Medici Money, by Tim Parks. Reblog

In 2005 English writer Tim Parks, long resident in Italy, published MEDICI MONEY (Profile Books, 2005).

This book offers another take on Renaissance Italy, Florence, the Medicis, and the complexities of the period. It was also very prescient as major Western banks go bust, (and still wobble) much as the Medici, and before them the Bardi and Peruzzi banks had gone bust.

1

The Medicis’ added little if anything to the practice of banking. All innovations had already occurred by their time: double-entry book-keeping, bill of exchange (cheque), letter of credit, deposit account. In the Medici long-game of power-acquisition, marriage was arranged between Cosimo and the available daughter of the long-established Bardi banking family. Nothing, it would seem, was beyond them in the build-up and establishment of the family name, wealth and prestige.

But banking was always a risk business; the bank cannot predict how their customers will behave in uncertain situations. Means can be developed to ensure that customers/clients are only of repute, and liquidity. But neither kings nor cardinals were beyond unscrupulous, unwise acts and projects.

Tim Parks traces the English contribution to the cause of an earlier bank collapse. He writes: The Bardi and Peruzzi banks (… ) both collapsed in the 1340s, when Edward III of England reneged on huge debts.

In the 1470s we find the Medici bank in the same straits, through a similar source, this time King Edward IV of England. At this point in time it seems the London branch of the Medici bank was already owing huge amounts to the Rome branch. Agnolo Tani, ex-banker was brought in to clear up the mess. As he made his way from the London branch to Rome, the War of the Roses broke out in its second phase. Of course, Edward was financed by the Medici banks, and when he lost the throne, the chances of repayment also fell. He re-grouped, fought back and regained the throne.

There was also the little matter of who financed his opponents – the Medici bank, of course. They were, after all, nobles, titled men from established families.

A no-win situation, because whoever won power was at the expense of their opponents; the bank lost either way. To regroup and regain Edward needed money – once more he borrowed heavily from the bank.

2

The English main produce was finished wool cloth. There was a hair-raising interlude when Florence branch general director Francesco Sassetti refused to advance monies for cloth, until, he asserted, the cloth had been sold. Merchants and bankers could not be relied on to be in synch; the whole history of banking relates the discordant harmonies of these two.

Previous to finished wool cloth the main English export had been bulk wool. The key to wool use is in the treating. This is a science in itself – how to get the course, wiry, lanolin-rich wool into usable state. The Scots Gaelic Waulking Songs all came out of this home industry. They used the livers of dogfish.

Working in bulk, though – the importers had to discover the best and easiest means of treatment. It was found to be alum.

As much as there was a fortune to be made from wool, the ownership of the source of alum became a key factor. And this is what we find in the book. At a later stage in the Medici bank history we see Lorenzo currying favour with a Cardinal by granting him an alum mine.

3

One of the main sticking points in early banking was how to make a profit on what was entrusted to them.

Clearly, charging interest was out – Jesus expelling the money-lenders from the temple ruined that one. St Luke wrote: Give, without hope for gain. The Lateran Church Council of 1179 denied Christian burial to usurers; the General Church Council of Lyon, 1274, confirmed the ruling.

The way round this was intriguing. And Cardinals, even a Pope, benefitted from it. It was to use the exchange rates of different  States, countries. This meant that quantities of money in various forms, that is, acceptable to the source banks, had to be conveyed around Europe, from banking centre to banking centre. Each destination was chosen for its productive rate of exchange. This proved a workable system.

4

Another interesting insight to come out of this is how unsteady the economy proves to be.
In diaries from the last thirty to forty years I notice approximately ten-yearly cycles of recession. How easily we forget once employment is the norm once again.

Consider:

Most people imagine that if they borrow from a bank, they are borrowing other people’s money.  In fact, when banks and building societies make any loan, they create new money.  Money loaned by a bank is not a loan of pre-existent money; money loaned by a bank is additional money created.” Michael Rowbotham, Grip of Death (1998)

“Where did the money come from? It came – and this is the most important single thing to know about modern banking – it came out of thin air.  Commercial banks – that is, fractional reserve banks – create money out of thin air.” Murray Rothbard, The Mystery of Banking (2008)

“… by far the largest role in creating money is played by the banking sector… When banks make loans they create additional deposits for those that have borrowed the money.” Paul Tucker

And the payoff to this, to use a phrase that shows how of deeply ingrained financial methods have become to us, consider the following:

With respect that the above implications have with respect to our national debt, it should now be obvious that any attempt to pay off our national debt will ultimately be deleterious, as paying of debt is tantamount to extinguishing it from circulation which will  collapse the supply of money available.  This is how depressions arise due to there being a shrinkage of the money supply due to banks failing to lend.

So, I wondered, if money is created, how come we are not swimming in it by now?
The Bank of England site tells us:
This also means as you pay off the loan, the electronic money your bank created is ‘deleted’ – it no longer exists. You haven’t got richer or poorer. You might have less money in your bank account but your debts have gone down too. So essentially, banks create money, not wealth.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-is-money-created

Money is: 3% notes and coins, 18% reserves, and 79% bank deposits.

Do we now have to consider a life flipped where red is black, in accounting terms?
Have we perhaps been living there for longer than we imagine, going off the above quotes?

How people lived in the 15th century

in Flanders.

Well, leaky roofs were, if not the norm, then, an expected annoyance.

Take the case of George Chastellain, appointed chronicler and celebrator of the ducs de Burgundy, Philip the Good, and successor, Charles the Bold.
This spanned the period 1419 to 1477.
George Chastellain was active in his role between 1450s to 1470s.

It is the latter part of his life we have most incidental details.
In 1455 he moved into a ducal property in Valenciennes, of the Flemish/French border. The move was permanent.

