The Hard and the Soft of It

 

By Arthur J. Diers,

 

Presented to the Chicago Literary Club on October 4, 2010

 

My father was a gentle man with sharp edges and so is Germany. My father was born in Oldenburg in the north of Germany. In 1914, he was sixteen years old, the tenth of thirteen children. He did not feel suited for business as his father wished. His father was a farmer, butcher, a churchman, a country gentleman and distinguished civic leader who served a couple of terms as what we would call a “state representative”.  My father respected his father, describing him as a “tense, severe man with a high sense of justice” who administered “severe punishment” to his children from which his wife a “soft-hearted woman tried to protect or soothe them.”  My grandfather  respected my father’s wish to avoid the impending war and find a life in the new world, so father went to live with bachelor cousins in Saskatchewan, tilling virgin soil for ten dollars an acre, until he was ready to take his stash, slip into the United States and attend a trade school in Minneapolis. Yes, he was an illegal immigrant. When he reached Minneapolis and checked out the school he didn’t like the look of the place.  While sitting in a park pondering what to do, he met a fellow who convinced him that there was a better school in Iowa. Together they took a train south, but father became suspicious, began to think this fellow was after his money. Along the way he noticed a town through which the train was speeding—Rockwell, Iowa. After being abandoned by his companion, he found his way back to Rockwell, where he located a distant relative who took him to the leader of the German community, Herr Pastor, who got him a job on a farm and saw to it that he went to Wartburg College, where most of the women were learning how to become teachers and most of the men were heading toward the ministry. He found his calling in the ministry, found the authority of the Lutheran orthodoxy of his day compelling and proceeded to minister to German rural congregations in Iowa having as his primary task at the beginning moving German services into English, no small adjustment for stalwart old German farmers. The Lutheran Church in America was for him a home away from home.

 

He was a strict German, too. But it was tempered. He did not use the rod. He spanked with a razor strap. The razor strap was not frequently used, but its threat was terrifying. His gait was slightly ponderous and steady; his voice authoritative--common phrases spoken in the manner of pronouncements. “Pass the butter,” -- sounded momentous, somewhat lapidary. I frequently felt his sharp displeasure especially at night when my restlessness would awaken him. I was often restless and he was often irritated. It was the most reassuring thing he ever said to me when he told me as an adult. “We didn’t know what to do with you.” Actually, I can’t remember an intimate conversation with him, but there was an unspoken bond because his gentle side was strong, with touching tender care for his wife and daughters and the parishioners. He would take asthmatic Anna, my sister, out for a ride in the middle of the night to relieve her. He assisted our neighbor to find a mail-order bride. I loved the smell of pipe tobacco as he schmoozed with his colleagues in his study, the warmth of sitting on the front porch swing with him in the evening listening to his memories, or riding with him in the car when he made his rounds of pastoral visits. He would soothe a psychotic woman between stays in what was then called the insane asylum, rescue a reclusive backwoods farmer from his isolation, hang around with an expert wood craftsman appreciating his skill. He was exuberant with praise for the beauty of Iowa. His devotion to his mission through hard and spare times was unwavering; making it without a salary with only five acres and a cow and the generosity of impoverished farmers, with four children to feed during the depression. It was no small feat. His certainty about truth was amazing. He would not countenance divorce, would not hold a burial service for a suicide, denounced the pope, and was eloquent about the ferocity of God’s judgment and his mercy—though he, much to my delight, mellowed with age. His certainty always puzzled me. It was not open for discussion.  I was sure about the judgment.

 

It was not altogether safe to be a German in America in those days.  Germans kept a low profile much as the Jews did in Germany.  Germans were the enemy during many of those years. There were stories of Lutheran ministers physically threatened, saved only by their parishioners’ wives. It was urgent to assimilate. German was not spoken in the house. Shame pervaded the community, all the stronger with the Holocaust. As I began to travel as an adult I had no desire to go to Germany. This shame still had me. But in the spring of 2009, I decided to face it head-on and go to Berlin to honor my father and acquaint myself with the country and its history from which he had come. I wondered about the harshness and tenderness in my bones for which I had few words and little knowledge. As I told others of my trip I was impressed with the strong emotions expressed about Germany—words of admiration and repugnance.

