14 20 453 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/50404cc7271572a66359c05c004cdb30.pdf 6e6095339363c425cfe02dec53b7ff61 PDF Text Text On the Origins of Celestial Dynamics: Kepler and Newton (A revised version of a lecture given at St. John's College in May, 1971) -Curtis Wilson- �-1- I wish to consider two moments in the emergence of - what we have come to call celestial. dynamics or mechanics, a Keplerian moment and a Newtonian one, seeking to explore what the development of such a dynamics meant to its a,uthors. Da,vid Gregory, a follower of Newton, writing in 1702, spoke of the riew celestial physics that "the most sagacious Kepler had got the scent of, but the Prince of Geometers Sir Isaac Newton trought to such a pitch as surprizes all the world". Actually, the Keplerian dynamics and the Newtonian dynamics differ in important respects, but Gregory's singling out of Kepler and Newton makes sense. Kepler was the first to introduce a dynamics into the heavens in the sense of hypothesizing a quantifiable influence of one celestial body on the motion of another, and Newton's universal gravitation is the same kind of thing. Moreover, the mathematical results Kepler arrives at by pursuing his hypothesis coincide, almost, with Newton's results, derived from a different dynamics. Meanwhile, in the period intervening between the appearance of Kepler's hypothesis in 1609, and the appearance of Newton's Principia in 1687, there were various attempt s at proposing what may be called mechanical causes for the celestial motions, but none of them allowed of mathematical formulation, or led to an astronomical calculus, a way of predicting positions of planets. The egregious Mr. Hobbes imagined that, as the southern and northern hemispheres of the Earth differ with respect to the proportion of dry land and ocean, therefore the aethereal vortex or whirlpool that moves about the Sun, having now more solid land to press against and now more of the yielding ocean, would drive the Earth in a path differing from a circle, perhaps app~aching an ellipse. M. Descartes figured out a reason why the suns or stars are off-center in their vortices, so that in our vortex the planetary paths are eccentri c but as in Hobbes' case, the hypothesis did not lend itself to mathematization; on t l"::contrary, as Descartes believed the universe to be packed with vortices inclined at various angles to one another, vortices that fill all space and interact with one another by transference of matter and motion, any simple mathematical. rule for the planetary orbits and motions becomes impJausible. �-2In Kepler's and Newton's cases, we can ask how the dynamical hypothesis and its quantification come about, what they presuppose, what they mean to their authors • • 1 Let me begin with Kepler. The first sprouts of Kepler's celestial _ dyna.mics make their appearance in his first venture into print, his Cosmographic Mystery of 1596, published when he was just turning 25. Since April, 1594, Kepler had been holding the position of district mathematician in Graz, with the task of teaching mathematics to the boys in a Protestant school, and making up an annual astrological calendar for the province, showing when to plant crops, and wh~t to expect of the weather and the Turks. He was, let me mention, marvelously successful with his first calendar: the cold spell he he.:1 predicted was so grievous that herdsmen in the mountains lost their lives or their noses from frostbite, and the invasions of the Turks he had predicted were also grievous; the provincial magistrates therefore added a bonus to his stipend. But Kepler was not satisfied with this kind of astrological hackwork. Beginning on the Sunday of Pentecost in 1595, we find him concerned with, and indeed thinking without let-up about, three large cosmological questions. At the start of the Cosmographic Mystery, Kepler say.::;, "there were three things above all of which I sought the causes why they were thus and not otherwise: -the number, size, and motions of the ~planetar.i/ orbs. That I dared this was brought about by that beautiful ha:rmony of the quiescent things, the Sun, fixed stars, and intervening space, with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," That is, Kepler sees the spherical lay-out of the cosmos, with the Sun at the center, and th1 stars at the periphery, as an image or signature of the triune God, the Creator, His Being, Knowledge, and Love. And with this vision in his head, he makes bold to seek the number, spacings, and motions that the Creator gave to the mobile bodies, the planets, occupying the intermediate space between Sun and stars. Obviously, Kepler is at this point a Copernican. By no means does he have a thorough knowledge of Copernicus' theory, As he _begins his speculations, he has not read and do~s not even possess Copernicus' book; he does not even know Rheticus' Narratio prima, the book in which, in 1.540, three years before the appearance of �-Jthe De revolutionibus, Rheticus had communicated to the world the major outlines of Copernicus' theory and given an account of its superiority over the Ptolemaic theory. Kepler says that he had learned partly from his teacher Maestlin at Tubingen, and partly from his own thinking, the mathematical advantages that Copernicus has over Ptolemy. The Copernican arrangement, simply by its lay-out, accounts for certain phenomena that are left unaccounted for, are left as coincidences, in the Ptolemaic arrangement. Why do the sun and the Moon not retrograde, while the other planets do? Why do Mercury and Venus always keep relatively close to the Sun, while the other planets can be at any angular distapce? Why are the superior planets always lowest in their epicycles, when in opposition to the Sun? For these questions and a few more, the Copernican arrangement provides an answer; the Ptolemaic does not. Ey the time he had finished his Cosmographic Mystery, Kepler had apparently read (the book paraphrases a sentence or two ·from) the famous tenth chapter of Book I of the De revolutionibus, where Copernicus says, in his brief commendation of the heliocentric arrangement, "we find in this arrangement a marvelous symmetry of the world and a hannony in the relationship of the motion and size of the orbits, such as one cannot find elsewhere." But even before, Kepler was asking not merely in what the symmetry and harmony consist, but also: On what are they founded? How does man come to recognize them? And already at the start, Kepler has answers to which he wiE always adhere: The world carries in itself the features of the omnipotent creator and is his copy, his signature. To man, God gave a rational soul, thereby stamping him in His own image. It is with that soul that man can recognize the symmetry and harmony of the Copernican world. Seeing that spherical Copernican world in terms of an idea of Nicholas Cusanus, as a kind of quantitative rP.presentation of the indissoluble triune essence of God, Kepler is encouraged to raise and pursue his bold, naive questions. One of the qµestions was not new. If you were Copernican, there were six circumsolar planets, not seven planets as with Ptolemy, since Copernicus leaves the Moon as a satellite of the i!:arth. Rheticus in his Narratio prima had explained this �-4sixfold number by the sacredness and perfection of the number six: six is the first number equal to the sum of its factors. A little later in the 16th century larlino will be using this same idea to explain the role of the first six numbers in musical consonances; he will te the first musical theorist to include thirds and sixths among the consonances, as they needed to be included for polyphony's sake. Kepler will be the second such musical theorist, but here as in the case of the number of the planets he will reject the notion of particular numbers as causes. He rejects number-mysticism in that sense. Numbers, for him, are only abstractions from the created things, and theref~re posterior to the Creation; they could not therefore te used by God as archetypal forms for cosmopoiesis, the making of the world. The second and third of Kepler's questions were new. In August of 1595 Kepler wrote to Maestlin, his former teacher at Tubingen, telling of his investigations, and asking whether he had ever heard or read of .anyone who went into the reason of the disposition of the planets, and the proportions of their motions. In the margin, Naestlin wrote in answer: "No". Let me remark here that no analogous questions are likely to arise in what can be called, and indeed came to be called, the Ptolemaic System, which was what Kepler had been officially taught at the university. By this tenn I mean not the set of planetary theories in Ptolemy's Almagest, but rather the world picture, current in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, according to which the planetary spheres are nested to fill exactly the space between the highest sublunary element, fire, and the fixed stars. There is no trace of . this picture in the Almagest, but j.u st four years ago i t was discovered that it is given in Ptolemy's Hypotheses of the Planets, the relevant passage having been omitted from Heiberg's standard edition of Ptolemy, apparently from some confusion among the translators; most of the work, including this passage, exists only in Arabic MSS, of which Heiberg gives only a German translation. What I now say is based on this recovered portion of the Hypotheses. The Ptolemaic System, Ptolemy freely admits , involves conjecture, but he also �-5insists on its plausibility, as did his followers through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Tycho Brahe was still accepting it in the 1570's. The plausibility is as follows. Ptolemy gives certain arguments in the Almagest, and again in amplified form in the Hypgtheses, for a certain order of the planets, beginning Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, and going on to the superior planets; I won't repeat the arguments here. (The Sun, note, is the central one of the seven planets or wandering stars.) He had a very good value for the maximum distance of the Moon from the Ga.rth, detennined from observations, namely 64 Earth radii. Assume now that the maximum distance of one planet from the ciirth is equal to the minimum distance of the planet next above it; take from the Almagest the ratios of nearest approach to farthest distance for each planet, and start constructing outward, using the Ptolemaic order. After the Moon comes Mercury . and then Venus. The maximum distance of Venus turns out to be 1079 Earth-radii, and the Sun is to come next. But there was an independent method for determining the relative distances of the Sun and the Moon, a way invented by Hipparchus~ described in the Almagest, and using eclipses. The result of that method, reported in the Almagest, was that at closest approach to the Earth the Sun was 1160 Earth-radii distance, 81 Earth-radii beyond the highest point of Venus' orb. Is this a big gap? Ptolemy shows, in the HYPotheses, that by a very slight change in the data of this determination, a change within the limits of observational error, the Sun at nearest approach will be found to use up the extra 81 Earth-radii, and everything fits. Moreover, this is the only order in which the planets can be made to fit in such a sequence of nested spheres, using the Ptolemaic numbers. In further .: justification Ptolemy adds, "this arrangement is most plausible, for it is not conceivable that there be in Nature a vacuum; or any meaningless and useless thine:: ." This Ptolemaic System was very well known during the 16th century, owing to th e description of it in Peurbach 's 'l' heoricae planetarum, which went through many editions. I suspect it was widely .accepted as filling out the heavens, and allowinz for the strange motions of these divine beings - motions which, according to Ptolemy, follow from the essence of the planet and are like the will and under- �-6standing in man. Copernicus, and also Kepler in the Cosmographic Mystery, explicitly reject this system, but I do not think any really forceful argument was made till Kepler - howed, some years later, that the Hipparchic method for the Sun's distance s I was practically useless, a small error in the observations leading to an enormous error in the final result. The question of the reason of the spacing of the planetary orbs does not, then, arise in the Ptolemaic System, because there is in fact no spacing. In the Copernican theory, on the contrary, there are unused spaces, not only a huge one beyond Saturn, separating the solar.system from the stars, but also unused spaces between the hoop-shaped regions of space that the individual planets pass through in their motions. That is the effect of the economy of the Copernican system, the elimination of the large epicycles. Copernicus speaks of planetary orbs and spheres ; whether he believed them to be real or imaginary remains a subject of scholarly debate. Kepler thought Copernicus believed the spheres to be real and solid, but in theCosmographic Mystery he is already pointing out some of the difficulties with this conception. 3y what chains or struts is the ~rth with its atmosphere held in its solid sphere? We are already in the heavens, and they aren't solid. Eut in either case, whether the spheres are real or not, there have come to be apparently functionless spaces, and the question can be raised as to the reason of the spacing of the planetary orhs. Copernicus does not raise this question. He is apparently seeking to re-do not the cosmography of Ptolemy's ~theses of the Planets, but the mathematical astronomy of Ptolemy's Almagest, and he wishes to do this job consistently with the first principles of the astronomical art. A primary principle is that there mus ·:· be only uniform circular motion; this is required if there is to be strict periodic )_ ; if the motions are not sometimes to fail, owing to their dependence on a chagg~.!!_g and thus cha.ngaable motor virtue. The intellect abhors such an idea, Copernicus says. The Copernican insistence on uniformity of circular motion will be taken up by later astronomers, by Tycho, Longomontanus, Eullialdus, and others, and echoed �-7for a hundred years and more, by both heliocentrists and non-heliocentrists. Not only had Ptolemy failed to keep to the principle; but new phenomena, discovered since Ptolemy's time, showed that there was an inequality- in the precession of the equinoxes that Ptolemy had not suspected. This was the trepidation, supposedly proved by observations of the Arabs collated with those of Ptolemy and Hipparchus. According to one scholar (Ravetz), it was this supposed phenomenon that pushed Copernicus into setting the Jarth in motion. For, argued Ravetz, if the precession of the equinoxes is due to the motion of the stars, i f this motion is non-uniform, and if the standard of time by whicry equality is judged is provided by the diurnal rotation of those very same stars, then the standard of time has been vitiated, and the entire system has become logically incoherent. The problem can be solved, Ravetz claimed, by giving the diurnal and precessional motions to the .l!arth; Rheticus seems to have a.greed, for he says that he sees no other possible explanation. In fact, the uniformity of the diurnal rotation is vitiated slightly whether one assigns the trepidation to the ~rth or to the stars. Sometime after 1588 Tycho Brahe convinced himself that the trepidation is not real, is the mere effect of the large errors in the times of the equinoxes that Ptolemy reports in Eook III of the Almagest; and this is the conclusion also of modern astronomy. No, Copernicus' original motive appears to have been opposition to the Ptolemaic equant - that point, not the center of the circle, about which Ptolemy assumes the motion on the deferent circle to be uniform. This violated the first principle of the astronomical art, the assumption of uniform circular motions only. It is primarily with this id e J. in mind that Copernicus re-does the Almagest. He is not, on the whole, looking at L "' emergent system with the wild eye of a cosmologist; certainly he is not asking for the archetypal, apriori reasons in the mind of God that will account for the lay-out. . :B etween Copernicus' death in 1.543 and 1596, the date of Kepler's Cosrnographic Mys~, there were very few Cbpernicans who spoke out. The ill-fated Eruno; a poet or two in the entourage of Henry III of France; Eenedetti, Galileo's precurso r in mechanicq; a mystically-minded :.:Jlglishman named Thomas Digges - they were few. �-8On the other side was the overwhelming chorus of denunciation. Melanchthon, Luther's lieutenant and a professor at Wittenberg, referring to the Copernican doctrine, said, "really, wise governments ought to repress impudence of mind." Maurolycus, a very competent and indeed innovative mathematician of Messina, said that Copernicus "deserves a whip or a scourge rather than a refutation". Pyrrhonist sceptics like Montaigne and his followers were fond of citing Copernicus and Paracelsus to show that there can be found people to deny even the most universally accepted principles ; this, to help show that we are so ignorant that it is even excessive to assert that we know that we know nothing. And Tycho Erahe wrote: "i·l hat need is there without any justification to imaeine the Jarth, · a dark, dense and inert mass, to be a heavenly body undergoing even more numerous revolutions than the others, that is to say, subject to a triple motion, in violation not only of all physical truth but also of the authority of Holy Scripture, which ought to be paramount." And the list of denunciations could be greatly extended. Kepler, then, turns out to be one of the early Copernicans, one of a handful, to speak out; he does so before Galileo, before his own teacher Maestlin. Maestlin praises Kepler for his first book, saying, "at last a learned man has been found who dared to speak out in defense of Copernicus, against the general chorus of obloquy," And Kepler's defence has a unique character; starting as it does from the notion of the spherical, Sun-centered world as symbol of God. It is this symbol, Kepler explicitly states, that encourages him to seek the reasons of the numcer, spacings, and ratio of motions of the planetary orbs. This symbol remains central in Kepler' s thought; every one of his major undertakings and achievements seems to be relatabl e to it. Let me mention in passing that Kepler's question about the spacings is not likely to arise for a follower of the Tychonic system, which resembles the Copernican except that the .2.rth remains stationary, and the Sun with the remaininc planets moves about the Sar th. In l .e t ters written in the late 1580' s, Tycho says t l_.,. he was induced to give up the Ptolemaic System by the discovery, from measurements of the parallax of Mars when it is jn opposition to the Sun, that it is closer to �-9the Za.rth than the Sun. This happens in the Copernican System, but not in the Ptolemaic; the Tychonic system accommodates the fact by preserving the Copernican spacings. Actually, Kepler found later that Tycho could not have determined, from his observations, the parallax of Mars; it was too smal1 for observational discrimination by the means at his disposal. And poring over Tycho's MSS, Kepler coneluded that some assistant of Tycho had misunderstood instructions and computed the parallax, not from observation, but from the numerical parameters of Copernicus' system. In any case, if you do accept the Tychonic system, then the path of rt.ars cuts across the path of the Sun, not impossible because ~ycho knows by now from his study of comets that there are no solid orbs, but still. 'inelegant. And the entire set-up lacks the centered symmetry that . provoked .the Ke-plerian inquiry. The answer Kepler finds to the first two of his ques:tions is well known; the discovery comes after he has tried many different schemes, and it comes, he tells Maestlin, accompanied by a flood of tears. Saturn - cube - Jupiter - tetrahed±on Mars - dodecahedron - Earth - icosahedron Venus - octahedron - Mercury. The structure is not built outward from the Sun: it is built inward and outuard from the Earth's sphere, which divides the five regular solids into two groups. Cube, tetrahedron, and dodecahedron, Kepler calls primary; each has vertices formed by three edges, each has its own special kind of face - square, triangle, or pentagon. rhe secondary solids, octahedron and icosahedron, have thei:c vertices fanned ty four and five edges, respectively, and have triangular faces. Th,, octahedron is formed from the cube by replacing square faces by the points at thei:~ centers; the icosahedron is similarly formed from the dodecahedron. A similar tra nsformation performed on the tetrahedron yields only anotbe.r tetrahedron. Ke pl er speaks of the secondary bodies, octahedron and icosahedron, as offspring of the cube and dodecahedron, respectively, as fathers, and the tetrahedron as mother, �-10from whom they· receive their triangular faces. The tetrahedron meanwhile is hermaphroditic in its production of tetrahedra. Of the primary solids, the cube has to come first, because1Kepler says, it is "the thing itself", meaning, I believe, that it presents to us the very idea of .corporification, the creation of body by the regular filling out of space in the three dimensions. The transformation of cube into tetrahedron is carried out by subtraction, replacing each square face by one of its diagonals; the transformation of cube into dodecahedron is carried out by addition, roofing over the cube, turning each edge into the diagonal of a pentagon. Out of the 120 possible orders of the five bodies, Kepler can say that he hP_s chosen the one that singles out, as a starting point, the very notion of corporification or the creation of body, that singles out the Earth's sphere as the very speci2.:!