All is force against force, nothing
else (Physics, Energy). With a rock and a stick, if a rock hits the
stick, and the stick is weaker, it will break. If the stick is
stronger, it will not break. The will to power that is in physics, is
also in humanity. For Nietzsche, there is nothing else.
“The secret of the greatest
fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live
dangerously!”
Übermenschlich = Super-human; a
concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche had his
character Zarathustra posit the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to
set for itself in his 1883 novel “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. As a
work of fiction, the utterances Nietzsche assigned to his Zarathustra
are not immediately discernible from his own thoughts and writings.
“Man is something to be surpassed.”
“A man’s maturity: that is to have
rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play.”
“In revenge and in love, woman is
more barbaric than man is.”
“What we experience in
dreams—assuming that we experience it often—belongs in the end
just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything
experienced "actually": we are richer or poorer on account
of it.”
“God is a thought which makes crooked
all that is straight.”
“Man is a rope stretched between the
animal and the Übermensch--a rope over an abyss.”
“One repays a teacher badly if one
remains always only a student.”
“Many brief follies--that is what you
call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with
a single long stupidity.”
“To demand of strength that it should
not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to
overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst
for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to
demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.”
“Of all that is written I love only
what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will
find that blood is spirit.”
“Beauty's voice speaks gently: it
creeps only into the most awakened souls.”
“Convictions are more dangerous
enemies of truth than lies.”
The adjective übermenschlich means
super-human, in the sense of beyond human strength or out of
proportion to humanity. Nietzsche introduces the concept of the
Übermensch in contrast to the other-worldliness of Christianity:
Zarathustra proclaims the Übermensch to be the meaning of the
earth and admonishes his audience to ignore those who promise
other-worldly hopes in order to draw them away from the earth.
The turn away from the earth is prompted, he says, by a
dissatisfaction with life, a dissatisfaction that causes one to
create another world in which those who made one unhappy in this life
are tormented. The Übermensch is not driven into other worlds away
from this one. Zarathustra declares that the Christian escape from
this world also required the invention of an eternal soul which would
be separate from the body and survive the body's death. Part of
other-worldliness, then, was the abnegation and mortification of
the body, or asceticism. Zarathustra further links the Übermensch
to the body and to interpreting the soul as simply an aspect of the
body.
For Rüdiger
Safranski, the Übermensch represents a higher biological type
reached through artificial selection and at the same time is also an
ideal for anyone who is creative and strong enough to master the
whole spectrum of human potential, good and "evil", to
become an "artist-tyrant". In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche
vehemently denied any idealistic, democratic or humanitarian
interpretation of the Übermensch: "The word Übermensch
[designates] a type of supreme achievement, as opposed to 'modern'
men, 'good' men, Christians, and other nihilists ... When I whispered
into the ears of some people that they were better off looking for
a Cesare Borgia than a Parsifal, they did not believe their
ears." Safranski argues that the combination of ruthless
warrior pride and artistic brilliance that defined the Italian
Renaissance embodied the sense of the Übermensch for Nietzsche.
According to Safranski, Nietzsche intended the ultra-aristocratic
figure of the Übermensch to serve as a Machiavellian bogeyman of the
modern Western middle class and its pseudo-Christian egalitarian
value system.
The term Übermensch was used frequently by Hitler and the Nazi
regime to describe their idea of a biologically superior Aryan or
Germanic master race; a form of Nietzsche's Übermensch became a
philosophical foundation for the National Socialist ideas. Their
conception of the Übermensch, however, was racial in nature. The
Nazi notion of the master race also spawned the idea of "inferior
humans" (Untermenschen) which could be dominated and enslaved;
this term does not originate with Nietzsche. Nietzsche himself was
critical of both antisemitism and German nationalism. In
defiance of these doctrines, he claimed that he and Germany were
great only because of "Polish blood in their veins",
and that he would be "having all anti-semites shot"
as an answer to his stance on anti-semitism. To his friend Franz
Overbeck he wrote, “I am just now having all anti-Semites shot.”
Blind pupils—As long as a man knows
very well the strength and weaknesses of his teaching, his art, his
religion, its power is still slight. The pupil and apostle
who, blinded by the authority of the master and by the piety
he feels toward him, pays no attention to the weaknesses of a
teaching, a religion, and soon usually has for that reason more
power than the master. The influence of a man has never yet grown
great without his blind pupils. To help a perception to
achieve victory often means merely to unite it with stupidity so
intimately that the weight of the latter also enforces the victory of
the former.
“Fanatics are picturesque, mankind
would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.”
The central ideal of Nietzsche's
philosophy was the individual and his freedom to shape his own
character and destiny. The German philosopher was frequently
described as the "radical aristocrat" of the spirit because
he abhorred mass culture and strove to cultivate a special kind of
human being, the Übermensch, endowed with exceptional spiritual
and mental qualities.
Although Benito Mussolini was certainly
familiar with Nietzsche's writings and was a long-time admirer of the
philosopher, Hitler's own connection with Nietzsche remains
uncertain. As a soldier during the First World War, he had carried
the works of Schopenhauer and not those of Nietzsche in his
backpack. There is no reference to Nietzsche in Mein Kampf (though
there is to Schopenhauer), and in Hitler's Table Talk, he refers
only indirectly to Nietzsche, saying: "In our part of the world,
the Jews would have immediately eliminated Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, and Kant. If the Bolsheviks had dominion over us for
two hundred years, what works of our past would be handed on to
posterity? Our great men would fall into oblivion, or else
they'd be presented to future generations as criminals and
bandits."
Nietzsche was clearly an elitist who
believed in the right to rule of a "good and healthy
aristocracy," one that would, if necessary, be ready to
sacrifice untold numbers of human beings. He sometimes wrote as if
nations primarily existed for the sake of producing a few "great
men," who could not be expected to show consideration for
"normal humanity." Not suprisingly, in the light of the
cruel century that has just ended, one is bound to regard such
statements with grave misgivings. From Mussolini and Hitler to
Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein, the last eighty years have
been riddled with so-called political geniuses imagining that they
were "beyond good and evil" and free of any moral
constraints. One has to ask if there is not something in
Nietzsche's philosophy with its uninhibited cultivation of a
heroic individualism and the will to power, which may have tended to
favor the fascist ethos. Musssolini, for example, raised the
Nietzschean formulation "live dangerously" (vivi
pericolosamente) to the status of a fascist slogan. His
reading of Nietzsche was one factor in converting him from Marxism
to a philosophy of sacrifice and warlike deeds in defense of the
fatherland.
Spencer Sunshine writes that "There
were many things that drew anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of
the state; his disgust for the mindless social behavior of 'herds';
his anti-Christianity; his distrust of the effect of both the market
and the State on cultural production; his desire for an 'overman'
— that is, for a new human who was to be neither master nor
slave; his praise of the ecstatic and creative self, with the
artist as his prototype, who could say, 'Yes' to the self-creation of
a new world on the basis of nothing; and his forwarding of the
'transvaluation of values' as source of change, as opposed to a
Marxist conception of class struggle and the dialectic of a linear
history."
The influential American anarchist Emma
Goldman in her famous collection of essays Anarchism and Other Essays
in the preface passionately defends both Nietzsche and Max Stirner
from attacks within anarchism when she says "The most
disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one
sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or
personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a
hater of the weak because he believed in the Übermensch. It does
not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this
vision of the Übermensch also called for a state of society which
will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves."
Nietzsche believed that only by
honestly facing the stark truth that there is no truth, no goal,
no value or meaning in itself, could one pave the way for a real
intellectual liberation and a revaluation of all values.
Young resorts to purely psychological
explanation primarily on the subject of Nietzsche’s attitude toward
women. He notes that Nietzsche had a large circle of highly
intelligent and forceful female friends, and that many could be
regarded as early feminists. As a Basel professor Nietzsche took a
minority stand favoring admission of women to the doctoral program.
But after his disastrous courtship of Lou Salomé, whose affections
were stolen by Nietzsche’s close friend Paul Rée, he came
to regard feminism as one of the most disastrous byproducts of
modernity, and women as needing (in the words of a character in
“Zarathustra”) “the whip.”
The most serious issue raised in this
or any other study of Nietzsche concerns the nature of his
politico-cultural program, the “transvaluation of all values,”
that was to take place in the wake of the death of Christianity.
Young properly criticizes attempts by the Nazis to appropriate
Nietzsche as one of their own. He points out that despite some casual
anti-Semitism in his early years, the older Nietzsche became a
principled anti-anti-Semite, an opponent of Bismarck and a critic of
the German chauvinism that emerged after the Reich was unified in
1871.
Nietzsche, however, hoped for a future
hierarchical society in which the labor of the many would support
the greatness of the few, one in which the cultural cacophony of
contemporary liberal societies would be replaced by the solidarity
of a single, common culture. Young argues that this was not
really a political project, and that the Übermensch at the top of
the pyramid should be thought of less as a Hitler-like dictator and
more as a spiritual leader, whom he compares variously to the
Dalai Lama or Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei. Cultural conformity
was not, for Young’s Nietzsche, something to be enforced through
political power, but rather something generated spontaneously through
communal participation in art, much as the ancient Greek polis had
been bound together through the common performance of tragedy.
No less convoluted were the efforts of
the Nazi commentator Heinrich Härtle in his 1937 book Nietzsche und
der Nationalsozialismus, where he presented the philosopher "as
a great ally in the present spiritual warfare." Härtle realized
that Nietzsche's advocacy of European unity, his elitism and
individualism, his critique of the state, his approval of
race-mixing, and his anti-anti-Semitism were incompatible with Nazi
ideology.
