the pigeon is still remembering fascism

A dog chases its tail. It grows tired. It stops and rests. Then it gets back to chasing its tail. This goes on and on until, eventually, the dog dies.

Another dog chases its tail. It grows tired. It stops and rests. While resting, it realizes that it will never catch its tail, that the exercise is completely futile. It does not return to chasing its tail, rather it sits and thinks about how stupid it is to chase one's tail, and how, really, there is no point to anything. Occasionally bursting into tears, the dog thinks about these things until, eventually, it dies.

In 1986, the city of Harburg unveiled the Harburg Monument against Fascism, War and Violence-- and for Peace and Human Rights, a large metal column that sunk slowly into the ground. It was a counter-monument encouraging the personal responsibility of memory work.

In 2007, Mark Hatlie, of sites-of-memory.de, visited Harburg. After struggling to find anyone who knew where it was, he found the monument. His photograph and caption sum it up better than I can:

"The pigeon is still remembering fascism."

I look up the word "revolution" on the Oxford English Dictionary website:

revolution

• noun 1 a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system. 2 a dramatic and far-reaching change. 3 motion in orbit or in a circular course or round an axis or centre. 4 the single completion of an orbit or rotation.

— DERIVATIVES revolutionist noun.

— ORIGIN Latin, from revolvere ‘roll back’.

A dog chases its tail. It grows tired. It stops and rests. Then it gets back to chasing its tail. This goes on and on until, eventually, the dog dies.

There will always be another dog to continue in its stead.

happy new year.

Die Bergkatze/The Wildcat (1921)

Pola Negri being seriously badass in Ernst Lubitsch's 1921 comedy The Wildcat.

Last night I saw The Wildcat (the German title is Die Bergkatze, literally "The Mountain Cat"), and I finally understood what the big deal was about Pola Negri.

I went home, checked IMDB, and said about Negri the same thing I'd said years ago about Garbo after first seeing Ninotchka (Lubitsch, 1939), "I can't believe she didn't do more comedies!"

As is often the case with the movies which really get me fired up, the plot of The Wildcat is nothing to write home about. Vain playboy lieutenant gets robbed in the mountains by a band of thieves, but his life is spared by the uncouth lady-thief. She falls for him, he falls for her, but he's engaged to someone else, blah blah blah, the ending reinforces class segregation.

Whatever.

The sets are ABSURD. Giant white curlicues in the interior of a military mountain fortress...why not? There's also an insane dream sequence with a band of-- you know, I'm not going to ruin it. You need to see it to believe it.

The cast of brigands and soldiers are adorably hapless, and the sequence introducing the male lead...well, let's just say it's a great example of the use of crowds in silent film.

It's a romp, an impecably made romp.

But what The Wildcat is REALLY about is Pola Negri. She is brilliant. From the moment she bursts out of her tent and (literally) starts whipping her ne'er do well band of thieves into shape, we are on her side and we want to know her story. Unglamorous, uncouth and unfeminine (as far as beautiful female movie stars go, anyways) in her rags and leopard pelt, toting a giant pistol (see above) and a big knife, Negri manages to be so funny, so sexy, so charming, so adorable, and somehow so believable in this picture that it's impossible not to fall in love with her.

I really need to see more of Lubitsch's work. But from the two movies I've seen, I really like him. I like his style, I like his sense of humor, and most of all I like what he gets out of his actors. I understand why Veronica Lake's character from Sullivan's Travels is so keen to work with him.

I'm going to resist describing the movie at any length, because I think it's great and that everyone should see it, and I don't want to take away from that experience. The Kino DVD (part of the Lubitsch in Berlin series) is the film's first American release. Rent it, buy it, whatever, it's marvellous.

the wandering Jew

the wandering jew, by gustav doré

I'm still not done talking about Jewish identity, sorry.


While doing some very preliminary research for my medieval European history paper, I came across the myth of the wandering Jew, the man who pissed Jesus off so much that he was cursed to roam the earth until the second coming.