_ place it is, the home of the image of God, and that, given these conditions, has the most complete symmetry. And it shows at once why the number of the planets must be just six; there are only five regular solids, as Euclid proves, hence only six circumscribing and inscribing spheres; the number has been deduced from the very idea of the creation of body, of the world, by an ever geometrizing, and let me add, echoing Kepler, a playful God. And man was meant to understand these things. Kepler says: As the eye was created for color, the ear for tone, so was the intellect of humans created for the understanding not· of just any thing whatsoever but of quantities •••• It is the nature of our intellect to bring to the study of divine matters concepts which are built upon the category of quantity; if it is deprived of these concepts, then it can define only 1::y pure negations. All right; we are meant to ·see these things; but are they true? To know that, we must know that the distances in the construction jibe with the distances determined by the astronomers, and moreover, jibe rather exactly. Kepler at different t~mes expresses the thought that the imposed forms might not fit the �-11world quite exactly, but in that case he hopes to find reasons even for the deviations. The problem Kepler faces in testing his hypothesis is first of all to know what distances to take from Copernicus; the sphere of each planet must be of such a thickness as to accommodate the planet's approaches to and recessions from the Sun, but should one, for instance, allow space for Copernicus' equatorial epicycle, which sticks out beyond the planet's path at aphelion? And can one trust Copernicus' theories for Venus and Mercury, which involve some peculiar hypocyclic and epicyclic motions that keep time with the thinks it incongruous that center of the ~rth's Copernic~s ,~rth's motion? Moreover, Kepler computes the planetary distances from the orbit rather than from the Sun itself. It is with such con- siderations that Kepler begins his critique of the det3:-lls of the Copernican theories. Eut disallowing the equatorial epicycles, shLfting to the real Sun as reference point, Kepler is able to make a preliminary comparison of distances, The ratios for the intervals between Mars and Jupiter and between Venus and the furth come out with zero per cent error; for the Earth-Mars interval the error is 5%, for the Jupiter-Saturn interval about 9%. For the Mercu.....ry-Venus interval, with Copernicus' numbers, the error is unfortunately 20%. Kepler persuades himself - on the ground of Mercury's very unusual situation and motion - that for Mercury the sphere to be used is that inscribed, not in the octahed.ron itself, but in the three squares formed. by the twelve edges of the octahedron - the octahedron is the only regular solid that can be sliced through along its edges in such a way as to yield regular polygons. With this concession, the Mercury-Venus error is · r .educed to 2%; the largest error remains that for Saturn, who.se distance is the greatest and therefore most difficult to measure; the next largest error involves the Earth, whose Copernican theory Kepler has reason to doubt; and the average error for all the intervals is but J.J%. It is eminently conceivable that these errors should have turned out to be much hiGher; and Y.epler has his initial moment of elation; later on, as he calculates, there are doubts, and then again moments of ~lation. He writes to Maestlin that he suspects a tremendous miracle of God. Maestlin, older, more cautious, widely known as a competent astronomer, �-12comes to agree with him, comes to suppose that it will be possible to obtain the distances of the planets apriorl. He assists extensively in the preparation and publication of the l-Ook, in which Kepler calls upon all astronomers to help in working out the details of the hypothesis. Among the readers were those who like Johann Praetorius of Altdorf said that even if the numbers ~arne out exactly, it would not mean a thing: astronomy should go back · to its practical business of predicting the planetary positions. Tycho's reaction was less hostile: of course there are hannonies, he said, but one must work out the planetary theories on the basis of exact observations first, 'before investigating the hannonies. Tycho und erstands here that the theories must employ unifonn circular motion, in accordance with the Copernican insistence on t hat principle; and he und.e!:'Stands, too, of cours e that the Earth is at rest. This brings me to another theory that is contained in Kepler's book, one which Tycho will object to, and which even Haestlin finds, he says, too subtle. From the very beginning, Kepler had wanted to account not only for the number and · spacing of the planets, but for the proportion of their motions. From the very beginning, he had noted that the periods of theplanets follow behind the distances; so that the period of the planet twice as far from the Sun is more than . twice as great. This observation had teen one of Kepler's encouragements in the investigation of the reason of the distances, because, he says, if God adapted the motions to the orbs according to some law of distances, then surely He also accommodated the distances to sor.1e rule. The first r.1ather.1atical rule Kepler proposes for the periods is given in a diagram: N ote that the diagram is pretty. S is the Sun, AC.':_: the sphere of c fixed stars. AiJ:; and :2FC are quadrants of circles with radius equal to the radius of the stellar sphere. To a given distanc P of a planet' from the Sun, SP, Kepler imagines that there would correspond a vigor �-13of motion proportional. to the line EF. In the Sun would be the moving soul, and an infinite force of motion; at the periphery are the motionless stars, providing by their distance the space for the planetary motions, and by the non-uniformity of their distribution, a cackground against which the c.o ntempiative creature, man, can locate the planets. The difficulty with the scheme is that Kepler has no clue as to the radius of the cosmos, and without a value for that radius, there is no possibility of calculating the consequences of the hypothesis, and so subjecting it to empirical test. This hypothesis, for Kepler at this point, has a status similar to that of the other one abqut the five regular solids, in the sense that it arises from the same thought, of the world as symbol of God. The five-regular solid theory had the assumed fact of spacings to work with; this hypothesis has the assumed fact of an inverse variation of distance and speed. Kepler tries another hypothesis for the motions which is more testable, and in a rough way correct, al.though it is not the right one (the right one is the third law that he will discover only i~ 1618). I shall not describe it. Here again Kepler is looking for a pure mathematical. form, graspable because mathematical by the mind, and which when discovered will be a symbol of the creating and radiative activity of the Godhead. So he will speak of the decrease in motive vigor with increasing distance from the Sun as suitable; it was fi t ting that God should have arranged matters thus. On the other hand, he at one point paraphrases the Timaeus, on soul ceing distributed through the cosmos; and in a somewhat different vein, he a. also begins to compre the spreading out of the motive virtue to the spreading out " of light from a center; light, as he will say later, is a kind of mediating thing, intermediate between bodies and souls. Kepler is the first to quantify light intensity. It is the quarttification of the Sun's motive virtue, that will lead on to his celestial. dynamics. He is already. o:::ito an important clue to it, in eliminating Copernicus' equatorial. epicycle, which was totally incompatible with the five-regular solid theory, and in thinking about the individual planet as slowing up at aphelion, in some proportion that he is not sure of. Later on, in 1599, pursuing the same idea, he will discover the annual inequality of the Moon. �-14Between the time of completing the Cosmographic Myster;y in 1596, and going to Prague to work with Tycho Brahe in 1600, Kepler ·became involved in the study of musical harmony, and a word must be said about this investigation as it relates to his study of the planets. Kepler loved polyphonic music, which he regarded as one of the most important discoveries of modern times, ranking with . the compass and printing . In his Harmonic of tEe World, published in 1619, he will write: It is no longer a marvel that at last this way of singing in several parts, unknown to the ancients, should have been invented by Man, the Ape of his Creator; that, namely, he should, by the artificial symphony of several voices, play out, in a trief portion of an hour, the perpetuity of the whole duration of the world, and should to some degree taste of God tbe Creator's satisfaction in His own works, with a most intensely sweet pleasure gained from this Music that imitates God. For the production of polyphony one needs to be aiming at thirds and sixths as consonances, and these intervals involve the ratios 4:5, 5:6, J:5, 5:8. The ancient derivation of the consonances, as you have it for instance in the Timaeus, does not account for these ratios. The. trouble with Plato and the rest, Kepler says, i9 that they didn't listen carefully enough, before setting out to make their theory. Kepler sets out to make a new theory, without invoking the causal efficacy of numbers. His solution involves the regular polygons constructible with straight-edge and compass, which divide the circumference of the circle into equal parts. If one imagines the 1 circle stretched out into a straight line, and transfonned into a monochord, one has the divisions giving the consonances required for polyphony, including thirds and sixths, fundamentally because of the constructicility of the pentagon. The pentagon depends for its construction on the division of a line in extreme and mean ratio, the golden section, and if you are familiar with that divi::>ion, and know how i t can be indefinitely reproduced, by subtracting the smaller from the greater segme!1t, or adding the greater to the whole, you may understand why Kepler views this division �-15as imaging sexual. genera ti on, and you will thus gain an explanation of the tender feelings that accompany thirds and sixths in polyphonic music. Kepler did not suppose, and I do not believe that any theorist before him supposed, that the inquiry into the physical conditions for the production of certain intervals would account for the shades of feeling that those intervals arouse in consciousness. On the one side we have instruments like the monocho:rd, from which we can get numbers; on the other, we have subtle perceptions of harmony, dissonance, restoration of consonance. There is a strange correspondence between soul and the bodily; but the bodily, in Kepler's view, does not account for the psychic. Kepler's explanation for this correspondence takes us back to the sphere, image of the triune God. By creative radiation from the center, one gets the straight line, the element of bodily form. A straight line, rotated about one of its points, describes a plane, representing in this image the bodily. When the sphere is cut by the plane, the result is a circle, the true image of the created mind, which is assigned to govern the body. As the circle lies both on the sphere and in the plane, so is the mind at the same time in the body, which it instructs, and in God as a radiation which, so to speak, flows from God's countenance. Since now Kepler conceives the circle as the bearer of pure harmonies, and believes these harmonies to be based in the nature of the soul, he comes to speak of the soul as a circle, supplied with the marks of the constructible divisions, an infinitely small circle, a point equipped with directions, a qualitative point. This no doubt is metaphor or symbol, but it is by such means alone that we can understand (insofar as that is possible) how body, soul, and God are related. The harmonic divisions of the circle apply, of course, in the heavens, as well as in music; it is from these divisions that Kepler develops his a.Strological doctrine, and also his harmonic theory for the planetary eccentricities. I cannot take time to describe these here. J.'he five-regular solid theory Kepler comes to see inexact, an archetypal form used to determine the number of the plan~ts, then slightly modified in order to jibe with the harmonic theory of the eccentricities. Ei'.c �-16A pl&yful God, ruled by the necessities of geometry, may be forced to such expedients. All these parts of Kepler's work are omitted, to say the least; :from the corpus of scientific knowledge recognized today. Meanwhile, his great achievement in rem~ing planetary theory, accomplished first for Mars in the years 1600 to 1605, is praised, sometimes on the mistaken grounds that it is purely empirical. It is not. It involves assumptions that are rejected today. Alternative paths to the so-called Keplerian laws are conceivable, but neither could they have been purely empirical. On the other hand, Kepler's study first of optics and then of the motions of Mars_. in the years 1600 to 1605 does lead to the development of a possibility already present in his thought. He is the first to quantify the intensity of light, in accordance with the inverse square of the distance from the source. (This is a purely apriori derivation, involving no experimentation.) He does not regard light as material or corpuscular; that would have meant Epicurean philosophy, which like most good Christians of the time he abhorred. Rather, he says, light is quantified according to surface, not according to corporeality. It is one of a group of immaterial emanations, whereby bodies, which are isolated from each other by their bounding surfaces, are enabled to be in communication with one another. Another such is the motive virtue issuing from the Sun, and in about 1602 Kepler finds out how this also can be quantified, · its intensity varying inversely as th~ distance from the Sun; the empirical support consists in what is known as the bisection of the eccentricity, which he had been able to verify from Tycho's observations in the case of Mars and the Earth. A further step is taken in 1605 when he discovers that that component of the planet's motion whereby it approaches and recedes from the Sun, can be regarded as simply a libration, or what we would today call a simple hannoniG motion: this, he says, smells of the balance, not of mind. And the elliptical motion that results from combining the libration with the vertical motion about the Sun this also, he says, smells of matter, not of mind. In no way do these developments disturb Kepler's fundamental. view of the world. �-17- They introduce something that one can perhaps call mechanism: matter turns out to have inertia in the s · ns. of being sluggish, and it turns out to be pushed by an e e immaterial something in an incomprehensible way. Unexplained by the quasi-mechanism are the initial conditions, the sizes of the orbits and their eccentricities, and these must be works of mind, harmonically determined. Kepler's Harmonic of the World - of 1619 will remain his final testament. And indeed it is through the spherical symbol, ultimate source of the archetypal harmonies, that Kepler was first enabled to accept Copernicanism, and then, developing the emanative aspect of the symbol, to banish from the sky .t he celestial intelligences, ultimate relics of paganism (as he calls them), and to rega:td the planets as material, subject to quantifiable forces that man from his moving platform can measure. Kepler wanted to dedicate his Harmonica mundi to James I of Eilgland. For years, very naively from a political point of view, he had looked to this monarch as the hope of Europe, the one who could bring a religious peace out of the strife of .Refonnation and Counter-Refonnation. The relevance of the Hannonice mundi to this end was that it was a work of the liberal arts, the arts of peace as Kepler called them, setting forth the principles of the hannonies with which the world had been adorned by its Creator. Kepler thought that, could men but see these things, they would be raised above the level of doctrinal dispute. Unfortunately, no one in the 17th century that I know of accepted either Kepler's dynamics as a whole (Leibniz undertook to re-vamp it), or his hannonic even in part. And as the book first appeared for sale in the market stalls, the Thirty Years War had already begun its terrible course. ................. . Let me turn abruptly to Newton. We do not expect to find effusions about the celestial harmonies in Newton's writings. True enough, in the second edition of the Principia, explaining his rule of induction, Newton says that Nature is ever consonant with itself; and so we might imagine it as emitting some single, deep organ tone. But this is from the second edition, 171J, and the first edition, 1687, �-18does not contain the rule of induction. The third book, the System of the World, rather begins in that first edition with a set of propositions la~lled "hypotheses". Shortly after the publication of the first edition, Newton began a series of revisions, .p ertaining particularly to the early part of Book III. He wrote a series . of scholia to accompany those propositions, 4-9, which lead to the establishment of universal gravitation. I wish to read to you from the proposed. scholium to Prop.8 .,. By what proportion gravity decreases in receding from the Planets the ancients have not sufficiently explained. Yet they appear to have adumbrated it by the harmony of the celestial spheres, designating the Sun and the remaining_six planets ••• by means of Apollo with the Lyre of seven strings, and measuring the intervals of the spheres by the intervals of the tones. Thus they alleged that seven tones are brought into being ••• and that the Sun strikes the strings. Hence Macrobius says, 'Apollo's Lyre of seven strings provides understanding of the motions of all the celestial spheres over which nature i . has set the Sun as moderator.' And .Proclus (commenting) on Plato's Timaeus, 'The number seven they have dedicated to Apollo as to him who embraces all symphonies whatsoever, and therefore they used to call him ••• the Prince of ,- the number seven.' Likewise in Eusebius' Preparation of the Gospel LEusebius was one of the Church Fathers] , the Sun is called, by the oracle of Apollo, the king of the seven-sounding harmony. But by this symbol they indicated that the Sun by his own force acts upon the planets in that harmonic ratio '--- of distances by which the force of tension acts upon strings of different lengths ••• The same tension upon a string half as long acts four times as powerfully, for it generates the Octave, and the Octave is produced by a force four tim e ~:. as great. For i f a string of given length stretched by a given weight produc e: a given tone, the same tension upon a string thrice as short acts nine time:s as much. For it produces the twelfth [ 1. e. an octave plus a fifthJ , and a string which stretched by a given weight produces a given tone needs to be �-19stretched by nine times as much weight so as to produce the twelfth •••• ~et me briefly review the mathematical relation here. Imagine a series of six strings with lengths proportional to the distances from the Sun to the six planets; let equal weights be hung on the strings; we thus obtain six different tones - vei:y dissonant with one another, let me add, but Newton does not mention the fact. These tones betoken different forces~ which can be measured by taking strings of equal lengths and hanging on them different weights, so as to give the same tones. Any two of the wei€;hts will be inversely as the squares of the corresponding lengths. Newton continues_:] Now this argument is subtle, yet became known to the ancients. For Pythagoras, as Macrobius avows, stretched the intestine of sheep or the sinews of oxen by attaching various weights, and from this learned the ratio of the celestial harmony. Therefore, by means of such experiments. he ascertained that the weights by which all tones on equal strings [were produced.] ••• were reciprocally as the squares of the lengths of the strings by which the musical . instrument emits the same tones. But the proportion discovered by these experiments, on the evidence of Macrobius, he applied to the heavens and consequently by comparing those weights with the weights of the . lanets P and the lengths of the strings with the distances of the Planets; he understcG, by means of the harmony of the heavens that the weights of the Planets towa:rd 0 the Sun were reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the Sun. But the Philosophers loved so to mitigate their mystical discourses that in the p~esence of the vulgar they foolishly propoUDded vulgar matters for the �-20sake of ridicule, and hid the truth beneath discourses of this kind. In this sense Pythagoras numbered his musicai tones from the ~th, as though from here to the Moon were a tone, and thence to Mercury a semitone, and from thence to the rest of the planets other musical -intervals • .Out he taught that were the sounds/emitted by the motion and attrition of the solid spheres, as though a great sphere emitted a heavier tone as happens when iron hammers are smitten. And from this, it seems, was born the Ptolemaic System of orbs, when meanwhile Pythagoras beneath parables of this sort was hiding his own system and the true harmony 9f the heavens. I have to ·say: Newton's interpretation of the ancient texts is not a little dubio uz , Contrary to what .all 17th century Copernicans believed, the early Pythagoreans were not heliocentrists; Philolaus, the first Pythagorean to write down doctrine (for which he is supposed to have been appropriately punished), did not in fact know the Earth to be round, and his Central Fire was not the Sun. Again, so far as anyone knows ' today, the law relating weights and string-lengths for different musical intervals was first discovered not by Pythagoras but in ·the late 1580's by Vincenzo Galilei, the father of Galileo Galilei. Indeed, the discovery of this law, which can be verified very precisely i f one has a good ear (and Vincenzo was a musician) - this discovery may have been what set Galileo on his course of experimentation, seeking exact numerical ratios in nature; he started with pendulums (again, weights hung on · strings), and proceeded to motion down inclined planes, in order perhaps to ·analyze the motion of the pendulum. But the incorrectness of Newton's interpretations is not my concern here. The sheer volume of the manuscripts, the many variants and revisions, in all · of which Newton is seeking to show that the ancient philosophers before Aristotle understood the Newtonian System of the · World, . demonstrates that these views were important to Newton. Can wa make that fact intelligible to ourselve!:'- . or must we conclude simply that it is one of the queernesses of genius? I want to speak briefly about the discovery of universal gravitation. I have recently changed my mind on this matter. My previous argument (which I unfortunately �-21published) was that before 1684 Newton did not have his 'proof' of universal gravitation, therefore was uncertain about the universality, I now believe that my interpretation was wrong with respect to the 'therefore' clause. The idea of universal gravitation can seem more paradoxical than we perhaps realize. For a long time, since the 1720's, the picture was, that Newton already in 1666 had all his principal ideas, and was held up from producing his masterpiece by the lack of a good value for the Earth's radius, or according to a 19th-century suggestion, by the lack of a certain mathematical theorem. That interpretation is supported by no solid evidence whatsoever; it is a mirage which can be explained; but my point here is only that it is wrong, All of Newton's statements about planetary motion, made before 1679, imply either Descartes' theory of vortices, and/or an aethereal theory to keep the planets from receding from the Sun, Newton uses Descartes' term, conatus recedendi a centro, the tenn which Huygens in 1673 replaces by the tenn centrifugal force. Newton's thought about planetary motion during these years, like Huygen:c;;', remains confined to Descartes' analogy of the stone in the sling. There