"There were many things that drew
anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of the state; his disgust for
the mindless social behavior of 'herds'; his anti-Christianity; his
distrust of the effect of both the market and the State on cultural
production; his desire for an 'übermensch' — that is, for a new
human who was to be neither master nor slave; his praise of the
ecstatic and creative self, with the artist as his prototype, who
could say, 'Yes' to the self-creation of a new world on the basis of
nothing; and his forwarding of the 'transvaluation of values' as
source of change, as opposed to a Marxist conception of class
struggle and the dialectic of a linear history."
Before we begin, however, it should
prove helpful to explain what Nietzsche's doctrine of “the will to
power” actually is. A psychological presupposition of Nietzsche's
is that humans are always attempting to inflict their wills upon
others. Every action toward another individual stems from a
deep-down desire to bring that person under one's power in one way or
another. Whether a person is giving gifts, claiming to be in love
with someone, giving someone praise, or physically harming someone,
the psychological motive is the same: to exert one's will over
others. This presupposition entails that all human beings are
ultimately and exclusively egoistic by nature. Therefore, according
to Nietzsche, there are no truly altruistic actions. The will
to power is not, however, limited to the psychology of human beings.
This is not to be confused with
Schopenhauer's "Will," however, though one could argue that
there are residual qualities of it in Nietzsche's "will to
power." The fundamental differences between the two are that
the "Will" is not concerned with power; rather it is blind
striving and unintelligent. Ideas and representations are the
outward manifestations of the "Will," while the "Will"
itself is the inner nature or essence of the universe. This
"Will," according to Schopenhauer, is never satisfied.
Taking the form of desires, aspirations, lusts, and cravings in
human beings, the unsatiable nature of the "Will" makes a
burden out of one's existence. Once one desire is satisfied, it
merely gives rise to another, and then another, and so on. The "Will"
is thus the source of all of the evil and suffering in the world.
These ideas lead Schopenhauer to adopt a life-denying view of the
world, since it contains nothing but suffering and the burden of
satisfying unrelenting desires. Nietzsche's "will to power,"
on the other hand, is a life-affirming view, in that creatures
affirm their instincts to acquire power and dominance, and
suffering is not seen as evil, but as a necessary part of existence
which is to be embraced. Lasting pleasure and satisfaction
come about as a result of being able to live according to one's
instincts--the ability to exert one's will to power. So, as
Nietzsche concludes in the very last lines of The Will to Power:
“Do you want a name for this world? A
solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you
best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?--This
world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves
are also this will to power--and nothing besides!”
“Whoever fights monsters should see
to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
“If you gaze long enough into the an
abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you.”
“The individual has always had to
struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it,
you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is
too high to pay for the privileged of owning yourself.”
“We love life, not because we are
used to living but because we are used to loving.”
“Without music, life would be a
mistake.”
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack
of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
“On the mountains of truth you can
never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today,
or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb
higher tomorrow.”
“Hope in reality is the worst of all
evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
“All things are subject to
interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a
function of power and not truth.”
“Thoughts are the shadows of our
feelings—always darker, emptier and simpler.”
“When marrying, ask yourself this
question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with
this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is
transitory.”
“The true man wants two things:
danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most
dangerous plaything.”
“He who has a why to live can bear
almost any how.”
“That which does not kill us makes us
stronger.”
“One must have chaos in oneself to be
able to give birth to a dancing star.”
“Not necessity, not desire—no, the
love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything—health,
food, a place to live, entertainment—they are and remain unhappy
and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be
satisfied.”
“You have your way. I have my way. As
for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not
exist.”
“Love is blind; friendship closes its
eyes.”
“In individuals, insanity is rare;
but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
“A woman may very well form a
friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by
a little physical antipathy.”
“The essence of all beautiful art,
all great art, is gratitude.”
“All truly great thoughts are
conceived by walking.”
“In heaven, all of the interesting
people are missing.”
“There are horrible people who,
instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to
solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how
to hit the nail on head should be asked not to hit it at all.”
...in attempting to counteract the
predicted rise of nihilism, he was engaged in a positive program to
reaffirm life, and so he called for a radical, naturalistic
rethinking of the nature of human existence, knowledge, and morality.
On either interpretation, it is agreed that he suggested a plan for
“becoming what one is” through the cultivation of
instincts and various cognitive faculties, a plan that
requires constant struggle with one’s psychological and
intellectual inheritances.
His attempts to unmask the motives that
underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy
deeply affected generations of theologians, philosophers,
psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights. He thought through
the consequences of the triumph of the Enlightenment’s
secularism, expressed in his observation that “God is dead,”
in a way that determined the agenda for many of Europe’s most
celebrated intellectuals after his death. Although he was an
ardent foe of nationalism, anti-Semitism, and power politics, his
name was later invoked by Fascists to advance the very things he
loathed.
“He who would learn to fly one day
must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one
cannot fly into flying.”
“I assess the power of a will by how
much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to
turn to its advantages.”
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is
to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than
those who think differently.”
“Faith: not wanting to know what is
true.”
“It is impossible to suffer without
making someone suffer for it; every complaint already contains
revenge.”
“Ah, women. They make the highs
higher and the lows more frequent.”
“There is an innocence in admiration;
it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they,
too, might be admired some day.”
“Many are stubborn in pursuit of the
path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.”
“It is not when truth is dirty, but
when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step
into its waters.”
“Our treasure lies in the beehive of
our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature
winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.”
“Is man one of God's blunders? Or is
God one of man's blunders?”
“A casual stroll through the
lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
“The doer alone learneth.”
“Those who cannot understand how to
put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.”
“Undeserved praise causes more
pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably
only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely
exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly
underestimated.”
“It is good to express a thing twice
right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left
one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able
to walk and get around.”
“There is always some madness in
love. But there is also always some reason.”
“Perhaps I know best why it is man
who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent
laughter.”
“Wit is the epitaph of emotion.”
“There is more wisdom in your body
than in your deepest philosophy.”
“The aphorism in which I am the first
master among Germans, are the forms of “eternity”; my ambition is
to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what
everyone doesn't say in a book.”
“We should consider every day lost on
which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every
truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.”
This then explains the central role
that music played in his philosophy. Nietzsche, a talented pianist
and occasional composer, had great hopes that Richard Wagner’s
music might somehow serve as the foundation for a refounding of
German culture on the basis of a unifying art, and for that reason he
entered eagerly into the circle of Wagner and his wife, Cosima. He
broke with the composer not because he ceased to believe in the
project, but because he felt that Wagner himself was too crude an
individual to implement it.
Nietzsche begins, in §716-719, by
arguing that in the modern world, societies as a whole tell us a
great deal more about the nature of mankind (as will to power)
than do individuals. States act in ways toward each other for
which individuals do not have the strength or courage, because states
do not feel responsible for their actions as do individuals. The
external behavior of the state is that of conquest and war,
acting in accordance with the will to power. The state is able to
engage in this behavior by dividing up the labor and executive
powers among its individuals, so that no one individual can feel
as though one bears significant responsibility for the state's
actions. It instills in its people values such as obedience, duty,
and patriotism, while it outwardly exudes values such as
strength, pride, and revenge. The former values are instilled
by the state's overpowering of the individual, so that one is
compelled to serve in its interests.
Jared Loughner's despair that
everything is unreal and words have no meaning amounts to hatred
of the world (a mania of moralism and narcissism) for its failure
to resemble the words we apply to it. Faced with a choice between
real people and some stupid abstraction about words,
themselves mere abstractions, Loughner killed the people to defend
the abstraction. This, then, really is a kind of nihilism,
only not the kind that people think Nietzsche was guilty of. It's the
kind of nihilism that Nietzsche was trying to warn us about, and
help us overcome.
By "actual neighbor," I take
Nietzsche to be referring to bordering states or societies, as
the context would indicate. It seems then, that Nietzsche is trying
to say that the violence inherent in the way a society exerts its
will to power is evidence that the true nature of man is one of
violence also. What Nietzsche reveals about the nature of states in
these passages is interestingly similar to some of the political
views which Noam Chomsky has professed--that states are
fundamentally violent institutions and a state's internally
espoused values have no bearing whatsoever on its external behavior.
Therefore, in this respect, all truly
great men, according to Nietzsche, are criminals in some respect,
in that they are individuals who are courageous enough to act in a
way that goes against the conformity of the herd. Nietzsche
expresses this sentiment in §740:
“Crime belongs to the concept "revolt
against the social order." One does not "punish" a
rebel; one suppresses him. A rebel can be a miserable and
contemptible man; but there is nothing contemptible in a revolt as
such—and to be a rebel in view of contemporary society does not
in itself lower the value of a man. There are even cases in which
one might have to honor a rebel, because he finds something in
our society against which war ought to be waged—he awakens us
from our slumber.”
The criminal is thus someone to be
valued by a society, as Nietzsche would have it, instead of
looked upon with moral derision. The criminal points out something
about society that is in need of change, helping to jolt the
rest us out of our complacency. The concept of "punishment"
for criminals then, simply amounts to the "suppression of a
revolt," in that it is nothing more than an attempt to
maintain the mediocre status quo of the herd by imprisoning
(or in some cases, executing) those who deviate from it.
Nietzsche argues further that finding a
punishment which will cause as much suffering as the suffering
inflicted by the criminal is impossible, since every criminal
experiences different degrees of pain and pleasure. Being that it is
not possible to measure these degrees, how are we supposed to
determine a punishment for such a person which would be fitting for
the nature of the crime? Nietzsche suggests here that the
institution of punishment thus fails to do what it sets out to do,
in that it cannot possibly provide punishments which offer the same
amount of pain to the criminal as the crime did to its victim. All
this seems to suggest to Nietzsche that punishment as a practice
should be abolished, but at the same time, he laments that
it would be a great loss. By this statement, it is likely that he
means it would be a loss of the pleasure one gets in being able to
inflict suffering on those who have wronged one, as he discusses in
On The Genealogy of Morals, second essay, section five:
“In ancient Rome, creditors were able
to inflict painful punishments on their dilatory debtors in the form
of removing body parts. They were legally given free reign
to cut off as much as they felt would satisfy their loss. In the
case of a society's penal code, the relationship between creditor and
debtor can be put in terms in which the debtor is someone who owes a
debt to society, and only the amount of suffering which seems
"fitting" for the crime (debt) will suffice as payment.”
