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154 posts categorized "Germany"

16 August 2013

German propaganda in Esperanto

Memories take me back to the USSR: in 1973, while reading a biography of famous Esperantist Vasili Eroshenko by the Ukrainian writer Nadia Andrianova, I admired the vivid description of his journey to England in 1912. A newly-wed couple, Margaret and Paul Blaise, waited for this courageous blind traveller from Moscow at the Charing Cross station.  As Eroshenko wrote later, the ten days that he stayed with this international (Welsh-Belgian) family were “the happiest days” in England. Years later, after exploring the streets of London that Eroshenko walked in 1912, I found books and pamphlets by Margaret Lawrence Blaise (1878 -1935) in the British Library, as well as her photograph in one of them.

Photograph of Margaret Lawrence BlaiseThe kind hostess of Eroshenko was not just the charming wife of Paul Blaise, secretary of the Belgian Chamber of Commerce in London, whom she met via their mutual interest in Esperanto. At the time of her marriage to him in 1910 she herself was an established teacher of Esperanto and already had a popular book The Esperanto Manual: A complete guide to Esperanto in the form of twenty-five lectures specially adapted to the requirements of pupils in evening classes (London, 1908) [012902.ee.53] under her belt (published under her maiden name of Jones). Various editions of this manual are a part of our collections.

 

Margaret Lawrence Blaise in 1913

 

She was also a passionate propagandist for the new language, created only a few decades previously. No wonder that when the First World War started Margaret Blaise continued to plead for its use in international communications.  In the spirit of the time (with many books and pamphlets titled “Why I am…” or “Why not…”) she produced a pamphlet entitled A World Language: Why not Esperanto? The British Library holds the seventh edition of this pamphlet, reprinted in June 1916 (01902.l.33.).

Title page of the 7th edition of 'A World Language: Why not Esperanto?'The sharp eyes of Margaret Blaise noticed the use of Esperanto by Germans in a way which was  previously unthinkable for idealists: for state propaganda. The British Library’s current exhibition “Propaganda: Power and Persuasion”  looks at many aspects of the use of language for the aims of propaganda. It pays attention to the use of established state languages  in wartime.   But what about auxiliary or so-called “invented languages”? In one chapter of the pamphlet called “German Propaganda”, Margaret Blaise summarises the use of Esperanto by the German authorities. She mentions an official German publication, La vero pri la Milito (The Truth about the War),  which presents  ideas “from the German point of view”. “They issued a pamphlet with the above title, sending out thousands and thousands of copies”, she notes. The British Library holds one of the surviving copies (08027.dd.12) as well as other German publications from this period.

It seems that Germany was the only country to use Esperanto for propaganda purposes during the First World War.

In later decades it was used in other countries. The “Little Red Book” by Mao Zedong (exhibited in “Propaganda Power and Persuasion”) exists in an Esperanto version too (P.2011.a.378). The most richly illustrated Esperanto journal, El Popola Ĉinio (ZF.9.a.6337), published in paper form from 1950-2000 by the Chinese Esperanto-League, dedicated a whole issue to the death of “La Granda Gvidanto kaj Instruisto Prezidanto Maŭ Zedong” in 1976 (pictured below).
Cover of 'El popola Cinio', 1976, commemorating Chairman Mao

Languages are created by people and for people. It seems that not a single one of  them can escape the temptations of state propaganda.

Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies.

Further reading:

Eco, Umberto. The search for the perfect language. (Oxford, 1995). 95/25870

Lins, Ulrich. La danĝera lingvo: studo pri la persekutoj kontraǔ Esperanto. (Moskvo, 1990). YF.2007.a.27179




Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:06 AM in Esperanto , Germany , Language , Propaganda | Permalink | Comments( 0)

01 July 2013

German Studies Library Group

The German Studies Library Group (GSLG) is a forum for information about German Studies in libraries throughout the UK, and beyond. Are you a librarian working with German Studies collections, or simply interested in German Studies? Would-be members are warmly encouraged to join via the membership page on our website.

