Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) was a professor for philosophy at the University of Leipzig from 1949-1956. But September 20, 1961, Associated Press reported: “The internationally admitted philosopher professor Ernst Bloch did not return from a visit in the Federal Republic (BRD, West-Germany) to the Soviet Zone (GDR, East-Germany).” One of his reasons: The building of the wall between the two German states August 13, 1961.
In his suit-case Bloch did not have no more possession than a crime-book of Agatha Christie. A typical nonchalant gesture of the philosopher of hope and progress. He wrote to the GDR-administration: “I am no longer determined to offer my work and myself to unworthy conditions.”
His peerless magnus opus, “The Principle of Hope”, he wrote in the years 1938-1947 in the “Public Library” in Manhattan at the 42nd street – after he had been driven out of Germany by the Nazis, who burned books and terrorized jews and socialists. His wife Karola earned the money, working as an architect in New York.
Back in Germany (1949) he at first helped to evolve Marxian thinking. But it did not last long, then he wrote: “Now chess must be finally played – instead of Bingo.” “Nowadays one can select between dull or wrong. With a wrong shoe however no one is able to walk far. A cloudy glass also makes anything cloudy, which is poured in…” With such aphorisms Ernst Bloch very soon became a mentor in the epicenter of the 1968 student movement in Tuebingen, a famous university in West-Germany.
Bloch often tried to convince via small anecdotes, for example the description, how Stephenson, the inventor of the steam engine, managed not to lose HOPE: “In vain he followed the first boiler on wheels running behind. The steam machine more and more rapidly approached a curve. The mother of all railway engines drove straightforward and exploded at the wall of a house. Stephenson now everything had understood completely. He built a new machine, equipped with a steering-wheel, using an iron-track.”
Like the art of engineering philosophy should never forget, that to proceed is an important component. This still has been the reasonable message of Bloch’s philosophy – though, in the meantime, some states (i.e. hammers and sickles) have had to change their doctrines fundamental …
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Comment by frizztext — 2010/01/18 @ 18:04 |
frizztext about Jana Hensel “After the wall”
Auto-Biographical
When I was born in 1945, my mother, a German armed forces helper on the way from Prague (deep South) up to an isle named “Ruegen” (in the very North), in the middle of her long journey through a breaking down Germany: she came down with me and, after one day in hospital, she stuffed me away into a children’s home (in a town called “Wuppertal”, West-Germany) – and left me to my fate. So she robbed me (among others) the experience of a childhood in the GDR, German Democratic Republic, “Wuppertal” should be “West-Germany” (American sector), the isle of Ruegen became Russian sector, behind the “Iron Curtain”. So I did not learn anything about “Young Pioneer meetings”, socialism, communism, STASI (the secret police) or summer camps of young “Pioneers”. In the Western hemisphere I grew up, drinking Pepsi Coke, receiving American Care packages, later on: listened to the Beatles, noticed the students movement in 1968, had no Ulbrich or Honecker, but chancellor Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl. But I tried to find out the place, where the woman could live, who had born me in that dark year 1945. After 40 years of persistent search, 1985, before the Berlin Wall fell (1989), I found out: She was living behind the “Iron Curtain” on the isle of Ruegen. And I started to look at this lost childhood, which I did not enjoy: She showed me her photo album: summer beach near “Kap Arkona” at the north-point of the isle, snowy winters on Hiddensee, flight ducks, cranes – but on the other hand coal heaps on washed-out sidewalks. Color films (Orwo), books, Trabi substitute parts: only hard to get. Nevertheless, I wanted to make up for my life in the GDR – in 1990 when the Berlin Wall was fallen: A schools inspector on the island pointed into a corridor, filled with former Stasi employees (security police) and informed me in this manner in an almost dumb “cadre conversation”, he unfortunately (thanks to the “reunification” of East and West-Germany) would have to hide many people in the teaching profession now (in hastiest kind). I should return please to West-Germany, where I just had come from. The direction of my journey seemed to be absolutely atypically, out of character, and not recommendable. No “Ossi” (vs. “Wessi”) – no job. As a result my mother, noticing, that all her dreams collapsed, joined an acute epidemic disease at that time: She committed a so-called balance sheets suicide. I was deprived of the chance to become a “zone child” a second time. Did I miss really much? Because the book of Jana Hensel has stimulated me to these thoughts – maybe her sometimes nostalgic “Ossi” writings (of course very different to my “Wessi”-point of view) are not as superficial, simple, banal, as I thought in the first moment? Compare her point of view …
Comment by frizztext — 2010/01/25 @ 12:50 |
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[…] helped Piet Mondrian and Max Beckmann, Andre Kertesz and Andreas Feininger, Theodor W. Adorno and Ernst Bloch to escape the “Third Reich”. A summary from Germany: by Frizztext: had my best days in […]
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