To every place there belongs a story . . .
LUBECK
The LODE-Line still crosses a now vanished border east of the old Hansa city of Lübeck. Like a palimpsest upon the landscape, the border has been scraped away from the modern landscape and no longer marked on contemporary maps, but the old border-line is still visible through the traces of its earlier existence.
The LODE-Line still crosses a now vanished border east of the old Hansa city of Lübeck. Like a palimpsest upon the landscape, the border has been scraped away from the modern landscape and no longer marked on contemporary maps, but the old border-line is still visible through the traces of its earlier existence.
Is it my imagination or is this border a ghostly version of the facial profile of Andre Breton?
This surrealist line, captured on GoogleEarth, tracks the old border between what became known, in the post WWII anglophone world, as East and West Germany.
Is it my imagination or is this border a ghostly version of the facial profile of Andre Breton?
From Iron Curtain to German Green Belt
The Berlin Wall fell over twenty-five years ago but Germany is still divided.
These maps using data from 2011 and 2013 give a stark image of difference in income and prospective employment between the old "East" and "West" of a modern re-unified Germany. So, the question remains, how unified is modern Germany?
How a German river marks cultural divide between east and west!
The notion of a shared identity, shared community, a shared experience has, seemingly, NOT materialised.
Have social and political fragmentation and economic divisions between citizens been amplified by the impact of perceived "globalisation"?
In trading cities like Lübeck, the Hansa cities were places where feudalism gave way to freedoms. Stadt Luft Macht Frei - City Air Makes You Free!
Trading has become a power in its own right. the beginnings of this kind of power are to be found in the towns of the German Hansa. The Hansa alliance was able to; "make
its own treaties, see off kings, blockade a nation into starvation and
force surrender. Money went to war with political powers".
Money goes to war with political powers!
Europe! Fragmentation versus Union? This is a choice that is being taken away from some majorities and some minorities by Europe's ruling classes! Today!
Is this the most important geographical, political and cultural phenomenon that European societies will have to grapple with in the 21st century?
One of the features of the socio-political and ideological geography of our modern communication environment is the term "Balkanisation", that has been applied to describe subdivision of the internet into separate enclaves.
However, Robert Morgus' and Tim Maurer's study suggests that the alarmist term Balkanization should be replaced with more appropriate terms such as fragmentation and diversity.
Tax avoidance by multi-national companies!
There is this revolving door syndrome between global businesses, nation states and the European Commission that is finally coming under question.
Do multi-national companies undermine national sovereignties?
The Berlin Wall fell over twenty-five years ago but Germany is still divided.
These maps using data from 2011 and 2013 give a stark image of difference in income and prospective employment between the old "East" and "West" of a modern re-unified Germany. So, the question remains, how unified is modern Germany?
The notion of a shared identity, shared community, a shared experience has, seemingly, NOT materialised.
Have social and political fragmentation and economic divisions between citizens been amplified by the impact of perceived "globalisation"?
In trading cities like Lübeck, the Hansa cities were places where feudalism gave way to freedoms. Stadt Luft Macht Frei - City Air Makes You Free!
Trading has become a power in its own right. the beginnings of this kind of power are to be found in the towns of the German Hansa. The Hansa alliance was able to; "make its own treaties, see off kings, blockade a nation into starvation and force surrender. Money went to war with political powers".
Money goes to war with political powers!
Europe! Fragmentation versus Union? This is a choice that is being taken away from some majorities and some minorities by Europe's ruling classes! Today!
Is this the most important geographical, political and cultural phenomenon that European societies will have to grapple with in the 21st century?
One of the features of the socio-political and ideological geography of our modern communication environment is the term "Balkanisation", that has been applied to describe subdivision of the internet into separate enclaves.
However, Robert Morgus' and Tim Maurer's study suggests that the alarmist term Balkanization should be replaced with more appropriate terms such as fragmentation and diversity.
There is this revolving door syndrome between global businesses, nation states and the European Commission that is finally coming under question.