There is nothing material of that period left, now. WW2 saw to that; the city had to be almost wholly rebuilt after the War.

1

What we have, was pieced together from various written sources by Graeme Small, in his book :
George Chastellain and the Shaping of Valois Burgundy, (The Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 1997).

In his earlier career, setting out into his literary life, he had work performed before the best writer of the time, Charles D’Orleans, resettled from a quarter century of ‘enforced’ English residence.
The work presented, The Azure Throne, was warmly received, both by duke Philip the Good, as well as Charles D’Orleans.

The residence, we are told, was situated in central Valenciennes as-was. The building (‘le lorgis Jorge’) overlooked the Escaut canal at the back, whilst the front had a courtyard. Oh, and a well. How easily we forget these basic necessities.
It was situated ‘close to’ the house of the grand receiver, and on the other, er… an oat loft. OK.

The building had a cellar, and chapel. Standard, then.
The ground floor was a ducal stables. Also there was a kitchen down there. Hm.

The actual rooms, chambers, etc, were up a staircase, which had doors leading off.
The staircase led up to a gallery. Here were the main rooms.
This gallery, however, was sort of like a cloister, open to the weather. In time he had to have installed wooden frames to stop the wind.

‘Off this draughty passage,’ writes Graeme Small, ‘lay several rooms…. Among these rooms were ‘le grant chambre de George Chastellain’, and one further, private room…. Built at Chastellain’s request, this was his ‘comptoir’ … where he wrote….‘

This was not a property for a family to live. George Chastellain did not marry, although he did have an acknowledged child, Gonthier.
Gonthier was brought up by his mother. By the time of his ‘majority’ his father had already died. His successor, Jean Molinet, elected to support the claims of Gonthier to applications for ducal support.

The times had changed, however. Charles the Bold was a very different character to Philip the Good. He was ‘the Bold’, but this also meant merciless, fearless. He was a warrior duke, and died in battle. He was expansionist, and his time was an unsettled time.

2

Here was George Chastellain at Valenciennes, away now, from the ducal court, as well as his ambassadorial missions to the royal court.
But Valenciennes was at an important meeting place en route between the two. Missives and ducal and court callers came constantly.
He wrote his great Chronicles here.

These Chronicles were lost, forgotten for centuries, until rediscovered.
… first edited by Buchon in Les chroniques nationales 1827 and re-edited by Kervyn de Lettenhove.: https://en.google-info.org/2406219/1/georges-chastellain.htmlhttps://en.google-info.org/2406219/1/georges-chastellain.html

These Chronicles, as well as George Chastellain’s surviving written works: political poems, ballades, formal poems, pieces written to other writers, allegorical plays etc became the main source material, or should we say, spring-board, for the huge and famous work
The Waning of the Middle-Ages,
by Johan Huizinga.

Here we read of the all-round sensual experience of the times: the noises – of parades, animals, people in general; the smells: no toilets, remember, and living close to animals, as here; the colours – this was the time of Jan Van Ecyk: look at those costumes.
jan-van-eyck.org
The gorgeous costumes, and furnishings of the Arnolfini portrait, give us a glimpse into the period, the Italian connections, and supposedly portrays their residence in Bruges.
This was also the period, and environment, for the great works of Flemish composer Johannes Ockeghem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Ockeghem)

Interestingly, when George Chastellain was taken on as chronicler of the Duke of Burgundy, Jan Van Eyck was also on the payroll. From the records of their recorded pay, George Chastellain’s the highest of the two.

George Chastellain was one the earliest of what became known as the Grands Rhétoriqueurs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grands_Rhétoriqueurs).
They were many, in time, and what may of begun as a latinate chronicling and court entertainments, evolved as writer responded to writer. We had eventually a force, and their fascination with “copia“, verbal games and the difficulties of interpretation link them to such Renaissance figures as Erasmus and Rabelais. (http://artandpopularculture.com/Rhétoriqueurs)

Such literary movements set off their own trajectories.
They were succeeded by rejection, and counter-claim for prominence, by Pierre de Ronsard’s La Pléiade.
But also both were rejected by the example of Francois Villon and his anti-rhetorical, ultra-realist writings.

Young Voices on Slavery

Let me once again refer you to The Low Countries online site:

https://www.the-low-countries.com/

The site hosts pages on Arts, History, Language, Literature, Society, as well as podcasts.

All these are in English.

They regularly check with readers on how best to improve the site. And so, acknowledge that many have difficulty reading tracts, extended essays etc online. They time-note each piece they publish.
This reading online issue, along with energy use, I am also very aware of, and so am very grateful for this move.

For instance, under the Arts section there is currently The Impact of COVID-19 on Dutch Artists Worldwide. This is noted as a 5 minute reading time piece.

The visuals are all very high quality, articles, reviews, news all up-to-date, high quality, and very pertinent to all readers.
There is material here in translation that is not available elsewhere.

One of the Series articles the site runs is Young Voices On Slavery, which I heartily recommend:

https://the-low-countries.com/series/young-voices-on-slavery

If you read no other on this site, you must read this one.

Here, we read,  Eighteen young Flemish and Dutch authors from deBuren’s Paris writing residency give a voice to an artefact from the Slavery exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Because this is a joint online enterprise with The Low Countries, the works are copyrighted, and cannot be published elsewhere.

This is an excellent enterprise, and not one I have come across elsewhere.
The exhibition opens plantation cash books, contracts of slavers and other artefacts, for young writers’ responses.
There is really good work here.
As well as bringing the reality of the practices into contemporary concerns, linking the Black Lives Matter campaign, and recognising all nations contributions to the promotion and development of slavery.
The residency maintains the relevance of history into present day awareness.

Of the many works here, one that particularly appealed to myself, was the work by Elsbet De Pauw: a line, a house, a skin.
I had originally intended to reproduce this work, along with links, but copyright issues prevented it.