Overall, however, Nietzsche sees the
criminalization of those who go against the grain as simply the herd
keeping people down to their level through the use of the state.
As he states in §746, such people should not be locked up, but
allowed to roam free, since they would help us break out of our
shared mediocrity:
Schopenhauer wanted rascals to be
castrated and silly geese to be shut up in convents: from what
point of view would this be desirable? The rascal has this advantage
over many other men, that he is not mediocre; and the fool has
this advantage over us, that he does not suffer at the sight of
mediocrity. It would be more desirable that the gulf should be
made wider; so rascality and folly should increase. In this way human
nature would be expanded—But, after all, this is dictated by
necessity; it does not depend on whether we desire it or not. Folly,
rascality increase: that is part of "progress."
What helps to maintain such mediocrity
among individuals is the present type of society or state in which
most societies presently function. Nietzsche highly disapproves of
any society which is operated on the premises of equal rights
and/or universal suffrage, or in other words, any society in
which the majority maintains power in one way or another.
Socialism, democracy, and anarchism all rest on the idea that
there are no great or superior individuals, and therefore Nietzsche
rejects them all. These forms of society represent nothing more
than the rule of the herd; the rule of mediocrity. Nietzsche
rejects such forms of society in favor of the aristocratic ideal,
which values a higher form of man; a model for society which
does in fact demonstrate a belief in great and talented
individuals and an elite class. For here the herd does not have
any power, and therefore does not keep in check those who
stand out among them who deserve rank and recognition, or in other
words, individuals are free to act upon their will to power in the
natural ways.
Nietzsche takes it to be a fundamental
error to place the goal of society in the masses, and not in
the individual, as democracy and socialism do. Rather, in
Nietzsche's opinion, the masses are the means to an end. He also
considers it a mistake to treat sympathy as the most valuable
trait in human beings, because, as he clearly states in section seven
of The Antichrist, pity asks for the multiplication of suffering (I
take Nietzsche to be using pity and sympathy interchangeably enough).
Pity makes us weak as individuals, sapping us of our ability
to exert our will to power in the natural, instinctive
(violent) ways that we normally would. It helps foster the herd, by
guilting us into helping to preserve those who would otherwise perish
of their weakness and life-denying attitudes. The most redeeming
quality of humans is, of course, their instinctive will to power.
In §768, Nietzsche writes about this nature of humans in the form of
its "ego":
“The Christian resolution to find the
world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”
“Fanatics are picturesque, mankind
would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.”
“There is not enough love and
goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary
beings.”
“Whoever does not have a good father
should procure one.”
“One has to pay dearly for
immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.”
“In every real man a child is hidden
that wants to play.”
“Character is determined more by the
lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.”
“Convictions are more dangerous foes
of truth than lies.”
“There cannot be a God because if
there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.”
“What do you regard as most humane?
To spare someone shame.”
“Whoever has witnessed another's
ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil
conscience.”
“Blessed are the forgetful: for they
get the better even of their blunders.”
Young appropriately underlines the
notion that postmodernism, with its embrace of diversity in values,
is no different from the 19th-century modernism that Nietzsche hated.
He would not have celebrated alternative lifestyles, non-Western
cultures or the right of every fourth grader to be his or her own
value-creator. Acknowledgment of the death of God is a bomb that
blows up many things, not just oppressive traditionalism, but also
values like compassion and the equality of human dignity on which
support for a tolerant liberal political order is based. This then is
the Nietzschean dead end from which Western philosophy has still not
emerged.
The first Soviet director of education,
Anatoly Lunacharsky (who was also in charge of state censorship of
the arts and bore the delicious title of Commissar of Enlightenment),
saw himself as promoting a communist version of the Superman.
“In labour, in technology,” he wrote, in a passage cited by
Watson, “[the new man] found himself to be a god and dictated
his will to the world.”
“The desire to annoy no one, to harm
no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious
disposition.”
“Love is not consolation. It is
light.”
“The best weapon against an enemy is
another enemy.”
“Fear is the mother of morality.”
Germanic peoples are also called
Teutonic Peoples, or any of the Indo-European speakers of Germanic
languages.
The origins of the Germanic peoples are obscure. During the late
Bronze Age, they are believed to have inhabited southern Sweden,
the Danish peninsula, and northern Germany between the Ems River on
the west, the Oder River on the east, and the Harz Mountains on the
south. The Vandals, Gepidae, and Goths migrated from
southern Sweden in the closing centuries bc and occupied the area of
the southern Baltic coast roughly between the Oder on the west and
the Vistula River on the east. At an early date there was also
migration toward the south and west at the expense of the Celtic
peoples who then inhabited much of western Germany: the Celtic
Helvetii, for example, who were confined by the Germanic peoples to
the area that is now Switzerland in the 1st century BC, had once
extended as far east as the Main River.
By the time of Julius Caesar, Germans were established west of the
Rhine River and toward the south had reached the Danube River. Their
first great clash with Romans came at the end of the 2nd century BC,
when the Cimbri and Teutoni (Teutones) invaded southern Gaul
and northern Italy and were annihilated by Gaius Marius in 102 and
101. Although individual travelers from the time of Pytheas
onward had visited Teutonic countries in the north, it was not until
the 1st century BC was well advanced that the Romans learned to
distinguish precisely between the Germans and the Celts, a
distinction that is made with great clarity by Julius Caesar. It was
Caesar who incorporated within the frontiers of the Roman Empire
those Germans who had penetrated west of the Rhine, and it is
he who gave the earliest extant description of Germanic culture. In 9
BC the Romans pushed their frontier eastward from the Rhine to the
Elbe, but in 9 AD, a revolt of their subject Germans headed by
Arminius ended in the withdrawal of the Roman frontier to the Rhine.
In this period of occupation and during the numerous wars fought
between Rome and the Germans in the 1st century AD, enormous
quantities of information about the Germans reached Rome, and, when
Tacitus published in 98 AD the book now known as the Germania, he had
reliable sources of information on which to draw. The book is one of
the most valuable ethnographic works in existence; archaeology has in
many ways supplemented the information Tacitus gives, but in general
it has tended only to confirm his accuracy and to illustrate his
insight into his subject.
The principal Germanic peoples were distributed as follows in the
time of Tacitus. The Chatti lived in what is now Hesse. The
Frisii inhabited the coastlands between the Rhine and the Ems.
The Chauci were at the mouth of the Weser, and south of them
lived the Cherusci, the people of Arminius. The Suebi,
who have given their name to Schwaben, were a group of peoples
inhabiting Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia; the
Semnones, living around the Havel and the Spree rivers, were a
Suebic people, as were the Langobardi (Lombards), who
lived northwest of the Semnones. Among the seven peoples who
worshiped the goddess Nerthus were the Angli (Angles),
centered on the peninsula of Angeln in eastern Schleswig. As for the
Danubian frontier of the Roman Empire, the Hermunduri extended
from the neighborhood of Regensburg northward through Franconia to
Thuringia. The Marcomanni, who had previously lived in the
Main valley, migrated during the last decade BC to Bohemia (which had
hitherto been occupied by a Celtic people called the Boii),
where their eastern neighbors were the Quadi in Moravia. On
the lower Danube were a people called the Bastarnae, who are
usually thought to have been Germans. The Goths, Gepidae, and
Vandals were on the southern Baltic coast. Tacitus mentions the
Suiones and the Sitones as living in Sweden. He also speaks of
several other peoples of less historical importance, but he knows
nothing of the Saxons, the Burgundians, and others who
became prominent after his time.
By the end of the 3rd century ad
important changes had taken place. East of the Rhine there were three
great confederacies of peoples unknown to Tacitus. The Roman frontier
on the lower Rhine faced the Franks. The Main valley was
occupied from about 260 by the Burgundians, while the Agri
Decumates (of the Black Forest region) were held by the Alemanni.
The Burgundians appear to have been immigrants from eastern Germany.
The Franks and the Alemanni may have been confederacies of
peoples who had lived in these respective areas in Tacitus’ day,
though perhaps with an admixture of immigrants from the east. The
peoples whom Tacitus mentions as living on the Baltic coast had moved
southeastward in the second half of the 2nd century. Thus the Goths
now controlled the Ukraine and much of what is now Romania; the
Gepidae were in the mountains north of Transylvania with the
Vandals as their western neighbors.
By the year 500, the Angles and Saxons were in England and the Franks
controlled northeastern Gaul. The Burgundians were in the
Rhône valley with the Visigoths as their western neighbors. The
Ostrogoths were established in Italy and the Vandals in
Africa. In 507, the Franks expelled the Visigoths from
most of the Gallic possessions, which had stretched from the Pyrenees
to the Loire River, and the Visigoths thereafter lived in
Spain until their extinction by the Muslims in 711. In 568 the
Lombards entered Italy and lived there in an independent
kingdom until they were overthrown by Charlemagne (774). The areas of
eastern Germany vacated by the Goths and others were filled up
by the Slavs, who extended westward as far as Bohemia and the
basin of the Elbe. After the 8th century the Germans recovered
eastern Germany, lower Austria, and much of Styria and Carinthia from
the Slavs.
...which explains how native Americans
covered all of the Americas from Alaska to the bottom part South
America, the Sami people in Sweden, some Asiatic traits in Finland,
and Genghis Khan.
