Thursday, June 19, 2008

A very modern man

Our enforced stay in Muhlhausen wasn’t all bad. We spent a very pleasant day in Augsburg, a city that I didn’t even know existed until a week ago.
My husband did. Apparently it is a post-industrial city and earlier this year, when he was still gainfully employed, he had toyed with idea of using it as a comparative city for an economic audit of Glasgow he was drafting. He decided against it, but was still keen to see it.
I was more interested in its shopping potential. Seven weeks without buying anything but wifi access and chocolate had left me slightly tetchy. I wanted some retail therapy and Augsburg seemed the place to do it.
After all, it was like Glasgow according to Nigel. I should have known he wasn’t talking about frocks.
There were plenty of shopping opportunities, I just hadn’t counted on German taste. Shop after shop offered sturdy clothes in ten shades of beige, enlivened only by the occasional flash of pastel pink or yellow. The shoes were very expensive, very well made, no doubt very comfortable, and very, very ugly. Ditto the bags.
I gave up after coming across a jacket featuring dominoes, yes dominoes, and headed for the birthplace of Bertolt Brecht, arguably the 20th century’s most influential playwright.
According to the guide book, the city of Augsburg had debated long and hard about how they should honour their most famous son, given that he had decided to live in East Berlin after the war, being of a socialist persuasion.
Luckily commonsense prevailed and his former family home has been transformed into a fitting memorial for a genius.
He may have died in 1956, but was a man of the 21st century. He embraced popular culture as well as high art. He loved boxing, revues, jazz, records, radio and film. He understood the plight of the individual in a mass society. And he liked the odd drink and cigar.
He wrote this short poem wrote in 1939, when in exile from Nazi Germany. It speaks for itself.

To those born later 3

You who will emerge from the flood
In which we have gone under
Remember
When you speak of our failings
The dark time too
Which you have escaped.

For we went, changing countries oftener than our shoes
Through the wars of the classes, despairing
When there was injustice only, and no rebellion.

And yet we know:
Hatred, even of meanness
Contorts the features.
Anger, even against injustice
Makes the voice hoarse. Oh, we
Who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness
Could not ourselves be friendly

But you, when the time comes at last
And man is helper to man
Think of us
With forbearance.


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