is no . evidence that, before 1679, Newton ever conceptualizes the orbital process as · the falling of the planet out of the rectilinear path it would follow i f left to itself, towards a central attracting body. Now this does not mean that during these years Newton rejected the possibility of attractions and repulsions, as possible physical causes, He was not a Cartesian; he did not believe space to be identical with matter, and all transfer of motion to be by contact• He was familiar with Gassendi's counter-argument, according to which not everything that is, is substance or accident; thus time and space need not be the accidents of anything, but may independently subsist, and so space need not be the space of something (namely body), This may not have satisfied Newton, but given Torricelli's experiment with the barometer, he was willing to grant the vacuum, and while this does not in itself lead to the granting of real attractions and repulsio n. it opens up the possibility of hypothesizing them, No doubt, to hypothesize such forces was to depart from the accepted norm of natural philosophy established by �-22- Descaztes. But Robert Hooke was doing it, and Newton began doing it, speaking of the sociability and unsociability of bodies in chemical reactions and cohesions. The forces he considered seem to have been forces acting over very small distances; his alchemical experiments were probably meant to find out about them. In 1679 comes the famous exchange of letters between Hooke and Newton, a polite fencing between bitter enemies. Here Hooke explicitly proposes that Newton work out the path of a body under an inverse-square attraction that pulls the body away from its rectilinear trajectory. So far as the evidence goes, this is the first time that Newton faced the planetary problem io such a form. And under this provocation, he makes the great discovery that a force of attraction, directed toward a fixed center' implies the equable description of areas, Kepler's so-called second law. He applies this law, which allows him to use area to represent time, to the ellipse with center of attraction in the .focus, and finds that the force follows an inverse-square law. Previously I thought that it was Hooke who first placed in front of Newton the ·idea of universal gravitation, so that if New·t on had not grasped it before, he did so now, and proceeded to look for a way to test it. But the fact is, that Hooke himself did not believe gravitation to be universal. He had generalized gravitation more than any previous author. Earlier authors like Kepler had regarded attraction as belonging to cognate bodies~ So Roberval could talk of a lunar gravity, a terrestrial gravity, a solar gravity, a jovial gravity, ·and so on. Let me quote Hooke ' . view in 1678; he is explaining a hypothesis about comets: I suppose the gravitating power of the Sun in the center of this part of the Heaven in which we are, hath an attractive power upon all the bodies of the Planets, & of the Earth that move about it, and that each of those again have a respect answerable, whereby they may be said to attract the Sun in the same manner as the Load-stone hath to Iron, and the Iron hath to the Load.stone. I conceive also that this attractive virtue may act likewise upon several bodies that come within the center of its sphere of activity, though �-2J' tis not improbable also but that as on some bodies it may have no effect at all, no more than the Load-stone which acts on Iron, hath upon a bar of Tin, Lead, Glass, Wood, etc., so on other bodies, it may have a clean contrary effect, that is of protrusion, thrusting off, driving away ••• ; whence it is, I conceive, that the parts of the body of this Comet (being confounded or jumbled, as 'twere together, and so the gravitating principle destroyed) become of other natures than they were before, and so the body may cease to maintain its place in the Universe, where it was first placed. Now Hooke is an inductivist of a sort, but induction is not here leading to universal gravitation. In his correspondence with Newton in the following year, Hooke suggests that Newton may be able to think of a cause of the gravitating principles now in Hooke's understanding, and I think in Newton's, too, to say that was to imply that gravitation is not universal, for the material cause of gravitation could not itself be subject to gravitation. In view of the passages cited and others I shall refer to later, I suspect that the idea of a truly universal gravitation became effectively present only after Newton had discovered the 'proof'. Why propose a theory which, by its very nature, precludes any mechanical explanation, which seems to preclude being tested~ and which, moreover, as Newton actually suggests once he has begun to entertain it, would seem to put the calculation of a planetary orbit beyond the ~ower of any human mind? There is the problem, also, of explaining Newton's delay for five more years after 1679. The best explanation, I believe, is that Newton does not yet think he has discovered anything very important, and sees no direction in which to pursue his discovery. Then Halley appears, probably in August of 1684, and persuades him that his discovery of the logical relation between inverse-square law and Sun-focussed elliptical orbit is important, and that he should publish 1 t, to secure the inventio n to himself. Newton sets to work, and we have a series of MSS which can be arranged �-24in temporal. order on the basis of internal evidence. In the first MS, there is no sign of the notion of universal. gravitation. Newton speaks of gravity as one species of centripetal. force - the term "centripetal. force" making its first appearance here (it is Newton's invention). There is no hint of the problem of perturbation, the disturbance of the orbit and motion of one planet by the attraction of another planet. The inverse-square law is derivedfrom Kepler's third law as applied to the planets and to the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, and the orbits are simply said to be elliptical. The entire development, I believe, is up in the air, in the sense that Newton does not know the cause of the attraction, does not know how exact Kepler's third law may be (he had questioned its exactitude at ·an earlier date), and is merely proceeding mathematically without knowing what may underlie the derivation: it could be something that might lead to the results needing to be qualified. To mention just one possible explanation, one that Newton had thought up in the t660's and proposed to the Royal Society in 1675: the action of the Sun on the planets might be due to the inrushing of a subtle aether, which would serve as fuel for the Sun's burning. A similar but different aether might_be rushing into the Earth to produce terrestrial. gravity; this aether might be transformed chemically within t h; Earth, then issue forth as our atmosphere. The satellite systems of Jupiter and Satur might be sustained by similar circulations of aether. These several centripetal. forc r: ::. would be explicable mechanically, that is by impacts; . gravitation would not be universal, In the second MS the notion of perturbation appears: Newton is now assuming that all the bodies of the solar system attract one another, just as Hooke had before. Can the planetary orbits still be said to be elliptical? Hardly, if the ellipses are drawn badly out of shape by the perturbations, the attractions of the different planets on one another, What must be done is to evaluate the relative magnitude of these perturbations. How is that going to be possible? Newton does 1t by considering the accelerations cf .the satellites of Jupiter �-2.5towtirds Jupiter, of the Moon towards the Earth, of Venus towards the Sun • .8ach . satellite is being accelerated towards the body round which it goes, and that acceleration depends on the power of the qcentral body to attract, and so may be able to serve as a measure of that power. Of course, to be comparable measures, all three satellites ought to b~ at the same distance from their central body, and they aren't.; But we can shift them in thought to the same distance, by using the inverse-square law. What we get, then, are the comparative attractive powers of Jupiter, the .i!arth, the Sun. That of .the Sun is overwhelmingly larger than the others. But do we really have attractions here or not? Thus far there has been no e vidence that Newton's aethereal theory for the planets is wrong. What then happens, I think, is that Newton realizes a consequence of something he has been assuming. In his derivation of the comparative attractive powers of Jupiter, the Earth, etc., he has been assuming that the quantity of matter of the satellite or test body didn't (if you will forgive a pun) matter; it didn't matter what mass it had; it was accelerated to the same degree anyhow; the differences between the masses of the test bodies could be ignored. Is that right? Is it so on the Earth? Did Newton~ the downward acceleration of all bodies on the F.arth, at a given place, to be the same? Not at this moment. Earlier we know he had assumed the rates to be slightly different for different bodies, depending on their micro-structure, and the way the downflowing aether affected them. Now, in the third MS, Newton sets out to test the constancy, and this is the most precise experiment reported in the Principia. He takes equal weights of nine different materials; encloses each ofthem - gold, salt, wool, wood, and so on - in boxes of equal size and shape, to make the air resistance the same; and uses these boxes as the bobs for nine different pendulums, with very long but equal suspensions. The pendulums, he says, played exactly together for a very long time. The accelerations of these different materials, he concludes, cannot differ from one another by more than one part in 1000. ~sentially the same experiment, the EX1tvBs experiment, has �-26been performed in this century with a precision of one part in one billion. Another way of stating the result, you may know, is that inertial mass is proportional to weight. At this point in the manuscript series, there appears for the first time in history, so far as I know, a statement of Newton's third law of motion, the equality of action and reaction. Let me now put these two results together, Newton's l:!XStvas experiment, and his _ third law, as they are put together in the Principia. The first implies that bodies on the Earth are accelerated downward by a force that is strictly proportional to what Newton now call~ their mass, by which he means their resistanc e to being accelerated. If the same thing holds with respect to Jupiter, with respect to Saturn, and with respect to the Sun, then one can compare the attracting powers of these different bodies in the way we have already seen: by taking a test body, '· it doesn't matter of what mass, placing it at a fixed distance from the attracting body, and seeing how much it is accelerated. Newton couldn't do this physically, as · we've said, but assuming the inverse-square law he could find from the actual acceleration of a body at one distance what the acceleration would be if the satellite were placed at any stipulated distance. Now comes the final step. Since the mass of the test body can be ignored, in the comparison of the attracting forces of two bodies, one can use each as a test body for the other. Then A's power of attraction B's power of attraction = acceleration of B acceleration of A By the third law. of motion, these accelerations are inversely as the inertial masses : acceleration of B acceleration of A = mass of A mass of B Put ting the two results together, A's power of attraction B's power of attraction = mass of A mass of B All right, that's it. l'he gravitational force is proportional to both the mass of the attracting -and the mass of the attracted body. Inertial mass belongs to �-2?bodies merely because they are bodies, Therefore gravitational force goes with all bodies; all . bodies attract gravitationally. Gravitational attraction is therefore inexplicable by any mechanical model of matter in motion, The mechanical phil-0sophy, Newton concludes in the 1680's and 1690's, is dead; he has rediscovered the ancient mystic Pythagorean truth of the harmony of the spheres. Gravitation, he concludes, is the result simply of ~he immediate action of God. There was a tradition in 17th-century .i!)lgland, pursued particularly by . the so-called Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, having to do with the prisci theologi or ancient theologiaps, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Thales, Plato, and so on, whose pagan wisdom, it was claimed, was really derivative from that of the Hebrew prophets, especially Moses. More and Cudworth developed their interpretation of these ancient doctrines into a justification for a new and revolutionary natural philosophy, Newton, influenced by these men in earlier years, now believes he has found the right interpretation of the ancient wisdom precisely because he has found the right natural philosophy. And so he writess Since all matter duly formed is attended with signs of life and all things are framed with perfect art and wisdom and nature does nothing in vain; i f there · be an universal life and all space be the sensorium of a thinking being who by immediate presence perceives all things in it, as that which thinks in us, perceives their pictures in the brain; those laws of motion arising from life or ~ may be of universal extent, To some such laws the ancient philosophers seem to have alluded when they called God Harmony and signified his actuating matter harmonically by the God Pan's playing upon a Pipe •••• To the mystical philosophers Pan was the supreme divinity inspiring this worl r.J with harmonic ratio like a musical instrument and handling lt with modulation, according to that saying of Orpheus "striking the harmony of the world in playful song". But they said that the Planets , move in their circuits by force of their own souls, that is, by force of the gravity which takes its origin from the action of the soul. From this, it seems arose the opinion of �-28the peripatetics concerning Intelligences moving solid globes. But the souls of the sun and of all the planets the more ancient Philosophers held for one and the same divinity exercising its powers in all bodies whatsoever •••• All [!.heir god~ are one thing, though there be many names. And so Newton goes on to argue, using passages from Plato and Lucretius and many other ancient writings, that the philosophers of antiquity, Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Democritus, and so on, were . really agreed upon the atomicity of ma. t ter, •·. the inverse-square law of gravitation, the universality of gravitation, and further, true mystics that they were, held th€ true cause of gravity to be the direct action of God. The unity of physical, moral, and theological wisdom is thus shown to have been present in the beginnings of the world, transmitted. from .Adam and .t!.Ve. That unity and that wisdom were gradually lost, after the corruptions of the sons of Noah; but now they have been recovered and restored by Newton. who thus takes his place among the prisci theologi, the ancient theologians. Newton is even able to find in the biblical book of Daniel the prophecy of his, Newton's, rediscovery of the truth. So the first beginnings of a mathematized celestial dynamics came, with Kepler, out of a trinitarian symbol, the three-foldness of the Sun, spherical shell of stars and intervening space in a Sun-centered world; Kepler h.atl his main idea from the beginning. With Newton it was different, and the crucial justificatory discovery came late, with a precise experiment to test the exactness of the constancy of the acceleration of gravity, and a new realization of the meaning of that constancy. And. in a world that has now lost its geometrical center, Newton accep.ts this discovery as a revelation of a mysterious, omnipresent, unitarian Cod, to discourse of whom from the appearances, as he will tell us in the General Scholium to the second edition of the Pl:'incipia, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy. But the most famous statement of the General Scholium, presented. there as the outcome of inductivist caution, "I do not contrive hypotheses" (hypotheses, that is, as to the �-29cause of gravitation) - this statement disguised rather than expressed the deeper ground of Newton's original and I suspect persisting view, that gravitation was indeed universal, and the result of the direct action of God, so that no hypotheses for 1t could be successfully contrived. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 30 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On the origins of celestial dynamics: Kepler and Newton Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture given on May 07, 1971 by Curtis Wilson as part of the Formal Lecture Series. (A revised version, originally entitled "Kepler, Newton and Planetary Motion”.) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wilson, Curtis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-05-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Wilson 1971-05-07 Deans Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8908d181ae842b8a5f7e3a6308ade933.pdf 6d521e62342a8d9c9ce342fc7660d6d7 PDF Text Text ) ~' ecte b The uni ~~'.?.:?-1 _t?_~~ ' nis material may he Copyright law (Title 11 .::>.Code) This is going to be a funny kind of concert, part Quaker Meeting; lec~--ure - part part of it is going to be talk. That is the most difficult part. Difficult be cause I shHll try to stick to my subject, music, with all the rigour I can And I want you to do the s 2Jne. muster. will subordinate the talk to the music. That means that I We can all talk aftervrn.rds, when there will be no more music - or only a little ·if requir·ed to make a point clear. During the lecture I want to let the music speak, and myself to get a word in edgeways here and there where this can be done without drowning the music. that the one will drovm. the other. music, for once, dominate,, I There is always the danger If nec essary, let the After some of the musical examples shall try to let some moments of silence elapse before t aking up the talk again. Partly as a measm.'e of , self-defence - the SD Oken music is so much more eloquent tha t a.nyfwords fall very flat after • .l- l v; but partly al so, and more in1portantly, b e cause I really vmnt the music to have its say and to be cons ider ed, So I sha ll occasionally try to give you time to consider it v hen your ears are still full of it. 1 You might even - in an unquakerish way - Yvant to jot things dov1 that occur to you. m Music has al1Nays been bedevilled by irrelevant talk. Irrelevance a1, ises all too easily - it seems almost impo ss ible to avoid it. I continually c atch myse lf at it. suffer from i rre levan t t alk; All subjects but thi s one mos t particularly, for some fairly obvious and some more comp licated reason s . One of the obvious reasons is that not all people experience music mus ic a llv ( t118.t 1 s a.n und eI'statement) £md there is a �- 2 - .. conspiracy to pretend that they do. Therefore we get a lot of talk ostensibly about music that is not really about music at all. I am not saying that the unrausical cannot or should not talk about nm.sic - they can and they should : the discovery of true extra-nmsical analogies may depend on them. But this matter of exnerience nm.st always be kept firmly in mind. By experiencing music musically I mean something that involves the whole person, including the mind, the active, participating mind. Not the mind that, Yihile there is music going on, concentrates of half concentrates on something else - be it the Bible, p·~to, or mathematics; or the mind that drifts off to visions, d1"es1ns, or reminiscences. Befo:;"'."'e we start I should like to make some remaI•lrn about the voluminous document you have been given. Actually they are pretty close to the heart of the matter we want to discuss later. For the texts that are not originally in English that is, when the composer set them to music - for those texts I have It does not scsn like given a rough and ready translation. is the original. It fis:~ neither singable nor entirely literal, noj_" in any way loyal to a s t'lle - it is rough. Its purpose is mainly to give the gener•al sense of the whole snd the exact translation of the keI vrords in the original. The latter•, the exact translation of key words, :ls v1hat matters most: bees.use the listener should kn.ov1 what certain vrords mean that have entered into union yrith cei-·tain musical phrases. l\Iuch of the point of the best kind of vocal cm:T~losi tion (and all the e:o::01n~1les to-night belong to the best ki:1C1 Cchough there is not a single operatic exam:pleJ)much of the point of such a corn:::iosition is lost if the music is actually or mentally �3 (in the listener's mind) forced into an· adulterous union (however loose) with different words. In this kind of vocal music j_t is not just the general drift of a verbal statement, or even the precise MetLlJ.ing of the vrhole statement, that has been corribined with music, but often it is single vrnrds or groups of tvrn or three v;ords that are t1expressed 11 , by - that are .§._\~ t1accom:panied 11 vdth particular notes or groups of notes~ Not only in such glar•ingly obvious cases as that of word 11 th~ charms 11 in the E:;cam.ple you will hear first (Hat once it charms the sensell) or the sliqhtly less obvious not only in such cases as tle 11 grieven; "jarring seeds 11 ruJ.d the nscatter'd a t oms", ouu also in a case l:lke that of the llwox•ld below 11 ar:d ...-A ., .L "the spheres above 11 - right up fu::c. ther to a case of such 0 sublimation or sublimi t;)T as our final sung example to-night., So, to get back to the use to be :made of this docu:rient, I Viould advise the follovJine; : don't x·ead ahead. Sufficient unto A..n.d as v1e get to some Examples, I may say something about the words. Example, I think, needs no advance e::c_planation .. The first <:i'-r ( .12.i-t'...$ 1) - 'Tis nature's voice, 'tis nature's voice, Thro all the movinc; wood and creatures understood, The universal tonsue, the universal tongue, To none of all her num'rous race unknovm, From her, from her it learnt The :mighty, the mighty, the mighty art To court the ear> or stri1rn the heart, At once the passions to ex_;;iress·and move, At once the passions to express, to express and move. We hear, and straight v!e grieve o:c· hate, We hear, and straight we grieve or hate, rejoice or love. In unseen chains it does the fancy bind, it does, it does the fancy bind. At once it charms the sense and captivates the mind; At once it charms the sense and captivates the mind. �- 4 - .. Soul of the World, inspired by thee, The jarring, jarring seeds, The jarring, jarring seeds of matter did agree. Thou didst the scatter'd atoms bind Thou didst the scatter 1 d, ~Le scatter 1 d atoms bind, ·which by thy laws of true proportion joined, Made up of various par· ts, !"1ade up of various parts, of various, various parts, Made up of various parts one.perfect, One perfect, one perfect, perfect harmony. .. . Thou tun 1 st this world, this vTOrld. belo33_, The spheres above, Who in the heavenly round To their own nmsic move. However persuasively put, this is a bunch of pretty bold claims. They were made - not uniquely - you will be f aro.iliar with most of them - by one Nicholas Brady. the music, is by Henry Purcell. 