I, like many other secular American Jews, really enjoy the diaspora. I don't want to be in Israel. I rather like feeling displaced. Of course, I might feel differently if I was being oppressed, which I'm not. One of the great things about being a Jew is that you can embrace the label while still rejecting everything it entails. It's a self-selecting identity. And since there are so few of us, I, at least, feel the need to help my people survive. I don't proselytize and I certainly don't plan on having a bunch of babies, so maintaining my own Jewish identity is the best I can do.

Why have we survived so long? We've survived by wandering, by being, in one way or another, useful to whoever is in power (a few exceptions aside), and by assimilating but still holding onto, at the very least, the J word. In medieval Europe, the average Jew was far better educated than the average Christian. Study is an inextricable part of the religious culture.

I understand why, given some of our past experiences, but I find it rather ironic that for a group of people constantly threatened with annihilation, who have no land of our own (many would disagree with me on this point, but the fact is that, at this point in history, a group cannot have a country wholly of its own without engaging in monstrous violations of human rights), we are so damned exclusive and xenophobic. We might be too obsessed with survival, or we might be just obsessed enough.

Are we too neurotic to settle down? According to German legend, when the wandering Jew came to Fünfeichen, he didn't eat or sleep, instead pacing in the sitting room of an inn all night long. Maybe he was cursed, but it sounds to me like he was just nervous.

Does this explain our survival? Perhaps. No matter how things go, cursed or no, we are always on our toes.

back to berlin

Like so many others in this fine nation, I'm what you'd call a Euro-Jew mutt. (Some might dispute my claim of being Jewish, as my mom converted after I was born, but they're just haters. I was bat mitzvahed and they can fuck off.) Both grandmothers were of Russian heritage. One was a princess and the other was...well, not. My mom's dad was the son of a Norwegian plumber, and my dad's is a German Jew.

I guess I can blame the patriarchy for the fact that, Jewishness aside, I feel more German than any of the others. My grandfather's family left Berlin in 1936. This summer, I was the first person in my family to return. I had a year of college German and a pretty good knowledge of 20th century Germany history under my belt, not to mention a love for beer and sausages. I was ready.

...at least I was for the most part. Unfortunately, to get back to where I was staying from the city center meant taking the U-Bahn in the direction "Wannsee," which meant I was told that I was going there several times every day-- by a computerized public transit voice, no less. Every once in a while, something like that would trigger icky Holocaust thoughts, but the people were wonderful, and I had a great time.

Then, I got an email from my father containing information about our family history, including the names of family members who died in the camps and the locations of my dead German ancestors' graves in Berlin. Among the graves was that of my great-grandmother, Erna Unger, a neue Frau architect and interior decorator who died of cancer in 1933 at the age of 40. I decided, then and there, that it was my duty to visit my family's graves, and to be the first to do so in over 70 years. I felt I owed it, at the very least, to Erna, whose name is never uttered, and about whom I know so little.

Yet, every trip I tried to take to the cemetary failed. Either I got distracted, or the weather wasn't right enough, or I was too tired that day. When I came down with a cold with two days left in the city, I knew it wasn't going to happen.

I boarded the plane at Tegel with an enormous sense of shame. How had I managed to screw this up? Had I been too scared? I took my seat and watched the Fernsehturm get smaller and smaller as we ascended, I watched the thick forests go by, and I heard something. Voices, speaking, no, they're whining to me so faintly in German. What were they saying? I focused hard to pick out the words...

"...and you don't even stop by?"

As if my living relatives aren't enough, I have to contend with an army of kvetching ghosts.

I dont travel well, and a guilt-trip on top of it all is too much.

"I'll visit next time I'm in Berlin."

I hear a chorus of disbelief.

"I mean it, I promise I'll come back." And I do mean it.

The voices grow more faint as the plane climbs higher and higher, flying away from the city where my grandfather was born, from the country he so firmly renounces. I'm not sure if I leave the ghosts or if the ghosts leave me, but we are seperated nevertheless. I whisper goodbye to Germany, and to all those, living and dead, who remain there.