People's Mill of Europe

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Völkermühle Europe is a metaphor that goes back to the writer Carl Zuckmayer . In the play Des Teufels General he has the main character, General Harras, say: From the Rhine . From the great people mill. From Europe's wine press! This refers to the fact that in the course of history the Rhineland has been a hub, passage area and trade route for many different peoples. That is why there was a more intensive exchange than in other areas.

Quote

In Des Teufels General , this metaphor appears for the first time in a conversation between Air Force General Harras and Fliegerleutnant Hartmann, when Hartmann was concerned about his " Aryan certificate ", since his fiancée broke off the engagement because of an ambiguity in his family tree, because one of his great-grandmothers seems to have come from abroad, while the rest of the family comes from the Rhineland.

Harras angrily replies:

"Well, what do you know about the affairs of your great-great-grandmother? Surely she didn't ask for proof of Aryan. "

And he reminds him:

"... what could not have happened in an old family. From the Rhine - at that. From the Rhine. From the great people mill. From Europe's wine press! "

After this comparison with viticulture, Harras continues more calmly:

“Now imagine your ancestry - since the birth of Christ. There was a Roman field captain, a black guy, brown as a ripe olive, who taught Latin to a blonde girl. And then a Jewish spice dealer came into the family, he was a serious person, he became a Christian before he married and established the Catholic household tradition. - And then a Greek physician came to it, or a Celtic Legionnaire, a Grison mercenary, a Swedish rider, a soldier of Napoleon, a deserting Cossack, a Black Forest Flözer , a wandering miller's boy from Alsace, a fat sailor from Holland, a Magyar , a Pandur , an officer from Vienna, a French actor, a Bohemian musician - everything on the Rhine lived, fought, drank and sang and had children - and - and Goethe , who came from the same pot, and Beethoven and Gutenberg , and Matthias Grünewald , and - oh well, look it up in the dictionary. They were the best, my dear! The worlds best! And why? Because the peoples mixed there. Mixed - like the water from springs and streams and rivers, so that they flow together into a large, living stream. From the Rhine - that means: from the West . That is natural nobility. That is race. Be proud of it, Hartmann - and hang your grandmother's papers in the toilet. Cheers."

origin

Zuckmayer could have adopted this idea from Wilhelm Holzamer , who wrote in 1905 in a Rheinhessen character picture:

“In the most colorful order, peoples after peoples had taken possession of the fertile land, in the earliest times the Celts and Chatti, the Romans and Burgundians and Franks, and then later until recently the Swedes and French, the Spaniards and the Dutch, up to and including nor did the Austrians transplant the most diverse elements of their mixture of states here. In spite of all this, the German element has remained the predominant one, but through these different blood mixtures - one would also have to name the Vandals and Huns, Gypsies and Jews - the breed has acquired an agility, a temperament, an elan and charm that it does above all distinguishes German tribes. "

Reactions

Josef Marein wrote on the occasion of the German premiere of 8 November 1947 in the time :

“... the audience - the reaction of which was so incredibly revealing to follow - was under the spell of a work from the start that is not only gorgeous theater, but in parts the most glowing poetry. Let Zuckmayer have General Harras say words that sound deep and German from his own heart, the poet! The praise of the Rhine, the “landscape of the Völkermühle”, where Goethe and Beethoven grew up, the best of the Germans, the best in the world! Deep restraint in the audience: how good it is to hear a real poet say this in the midst of the contempt that surrounds everything German today! Wasn't a poet speaking here whose heart, although he had to leave Germany himself, remained at home? "

A Spiegel author, on the other hand, took a critical, distanced view of the topic in 1955:

"Long before he let General Harras speak these words, Zuckmayer had explained to his fellow citizens of Nackenheim quite drastically what he originally meant by" natural nobility "and" race "of the Rhinelander, namely in 1925 with the popular piece" The happy vineyard " . In the "Weinberg" the western products of the "Völkermühle" were described in a way that Nackenheim's citizens indignantly replied to the author for decades. "

Others

  • The song Traben-Trarbach by the cabaret artist Jürgen Becker uses a similar allegory : It describes that the water of the Rhine is only a small part of the water that comes from the source of the Rhine, but mostly from its tributaries.
  • Willy Millowitsch performed Harras' monologue on November 9, 1992 at Arsch huh, Zäng ussenander .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carl Zuckmayer: The devil's general . Fischer paperback, p. 64 f.
  2. ↑ Catherine Weisrock: Wilhelm Holzamer (28. 3. 1870 - 28. 8. 1907) - Writer Rheinhessen . (PDF; 624 kB) p. 70 f .; Retrieved March 6, 2012
  3. ↑ Josef Marein : "The Devil's General". Zuckmayer's drama and its audience . In: Die Zeit , No. 47/1947, p. 5
  4. ^ Zuckmayer - The happy wanderer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1955, pp. 41 ( online ).
  5. ↑ ASS huh, ZÄNG ussenander! Against racism + neo-Nazis . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-462-02272-5 , p. 80-81 .
  6. ↑ VHS recording (from 0:39:00) on YouTube , accessed on January 27, 2020.