götterdämmerung (10. 949)

A translation of the Norse term Ragnarök, the final cycle of the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner (previously) premiered on this day at the Festspielhaus of Bayreuth in 1876. The play opens with the Norn sisters (analogue to the the Moirai, the Greek Fates who weave mortal destiny) braiding their wyrding rope and foreseeing an avoidable future with Walhalla burnt and in ruins and the “twilight of the gods.” The cord breaks when they begin to contemplate the curse of the ring of power, Andvaranaut—that would reveal gold and other precious items to its wearer, stolen by the god Loki and given to Hreidmar, King of the Dwarves, with a curse to bring eventual destruction to its owner, Prince Fafnir stealing the ring from his father and transforming himself into a dragon to guard it and his hoard of treasure, himself slain by Siegfried and gifting the ring to Brünnehilde—and lamenting the loss of their foresight retreated into the Underworld. With this token recovered from the dragon’s lair as a symbol of his fealty and faith, Brünnehilde dispatches our tragic hero on a quest along the Rhein.

die bauhausausstellung von 1923 (10. 945)

Opening on this day in Weimar and running for the next six weeks, the exhibition was the first public presentation of the art and architecture movement founded in 1919, and advertised in around one-hundred train stations with Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus logo (the event delayed due individual presenting workshops wanting to prefect their items in accordance with the shift from handwork to industrial production and the poster stickered over), attracting around fifteen-thousand visitors. The first week included lectures by Walter Gropius and Wassily Kandinsky, ballets and concert performances and a procession with lanterns and fireworks. Installations included a model home, ceramics and various painting and building designs by contemporary figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. Occurring during the height of the Great Depression, the exhibition became of symbol of the culture war simmering in Germany with praise and enthusiasm on one side for the school’s creative and educational goals and roundly rejected by conservative leaning critics who felt strengthened in their position by the relative financial failure.

akte x (10. 926)

Our gratitude to the always interesting Maps Mania for referring us to the Anomaly Observatory has been documenting paranormal activity focused mainly on Berlin and environs since 2008 but monitoring the unexplained—from the mundane to the phenomenal—which deviates dangerously from the norm. Like with this instance with the map centred on this location on the Museuminsel recounting how one night last December a torrent of water washing away hundreds of exotic fish causing huge and disruptive flood appeared, nearly eliding over the fact that the source was the sudden and catastrophic explosion of a hotel aquarium, it is difficult to tell if it’s an earnest investigation or a facetious commentary on such endeavours but regardless wonderful weird and dedicated to urban mythos. More to explore at the links above.

synchronopitica

one year ago: Que Sera, Sera,  The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967), assembling the globe by various demographic factors plus more city map generators

two years ago: assorted links to revisit,  identifying the location of a sketch by Leonardo plus a Beatles single with an equally good b-side (1966)

three years ago: America tries to ban TikTok, the invention of telegraphy was first dismissed as a gimmick, more links to enjoy, an alternate ending to The Giving Tree plus the Portsmouth Sinfonia

four years ago: air traffic controls in the US strike (1981), the craze of purikura plus a look at the hodiernal verb tense

five years ago: a preview of Star Trek: Picard, a planned remake of 9-to-5 plus more links worth revisiting

nacht der langen messer (10. 847)

Beginning on this evening in 1934 and lasting through 2 July, Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler urged Chancellor Adolf Hitler to pursue a series of executions in order to consolidate power and legitimacy and eliminate the Sturmabteilung (SA), the autonomous stormtroopers who protected Nazi assemblies and disrupted meetings of opposition parties under the leadership of Ernst Röhm, replaced by the group carrying out the killings, the Schutzsaffel (SS) under instigator Himmler.

Though Röhm was loyal to the end, the murders were presented in response to an imminent coup (Putsch) by the SA. Though useful idiots, their thuggish (and homosocial and homosexual behaviour) and often resorting to street violence was seen as bad public-relations and the regular army which saw this paramilitary organisation as rivals, and the purge resulting in the murder of some eighty-five individuals was undertaken, expanded to eliminate critics and loyalist to the old order with hundreds arrested and detained, Hitler personally paying a surprise call at the resort outside of Munich where Röhm and many of his were staying. Justifying his extrajudicial killings in a speech broadcast from the Reichstag, Hitler defended his actions: 

If anyone reproaches me, and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterise to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with such impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.