...industrial revolution which started
in UK. it should be remembered that the Spanish and Portuguese went
to South America for Gold. The English (including the Welsh
but not Scots and Irish for historical reasons) also wanted gold but
the others would not let them have it and got there first. People
like Drake Raleigh, Frobisher, Hawkins etc. with the approval of
Queen Elizabeth I decided to put that right. Hence the Spanish and
Portuguese regard these as pirates but there was no way QE l was
going to let Papists have all the Gold. That meant the English had
some money and in it's way this financed the industrial
revolution. In it's way USA as separate states had only to
overcome the native Americans known in cowboy films as INJUNS. It
should be remembered that at no time did these people dishonor a
treaty. It was always the incomers.
Major characteristic of White people
(Nordic) is that they respect the FAIR PRICE principle, rather than
trying to obtain the maximum price which is considered greedy and
dishonorable. It's the only culture that is not mercantile.
True Europeans are quite traditional
and won't move unless persecuted or forced by famine: the
colonization of the US followed religious persecution. Canada and
Australia had to be populated by prisoners, because nobody
wanted to move there.
Darwin's The Origin of the Species was
published in 1859, slavery was already on its way out. It was
outlawed in 1834 in the British Empire; Abraham Lincoln was
elected in the US on an anti-slavery manifesto in 1860. (An
interesting side note: Darwin and Lincoln were born on the same day.)
Spirituality vs Ruthlessness.
Asians may be smarter technically but they live by their rules of spirituality, they tend not to do things they disagree with, or their various religions disapprove of.
White peoples (British/Europeans) on the other hand have tended to largely ignore the spiritual side of life and pursue material wealth—land, money, power, resources—traveling far and wide to get it, and even using their religion (Christianity) as a tool to dominate (forced conversions through missionaries etc), rather than as a guide for living a simple spiritual life.
That's the difference between them - it all comes down to how ruthless you want to be.
Asians may be smarter technically but they live by their rules of spirituality, they tend not to do things they disagree with, or their various religions disapprove of.
White peoples (British/Europeans) on the other hand have tended to largely ignore the spiritual side of life and pursue material wealth—land, money, power, resources—traveling far and wide to get it, and even using their religion (Christianity) as a tool to dominate (forced conversions through missionaries etc), rather than as a guide for living a simple spiritual life.
That's the difference between them - it all comes down to how ruthless you want to be.
Maybe because the white people in
England were all freezing with nothing better to do so they made
all these inventions to take over the world while the black
people didn't care about such things as they were too busy sitting on
the beach drinking Malibu.
The Asians were too busy inventing Tamagotchis to be interested in world domination.
The Asians were too busy inventing Tamagotchis to be interested in world domination.
“It’s not by hypocrisy that the
playing field isn’t level. It’s by necessity.” - Xenocrates
Secondly, the word “Caucasian”
arose out of the theory that all white people emerged from a region
between Europe and Iran called Caucasus, and it describes a
very wide range of ethnic groups. Caucasians include most
fair skinned “races”, which automatically includes anyone who
has the skull structure, if not the corresponding skin color.
Thus, Aryans, Indians and Arabs are all considered Caucasian –
only to establish Aryans as white and the rest as not.
This type of controversial
classification only has social value. Words that only have social
value tend to become abused to fit phobic agendas (such as racism)
and thus are inherently loaded. Similarly, describing Negroes as
“People of African descent” is inherently fallacious, as proven
by The Genographic project, confirming the theory that all of mankind
is of African descent.
So how did white men conquer the world,
exactly? Through several functions of cause and effect which occurred
in a specific sequence that would create that effect, starting out
with:
Caucasians has many more
conspicuous, traceable mutations (such as white skin and blue eyes)
in the last 20 – 50 thousand years than all the others. Where as
other phenotypic group expressions (commonly referred to as “races”)
differ primarily in orthopedic, (and more specifically, cranial)
qualities, there are enough variations in Europeans to functionally
deprecate any further use of the words “race” and “Caucasian“.
White people are uniquely different
from virtually all other phenotypic groups in that the genetic
mutations that created them are vastly more distinct. They constitute
a larger number of diverse physical characteristics that are not
as subtle as the variations that exist in other groups. Thus,
the prevalence of white people across the world speaks to what many
scientists believe to be natural selection due to the perception
of an apparent innovative survivability by female mates within
the group of this distinct phenotype, giving generational
prominence.
This is why blue and green eyes,
fair skin, blond, brown and red straight hair became the standard
qualities that describe people of this group. Virtually all of these
qualities are genetic mutations that were simply given preference
over most others when they first occurred, thus giving them a
greater degree of ubiquity in the group than the other existing
permutations.
The Germanic languages belong to the
Indo-European family of languages that span Eurasia from Ireland on
the west to India on the east. The origin of the Indo-European
languages is believed to have been in the merger of three peoples
in the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. One of
the three excelled in warfare, one in agriculture and one in
metal-working. The synthesis of these three strengths produced a
folk that spread east and west. The western branch splits into the
ancestors of the Baltic, the Celtic, the Germanic and the Slavic
tribes as well as a welter of smaller groupings such as those of
the Latins and Greeks. The languages of the Germanic tribes
underwent a systematic sound change that distinguished them from
the languages of the other branches.
By about 500 BCE, the Germanic tribes
were occupying the southern shores of the Baltic and southern
Scandinavia. Some of these Germanic tribes migrated and established
control of new territories. Tribes from Scandinavia, known as the
Goths, migrated southeast to the area north of the Black Sea.
Later they divided into the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths and
conquered areas in the north shore of the Mediterranean Sea as far
west as the Iberian peninsula. Later the Franks from what is
now Germany moved west and conquered the Low Lands and Roman Gaul,
giving it their name as France. The Angles and Saxons,
along with Justes, invaded Britain and created England.
Another Germanic tribe, the Lombards (long beards), invaded
and conquered what is now northern Italy. The Burgundians from
the region which included the Baltic Island of Bornholm moved
southward and ended up establishing the Kingdom of Burgundy in what
is now southeast France. Still later Germanic tribe invaded the
territory of the Prussians, a Slavic people, and conquered
them so thoroughly that Prussian came to be identified as the
epitome of Germanness. All in all it was a remarkable record of
military prowess on the part of the Germanic tribes. However in the
scheme of things the occupation of territory by the less bellicose
Slavic tribes was more successful. And while the Slavic
tribes by and large maintained their linguistic and cultural
identity the conquering Germanic tribes were largely absorbed
into the cultures they conquered.
The first written record of the
Germanic tribes was by the Roman historian Tacitus in 98 BCE. German
tribes were moving into the region that is now southwestern Germany
about the same time the Romans were conquering Gaul. Julius Caesar
defeated the Suevian tribe in 70 BCE and thus established the
Rhine River as the boundary between Roman and German territory. But a
Roman fear of militaristic peoples on their borders prompted the
Roman governor Varus to invade the territory beyond the Rhine.
Those Romans were soundly defeated in the year 9 AD at the Battle
of Teutoburg Forest. The leader of the victorious Germans was a
German who had received military training in the Roman army.
This German victory freed the German tribes of any serious threat
of domination by the Romans, although the Romans did later
conquer some territories beyond the Rhine and the Danube.
The king of the Franks, Clovis,
ruled over the mixed Celtic-Roman-German population of Gaul from
486 to 511. Clovis's line, the Merovingians, ended when Pepin
the Younger gained the throne of the Franks in 741. His line became
known as the Carolingians.
The greatest of the Carolingians
was Charlemagne (Charles the Great) who ruled the Franks from
768 to 814. Charlemagne conquered the Lombard kingdom of north
Italy in 774. In 800 Charlemagne was declared Holy Roman Emperor by
the Pope. Charlemagne's son Louis continued the rule of the Frankish
Holy Roman Empire which stretched from the Spanish Marches to what is
now Germany and Austria. But this magnificent empire was too large
and unwieldy to rule so shortly after Louis the Pious died in 840 the
empire was divided, in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun, between three
of Charlemagne's grandsons. The title of Holy Roman Emperor went
to the ruler of the Middle Kingdom.
60,000 years of evolution, the northern
folks were able to revisit Africa in their now finely refined,
fair skinned, brown haired, blue eyed, cotton clad, gun toting, sea
faring, gold digging, monarchy backed personas, only to see their
fellow humans in almost the same position they left them 60,000 years
earlier living in relatively primitive civilizations.
For black folks reading this, the fair
skinned men from the northern lands weren’t the first to enslave
darker skinned humans. That was just the most recent case. In fact,
Africans have been enslaved at least five times in world history.
At the very least, the Arabs, Greeks, Persians, Romans and various
European nations such as Portugal and Holland all chipped in.
As a result, the darker men in Africa
constantly had their culture being rebooted every 500 – 2,000
years by their smarter, more cognitively evolved, fairer skinned
northern land dwelling brothers. Some 700 years later, Africa is
still trying to play catch up to the rest of the world, as it
desperately tries to recover from the repeated culture rape of the
last 5,000 years or so.
...since China owes its wealth to
America and Africans living in the west are not as poor.
It’s the same reason why most western
black people would never return to Africa, why Latinos are
trying to escape Mexico, why you’re Asian and you don’t know a
single word in Chinese, or why your government is no longer run by a
Monarchy or a religious elite. White people have reformed our
thinking and given us the ability to think about things in a wholly
different way.
It is not surprising that our
education systems, our governments, our politics, our clothing, the
technology we use, the sports we play, many of our cultural
idiosyncrasies and much of the music we love is largely based on
European standards. Europeans and their descendants have defined
much of what you now come to take for granted, because it was “always
there“.
That’s why complaining about the
hypocrisy and inequality between races is an intrinsically
redundant argument. It is not by hypocrisy that the playing field
isn’t level. It’s by necessity. I know this sounds
Machiavellian from the outset, but all peoples needed to evolve
out of their barbarianism sooner or later. Whites just got there
first and are now spreading that around.
If white men had not intervened when
they did, many peoples would still be living in primitive
societies plagued by dangerous diseases and barbaric cultural
practices. I know you might be thinking that white folks could
have done the same thing without the hideous crimes against humanity.