11 The persuasion, These two were chosen by The Musical Society". in London to vVJ:>ite an Ode for St. Ceci- lia's Day in 1692 (Purcell also wrote others, but this is his biggest).· Cecilia, as you may know, was a Rom.211 matron and becsI!le a Christian saint. blind - and of music. She is the patron .saint of the . «S Musical literature is full of pieces written in her honour, but Purcell's great OdeA.the greatest, because the most musically relevant, the most magnificent, and the most assertive. (The composer himself, incidentally, sang the number with which we started and from which I,took my title.) The words, I said, are by Brady (a less distinguished poet than Joh.tL Dryden - but just listen, one day, to the Dryden/Haendel Cecilia Ode and you will be able to disprove for yourselves the wisdom of Beethoven's desire to compose the words of poets worthy of his efforts, like Homer or Schiller.) The vrords of this Ode, then/ are by Brady. did not sheets. ~ite But he probably all those repetitions that you have on your Those are by Purcell - and I only put a minimum of �- 5 - them down - in the polyphonic choral number even more repeating goes on between the different voices• repetitions? Because if~ou repeat something often enough, even a lie, it will be believed? fancy bind n? Why did he put all those "It does, it does, it does the Or ttat once the passions to express and move, at once the passions to express, to express and move. 11 At any rate it is That may be the most crucial claim of all. one that is most volub"ly and most heatedly discussed nowadays. Here is what the 11 anti-expressionist 11 Stravinsky says: 11 I consider that nmsic is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to e:x:oress anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc ••• ~E.x:oression has never been an inlierent • . . property of music. That is by no ment:,- the purpose ••• (E.A."}lression is) an aspect which, unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being ••• Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time. Its indispensable requirement is constructiOll:Construction once completed, this order has been attained, and there is nothing more to be said. 11 Q.~"'s 11 0rder.c.the coordination between man and time. ~t (PLAY Ex. 2) / " G o t t e s Zeit, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste, ist die allerbeste Zeit, die allerbe s te, ist die allerbeste Zeit. II Some of you may remember that. Bach's Cantata all 11 • 11 It is the opening "of God's time is the best time - the best time of The cantata is also called the Actus Tragicus. a funeral piece. It does not sound funereal. win then : it expresses nothing? It is Does Stravinsky Or the "expressionists rr vdn : it expresses the Christian joy at a departure to a better life? Or does Stravinsky win after all, because it "establishes an orde:r ••• between man and time 11 - in whatever sense you may choose to take that - either by its statement of the fact that "God's time �- is the best time 11 - 6 - or by the very nature of music? Let us ha.ve another example. (Ex. 3) Ich bin vergnilgt mit meinem Gliicke, das mir der liebe Gott beschert." 11 A slow waltz. 11 But hardly gay. You may have caught the words: Ich bin vergnngt in meinem Glilcke 11 - the lady says she is gay, or content, in her happiness, or good fortune. The oboe, and indeed the lady rs vocal line, seems to say. ·something different ri t~ h ·;; c.~ ...eJ.~J"A-~ ~.. · """":• ""-e_.,.~.,.,-..J!... ~---""'"~Ji- ;t!J?~o ·,,. ..... l'J. . . ~~·'· e ... ·~<:~...t.L.,.$~"'£\ 1,;...... ..,,_s..,_,...,,-~ · (-c:>r something extra?). J ·The next example, which I want to give /'you for the sake of comparison, does not seem to me to be a far cry: Ex. 4 11 Erbarme dich. o. 11 It is, most of you know it, 11 Erbarme dich 11 (Have mercy, Lord), the plea for mercy af·ter Peter's betrayal and bitter tears in the St. Matthew Passion. Let us have the whole of that passage: the three-fold challenge, tlJ.e three, increasingly emphatic, denials, and the remorse. It is Example 5 and you have all the words on page 2, with a rough English translation beside them. It is the Gospel story. Try to stick to the German words and only refer to the English when necessary. Ex. 5 ~ (Ex. 5) Petrus aber sass draussen im Palast, 'Und es tra t zu ihm eine Magd und sprach: Und du warest auch mit dem Jesu aus Galil!la. Er leugnete aber vor ihnen allen und sprach: Ich weiss nicht, vrns du sagest. Als er aber zur T-8.r hinausging, sahe ihn eine andre und sprach zu denen, die da waren: Dieser war auch mit dem Jesu von Nazareth. Und er leugnete abermal und schwur dazu: Ich kenne des Menschen nicht. Und ilber eine kleine V!eile traten hinzu die da sta.n.den und sprachen zu Petro: 'Wahrlich, du bist auch einer -Von denen, denn deine Sprache verr~t dich.' Da hub er an sich zu verf luchen und zu schw8ren: Ich kenne des l'.Ienschen nicht. Und alsbald kr!ihete der Hahn. Da dachte Petrus an die Worte Jesu,, da er zu ihm sagte: Ehe der Har.in kr!llien wird, _ 11 �- 7 Wirst du mich dreimal verleugnen. Und ging heraus und V1einete bitterlich. Erbarme di ch, me in Gott, u:.m me iner Zfiliren will en. Schaue hier, shhaue hier, Herz und Auge weint vor dir, Weint vor dir bitterlich ••• 11 And now let us have the other, the gay lady once more. (Ex. 6) (Ex. 6) ~.course when I say she says she is gay, I am not hinting subtly that I think Bach is bungling his job. rr express" That he can when he wants to "express t1 in the usual, if I may call it that, most prosaic sense, he shovrn in his treatment of the words llweinete bitterlichn. I could give a lot of examples for that kind of expression. There are, however, other kinds too that need illustrating. TheT'e is a penitentialfanfilta, 11 Her1", gehe nicht ins Gericht 11 (Lord, enter not into judgment) vrhich has a suitably dovmcast, . . ContrJ.. te b e"'01."' nni· DP' an?t t'nen , on . -o, -'-~ +:'.l~.le ~ ,,-rords na.enn vor di· r 1.uird. .- kein Lebendiger gerechttr (for in Thy sight shall no man be justified) breaks into a lively dance. Is Bach bungling again? There is no time for this first chorus fyou will have to take my word for it), nor for the whole of the incredibly beautiful but long aria on the vrnrds 1 "~Yie zi ttern und wanken der sunder Gedanken 11 (How the sinners' thoughts quake and tremble). most incredible beauty comes in the development. The Unfortunately I can only play the very beginning of it and I want to play that because of its obvious rhyth'!lic connection with the concluding chorale. words 11 The chorale (Exrunple 7) starts on the ?Iun, ich weiss, du wirst mir stillen mein Gewissen, das mich plagt 11 (Now I 1:now Thou wilt still my conscience ••• ) And the "stillingll is shown in the orchestra. The singers have a quarter note per syllable, and to begin with the strings �- 8 - " quake below with 4 sixteenths per syllable, just as they did in the soprano aria, then the~, calm dovm to triplets, then to two eighths, then to nearly one, namely a quarter and an eighth in 12/8 time (with the singers still in 4/4), then, ·when the singing has stopped, to simple postlude. lJ;l(\ ~tN.~EAA % A.cccH.f~(H.e-NT ( --D1l J { ) / T7I ~, / \,' J ~- ~ 1J ~ / .L ~(J t1 J' { 1-- ,, ~~ t f\ {" l /;;' \_/' ~ \./ 0 ~\ ~ - ~ ~~ ~, ,,,l E~ k t&ei'~ 1'd3.. . .2E:,~, J~ q~arter .---, I' notes, in the ~~\-l,l lu..i v % e.v, lt j J1~ 1 fl i , I ((\ ,, "" \J L l l' "~· A simple trick? 0 ___.. ( \ (. / r / ~tl / \ ~ ? } '' \...../ ,) But effective. Bach was perfectly ~apable of more complicated rhythmic tricks; but I want to leave those till later. Let us first go back before the Fall, before Sin, repentance, and anxiety. Let us listen to the Creation of Man, as ~:l..- presented byr:,_Joseph Haydn. words on page 3. It is Example 8 arid you have the The recitative comes more or less straight from Genesis: Und Gott schuf den Menschen Nach seinem Ebenbilde, Nach dem Ebenbilde Gottes Schuf er Lh..n. Mann und Weib erschuf er sie, Den Atem des Lebens hauchte er In sein Angesicht, �.. - 9 - Und der Mensch vrurde Zur lebendigen Seele. The aria comes more or less straight from Milton - whose version you can see below. Haydn's version goes: Mit wiirdt und Hoheit angetan, Mit Sch8nheit, St!irk 1 und Mut begabt, Gen HL11Lmel auf gerichtet Steht der Mensch, Ein Mann und K8nig der Natur. Die breit gew8lbt' erhabne Stirn Verklindt' der Weisheit tiefen Sinn, Und aus dem hellen Blicke ~ Strahlt der Geist, Des Sch8pfers Hauch und Ebenbild. Actually M::iJton said (-when Satan first sees Adam and Eve): ••• the fiend Saw undelighted, all delight, all kind Of living creatures, new to sight 2.nd strange. Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, Godlike erect, with native honour clad, In naked majesty seemed lords of all: .And \'rorthy seemed; for in their looks divine The image of their glorious Maker shone, Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure (Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,) vfnence true authority in men. We only have time for Or expressive? One can virtually -~ Man rising, and stand upright. But then something happens in the music that has no visual correlative. In the passage about man's sublime brow and his wisdom the music provides a perfect non-pictorial image of the nobility and complexity of man 1 s mind. Let us hear that part again. (Ex. 8b) Does it not seem to correspond in a startling way to Iv1ilton 1 s 0 image of their glorious Maker"'? (Ex. 8c) Let us have it once more. It does not do it in words or in pictures. Gesture comes closest to it, perhaps, but does not solve the �- 10 - .. When one trie$ to convey what happens in riddle either. the music, one is likely to use two hands to show the diversity in the unity, the divergence of the lines of horns and strings and their juxtaposition with the voice. But one is just as likely to throvv up oner s hands helplessly, for this kind of miravle cannot really be explained, although one ca~oint to this and that that goes on in it. It is not even that the various parts that make it up It is that we are confronted with are so many or strange. the nature of music. how? It conveys something - but what, and Or perhaps I should hy%,enate that and say "what-and-how"? Perhaps the 11 What 11 and the 11 How 11 are identical. My next example is much more complicated and quite frankly so. I can only pick out a few elements of it. It is the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion. I hope the words, which you have got, ·will be of some help. I would ask you to look at them now, rather carefully, so that later, when you listen to the music, you need at most to glance at them. First, though, let me say this: forces in this piece : Bach employs considerable two entire and separate orchestras,, two choirs of four parts each, plus an extra choir of sopranos, called Ripieno. The two orchestras start, slowly, After a while the first choir comes in and sings sadly. words that maan something like lament 11 - 11 Come ye daughters, help me with some repetition, but I have by no means indicated all repetitions in the text you have in front of you; I ~' hovirever, tried to indicate the difference between the passages where four to eight voices polyphonically have �- 11 - their words at different times (and often have many notes to a syllable) between such passages on the one hand, and the passages where they are all together, on the other hand. have underlined the latter. underline~) : 11 Sehet 11 - 11 Choir I goes on (altogether, Behold 11 - never mind the stresses fall1img differently in English - follow the German (and to say 11 11 see" or look" would not help either, or not much, because it only has one syllable; like 11 him 11 , and one cannot add a monosyllabic object, because the exchange between the two choirs that follows keeps changing que's tions. "Behold ii, says Choir I, 11 So let us just take Whom? n asks Choir II, says Choir I, and goes on : "See him 11 • 11 I Like a lrunb 11 , is the answer; 11 11 11 behold 11 . ) the bridegroom", How 11 , asks Choir II and as though this word "Lamb 11 had triggered something, the Ripieno choir enters, slowly, deliberately, sounding almost unconcerned, heartless, inexorable, with a choral tune no Lamm Gottes unschuldig 11 (0 guiltless laJUb of God). I have sometimes tried to cheat a bit to get the exact English word underneath the corresponding German word, but mostly I have simply used the English word order and I run fairly sure you will see which Germa...n words mea...n what. of course, what \vord is wedded to -vvhich note. It does matter, That is why it seems to me best to perform a piece in the language in ·which it 'Nas composed. One can always supply a translation for the listener to refer to and must hope that he won't concentrate on the trac"lslation instead of on the music.) The slov-r can tus f irmus, that is the chorale melody sung by the Ripieno choir, goes on (IN CAPITAL LETTERS) 11 am Stamm des· or slawrh tered Kreuzes geschlachtet 11 that is 11 butchered/on'-'the tree of the cross 11 �- 12 - while the two other choirs carry on with the lament and the pointings and th0 questions and answers about the bridegroom, (The . can tus f irmus is given in capital letters the lamb. thr our;i;hou t. ) Comes a s11ort orchestral interlude. resume their exchange. Be.hold - what? - behold the patience; and the cantus firmus takes up . ' d espiseQ l1 • Then the two choirs 11 always four1d patient, hovvever Then another short orchestral interlude, still in J the old rhytbrn, with the insistent in the basses and grou:;Js of eighths, tied in different ways, above - sometimes a dotted quarter, namely three eie;hths, tied to the fi :st of Nt l~/ .. /~ .t~ ~ ( / next gJ:ouIJ of ,,l . ·Tl ,, ' J ·"' / ~l ,l l ltt 9- t~ll3 t j J ,) ' / t<f'\ / } ) ,i' r._7 eight11s, tht1s ..i 'l:r r' 7 ~ > ... J' I rT1 .- ... :!_. I }! 1 J. ~ ; ..\ j ~ [j_( tl1~ece Lr_r 't. -) w~ o_,;_J' l " .\... .~ ;.. ,r,• cJJ. ()...{.,· .,._.., ;) '-"'l v- (;}vi?_. ,( ~ .f\ ~ck ~;A,_.-e~} f But suddenly the pattern ch£'Lrise s. '-" The obstinate bass continues, but above it there are now g;rou _ of three staccato eighths. _:;s And the Y1o:eds? our guilt. 11 Look - at what, R_t vihat.,, 2t what? - look at Surely it is no accident that this Protestant 11 Cantor, vrhen it comes to the confes:=;ion of guilt, emplo:rs the musical equivalef\t of the Catholic triple striking of the breast. Thou bo::r.ne 11 (it is all rather 1~e:miniscent of th,3 Latin ·1:0::..•c.~; of t:i::; U'.::iJ·s qul '-_ • toll''" ""'"CC".\+-.., J.. "'' l"' c .. v c; 0. -~11ndJ" • i1) l<l ·'- ~ - tteJ.~,e • 1••1,1 e 11 .Agnus sh_ould hqve to des_c,1 ai:r 0 - Then the two choirs point to Christ carrying his own cross to Dei • �- 13 his execution and the Ripieno choir ends by calling on Jesus to have mercy - just as the corrt8ponding part of the Mass concludes ~1 miserere The two choirs once more point nob is 11 • to the Bridegroom, the Lamb, then comes the orchestral 2ostlude. This introductory chorus is a long number and straightaway sets the tone for a great and long work. As soon as its starts ·we knmv we are in for 4 and a half hours of it., or should be. That, too., is an aspect of the role of time in music. time Stravinsky was talking about. music. To ~ The One has to give time to One cannot have it an.d something alse at the same time. act as though one . ~ is self-deception and has serious, diabolical consequences. So this great work starts with a grand and long number, which by the clock usually taKts 10 or 11 minutes (the way Schvrni tzer advocates and Scherchen actually takes is s ome.v1hat quicker. We m:>e now about to hear a 11 standard 11 version-} - but, whatever the basic speed, the number itself contains two distinct orders of time - or an image of time and eternity. The two orchestras and choirs operate in one, the ripieno choir clearly in another. Its basic unit per syllable is a dotted quarter or three basic units of an eighth( that the others work in. The difference, the distinctness, is further empha- sised by the distrihution of the phrases of the cantus firmus over what goes on belov1 and by the fact that it is a major tune and much of what the others utter is in minor or where it is not imt'~nor is harmonically slanted in a way to contrast vrith thE clearly ma:;.,.,ked melody of the Ex. 9 (Kormnt ih...r T8chter) ~· (PAUSE. Then: ) C&'l. tus firnrus. (Ex. 9·} �- 14 - You lr.now~the quotation from Stravinsky which I at the beginning was incomplete. I ~ave you ga'4e it in the form in which it is given in a book of the "expressionist" school of thought that has appeared relatively recently: nhor, by Donald Ferguson. Sally, a straw man. Music as Meta- Ferguson clearly needed an Aunt So he made half a Stravinsky into his stre:w man and quoted: 11 I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no mea.-ris the purpose of its existence, •• ~xpression is) an aspect which, unconsciously or by force O.Lfiabi t, we have come to confuse with its essential being ••• Music is given us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time,,,Its indispen$able requirement is construction:-- Construction once completed, this order has been attained, and there is nothing more to be said, 11 That is the Ferguson quotation from strawman Stravinsky, Now, let me give you the real Stravinsky: 11 ••• For I consider that music is, b:T its very nature, essentially powerless· to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc •••. Expression has never been an inherent property of music, That is by no means the purpose of its existence. If' as is nearl a~ ~' music a-:Jnears to express some hin.iz is is oniv an~illusioil no ·a real t • is s_mp -~nal a ri'biT£e-.,...v.....,·rn.-.i-;-,~--- and inve erate - acit greement, we~ t'11rU:St un~~ a conve~- in ·d}lort, an ~ich, unconsciousl~force of habit, we have come to confUse with its essential being. Music is the sole domain in which man real.,.,. s the pres en' the inroer ec vi:m of is - "GU· , ma·1 is doomed t su m -1>0yhe p.assag~1e - to i s cav :ories of s~w~~ p a le o ive su sta.i'1ce, and therefore -~ ~i'Z.gorv oj_ ne o:'ip:-71.>-;-:o~~-i-v:-.-----~1-ienomeno of music is given to us with the sole purpose of es ab_ishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time. To re put into practice, its indispen$able and single requirement is construction. Construction once completed, this order has been attained, and there is nothing more to be said. It· ...._ would be fu til.e to look for, or expect anything else from .... · it. It is precisely this construction, this achieved order �- 15 - which produces in us a UTulUe emotion having nothing_ ~~~+-~ in uuHm1on vn.l,n our or d. .inarv_s_e.J.~.ons ancl our resnonses ~iliLI~p.i1-asiiDD.s nf (;LS j J ¥-i.u_a__ t-efte- "'H~o-t-oe tter define the sensation c D.y music thf:Jll by saying that it is~~'cca with that evoked by the interplay of ~_1rtJitectural forms. Goethe thoroughly underC' ct that when he called architecture petrified ~------'-' _. ~-) What interests me most in the part of Stravinsky suppressed by Ferguson G'is the last bit about it being "precisely this construction, this achieved order, ·which produces in us a unique emotion. 11 The s&'lle Stravinsky, incidentall,, said some time later, ·when asked about religion and the 1Nri ting of relie;ious music (and as you know he writes it) : that it cannot be done without faith. And he did not, I think, just say that to bamboozle the burghers. 11 A unique emotiono •• We obviously do not all feel it 11 who are properly moved by it. s~me harmful to pretend But there is something in cornraon between those that we do. to the ~nd It is useless when we listen to music .. The same thing in them responds thing in the nTQsic. One can also be improperly moved,, by extra-musical associations. The improper movement can be ezploi ted and manipulated by Movie and Muzak other Merchants. .And I 8Jn make1~s and convinced that unless v;e drive them out where theJ have no legitimate business, and keep them at bay, Hi-Fi, transistors, and all, we will be driven out of our minds. It is precisely because it is the universal tongue that music must not be ubiquitous. Let us, however, return to proper motion or emotion mid to our last I~x.runple. V!e ~~ moved - bod:Lly and in ou:r souls. 'i'I'nat is it that does that? the v-railing on 11 Come In this instance it was not just ye daughters .... 11 ,_, It is the ·way that musical phrase has been used in a musical structure, not only �. - 16 having the "llih'1loved 11 cantus firmus superimposed on it, but also -being switched about, mo-ved and used here and there, either as the stressed or as the unstressed part of the larger unit, and used with different words. All our exarnple s to-day were of music with words - though I think the most exciting part of the Haydn is the purely orchestral part - still 1 it comes in a context of sung words. You may have noticed that I omitted opera. This was not done to rig the argument in any way ( it doesn 1 t actually - opera cuts both ways ) but in order to keep the field of discussion manageable. On the other hand I do want to end with ·a_ few words a~out instrumental music. .. It moves too - even_, and especially, when it is far removed from any association with words • . You 1mov1 .tl1a_t I __could give exs.mples of instrumental music that seems to express emotion. Much of Mozart rs instrumental music is dovmright operatic, reminds one of dr&'llatic situations and characters singing. But for my last e:cample I have chosen something to whic:h no emotional label will stick. And yet ~t moves. So let Mozart have the last 1,wrd. (Ex. 10, Minuet from Serenade in· C-minor) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 16 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The universal tongue Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered in 1963 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1963 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1963 FaFi-Ruhm von OppenB024 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/906666f4be01ee8828436adb8d8df69d.mp3 7fb0256b3063ed18cb448a05d1194a18 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiotape (Tape 109) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:21:03 (Cuts off at 01:20:23 and resumes at 01:20:52.) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bach's rhetoric Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on October 27, 1972 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-10-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3585">Typescript</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1972-10-27 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bd24d41bfc122ecbdf84c326f644e976.mp3 8b5ffe20ef4f0b0c69fc193cd4d1d611 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiocassette Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:57:05 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interpretations of the <em>Magic Flute</em> Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 4, 1978, by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-04-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Ruhm_von_Oppen_Beate_1978-04-14_ac Subject The topic of the resource Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791. Zauberflöte Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bfe8d90a992062695b802c582a6150c6.mp3 96dcdd2bd7a0e62801e8ee9b83c2da02 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiotape (Tape 74) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:52:51 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Trial in Berlin Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 28, 1973 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-11-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3588">Typescript</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1973-11-28 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d9e16e6d01b0c6e705bfe60d8925470e.mp3 1649c99e84792c18c3f822050a10386b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiotape (Tape 98, Vol. 1) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:59:06 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Student rebellion and the Nazis (part one) Description An account of the resource Audio recording of part one of a lecture delivered on in two parts on February 18 and 25, 1972 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-02-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Relation A related resource Sound Recording:  <a title="Part Two (Audio)" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3590">Part two<br /></a> Typescript:  <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3589">Part one and two</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1972-02 (Part I of II) Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6c44b4b0f55399fe3039e8e0663c3d41.mp3 aa1ce5ff9cb4bcc8b94ddc0c0f2bd900 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiotape (Tape 98, Vol. 2) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:10:44 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Student rebellion and the Nazis (part two) Description An account of the resource Audio recording of part two of a lecture delivered on in two parts on February 18 and 25, 1972 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-02-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Relation A related resource Audio recording:  <a title="Part One (Audio)" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3598">Part one</a> Typscript:  <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3589">Part one and two</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1972-02 (Part II of II) Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/177e96e8e312e1b0be5818798ff44bc1.pdf 5be9cb22af5eded8bcce8798e36275e6 PDF Text Text . -D.t~ This matenaI may be prot . · C opyright law (Title 11 u ·s·~a by · Oda) STUDERT REBELLION .AID TSE NAZIS Two lee tu ...es given by Beate Ruhla von Oppen at St. John's College, Annapolis, on 18 and 25 Feb ~a ry 1972 ..,...,.. �STUDENT REBELLION AND THE NAZIS Two lectures·. given by·.-Beat~· Ruhm von Oppen at st. JbhnAs College, Annapolis, 18 and 25 February, 1972 I. The Rise and Rule of Hitler If someone were to ask why I am giving two lectures in a row instead of the traditional single lecture, I might give as reason an experience I had about a couple of years agoo It was at a university specializing in theology -- one that had theology as one of ·its three main divisions. It was in May 1970, just after the American incursion into Cambodia. There was student unrest all over the country and talk of "revolution." There was something like that going on at that university on the day I spoke there. My subject was the relationship of the Nazis and the churches, a subject, I had been ~old~ of spec~al interest to the people there. But perhaps not on that disturbed .day. period was dismal, discussion i~possible. The question One questioner got up and asked1 ""What about studen_t protest?•• sly question; it was quite innocent and.proceeded from pure It was not a ignorance, such ignoranc·e as I was totally unprepared for .in a middle-aged questioner. So I gave' a brief and brutal answer on the history of stu~ent prot~st in Germanya that loud and massive and effective protest existed in the period before the Nazis came to power and the protesters ·were Nazis, or at any rate mil.itant natioJ'.lalists, who exercised considerable pressure· on the academic establishment of the Weimar Republic -and even more, incidentally, in the Austrian Republicr that �-2- once the Nazis were in power, there was hardly any open protest a and that the first three of the famous group of Munich students who protested in pubiic against the Nazi regime and its war, were dead within a few days .of being caught, in 194Ja the rest following a few months later. A helpful colleague, a theologian and church historian. then jumped into the breach and explained that Nazi Germany was a police state and what that meanto taken that as read. I must confess I had But the incident ·showed me that one can- not take it as read any longer and that any description of resistance must start wiih that which is resisted. Also it could be that a term like "police state," being misused too much, has lost .its meaning and like other such terms -- "genocide," for instance, or "fascism•• or "totali tarianism," no 1ong~r conveys anything precise or ·distinct. But meanings and distinctions have to be kept' clear, or, if they have been blurred, have to be m~de clear again, not ·just for love of pedantry, but for the, sake of liberty, indeed of life itself. Lies work best when there .is a· grain of truth in them. The best precaution against being taken in, is the cultivation of the habit of looking for that grain of truth and trying to see what has been done with it. of truth or the fa~ts Denying or ignoring the grain of a matter may be magnificent ideology and rousing rhetoric, but it is no defense against the better liar. Hitler was probably _the best liar there ever was. That is one reason why we are having 1!!Q lectures, the �-3first on the police state or whatever other name we may find more proper for Nazi Germany, and the second on a group of students who opposed it .and a professor who opposed and died with them. Two lectures are a risk, on two counts. St. John's does not .[Q ''history." arts. It is not one of our liberal We read Homer and Herodotus and Thucydidesr Tacitus1 Plutarch and Gibbon; ~ Vergil and Toqueville and Marx and Tolstoi We read quite a lot of political philosophy. that Firstly because We read much . history, from the Bible to the church fathers to the ref.armers tci the debunkers r . .from Aristotle to Rousseau and Kant to.Hegel and Darwin to the Documents of American political history, Yet we do not have "history" as a subject, or a discipline. The s·e·cond risk is rather peculiar to our moment in history, now; but it is probably the lesser of the two risks, here. at St. John's. The temper of m•ny of the more vocal, more audible and visible of our contemporaries is or anti-historical. is regarded as ~-historical There is no patience with history. "irrelevant~ -- unless, of cou~se, It disjointed bits of it can be used, torn· from their context, as ammunition in some campaign. The two risks may, to some extent, cancel each other out. We cultivate, perhaps over-cultivate, rationality hereo By "over-cultivate" I mean a development of' the reasoning faculty at the expense of other faculties. increasingly, anti-rational The temper of our time is, and one can see what has brought �-4- about this reaction1 the rebellion against the shallow, "functional" rationalism of the mechanised, mass-educating,. manipulative age. Our rationalism here, at st. John'~, is different -- more comprehensive -- and therefore few of us are driven into this reactive irrationalism, in fact most of us are quite good at resisting it. But I often sense a divorce from reality, human reality, psychological, political, historical reality. For instance, seminar discussions of Thucydides on the revolution in Corcyra and the attendant linguistic revolution in which "words had to chan~e their usual meanings" tend to be perfunctory1 a few contemporary examples of the misuse of words by lying politicians or commercial salesmen will be mentioned, but the discussion. lacks feeling, passion, lacks, apparently, experience; I mean1 lacks the quality of talk about something one has really experienced; it lacks the conviction that this is something really evil and dangerous -- and should be resisted or count~racted to the best of our ability. of experience abounds, The raw material But the mental, including the emotional; engagement rarely seems to take place. I cannot here go into the question of what the reasons for this inattention may be. Quantity of comment on the phenomenon of misused language proves nothing -- certainly does not prove a realization of · the seriousness of the matter. Neither does a concern for the purity and impeccability of language necessarily ensure the best politics and the most just and decent polity. But certain peccabilities are more �.. · ... -5dangerous, some more insidious in their effects, than others. The more serious linguistic sins seem to me to be very closely related to the subject at the core of these two lecturesa slavery and freedom, the manipulation of men (and women, and childr~n) and the resistance to manipulation -- a resistance that is needed at all times and is always fraught with risks and renunciations, but which in bad times may involve the readiness to stake one's life. Does that sound somewhat exaggerated? I do not think it is -- but perhaps we can discuss that later. Now I must try and describe the indescribable and explain the inexplicable. The simplest procedure may be to mention the ways in which politics began to impinge on me at the time when times were bad and getting worse. The students I am going·to talk about next week were roughly my vintage, or belonged to the same "cohort," as, I believe, the trade . 1. now calls 1t. · They grew up at. the same time in more or less the same country. But I left when I was 16. I was born in Switzerland at th·e end of the first world war and grew up, or started to grow up, in Germany. I cannot think back to a time when politics was not in the air. I re- member ·the evidence of food shortages in my kindergarten and elementary school days. I remember the feeling of insecurity communicated by all around me when the currency collapsed, that is, when there was not just the sort of inflation we have now, but something that gall.opped away in geometric or exponential progression, so that, for instance, a lawyer's or doc- �-6- tor's earnings of one day might not be enough to buy a loaf of bread the next day. Not long ago you could see, in the window of an antique shop in our Main Street,.an old German 50,000 Mark note, said to have been "used in Hitler's Germany." as wall-paper. Perhaps it was used It might be more accurate to say that it was used -- as money -- in pre-Hitler Germany, though I'd hate to refer to the Weimar Republic as just that. It was a specimen of the kind of money that helped to bring abou_t Hitler's Ger-· many. 50,000 Marks !1Q!!. would be worth about $13,000. mal" times, In "nor- the dollar has recently been devalued a bit -- 4 Marks were a dollar. The date of issue on that 50,000 Mark note was 19 November 1922. The very fact that such a note was printed and,:put into 'circulation was, of course, a sign that inflat.ion had got out of hand. In the summer of 1922 the dol- lar was worth not 4 Marks, but over 400. The next summer it And by 15 November 192) it was 4 trillion was over 4 million. (4,000,000,000,000). If my reckoning is right -- but you'd better check it -- that 50,000 Mark note issued in November 1922 was worth one-eighty-millionth of a dollar a year latera $ 1. or 1 of a cent. - 80,000~000 800,000 pape~. But expensive, too. That was very cheap wall- What it all meant, among other things, was the pauperi~a­ tion and demoralization of the middle class and the partial destrucfion of the social fabric. It was in that month, November 192), that Hitler, the �-7leader of ·a tiny party •. staged his abortive putsch or coup time, d',tat in Munich, when he tried for the first failed, to seize power. That year had also se.en communist attempts to seize power, in central Germanys foiled. Hitler was sent and they too were to a comfortable prison for a while and used his leisure to write his book, Mein Kampf. When he got out again, he adopted a policy of legality and with that he eventually prevailed • .By the time I entered elementary school, ·in 1924, a new c.tirrency had been established and money once more was money, tho~gh scar.ce. .But I noticed that my t~achers were not en- thusiastic about the political system, though we dutifully and decorously celebrated the BOth birthday of our President. His name was Hindenburg and he had been a famous· field marshal:.:. in the world war, halting the Russian advance in East Prussia. Being, as it were, a personal link. between the old, pre-war empire and the new, post-war re~ublic, and loyal to the new constitution, he was a national figure acceptable to the moderate right and moderate left and lasted a decade as head of state, while chancellors, or heads of government, succeeded. each other at a breathtaking rate. The country had many po- litical· parties. and an election system based on proportional representation, so that votes were distributed across a wide spectrum and large number of parties, and governments had to be formed out of coalitions of several of them and were correspondingly shaky and shortlived• I also remember many elections during my school iia.ys and reports of violent rhetoric �-8- from left and right, as well as physical violence, street fights, murders, assassinations. Then, after the Wall Street crash of 1929-with its worldwide repercussion·s, there was another economic crisis a mere six years after the beginning of the recovery from the earlier one, with a growing, an intolerable, rate of unemployment. It grew from 1.J million in September 1929 to J million a year later, to ove·r 6 million in 1931. With a total population of about 65·million, this meant that one in every two .families was hit. affected. It was not only working class families that were so There was for instance, much unemployment among academics too. The.•xtremist parties. the communists and Nazis, made great gains and .finally occupied more than half the seats in the national parliament, where they were now able to para-· lyze the democratic procews. They also joined, for instance, in a strike to paralyze the transport. system of Berlin.. Other/wise they could fight each other to the death, and did, with casualties on both sides, despite the general strategy of the communists at that time to treat the Social Democrats as their enemy No. 1 -- whom they called "social fascists" for the purpose -- and to flirt with the possibility of a Nazi as a promising prelude to a communist takeover. pinged of course, on a Berlin school childr vic~ory All this im- the transport strike, the posters, the polarization, the cQabination of both extremes against the middle, and the weakness and apparent helplessness of the middle. When President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich Chancellor �-9on JO January 19JJ, he was acting ln accordance with the letter and perhaps even the spirit of the constitution. Hitler's party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (or "Mar.is" for short, to distin&ulsl'I them from the "Sozis," or Social Democrats), was by then the strongest party in the country, with about one-third of the vote; the Soc'ial Democrats had only one-fifths ·the communists one•sixths the Catholic Gen~ ter Party, together with its Bavarian affiliate, about the same. And there were many_gthers, but all of them had less than 10% of the vote, the largest of them the Nationalists, 8.8% Hitler became the head of a coalition government. I still re- member seeing the faces of these gentlemen in an evening paper that carried the announcement. No-one.knew wha:t it meant. had read Hitler's book. I was somewhat scared, for I I had had to do it secretly, at night, with a flashlight under the bedclothes, for my parents, like many other respectable people, ~egarded it as pornographic -- which indeed in a manner of speaking it was. longs Also it was very and that was probably why very few people read it, though once its author had become the ruler of the land, it wa~ widely and compulsorily distributed, for instance, as;presen.t to newly-weds, bound like a bible. But that did not, of course, ensure its perusal. Before saying anything about what I had found in that book, let me, quickly, give you an account of the rest of my. Berlin schooldays, to show how life at school changed in the 17 months ·before I left. There was much talk of national �-10- solidarity and the Community of the People. in personnel and in the curriculum. rate of attrition. half There were changes And there was a dramatic My own class was reduced by more than . probably because girls (it was a girls' school I went to) or their parents thought that since the new regime had set its face against too much academic education for women (who were not to exceed 10% of university enrolment), it was hardly worth struggling through more Latin and trigonometry and the rest •. up to the rather stiff school leaving exam which was normally taken at tB • . The teaching personnel changed in two waysa there were a few dismissals, of Jews -- we had very few Jews at my schoola and our English teacher, who was a Jew, was at first said not to be subje.ct to dismissal because he had not only served in the war but had even been shot in the heada but eventually he left all the same and the next English teacher was and that one was in due course a teacher trainee. r~placed ~ess good1 by an even worse one, The other change among the teachers was a change of tone and colour. A very few revealed themselves as Nazis which, they said, they had been all along but could only . now, at last, openly avow to be. (On the whole the school had been vaguely nationalistic, but far from Nazi.) Others toed the new line as best they could and exhibited varying degrees of cravenness or caution or dignity, enthusiasm or moderation or reserve. Many new things were reguired1 the Hitler salute at the beginning of classes, attendance at new·national celebrations that prol:iferated and at which you had, _of course, �-11- to stand at attention (with upraised arm) when the new national anthem was played and sung, the old marching song of the Nazi movement, with text by one Horst Wessel, sayings "Raise the flag, close the ranks, we stormtroopers march in firm and ·) " 1 steady tread. Comrades shot by the Reds and Reactionaries are marching on with us." It was the battle song of the new revo- lution. So there was all that. And there were changes in such subject.s as history and science. Let me take biology, for that is where I had my brief hour of glory. I had not done well with the dissection of tulips and the like. once biology was converted into race biology. But I shone Not only was there Mendel's law, about which my father had told me before (only that its implications and application were now rather different from what I had gathered from him) -- ~. and this is where the real fun came in, we now learnt about the German races -- "Aryan," of course, all of them. There were six, .if I remember correctly, ranging in excellence from the Nordic to the East Baltic. Nordic was best because Nordic man had created almost all the culture there was and he had qualities . of leadership. The Mediterranean race was also quite good (for after all there had been ancient Greeks and Romans and there were modern Italians, good fascists, full of leadership.) The Mediterranean race could most easily be memorized as a smaller, lightweight, and darker version of the Nordic& what they had in common were the proportions of their skulls and faces '(long, narrow skull, long face) and the characteristic �-12- way of standing on one leg, with no weight on the other, one standing and one playing l~g, as a literal translation of the German. names for them would have it. Such legs could be seen in Greek statues and such were the legs of Nordic man. Now the Falic race was the next best. It shared many ·, of the sterling qualities of the Nordic -- highmindedness and the rest -- but could be distinguished from it by the fact that it stood, squarely, on two legs. Also its face was a bit broader. No playleg there. That race lacked, somewhat, the fire of Nordic man, or let us say the thumos, but made up for it by solidity and staying power. was fairly nordic, blond .hair, blue eyes. The colour scheme So was that of the East Baltic race whose virtues were less marked that those of the Nordic and the Falic and whose features were less distinguished, ·including a broader skull· and a broadish nose. I could not quite make out the use of this race, unless it was, perhaps, territorial, to keep not a German race. th~ Slavs out. The Slavs were Then there was a German race that looked, one mi:ght say, a bit Jewish, or perhaps Armenian, but it was neither. It was Dinaric and seemed to be much the same as what earlier classifications had called Alpine. race dwelt in the mountains. Indeed this It looked sturdy enough, but not as prepossessing as the Nordics. and its head had awkward mea::rnrernt~rrt~u Di.n:lr.i.c ma.n had back to his head o '.i prominent nos·~ .~nd But he had a redeeming feature 1 · not much he was musical. Now all this, of course, was good clean fun and easy to �-1J' visualize and memorize. tures of well-known rization• pic- Indeed there were visual aids1 personag~s Hindenburg for th~ to help recognition and memoFalic race, somebody like Haydn for the Dinaric, Caesar for the Mediterranean. Then there was a picture of Martin Luth$r. the great Germ.an Reformer. and I forget now what race he wa$ said to represent. looked Slavic. To me he But.that, of course, could not be. I suppose he was declared a darker type of East Bal tic or Falic·. All this was child's play, and this child played it with zest and success• History was harder.. You could not inwardly laugh off and outwardly play it as a parlor game. ~ You had to learn, ". or appear to learn, appear to make your own to some e~tent, in some way; at least -- you had to read, say, and write the things that :h~d ~een neglected .or "falsified" in the Weimar Republic of evil memory, under "the System• {"in der as the Nazis referred to it). brought out overnight. N~w Systemzeit.