The association of treachery and retribution has been associated as such since the fifth century when an Anglo-Saxon settlement was attacked by a local warlord during a peace discussion which resulted in massacre and became the oft-cited metonym twyll y cyllyll hirion or the Deceit of the Long Knives.

der rattenfänger von hameln (10. 837)

On this day, the Feast of SS John and Paul, in 1284—according to the Lüneberg manuscript, the Pied Piper paid a visit to the town of Hamlet, commission to rid the place of rats, which he manages tidily luring them with his magic pipe to the shores of the river Weser where they all drowned. The mayor however reneged on his promised bounty of a thousand guilders, offering only a fraction of the princely sum, and returning avenged his slight attracting the town’s children whilst the parents were in church—into the hills and never to be seen again. According to the legend, three children remained as witness and pieced together what happened to their inconsolable parents, one lame, one blind and one deaf that couldn’t join the procession. Various theories and allegorical readings exist ranging from a deliverance from the Plague, a clash between Christianity and paganism still practised in parts of Lower Saxony at the time to an interesting conjecture regarding emigration and over-population that saw mass-resettlement out of the area to Moravia, Prussia and a de-populated Transylvania (Siebenbürgen). The street in the Altstadt where reportedly the children were last seen is called Bungelosenstraße (drum-less) and to this day, singing and dancing are prohibited there.

confessio ausgustana (10. 835)

Presented to the public on this day in 1530, the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church was drafted during the previous summer (as the Articles of Schwabach) by Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon and Justus Jonas as a summary of the faith to be given to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who decided to convene a diet in the city city of Augsburg, calling on the princes and free states to advocate and explain their religious convictions in an attempt at reconciliation—aimed at restoring political unity within the empire and present a united opposition to counter Ottoman incursions in Austria and prevent a repeat of the ultimately unsuccessful Siege of Vienna. The twenty-eight articles of faith were read out by the rulers of the territories where Protestantism was the majority and consisted of twenty-one positive teachings (theses)—chief tenets of the confession, and seven negative (antitheses)—representing their split with Catholic doctrine and ceremony, mostly do to with dietary proscriptions (XXVI: On the Distinction of Meats) and the requirement for confession (XXV) to a priest for absolution of sin. At the conclusion of the diet, the Lutheran princes concurrently entered into a military pact called the Schmalkaldic League, an alliance of mutual protection should the emperor make untoward demands of their domains, which eventually petitioned for official recognition of the faith in the empire under the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 under the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, “whose realm, his religion,” where the confession of the ruler became the state religion and all of its subjects.

neue sachlichkeit (10. 806)

Coined by the director of the Kunsthalle Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, art critic and curator, as a counter-movement to expressionism and introduced to the public on this day in 1925 as an exhibition hosted in his gallery, “New Objectivity”—which can also be translated as the New Resignation, Dispassion or Matter-of-Factness—is seen as rejection of romantic idealism and the promotion of pragmatic cooperation and a return to order, post World War I. Featured artist included Otto Dix, Carl Grossberg, Max Beckmann and Jeanne Mammen. Its influence is also found in the gritty realism of films of those years just prior to the rise of Nazism and in the architecture of Hans Poelzig, Bruno Taut and others. The movement ended in 1933 with the ascent of the Nazi dictatorship and was condemned as degenerate art.

6x6 (10. 800)

reagan candy: the Taiwanese term for jelly babies  

treuhand: the privatisation of East Germany and the long reach of its consequences—via Maps Mania

mexico filter: the cinematic colour scheme applied to movie set in the “Global South” evokes corruption and pollution is the tinge of New York City (previously) now—plus lots more from Hyperalleric’s Required Reading—see also  

tag yourself: what your favourite classic rock band says about you—from Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links  

ekd: hundreds of parishioners attend a Lutheran service in Fürth delivered by an AI—see previously—via Slashdot 

lu xun: the memes telegraphing generational disillusionment in China—see also

hinter den kulissen (10. 782)

H doesn’t recall watching but we rented Stanley Kubrick’s sumptuous 1975 period drama Barry Lyndon (based on the William Makepeace Thackeray novel about the gentleman gambler and social-climber) several years ago. 

Set in Ireland, England and Prussia in the 1750s during the Seven Years’ War, the title rogue travels across Europe calling in debts through various scams, scenes and establishing shots were filmed in Dublin, County Wicklow, Schloss Ludwigsburg outside of Stuttgart, Sanssouci in Potsdam and as we just learned, in between these two locations at around the fifty-three minute timestamp, Lyndon’s regiment on the march, in our very own little village on the Bavarian-Thüringen border, uncredited but confirmed by Redditors. 