 

I learned that the harshness was there from the beginning. My father’s name was Hermann, named after the mythic hero, Hermann, a warrior, who defeated the Romans in 9 AD in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. “Heer-man”. as a youth was taken hostage by the Romans, was educated, joined the army, became  an aide to Varus, a Roman nobleman.  Legend has it that after secretly organizing a collection of rebellious German tribes, he led Varus’ army into a trap funneling 20,000 Romans into a 100 meter-wide pass between a thick bog and a steep hill. The Germans attacked with spears and arrows, killing ten thousand Romans. This battle defined the northern border of the empire along the Rhine for hundreds of years. It was to gain independence from the established civilized world, much as uncivilized America gained independence from civilized Europe. The German hero, however, was a military man.

 

After the death of Charlemagne in 911, whom the Germans claimed as Karl der Grosse, there was a split between the French west and the German east. In the east hundreds of little fiefdoms emerged, the castles of which stand to this day, towers fitted with armor, spears and shields, such as those we see in the Art Institute.  Germany’s roots are in these medieval fiefdoms, and hard roots they are, with much bitter fighting between them over few resources. They were like the tribal areas in Yemen today.  Goethe describes a citizen of those times in his play, “Goetz von Berlichengen”.

 

Goetz is a legendary hero, a little like our John Wayne or Davy Crockett, an iconic hero—buried somewhere deep in a cultural psyche. He is an old knight defending the chivalrous manners of the feudal nobility valuing personal valor above all and supreme loyalty to the feudal lord. He is called “Goetz the Iron-handed” because he lost his right hand in the wars, and had one made for him with springs with which he dexterously manages his lance. He is renowned for his courage. He fights daily, lives in the midst of battles, sleeps in his armor, is continually on horseback, only rests when besieged, saves all his energy for war, thinks of  nothing else. He must have been a candidate for PTSD. It was a time when aristocratic submissive women were cherished, and justice was arbitrary.  At the end he dies with gloomy courage, the noblest of knights, a good German, giving unquestioned obedience to authority—as did my father with respect to his district president, and Michael Reu, his mentor, and Lutheran doctrine. There is an  awesome iron rigidity to this strict compliance with authority. But it is understandable. Obedience to authority is a source of security in a land rife with warlike conflicts among the fiefdoms, later between nations on German soil, and among insecure Iowa German immigrants. I have learned that an excessive need for established order also stems from deep personal deprivation. Only the meeting of unmet needs can alter this iron fist.

 

Goethe’s play was very popular in Germany.  It moves the hearts of the Germans, the toughness and the tenderness of the valiant male warrior, the terrible fear of capricious judgment, the quick blow to the head. There is no American optimism here, only a gallant misery, too much of life abusing or being abused. Goethe intends his play to be a protest. He’s acknowledging, “This is our inheritance, this gallant misery” but he asks, “How can we settle for this?” Amen to that.

 

In those dark ages the Church was there to save guilty suffering souls bent by this burden. But Renaissance vibes began to filter in from the South, and the Church preserved libraries for the clergy, opening a break from this rigid mentality.

 

Martin Luther was in the forefront of that break. My father, as a Lutheran, of course, thought of himself as an heir to Martin Luther, who was born in   1483. Father and I both liked Martin Luther’s spirit. Hans Luder, Martin’s father, was a farm boy who took up mining—the most superstitious of cultures.  There the devil would attract men to false glitter, and lead them to take catastrophic risks with only the magic of St. Ann, the Mother of the Mother of God to protect them. Hans’ ambition led to management of the mines and civic leadership. He was ambitious for his family too, especially for his precocious eldest, Martin, who in his mind was without question to become a lawyer. Hans was ill-tempered subject to alcoholic rages, was said to have committed murder in his youth. Now he reserved his physical violence for his immediate family, caning his son until Martin retreated feeling ugly and then backing off, letting Martin’s genuine affection for his father return. Martin’s mother was said to be a hard working woman from middling means, from trading stock, a woman with some music in her, but also harsh, once beating Martin bloody for having stolen a nut. Martin was not an angry child. He was a sad child. I know how he felt.

