stars have faded,

    now I must light the stove,

    toiling unaided.

    Flames cast their golden shine,

    the sparks leap and glow,

    lonely I stare and pine,

    in deepest sorrow.

    And then, unfaithful boy,

    then I remember

    the dream I had of you

    last night in slumber.

    Tear after tear I shed,

    down they flow together;

    thus dawns the day ahead

    can’t it be over?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV3Pnwu19OQ

  • Reformation Flame War

    In honor of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses, here is my heavily redacted version of a Reformation-era dialogue by Hans Sachs, namely

    A dialogue on the hypocrisy of the religious and their vows, through which, despising the blood of Christ, they presume to become holy.

    in which Hans the cobbler and Peter the baker amuse themselves by trolling an unsuspecting Franciscan friar who just wants some candles. These dialogue pamphlets dramatizing theological disputes were very popular in the 16th century. Here the Franciscan friar attempts to defend traditional Catholic religious orders against Protestant objections. Like most Reformation dialogues, this one contains lengthy passages where the speakers just sling competing Bible verses at each other. I’ve cut most of that out and kept the fun stuff. Although this is a loose translation, it’s still fairly accurate. Enjoy!

    Monk[1]: Peace be with you, dear brethren! Of your charity please give me some alms for the poor barefoot Franciscans, we need candles for singing and reading.

    Peter: I don’t give to strong beggars like you and begging is forbidden. In Deut. XV God says, “There shall be no beggars among you.” I give candles to my poor neighbors who use them for WORKING. Get a job!

    Monk: Ah, you must be Lutheran.

    Peter: Nope, Evangelical.[2]

    Monk: Then yeesh, do what the Gospel tells you and give to anyone who asks of you. Matthew V, Luke VI, and so on…

    Hans: He just roasted you with Bible verses, Peter.

    Peter: OK fine, I got roasted. Here brother Heinrich, behold this penny which I will give you for the Lord’s sake and which you can exchange for whatever candle suits your fancy.

    Monk: Oh, God protect me, I’m not allowed to take money! My order forbids it.

    Hans: Who set that order up?

    Monk: Our holy father Francis.

    Hans: Oh, so Francis is your father? Well GUESS WHAT – Christ says in Matthew XXIII to call no man “father,” for you have but one father who is in heaven!

    Monk: Arrgh, we know that. But he taught us the way a good father teaches his children.

    Hans: Then I guess he’s your master and you can’t call any man “master” either, according to Christ in that same chapter, and Christ says again in John’s Gospel that he is the way the truth and the life, which isn’t really relevant but I feel like I need more Bible verses to back up my argument.

    Monk: But Francis didn’t just make things up himself, he took them from the Holy Gospel.

    Hans: Where in the Gospel does it say you can’t touch money? I can give you the opposite example. Remember when Christ told Peter to catch a fish and open it up and there was a coin inside? That was amazing.

    Monk: But he also said not to build up treasure on earth, and you cannot serve God and mammon, and Luke XII, and then there’s the camel and the eye of the needle, and sell all you have and give it to the poor…there you have it.

    Hans: You talk the talk, Mr. No-Shoes, but do you walk the walk?

    Monk: Um, yes? We don’t take any money, which means we don’t have any. Not even a little.

    Hans: But outside your cloister walls you have plenty of friends taking and spending money for you…princes who build your snazzy monasteries and pay thousands of ducats for you to buy a cardinal’s hat. Don’t think we haven’t noticed. If that’s not called “building up treasure on earth”, I don’t know what is.

    Peter: It’s called playing your greed under your little hat.

    Monk: OK what the – look, fine, we have people who look after the money for us. But we don’t pay any attention to money. We focus on our religious duties.

    [extended conversation about money, including the accusation that money donated to religious orders is ultimately being stolen from The Working Man]

    Hans: …and you’re no use to God or man.

    Monk: It might make sense to say that if we didn’t spend LITERALLY ALL OUR TIME SERVING GOD!!!

    Hans: You’re good at going to church, not so great at doing actual works of mercy.

    Monk: Come to our monastery tomorrow at noon! You’ll see a whole pile of poor people getting fed.