 

Not much has changed (the roads are paved now however) and we’ll need to do a re-watch soon.

mäusebunker (10. 768)

So called because of the Brutalist (Nachkriegsmodern-Stil) structure’s resemblance to war-era defensive bulwarks, the facility designed by architects Gerd and Magdalena Hänska in 1971 for the Frei Universität of Berlin for animal research (Zentrale Tierlaboratorien, received with controversy at the time for such a grandiose concrete pyramid being built for the purpose of animal testing) and later for microbiology, pathology and experimental human medicine by the city’s Charité research hospital, vacant since 2020, has happily been spared planned demolition and been declared a historic monument for preservation. Owning to a vigorous campaign to conserve this icon, bastion of 1970s and others, an exploratory committee has been formed to find possible uses for this structure. More photos from organiser Felix Torkar and SOSBrutalism at the link above.

bachstadt arnstadt (10. 746)

While waiting for our dog to recover after surgery at the veterinarian clinic there, H and I took a quick tour of Arnstadt, an old and storied town also known as the Gateway to the Thüringer Wald due to its location on the northeast corner of the forest, the oldest settlement once in East Germany due to its first documented mention in 704, a candidate for the origin of Bratwurst and Weizen beer outside of Bavaria thanks to a fourteenth century mention, and mostly famously for its native son Johann Sebastian Bach (see previously), who had his first posting in the New Church—now known as the Bachkirche—as organist. 

Granted a charter as a city by Hersfeld Abbey, heavy sanctions were levied against the town for aiding fugitives during the Peasants’ War in the thirteenth century and nearly a hundred rebels were burnt in the market square. 

The main landmark is the remaining tower of the ruin of the Neideck palace, already in disrepair by the end of the reign of the dukes of Schwarzburg by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the rest was bombed into rubble during World War II. The church’s Baroque pipe organ has been restored to its condition and appearance in 1703 when the eighteen year old prodigy first played it.  The monument is pure speculation as no portraits or physical descriptions of Bach and locals refer to the bronze as the ‘Marktflätz’—one whose sprawled out in the square—cf, Marktplatz.

be acceptable in thy sight here tonight (10. 739)

Beginning a five-week run at the top of the UK singles charts on this day in 1978, Boney M’s (previously) cover of The Melodians’s song “Rivers of Babylon” with B-side “Brown Girl in the Ring,” composed originally by the Jamaican reggae group, it is taken from Psalms 19 and 137 (one of a handful of best-sellers taken directly from the Bible, along with Pete Seeger’s and the Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and U2’s 40 (“How long must I Sing this Song?”—Expectans expectavi Dominum) as an allegory of oppression against members of the Rastafarian faith, though the Kingston government banned it from the airwaves as potentially subversive anyway. From their third studio album Nightflight to Venus, both—the latter based on a traditional Caribbean nursery rhyme—propelled the eurodisco group to fame worldwide. The below performance is from 1979’s Sopot Festival:

right of reply (10. 699)

Incorporated on this day in 1910 in Zwickau, Audi was the second automobile business started by founder August Horch, whom was not allowed by his former business partners to call his new company by his last name as they had decided collectively for the first claiming trademark infringement. The name was at the suggestion of associate’s son, Heinrich Fikentscher, Latin student, who was studying during a meeting held at his father’s apartment about what to call their new enterprise and growing weary of the insistence that they retain Horch (a near homonym of the German hören, hört, attend or hear) implored his father “Audiatur et altera pars…wouldn’t it be a better idea to call it audi rather than horch?” The phrase, usually cited as a legal principle or editorial policy in its singular imperative form Audi alteram partem, means “let the other side be heard as well” and is applied in disputes to allow both sides to give their version of events or present both sides in a media venue.

forschungensreaktor haigerloch (10. 695)