To give you a flavour of our activities: our Annual General Meeting takes place on Friday 5 July, on this occasion at the Goethe-Institut in London.  It involves an afternoon programme beginning with refreshments and including a tour and talk about the Institute as well as a guest lecture on German musicians in Victorian Britain from Dr Stefan Manz, Head of German in the School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University – and, like me, a German who has lived and worked in the UK for quite a number of years.

In 2011, the Group celebrated its silver anniversary, and since its inception, it has always included representatives from the British Library. Outreach and networking are important aspects of any British Library curator’s role, and groups such as the GSLG enable exchanges of ideas and best practice among curators and librarians alike, across the country, working at a variety of research, university, and other libraries and institutions. The British Library’s German Studies collections constitute a fabulously rich resource, and the GSLG also provides the British Library, and members from other institutions, a welcome opportunity to promote the value and possibilities of significant German-language collections to as wide an audience as possible.

In recent years, the GSLG has organised two conferences in Germany, at Göttingen and Halle where we were guests of the University Libraries in both cities as well as visiting other major German libraries such as those in Erfurt, Gotha, Leipzig, Hildesheim and Wolfenbüttel.

GSLG members Outside the DNB
Group members visit the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Leipzig, September 2011 (photo: Susan Reed)

The GSLG also publishes its own Newsletter (held by the British Library at shelfmark ZK.9.b.1089), circulated free of charge to all GSLG members. We welcome articles and news stories both from our members and from writers beyond our membership.  If you have an idea for an article you would like to contribute, or news you would like to share with readers interested in German Studies collections in the UK and further afield, please contact the Newsletter’s editor: [email protected].
 
Dorothea Miehe, Curator German Studies

Posted by Susan Reed at 2:58 PM in Germany | Permalink | Comments( 0)

Tags: German Studies Library Group , Librarianship

05 June 2013

Propaganda in the schoolroom

One of the exhibits in The British Library’s current exhibition ‘Propaganda: Power and Persuasion’ is a school textbook, opened to show one of the nastiest maths problems ever posed: how much does it cost to care for the ‘hereditarily unfit’ in terms of a ‘normal’ worker’s annual salary? The book was published in Germany in 1941, and its young readers were effectively asked to put a value on human lives and encouraged to see one kind of life as more valid than another.  Other calculations in the book involve the proportion of German territory lost in 1918, the falling percentage of Jews in the German population since 1933 and the comparative sizes of the British and German navies.

Chart summarising costs of care for 'normal' versus 'hereditarily sick' people
'Was Kostet die Betreuung Erbkranker', from Rechenbuch für Volksschulen. Gaue Westfalen-Nord u. Süd. Ausgabe B. Heft V – 7. und 8. Schuljahr. (Leipzig, [1941]). British Library YA.1998.a.8646

Maths might seem an unlikely field for spreading propaganda messages, but the Nazi regime could press almost any school subject into the service of its propaganda machine. Hitler made no secret of his desire for children to ‘learn nothing else but to think as Germans and to act as Germans’, and the schoolbooks published under his rule promoted the Nazi mindset in many different ways.

An obsession with race and eugenics was a major part of this mindset, promoted in biology textbooks with long sections on ‘racial studies’. But two biology textbooks in our collections also show more subtle use of propaganda. One is intended for use in girls’ schools and contains information on food and nutrition and on choosing a healthy partner; its cover shows a woman in a blossoming orchard, surrounded by blond children. Woman’s role is to nurture, to feed – and to breed. In contrast the textbook for boys’ schools is more technical and its cover features a powerful woodcut of a muscular ploughman, hair blowing in the wind. Man’s role is to fight the elements and tame the soil.

Biology textbook covers showing a woman in an orchard and a man ploughing
Biology for girls and boys: Graf, J. Biologie für höhere Schulen. Bd. 4. Ausgabe für Mädchenschulen. (München, 1943). YA.1994.a.15364, and Meyer, E. Lebenskunde: Lehrbuch der Biologie für höhere Schulen. Bd. 3 (5. Klasse). (Erfurt, 1942). 7006.v.17

The boys’ textbook uses the term ‘Lebenskunde’ instead of ‘Biologie’, and this preference for more ‘Germanic’ terminology developed throughout the period: a geography textbook which originally had the ‘does-what-is-says-on-the-tin’ title Lehrbuch der Wirtschaftsgeographie became in its 1940 edition Volk – Raum –  Wirtschaft (British Library: 10004.ppp.44.)