 

Hans moved the family, following his own ambition, always sending Martin to the best schools with the most severe discipline. He eventually received a masters degree from the University of Erfurt with highest honors at the age of twenty-two, then following his father’s wishes entered law school.

 

On July 2, 1505, he was on horseback during a thunderstorm and a lightning bolt struck near him. He was terrified of death and divine judgment, crying out “Help! St. Anna, I will become a monk!” This was a vow he could not break. Within two weeks he had left law school, sold his books, and entered a closed Augustinian friary without telling his father. His father was furious as any father who wishes the best for his son would be. We all know how that goes.

 

Martin dedicated himself to monastic life—he suffered, fasted, prayed for hours each day, confessed continually, indulged in excessive introspection, was most miserable, in spiritual despair. Finally, after some months of this his wise superior, Johann von Staupitz, ordered him out of himself to graduate school where he studied, among others, Aristotle and William of Ockham. He came to agree with Ockham, that the only necessary entity is God, all else is transitory, and that only faith can connect with the certainty of God’s reality. Martin needed certainty. Through intense study of the Scriptures he was struck to his core by God’s unconditional love absolving him from all sins. He was turned around entirely by this incredible acceptance. He had felt like a criminal all his life, but God’s love let him off the hook entirely. Without it he was doomed. He was an all or nothing kind of guy. Just like the Mercedes ad: The best or nothing. He continued feeling like a criminal all his life, but the edge was off. Father was at his most eloquent preaching the Good news of God’s love and the relief it offers to miserable sinners. Of course, he meant to include all of us.

 

When Martin was a young professor the Pope started a development campaign to rebuild St Peter’s Basilica.  John Tetzel was in charge of the campaign in Germany.  He ran around singing this jingle: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory (into heaven) springs.”

 

This hit a sore spot in Martin. He had relinquished his career aims, lived the ascetic life, suffered the agonies of despair and could not get anywhere near salvation. How could this fellow say that it could be bought with a few coins? He wrote an extensive memo to his boss, Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, protesting the sale of indulgences. It is a scholarly effort, written with no intention of confronting the church, although it does have a barb or two in it. “Why can’t the rich pope pay for his own church rather than squeezing it out of poor parishioners?” Legend has it that he posted this memo on the castle door in Wittenberg. Within months because of the new technology, the printing press, it reached all of Europe.

 

It caught on like wildfire. Learning was becoming more widespread, the economy was improving, and princes were becoming stronger politically. People were restive with papal domination. The world was ripe for Luther’s voice. After many years of learning never to talk back he found himself among the biggest back talkers in history. Kierkegaard describes his style—“he wrote like a man with a lightning bolt behind him.” Sometimes we are delighted to hear a paper with such force in the literary club.

 

 The pope eventually excommunicated him. It was a crime for anyone to give him food or shelter. Anyone could kill him without legal consequence. It was like the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

 

His Elector decided to protect him, kept him hidden in Wartburg Castle. It was a gift. He spent months translating the Scriptures into German, spending his nights incognito in the pubs, enjoying his beer, getting to know the vernacular, swearing with the best of them (his uncensored writings are as salty as any sailor’s) and with his translation of the Bible shaped the German language for centuries to come, much as Shakespeare did with English. His German became the common language of the many fiefdoms in the region, and eventually brought them together. Now everyone could read the Scriptures, everyone a priest.

 

 Much to his surprise, he fell in love in his late thirties with Kathryn, an ex-nun, and became a happy family man, enjoying his sensuality—challenging the celibate clergy. All this was a boost to the modern age—every man and woman could have direct contact with the ultimate creative spirit, and have this creativity unleashed without limit.