    Peter: Yeah, you give them the food you don’t want, like soup and peas, then you sit in your own refectory eating delicious fish soup and vegetables with no sense of shame!

    [boring section cut]

    Monk: Well God bless you, young men, but I have to move on now to someone who might actually give us something.

    Hans: Wait, wait Brother Heinrich! One more thing.

    Monk: WHAT

    Hans: Do you keep your vow of chastity?

    Monk: Yes, why not? If we didn’t know how to keep that vow, we wouldn’t make it.

    Peter: The farmer’s daughters really get a taste of your chastity when you’re out collecting cheese.[3]

    Monk: Show me where it says that in our rule!

    Peter: I don’t mean just you guys…it’s all the mendicants who are out there collecting cheese.

    Monk: Don’t judge the whole crop by a few weeds.

    Hans: My concern is that if you don’t do things the natural way, you’ll end up getting into the freaky stuff….

    Monk: That’s why we discipline our flesh. Our whole rule is designed to curb the desires of the flesh. Not just by fasting, but other kinds of discipline too.

    Peter: Tell us about it…

    Monk: Happy to! We don’t wear any linen underwear, but we do wear rope belts, we go barefoot in open shoes[4], we don’t wear any hair on our heads, we go our entire lives without taking a bath – seriously, until we die – we don’t sleep on feathers, we never take our clothes off, we eat meat at not quite half our meals, we don’t eat off of tin[5], we have to be quiet A LOT, we have to stand and kneel in the choir for an hour or five every day, and pray in the middle of the night.

    Peter: Oh yeah? Well the guys and I work really hard every day for crappy food and then we get to bed late, and in the morning the kids are already up yapping by matins…I think my rule is harder than yours.

    [interminable argument cut]

    Peter: Look Brother Heinrich, I have two candles for you. But don’t use them to read Scotus or Bonaventure. Read the Bible and eventually God will enlighten you. And don’t be offended by the way we jumped down your throat and harangued you for an hour when you could have been out collecting more candles.

    Monk: It’s OK, dear brethren. God be with you.

    Peter: AMEN.

    Epilogue: Peter and Hans were saved by faith alone and went to Heaven even though they were jerks. Their many descendants refuse to go to bed when somebody is wrong on the Internet.

    Brother Heinrich asked the prior if he could be put on cheese collecting duty next time. He is still in Purgatory.

    [1] Actually a friar.

    [2] The idea here is probably not that Peter disapproves of Luther, but that “Evangelical” is a better term with more legitimacy, since it basically means “a follower of the Gospel” (as opposed to a follower of one specific guy).

    [3] “keß” in my edition, “kes” in another one. I think that must be cheese… Collecting cheese was apparently such an occasion of sin that Sachs wrote a jaunty little couplet about it: “Mein keuschheit ich frei halten tet / wenn ich nicht kās zuo samlen het” (“I’d keep my chastity with ease / if I didn’t go out collecting cheese”). For more on cheese and chastity, see here.

    [4] So…not actually barefoot?

    [5] “essen aus kainem zin”?

  • Heine heads for the hills

    Here is my translation of the poem that opens Heinrich Heine’s delightful travel narrative Die Harzreise (1826). This poem is all about how it feels to leave the city of Göttingen — famous, he tells us, for its sausages and its university — to walk in nature among simple mountain folk.

    Schwarze Röcke, seidne Strümpfe,

    Weiße, höfliche Manschetten,

    Sanfte Reden, Embrassieren –

    Ach, wenn sie nur Herzen hätten!

    		 Black their skirts and silken stockings,

    White their cuffs, so fine and neat,

    Tender speeches, sweet embraces –

    Would that hearts within them beat!
    Herzen in der Brust, und Liebe,

    Warme Liebe in dem Herzen –

    Ach, mich tötet ihr Gesinge

    Von erlognen Liebesschmerzen.

    		 Had they hearts in loving bosoms,

    Love aglow within their hearts –

    How I tire of their crooning,

    Spare me their deceitful arts.
    Auf die Berge will ich steigen,

    Wo die frommen Hütten stehen,

    Wo die Brust sich frei erschließet,

    Und die freien Lüfte wehen.