Geography of course offered further opportunities to hammer home to children the losses to German territory following the ‘diktat of Versailles’. History too was a fertile field for the propagandist, focusing on the heroes and triumphs of the German past. One history textbook describes the boy Hitler reading about the ancient Germans and lamenting that his native Austria was no longer part of a great German empire. Another includes an ‘appendix of enemies and traitors’, from Segestes, the betrayer of Arminius, to the Weimar Republic politician Walter Rathenau.

It’s hard to know how much influence this kind of textbook propaganda had on the children of Hitler’s Germany, but a generation grew up with these books and the teaching that went with them. Few if any can have remained completely untouched, and the post-war world must have given them much to un-learn and reconsider.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies

Posted by Susan Reed at 1:44 PM in Exhibitions , Germany , History , Politics , Propaganda | Permalink | Comments( 0)

22 May 2013

Opera crimes

Today is the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth. Our Music Blog is marking this with news of a digitisation project, but I make no excuse for blogging on the same topic on the same day. After all the many items in the media last week  have not only covered Wagner's music but also his cultural, political and literary influence. On 8-9 June the British Library will be hosting a "Wagner Weekend" featuring a seminar on Wagner as a writer and a dramatic reading of his tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen - both events with a literary rather than musical focus. Few other composers’ work would be examined (or performed) in this way!

In fact, there are few aspects of Wagner’s work which have gone unexplored over the years. One particularly strange little corner of Wagner studies is the legal analysis of the Ring Cycle. The writer Paul Lindau, in a review of the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876 [BL: 11794.c.17.], was perhaps the first to mention how many criminal offences are committed in the work, ranging from petty (unauthorised bathing by the Rhinemaidens) to severe (various murders).

Lindau had his tongue firmly in his cheek, but some writers have taken a more serious look at the legal side of the Ring Cycle. After all, the plot of Das Rheingold turns on a theft and a breach of contract, while oath-breaking and perjury loom large in Götterdämmerung. As critics from Bernard Shaw  onwards have recognised, Wagner was concerned in the Ring with power and its abuses, and the making, breaking and defying of laws form part of that theme. So trying to establish, to use the title of one essay, “Whose Gold? Whose Ring? Whose Helmet?” can be more than a mere parlour game for bored lawyers when analysing the complex political and moral world of the tetralogy.

Still, it’s the parlour game aspect that really catches the imagination, and its finest flowering is a work entitled Richard Wagners 'Ring des Nibelungen' im Lichte des deutschen Strafrechts (Richard Wagner’s 'Ring of the Nibelung' in the Light of German Criminal Law) [BL: YA.1994.a.10378]. Allegedly written in the 1930s by Ernst von Pidde, a provincial lawyer sacked by the Nazis for writing anti-Wagner polemics, this is in fact an anonymous spoof, first published in 1968 and occasionally reissued with updates taking into account changes in German law.

“Pidde” painstakingly analyses text (and sometimes music) to establish, for example, whether the hero Siegfried’s killing of giant-turned-dragon Fafner should be classed as homicide or cruelty to animals. At the end of the book he lists the relevant punishments for the guilty characters: I’ve always thought it unfair that the goddess Fricka gets life for incitement to murder while her husband Wotan, as accessory to the same murder (and killer, thief and arsonist), could be out in five years!Final scene of Götterdämmerung by Arthur Rackham

But for a truly obscure crime, we have to go back to Lindau. At the end of Götterdämmerung, Brünnhilde rides her horse into Siegfried’s funeral pyre, and is thus guilty of “burning the carcase of an animal in close proximity to inhabited buildings”. As they might have said on The Sweeney, “Get yer breastplate on, you’re nicked!”. 

Susan Reed, Lead Curator, Germanic Studies

Brünnhilde rides into Siegfried's funeral pyre: technically illegal. 

Posted by Susan Reed at 1:45 PM in Germany , Music | Permalink | Comments( 0)

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