 

Martin Luther had the hardest of the hard and the softest of the soft. God’s judgment could not be harsher, and His mercy and unconditional love in Christ could not be softer. Our family among many German families stood balanced between this judgment and that love. It’s a confusing place to be.

 

This emboldened man was present in my life. Every member of my family graduated from a college called Wartburg. I memorized Martin Luther’s Small Catechism when I was twelve, and was examined about its contents. My mother could still recite it from memory at the age of 103. Luther’s  “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” was one of many of the hymns sung each Sunday with my father leading the singing with a fervent, loud, authoritative unpolished voice. This image of him boldly leading the processional song as he moved toward the altar in his simple black robe is impressed in my memory. I felt most proud of him then, the sturdy leadership he offered with his powerful voice—ringing with that judgment and that love. I was not so pleased with his interminable sermons.

 

Many unintended consequences evolved from Luther’s reforms. There were different takes on what the Scriptures mean. Luther’s take was codified in the Book of Concord, Calvin in his Institutes. Anabaptists, Wesleyans, humanists, the Roman Catholic Church, all had their loyalties to ultimate meanings. Since each confession of faith was regarded as the ultimate truth worth fighting to the death for wars pervaded the next century and a half. Finally, in the middle of the Seventeenth Century at the Peace of Westphalia all were exhausted after millions of deaths. Some mutual respect was grudgingly agreed on. We wish we could all get that tired of war in our time.

 

Frederick the Great started the move toward German unification, the beginnings of Germany as a great nation of which my father was proud. What a powerful, commanding presence Frederick has high on his horse in the middle of Berlin’s main drag, Unter den Linden. Looking at this monstrous statue it made me wonder, “Who is this guy?” I must have been impressed. I found dozens of pictures of this statue when I developed the film. I hadn’t known anything about him, but was curious to learn. He was born in 1712. His father, named the “Soldier King”, was a classic German boor—a pietistic, uneducated, militarist, built walls around the city of Berlin, not to protect from external enemies, but to keep conscripts from getting out. He would strike men in the face with a cane, kick women in the streets, all with righteous indignation. His wife, Sophia, was well-mannered and educated the daughter of the man who would become King George I of Great Britain.

 

The king’s son was educated on the sly with the help of Jacques Duhan through whom he procured a secret library of poetry, Greek and Roman classics, and French philosophy. He tried to run away to Great Britain with his dear friend, Katte. Who would blame him for running away from a father like that? But he and his friend were caught, arrested, imprisoned, accused of treason. His father insisted that they both be executed. Aides restrained him. Young Fred was forced to watch his friend’s decapitation. When he was eventually restored to the Prussian Army, he fought in the campaign against France on the Rhine, but suffered from such gout that he was granted sick leave, housed in a castle in Rheinsberg. My son has gout. I know how bad that is. He had to take leave. There he assembled a number of musicians, actors and other artists and spent his time reading, watching dramatic plays, making and listening to music’ engaging in serious discussion with academic military men. It was the happiest time of his life. He played the flute and wrote many compositions for it.

 

When he became king in 1740, he united the disconnected lands of Prussia, using his father’s well-trained army he conquered Silesia to gain control of the Odor River, and the raw materials which would complement his western manufacturing capabilities. He rearranged the economy, altered the currency, and improved public education to be the best in Europe. He built canals, drained swamps, introduced new crops, nurtured the arts—the country prospered.

 

He fostered tolerance, encouraging talent wherever it was to be found—whether among Jews, Jesuits or Muslims. I met Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin at the splendid jagged Jewish Museum where he is designated the third great Moses, the German Socrates, the friend of Lessing, the great intellectual who brought Jewish intellectual life into the mainstream which led to the contribution of Jewish  scholars and scientists to the modern world. Friedrich made Moses an honored citizen of Berlin. Fredrick, himself, however, idealized French culture, usually spoke with others in French, and instructed his faculty at the University of Berlin to emphasize French studies. They ignored him and he didn’t mind. He would listen to criticism. He outlawed torture.

