Monday, 29 May 2017

Brandenburg and Prussia- A holiday -Part 1- The History Copyright- Robert Fullarton 2017

Brandenburg and Prussia- A holiday

-Part 1- The History
Copyright- Robert Fullarton 2017

I was recently on holiday in the German state of Brandenburg. It is a beautiful land, with the floodplains of the rivers Havel and the Spree, where the rivers create lakes of great beauty. I went to Potsdam, former haunt of the Prussian kings, the Hohenzollern dynasty that abdicated, under Kaiser Wilhelm II and came to its finality in November 1918 at the end of ww1.
Even on the train ride south west, out of Berlin, you are surrounded by forests, the great “green lungs” of the Grosser Tiergarten, Grunewald Forest, the Duppler Forst by the Wannsee, there are these impressive stretches of pine and birch by the river Havel. This is a land of great aesthetic beauty, in the former GDR, and where sinister Nazi planning took place in a Wannsee villa for the “final solution” of the Jewish people.
This is the land of Frederick the Great (Fredrick II of Prussia) that gave rise to the Hohenzollern dynasty, home to its fine palaces that rivalled the Habsburg Court and the fine chateaux’s of Bourbon France. One man's egomania, vision for architectural perfection and precision, for philosophy and military ideal echoed through the centuries that followed. Frederick II was militarily a gambler against the odds, facing enemies beyond his own numerical strength, taking on the European powers of France, Russia and Austria. He played a diplomatic game of chess with Maria Theresa’s Austria, striking her armies with speed, taking the Polish region of Silesia, while maintaining a pivotal and precious alliance with Great Britain.
His goal was to make Prussia the strongest of the German states and downgrade the status and power of Habsburg Austria. During his reign the state of Brandenburg was joined with the duchy of East Prussia, West Prussia (Royal Prussia) after the first partition of Poland and the conquest of Polish Silesia. Berlin became the royal city of Prussia that slowly began to flourish eventually under the architectural genius of Fredrick Schinkle.
Fredrick the Great was called an enlightened despot (an autocratic monarch) who effectively reformed and strengthened the Prussian army (known for being an army with a country!) he welcomed thousands of Huguenot expellees, who brought with them the linen industry along with German colonists from the Palatine of the Rhine. Frederick was an art connoisseur, having acquired Caravaggio, Rubens and Van Dyck paintings for his private collection, he was also a prolific composer of flute sonatas and lover of Ancient Greek Literature.
His palace Sans Soucci (built by the Prussian architect Georg Wenslaus Von Knobblesdorf) stands ostentatiously like as if it were meant to be a throne above the stairs to heaven, above a fine water feature, fountain and sculpture work, this palace was meant to be his own private summer retreat. Its citron lemon facade, French formal gardens, and sculptures (meant to represent nature and pleasure) reflected the Kings vivacious passion for the arts and yet his own egotistical vanity at times seems to speak in the sheer volume of palatial designs his architects had to contest with, as he was according to local sources meticulous with the construction of both the Sans Soucci and the Neues Palais (New Palace) which had to be built according to his ideals. These buildings were built in the architectural style that was known as Frederican Rocco.
Brandenburg had previously been a backwater off the world stage, having been largely devastated by the armies of the Catholic League during the 30 years war which ended in 1648. The electors of Brandenburg grew in stature and Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg succeeded to becoming king of the Dukedom of Prussia (which was the Baltic territories around Konigsburg where the Teutonic Knights had previously ruled). 

Prussia was in reality a political phenomenon, a consequence of the Germanic conquest and the colonisation of the Baltic coast, whose armies were living the legacy of the Teutonic Knights of the 12th to 14th centuries who were an elite warrior, monastic order, whose greed for land and wealth, faced the antagonism of the powerful Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth and the Papal States. The 26th Grand master of the Teutonic Order Ulrich Von Jungingen, who commanded the Teutonic knight armies was badly defeated by the joint Lithuanian-Polish army at the battle of Tannenburg at 1410. The order’s expansionist ambition was cut short and its long decline began to set in after this defeat.
However this order, with its warlike ambition, duty to discipline, rank, file and conquest, gave the new Prussia of Frederick the Great and the Hohenzollern Dynasty an identity to thrive upon. The Iron Cross and the Order of the Black Eagle all emerged as old Teutonic symbols to become the laurels, medals and orders of the new dynasty, that like its predecessor, loved the art of war (shown by the likes of Von Clausewitz, Von Blucher and even Otto Von Bismarck) and likewise subjected the Slavic peoples (Sorbs, Poles, Kashubians and even Lithuanians) into the new state of Prussia, that would recover from its atrocious defeats under Napoleon at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806 and the Occupation of Berlin. When the French army marched through the Brandenburg gate in triumph that was when the Prussian people had determined not to rest until the French had been expelled from German soil.
The Hohenzollern dynasty rose from its territorial gains at the conference of Vienna 1815, after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo to double in size, in population and in resources as the occupants of the Rhineland, Westphalia and the Ruhr valley. The Prussian monopoly over Germany- with its rulling dynasty and nobility of power hungry land owners (Junkers)- along with its triumphant army (having beaten Denmark, Austria and France all by 1871) appealed for German unification and so there came a common German people and an empire declared at the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, at the high water mark of Prussian power in Europe.
Today the state of Prussia (or Borussia as it was also called) has been wiped off the map, after two world wars, after the murderous campaigns of Adolf Hitler and the revenge killings of a wrathful Russian army, of rapes, mass killings, tit-for tat murders, some 14 million Germans were expelled along with east Prussians to head west. Stalin pressed the western Allies at the Potsdam conference for the new German border to be drawn up along the Oder line west of Stettin and south to the border of Saxony. Many marched west with their belongings in desperation carrying their barrows during the coldest winter of 100 years, many died of disease, others were crushed under T34 tanks and many more went hungry. 