Those were certainly regrettable, but all ethnic groups are guilty of
the same crime.
The unification of China saw the
slaughter and exile of many ethnic Chinese groups that brought the
Han Chinese to prominence. The same thing is happening in Africa
even today, most recently with the genocide in Darfur and Rwanda.
Even prehistoric Neanderthals had similar periods of ethnic
cleansing. So white people are no more vile than the rest of
humanity.
Love or hate them, we owe a great deal
of our cognitive evolution to white men. But let us not get
distracted. Any group of humans that migrated out of Africa to the
north west would have evolved into fair skinned, blue eyed, brown
haired explorers extraordinaire. The environment is what
facilitated the genetic mutations. Technically, any
phenotypic expression of the human genotype can produce any other.
They weren’t white while they were primitive tribes in Africa.
The impending ubiquity of technology
has effectively shrunken the world. While great divides still exist
economically between white societies and all others, the rest of the
world has finally caught up with the cognitive levels of white men
– and white men are to be thanked for that. It is they who after
all have educated the rest of the world on their social advancements.
No longer does the USA hold a monopoly
on economies of scale nor is it the manufacturing center of the
world. China now has that honor. The greatest minds in the
world may still be mostly white, but now those great minds include
Africans, Asians, Hispanics and every other variation of
humanity in between. This is how whites have ultimately redeemed
themselves.
Make no mistake though – white people
still rule the world. The only thing changing this, is that there is
a limitation to cognitive evolution. The more educated a group
becomes, the more interested it will be in the pursuit of
knowledge and the less interested it will be in the pursuit of
procreation. White populations around the world, from America to
Europe, are dwindling.
This is the change that will ultimately
unseat the dominant phenotype – maybe not in our lifetimes, but
certainly eventually. White populations are not expanding as
quickly as that of other groups – most notably people of Asian,
Latin and Negro descent. If the rate of cognitive evolution
remains the same and the negative population growth of Europeans is
unmitigated, we may very well see a successful shift in the dominant
phenotype from Europeans to Asians.
Even so, this is not a cause for
concern. There will always be white people around. That their
populations are shrinking is only a function of being the first to
civilize. That will be the fate of all distinct human groups. For as
I said before, no phenotype is inherently superior by design. The
perception is a fallacy based on the deceptive evolutionary impact
of the environment.
Genetic advantage is a fleeting thing.
The Prussians were originally Baltic
Slavs.
I just got back from Germany and wow!
You guys are the best people I have have ever met. i have traveled a
lot and never met anyone better than from Germany. I have a site that
has a link to my travels here www.meemsgalaxy.com.
Thanks a million Germans for being the most hospitable people on the
planet. Is it something they put in the beer to make you so nice and
beautiful? Thanks again.
Have you asked the Jews or Romani
people? How about the Slavs. Ugly dog looking Hunnic creatures.
Brits and French are way better.
Brits and French are way better.
More Americans are Skinheads then
Germans.
In the civil-American war between north
and south it were mostly the Germans who fight for blacks freedom -
not the Brits. All clear? And it were the Brits who made slavery, and
nowadays the Arabs in Darfur, but not the Germans.
Germans are only nice to tourists. But
if you plan on staying here, then oh boy their true colors come out.
They are some of the most racist people on earth. Trust me on this.
And yes Germans are still Nazis.
Who were
financiers and sympathizers of AH and his party?- people from all
over the world, especially in the US.
60 percent of the American people, say
they have German ancestor. That's why both countries are so
succesful. What about the Cold War? The German people stopped this
madness. On a peaceful way.
You are right
Vivek. The slave trade was primarily run and operated by nasty Jewish
merchants. They even admit to it in their own history books. Look up
the book: "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews"
if you don't believe me. Jews have a long history of cruelty and
exploiting other people.
I am almost 100% German and grew up in
America. I can honestly say I came from the most awesome family. They
could party! They were all accomplished musicians that would jam all
night. My grandfather was from Austria/Bavaria and was a jazz
musician at the age of 12. We all love science, especially astronomy
- and would stay up at night at our cottage out in the woods,
discussing astronomy, philosophy, religion. They are the most
interesting and generous people. I feel so lucky to have grown up
like I did. I am really happy to be German! Oh, and their food rocks
too!
Immer dieses Scheiß gelaber, dass die
Deutschen Nazis sein sollen! Selbst nach gut 70 Jahren habe die
Vollidioten, die uns Nazis nennen es immer noch nicht begriffen! Jede
Nation hat Dreck am stecken! Aber das übersehen Antideutsche und
deren Gefolge ganz gern, wem es in Deutschland nicht gefällt, der
kann gebrauch von der Reisefreiheit machen, ich kann diese
stimmungsmache gegen Deutschland nicht mehr hören und lesen!
I am German, I would not claim German
ancestry without being able to tell you that my family moved to
Russia when Catherine the Great asked Germans to farm (get food)
for Russian people. In exchange I believe it was land to live on
and farm. A little bit down history they came to America and lived in
Kansas, which is where my Grandma grew up, and then my grandma moved
to Florida with here husband where they live now, and where I live
with them.
@Joe He didn't say a gauranteed 60% are German, he said 60% claim to be German. It seems like Americans like to give themselves false titles and lie about ethnicity as well. Like the great amount of you who have Native American ancestors, even though you have blonde hair and it is straight like a white persons hair.
@Anti-Kartoffel You can't judge Germans as a whole, and a little fact for you, when Hitler came to power his role model for military was America. So when you want to call Germans Nazis just remember that and that there are Nazis in America. Nobody forgot about your KKK either, or your camps for Japanese. America is far from perfect.
The Slavs are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group living
in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and
Central Asia, who speak the Indo-European Slavic languages,
and share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and
historical backgrounds. From the early 6th century, they spread
to inhabit most of Central and Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe.
Slavic groups also ventured as far as Scandinavia,
constituting elements amongst the Vikings; while at the other
geographic extreme, Slavic mercenaries fighting for the Byzantines
and Arabs settled Asia Minor and even as far as Syria. Later,
East Slavs (specifically, Russians and Ukrainians) colonized
Siberia and Central Asia. Every Slavic ethnicity has emigrated to
other parts of the world. Over half of Europe's territory is
inhabited by Slavic-speaking communities.
Modern nations and ethnic groups called by the ethnonym Slavs
are considerably diverse both genetically and culturally, and
relations between them – even within the individual ethnic groups
themselves – are varied, ranging from a sense of connection to
mutual feelings of hostility. Present-day Slavic people are
classified into West Slavic (chiefly Poles, Czechs and Slovaks),
East Slavic (chiefly Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians),
and South Slavic (chiefly Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians,
Macedonians, Montenegrins, and Slovenes). For a more
comprehensive list, see the ethnocultural subdivisions.
The Cherusci were a Germanic
tribe that inhabited parts of the plains and forests of northwestern
Germany, in the area possibly near present-day Hanover, during the
1st century BC and 1st century AD. Ethnically, Pliny the Elder
groups them with their neighbors the Suebi and Chatti, as well
as the Hermunduri, as Hermiones, one of the Germanic groupings
said to descend from an ancestor named Mannus. They led an
important war against the Roman Empire. Subsequently they were
probably absorbed into the tribal confederations such as the
Franks and Allemanni.
The first historical mention of the
Cherusci occurs in Book 6.10 of Julius Caesar's De Bello
Gallico, which recounts events of 53 BC. Caesar relates that he
crossed the Rhine again to punish the Suebi for sending
reinforcements to the Treveri. He mentions that the Bacenis
forest (a relatively impenetrable Beech forest, possibly the Harz)
separated the territory of the Cherusci from that of the Suebi.
In 12 BC, the Cherusci and other Germanic tribes were
subjugated by the Romans. They appear to have been living in the same
homeland when Tacitus wrote, 150 years later, describing them as
living east of the Chauci and Chatti. This is generally
interpreted to be an area between the rivers Weser and Elbe.
As Rome tried to expand in northern
Europe beyond the Rhine, it exploited divisions within the Cherusci,
and for some time the tribe was considered a Roman ally. At this time
the tribe was split between Arminius (known in modern German as
"Hermann der Cherusker", although his actual Germanic name
was more likely Erminaz) and Segestes. Arminius advocated breaking
allegiance to Rome and declaring independence, while Segestes wanted
to remain loyal. By about 8 AD, Arminius had gained the upper hand
and began planning rebellion. Segestes repeatedly warned Publius
Quinctilius Varus, the governor of Gaul, that rebellion was being
planned, but Varus declined to act until the rebellion had broken
out.
In 9AD, in the Battle of the
Teutoburg Forest, an army of allied Germanic tribes under the command
of Arminius (the Cherusci, Bructeri,Marsi, Sicambri, Chauci
and Chatti) annihilated three Roman legions commanded by Varus.
The legions' eagle standards, of great symbolic importance to the
Romans, were lost. The numbers of these three legions, Legio XVII,
Legio XVIII, and Legio XIX, were never used again.
After the mutinies of the German
legions in 14, Germanicus decided, at the urging of his men, to march
into Germany to restore their lost honor. In 15, after a quick raid
on the Chatti, invaded the lands of the Marsi in 14 AD with 12,000
legionnaires, 26 cohorts of auxiliaries and eight cavalry squadrons.
According to Tacitus (Annals 1, 51), an area 50 Roman miles wide was
laid to waste with fire and sword: "No sex, no age found
pity." A Legion eagle from Varus's defeat, either from the
XVII or XVIII, was recovered. Then he began a campaign against the
Cherusci. He received an appeal to rescue Segestes, who was
besieged by Arminius. Segestes was rescued along with a group
of relatives and dependents, including Thusnelda, Segestes' daughter
and the wife of Arminius. Germanicus spared them and gave them
land in Gaul. He then found the site of the Battle of Teutoburg
Forest. His men buried the dead and built a funeral mound.