~ textbooks could not be So we were all given a short brochure on contemporary history, the.recent and most "relevant" .period of Germ&ln and European. and world history. It started ,with the German surrender at the end of the world war {there was.only one then; so it needed no number), a surrender brought about by trickery ab~oad and treason at home, by President Wilson's 14-point peace proposal and the stab in the back of the un- . defeated German army, a piece of treachery committed by Jews. Marxists, and Catholics ties. feckless folk, with international These traitors then set up their system of abject sur- �-14- render abroad and iniquity and immorality at home. They ac- cepted the shame:f'Ul peace treaty of Y.ersailles. which not only saddled Ge.rmany with sole responsibility for the war. (in Article 231, which Germ.ans called the "war guilt clause• or "war guilt lie") 2 but also provided for the payment -- virtually in perpetuity -- of quite crippling reparation~ •. Germany was -unilaterally disarmed (whereas Wilson had envisaged universal disarmament) and was f~rst blockaded by the British -- after the ces·sation of hostilities -- to enforce submission, and then, in 192J, invaded by the French, who marched into the Ruhr. valley to seize German coal and steel production as re. . ~ paration payments were 111 arrears. '·It was reparations that caused the economic misery during the republican 14 years of shame. Attempts to revise the reparations schedule to make it more tolerable were fruitless and fraudulent. The last revision provided for the.spreading of payments until 1988 ' ' and the country was dying in the. attempt to do the· victors' ' bidding, . The nation would have t·o stand together and rally round the Buehrer -- or the •people's Chancellor,• as he was then still called to throw off the shackles of Versailles. The cover of this brochure had a muscular worker on it, stripped to the waist and bursting his chains. We also learnt about the parts of Germany that had been taken away by the Treaty of Versailles. that dictated peace, and about the Germans that languished under foreign domination. We learnt that German defencelessness .was further aggravated by the geographic position of the country• surrounded by hos- �-15tile powers. Thus a bombing plane could take off from France and fly right across Germany and land in Czechoslovakia, without refuellin~. . ercises. tive. The lesson was brought home by air raid ex- They were not very realistic, but they were educa- I stili ~emember leading my little troop of classmates to their several homes, staying close to th~.houses, as in- structed, to avoid exposure to imagined falling shrapnell and flying glass. That was in the first.year or so of Hitler's power, five or six years before his war. It was useless, of course, as an exercise in air raid precautionsr but it was useful for ·romenting fear and a spirit of national defence. It also showed. that the Czechoslovak Republic, even if militarily it amounted to no more than an aircraft base, was the power that enabled France -- or plane& based in France .-- to bomb the wl)ole of Germany. And in addition.-- but this point was not given too much prominence until four years later, in the crisis leading up to the M~ich settlement that dismem- bered the Czechoslovak Republic -- in addition the country was a political entity in which six-and-a-half million Czechs held over ) million Germans in subjection, as second-class citizens. Cl.early the Sudeten region had to be united with Germany. so·much for what was taught in class and done in extramural exercises under the responsibility of the school. there was one .other thing I should mention. But Schools were o- bliged to take their pupils to certain films, propaganda films that were being shown commercially. So, obediently, our class went to see the movie "Hitlerjunge Quex," the story of a Hit- �-t6- ler Youth of th.e working class whose father was a communist and whose mother was long-suffering and tried to cope with conditions and her husband, but in the end attempted suicide, by gas, from misery and despair. Quex (who was a very idea- lized version of an actual Hitler Y.outh who had been killed) first belonged to· a communist youth group, as was natural in view of his home background. But on one occasion, one excur- sion, he was so revolted by their beastly ways, that he ran away, ran through the woods, and came upon t~e camp of a Nazi youth group which instantly and deeply impressed him as his own and the country's salvation. {It was a sunrise scene, to make sure we all got the point.) clean limbs, real and hope. c~mradeship, Here were shining faces, purpose, discipline, dedication, So he jolned the Hitler Youth and·was active, devo- tedly active· in the distribution of leaflets. and all. that. He continued, of course to live with his parents in the working class district of Berlin. And one day, at dawn, the communists took their revenge and. his particular personal en~ emy, a brute of a man, pursued him· throiigh the deserted streets -- also through the maze. of an an"aa~ment park, a very effective, macabre, cinematic touch that~ and long be:f'ore ..:lU Third Man -- and finally caught up with him and knifed him. But Quex died for the cause, and when his friends found him, on the point of death, and propped him up, he raised his right arm in a salute to the German future and the camera swung up ~o the clouds and the sound track into the- marching song of Hitler Youth, with the lines •the ·flag leads us into eternity, �-11- the flag is more than death ... The trouble was twofolds that the film was most effec- tive and affecting (however corny it may sound as I now tell it) and it was made with terrific competence and with the participation of some very good actorsr and secondly that ,the school was under an obligation not only to take us to it, but also to discuss it with us. sion. So we had our class discus- I do riot remember much about it except for the fact that I decided.to play the part of aesthetic ~nd dramatic critic, arguing that, powerful though the movie was, it could have been even better if it had been less black and white (metaphorically speaking), if it had had more nuances, more human diversity and verisimilitude. Why did i take that line? In order not to embarrass or endanger our teacher who was leading the· ··discussion, who, I had reason to. believe, was very unhappy ab9ut the Nazis, and who was.a .widow with two children for whom she had to provide. Then there was a film about -Joan of Arc, replete with horrors of the Hundred Years' War. It exposed the sadism of the British and the brutality of the Catholic clergy. On that occasion I objected to the screening of atrocities; and that was· about as far as one could go and get away with it. Soon after, I got out of the country and cannot speak any further from personal experience about what subsequently·· became pos.sible and impossible. Now "impossible" is a term that strictly speaking brooks no· comparison. So let us look at some of the laws that· �existed and were passed l.ater, which limited the freedom of expression and of assembly and of organization and action. Whatever laws may exist, and be enforced, it is, of course, still possible to do some of the things that are forbidden1 but it becomes less likely that people will do them, the penalties are painful. are - inflicted. becau~e In a police state they really Actually, Nazi Germany became something even worse than a police stateJ because Hitler's shock troops,, the SS, not only permeated and took charge of the police, but came to have a whole empire and fields of activity to themselves, outside the reach and control of the police, and the army. It was the SS that ran the concentration camp~ and extermination camps and the campaign to improve the health of the nation (or the national economy) by k.illlng the in... curable. f-hey were not hampered by the law but acted di· rectly on Fuehrer•s Oi'ders, something beyond:the law. But I am anticipating. Let me mention some of the lawa that were passed and enforced. The first and most fundamental of them was .the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State. It was promulgated on 28 Pebruary 19JJ, four weeks after Hitler had become Chancellor and the day after the burning of the Reichstag building by arson. A young Dutch anarchist boasted of the deed and was eventually sentenced to death by the Supreme Court. Ostensibly rected against communist acts of violence. th~ decree was di- In fact it was used against all who could be said to be endangering the State, �-19including, for instance, members of the cler~ who made bold It ltOt to continue to preach and practise Christianity. only tightened up· provisions or increased penalties under the criminal code for such offences as treason, arson, the use of explosives, and the taking of But it alsQ. hosta~es. suspended "until further notice" a number of basic rights -- , . and it remained in .effect until the end of Hitler's rule. Three weeks later, on 21 March t93J, there was a Decree "for the defence of the government of national resurgence .. against malicious attacks." (It is the word Ernebung I am translating here as "resurgence.• The word can also mean uprising, but also uplift and elevation. T. s. Eliot found it untranslatable or c·hose to treat it as such in "Burnt Norton," the first of the Four Quariets, published, l think_, in 19J5 1 an:d showing an amazing remote~ess or from_ tivity to the world and language of pc;>lit,ics. insensi- I am sure he neither meant harm nor intended a sinister joke.when he wrote the passage about E~heb~ng without motion, _ concentration without elimination ••• J · ,, and this at a time when the strongest connotation of Erhtl!mg • f was not· elation or elevation. but the revolution enacted by the Nazi Movements and when concentration camps had been instituted by that Movement -- the first of them in March 19:33 ·- precisely for the elimination ot undesirables. London Times had a very goo~ co~responde~t The in Germany and Mr. Eliot must surely have read that paper occasionally.) �-20- So the Decree ·of 21 March t93J was to protect the government "of national resurgence1" and what the word Erhebung in the title meant and the text of the decree spelt out was that this protection of the law was not only for the government but also for the "organizations supportiqg it." protection of government and party organ~zations It was the against •mal•. ice" -- and "malice" was construed to include factual statements that were false or badly distorted. This decree was very effective·in silencing criticism. The Nazis even tried to sile·nce foreign critic ism -- and to some extent succeeded. suasion even abroad. They had means of pressure and per- They had hostages at home -- for instance the half million German Jews. The one-day boycott of Jewish shops and businesses on 1 April 19J) was presented as an act of retalia'tion and warning against Jewish-insti.gated atrocity propaganda abroad. (Where sensationalism had, indeed, occa- sionally got the be.tter ot factual reporting.) On 24 March 193J there parliament and limiting its ·~· the Enabling Bill,· passed by r~ghta in favor of the executive. This was the "Law to alleviate the sufferings of the People and State." I am translating the title or the law as best I can -- though the word ".f!2!," here rendered as "sufferings," or perhaps I should say "plight?"• is another of those many- facetted and multi-level German words, with meanings ranging from "misery" to use of the word.) "em~rgency." (I won't here go into Wagne.r's This Behebung (literally• I lifting1 or al- leviation) Behebung der ttot· yon Volk UQd Staat demanded· �.-21- stro11g measures and the government's hand was to be strengthened against potential paralysis by parliament. There were still parties in that parliament, though the communists, after having done quite well in the elections of 5 March, were prevented from taking their'seats, These elections, now far from free.though they were, still only gave the Nazis 44~ of the But by mid-July all other parties were aboliahed and it vote, may have had symbolic signiticance that the "Law against the formation of new parties." the law instituting the one-party state, was promulgated on t4 July ,19J). On the same day there was a law on·plebiscites, which could now be coupled with elections, The one-party rule was further buttressed by a law, of 1 December 19)J,. "to safeguard the unit.Y party an4 State, o~ Meanwhile there were also certain administrative measures and reorganizations, l!ll!& -- a term.taken There was something called Gleichschal~rom mechanics and meaning synchroni- zation or co-ordination, or bringing into line. Gleichschal- . tung was applied to constitutional and administrative streamlining, as in the laws of March and April 1933, for the Gleichschaltung der Laender mit dem Reich, that is, the co-. ordination of the Laender, or States, with the Reich, or national ·government and administration. It was aimed at cent~al~ ization and the weakening or abolition of powers enjoyed by the states constituting Bismarck's Reich and the Weimar Republic. Perhaps I should add another word to our glossary1 Reich. It means realm or kingdom or empire. The Holy Roman �-22- Empire was, in German, Das Heilige Roemische Reich. It was finally and officially abolished by Napoleon, in 1806. When Bismarck united Germany in 18?1, he founded the second German Reich, or empire. The official name of the Weimar Repub- lic wa.s also Deutsches Reich, but the Nazis did not count that and adopted the name Third Reich to describe their own though not officially, not in international discourse. But Reich, as I said, could also mean "kingdoa," as in Reich Gottes "the kingdom of God" -- and it was this over- tone that Hitler played on when he ended a long speech at nis first big public appearance after his inauguration as Reich · Chancellor with a long sentence affirming his faith in the German people and the resurrection of the nation and "the new German Reich of greatness and honour and power and glory. and righteousne~s. Amen." 4 Yes, he saids "Amen." It wa~ an allusion to, and a secular usurpation ending of the Lord's prayer. or,· the Protestant Compare this tastelessness and blasphemy with the editing of a ·sentence in John Kennedy's inaugural address, which went through many drafts. draft had a sentence that rans "We celebrate today not a victory of party, but the sacrament of democracJ•" final text this becamea The fir,st In the i "We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom." 5 The blasphemy was edited out. Hitler, unlike Kennedy a lapsed Catholic, pro- bably thought references to nationai resurrection and invocations of power and glory (of the German Reich, not the Reich Gottes) would appeal to the Protesiant majority of the �-2Jcountry -- which was much more nationalist than the Catholics and whose support he needed. But to return to Gleichschaltung for a moment1 it was not only L1ender that were being co-ordinated with the Reich, but other organizations were also brought into line, and th~ . term was also used for the change of orientation or thinking, certainly of all expression of thinking (though this meaning was not in official use, only inofficiala it often cropped. up in -private comment .by critics of the regime). Not only were laws passed for the rigid control of all cultural acti~ vities and the press and radio, not only-was there a law a-, gainst "malice," but all language bacame subject to "regulation" -- explicit in the ministries and in instructions to editors, but conveyed quite clearly by implication to the general public too. This Sprachregelung was extremely ef- :fecti ve and of a thoroughness now almost unimaginable. Even George Orwell can hardly give one an idea ·or the pervasiveness of it or of the feel of a linguistic universe in which things could no longer be called by their proper names. This was why all :forms of non-verbal communication became so very important. Let me give you two examples to illustrate this. Let us take the word "murder." of the government. It was taboo for actions When,iin the bloody purge of the summer of 1934, the Nazis murdered Erich Klausener, the head of the Catholic Action, they announced it as suicide. Mr. Klein recently gave me the issue of the paper of the Diocese of B.erlin reporting Klausener•s death. 6 The front cover is oc- �-24cupied by his picture under the title of the paper and its emblem, a lamb with the inscription "Behold the Lamb of God," in Latin. On the next page there is the announcement of his unexpected death on JO June 1934 (and everyone knew the meaning of that date), the requiem mass for him in the ~resence of the Bishop and all the members of the chapter of the Cathedral of st. an Hedwig, address by the Bishop, anm the bur- ial of the ashes -- (ashes) --, with all liturgical observances, in consecrated ground. The page after that carries the Bishop's last salute to t·he deceased, and then there are five more pages of obituaries. Not a word about suicide. Not a word about murder, But the fact that the ashes -- the Nazis had evidently thought it wiser.to cremate the body -were given· Christian burial and that the funeral was a event in the Ca~holic gr~at diaspora of Berlin, gave the lie to the Nazi version of his death. But such publicity was not to be possible much longer. · Ten years later, after the .failure of the attempt of 20 July 1944 to kill Hitler and oust the Nazis, there were series of secret show trials of the conspirators. a contradiction in terms, but I can explain• This may be admission to the trials·and reports on them were completely controlled. The "show" aspect is harder to explain, but it was real enougha those trials were filmed and the film was !ntended to be shown after suitable editing. Very little of it survives after editing by Goebbels and the Allies, The most moving moment in what those two sets of censors and the vicissitudes �-25of war spared, comes in a sequence when one of the defendants, in order to ·explain why he took part in the conspiracy, re~ ferred to "the many murders" -- only·to be instantly interrupted by the presiding judge, yelling, with pretended incredulity (or perhaps .he could really not believe his ears)a, "Murders?" He then subjedted the defendant to screaming a- buse and asked him whether he was not breaking down under weight of his villainy. ~he The accused, as far as I could tell from the film, wanted .to.treat this as a rhetorical questions but when the judge insisted on an answer, yes or no, paused for.a moment and then, quietly~ "No." saids After which there was further loud invective· from the judge.7 dant was sentenced to death and hanged. to death· and hanged in those trials. The defen- Many were sentenced But ve.ry few were able to say $.nything. so clear and unsettling to the regime as this man with his explicit mention of murders and· his final .lie• So there was this careful regulation of language and there were laws circumscribing people's freedom ot action and of expression. All the laws I mentioned before were enacted in Hitler's first year of power. that came later. I shall just mention a few President Hindenburg finally died, having been very doddery .before, in early August 1934. On 1 August 19J4 there was a law on the office of Head of State and it united the offices of President and Chancellor. had them both. Hitler now On the next day a new oath was administered to the armed forces, sworn personally to the new Commanderin-Chief, "the Fuehrer of the German Reich and People, Adolf �-26Hitler." In March 1935 there was an armed forces law, intro- ducing conscription. The Treaty of Versailles had limited the size of the German army to 100,000 men and sti~ulated long periods of service in order to prevent the training of large numbers of short-term recruits. It was that small and highly professio.nal army that now served as nucleus of the new. In September of that same year, 1935, the so-called Nuernberg Laws were passed by the Reichstag which was meet-. ing not in Berlin but in the city where the annual party ral.lies were held. '£hese laws, one relating to citizenship and one to·::the protection of German bl.ood and honour (this was the wording of the title) deprived Jews of certain civil and social right.a, including the right to marry anyone but J.ews or to· have extramarital intercourse with gentiles. Jews (and other undesirables) had already been.eliminated from the civil service by·the law for the "restoration ·or the sional civil service" passed in ·April 1933. profes~ By the way1 in 1935 it was still possible for Jews to leave the country .. But there was the problem of where to go and how to find a livelihood. This may illustrate it1 the American immigration quota for Germany was not fully taken up until 19J8. After the pogrom of November t9J8, that German quota had a waiting list. Professional discrimination and economic disabili~ies had been increasing before, but i t:··,was only the excesses of . November 1938 -- staged after the fatal shooting of a German diplomat in Paris by a y-oung Polish Jew -- that made it clear �-2?"that worse might be in store. There was a policy of mounting discrimination, then of segregation, finally, during the war, of deportation to the East, and of extermination. was .!l.Q! promulgated in a law. state secret and carried out But that On the contrary, it was a administr~tivaly, th~ Most of . victims of that last phase were not German.:Jews, but Palisi\, Russian, and other Jews from all over Hitler's Europe, The expansion of the Reich began with the annexation of Austria in March 1938 and the law bearing the curious title "Law on the reunification of Austria with the Reich," Wha'f; . was being united was the country of Hitler's birth and the country he adopted and which adopted him with such catastrophic consequences for itself and for. the world. Hitler actually ·became a.German citizen less than a year before he became .. · German Chancellor, The dodge to get· him naturalized was his appointment by some of his sympathizers and purely on paper •.. of course, as a civil servant of the litt·le sta·te of Brunswick, in order to enable him to run in the Presidential election of March 1932, a few days later. The American consti- tut1on seems a' bit more careful in that respect. There were many Austrians and many Germans who wanted the Anschlus§, the joining of the two countries. peace· treaties after the world war forbade it. had wanted itr But the Many liberals but perhaps the conditions of 1938 were the most propitious. ~ot. Propitious or no, they brought about the Greater German Reich (as distinct from Bismarck's Lesser Germany that had excluded Austria) and a flanking threat to �-28- Czechoslovakia. That country was dismembered a few months after. All this happened in a state of peace, The state of war did not come about until September 1939 when Hitler, having made a pact with Stalin, marched into Poland. without a declaration of war,, but •returning (Polish) fire,• as the offi- cial German communique had it. Poland was subdued and par-,,, titioned between the Germans and the Russians. France fell the following summer, after neutral Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembo'l,lrg, ally Mussolini joined in. That was the stage at which Hitle~'s Hitler failed to invade Britain but instead invaded Russia in June 1941. Japan and America , entered the war in December of that year, over two years ter its b~ginning, It did not end in Europe, until the a~­ Amer~ icans and t:he Russians met in the middle of Germany in May 1945, and in Asia until two atom bombs had been dropped on, Japan, in August 1945. Did all this happen because .people had not taken the precaution of reading Hitler's book? Not solely1 though it might have helped with some of their decisions if they had done so. Hitler's strongest card was the Treaty of Ver~ailies. ,_ His initial strength and his support in the period of con• solidation.of power came from the German sense of national injury and the real grievances. So long as he was just seen as the man who was working, by hook or by crook, for the revision or abolition of that treaty, he had support for his �-29foreign policy far beyond the ranks of his own party. Peo- ple were willing to . .allow some of the more distasteful components of his domestic policy for the sake of the liberation of the country from the shackles of Versailles. The first move in that direction came during Hitler's first year in power, in October 19JJ, when he took Germany out of the League of Nations as a protest against continued discrimination against Germany in the disarmament negotiations. He got this step endorsed by a plebiscite combined with new elections (only one party now to choose from) and.the result was indeed more favourable than the 44% of the previous March, more than twice as good. Before the voting~ to show the people and the world that Hitler had the backing of the greatest sages in the land and of the academic establishment, there were declarations of support (entitled, .. "Bekenntnisse," or confessions of faith) from representatives of that establishment, including, for instance, the theologian Hirsch at Goettingen and the philosopher Heidegger at Freiburg, both Rectors of their universities. 