Some interesting numbers from Europe

• Since 1998 the population of the Baltic states has dropped by almost a third
• Bulgaria lost 20% of its population over that period – it is projected to lose a further 20% over the next 30 years
• Between 2000 and 2018 Romania‘s population dropped from 22.4M to 19.5M
• c.5% of the population of Croatia moved to other EU states between 2013 when it joined and 2017
• The financial crisis of 2008 caused the movement of a significant number of Greek and Spanish people to other EU states, especially young adults
• A recent study in The Guardian identified “youth deserts” in eastern Germany, rural Spain, Greece and Romania.

What does this point to? Because it tends to be the young and well educated who leave, in the areas left behind the concentration of older people and less advantaged people is an ideal growing medium for right-wing politics of the more extreme sort, for lack of hope and for a gradual but constant withering on the vine.

Tigress

While it was very sad to hear of the death of Judith Kerr this week, it also felt like the rounding off of a life well lived. To come from flight (in 1933) from the Nazis and the Holocaust in Germany, Poland, France and across Europe (which went out to vote the day after her passing) to a constructive, hopeful and beautiful body of work which gives delight to millions is a story and a half.

I had the pleasure of appearing with her on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’, talking about fathers reading to their children. Prior to entering the studio I’d forgotten that the programme was live so it really helped having a calm atmosphere engendered by Judith and Jenni Murray, the host. I can’t recall much about the conversation other than it went well, felt coherent and fluent, not stressful. And Judith was a thoroughly inspiring person.

Of course I read ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ with my boys. She kindly signed their copy after the recording at Broadcasting House.

I have a vague memory of people looking for a historical analogy in it, like the Tiger stood for the Nazis or the Gestapo or something, “It’s about the rise of Hitler, right?” “No” she said “it’s about a tiger. Who comes to tea.”

That Judith Kerr now stands widely as being about turning adversity to living fully, being constructive and defeating the forces of darkness with hope and humanity is as it should be. The family, though surprised, take the Tiger in their stride and find a joyful, united solution to the problems it causes.

I am writing this in the garden of Keats’ house in Hampstead. Up the road in Downshire Hill, opposite the house of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, is the home of Fred and Diana Uhlman. I met her many years ago to speak about her husband’s work as an artist and their joint role as catalysts of the London art scene before and after the Second World War. Fred came to London in 1936 and became the centre with Diana of a network of artists on the run including Oskar Kokoschka (who followed in the wake of Egon Schiele). This whole area became a home to artists escaped from Nazi tyranny. Judith was the widely admired standard bearer for art and culture’s triumph over the dark side.

The Artist Who Came To London (acquired this week from Black Gull book shop, East Finchley)

Postcard No. 3

 

The third from my random collection of old postcards.

I think I took this as Jesus when I bought it (for 30p) because I’m fond of a good Jesus. My favourite is Jeffrey Hunter in King of Kings (also Captain Pike, original commander of the USS Enterprise in the first ever Star Trek).

Jeffrey Hunter in ‘King of Kings’ (1961) Directed by Nicholas Ray

But this turned out to be Johannes or John, presumably John the Baptist. He has a big crook so is clearly also a shepherd of men. I presume he too is an actor as the card is marked (in German) as an ‘Official Postcard’ of the Passionspiele (passion plays) at O. -Ammergau, Oberammergau, a village in Bavaria where a passion play has been performed since 1634. So not mediaeval like Brit passion plays, such as the York Mystery Cycle which dates from the mid-fourteenth century, but a good effort nonetheless. The Oberammergau plays are performed on open-air stages.

This one is dated 1922 and seems to be No. 74 in a series – that’s a lot of characters.

The printer was F. Bruckmann of Munich – Friedrich Bruckmann (died 1898). His older son Alphons and younger son, Hugo (13th October 1863, Munich – 3rd September 1941, Munich) took over F. Bruckmann KAG on his death. Hugo and his wife Elsa were among the early promoters of Hitler, helping him gain access to upper-class circles in the city.