It is the intelligence of this response that struck something in me.
And this is the only work by this writer available in English translation.

I do really hope to read more of this writer. She has nothing, as yet, available on the Poetry International site, either.
https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/home

Other Series pages are : On the Shoulders of Old Masters; Old Works Young Writers; Our Colonial Legacy; Migration, the Other way Round

This site is full of glorious wonders. I urge you to explore.

https://www.the-low-countries.com/#

Holocaust Memorial Day 27th January

BE THE LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

Be the light in the darkness is the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2021.

We will continue to do our bit for as long as we can, secure in the knowledge that others will continue to light a candle long after us.

– Gena Turgel MBE, survivor of the Holocaust (1923-2018)

Watch the UK HMD Ceremony

https://www.hmd.org.uk

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2021/jan/27/holocaust-remembrance-day-in-pictures

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-55816309

Effigies in the Mirror of Time, by Daniel Dragomirescu

This is a dual Romanian/English publication.
Available from:
Colectile Revistei ‘Orizont Literar Contemporani’, Bibliotheca Univeralis

There are so many untold stories.

Early mornings I would be waiting, shivering, for the early bus to go to work. One companion of those mornings was a Romanian man. Once he told me, ‘Boating was my life, then. I would have happily spent my whole life sailing on the Black Sea.’
‘One year,’ he said, ‘everyone was issued with iodine tablets. No exceptions; no explanations. That was thought to be sufficient. I remember it; it was 1986. The year of Chernobyl.’

*

Daniel Dragomrisecu has set himself a very important task, in this book. He is rescuing the memories, the works, the reputations of people lost to the old regime. People who fell out of favour. People lost to time’s relentless tumble.
He gives us eight recollections, and revaluations.

Romania.
The Ceausescu regime, with its grand empty palace and boulevard. Claudio Magris, in his book Danube, writes: “Hiroshima” is the name  bestowed by the people of Bucharest on the quarter of the city  which Ceausescu is gutting, levelling, devastating … building his Centre, the monument to his glory.

But what of the starving villages’  untold stories?

What Daniel Dragomirecu has done here is collect together articles and memoirs he has published in newspapers, magazines, journals, and published them in a dual translation book, called Effigies in the Mirror of Time.

Ok, we started with Romania, but we need to narrow-down, zoom-in. Let’s find Moldavia, and in Moldavia, the region of Vaslui. This is the hub for all the stories, the personalities.
How often do we hear or read news from Moldavia?

We have here writers, intellectuals, philosophers, engineers, and a comedy actor: the exuberant, gifted, Constantin Tanese.
This sketch-song of his could well be a timeless anthem:

Nothing has changed / Everything is the same
/ Everywhere the same lies / So what have we done? /
Revenge is plotted behind the scenes / As it has not
been seen before / The country is full of VIPS / So
what have we done? / Our people leave, our people
come! / This is the famous slogan, / We have been
fools to vote again / So what have we done?

The story was that he was shot whilst on stage – he was doing a satire on Russians, the new power. A Soviet officer in the audience stood, up and shot him dead.
Did it really happen? Was that how we wanted him to go?
Or was the end of the great man more prosaic?
Truth and legend, both are necessary, both are stories from which we gain life and sustenance. But truth must take precedence; always.

When communism was abandoned, many here in the West hoped that the best of that regime – or was it the most durable? – would be combined with the best/most durable in the West, to create a better society. The old Marxist dialectic, with its synthesis: how people love to make patterns.
Now, it seems, many feel what they have instead is another lost possibility. Because what modern capitalism has to offer is repugnant in many ways. And durability does not promise anything, either.

In the West these ideas, the dialectic, were never put into practice; we did not witness its effects on people as with the people Daniel here rehabilitates.

Take, for instance, Cezar Ivanescu (1941 -2004). He was an uncrowned prince among academics: Don Cezar. Writer, philosopher, critic, academic par excellence. He was severely beaten in the 1990 Miner’s Strike, and hovered between life and death for weeks.

As a less violent example, take Nicolae Malaxa (1884 to 1965). Born in humble circumstances he grew up and developed an acute managerial sense combined with a dedicated engineering skills. Train engine maker, car engine manufacturer, heavy-engineering magnate. Only to lose it all when all his great enterprises were nationalised under the new regime.
What the man could have done for Romania.

Many here were academics, writers, poets.
We ask now, what is the worth of such work? We ask that because everything now is monetarised, including health-care, basic necessities. Cultural value differs from monetary value; there is also the value of a persons’ life in itself.

And the irony of free-thought. In the context of the early part of last century when these people were young, free-thought still meant mostly left-wing ideas. And so when left-wing ideas became a (supposed) reality, they found themselves once more on the margins. Why was this?
Left-wing practice had its own very special character. Only those who legislated knew what it was; this is a well-known managerial tactic, to keep everyone off-balance.
What was one of Stalin’s first acts as leader? Get rid of all the old Bolsheviks.
The old and out-of-place ideas and idealists had to go. The last thing they needed was free-thought.

Teodar Rescanu (1887 to 1952) was such a left-wing idealist. And writer: it is heartening to see his books being re-discovered.
He was out-of-step with the new regime. He had been imprisoned for his support of the left, but even that did no good with the new boys. He was black-listed, and the ostracism became increasingly brutal as conditions hardened.  Suicide was always an option, and he chose it.

One of the many virtues that stand out among these exemplars, is their dedication to the people, and to the idea of Romania. It almost becomes as if the whole communist experiment has a hiccup in history, a glitch, that all are quickly working at eradicating.
That is, until you see the human dimension.
The people in this book are ones who lost out to that glitch, and the ones who follow – this is especially illustrated in Daniel Dragomirescu’s relationship with Don Cezar, and in turn with poet Ion Enoche – are left to reconcile this loss, and rescue from it a sense of human value.