8 The declara- tions were enthusiastic, bo•bastic, and.nauseating. The language in which they were couched was very German and v-irtually untranslatable. The "official" translations appended for foreign readers cannot have impressed the world with the efficiency of the German translation industry. I shall not try now to improve on them but content myself with saying that when I made Miss Brann read the German text to me while I checked the official translation, she lost her customary �-JOcomposure and delicacy forbids mention of the number of letters in the word she used to give utterance to her reaction. Actually I did not think the word either appropriate or adequate and shall refer to the matter as the Hirsch-Heidegger syndrome. By that I denote the abdication of political re- . sponsibility and the intoxication with high-sounding and meaningless words1 the use of language not in an attempt to get at the truth of a political matter, but to glorify the winds of change or the march of history or the peoplehood of a people or the leadership of such· a leader. When this is done by a Heidegger in somewhat substandard heideggerian German, it is a very, very bad thing. He soon relented, of courses he may even have repente~. As Ernst .Nolte, one of his students, later turned historian and a great .. authority on fascism, put it in an essay on the. types of behaviour among academic teachers in the Third Reioha "It was not long before Heidegger, with his turn T.o Hoelderlin, joined the widespread tend~.ncy to retreat from t; Socialist reality ••• " 9 .:r National Nolte, incidentally, dOe$ not think that Heidegger was so lamentably subject to the mental climate because of his philosophy. ~revailing . He does not consi- der the· possibility, which I regard as a probability, that Heidegger's lack of mental resistance may have been due to his relationship with language. have been his linguistic tin e~r It is my feeling that it must that failed to warn n,im of . . people who spoke Hitler's language. And the students? One m·ust not and one cannot general~ �ize -- but they were, on the whole, well ahead of the general development, in the vanguard. Nazi students took the lead and won the votes in the elections to student organizations long before Hitler seized power aad Professor Heidegger saids "Let not theses and ideas be the rules of your beingl The Fuehrer himself and he alone is the German reality and law, . today and in the future." 10 To some extent it 1.! true to say that "National Socialism came to power as the party of you~n.• 11 But it is not the whole truth. I shall try to go into that a little more next time. I am sorry to end on such a negative note today. the ~irsch-Heidegger But . syndrome was, unfortunately, significant, and fairly widespread, and Nazi student activism not only followed and accompanied. but preceded it. Youth was in the. · vanguard of'.-the Nazi movement and revolution. Also the average age of the representatives and leaders of that party_ was well below that of other parties, a fact.from which the Social Democrats, in particular,,suffered acutely• lacked dynamisms They the Nazis had it. Next Friday I shall try to show how six members of the, universtty of Munich. five students and one professor, thought and felt and acted in the midst·of that dynamism • • �-32II. ':.:!·:;;~ The Case of the White Rose The negative note I finished on last Friday concerned the German universities, whose student organizations were captured by Nazi activists long before Hitler and his party captured the chancellorship and command posts of the country and established a police state 1 or rather something even beyond a police state. There was also that rather appalling phenomenon I called the "Hirsch-Heidegger syndrome," an intoxication1 a passing intoxication, perhaps, certainly in the case of Heidegger~ but none the less real and productive .of real con$equences ~t the time. In Heidegger's case I suggested that the loss of sobriety may have been due to the patient's relationship with language, that is, not with h. is 1 philosophy,· but with his failure to test words used in the political context for their meaning . . ~nd implications. The appeals ,·by prominent representatives. of the academic ' , : estabiishment to the German electorate to vote for Hitler after his first significant step.in foreign affairs, leaving the League of Nations, . were, as I mentioned, printed and . . translated and also disseminated abroad, as "Bekenntnisse," confessions of faith, in the new Germany and its leader Adolf Hitler. Let me quote you the official preface to thls collection of "confessions" by leading academics. I shall quote it in the official translation, for that, after all, was what the wider world read, It is a bit roughly what it meant. t~nny, but I shall then say It was headed "An Appeal to the In- telligentsia of the World" and ran1 �-3~ All science is inextricably linked with the mental character of the nation whence it arises. The stipulation for the successful scientific work,i8• therefore, an unlimited scope of mental development and the cultural freedom of the nations. Only from t.he co-operation of the scientific culture of all nations -- such as is born from and peculiar to each individual nation -- there will spring the nation-uniting power of science. Unlimited mental development and cultural freedom of the nations can only thrive on the basis of equal rights, equal honour, equal political freedom, that is to say, in an atmosphere of genuine, universal peace, On the basis of this conviction German science appeals to the intelligentsia of the whole world to cede their understanding to the striving German nation -united by Adolf Hitler -- for freedom, honour, ~tistice and peace, to the same extent as they would for their own.12 There are troubles with the translation of this document, of course. It is not very English. For "science," for instance, read scholarship, or learning. For other words it is harder. to substitute English equivalents, for in some cases there-are none. ~ental The German original of what became the character of the nation" was something called "geistige Art des Volkes,tt and that bristles with difficulties and booby-traps. Not only because the word "~" had on the one hand its denotation of "people" (and there was and is no other word of !•rac~." for~), on the other hand it had connotations -· But also a once harmless word like ttArt " meaning "kind" (or perhaps even "character" as the official translation put it) had ceased being harmless and now had a racial overtone as well, a matter later made quite clear in racial legislation which used the term "artfremd,• or alien, to refer to alien blood • .But the gentle reader abroa¢l could not know this and was �probably no more than slightly bemused by the language served.u~ to him in this document and others. What did get across, though, was the plea for equal rights, egµal honour,. equal freedom -- that is• tion against Germany. the plea for an end to discrimina- (It was over the matter of persistent discrimination in the disarmament negotiations that Hitler had taken Germany out of the League of Nations.) for "equality" had a tremendous effect abroad, This plea It really did seem no more than fair, and perhaps even aiming at a more properly balanced international stabilit_y (the ngenuine, unitiii versal peace". of the translation). But also equal rights, honour, and freedom meant allowing Germany to conduct her domestic affairs her own way. That, too, co.uld be presented and seen as no more than the right that ·91 ther was or should be the right of !!lI country. The nation state ~· after all effective political unit. a_nd it still is -- the And it was only a country consti- tuted or re-constituted after the first world war, like Poland, that had speci~l clauses on the protection of minori- ties, notably Jews, written into its peace treaty. 13 But then Poland was a country with a large Jewish population and a bad history of· anti-Semitism. Germany's Jewish population was small and German anti-Semitism no worse than anybody else's indeed until the 1920s Germany attracted Jews from Poland and Russia, because it was such a civilised country. Let me here interpolate something that is in a curious, a mysterious way both central ~nd peripheral to the story of �Nazi Germany• the part the Jews played in that story. it should have been peripheral may strik~ you as odd. on the practical plane it really was1 That But the other nations did not go to war with Hitler or fight the Germans to save the Jews. And it is a mistake •. a serious mistake, to concentrate on the fate of the Jews in that drama to the exclusion of all else. It is an understandable m~stake, because regarded -as a people the Jews did have the heaviest losses proportionately to their number. The ·Poles were only decimated, that is, they lost about one-tenth of their population. . The . ··Russians, even by their own accounts, only lost 20 million people. But of the -roughly 11 ·mill.ion European Jews between ·four-and-a-half and 6 million -- about half -- were done to death by the Nazis. 14 The exact figure is hard to establish. And it is not the thing that matters most. - What ·does is th• Jewish experience of forsakenness -- and that can never be brought home to non-Jews by numbers. But neither must it be allowed to perpetuate Hitler's heresy. What was that heresy? true theologya That genealogy is the only that it is by the blood of a "race" that we are saved or damned. That whole sad ·chapter of ·history has been vulgarized in a number of ways. The saddest of them is the vulgarization that falls into Hitler's own trap, his own way of publicly presenting or misrepresenting what he was really afters the vulgarization that sees that conflict as one of Jews and gentiles, or •Aryans .. as the Nazis called them• or as one of �Jews and Christians. That last mistake even the Nazis did not make1. on the contrary, they.were so concerned to deChristianize the gentiles -- with Hitler, of course, as the saviour of the gentiles -- that one of the forms t·heir attack on 'Christianity took was to treat it as a Jewish thing and therefore to be rejected by the Germans. One can even take this further. Hitler, the great liber- ator, once said to one of his followers who later left him,. perhaps because of this dictum and all it stood fora "Con- science is ~-Jewish invention. 015 Hitler was out to remove· the .invention and.its inventors.· This makes it clear, or at least;·;;strongly suggests, that behind the "racial" struggle stood a more.fundamental onea war of religions a not of Christianity versus· Judaism, but ot a new heathenism against the Jewish ~ Christian faith and tradition. !h!!1 was the central significance of the Jews in that drama, as central as that of the.relationship of Jews and Christians1 and of Christians -- the nominal and the other kind -- to Christianity and to humanity, But now I must get down to the White Rose, the rose that bloomed· despite the dynamism of 'the destroyers to which r·referred last week. The Nazis undoubtedly were dynamic. "The White Rose" was the name chosen by a group of Munich students and a professor and friend of theirs when they launched a campaign of leaflets against the Nazis. called them "Leaves They or leaflets -- of ·the White Rose." �-37Its blooming was brief., . its p:r;ep~ration long. As for its after-effects -- who is :to ... say what they were or may be? The one woman among them, a girl of 21, her name was Sophie Scholl, had a dream the night before her execution a.nd told it to her cell-matea It was a sunny day, and i was ca;rrying a little child, dressed in a long white gown to be baptized• The path to the church led up a steep hill. But I was holding the child safely and surely in my arms. All of a sudden I ·found myself at the brink of ~ crevasse. I had just enough time to set the child down on the other side before I plunged into the abyss.16 · Willi Graf was the last of the six,to die. 17 says that he "was not a dynamic person." His sister That is probably what makes him the most impressive of the six to me. Let me give you her phrase in its context, and in her words• Willi was not a political type of person in the superficial sense. He had no natural inclination to revolutionary action. But when intellectual freedQm. of choice is not guaranteed, or development in accordance with his own inner law, or simply being human, when a regime on the contrary negates all this and enforces.forms of thinking and of life which keep violating human dignity most deeplya then a young person with sound in·stincts and a sense of watchfulness and faith will rebel, If he is moreover plucky·and prepared for sacrifice and is confirmed and encouraged by likeminded tttends, then he must ~ctively resist such enslavement and finally become an antagonist of the spirit of the times. Thus Willi was driven to the role of having to rebel quite against his own disposition. And then she quotes the sentence which stands as motto over the whole short memoir of her brother. ( First Epistle of James, verse 22. It is taken from the She found it in a diary her brother had kept in 1933 -- the first year of Hitler's power, when Willi was 15 -- where it stood s~ddenly, all by �-)8- itself, in the midst of boyish descriptions of group meetings and excuraions1 It was this sentence• "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only," She then goes on•· Ever since 19)4 the .conflict with National Social~ ism had been. a burning problem for Willi and his friend~. The question 'What should we J!2 against it?• became the cardinal point of their thinking, .Even the question of tyrannicide was discussed one night at their Easter meeting in i934,.,Tha friends were agreed that it was not enough to he indignant in small closed circles. ("They discuss." she quotes Willi on a visit by relatives, "the usual stuff, see the dangers, but think they.have to stick it out1" and mhe then continuesa) ·He wrestled with' these problems, just because he inclined far more to a contemplative life and habitually subordinated politics to metaphysical values. He was not a dy~ namic person1 on the contrary, he liked to keep hie reserve and loved order. But the constant occupation of his thoughts with "our situation" (as. he called the definition of his own and his friends' attitude to their time) finally put him on the path that seemed to him inevitable. The determination to let his im~er attitude become daed grew slowly but steadily. When the war starte 1 Willi said f~om the outset that it must and that it would be lost. This conviction separated.him from many.people, even from some of .the friends of his youth who believed they had to defend their fatherland at all costs. His inner loneliness increased more and more and especially when he was drafted in January 19 0 and started training in a medical unit in· Munich,18 4 After his final arrest, Graf himself was asked by the Gestapo•. the secret police, to give them an account of his life, - And this is what he told.them• - He was born in 1918, in the Rhineland, In 1922 his family moved to the Saar. His father became a manager in a firm of wine wholesalers. Willi h~d two sisters, · The family led a co•fortable, though frugal, life. Religion was the center of the children•s education and �they were taught to respect parents and superiors. Willj's father was a man of probity in his professional and private life and demanded the same of his children. He was severe when Willy showed signs.of dishonesty or disobedience. Willy's mother was affectionate and totally dedicated children and the welfare of her family. ~o her Willy was initiated into the observances apd life of the church at an early age. and .tne seasons were filled with the spirit of religion, (By that. I suppose. he meant that he experienced the seasons conaciously a~ parts of the church year.) At the age of 10 Will~ was sent to what the Germans call . a humanistisehes Gvmnasium• that is, a high school teaching Greek and Latin. His special inte·rests were German literature, religion,. and later Greek and music1 tory. also geography and his-· He liked to construct things in his free time, worked on light and bell systems. and tried to understand the mysteries of radio. He liked to go walking, especially in the summer vacations, came to know and love his country and became a lover of nature. During his last years at school, he had a chance to visit faraway places in Germany, Italy, and Yugoslavia, and he relished the experience of dista.nt lands· and of different people with other customs. The precious memories of these walking tours sustained him throughout the rest of the year. His mother opened the eyes of her children, when they were still quite young. to the social and economic sufferings ·of others. He was taught to.do without certain things so �-41>-. that a poorer child could benefit. He occasionally accompanied his mother on charitable missions, 19 The actual phrase Graf used in his draft autobiography "Thus I learnt the significance ot per- for the Gestapo wasa sonal charity." He was clearly trying to stress the contrast to the welfare state approach of the Nazis. The document -- his police autobiography -- is characterized throughout by !!!2 thingsa the judicious omission of certain incriminating features of his bi~graphy of which I $hall speak later1 and the equally judicious inclusion of statements intended to educate his enemies or at least to put on record the convictions that animated him. By "omissions .. I mean, for instance, the discretion observed on the precise nature and circumstances of those walking tours1 they were undertaken.-- at some risk by a very c··lose-knit illegal youth group.· By the attempt to educate -his enemies I. mean references t.o "p-ersonal charity," or religion -- even the appreciation of strange peoples and their ways. This brief life then continuesa Will~ said of himself that he always had a great need for attachment and had close frJiandships with playmates and schoolmates. This was the way that led him to the Catholic youth organizations to which.he belonged for many years and where his interest in religious and literary questions was further developed by likeminded companions. His religious and "ideological"· development was fairly unproblematic. He grew from the childlike notions ·formed at home and in his first religious instruction into �the big world of faith, in whoa• docttlnes he felt secure and protect•d• Even violent and long di•cusaions with boys who thought differently could only endanger this security temporarily, but.not in the long run.2~ L•t me here mention something not altogether irrelevant. Hia trienda' famous nicknam~ tor Will.~ Pi~niah long-dist~nce was 11 111.lrmi." Nurmi was a runner -- actually he ran what would now be called middle distances -- and a hero of the Olympic gamea of 1920, 1924 1 and 1928 especially Amsterdam, 1928, where he won ) medals, Clearly Willj's friends pi~k•d on this name because of .Willi's tenacity and his capacity for independence, even loneliaees. Mr, Crockett says that one ot the most interesting things about Nurmi wae that he would warm up for two. hour.a be tore a· run. He was a th&Qldng run- ner. Willt'• (police) aut.ob~ography continues• In November 1937 he went to the university of Bonn to study medicine. Since the au11laer of 1.935.he had ~ee~.determined to become a ~ .; doctor, because, he said, he thought that would give him th·e beet opportunity to help others. "This seemed to me," I am quoting him verbatim now, •the most beautiful task, giving, as it does, a chance to put into· practice the commandment which to me is the moat compelling of all, to love my neighbour. But I also worked on philosophical and literary ques- tions in order to con~inue my intellectual education and to make finner th• ~truc~ure of my religious viewa.• 21 (Actually hia sister says that if it had not been fqr �-42the Nazis, Willi would have gone into philosophy or theology, not into medicinea and that he only chose that sub- ject of study because it was relatively free from ideological interferences yet that does not make Willi's statement to the Gestapo a lies truth, it was merely less than the whole and it gave him a chance to remind his captors of a commandment they also learnt as children, only perhaps less · well. Even the mention of the year 1935 as the year in which he decided to study medicine in order to help his.fellow-men may have been deliberate• that was the year in which the Saar. territory,· deta.ched from Germany by the Tr(!a~y. of Ver- sailles, had the plebiscite envisaged by th•t treaty and voted ~o rejoin Germany. Willi and his friends had observed devel- opments in Germany with grow~ng but until 1935 they alarms had been rr·ee from the pressures to which the inhabitants' not to say the inmates, of the Reich were subjected.) He read a lot, Willi continued his official autobiography, especially modern German ·writers and philosophical works. He had time fo~ theologic~l· and active sports and the enjoyment of music. I shall quote the end verbatim tooa •ouring these years ' I experienced the smaller and larger conflicts between the church and offices of the state and party and could not understand them, because no state can have permanence -without religion ••• All order is from God, be it the family, the state, or the people,n22 This young man of 25 knew more clearly and firmly what �even the boy of 15 had known when Hitler began to destroy the old order to build his own . New Order. an order without God ... but with the. new idols of race· and people, and with the divine Fuehrer himself ·something between prophet and deity. Lutherans had greater trouble discerning and opposing ·the ungodly nature of this new civil authority. They did not discuss tyrannicide in.t9J4, and ~ery few of them even later. Incidentally• I did not mean to advocate tyrannicide in the discussion the other day. I merely ~eant that it was a thing that might be considered in the face of murderous fanaticism. However, let us have a few more facts of Will;O;. Graf 's life.