A series of battles followed.
Inflicting minor casualties on the Romans, Arminius seemed to be
gaining the upper hand, but in 16AD Germanicus defeated Arminius
at Idistaviso and in 18 at the Battle of the Angrivarian Walls.
In 19AD, Adgandestrius, a chief of the Chatti, asked Rome for
poison to kill Arminius. Tacitus claimed the request was
refused on the "noble" grounds that (as related by Tacitus)
"Romans take vengeance on their enemies, not by underhanded
tricks, but by open force of arms." Following the decisive
Roman victories, Arminius increasingly became embroiled in
tribal disputes; his opponents accused him of trying to make himself
King. In 21AD Arminius "succumbed to treachery from his
relations" (Tacitus) and a client king was appointed on the
Germans by Rome.
After Arminius' death, the Romans left
the Cherusci more or less to their own devices. In 47 AD. the
Cherusci asked Rome to send Italicus, the nephew of Arminius, to
become king, as civil war had destroyed their nobility. He was
initially well liked, but since he was raised in Rome as a Roman
citizen, he soon fell out of favor.
Tacitus, writing of the Cherusci
in his time (about 100 AD):
“Dwelling on one side of the Chauci
and Chatti, the Cherusci long cherished, unassailed, an
excessive and enervating love of peace. This was more pleasant
than safe, for to be peaceful is self-deception among lawless and
powerful neighbors. Where the strong hand decides, moderation and
justice are terms applied only to the more powerful; and so the
Cherusci, ever reputed good and just, are now called cowards and
fools, while in the case of the victorious Chatti success has been
identified with prudence. The downfall of the Cherusci brought
with it also that of the Fosi, a neighboring tribe, which
shared equally in their disasters, though they had been inferior to
them in prosperous days.
Claudius Ptolemy in his Geography,
describes the Χαιρουσκοὶ and Καμαυοὶ (Cherusci
and Chamavi) as living near each other and also near to "Mount
Melibocus" (probably the Harz mountains) and to the Calucones,
who lived on both banks of the Elbe.”
Later history of the Cherusci is
mostly unknown. In the 4th century AD they perhaps contributed to the
formation of the Saxon or the Frank peoples.
According to Julius Caesar, the Germans
were pastoralists, and the bulk of their foodstuffs—milk,
cheese, and meat—came from their flocks and herds. Some farming
was also carried out, the main crops being grain, root crops, and
vegetables. Both the cattle and the horses of the Germans were of
poor quality by Roman standards.
The Iron Age had begun in Germany
about four centuries before the days of Caesar, but even in his
time metal appears to have been a luxury material for domestic
utensils, most of which were made of wood, leather, or clay.
Of the larger metal objects used by them, most were still made of
bronze, though this was not the case with weapons. Pottery
was for the most part still made by hand, and pots turned on the
wheel were relatively rare.
The degree to which trade was developed
in early Germany is obscure. There was certainly a slave trade, and
many slaves were sold to the Romans. Such potters as used the
wheel—and these were very few—and smiths and miners no doubt sold
their products. But in general the average Germanic village is
unlikely to have used many objects that had not been made at home.
Foreign merchants dealing in Italian as well as Celtic wares were
active in Germany in Caesar’s time and supplied prosperous warriors
with such goods as wine and bronze vessels. But from the reign of
Augustus onward, there was a huge increase in German imports
from the Roman Empire. The German leaders were now able to buy whole
categories of goods—glass vessels, red tableware, Roman weapons,
brooches, statuettes, ornaments of various kinds, and other
objects—that had not reached them before. These Roman products
brought their owners much prestige, but how the Germans paid for them
is not fully known.
Warfare.
In the period of the early Roman
Empire, German weapons, both offensive and defensive, were
characterized by shortage of metal. Their chief weapon was a
long lance, and few carried swords. Helmets and breastplates
were almost unknown. A light wooden or wicker shield, sometimes
fitted with an iron rim and sometimes strengthened with leather,
was the only defensive weapon. This lack of adequate equipment
explains the swift, fierce rush with which the Germans would charge
the ranks of the heavily armed Romans. If they became entangled in a
prolonged, hand-to-hand grapple, where their light shields and
thrusting spears were confronted with Roman swords and armor, they
had little hope of success. Even by the 6th century, few of the
Germanic peoples had adequate military equipment. None evolved a
force adequate to deal with the heavily armed mounted archers of
Justinian I.
The original/indigenous people of
Germany are Europeans from the central and northern regions. However
they are not exclusively limited to that, since Slavs also
inhabitated parts of eastern Germany. Thus the physical features/
traits would be similar to North and Central Europeans in most cases.
As a whole Germans belong to the light and blond branch of
Europeans, however this varies greatly. The so-called Nordic
type linked to a tallish stature, slender build, longish head shape,
strong chin, narrow features, and a pale complexion, with light eyes
and light/blond hair is seen among Germans, but is not dominant.
This was the type associated to people who brought Germanic languages
to Germany. However the Palaeolithic type which is larger in build,
taller, broader-featured, shorter-headed, darker-haired (more
brown-haired), as pale and light-eyed is dominant in northern to
central Germany. The so-called Alpinid/Central-European type which is
darker than both types already mentioned and is also
broader-featured, shorter-statured than the Nordic, mainly hazel to
brown-eyed is common in southern Germany. However due to population
movements Alpinid could be found as individuals anywhere in Germany.
Now as in every population there are mixing, thus Nordic-Alpinids are
common, especially in central and eastern Germans populations.
Nordic-Palaeolithics are very common in the north, this type is as
blond as the Nordic, but broader featured. Slavs also brought
another type known as the Osteuropid, which is somewhat
blonder-haired than the Nordic, with more grayish-colored
eyes found mostly in northeastern parts, but is in the minority. Thus
a whole Germans belong more to the blond regions of Europe than
brunets. The very tall, medium-build, hook-nosed,
brunet-complexioned, dark-eyed Germans are also found especially in
the south and are slightly more common than the Osteuropid ones.
Nevertheless Germans are by far predominantly Northern European
(60-80%) in physical traits, the rest Central European.
There is a Slavic tribe in central
Germany called the Sorbs, but they are very small in number. I'm not
even sure they exist any more.
Prussia was the Kingdom of Northern
Germany that was stretched from Central Germany to what is now East
Prussia. East Prussia is where it started, got its name and so on.
This area was inhabited by Natives that before the Teutonic knights
settled it in the 1300s, they were not necessarily Slavs but Baltic
people like the Latviens and Lithuanians.
So no it was not a Slavic country, they did not have countries back when non-Germans lived there, nor where they Slavs. I thinks its pathetic what is left of the Great Kingdom. My mother's family was from Königsberg and they were expelled from the area by the Soviets at the end of WW2, but as I have read since the Soviet capitulation some small numbers of the remaining Ethnic Germans from Russian lands have resettled in East Prussia recently.
So no it was not a Slavic country, they did not have countries back when non-Germans lived there, nor where they Slavs. I thinks its pathetic what is left of the Great Kingdom. My mother's family was from Königsberg and they were expelled from the area by the Soviets at the end of WW2, but as I have read since the Soviet capitulation some small numbers of the remaining Ethnic Germans from Russian lands have resettled in East Prussia recently.
This is a huge topic, so it is easier
to concentrate on one aspect of the migrations. There was a German
presence in all of Prussian lands for a long long time well before
its rule by the Hohenzollerns. Albrecht of Brandenburg-Anspach
secularized the Prussian holdings of the Teutonic Order.
East Prussia lay along the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea and enclosed the bulk of lands of the now-extinct old Prussians. These people were not Slavs. In prehistory, the east of the area was inhabited by the Eastern Balts. In time, the Western Balts consolidated into the Old Prussian nation, while the Eastern Balts, including the "Curonians", consolidated into part of Latvia and Lithuania. Parts of the Baltic region remained wilderness for longer than anywhere else in Europe.
About 350 BC, Pytheas called the territory Mentenomon and the inhabitants Guttones, neighbors of the Teutones. The territory was called "Brus" ("Prus") on an 8th century German map. Vikings penetrated into the area in the 7th and 8th centuries and many were absorbed into the local population, especially in the bigger trade areas such as Truso and Kaup where they were said to travel back and forth across the Baltic Sea. In later expeditions launched by Danes and other Vikings, many areas in Prussia including Truso and Kaup were destroyed. After the new state of the Poland formed in the 10th century, there were also constant, unsuccessful attempts by Polish rulers to conquer the land of the Prussians. Raids in 1147AD, 1161AD, 1166AD, and a number in the early 1200s were repelled by the Prussians.
The old Prussian language belonged to the Western branch of the Baltic language group, but old Prussians spoke a variety of tongues, including German, and some related to modern Latvian and Lithuanian languages. Eastern Prussia from the 13th century on was almost entirely German as a result of German settlers. In 1457, Königsberg became the center of the Teutonic Order who since 1220AD had dotted the landscape with castles and founded numerous other towns and fortresses.
By 1939, East Prussia had 2.49 million people, 85% of them still German, and a Lithuanian and Polish-speaking minority. After the expulsion of the German population and the theft of East Prussia at the end of the War, Königsberg, a dignified cultural mecca of arts and learning founded in 1255, was renamed Kalingrad after a Soviet thug who never stepped foot there. Most traces of the area's Germanic past which survived brutal Allied bombing were intentionally blown up and bulldozed. Kalingrad turned into a grim, grey, dirty, contaminated, disease-infested and poor city with about 400,000 people in the metropolitan area and a total of one million are in the "oblast". Krieger is correct. In the late 1980's some ethnic Germans arrived, most driven out of other parts of the USSR, and by 1991, 5,000 ethnic Germans were said to inhabit the city and 13,000 the region.