    		 To the mountains I’ll away now,

    There are wholesome cabins found,

    There the breast can swell unfettered,

    And the wind blow freely round.
    Auf die Berge will ich steigen,

    Wo die dunkeln Tannen ragen,

    Bäche rauschen, Vögel singen,

    Und die stolzen Wolken jagen.

    		 To the mountains I’ll away now,

    There the dark pines loom on high,

    Brooks are rushing, birds are singing,

    Clouds go speeding boldly by.
    Lebet wohl, ihr glatten Säle!

    Glatte Herren! Glatte Frauen!

    Auf die Berge will ich steigen,

    Lachend auf euch niederschauen.

    		 So farewell, ye shallow halls!

    Shallow ladies, shallow men!

    To the mountains I’ll away and

    Laugh as I look down again.

    I care a lot about meter, and in German each of the lines ends in an unstressed syllable, so my first draft preserved that. However, those kinds of rhymes (feminine rhymes: Manschetten/hätten, Herzen/Schmerzen) occur more easily in German because if you pool all the infinitives and verbs conjugated for 1st and 3rd person plural, as well as a large percentage of plural nouns, you have a ton of words ending in unstressed “-en”. Feminine rhymes in English (mountain/fountain, passion/fashion) tend to require more rumination. They also risk sounding too cute.

    After getting a first draft down, I considered that this is supposed to be a poem you dash off as you pack your things. You leave it on your desk for your poseur university friends to find, and maybe they’ll tell those girls you met the other night that you are so over them.

    So I reworked it with easy one-syllable (or masculine) rhymes, the kind that would occur to you easily as you put on your hiking boots. This means the meter is a little different from the original, but I’m happy with the result.

    I was particularly happy with “shallow halls,” which sounds like a contemptuous play on “hallowed halls;” initially I had tried “glib” because of its closeness to “glatt.”

    My in-house critic pointed out that it might not be OK to rhyme “again” with “men” in old-timey poetry. He may be right! But for the moment I’m declaring this one done. By the way, I didn’t consult any existing English versions for this and I still haven’t, so any similarities to other translations are purely coincidental.

  • Marion Dönhoff and Bismarck’s daughter-in-law at the end of the world

    Refugees fleeing East Prussia

    In January 1945, East Prussian Countess Marion Dönhoff jumped on her horse and headed west, away from the Russian army. Seven weeks later she and the horse arrived safely in Hamburg, where she settled and built a long career in journalism. She recounted the journey in her book Namen, die keiner mehr nennt. Ostpreußen – Menschen und Geschichte (1962).

    One memorable incident was her encounter with Sibylle von Bismarck-Schönhausen, which I have translated here:

    We had been traveling about 14 days when we arrived one evening in Varzin, a large estate in the Rummelsburg district, which Chancellor Bismarck had acquired with his endowment after 1866: large, magnificent woods, and a farm run in exemplary fashion.

    The Nogat and the Weichsel lay behind us and I had thought this would be a place where we could rest a while. To finally arrive – what a relief it would be. We rode through the park gate and up the sloping path to the manor house. Up there, in front of the main gate, stood a wagon and two large rubber-tired carts, piled high with boxes. Others have already stopped by, I thought: hopefully there’s still room inside. But to my great surprise I learned that it was not the luggage of East-Prussian refugees; it was the Bismarck archive awaiting evacuation. Even here the decamping was underway. And I had believed that things were calm beyond the Weichsel.

    At that time the Chancellor’s daughter-in-law was still alive – a small, slender, highly amusing and very old lady, who in her youth had been the cause of many a furrowed brow: she had hunted on horseback, smoked cigars and distinguished herself through joking and witty repartee.

    And indeed she remained immensely compelling, so compelling that I could not decide – although it seemed imperative – whether to leave the next day. In the end we stayed two days. Two memorable days. Outside the refugees trekked slowly through the country, and as the last ones passed by, locals joined the train and became refugees themselves. Here, too, they had reached the turning point. The wagon we had seen had already driven away without the old Countess, who could not be convinced to leave Varzin. All our warnings and remonstrances were no use. She was quite sure she would not survive the Russian invasion. Nor did she wish to survive it, and she had had a grave dug in the park accordingly (on the assumption that nobody would have time to do so later on).