From 1928 the Bruckmanns backed the National Socialist Society for German Culture. And from 1930 Hugo was a board member of the ‘Kampfbund’ (Pressure Group) for German culture, founded by Alfred Rosenberg. He was an NSDAP (Nazi party) member of the Reichstag (German parliament) from 1932 until his death in 1941. In 1933 he became a member of the board for German museums. It is suggested his personal influence on the Fuhrer helped reduce political interference in the cultural sphere. An attempt to ban Jewish books from libraries was successfully opposed by Bruckmann. Because Hugo knew the big man after the outbreak of war his publishing house was declared of special importance for the war effort. He was honoured with a state funeral in 1941.

Also mentioned on the back is ‘the Munich graphic business’ Pick & Co. They seem to have been in book publishing too. Alongside is a reference to “Kupfertiefdruck” which seems to translate as “Rotogravure” (literally Copper Gravure – Gravure is “a printing method in which an image is applied to a printing substrate by use of a metal plate mounted on a cylinder” so the cylinder explains the “‘roto” bit). Whether this is a rotogravure… Jesus (No. 1) knows.

On the front is written “Traut photo.”. Traut seems to be H. Traut of Munich. Here’s one of his from 1906:

Photographer: H. Traut of Munich (1906)

Atelier Henry Traut was in business from 1857 to 1940. It was based at Herzog-Wilhelm-Straße 32, Munich.

Here’s one of his ‘glamour’ photos:

And here’s the gen on him from the reverse of a postcard:

So his speciality was taking portraits in private houses in daylight and artfully lit. There are whole books about him.

I found one other of his 1922 photos online:

I”m not sure which number or character this is.

Other similar images from later years:

Another John from 8 years later (1930) actor Hans Lang

Also from 1930, Jesus & Mary

An early one from 1900 – Mary’s farewell to Jesus

A later one (1950) Judas’ kiss featuring actors Anton Preisinger (Jesus) & Hans Schwaighofer (Judas)

At last No.1 Anton Preisinger as Jesus, complete with autograph (probably 1950)

Anton Preisinger as Jesus (probably 1950)

I like my one best.

Return to the Fatherland (Day 37)

I’ve just boarded a train at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof heading for Leipzig, the city in which my father was born. It’s a modern glass-doored version of one of those old-fashioned railway compartments. The only other occupant is a rotund German, balding, pot-bellied, bespectacled, avoiding eye contact, ignored my Guten Abend. So straight out of Emil and the Detectives (albeit travelling in the wrong direction) which is as it should be. Alles in Ordnung.

This will be my third time in Leipzig. The first time was a great adventure with my own gang of urchins which you can catch up on here and here [written 3 years ago to the very day]. And here’s a poem inspired by that trip.

What with the packing and generally getting my shit together, not that much accomplished book-wise before hitting the trail. My focus today has been on the Comedy chapter – sussing out whether Peter Cook is a potential candidate for the protagonist of the case study. I consulted comedian Gordon Kennedy of Absolutely Productions (with whom I once shared a train carriage to St Helens on a research trip) and he was uncommitted regarding Cook as he hadn’t really encountered him much. My friend author Doug Miller who is really good on the Ingrams/Cook/Private Eye circles felt there was real potential so I’m following his guidance and embarking on Harry Thompson’s quite fat biog of Cook. From memory he was Daisy Goodwin’s business partner who I’ve been working with recently on a TV project to do with Facebook. I liked his biography of Herge and this one seems an entertaining and informing read.