East Prussia lay along the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea and enclosed the bulk of lands of the now-extinct old Prussians. These people were not Slavs. In prehistory, the east of the area was inhabited by the Eastern Balts. In time, the Western Balts consolidated into the Old Prussian nation, while the Eastern Balts, including the "Curonians", consolidated into part of Latvia and Lithuania. Parts of the Baltic region remained wilderness for longer than anywhere else in Europe.
About 350 BC, Pytheas called the territory Mentenomon and the inhabitants Guttones, neighbors of the Teutones. The territory was called "Brus" ("Prus") on an 8th century German map. Vikings penetrated into the area in the 7th and 8th centuries and many were absorbed into the local population, especially in the bigger trade areas such as Truso and Kaup where they were said to travel back and forth across the Baltic Sea. In later expeditions launched by Danes and other Vikings, many areas in Prussia including Truso and Kaup were destroyed. After the new state of the Poland formed in the 10th century, there were also constant, unsuccessful attempts by Polish rulers to conquer the land of the Prussians. Raids in 1147AD, 1161AD, 1166AD, and a number in the early 1200s were repelled by the Prussians.
The old Prussian language belonged to the Western branch of the Baltic language group, but old Prussians spoke a variety of tongues, including German, and some related to modern Latvian and Lithuanian languages. Eastern Prussia from the 13th century on was almost entirely German as a result of German settlers. In 1457, Königsberg became the center of the Teutonic Order who since 1220AD had dotted the landscape with castles and founded numerous other towns and fortresses.
By 1939, East Prussia had 2.49 million people, 85% of them still German, and a Lithuanian and Polish-speaking minority. After the expulsion of the German population and the theft of East Prussia at the end of the War, Königsberg, a dignified cultural mecca of arts and learning founded in 1255, was renamed Kalingrad after a Soviet thug who never stepped foot there. Most traces of the area's Germanic past which survived brutal Allied bombing were intentionally blown up and bulldozed. Kalingrad turned into a grim, grey, dirty, contaminated, disease-infested and poor city with about 400,000 people in the metropolitan area and a total of one million are in the "oblast". Krieger is correct. In the late 1980's some ethnic Germans arrived, most driven out of other parts of the USSR, and by 1991, 5,000 ethnic Germans were said to inhabit the city and 13,000 the region.
Both the Baltic and Slavic languages
are often said to be from a common Balto-Slavic tongue descended from
the original Indo-European tongue. The Balto-Slavic speech diverged
into separate Baltic and Slavic branches each of which gave rise to
new languages in turn. Certainly, the dividing line between Balt
and Slav was never clear and distinct.
While the Baltic-speaking Old Prussians were absorbed by the Germans, the Baltic-speaking peoples of what is now Belarus were absorbed by the Slavs. The East-Baltid racial type is common among the North Slavs and among Balts such as Latvians and Lithuanians. The pagan Slav deity Perun is essentially the same as the Baltic Perkunas/Perkons.
More importantly, while the name “Prussia” originally referred only to the land between the rivers Vistula and Memel (and was thus Baltic-speaking) the political entity under the Hohenzollerns called “Prussia” would later expand to take in areas which were indubitably once Slavic. Slavic languages were once spoken over much of what later became Germany, as far west as the Rivers Elbe and Saale and beyond, as the Slav Wagrians of Holstein attest.
A Slav language was spoken on the island of Rügen until around AD 1400, this island having pagan Slav shrines. The Slav Obodrite people of Mecklenburg retained their language until the Eighteenth Century. All these peoples were assimilated by the Germans. The Slavic Sorbs (Wends) of the Lausitz region to the east of Dresden retain their language and identity to this day, the northern Sorb dialect being like Polish, the southern Sorb dialect is like Czech.
The Slavs have left a legacy of placenames throughout what was once Prussia. Pomerania (once again Slavic) derives its name from the old Slavic tribe the Pomoryanie, whose name means “by the sea,” which renders into modern Polish as Pomorze, a more accurate transcription from the old Slavic than the German “Pommern” which was a corruption of this. Leipzig was once the Slavic Lipsk from “Lipa” (lime tree). Chemnitz derives from the Slavic root “Kamien” (stone).
Placenames of Slavic origin include those ending with the suffixes –ow, -in (as in Berlin), -au (as in Spandau) and –itz (as in Colditz and Auschwitz).
While the Baltic-speaking Old Prussians were absorbed by the Germans, the Baltic-speaking peoples of what is now Belarus were absorbed by the Slavs. The East-Baltid racial type is common among the North Slavs and among Balts such as Latvians and Lithuanians. The pagan Slav deity Perun is essentially the same as the Baltic Perkunas/Perkons.
More importantly, while the name “Prussia” originally referred only to the land between the rivers Vistula and Memel (and was thus Baltic-speaking) the political entity under the Hohenzollerns called “Prussia” would later expand to take in areas which were indubitably once Slavic. Slavic languages were once spoken over much of what later became Germany, as far west as the Rivers Elbe and Saale and beyond, as the Slav Wagrians of Holstein attest.
A Slav language was spoken on the island of Rügen until around AD 1400, this island having pagan Slav shrines. The Slav Obodrite people of Mecklenburg retained their language until the Eighteenth Century. All these peoples were assimilated by the Germans. The Slavic Sorbs (Wends) of the Lausitz region to the east of Dresden retain their language and identity to this day, the northern Sorb dialect being like Polish, the southern Sorb dialect is like Czech.
The Slavs have left a legacy of placenames throughout what was once Prussia. Pomerania (once again Slavic) derives its name from the old Slavic tribe the Pomoryanie, whose name means “by the sea,” which renders into modern Polish as Pomorze, a more accurate transcription from the old Slavic than the German “Pommern” which was a corruption of this. Leipzig was once the Slavic Lipsk from “Lipa” (lime tree). Chemnitz derives from the Slavic root “Kamien” (stone).
Placenames of Slavic origin include those ending with the suffixes –ow, -in (as in Berlin), -au (as in Spandau) and –itz (as in Colditz and Auschwitz).
Broadly speaking, it seems from a
certain modern Slav view of history, almost all of German lands were
originally Slav (well, they might agree that the Rhineland was
German, but then the French like to claim that...), but it just isn't
true. Slavs migrated west in much the same way as Germans migrated
east. The original population of Silesia, for example, was
according to most scholars probably Celtic and about the year
1138AD Silesia was first transferred to the Germans. By the end of
the 13th century, Silesia had virtually become a German land with
Breslau growing into a leading center of trade.
Bohemia itself owed its name to the Celtic "Boii", a people which occupied the country in prehistoric times. About 78 B.C. the land was occupied by Germanic tribes, and some years after the birth of Christ, the Marcomanni King Marbod united the German tribes as far as the North Sea and the Baltic to form a great confederation which menaced the Roman Empire. When these tribes left Bohemia and Moravia in the sixth century, a Slavonic people came in from the northeast which was soon to appear in history under the general name of Cechen (Czechs). Bohemia went back and forth between Celts, Germans, Hungarians and Slavs, however German and Latin remained the prevalent language of the aristocracy in south Bohemia and Moravia, as well as in parts of north Moravia and northeast Bohemia from the 11th century, even among the Royal house of the Přemyslid dynasty.
Along areas of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, between the estuaries of the Oder and Vistula Rivers, lies the historical region of Pomerania, once all part of old Prussia and settled by Germanic tribes between 1200 and 1000B.C. Except for the easternmost districts, which were in ancient times Polish and where a small Polish-speaking, mostly Catholic minority remained, Pomerania was German and Protestant for most of modern history. That these places were "eternally Polish", etc, was a fabrication of Stalin to justify outright theft.
You are right, however, about some place names and even surnames being of Slav origin. You see, there were actually times in history when Slavs and Germans did not fight.. usually when left to their own devices without meddling from third parties eager, from greed or political power-lust, to instigate problems. Take Bavarian Duke Georg of Landhut, whose wedding with married Polish princess Jadwiga Jagiellon in 1475 was celebrated in one of the most splendid festivals of the Middle Ages.
Bohemia itself owed its name to the Celtic "Boii", a people which occupied the country in prehistoric times. About 78 B.C. the land was occupied by Germanic tribes, and some years after the birth of Christ, the Marcomanni King Marbod united the German tribes as far as the North Sea and the Baltic to form a great confederation which menaced the Roman Empire. When these tribes left Bohemia and Moravia in the sixth century, a Slavonic people came in from the northeast which was soon to appear in history under the general name of Cechen (Czechs). Bohemia went back and forth between Celts, Germans, Hungarians and Slavs, however German and Latin remained the prevalent language of the aristocracy in south Bohemia and Moravia, as well as in parts of north Moravia and northeast Bohemia from the 11th century, even among the Royal house of the Přemyslid dynasty.
Along areas of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, between the estuaries of the Oder and Vistula Rivers, lies the historical region of Pomerania, once all part of old Prussia and settled by Germanic tribes between 1200 and 1000B.C. Except for the easternmost districts, which were in ancient times Polish and where a small Polish-speaking, mostly Catholic minority remained, Pomerania was German and Protestant for most of modern history. That these places were "eternally Polish", etc, was a fabrication of Stalin to justify outright theft.
You are right, however, about some place names and even surnames being of Slav origin. You see, there were actually times in history when Slavs and Germans did not fight.. usually when left to their own devices without meddling from third parties eager, from greed or political power-lust, to instigate problems. Take Bavarian Duke Georg of Landhut, whose wedding with married Polish princess Jadwiga Jagiellon in 1475 was celebrated in one of the most splendid festivals of the Middle Ages.
Again, as regards toponymy I am given
to understand that Breslau/Wrocław derives its name from that of a
Slavic chieftain, the capital of Slovakia (Bratislava) being a
different variation of this personal name. The “German” identity
of these lands was built on Slav foundations, the Slav languages
being gradually pushed out (for reasons of prestige, etc.) and
replaced by German. In much the same way in the British Isles the
Celtic languages were pushed out by English. Whereas the Welsh and
Irish retained a notion of being “other than” the English
(despite the fact that they now spoke English), the descendants of
these Slavic peoples considered themselves to be nothing other
than Germans by the end of the Nineteenth Century.
