German Joys

The Max Goldt Treasury, Reloaded

As time permits, I've translated the odd column by Max Goldt. In honor of his recent receipt of the Kleist Prize, I decided to increase the pace of translations as part of "Max Goldt Weeks". As part of MGW, I'm pleased to announce the latest translation, The Masses and the Maidens.

I've also decided to set up an independent section of this website just for Max Goldt translations, so they don't get lost amid all the nonsense and bloviation. If you look to the right, the sidebar now features an widget entitled The Max Goldt Treasury, with an introduction and table of contents, as well as links to all of my translations of Goldt's essays. From now on, the latest translations will always appear there.

Enjoy!

Cutest. Hitler. Ever.

Two Pennsylvania parents who named their son after Adolf Hitler are, surprisingly enough, having trouble getting his name on a birthday cake [h/t bro]:

The father of 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell, denied a birthday cake with the child's full name on it by one New Jersey supermarket, is asking for a little tolerance.

...

Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name." He sounded surprised by all the controversy the dispute had generated.

Campbell said his ancestors are German and that he has lived his entire life in Hunterdon County. On Tuesday he wore a pair of black boots he said were worn by a German soldier during World War II.

He said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically.

But he said he would try to raise his children differently. "Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That's fine, I don't really care," he said. "That's his choice."

Come to think of it, "Adolf Hitler" does have a sort of fetching melody to it. Why, it just rolls off your tongue! This 100% innocent explanation is is somewhat undermined by the name of one of Heath's other children: "JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell."

But why are we giving 'racialists' (as they sometimes like to call themselves) such a hard time? I can't end this post without quoting Heath Campbell's stirring paean to tolerance -- coming soon to an embroidered couch cushion near you:

"I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," Heath Campbell said Tuesday....  "There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change," the 35-year-old continued. "They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did."

Heath's got a point. Just look how adorable "li'l Adolf" (center) is:

Exterminate entire races? Enslave continents? Moi?

Rasumovsky No. 3 for Beethoven's Birthday

It's Beethoven's birthday! Since we're on the subject of Ludwig van anyway, let's look at the Allegro Molto finale to his String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, (Op. 59, No. 3). Beethoven's middle-period Quartets 7-9 are usually called the Rasumovsky Quartets, since they were commissioned by Prince Andreas Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna. The finale to No. 3 starts out with a furiously driving theme for the first violin, which is then taken up into a whirling fugue by the rest of the instruments. The pulse gets progressively faster, generating showers of syncopated sparks interrupted by the odd unison chord. Instead of coming to an orderly conclusion, the fugue circles around faster and faster until it smashes through some barrier and rockets off into parts unknown.

My favorite performance was always by the Smetana Quartet, on a Denon CD I bought in the early 1980s. The Smetanas were a bit old by this time, but still played like demons. They tore into the Allegro Molto like a ferocious beast. It wasn't a pretty recording: the sound was a bit thin and vinegary, and was miked very close: you could hear strings popping and breaking, and the old Czechs wheezing and grunting as they sawed away. But it scorched your ears the way Becherovka scorches your gullet. That is, in a good way. I took to calling Rasumovsky No. 3 Beethoven's 'speed metal' quartet.

I can't find the Smetana version of the Allegro Molto online, so here's the Tokyo Quartet playing it. They're first-rate musicians and all, but they've always struck me as being a bit too dainty and polished for Beethoven's more thunderous moments. But at least you get the idea:

And here, musicologist Roger Parker analyzes the Razumovsky No. 3 in a wonderful lecture delivered at Gresham College:

This is, as you can hear, not for the fainthearted; and emphatically not for the willing amateur. Count Rasumovsky the part-time violinist may have paid handsomely for these quartets, and he even had the cheek to ask Beethoven for a few composition lessons (request denied); but it's difficult to imagine him reaching for his instrument when he saw what Op. 59 called for. This is emphatically professionals' music, with the first violin's part no less demanding than a concerto; the second violin (as always) constrained to dive manically between this mode and that of an accompanist; the viola as exposed and taxing as any in the repertoire; and a cello part that has made even the surest technicians blench at the way they are obliged to rattle up and down their huge fingerboard, imitating the scampering upper strings.

Hitler's Erudition, Beethoven's Arrogance

Two fine English-language articles about famous Germans have crossed my path recently. First up, Anthony Grafton has an excellent review essay in the New Republic about a controversial Austrian statesman's reading habits:

Hitler's own words make clear--clearer, in fact, than the surviving volumes [of his library]--just how much some writers meant to him. His lifelong favorites--leatherbound copies of which he kept in the study of his alpine villa--ranged from the Western adventure novels of Karl May to the plays of Shakespeare. May's novels, from The Ride Across the Desert on, "overwhelmed" Hitler as a boy, claiming his attention so powerfully that his grades suffered "a noticeable decline." During the war, Hitler told his generals to study May's books, and even had a special edition issued for soldiers at the front. He considered Winnetou, the Indian chief of May's tales, a master of "tactical finesse and circumspection," and a model for his own love of cunning tactics and surprises. Reading at night, he told Albert Speer, "when faced by seemingly hopeless situations, he would still reach for these stories," because "they gave him courage like works of philosophy for others or the Bible for elderly people."