 

 He was very tough and very tender and beloved of his people. He was the last German leader for quite some time who kept the proper balance. He created a simple palace, Sanssouci, which means free of all cares, his favorite place, built to meet his every simple need. When Napoleon visited his tomb there he said, “If this man were still alive, I would not be here.” Sanssouci moved me. It was an expression of Frederick himself, with a large well-lighted library study where he worked, a slightly larger room for meeting with staff or visitors, a moderate sized dining room where he would dine mostly by himself, adjoining a music room with instruments where he would listen to invited artists or make his own music, and three guest rooms for stimulating visitors like Voltaire.  That was it, simply what he needed.  From this modest home Frederick set the political course for Germany toward power and unity.

 

The man who set the cultural course for Germany was Johann Wolfgang

von Goethe who lived between 1749 and 1832. I don’t recall discussing Goethe with my father ever, but I know that his nickname at school was Schiller because his best friend was Gaede. It was one of those silly plays on words that Germans go for. Goethe’s friendship with Schiller is regarded by Germans as the ideal friendship between men. I’m sure that my father read Goethe and Schiller in his late adolescence as avidly as I and my friends read Camus and Kierkegaard. He had so much respect for him that he named his first two children Herman and Dorothea—after Goethe’s essay which describes so well the joys of middle class life. Father had Goethe’s love of life and charm, and sense for the flow of life as he cared for each family, including his own, from birth to death. He took on the task of building a life echoing Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister”.

 

 Goethe was the kind of intellectual Germans idealize—a man who seemed to easily learn everything about everything—everything from what is deepest in the heart written most lyrically to the rigors of scientific research. Goethe was simply himself evolving who he was, writing of life realistically and affectionately. He enjoyed the company of men and women in all walks of life, including politicians and clergymen. But he was averse to philosophical, religious and political ideology. Rigid views hurt too many people. In contrast, Goethe simply followed the flow and rhythm of life appreciatively, and had great respect for whatever form of government enabled its citizens to live a good life. The best way to treat life is to absorb its disparate parts and not try too hard to impose too much unity on it.

 

As a child he didn’t get along in school so he was home tutored, mainly by his stern and loving father Casper who was an intelligent, orderly, somewhat bitter man who made his way on the basis of inherited wealth.  He wanted his son to do better, sternly insisted he be exposed to languages.  By the age eight Wolfgang knew eight of them.

 

His mother was named Catharina. Her father, Johann Textor was no aristocrat. She had to marry into money and Casper was lucky to get her. She was warm-hearted, efficient, emotionally wise without erudition, sunny, realistic. When Wolfgang and his sister Cornelia were frightened by imaginary horrors in the middle of the night in their large, haunting home and ran out of their rooms father would jump out of the shadows and scare the daylights out of them to get them back in bed. Mother would promise them a sweet pear in the morning if they would stay in bed overnight. Guess what was more effective.

 

This always cheerful mother loved to tell him stories, some for fun, some with lessons, always stories which were to be continued. Then Wolfgang would speculate about what would happen next, and the stories would continue with a blend of what the two of them wished—fairy stories about nature, morality and life.  This is how Wolfgang wrote from his heart at whatever turn his heart would take. He would write from his passions to the passions of the listener, to share, to imagine together, and slyly instruct.

 

He and his sister would explore Frankfurt, a free Imperial City, proudly visiting city hall in the chambers of which his grandfather had the only desk. He always thought it was more important to be an actor than a writer—a lover, a leader, a public servant, a warrior, a scientist. And as his heart led him he became all of those and simply gave them lyrical expression.

 

To quote him: “I get my build, and my serious side, from my father; I’ve got dear mama’s happy ways—and just like her I love to invent stories. My grandfather (on my father’s side) was always a favorite with women; well, that goes for me; my grandmother was pretty stylish and loved a bit of display—that’s in the blood too. These qualities are fused in me: there’s nothing that’s actually new.”