In Upper Silesia there was a population that spoke “Schlonsak,” a Polish dialect interspersed with words of German. This population was allowed to stay behind after World War II because they were held to be indigenous Poles although they were (and are) very conscious of their cultural connections with Germany.
In Upper Silesia there was a population that spoke “Schlonsak,” a Polish dialect interspersed with words of German. This population was allowed to stay behind after World War II because they were held to be indigenous Poles although they were (and are) very conscious of their cultural connections with Germany.
Prussian language died out in middle
XIX century, was similar to Lithuanian (Baltic language) and
Polish (Slavic language with huge Baltic influences, some Germans
words as well). I read once that the East Prussia longer than German
has been Polish up to 1795 (Danzing 1772). German language
has nothing in common with Prussian... but Lithuanian and Polish
definitely...
German people gradually migrated to the
east during medieval times. In the year 900, the boundary between the
Germans and the Slavs was more or less in the same place it is today,
on the Oder. But Germans moved eastward along the shores of the
Baltic and elsewhere, starting with the Teutonic Order and the
Hanseatic League, and ordinary Germans followed them into those
lands. They eventually reached East Prussia and Germanized it,
through a combination of displacing the original population and
assimilating them.
East Prussia was a feudal fief of Poland until 1660, but was independent after that. West Prussia was added to the Hohenzollern Kingdom of Prussia in 1772, and remained German until 1919, but remained largely Polish (except for the cities of Danzig and Bromberg) throughout that time. By 1795, the partitions of Poland had been completed, and even Warsaw was briefly a part of Prussia. All of the Polish territories annexed by Prussia except for West Prussia were lost in the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807.
The old Prussian language is very similar to Latvian and especially Lithuanian, and the Prussian people prior to the Germans' arrival there were ethnically related to the Latvians and Lithuanians. The Polish language and people aren't connected to this; they're Slavs who speak a Slavic language most similar to Belarusian, Ukranian, and Russian, although many Poles once did live in East Prussia, and were the majority in West Prussia.
East Prussia was a feudal fief of Poland until 1660, but was independent after that. West Prussia was added to the Hohenzollern Kingdom of Prussia in 1772, and remained German until 1919, but remained largely Polish (except for the cities of Danzig and Bromberg) throughout that time. By 1795, the partitions of Poland had been completed, and even Warsaw was briefly a part of Prussia. All of the Polish territories annexed by Prussia except for West Prussia were lost in the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807.
The old Prussian language is very similar to Latvian and especially Lithuanian, and the Prussian people prior to the Germans' arrival there were ethnically related to the Latvians and Lithuanians. The Polish language and people aren't connected to this; they're Slavs who speak a Slavic language most similar to Belarusian, Ukranian, and Russian, although many Poles once did live in East Prussia, and were the majority in West Prussia.
Prussians are Germanic-Slavs.
The people of Prussia are Baltic Slavs people that immigrated
to Germany, And mixed with the Germans. Prussian language is
Slavic, like Polish is Slavic.
"The old Prussian language is
very similar to Latvian and especially Lithuanian" truth
but Polish sound differently from Russian and Ukrainian because
Baltic influences so many world was similar to Polish. For example
Kashubian in Poland language which came from Prussian... Bromberg
city with polish architecture mainly...
Pierre Ferrand, while correct in
objecting to the use of Frederick the Great of Prussia as a peace
symbol for Germany, repeats a common mistake in identifying the
original Prussians as a Slavic tribe (letter, Aug. 23). They were
a Baltic tribe, akin to the modern Lithuanians and Latvians. CHARLES
E. TOWNSEND Princeton, N.J., Aug. 29, 1991 The writer is professor of
Slavic languages, Princeton University.
“The autonomous, self-determining
Superman is yet another piece of counterfeit theology.” Aiming to
save the sense of tragedy, Nietzsche ended up producing another
anti-tragic faith: a hyperbolic version of HUMANISM.
“Go up close to your friend, but do
not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.”
“The best author will be the one who
is ashamed to become a writer.”
“Glance into the world just as though
time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.”
“The world itself is the will to
power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power -
and nothing else!”
“The demand to be loved is the
greatest of all arrogant presumptions.”
“Egoism is the very essence of a
noble soul.”
“When one does away with oneself one
does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves
to live.”
“After coming into contact with a
religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”
“He who laughs best today, will also
laughs last.”
“A friend should be a master at
guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see
everything.”
“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”
“Art is the proper task of life.”
“He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.”
“Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.”
“At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.”
“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”
“Art is the proper task of life.”
“He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.”
“Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.”
“At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.”
“Is Wagner a human being at all? Is
he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he
has made music sick.”
Do not forget, man, consumed by lust:
you—are the stone, the desert, are death … ~Dionysian-Dithyrambs
(1888)
In 1989, the government of East Germany
announced, with little planning, that its citizens would be able to
visit West Germany and West Berlin
"For believe me! — the secret
for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the
greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on
the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at
war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long
as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge!
Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in
forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will
reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you
with it!" Sec. 283, The Gay Science (Die fröhliche
Wissenschaft) 1882 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
“Did you know that Prussians
conquered a Baltic-Slavic people to establish their state (1415)? I
know! I'm just as shocked as you.”
Larry Hovekamp: “Yeah, and nearly
exterminated them. If there were any survivors, they were
assimilated into the German Prussian population. Sounds like a
similar "conquest" and "settlement" a little
later. They tried to move eastward with no success and disastrous
results. Dang those Russkies!”
Johnathan Masters: “Wow Larry, you
know too much. But that's good for me, for you're willing to educate
others. That's a gift not all have. Most folks keep their knowledge
locked up, and close to their chest (or have none). SO, let me ask
you this. Most were exterminated? OR, assimilated? Because as part
Prussian, I need to know if I'm part Baltic or Slavic or not. Slavic
folks look white as hell, so I can see a possible resemblance. ALSO,
how come you know about this?”
Johnathan Masters: “AND, weren't
Baltic-Slavic people descendents of Germanic tribes?”
Larry Hovekamp: “We Krauts are all
mutts, or in Deutsch: "Mischling"! So much of the Prussian
and East Saxon population was mixed with acquisition of Slavs and
Baltic peoples when they and the Hanseatic League penetrated the
region. Later, huge numbers of French Huguenot, Polish and other
Protestant exiled refugees from the south of Germany were settled in
the kingdom. There was a friend of our family who was ethnic German
Lutheran but was living in Poland. His forebears were originally
from the Austrian Alps until some crazy Catholic bishop ran them off
and they ended up there. Ironically, he lived in the Austrian part
of Poland until Polish independence, 1918. That's what make the Nazi
fantasies such whopping lies. Germans, from the constant wars and
population movements, are a mixed mess. And what is "German"?-
many of my ancestors were so near to the Dutch border, Westphalia,
that their dialect and local culture was identical to their
neighbors and relatives across the line. Prior to WWI, German maps
tended to lump the Netherlands and Flanders with the rest of the
German states. Hence my not quite German or very very Low German
surname "Hovekamp". What the early Prussians did was
extermination and assimilation, probably mostly the former. In fact
(and you might Google this), the very name "Prussia" was
originally the name of a Baltic nation and people residing there
eliminated by the German ones. Like the Spanish Conquistadors called
themselves "Mexicans". The Medieval Prussians led to the
future militarism and expansion as later expressed by the Nazis.
Larry Hovekamp: “Jonathan, I learned
the spelling of the word "Hanseatic" as in Hanseatic
League, the Medieval alliance of trading cities and ports which
hired mercenary knights, principally Prussia, to do their dirty work
expanding into the native lands to the East and led to so much grief
on all sides.”
Johnathan Masters: “I'm familiar w/
the Hanseatic league and with Westphalia, or "Westfalisch",
because that's where my Gripshover ancestors hailed from. A tiny
town called Ottmarsbocholt, just like 15 miles South of Munster.
They also spoke Plattsdeutsch, which was the lingua franca of the
Hanseatic League. Yeah, there's no real "German", but I
guess there is, since there's a State. Imagine if the State was
abolished though. Maybe we'd be Westfalisch? Or Plattsdeutsch
speakers. IDK Anyways. Wow. Good stuff Larry. I have made the wiping
out of Prussia one of my Holidays, though I keep on going back to
this region for many reasons. Neitzsche is from there. Einstein
studied there. THey have solar panels on their houses, like 75% of
them do. Free college. America adopted the Prussian educational
system. Kindergarten is literally a German word meaning Garden for
Children. Bridges, and other engineers constructed lots in AMerica.
Most Germans fought for the North in the Civil War. Frederick
Douglass really liked the GErmans. Germans and Bohemians were said
to be agitators in that period (Haymarket Affair). While Germans
have blended in w/ the whites here, I kinda of think, the best of
America was brought forth by these German immigrants. Maybe, maybe
not. But they have contributed a ton. Anyways. I'm also part
Bavarian, Austrian, and Bohemian AND African, if you can believe it.
11% sub-Saharan blood. I guess it's hard to determine how much of a
conquered people in 1415 was still around, but now I have a degree
of affinity for the Slavic and Baltic peoples, as with all those
other groups I mentioned earlier. Also, with the downfall of
majority white in America, I think folks will start to pick up their
ethnicities, or maybe not. But I like knowing where I'm from,
knowing my roots. I like knowing all of these different ethnicities.
I dont see a color blind society, but a colorful society, with
streams of rainbow colors in every different. We're all humans,
yeah, of course, but it's our differences which make us unique and
interesting. Hitler probably stopped me from ever learning about
these folks, when Hitler got what he was doing from the colonization
of the American govt, so... anyways. Good stuff Larry, comrade dude.
Karl Marx was German too.”
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