V I Catarama – it is very hard to find general information on the man. And yet at one time he was an esteemed man of letters, and teacher – an Apostle of Education, as Daniel Dragomisrecu entitles him.
He fell foul of the system in 1958, and was held until 1964. He was the son of a farm worker, a left-wing supporter. It was not enough.
His reinstatement was marginal; he was allowed to teach. Although the continued scrutiny this entailed must have been oppressive.

Ion Enoche is an interesting case: on the fall of the old regime, he still had no place. He had become such a thorough non-conformist he could no longer adapt to any system. Daniel Dragmirescu implies that the over-riding  atmosphere after the fall of the regime was predominantly political, and busy with rebuilding the new Romania.
Enoche could not adapt to this, he was singular, and one-directional; his sole focus was poetry, a poetry cleansed of any politics, official or otherwise.
How was this possible?
Daniel Dragomirescu gives a moment from one of his works:

a poor, bedraggled, and starving Roma woman was riffling through a garbage can
for ‘a ray of sunshine.’

The set up of contrasting elements, and steering of image out of one circumscribed field of imagery towards another, more open and encompassing one, one of human values, is masterly.
It is, still, we could argue, political.
See also:
https://ion-enache.blogspot.co.uk/

Another online source related to this book is:
Ion Iancu Lefter: https://cumpana.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/pagina-121.pdf

*

This is such an important and necessary project.
It only tells a fraction of the story, of course; he acknowledges this.
It is a work of love, as well as rehabilitation.

May I suggest that he follow it up with a companion book, on the subject of notable women?
I would eagerly look forward to such another book.

History and Reality

There are many, many problems with our time and people that I have struggled with over the years.
How can we move ahead if still held back by these… they must be glitches, plummets into madness? ‘The blindness of God,’ perhaps.
If we think of ourselves as planing onwards towards better futures, – think of a slow low and elegant curve upwards, of improvements in general technological, scientific, especially ethical and moral codes. Then does this leave us open to misrepresentation and misinterpretations of our basic human nature? And so, prone to perpetuating these same horrible acts?

One of these ‘problems’ I have been struggling with has been how people could, that is, certain officials backed up by the rank and file officers, think it acceptable to release poison gas onto battlefields, into trenches, of the opposite forces.
The recent Times Literary Supplement has an article on Einstein’s brief stay in England. Mentioned in a sideline is Fritz Haber who helped develop this ‘tactic’. So, we have a name.
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-public-and-private-lives-of-albert-einstein-p-d-smith/

How could anyone think that was acceptable behaviour under any circumstances?
Is my problem a lingering belief in an agreed gentlemanly conduct, even in wartime. The two 1929 Geneva Conventions, perhaps?

I began to wonder whether there was something about the German make-up, at that time, beset by War reparations, the Financial crisis, and the Soviet Union’s internationalist programme.
And then, of course, there was the Holocaust.
Completely unimaginable how that could be perpetrated, on such scale and over such a length of time. How was that possible?
Not that there have not been pogroms of great brutality throughout history. They are easy to forget, especially if one’s own history glosses over such self acts.

The scale, I think, is the problem.

I have come across incidents in history, going way back, of equal and sustained barbarity. All smaller scale, but as bad in their ways. Precedents, then.
And then I came across this book review:
Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45, and the American Cover Up

https://contagions.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/japanese-use-of-plague-during-world-war-ii/

That the Japanese military had indeed been conducting biological tests on prisoners using ‘plague, glanders, anthrax’ etc to see which was most effective, i.e. quicker, and most contagious. They extended these tests to villages, to find which could decimate larger areas.
This was conducted in Manchuria/Manchukuo, preWar.
Now, Manchuria was bordered, in the West and North, by the Soviet Union.
They also were carrying out similar tests, and along this same border.

So, is the German make-up exonerated?

It is the military mind, then, surely…
how it isolates itself from common morality ( how could you kill wholesale otherwise?) but in time becomes self-sufficient in its own utilitarian ethics and morals.

And so, in a little way, but nonetheless revealing, is myself looking for cause (blame?) in the German make-up, that gives a quick glimpse into my failings (get the hint? Conjugate my) – a lack of sufficient background knowledge.

I reviewed a book some years back, The Causes of War, by Professor Hidemi Suganami, published by Oxford University Press:

https://pure.aber.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/the-causes-of-war%28486854c0-7420-4dc2-b947-48ff5f1b0090%29.html

His conclusion? Wars exist because they are continue to be seen as a viable option.
It sounds banal, especially after the hugely meticulous research and arguments he perused and conducted.
Wars seem as viable an option now as they ever have.
Short-term thinking and blinkered reasoning.
It is the aftermath, though, that takes generations, centuries, to struggle to accommodate, or reject, that wars leave behind is the real face of war

And so, that is where I begin here, as part of those attempts to accommodate the problems of my time , and yes, as can be seen, even attempt a brief rejection (German make-up).

We are all prone to these creeping errors of thought. We all must be constantly on guard – against ourselves, that is, our mono-cultural attitudes, backgrounds, and prejudices.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/european-colonial-powers-still-loth-to-admit-historical-evils

This is not something that needs to be started now – it is the common practice of modern historians and cultural materialists, and has been for many years. It’s already on its way.
Let’s climb on board.

Reblog: Book Review – The Spider and the Spies: The Secret Files of Stasi & Co, by Karen Margolis

Ebook: The Spider and the Spies: The Secret Files of Stasi & Co, by Karen Margolis
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spider-Spies-secret-files-Stasi-ebook/dp/B0758145MD/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1515355645&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Spider+and+the+Spies%3A+The+Secret+Files+of+Stasi+%26+Co%2C+by+Karen+Margolis

Karen Margolis gives here first-hand testimony of her experience of the GDR, and the Stasi State.
Some years ago, after much deliberating, she decided to apply to read her Stasi files. Their filing system was hermetic, to say the least.