Do multi-national companies undermine national sovereignties?
Global Insights?
From different places and positions in the world we find different views and projections into our shared future but we must question these projections, questions that address the probable interests being promoted.
For example: Is it true that Europe is starting to think the unthinkable: breaking up?
Whose Europe? And who exactly is doing the thinking?
"The question of why German wages are not rising faster is one of the biggest riddles of the economy."
“There are those who prefer Keynesian economics,” he says. “But the image of the ‘Swabian housewife’ who prefers to keep the house in good order is prevailing . . . in politics at the moment.”
To every place there belongs a story . . .
. . . and a storyteller . . .
Buddenbrooks is a 1901 novel by Thomas Mann, chronicling the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the Hanseatic bourgeoisie in the years from 1835 to 1877. Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the Mann family of Lübeck, and their milieu.
The exploration of decadence in the novel reflects the influence of Schopenhauer on the young Mann. The Buddenbrooks of successive generations experience a gradual decline of their finances and family ideals, finding happiness increasingly elusive as values change and old hierarchies are challenged by Germany's rapid industrialisation. The characters who subordinate their personal happiness to the welfare of the family firm encounter reverses, as do those who do not.
In any case, the main theme of Thomas Mann's novels, the conflict between art and business, already governs this work. Also music plays a major role: Hanno Buddenbrook, like his mother, tends to be an artist and musician, and not a person of commerce like his father.
It was Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty-six years old. With the publication of the 2nd edition in 1903, Buddenbrooks became a major literary success. The work led to a Nobel Prize in Literature for Mann in 1929; although the Nobel award generally recognises an author's body of work, the Swedish Academy's citation for Mann identified "his great novel Buddenbrooks" as the principal reason for his prize.
In any case, the main theme of Thomas Mann's novels, the conflict between art and business, already governs this work. Also music plays a major role: Hanno Buddenbrook, like his mother, tends to be an artist and musician, and not a person of commerce like his father.
W. W. Rostow (The Stages of Economic Growth, Cambridge University press, 1960, p.11) identifies what he calls the 'Buddenbrooks effect':
In Thomas Mann's novel of three generations, the first sought money; the second, born to money, sought social and civic position; the third, born to comfort and family prestige, looked to the life of music. The phrase is designed to suggest, then, the changing aspirations of generations, as they place a low value on what they take for granted and seek new forms of satisfaction.
Mann's 1896 short story "Disillusionment" is the basis for the Leiber and Stoller song "Is That All There Is?", famously recorded in 1969 by Peggy Lee.
Jerry Leiber's wife Gaby Rodgers (née Gabrielle Rosenberg) was born in Germany, lived in the Netherlands. She escaped ahead of the Nazis, and settled in Hollywood where she had a brief film career in films noir. Gaby introduced Leiber to the works of Thomas Mann. The narrator in Mann's story tells the same stories of when he was a child. The lyrics of this song are written from the point of view of a person who is disillusioned with events in life that are supposedly unique experiences. The singer tells of witnessing her family's house on fire when she was a little girl, seeing the circus, and falling in love for the first time. After each recital she expresses her disappointment in the experience. She suggests that we "break out the booze and have a ball—if that's all there is", instead of worrying about life. She explains that she'll never kill herself either because she knows that death will be a disappointment as well. One difference between the story and the song is that the narrator in Mann's story finally feels free when he sees the sea for the first time and laments for a sea without a horizon. Most of the words used in the song's chorus are taken verbatim from the narrator's words in Mann's story.
Lübeck No 1 in the Top 5 "One Province Minors" in Europa Universalis IV
This blog-post is a matrix that originates first in the context of an artistic activity that relates to this place, Lubeck, and then connections multiply through processes of association, suggesting links, articulations and juxtapositions that the contemporary information wrap affords us, in a particular and contemporary type of consciousness, where the "loop" or "ricorso" helps the zig zagging necessary to see what is going on.
That's just the way it is . . . but don't you believe them . . .
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