The war in the east, to understand it was like something from St. John’s Apocalypse, one of utter destruction, inflammable hatred, where the Wehrmacht had sowed such destruction and reaped the Soviet fire, in a time of horrific cruelty, barbarity and hardship. The only memory of Prussia alive today can be seen in the palaces of the Hohenzollern Dynasty and in the Prussian parks and castle society that keeps the history alive for all people to enjoy wonderful architecture and art and to learn from the mistakes of former rulers and from the softening of the Iron Kingdom that had been broken in time.

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Monday, 1 May 2017

The Crocodile Part 5, Copyright Robert Fullarton 2017

                               The Crocodile Part 5, Copyright Robert Fullarton 2017

                                              

                                                                     IV

Minister Daschund and his beloved Beagles were out walking on a Sunday morning stroll through the arches of the old weaver’s quarter when the sight of a large, fierce crocodile had been spotted “sunbathing” on Lady Forrester’s tin roof shed. The enormous tail protruded outward, the tough leathery, armoured like skin glowed in the gleaming light and the intrigued neighbours began to gather creating a kerfuffle. As the wealthy denizens of Gustavia gathered round the spectacle, some discussed how one should “kill such a creature” and others on how “one should see him as a greatly misunderstood victim of human hysteria and fantasy.” Ultimately however, life was “too comfortable” and the plethora of luxury could “not be disturbed.”  So many simply gazed and gossiped but did nothing, in hope that somebody else would do confront the strange beast.
Peace had made them lazy, this animal was a war like creature whose ancient nature, and instincts made killing a necessity, it was all about the feeding of an insatiable appetite that devoured the slow witted, that devoured the complacency of a sleeping society and a people unwilling to accept the facts for what they were! Peace, their peace would be devoured up too, unless they recognised all that they lacked and how such emptiness was to break, like a bulging barrel, swollen, exploding, with the contents of its noxious poison.

Meanwhile the plump, pompous, self-serving Burgmaster Krauss, spoke to a cautious crowd of chicken farmers, concerned elderly ladies of the Gustavian Tea society, the Musket appreciation society (who fired their muskets and accidently blew in the windows of the local bakery. Such was their clumsy aim!) boys of the Leibnitz Gymnasium and the old bachelors Brewers Lane.
Krauss despite being as blind as a bat, had been declared the Burgmaster, because of the “great service and honour” his father had brought before him in his days as the town’s mayor. But the mayor had often mistaken his guests at Homely Hall when wandering blindly through the vast confines of the manor, with pet spaniels, his touch and senselessness were beyond all patience. Nothing in the world made Krauss happier than the touch and call of his pet Spaniels that led him often in the wrong direction (including the one time when they led him over the edge and into the river, the mayor had to be retrieved by the deputy mayor and his assistants with a fisherman’s net! Krauss could see the shadows of men and just about distinguish between man and beast! Yet the old “sophisticated ladies” of Gustavia swooned and swayed, “oohed” and “aahed” at the sight of the mayor with tear filled handkerchiefs waving and “cooeeing” the blind mayor from his course, from stepping on the right pavement stone and stumbling into the arms of his “adoring” ladies.

Krauss did not know what a crocodile was, he had never seen a crocodile before, and never even been to the Zoological scientist Jan Steiner’s exhibits in Lotharville. His days of opening farmer’s markets, kissing pretty maidens and shaking old ladies hands, had come to its end, as he had to deal with the hysteria and confusion of a people whose pressing demand was a front for their own emptiness of meaning and purpose.
The local “village idiot” Rumpledaen smoch Outen was throwing his pfennigs into the fountain making a wish.
“Lord make me into a strong man, so men will respect me. Why must I be an invalid? What purpose have I to live for, when I like Cinderella am left behind so the others can attend the ballroom events. Am I to wait and let others live their life, while I lie down until I disappear? I am seen and yet at the same time I remain unseen. I am invisible to their eyes, they throw their coins, and day upon day they wear their great coats, but their most precious item is the mask they wear and will not lose, the day the mask comes off is the day their world ends, coming spinning down from the sky to the dust below!”


Rumpledean was the one man in Gustavia, in the midst of the trades people, the silent workers and the unknown faces of the crowd who protested against making the crocodile the mascot of Gustavia, to be presented at every grand official opening, for the farmers market, at the pageants of beautiful maidens and the opening of the brand new shipyard, the crocodile would be the grand marshal of each parade, the feted hero of the hour, the pet of the people, the aspiring creature to be beyond what God made it be. Or so they thought! When all the crowds cheered at the sight of the mayor and the quiet creature on the wooden podium, through the hurricane of the moment, the pomp of the “hurrahs” the crocodile was hungry and food was his one and only concern, if indeed he had any at all.

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