 

When he was sixteen his father sent him off to law school in Leipzig. He was indifferent to his studies, but he enjoyed a dalliance with his innkeeper’s daughter, wrote romantic poems for her. She was lower class, so he dumped her, but he missed her. He became ill, had a nervous collapse, a damaged lung, bowel trouble, and dropped out of law school. He returned home where he was nursed back to health by his mother and a pious nurse. He took to the feeling life of the pietists— doubt, hope, despair and shame, the dawning of faith, the grandeur of certainty giving him fodder for his artistic imagination.

 

 As he got better he wrote a comic play and loved fooling around. His father was infuriated by this silliness, kicked him out of the house to go back to law school this time in Strasburg where he buckled down barely enough to get through.

 

He desperately yearned to simply live life as a genius but finally realized, as young men do, he had to get a job. He reluctantly took one at the Imperial Court of Appeal located in Wetzler, thirty-two miles north of Frankfurt, an ancient, dirty town. His main interest was reading Homer’s poems, but he went to a ball, met and had a sudden infatuation for Charlotte Buff, a nineteen year old, lively, young lady from an important family. He liked her a lot, but soon learned that Charlotte was informally engaged to an older, serious, man. She found Goethe’s company sweet and interesting, but had her loyalties straight. Goethe, however, fell madly in love with her. He had to see her every day. Nothing else mattered. She was a lamp illuminating his life, without her everything would be bleak and pointless. He desperately wanted an intense romantic friendship, intimate conversation, kisses in the moonlight, holding hands. She didn’t. She wanted a solid, reliable husband. So Goethe, on September 11, 1773, wrote a goodbye note and left.

 

Out of this experience at the age of twenty-four he wrote “The  Sorrows of Young Werther”, the story of a young man so enthralled in unrequited love that life must stop. He borrowed a pistol from his dear love’s fiancé and killed himself on the day before Christmas. It was the most popular book Goethe ever wrote, it spoke to the private unacknowledged misery of many, the misery of the broken-hearted from which so much violence can come. He did not make any money from it. I think you would find it a fascinating read.

 

In May of 1775, Duke Karl August, the eighteen year old Duke of Weimar, having read the Werther book, invited Goethe to visit him in Weimar, indeed, he sent a carriage to take him across Germany. Goethe wasn’t interested, did not make connections with the carriage, set off on a little trip of his own perhaps toward Italy. The carriage somehow caught up with him. Impulsively he got in and set off for Weimar which was to become home to him for the rest of his life.

 

He had been brought up to follow in both grandfather’s footsteps to become the political boss of Frankfurt, so when he became the confidante of  Duke Karl August he found it natural to become deeply involved in public responsibility. Karl was immature, but was willing to learn. He valued Goethe as a friend, as an asset to his dukedom, paid him a fine salary and gave him a small garden home just outside the city.  At first, Goethe would accompany the duke on his wild hunting trips including heavy drinking and womanizing, (the Duke took any attractive peasant woman he pleased). Of course it was not proper for Goethe even to eat with the duke. As time went on he developed a silver mine to solve some of the duke’s economic problems. He did it well but there wasn’t enough silver there. He was put in charge of roads, then the army (which he reduced considerably in size), and eventually finances. During this time he wrote a play, Tasso, which was working out how the life of a poet and that of an administrator can be integrated in a creative way with all the tensions involved, issues with which many of us are familiar.

 

A woman became his mentor during this time—Charlotte von Stein, a good humored, educated, elegant married woman.  She was devoted to him, helping him to know himself, the ways of the court, the aristocracy and he learned how to become more statesmanlike.  He likes being on the inside of power, but gets restless with its drudgery—intractable problems, muddy journeys, stupid, stubborn colleagues, endless management rather than real improvement, chronic lack of funds. Many of us are familiar with those frustrations. He balanced his life with mountain climbing, and writing Edgmont, on the uses of power.