It was not an easy decision.

What do you hope to find, and what do you dread?
There are always surprises, unwelcome or not. The husband of a close friend, himself close, had a quiet word: You may well find my name there.
She could not say anything to her friend, his wife.
And so the game of confidences, secrets, continues, just as it did under the system.
The stomach-churning knowledge, that blights relationships, friendships, even marriages.

And what of the ‘outing’ that was endemic for a period? To whose advantage was that? Hardened agents, with years of training and experience in emotional blackmail and manipulation, could still come out of it relatively unstuck. Transferable skills. The old tricks. And they were useful in the new Germany.
Miriam, in Anna Funder’s book, Stasiland,
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stasiland-Stories-Behind-Berlin-Wall/dp/1847083358/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1515355920&sr=1-1&keywords=stasiland
found herself working under an ex-Stasi officer on a radio station, using the same tactics to manipulate people, this time the staff, as he had back then.
Also, see: The Disclosures of Respect: The Public Exposure of Stasi Informers after the German Reunification, by Juan Espindola
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.896.3940&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Anna Funder’s book is based on her research for a radio programme. She advertised for interviews. She focussed particularly on the role of the Secret Police, the Stasi.
One of the names that came up, was a Herr Von Schnitzler. He was popularly known as Herr Von Schni, because that is how far the announcer got before being turned off. He ran a regular TV programme, The Black Channel. His programme followed airing of programmes from the West, and he sat there afterwards onscreen and pulled the programme to pieces. Many named him the most hated man on TV. You can imagine his hectoring, bigoted sneer.
How to deal with such a character in an interview. To Anna Funder’s credit she did it, she got in under his radar:
‘There was a serious attempt to build a socialist state, and we should examine why, at the end, that state no longer exists. It’s important.’
He replied:
‘I noticed relatively early… that we would not be able to survive economically.’

This is important. She cites figures in the book, on East German production, and particularly on the biggest employers (‘There is no unemployment… you are seeking work’). The retreating Soviets had dismantled and shipped back what plant machinery they could, at the end of the War.
And it turns out the biggest employer in the whole of East Germany was… The Stasi.

I am not talking about the tens of thousands of informers: their remuneration was pitiful, but the managerial ranks: it was based on military lines, so the Colonels and upper and immediately lower ranks.
The biggest employer.
And their GDP?
0.
They ‘produced’, in turn, nothing.

In fact, a good case can be made for them undermining the survival and productivity of the State.
They demoralised, victimised, ruined, lives, destroyed families, lied outright, falsified… murdered. But actually produced nothing. Unless you think an atmosphere of paranoia and continual fear a product.

The people separated the Stasi from the State: they supported the State, and hated the Stasi. They were in reality one.
When the end came it was the Stasi took the brunt, and the State officials in wealthy dachas and country houses were un-reproached. That was, after all, ‘normal.’
Peter Schneider, in The Wall Jumper,
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wall-Jumper-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141187980/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1515355862&sr=1-1&keywords=the+wall+jumper
cites many examples of Easterners supporting the Eastern system, its social security, its low prices.

So when you come to the impact of this on people, it is The Stasi you think of first.
Their presence was everywhere.

Don’t let them through your door! Someone says.
– In the 1970s the response was a grim resentment, an entrenched attitude.
The 1970s were grim everywhere.
– The 1980 generation’s attitude was Ignore them. Have fun. Enjoy.
But if you didn’t let them in, they would summon you. If you didn’t go, they would pick you up at work, school, on the street.

Give them nothing.
They had meticulous details about your personal life, so much so that the notion of a private life would seem a mockery. And they had ways of manipulating you into quiescence, through shaming, robbing you of choice, free will, revealing that what you thought was basic humanity, was a construct, and so, manipulable.

Where did this information about you come from?
Ask yourself: could you bear to know? Would your life be easier, happier, not knowing? To not know is not necessarily to speculate What? and Who? but also perhaps to wonder What if not?
Peter Schneider’s character, Robert, would say that way of thinking was naive, Western. For him the State controlled every time you moved your hand to drink coffee, which coffee you drank, when you drank it, and why.

Where does the truth meet reality?
In testimony, like Karen Margolis gives here.
This is a valuable book. We still need to understand those difficult times.

Reblog: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall

30 years!
So much promise and expectation… squandered?

The Collapse – The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall. By Mary Elise Sarotte.
Basic Books, 2014. ISBN 9780465064948

I want to recommend a great recent book on the story behind the fall of the Berlin Wall. (This piccie of the cover does not catch the eye and face of a border guard peering through the gap in the Wall at the photographer.)  It’s a history book – but don’t let that put you off.

The author, Mary Elise Sarotte, is Visiting Professor of Government and History at Harvard, and Dean’s Professor of History at University of Southern California.

Another link worth following:http://www.katrin-hattenhauer.de/

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I’d like you to meet Harald Jager. He was born in 1943, the son of a Border policeman in what was soon to become East Germany. By 1964 he had entered the Border patrol himself.

What is special, in this story, about Harald Jager?

He was the senior Stasi employee on Bornholmer strasse Border Crossing Point, on the night of 9th November 1989. ‘He was essentially a record-keeper, one of the deputies to the senior figure…’ Mary Elise Sarotte writes.

He had begun work at eight that morning for a twenty-four hours’ stint at Bornolmer. He was the senior figure on duty. He was also very worried, to begin with: he had just had a test for possible cancer. He was nervously waiting for the results.