Apart from that I set up a meeting with entrepreneur James Laycock (mentioned yesterday) and a call with Mark Brown, writer on Creativity, with whom I made The Blue Movie in 1994, winner of the Grand Award at the New York International Film and TV Festival, a large chunk of silver I was holding when I first met Peter Fincham [story here], now one of the grand fromages of ITV, who is one of a panopoly of UK comedy movers&shakers interviewed by Thompson for the Cook book. (Thompson and Goodwin worked at Talkback before setting up on their own.) I’m meeting another one, an actress, next week to talk about Joan Littlewood. [I just noticed in that post which tells the New York award story that Allen Ginsberg was already entering my consciousness, six years ago –  how these things brew…]

I’m rather tickled with the idea of writing part of this book in my grandfather’s city, hence this trip now.

in memoriam Nat & Dora Gewurtz

Leipzig Hauptbahnhof (today) – the biggest station in Europe

Leipzigzag

I look down at my feet of red clay
The stone threshold is a vale
Worn by hundreds of residents
On thousands of journeys
Behind which lies the story of Nathan
And his married sister Else
In which seventy-two years later I stand
And cross my path with theirs.
What mathematics zigzagging
Across the great gentle curve
Along the angles of history
Brings their heirs to this square
Where I feel they were happy?

The code is broken
By a facsimile map
On the back shelf
Of a dusty museum shop

Promenadenstrasse
Blown to high heaven
By a home-grown bomb
Ironically Angle or Saxon
Or written out of existence
By Soviet canonisation
Comes into alignment
In the palimpsest of charts
Etched back into history
As Käthe Kollwitz

As the lines and angles align
Our trajectory bounces off the city museum
Across the top of the central square
Towards Nat and Dora’s quarter
I fire off a text to a vestige of their family
Dead loss
And shoot off a volley
To the other half in the other Old Country
Prompting tears

Then the rectangle is spotted

Simple concrete
With invisible walls
And bronze chairs
For the invisible congregation
It’s Saturday morning, about eleven
Just the right time
And Nat’s three off-spring zag off onto the rectangle
Sit in the cold back row
Where I wonder what strange geometry
Brings us back here
And what the old man and his sister make of this
I’m sure he’s pleased we got him back home

On Kristallnacht
They melted the angles
And Moorish curves and arches
In their chaotic flames
Then charged the Israelites
To demolish the remains

A hundred and forty haunted seats
Seventy-nine people per seat
Plus interest for 1933 to 1938
By the time the 69th arrived
The maths of dark bureaucracy
Calculated zero squared

We spun off to the first point of the triangle
Twenty-two twenty eighteen
Sixteen

A space

A car park
Emptiness
Covered by a blue cloudless sky
Tranquil leaves swaying

Two years on plus two days
I zig back into town
To complete some symmetry
And get these last lines down
In the fatherland
Land of my fathers
May the old language endure

Emptiness
A car park
A space
By the corner, the first corner
We piece together the crystal shards
Of our past
By reflection
As eighteen so sixteen
Then translated to Carmel Court NW11
And rotated to that opening scene
Of burgerlich Krakow apartments abandoned
In haste
What fearful symmetry

A sweep round the circular by-pass
Brings us to the stone threshold
Number one on the Northern square
Is point two

The address on the birth certificate
With its eagle and perverted cross
What fearful geometry converted that cross
From auspicious object
Turning right and rotated
Night on blood in emptiness
To helpless subject with broken limbs
Nailed to the intersection

Father don’t forgive them
They knew what they were doing
They typed it all out
Signed and sealed it with the eagle
They had staplers and ink pads
That’s how mundane they were

The address after all these years
Turned out not to be home but hospital
The red pin dropped
On the point of birth
The last point of the triangle
Where the sons of the son of the son
Played on the black posts
Rising and falling
Lifting the feet of red clay
In the triumph of fearless play

A vestigial homeland triangle
Superimposed on the triangle of father . son . son .
Is a star
Look up
Burning across time
And space
Ad infinitum…

 Leipzig, 27^th October 2012

Gotta love the Irish

The second best Irish thing I’ve read this week (the first was Ulysses which I finished on Sunday for the second time)