 

When the duke set off to join Frederick’s army, he arranged a sabbatical in Italy,  left Charlotte without saying goodbye, shortly after she declared her love for him, then spent a few days in Venice reveling in Palladio’s genius, He identified with Palladio since he was imbued with the spirit of the ancients. Then he steeped himself in classical art in Rome—for four years.  He had dreamed of being there all his life. He felt that he was born again the day he entered Rome.  He focused on the ancient monuments, buildings, streets, landscapes, paintings. He lived communally with artists, writing in the morning, exploring antiquities in the afternoons. He drew something that struck him each day, constantly returning to admire a statue of Athena.  It was a meditative time. His talents seemed meager in the shadow of the classic giants. All he could do was to internalize them and move on.

 

Soon after he returned to Weimar his stroll along the river near his home was interrupted by a young woman who approached him to ask if he could help her brother who now had to support the family due to their father’s death. Christiane Vulpius was twenty-three years old, good-natured, with fresh round face, neat white teeth, voluptuous lips, good looking in a homely, plump way.  It was love at first sight. They searched for each other desperately the day after they met. She dragged him to her bedroom and to what he reported as “indescribable happiness”. She worked in a factory making artificial flowers. She was practical, straight-forward, liked to organize domestic life, loved wine, lively company, and like Helen Mirren, she liked dirty jokes. She was erotically adventurous. Goethe writes of the mutual exploration of “all twelve books of sexual experience”. He was deeply in love, spent hours sketching her face. They married more than ten years after they met only after Christiane rescued him from the French army.  He devoted himself wholeheartedly to her and to their much loved son, August, until her death eighteen years later. In the bloom of their relationship he wrote Erotica Romans, giving a poetic, sensual twist to the classical experience he loved. It was Rome in passion pink.

 

Goethe became chancellor of Jena University. He brought in Immanuel Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Hegel, the Schlegel brothers and his friend Friedrich Schiller, serious intellectuals all, and made Jena a major cultural center in Germany.  Many would say that out of this flowering Germany became one of the most important cultural centers of the Western world.

 

 His friendship with Schiller met a deep need in both of them. They conversed daily, stimulating each other to write better every day. Schiller wrote meditations on the meaning of Goethe, how he shaped the western educated vision of what it means to be a human being. The ideal is that we should live our own lives and become whole and balanced versions of ourselves, being devoted to what we love, seeing all realistically with love—centered and calm, vital but poised.  They now stand Goethe’s hand on Schiller’s arm outside the present-day German National Theatre in Weimar. To my mind, they had the right idea about how life is to be lived.

 

The greatest thing about him is that because he was such an emotionally  healthy genius he could look more squarely at Germany’s darkness, and his own. Throughout his life he wrote his Faust, with its playful God and beguilingly likeable devil. He could appreciate the beauty and the horrors, the love and hate, the dreams and their dashing, the wonder of innocence and the death of it, the liveliness of children and their brutalization, the extraordinary feats adding richness to life and  the holocaust-like atrocities made all the worse by being done in the name of righteousness--owning his own share in the light and the darkness as all of us must do. He could look at it all long and steady. Lyrically showing that every good can be really good and can be subverted into something really destructive—except for generosity.

 

After Goethe’s death Germany managed to gather its strength after being shoved around by other nations. The muscle for this strength came from the Prussian militia. Many fiefdoms were finally united after military victories in 187l. It took dictatorial leaders to hold them together. The Siegenthaler, the tall, elegant column under which Obama spoke before his election, is the commemorative emblem of that victory. After that the Kaisers with Bismark’s remarkable diplomatic and executive steering created a powerful nation. My father, born in 1898, grew up during the first decade of the last century when this pride and power was blossoming to a fever pitch. It is not too much to say that the whole world celebrated Germany as the pinnacle of culture at that time. A recent book, “German Genius” written by Peter Watson, elaborates this time when Germany was without question foremost in knowledge, science, philosophy, psychology, technology, music. Their universities were the best. Germany was the most creative country in the world.