Shakespeare seemed to him much greater than the classic German writers of the eighteenth century. After all, Shakespeare had brought the imperishable character of Shylock to the stage, whereas Lessing had created Nathan the Wise, the Jew who taught Christians, Muslims, and Jews a lesson of tolerance. Hitler quoted Shakespeare as more highly educated Germans quoted Goethe, threatening opponents: "We will meet again at Philippi."

 The Fuehrer read by night...

Late at night on the Obersalzberg, Hitler read for hours a time, sometimes until dawn. He worked in his study, outside of which hung a sign that demanded ABSOLUTE SILENCE, reading with intense concentration--so intense that he became furious one night when Eva Braun interrupted him, and sent her packing, red-faced, with a "tirade. " At breakfast, as Traudl Junge, his last surviving secretary, recalled to Ryback, he "would reprise his previous night's reading in extensive, often tedious detail." Even at the end, as a photograph of the Berlin bunker shows, unidentified thick books took up some of the scarce space in his tiny bedroom.

...but not like an 'intellectual':

In a famous passage in Mein Kampf, Hitler made clear that he rejected the scholar's deferential approach to texts. Intellectuals read supinely, allowing books to lead them: "Naturally, I understand by 'reading' something other than that which the average member of the so-called 'intelligentsia' understands," he wrote. "I know people who 'read' an endless amount, who go from book to book, from letter to letter, yet I would not want to call them 'well-read.' They possess an abundance of 'knowledge,' only their brain does not understand how to process and organize the material it has taken on board." Such readers "lack the art of being able to divide the valuable from the valueless in a book." In the end, Hitler explained, "reading is not something we carry out for its own sake, but an instrument used for a purpose," a "tool and a building material that one needs for one's calling in life."

And in Slate, music writer Jan Swafford has a short piece on the influence of the Illuminati on the young Beethoven:

By the time [Illuminatus] Christian Neefe arrived in Bonn and started teaching Beethoven organ and composition, the 10-year-old was as good a keyboard player as anybody in town. Soon Neefe got into print some variations Ludwig had written, one of his first pieces—slight and conventional, still not Mozart but impressive for his age. In a newspaper article, Neefe cited the variations and said the magic words: With proper nurturing, this boy will "surely become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart."

By his midteens, Beethoven was a court musician in various capacities and making huge strides as a composer. His father had pulled him out of school after a few years so he could concentrate on music. (Beethoven learned to add and subtract but never learned to multiply. If he had to multiply 65 by 59, he wrote 65 in a column 59 times and added it up.) Meanwhile his father was promoting him relentlessly, mounting concerts in the house and taking him on tours around the Rhineland. By that point, there was little question in Ludwig's or anybody else's mind that he was headed for big things. One day when his landlord's daughter accosted him with, "How dirty you're looking again! You ought to keep yourself properly clean," he told her, "What's the difference? When I become a gentleman, nobody will care."

Germany Debates

Doppelfish included a link in his latest comment to this online article from the Berlin Tagesspiegel (g), which reports that 1/3 of the people in Berlin's local jail are there because they repeatedly used public transportation without paying, and refused to pay the resulting fines. (Under German law, if you can't/won't pay a fine, you can serve a certain number of days in prison as an "equivalent" to paying the fine).

A few of the sources in the article criticize the practice of jailing subway scofflaws, since (1) they're pretty pitiable people; and (2) keeping them in jail costs more than the fines they would have paid. But the article isn't really what's special. What's special is the comment thread (already 51 comments in one day!). It's a painstakingly thorough, civilized airing of every single attitude you could ever possibly take to the problem of public-transportation free-riding. Many entries are even divided into numbered lists for clarity!

It's things like this comment thread that make me rather like Germany.

'Fun' Incarceration Fact

Over at Reason's Hit & Run blog, Jacob Sullum cites a new study (.pdf) showing there are approximately 500,000 Americans in prison for drug offenses alone, which is more than the total prison population of all EU countries for all offenses. In a previous post, Sullum provided this graph, which says it all:

  Germany would probably place between Finland and the Netherlands. 

Liberation of the Holy Family

USA Today reports:

Churches, synagogues and other places that display holiday scenes are taking a high-tech approach to an old holiday tradition: theft. They're embedding Jesus figures, menorahs and Santa statues with global positioning system satellite tracking devices.

Scene: Deacon Bud and Minister Ray are traipsing through a dark forest on the 23rd of December. They've received a tip that figures stolen from their church's nativity scene are being stored in a deserted cabin, awaiting shipment to Qatar to be reprocessed into luxury toilet handles. Desperate to get the figures back before Christmas Eve, they've set out together, each one with a hand-held GPS tracking sensor.

One of the sensors begins beeping.

Bud: I've got baby Jesus at 12 o'clock.

Ray: Roger that. Me too.

Bud: Wait, now I've got Joseph directly behind us!

Ray: Wait...yep, there he is. Thank God we've found them. And there -- there's Mary due east.

[Both sensors begin beeping faster.]