The nuclear test facility, the final experiment of Uranprojekt of Nazi Germany, discovered the day previously by the US and the British Special Forces unit Alsos, created as mission under the aegis of the Manhattan Project to coordinate foreign intelligence on atomic research and activity—a heavy water nuclear pile, housed in a cliff cellar used for beer storage and obscured by a castle chapel and disguised as a spelunking centre near Tübingen was brought offline on this day in 1945 during the last phase of War World II and dismantled, with the attendant scientists and materials brought back to America as part of Operation Paperclip. Under the direction of Werner Heisenberg, the aim of the undertaking was to harness the power of nuclear fission, though the research never moved beyond the experimental stage and later assessments concluded that critical mass would have required a set-up one and a half times larger, for weaponisation or as a practical output of energy. Crossing the front with the 7th Army, Alsos members moved over the Rhein and apprehended physicist remaining at research facilities, a cyclotron, in Heidelberg, and scoured the region for other trials to forestall capture by the advancing Soviet army and eventual French occupying force, whose arrival the same day prompted assessors to downplay its significance and immediately disassemble the laboratory and remove the contents to Munich, headquarters of the American Zone. Heisenberg and the other internees learned of the bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August and expressed gratitude that their tests were a failure and would have never produced such a weapon but rather a power-plant. Since 1980, the site has hosted a museum on nuclear reactors with the original five cubes of uranium on display.

isar 2 (10. 679)

Just hours after Germany took its last remaining three operating nuclear reactors offline after a brief

extension on the moratorium prompted by the spike in energy prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the government of Bavaria pledged to forward legislation to amend the federal monopoly on AKW (Atomkraftwek) and cede to the states control, arguing that the phaseout is premature and naive until renewable alternatives are truly viable. The success of this bid seems unlikely, given coalition support for the draw-down, which has happened gradually over the course of the past decade, already planned but accelerated after the disaster in Fukushima in 2011.

der lehrpfad der unholdigen personen (10. 650)

In the forest of the municipality of Salzhaff in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on the coast of the Baltic, colloquially known as the ‘Arschlochwandelweg,” there is a mile-long sculpture trail featuring six, life-sized bronzes of George W Bush, Erich Honecker, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Nikita Khrushchev and Donald Trump. On private property but freely accessible to the public, the owner choose to have a rogues gallery of the unkind and inept but did not want evil figures like Hitler and Stalin. A commission was put in for the addition of Vladimir Putin but was ultimately rejected by a Polish foundry due to the neighbouring war.

vereinte dienstleistungswerkschaft (10. 623)

Established on this day in 2001 as a merger of the congresses of five individual trade unions—with a membership of around two million workers, including postal, banking, insurance, health, education, public service, media and transportation sector employees, Verdi represents the professional interests of its members and successfully lobbies—through political clout, collective bargaining and strike actions—for better compensation and improved working conditions.

9x9 (10. 614)

telegeography: the current map of submarine cables connecting the world  

blogoversary: a belated birthday greeting to Fancy Notions 

rightish: Microsoft touts AI’s factual errors as “usefully wrong”  

goldenes buch: German communities’ official, historic guest logs are a chronicle of the times and Zeitzeugnisse  

media matters: if journalists cannot call out propaganda—what’s even the the point of coverage—via Kottke  

gǒutóu māo níng—literally dog’s head, cat’s meow: cute Chinese animal transcriptions for English salutations  

seoul ring: the world’s largest spokeless ferris wheel being built in South Korea  

linkrot: more thoughts on three broken links and internet conservation  

mappa mundi: the thirteenth century chart of the mundane and exalted—see previously

9x9 (10. 596)

destination berlin: a Royal Military Police guide to the divided city from 1988—see also

geodomesticeerde: one Dutch rancher spearheading the protest against livestock reductions 

gado gado: the Indonesia version of the cult Cobb salad that may be the best in the world—via Digg 

fret and fingerbøard: a guitar nearly exclusively sourced from IKEA furnishing elements—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

paratethys sea: the ancient lake that stretched from the Alps to the Arals was the world’s largest lake  

florilegium: botanical collages by an eighteenth-century septuagenarian—via Kottke  

mar yousef’s: the “pizza church” of Jordan imparting Iraqi Christian refugees with marketable skills—via Miss Cellania  

heritage graziers: regenerative agriculture, no farmstead required  

orange alternative: how a diminutive graffito helped bring down the Soviet Union

das manifest der kommunistischen partei (10. 562)

First published without attribution on this day in 1848 by the Workers’ Educational Association (Kommunistischer Arbeiterbildungsverein) in Bishopsgate Without in London, the twenty-three page pamphlet authored by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels under contract of the Communist League is a systematic summary of class struggle and the estrangement of labour. While envisioning the potential future forms of political economy was beyond the scope of the brief synopsis, the invocation in the ultimate paragraph calling for the “overthrow of all existing social conditions” would go on to spark revolutions across the globe. With the initial revolts in Europe of the spring suppressed, the work did not reemerge until the early 1870s, culminating in the October Revolution in 1917.