Gunter Schabowski, the Politburo member for the Media, had made a hasty announcement at the end of a tedious TV broadcast that evening. This end announcement was itself a hastily patched-together script; it couldn’t be examined by top Politburo people because they were tied up in internal wrangling. Nor could it be given assent by the Soviets because they were on extended leave celebrating the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

They all presumed it was bona fide, and gave it the nod.

What was it about, this script? The relentlessly growing pressure inside East Germany had forced the authorities into giving some kind of placatory announcement. But there were those, the hard-liners, favoured the China Approach: the Tiananmen Square resolution to trouble-causers. And there were the ones who called for more diplomatic solutions. The two were destabilising the already atrophied regime from the inside.

This script announced that East Germans would be able to travel outside, legitimately. But it was an emigration only exit. They must apply for permits of course. And here the regime thought they were being crafty: such permits would be difficult.

When would this come into effect?

Right away.

The gabbled announcement on TV – he had not read it through beforehand – seemingly handed to East Germans an exit visa. Not only that but the announcement named West Berlin, a rare occurrence in connection with travel. Especially during this period of great unrest: the Hungarian border-leak had been plugged; the Czech leak was causing great upset and putting even more pressure on the East German regime,

 

Harald Jager was senior man on duty that night. He had twenty-five year’s loyal service behind him.
Then people started turning up at the check point, demanding to be let through. They had heard the broadcast, and very few regime members had bothered to listen. Harald Jager had heard it – he was astounded.

People began to turn up in their hundreds. This was happening at every check point. The numbers grew all night long. They were peaceful, but insistent. Thousands came, and they were growing.
This was on the back of the huge demonstrations in Leipzig and Dresden

In a centralised system like East Germany, all permissions had to come from above. Harald put through about thirty calls to his superiors that night: How do we deal with this?

And they had no idea. They tried all sorts of tactics, but outright denial of exit would most certainly make matters worse, turn a peaceful gathering of people into a potential danger.
All guards had received instructions months before not to fire unless attacked themselves.

One tactic the superiors suggested was take in the ring-leaders, the trouble-makers, as though processing for exit, then let them out – but do not allow them to return. They did this.

The trouble was people saw others getting through.

The regime had misread the people so badly: there were no ring-leaders; trouble-makers were just people who were more insistent, made more noise.

This made the pressure worse.

He rang his superiors again: What do we do? Harald’s superior patched him into a conference call: Don’t speak, just listen.

And what he heard was his superiors, out of touch, out of the loop of what was actually happening on the ground, questioning his abilities, calling him a coward. The connection was cut. Harald was left to himself, fuming, betrayed, abandoned.

We all know what happened, but it is the How that is most important. Read and find out.

Harald Jager in later life, at Bornholmer strasse:

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This is just one of the fascinating, heartbreaking REAL stories contained in this book.
All are meticulously researched: many, like this one, are pulled together from  interviews cross-checked with Stasi phone transcripts.

What happened to Harald? In unified Germany he had no job. He managed odd work here and there. Then he retired, on a meager pension.

Oh, and his cancer tests proved negative.

Many East German dissidents felt let down by the unification. Some felt that a greater democratisation was already on its way. Think of Gorbachev and his modernisations, his Glasnost etc. But the Czech and East German regimes opposed them. This disunity played its part in the communications failure of 9th November 1989.

Some dissidents hoped for – and I have read this recently as well – that the new Germany would combine the best of both East and West. In the event they felt, rightly, they had been steam-rollered by the Western powers. I had hoped this would happen too: creating a new European model – ah, the old dialectical synthesis idea, how it lingered.

One of the many commendable aspects of this book is how Mary Elise Sarotte has kept Western (USA, Britain, France) politicking out of the story. Hers is a story told by the participants, and they were the people on the ground, the streets.

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Many talk of ‘tipping points’ in history. This seems a bit of a lazy idea: maybe it is that concepts of such a thing as ‘history’ gives birth to these things. History is the story the historian tells from the information of all sorts, in all forms, its nuances and contexts: history is in reality a scatter of information around several centres within an event time-frame. This posits a psychological angle on the presentation of history as history: the historian’s predilections. It is inevitable. How they get around this, I suspect, is why many seized on Derrida’s ideas so readily: history as the text of texts of texts: objective, measurable to some extent.

An identifiable tipping point is the construct of the historian.

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Wikipedia gives us the following; let’s use it as a footnote:

His claim to be the first to breach the Wall was questioned in 2009 when Heinz Schäfer, a former colonel in the East German army, claimed that he had opened his crossing at Waltersdorf in the south of the city a few hours earlier, which would explain the supposed presence of East Berliners in the area before Jäger opened his gate.

Later life

Following the fall of the Wall, he was unemployed. In 1997, he was able to save up enough to open a newspaper shop in Berlin with his wife. He has since written a book about his experience called The Man Who Opened the Berlin Wall.

The day after: 10th November, 1989, Bornholmer strasse Crossing Point:

ADN-ZB-Roeske-10.11.89-Berlin: Rund eine Million DDR-Bürger besuchten am Sonnabend Berlin (West). An den Grenzübergangsstellen, wie hier an der Bornholmer Straße wurde zügig abgefertig. Vom Ministerium des Innern wurden seit dem 9. November weit über 10 Millionen Visa für Privatreisen und über 17 500 Genehmigungen für ständige Ausreise aus der DDR erteilt.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1989-1118-017 / Roeske, Robert / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5424866

Reblog: Johan Huizinga, Dutch historian

I’d been email-chatting with an historian, one of a new group, with their own angle, agenda, their own name. I signed off saying I was just going to re-read some Huizinga.
And that was it. I did not hear from him again.
I had gone beyond the Pale.