 

When I visited Berliner Dom, the great Lutheran cathedral in Berlin, I was hit with the force of my father’s expansive pride in the Kingdom of God, given a great boost, shaped by the German pride ingrained in his youth.  High above is Martin Luther’s statue. At the side is the great, great organ to blow forth praises. In the central stained glass window is the suffering Christ reflecting German suffering. The powerful Kaisers are all entombed below, and above all is the towering pulpit emblazoned with my Father’s mantra, “The Word of God Abides  Forever.” I remember  vividly the time I heard him discuss with a friend what was most important in life. His friend said, “To be a good example,” Father said “To preach the Word.” This visit to Berliner Dom expanded my understanding of him immeasurably.

 

Since that early decade, of course, there were dark things to come. Germany joined in the European powers’ thirst for war and lost after many gruesome deaths. Most of my father’s brothers died or were severely wounded in that war. His gentle mother died of sorrow. Germany was humiliated and flattened by the terms at Versailles, and the subsequent inflationary spiral immobilized government. The country turned desperately and enthusiastically once again as in ancient time to a military leader who led them to commit one of the worst atrocities in history. Let’s hope our season of deprivation and political immobilization doesn’t lead us into such foolishness. I was pleased to read a letter which my father received from his father in 1933, shortly before his death, decrying bitterly the rise of Hitler.

 

 

The same shame that I have felt about appalling German horrors has motivated the Germans mightily. They now have a small army. They have become one of the greenest countries in the world.  The subways, and buses, the light rail, the generous bike paths make automobile traffic in rush hour almost easy. They are industrious and claim to lead the largest economy in the world. Their Hauptbahnhof, a huge modern railroad station, is set to be the hub of speed rail, the center, with spokes to Moscow, London, Paris and Rome. I was informed that their president’s residence is five times larger than ours. I sensed no disrespect for America, but got the impression that they regarded us as almost irrelevant. It is as though they feel that they have long passed us by. I was so pleased to get back home.  In Germany there was so much darkness acknowledged and unacknowledged beneath the splendor. Maybe I was finding too much of it in myself.  

 

On the softer side, the Germans have opened Goethe societies throughout the world to teach the German language, and celebrate German culture.  There is one here in Chicago.   But I think we are all heirs of Goethe.  There are many German names in our Yearbook. Goethe’s spirit is akin to ours. He would have welcomed becoming a member of our club. We are like him. We are all accomplished professionals seeking an opportunity to express ourselves lyrically wherever our spirit takes us.  We can share whatever matters to us, have it appreciated and thereby enrich each other’s lives, as Goethe did.  Clark Wagner shares serious thoughts about the darkness of death. Steve Schlegel describes the colorful, multidimensional Native American who has given us many of the parks which are our city’s joy.  Bob Carton lovingly describes the terrain of northern Illinois on the way to his dear farm.  Yolanda Adler shares her journey with beloved photographs, and Yolanda Deen forges us a venue.  Helen Rogal discerns the depths of racial issues as well as anyone. The women in the club have enriched us as Goethe was enriched by the many women in his life. Brian Duff offers his poetic Irish prose; Frank Lackner keeps alive all our voices on the internet, Bob Strong plays with our numbers musically. Chuck Ebeling gives us the inside adventures of MacDonalds. Who can forget David Zimmer and his pirates, Jim Thompson’s philosophy of an ad man? Leon Carrow’s extraordinary contribution to home child birth in Chicago, Stan Allen’s wonder over China’s expansion, John Notz’ affection for Graceland Cemetery, Tony Batko’s old memories of Riverside. And so many others. We must restore Steve Thomas to his jazz piano.

 

It is a beautiful thing to express parts of ourselves that have not yet found

voice. It lends balance to life and is a generous gift to the rest of us. Deep friendships come of it, and many rich rewards—along with fine food and drink in elegant settings.

 

So here’s to father, Herman. Here’s to Goetz the valiant knight, the hard roots from which many of us come. Here’s to Luther and all those who have broken open the modern age. Here’s to Goethe who expresses the hard and the soft of life—all with affection. Here’s to the members of the Chicago Literary Club who share each other’s lives and literary dreams. May we enjoy our companionship through the hard and the soft of it, and may our numbers grow.