    She wanted to stay in Varzin and enjoy her home to the last. And this she did with grandezza. Around her everything was as it always had been. The old servant, who did not wish to leave either, served at table. One superb red wine followed another – vintages that were the stuff of a connoisseur’s dreams. Not one word was spoken about what was happening outside or what was to come. She told lively, nuanced stories of the old days, her father-in-law, the imperial court, and the time her husband Bill Bismarck had spent as governor of East Prussia.

    When I finally said farewell and we rode away, I paused halfway to the garden gate to look back once more. She was standing, lost in thought, in the doorway and giving a last wave with a little handkerchief. I think she was even smiling…though I couldn’t quite tell.

    The manor house at Varzin

  • “Five Germanys”

    Recent events have inspired me to re-read Fritz Stern‘s book Five Germanys I have known (grammar nerds will note that it is “Germanys,” not “Germanies,” because the usual plural spelling rules don’t apply to proper names), specifically the middle section about nurturing, preserving, and defending liberal democracy.

    Reading this book ten years ago, I skimmed that part thinking, “Yeah, mm-hmm, whatever.” But it all seems terribly relevant now. Take his comments on the student revolts of ’68, when he was teaching at Columbia University:

    I was angry at the jubilant desecration of the university, and afraid that we were betraying our patrimony. […] I was afraid of the radical youths who were intoxicated by their own rhetoric, enthralled by the initial successes of violence, and convinced of their historic role as iconoclasts. […] Their disruptions were not cost-free: I feared a massive backlash, a reaction by conservative yahoos who would feel justified in their paranoid hatred of liberal (and expensive) institutions.

    How relevant.

    Then there was a rising desire on the right for repressive law and order, along with a “professed faith in the virtues of hard work and economic individualism, and contempt for the welfare state that ‘coddled’ the weak…a new version of Social Darwinism, bloody-minded if economically effective.” And there were advocates of la politique du pire — “that delusionary policy that holds that the worse things go, the better for radicals. I have often fought with these self-righteous ‘wreckers,’ who seldom realize how bad and irredeemable things can get.”

    Ditto.

    Having fled Nazi Germany for an America that was — on the whole and despite its economic woes — confident, well-meaning and optimistic, with a president who insisted the only thing to fear was Fear itself, Stern was wary of radicals on the left and right. Like G. K. Chesterton, he understood that it was worthwhile, and an adventure, to keep your horse running straight when it is tempted to veer onto the paths that lead to insane extremes.

    He gave an interview to Greenpeace magazine in January 2016, a few months before his death at age 90. The interview seems to be available only in German, so I’ve taken the liberty of translating an excerpt here:

    Historian Fritz Stern: “We are facing an era of fear.”

    GP: Is Europe moving too far to the right?

    FS: I fear it is. I believe we are facing an era of fear, widespread fear — the fear that can be exploited by the right. And you can already see in the example of Poland how fragile freedom is. It is shocking how quickly an authoritarian system is being built up in Poland. […] And as an American citizen I am also deeply concerned.

    GP: About what comes after Barack Obama?

    FS: Precisely. On the whole I’m an admirer of Obama and it was a great achievement on the part of this country to have elected him twice. But the current situation is so serious, so destructive, so dysfunctional, that it can only make you worry.

    GP: You mean Donald Trump?

    FS: Trump is the best example of the dumbing-down of the country and the appalling role of money. An absolutely amoral guy who flaunts his money and ignorance. I arrived in this country when Franklin Roosevelt was president. That someone like Trump, who is a nobody apart from money and monstrous ambition and ugliness – that he would not only put himself forward but would even be accepted by many people as a candidate, is simply beyond comprehension. 

    GP: What has changed in American society?

    FS: I’ve already spoken of dumbing-down. That is due in large part to the media and to the fact that there are fewer and fewer objective journalists. Most people can choose the ones who preach what they want to hear. […] A certain kind of new religiosity, which has very little to do with true religiosity, is also on the rise. I believe we are facing a new illiberal age. And for someone who dedicated his life to a certain liberalism, those are sad tidings. It’s a decline.

    RIP Prof. Stern. If there’s anything I can do to keep that horse on the trail, I’ll do it.