That is the problem with Academies, they become so culty, hemmed-in with codes and etiquettes. I had obviously mentioned an historian who was not ‘in’ with their group.
I was going to re-read him because I found so much of value there. But it wasn’t what they valued.
He did it differently.
Heaven forbid.

Johan Huizinga is mostly known in the English-speaking world for his magisterial The Waning of the Middle Ages – the more correct title, apparently, is The Autumn of the Middle Ages – published in 1924. It is this book made the man’s name. He became a leading Dutch, indeed European, historian.

His dates are 1872 to 1945.
That last date in particular I want you to note: died February, 1945. He had been interned in 1942 after criticism of the invasion forces. Eventually, after much clamour and agitation by the international history community, he was released. He was released in that terrible winter of 1944/5.
It is now estimated that 10,000 Dutch people died that winter, after the Nazi’s cut off food and energy supply lines, in retaliation. As the Allied forces moved through France, the Belgian and Dutch citizens could see liberation so near, so inevitable. They cheered them on. When the advance was stalled in the Ardennes, the Nazi’s took their revenge.

He began his academic career as a student of Indo-Germanic languages; he then studied comparative linguistics. He taught Oriental Studies for many years. It was not until his 30s he turned to medieval studies. Here he excelled.

His book on the later middle ages gives us the clamour and spectacle of the period, the life-lived-in-public aspect.
He also fills in with some of the gaps in current information on, for instance, such figures as Georges Chastellain, and others grouped as the grands rhetoriqueurs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grands_Retoriqueurs.
This gives us, in turn, the real nature of the much acclaimed period. In this book he sets the increasing brutality and violence of the time against its constructed images of courtois and chivalry.
The book investigates the Burgundian Court in its positioning as potential alternate power-base to the royal court.
Professor Ralph Strom-Olsen of Madrid University, put up a very interesting paper on this: Georges Chastellain and the Language of Burgundian Historiography, that is available on Academia.edu from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/

He has other books, influential in modern fields. Take Gaming – for this the ‘go to’ book is his Homo Ludens, published 1938.
Homo Ludens puts forward, and illustrates, the theory that our main and enduring activities as civilized people, is a form of play, serious play; that is, play with rules.
He traces word games as the origins of rhetoric, to Cicero’s monumental legal disputes; he sees here also the dress-up aspect in legal and royal court costume.

Playing and Knowing is an intriguing chapter, challenging us to consider acquisition of knowledge, experimentation, indeed logic, as forms of play-activity.
How can we know anything until we put aside certainty, the known, and step out into maybe-land? But this play is deadly serious: riddle-solving, the penalty of death, are part and parcel of the game.

The point is, he stimulates thought, he makes us look at our institutions differently.
The range of this subject can be seen to refer us back to to the subject of Professor Huizinga’s first PhD: The Role of the Jester in Indian Drama.
https://gamingconceptz.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/huizingas-magic-circle.html

You can go to the crazy end and cite the late 1960’s Playpower ideals here. Oz Magazine founder, Richard Neville’s book, Playpower, was the bible for attempts at neutralizing governments and their powers through play, through the skewing of seriousness and power politics, by returning to origins, and seeing what all its accumulated kudos really was.

Another book of his well worth searching out is Men and Ideas, first published in translation in 1959.
This collection of essays is concerned with ‘the task of cultural history.’
The books have dated, that is, their range of subject matter and methods of treatment, have been left behind by modern tastes.
But the general reader will not find a more stimulating essay on Peter Abelard, than this.

His essay on John of Salisbury is also outstanding.
Who was he? He was a 12th Century English cleric, who became apologist for Thomas a Beckett. From modest beginnings he worked his way up, studying under Peter Abelard, was secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Theobald; he even met who was to become known as St Bernard of Clairvaux.
John’s main legacy to us, however, is his Policraticus; the study is a slice of his time.
http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/source/salisbury-poli4.html
Chaucer valued it highly for its political relevance, its clear thinking, its civil conscience.

His essay on Erasmus, which was the heart of the collection… is it the translation? No; I think Johan Huizinga became exasperated with his subject. The reader comes away with the impression he blamed him for wasting his opportunities, for not being as good as he should have been.

I would dearly love to give as much information on his wife, Mary Schorer.

Her story must be as fascinating, and as eventful.

Their son, Leonard Huizinga, became a prolific and popular Dutch novelist, with his comedic Adriaan and Olivier series.
There is also another son, of whom I can find nothing.

See also:
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/historian/johan_huizinga.html

Harald Harada- reblog

Harald Harada – they don’t make them like that any more.
Born 1015, died 1066.
His real name was Harald Sigurdsson, son of a king of Norway. He ascended the throne himself in 1047.

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In 1030 he fought on the battle of Stiklestad, aged 15. It didn’t go well for him, and the contending forces of Danish king Cnut the Great drove him and his retinue into exile. He didn’t take this easily, and later in life made darned sure he got back at them, claiming kingship of Denmark, as well as Norway.
It must have been that period he earned that epithet Harada, that is, hard ruler.

Before this though, is when he really had the time of his life.

Exile meant travelling through Russia – in those days consisting of principalities ruled over by separate princes, kings. The heart of old Russia in those days was Kiev. And that’s where he headed.

He was a king’s son, he was used to privilege and the companionship of princes and the relatively affluent.

Travelling as an exile was not exactly comfortable, or was his company always what he was used to. So, he headed for the princes and kings. And they welcomed him!

If he followed the Viking paths down the rivers, most importantly the Volga, the Don, then there was the place. Why do I say this? Well, Yaroslav’s wife Ingegerd was a distant relative of Harald. She was a Swedish princess married to a Kiev King.