Bud: Ray, wait a minute. Stop walking toward Jesus.

Ray: Uhh, why?

Bud: I got a funny feeling about this. Look at your display.

Ray: Hmm...that's odd -- they seem to be...

Bud: Holy hand grenades, they're moving.

Ray [voice trembling]: And they're coming straight at us.

Bud: Jesus, look how fast they're coming -- they'll be here in seconds!

Ray [nervously]: We should be hearing something. It's quiet...too quiet.

Bud [screaming]: Are you seeing what I'm seeing?! They're -- they're right on top of us!

Ray [also screaming, while turning rapidly in circles]: Jesus, Mary and Joseph -- but WHERE?!

[A loud thudding sound. Ray collapses.]

Bud: Ray, my God, what happened?

Ray: Gorgle! Mrh! I'm hit. Save...yourself...Bud! Tell...my...wife...love her, and (gasp) RUN!!

Cocktail-Party Informational Asymmetry

And while we're on the subject, Stuff White People Like has advice for those who live in countries like Germany. Germany's problem is that it heavily subsidizes classical music training and institutions. This produces an excessive number of people who actually know a lot about classical music. This is not good for 'white people':

If a white person starts talking to you about classical music, it’s essential that you tread very lightly. This is because white people are all petrified that they will be exposed as someone who has only a moderate understanding of classical music. When a white person encounters another white person who actually enjoys classical music (exceptionally rare), it is often considered to be one of the most traumatic experiences they can go through.

“Really? Beethoven’s 5th Symphony….that’s your favorite.”

“um, no, I mean…”

“You sure it’s not Pachebel’s Canon?”

“well, ah, I like that, ah, song”

“sigh, of course you do.”

Even the possibility of this conversation happening is enough to scare white people into attending up to (but no more than) two performances in any given classical season. Therefore it is essential that even if you possess a massive amount of knowledge about classical music, do not share it with a white person regardless of how much they profess to love it. It’s a recipe for disaster and shame.

Elliott Carter Turns 100

Cheerful, uncompromising modernist Elliott Carter just turned 100. A piece on the festival concert from the NY Times here. His string quartets are not for the squeamish, but they have a sort of rough-hewn vitality that's always appealed to me. I've heard good things about the new Naxos recordings of them. Europe likes its avant-gardists unapologetic, so Carter's got a big following in Europe. An outstanding 100th-birthday portrait from Die Zeit here (g). The New York Times interviews him here, and Frank J. Oteri of New Music Box interviews him here:

Embracing 'Crass Keynesianism'

Over at the New York Times, Paul Krugman rips into Peer Steinbrueck: 

There’s an extraordinary — and extraordinarily depressing — interview in Newsweek with Peer Steinbrueck, the Germany [sic] finance minister. The world economy is in a terrifying nosedive, visible everywhere. Yet Mr. Steinbrueck is standing firm against any extraordinary fiscal measures, and denounces Gordon Brown for his “crass Keynesianism.”

You might ask why we should care. Germany’s economy is the biggest in Europe, but even so it only accounts for about a fifth of EU GDP, and it’s only about a quarter the size of the US economy. So how much does German intransigence matter?

The answer is that the nature of the crisis, combined with the high degree of European economic integration, gives Germany a special strategic role right now — and Mr. Steinbrueck is therefore doing a remarkable amount of damage.

Here’s the issue: we’re rapidly heading toward a world in which monetary policy has little or no traction: T-bill rates in the US are already zero, and near-zero rate will prevail in the euro zone quite soon. Fiscal policy is all that’s left. But in Europe it’s very hard to do a fiscal expansion unless it’s coordinated.

[Here, Krugman argues that Germany's spoiling the chances for a coordinated response]

And if Germany prevents an effective European response, this adds significantly to the severity of the global downturn.

In short, there’s a huge multiplier effect at work; unfortunately, what it’s doing is multiplying the impact of the current German government’s boneheadedness.

Of course, I don't know who's right here, although I tend to find much of what Krugman says convincing. I can understand Steinbrueck's dismissive response to UK policy and to 'Keynesianism', since it sounds like stuff I frequently hear from German business and government types:

1. This crisis started out in the U.S. and the U.K., they're the ones who are going to suffer from it, we'll be largely exempt because we didn't drink their Kool-Aid;
2. 'Keynesianism', whatever these German bigwigs consider it to be (and, in my experience, they often can't really define it when asked, except to imply that it always endorses large deficit spending) is irresponsible and wrong-headed. Another variant: those 'damned reds' are always invoking Keynesianism, so it must be a terrible idea; and
3. We Germans are extremely debt-averse, and have a lot invested in our reputation as Europe's Captain Sensible in budgetary affairs, scolding other EU countries who run large public debts. If we take on 1 extra euro in public debt, that will give a green light to those hot-headed Italians, who will take on 5 euros for our 1, and the even more hot-headed Greeks, who will take on 10.

We'll see which position emerges as the right one -- although if what Krugman says is true, Germany's refusal to play along is likely to diffusely hurt Europe as a whole, not just Germany.

Perhaps Krugman should issue a challenge to Steinbrueck to have a public debate. Would be fun for wonks like me.