In Kiev he spend some time as captain of the warriors of Yaroslav the Wise. He rode many campaigns with them. Most probably against the Polovetsians, a nomadic people from Siberia, who had settled in what we now know as the Ukraine. For more on the Polovetsians, see The Song of the Campaign of Igor.

By 1034 he was in Byzantium, once again pestering the kings and princes. He became a Commander of the famous Varangian Guard, until 1042.

The story was, he had developed a habit of dipping his hand into the treasury; at one point he was imprisoned because of this. He had to leave Byzantium under cover of night: he had requested permission to leave, but was refused. So he ended up back in Kiev. It was here he married Elisabeth, Yaroslav’s daughter. His poem to Elisabeth has been suggested as the origin of The Lament of Yaroslavna, in the Song of Igor’s Campaign.
His campaigns were reputedly wide ranging, taking him into the Middle-East, even as far as Iraq in some chronicles.

They returned to Norway, where he promptly set about claiming for himself the throne. There followed a period of fierce settlements amongst old enemies and detractors.

By 1066 we find him leading a force against Harold of England. They engaged forces at Stamford Bridge. From what we know of this battle, he was killed – an arrow in the throat? And then English Harold had to tramp down with his forces to Hastings, way down in Kent, for himself, an arrow in the eye. And the rest, they say, is history.

2
It is interesting to note the dates here; I know, dates are the bane of history.

It’s just somewhere to hang the structure to see it better. When you’re talking about a life it’s just not chronological – we have lapses, go back a step or two, sometimes (if we’re lucky) race ahead, or more often than not have long periods of fallow: all over the place; any idea of chronology is crazy.

It’s just a device for ordering stuff in retrospect.

In this case they reveal to us a bit more of the man, and of the expectations, and mindset of the time he lived in.

Born 1015, in Norway – we don’t know where as such – but he was a part of the Norwegian ruling elite. His father Sigurd Syr was second husband to Asta Gundbrandsdattar. Why is this important – the form of his mother’s name became synonymous with Icelandic formations after the Settlement. Her first marriage resulted in the birth of Olaf, later St Olaf, king from 1025 to 1028.

It was after this the Norwegian throne was claimed by the Danish king, Cnut the Great. Yes, that’s right, That King Cnut, the one who also claimed the English throne.

The next date is 1030, the battle of Stiklestad, one of the most famous battles in Norway. It happened around Trondheim. Harald sided with his half brother Olaf against local claimants for the throne.

Oh, by the way – he was 15 at the time. Accounts say he acquitted himself well. He came from the battle honoured, but injured. It was thought best, safest, ‘to live in exile’.
His exile also entailed his retinue as a regal claimant.

1031 he had made it to Kiev: aged 16.
His reputation as a fighter travelled with him; so much so that he was taken by Yaroslav the Wise. His wife, as mentioned, was a relation of Harald’s from Sweden.
He was involved in many campaigns here – against Poland, Estonians… there were many factional squabbles. He learned his trade, improved his craft.

1034 and he appeared in Byzantium, where was eventually appointed commander of the Varangian Guard. They were an elite force, and bodyguards to the Emperor. They were and remained a predominantly Scandinavian group amongst the Byzantines. The Guard began as a group of mercenaries paid to protect Byzantine interests.
the Byzantine Empress Theodora valued their valour, if not their table manners.

It is possible his campaigns took him as far as the Euphrates (Iraq), and even Jerusalem.
A Greek book of 1070s, Kekaumenos’ Strategikon recorded him winning favours from the Emperor.
It was some time after this he was imprisoned by the new Emperor, and his powerful wife Zoe. There is some suggestion he dipped into the treasury coffers.

William of Malmesbury, as well as Saxo Grammaticus, all have their pennyworth to add – but it was all hearsay.

The new Emperor was not popular, and insurrections broke out – whether Harald was released to lead the fight back, is not clear.
What is clear is that, when in 1042 he requested permission to leave Byzantium he was refused.
And so he had to sneak away at night, with his loyal companions And back to Kiev.

By 1047 he was married, back in Norway, and ascended the throne.
Payback time for Denmark. Only, it didn’t quite end up like that. It did end up in a lifelong truce.

So, if he could not claim Cnut’s Denmark, he looked to England, Cnut’s other realm.

 

Let’s take the instance of the great town of Hedeby near Schleswig. Quite a lot has been unearthed about the town, but one significant period stands out. The period of the 1050s. Why? One source has it: ‘A thick layer of ash and charcoal in the central area represents the final destruction of the town just before 1050. Whether this fire was accidental or… by… Harald Hard-ruler… is unclear. This was the end of Hedeby…’

Submit, or be smashed.

Tostig Godwinson, who was the brother of Harold Godwinson, king of England, persuaded our Harald that he had a decent claim to the English throne. Brothers, eh! Can’t live with them, can’t trust them out of your sight!

September 1066, and the Harolds (well, HarAld, and HarOld) met outside York. The first battle at Fulford went well for HarAld, but it seems it made him complaisant. The later one at Stamford Bridge finished him.

And HarAld was killed. He was 51.
According to Snorri Sturlson he was buried at Mary Church, Trondheim. A huge stone now commemorates his burial place.

Even that age is a little old and grizzled, for some. Still, that was one life lived to the full.

A little like the old curse: May you live in interesting times. It’s usually a disaster for the people trying to get by; always someone trying to make them part of his big scheme for power. And he was one of those.

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Within all this busy life, the to-ing and fro-ing, the slicing, riding, chopping and disemboweling, our Harald could also turn a well-crafted verse when he had to.

This was, of course, one of the expected skills of the courtier; and it seems Harald had it in bucketfuls.

One source has it that the verse of this region and period was considered inferior to the Eddic, skaldic, verse, because it is thought ‘artificial’, even, ‘convoluted’.

See:
https://wordpress.com/post/michael9murray.wordpress.com/8201