- T~eY com~ from his surviving sister, from friends, from letters and diaries. He belonged to a Catholic youth organization until it was suppressed, and then he belonged to an illegal successor organiza,ion. He made not concessions to associates he co~sidered faithless. When he was 15, in 1.9331 ije struck off from his address book names of boys who had belonged to his group and who were now in the Hitler Youth. He refused to join the Hitler Youth, although he was threateded with non-admission to the school leaving exam, the precondition ot university entrance, unless he became a member. early arrest in January 19)8 An there were numbers of arrests for activities in.· illegal youth groups -- was terminated by an amnesty to CE!'l . .2) ebrate the annexat i on of Austria •. �The autobiography he wrote for the Gestapo after his later arrest was, of course, not only aimed at not incriminating himself, but also at not incriminating family and friends• Those ;vears of semi-illegality were a good training in careful formulation, ~itude. And his qircumspection was combined with for~ Although he was kept alive for months after t~e execution of the ·others, bec•use the investigating authorities. hoped to get more facts and names and leads from him, with all kinds of threats, he did not.oblige. cut off his head too~on He had also been a So in the end they 12 October 1943. careful reader and given to writing things down that impressed him. With friends he trusted he loved to discuss the most serious" questions passionately and thoroughly, and preferably by night. The le.gal and later l.llegal youth groups also gave their members much training in the endurance of physical hardship and developed their resourcefulness and stamina. In fact Willj became exactly what Hitler wanted his boys, the Hitler Youth, to bes and he had put it in a winged word that Nazi youth leaders were forever quoting• swift as greyhounds, hard as steel." said "Krupp steel.") "Tough as leather, (Well -- Hitler actually But there was one vital differencea that w111i Graf combined these qualities with a mind of his own and an unshakable faith. A greyhound actually is a dog, though a very noble kind of dog, ?ou can condition the reflexes of a dog. condition the reflexes of human beings too. You can But you should �_45... not try to make men into nothing but conditioned reflexes. And these are the chief lessons of the Nazi period to me1 how terribly manipulable people are, especially in our twentieth centurys pulability. - but also that there are· limits to this mani- And there is a ridera we must help to set the limits and defend them. Back to Willj Graf, though. in 19.37. He began his medical .studies In January 1940 he was called ··up and trained in a medical unit in ·Munich. his old friends. This transfer separated him from He served in Germany, on the Channel Coast,, in Belgium and france, Croatia and Serbia1 finally in Po- land and Russia. In April 1942 he.got study leave and returned to-Munich. Apart tram his m•dical studies, he worked in philosophy and theology· and took an increasing interest in liturgical ques,. tions and in psychology. fencing. When there ·was time, he did some He joined the Bach Choir and went to concerts whenever he could. It was then, looking for·new friends, that he got to know a brother and sister, Hans.and Sophie Scholl, and their friends Christoph Probst and Alexander Sch~orell. With them -- the .men were all medical students on leave from the army and Sophie a student of biology and philosophy and·musical psychology. They were all agreed in their opposition to the Nazis and shared many interests, chiefly in writing that mattered .and -- despite their different denominations, they were. united by shared Christian convictions. Jointly they came to �the conclusion that they ought to engage in active propaganda against the Nazis and that this should now take. the form of 24 leaflets. This may be the moment to describe the very different route by which Hans Scholl reached that point·. had a ringleader, it was Hans Scholl. scribed as a "dynamic" .!!! ma what is delllf! per$on. Born in 1918, the same year as son of .a small town mayor. ~igger town, Ulm. If the group Will~ Graf, he was the But later the family moved to a They had three daughters and two sons, of whom Hans was the elder. They were Protestants, the mother probably more pious than the father. I am not sure what their politics were, only that the father was .opposed to the Nazis from the outset. also spent :time in jail for this opposition. what form this opposition took. Hitler •tthe scourge of God." Later he I do not know I only know that he called That may have been what did it. But it was long before, at the very beginning, that Hans Scholl, finding his father's disapproval of this great new llbvement reactionary, decided to join the Hitler Youth, and his brother and sisters followed him. 2 5 ·Ten ye~rs after Hitler nad come .to power, Dietrich Bon- hoeffer, a Protestant theologian opposed to the Nazis -- he later died on the gallows -- wrote of the great masquerade of evil. He said1 "For evil to appear disguised as light, be- neficence, historical necessity; and social justice, is sinp~y bewildering to anyone bro\Jght up in the world of our �traditional ethical conc.epts1 but for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it precisely confirms the radical malice of evi1.• 26 . It may seem strange now. effective, And the youn~er But the masquerade I ~ very Schells were swept away by·the idea of a real people's community, the social justice and equality promised by Hitler, and they joined the march of history. In doing that, Hans Scholl was not unlike many of' ·other young Germans opposing their hidebound parents. It was not the Bible that showed Ha.:i~ Sc.holl the error of his way. To that he only came much later. What first put him off was the fact that the fellowship of the Hitler Youth had an element of regimentation -- something of the Gleichschaltung I mentioned last time. His surviving elder sister mentions an incident that gave !l!£ momentarily -- to thinks but the.moment passed. She writes1 We were taken seriously -- taken seriously in a quite remarkable way -- and.that.aroused our enthusiasm, We felt we belonged to a large, wellorganised body that honoured and embraced everyone. from the ten year old to the grown mano We sensed that there was a· role for us in the historic process, in a movement that was transforming the masses into a Volk. We believed that.whatever bored us or gave us a feeling o~ distaste, would disappear of its~lf. Once a fifteen year old girl, after we had. gone to lie down under the wide, starry sky at the end of a long cycling tour, said in our tent, quite suddenly and out. of the blue, "Everything would be fine. but this thing about the Jews I just can't swallow." The troop leader assured us that Hitler knew what he was doing and for the sake of the greater good we would have to accept certain difficult and incomprehensible things. But the girl was not satisfied with this answer, �-48- Others took her side, and suddenly the attitudes in our varying home backgrounds were reflected in the conversation. I spent a restless night an that tent, but in the end w.e:.··were just too tired, and the next day was inexpressively splendid and filled with new experiences~ The conversation of the night before was for the moment forgotten. In our group there developed a sense of belonging that car~ied us safe~ ly through the difficulties and loneliness of adolescence, or at least ·gave us that illusion. The maddening.thing about Inge Scholl's book, if I may say so, is that she hardly ever gives a ~ fQr anything. But this sounds like an early incident to me, earlier than the·Nuernberg Laws ~ven -- let alone the pogrom of 19J8 or the deportations that started in the war. It probably took place about the time when nothing much was being done yet about the Jews,- apart from verbal an.d pictorial vilification and the removal from the civil service. But it is another.matter she mentions as an early cause of her brother's discontent, He liked to sing.and ne sang to his.troop, accompanying himself on the guitar. he sing? What did The songs of the Hitler Youth -- and I have studied their official song book (edition· of 1_941) and was amazed to find many good songs in it. But Hans also sang foreign songs -- Norwegian or Russian, or something like that. leaders forbade it. He disregarded the prohibition. threaten·ed punishment. His They He got depressed, But there was a great experience in store for him. He was to be the flag bearer for his troop at the big a_nnual Party Rally in Nuernberg. back disillusioned. He went with high hopes.J. and came The full implications of the regimentation -- not only of the Hitler Youth, but of the whole show, all �- 49 - or Get'man life as the Party clearly intended to fol'lll it in 1 ts own image -- ·al.1 this had now come home to him •. And there was the odd book his leaders would not let him read, because the author was a Jew, or a pacifist. But the final break came after a promotion: had the rank or Fll).nlei~tflhrer 150 or so boys.} for itself and Hans now (which meant being in charge or His troop had designed and made a banner sh~wed up with it at a parade before some higher-ups of the ff1tler Youth. A boy of twelve carried it. A superior Hitler Youth leader demanded its surrender. There The boy stood firm. were to be no private flags or emblems. He stood a bit less tinn when the surrender order was given for the third time.. Hans intervened. slapped the Hitler Youth superior. care·er in th~ Ri tler Youth. Be stepped forward_ and - That was the end of his . His subsequent membeieship in an illegal youth group ended in arrest and some weeks in But he too, like Willi G~ar, jail~ benefited from the post-AnschlU§.! amnesty. Gttadually all the young Scholls heard things that happened to people they knew. or disturbing events They now asked thei rather about the meaning or some of this and it seems that old Scholl did call things by their proper names and even disabused his offspring of the notion -- very widespread in all those dreadful twelve years -- that whatever horrible things might be happening, they were the doing of wild or mean or sadistic subordinates or loeal potentates or tough men -- and that the Ffth re r did not know about them. �-soFather Scholl explained to his children that this really was unlikely, Hitler knew. Fatner Scholl also tried to exp!ain how such a man could come to power. found it any easier than·I do.) (I don ··t suppose he Finally it seems that he told his children that he wanted them to be free and upstanding, whatever the difficulties, That, at last, bridged the generation gap whiqh -- like many another gap -- Hitler had exploited so skillfully. I~ al:so Rilke was not sent Hans back· to the sources. the fowida.tions. m~oh poet, Hoelde.rlin 1 Plato and Socrates, and Pascals help, neither was Stefan George. or another nor was Nietzsche. th~ Hans finally found early Christian authors, Augustine, and the Bible, whose words, as his sister says, now acquired for him a new and surprising significance, an overwhelm~ng relevance and immediacy, and an undreamt of splendour • . He was a student of medicine now. And the war came. After a while he was drafted for a medical unit and served in the French campaign~ Then he was sent to Munich as a soldier-student, a member of a military student unit. It was a strange ·1ife, commuting between barracks and the university. and the clinic. And all this in a steadily worsenlng political climate, with oppression growing harsher every day and-more and more becoming known -- piecemeal and not always reliably about the crimes of the regime. It was mimeographed copies of a ·sermon of the Bishop of Muenster against e·uthanasia, the secret killing or incura~le~ �which,, h.owever, cquld not be ·kept altogether secret, siaee ' I • ~ ' •' •: _ ~ ': 'L • •• it ~~s C:l~.r:r;,ie,d on ipside Germany -- it was Bishop Galen• s pq'Q+~9 ~~~P\90 ~bo~t this crime, his denunciation of it as not- ori,+y ilQlllsnral but also illegal, a sermon· preached in a re·I. 1i ., ': ·~::· • mote part of q,rmany, but disseminated throughout Germany in mimeographed copiell -~ secretly, of course -- that made Hans Soholl.thihk of leaflets as a possibility. He was relieved that someone, at last, had spoken, ope.nly. And, it seemed, such open speech cobld be spread. He was not alone. In partic'ul~r, he had a fatherly friend and mentor, Carl Muth, the former editor of a Catholic monthly, Hoch.}.and, now suppressed -"'." whom he had met in an almo•t accidental way and whom he thenceforth saw almost daily, learning all the while, and growing There were others too. ~learer and stronger. The underground intellectuals of Munich -- middle-aged or older men most of them, whom the Nazis had eliminated from public life -- were an impressive bunch. They included such pe.ople. as Theodor Haecker, trans- lator and exponent of Newman and Kierkegaard. 27 •.•' Arid there w.ere friends among the· students, especially ... m9ng th~ military-medical students• The closest among them was -was-·Alexander Schmorell, son of a Russian mother whom · ~~'los~ ••~ an infant and who was brought up by a Russian nurse after the family's flight to Germany, where his father married again and became great an~ friends. a well-known physician. Alex had a romantic love tor Russia, which he shared with his Then there was Christoph Probst, the only one of �them to be married, a very young father of two children, with a third on the way. And finally there was Willi Graf. Sophie Scholl came to Munich to study biology and philosophy in the spring of t942, when she had just turned 21, She was three years younge:ti than her brother Hans. She had had to do her labor yg war service before being allowed to become a student. Kurt Huber. Her philosophy professor was a man called He was a somewhat strange man, but, as far as the Scholle and their friends were concerned, the best man in. the university. his Theodicy. university.too. They all went to his lectures on Leibniz and And they got to know him better outside the And he introduced them to other people. They met for readings and discussions. In· the early summer of t 942 the. first leaflets turned up. Hans Scholl:·. had started them, and he had been so discreet that even his sister at first did not know he was connected with them until she saw a marked passage in a book he had. It was a passage in Schiller's es.say on the legislation of Lycurgus and Solon and was clearly the source of the first l.eaflet. This had had long quotations from the essaya Considered in.the light of what he wished to accomplish, the legislation of Lycurgus is a masterpiece of ·political science and human psychology. He wanted to establish a powerful, self-sustaining, indestructible state. Political strength and durability were his aim, and this aim he accomplished insofar as circumstances permitted. The admiration aroused by a superficial glance at· his achieveme.nt must give way to strong condemnation when his aims are compared with those of humanity. Everything may be sacrificed to the best interests of the state ex·. oept the end ·which the state· itself is designed to serve. The state is not.an end in itself. It is �important only as a means to the realization of an end which is no other than the development of all the faculties of man and cultural progress. If a constitution hinders this development, if it hinders intellectual progress, it is harmful. and worthless, no matter how ingeniously it is conceived and how perfectly it may function in its own way. Its durability is to be regretted rather than admired. It is only a prolongation of evil. The longer such a state exists, the more detrimental it becomes ••• Political service was achieved and the ability to perform it was developed by sacrificing all moral sensibilities. Sparta knew nothing of conjugal love, maternal affection, filial piety, friendship. ·It recognized only citizens and civil virtues ••• A state law required the inhuman treatment of slaves. In these hapless victims mankind itself was insulted and maltreated. In the Spartan code the dangerous principle was laid down that men were to be considered as a means, not as an end, thus · abolishing by law the foundations of natural rights and morality. All morality was sacrificed to achieve an end which can be valuable only as a means to the establishment of this morality ••• How much more beautiful is the spectacle of the rough warrior, Caius Marius, in his camp before Rome who sacrifices vengeance and victory because he cannot bear the sight of a mother's tears ••• The republic of Lycurgus could endure only if the mental development of the people was arrested, and thus it could maintain its existence only if it failed to fulfill the highest and only true purpose of political government. This firsi5 leat.fl(tt b.ad · lMqun w;t:bb the wends t Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be "governed" without opposition by an irresponsible clique subject to base inatincts. It is surely a fact that to-day every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of the shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes -- crimes that infinitely exceed all measure -- reach the light of day? If the German people are already so corrupted and decayed in thair iniost being that they do not raise a hand and,frivolously trusting. in a questionable law of history,yield up �·~ -- .. '1l"'f."' ---------------- - #. -~· '' ' -54man•s highest possession, that which raises man above alllother creatures, if they surrender free will, the freedom of man to seize and turn the wheel of history in accordance with rational decisions1 if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gave so far along the road toward becoming a spiritless and cowardly mass - - then, then 8 indeed they deserve their downfall ••• 2 To anticipate, let me say that there were six leaflets in all, in thousands of copies. mously and secretly. They were distributed anony~ Those, many of them, that were sent through the mails, were mostly posted in the cities to which they were sent, in order to avoid any hint to the police that Munich was the headquarters of this activity. Risky train journeys were undertaken by several members of the group to take leaflets to cities like Stuttgart, Augsburg, Vienna, Salzburg. Willy Graf even took a duplicating machine to a friend in the West and recruited friends and sympathizers and collaborators where he could. Recipients were assured that their names had simply been taken from telephone directories to free them of the fear that they might be on some list and thus exposed to punishment. The leaflets usually had quotations towards the end of their text, as this first one used Schiller on the lawgivers. The second leaflet begana It is impossible to engage in intellectual discussion with National Socialism because there is nothing intellectual about it. It is false to speak of a National Socialist philosophy (Weltanschauung) for if there were such a thing, one world have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to fight it. In reality, however, we have a totally different picturea even in its first beginnings this movement depended on the deception of one's fellowman, even then it was �-55rotten to the core and could save itself only by constant lies, After all, Hitler states in an early edition of "his" boo)c.{a book written in the worst German I have ever read, and yet it has been el.evated to the rank of a Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers)• 'It is unbelievable to what extent one must deceive a people in order to rule it.• If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not too noticeable, .it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept at bay, As it grew larger, however, and finally attained power ••• the tumor broke open, as it were ••• The ma.jori ty of former opponents went into hiding, the German intelligentsia fled to a dark cellar, there, like night-shades away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death~ Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to enlighten each other, never to forget and never to rest until even the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle· against this system. When thus a wave of rebellion goes through the land, when 'it is in the air,• when many join the cause, then in a last mighty effort this system can be shaken off. After all an end in terror is preferable to an endless terror. The leaflet went on to speak of the murder of Jews ·-,. J00,000 in Poland -- and of Poles, and of the need for more than compassion. Doing noth.ing constituted complicity. they tolerated these things, Germans were guilty. Now that they had recognised the Na,zis in ·their true colours, had the duty to destroy them. If G~rmans This leaflet ended with quo- tat ions from Lao-Tse.29 The third discussed forms of government and utopias the highest of them, it said, being the City of God. present state was a dictatorship of evil. -- The Something had to be done about it and cowardice must not hide behind·a cloak of prudence. Only passive resistance could be offered, but that must be offered wherever possible. Military victory over Bolshevism must not be the prime concern of Germans, but �-56on the contrary the defeat of the Nazis. There were sugges- tions for various forms of sabotage, though no blueprint for general action could be given and everyone should use what opportunities offered in whatever way seemed best. This leaf- let concluded with a quotation from Aristotle's Politics, a passage on tyranny.JO The fourth leaflet had an appeal to Christians to attack evil where it was strongest. It was strongest in the power of Hitler • . It had a quotation from Ecclesiastes and one from the German poet Novalis on Christianity as the foundation of peace. It also had a postscript, assuring the reader that The White Rose was not in the pay of any foreign power, addingi "Though we know that National Soci~list pow- er must be broken by military means, we are trying to achieve a renewal from ~ithin."Jt Then there was a long hiatus1 for the men were sent to Russia during the long vacations between semesters~ they saw in the East confirmed them in their resolve. saw Jews in labor gangs. prevailing in Poland. What Hans All saw the miserable conditions All fell in love with the Russians. When they returned to Munich in November, they resumed their secret work with redoubled energy and it became quite feverish. There were two more leaflets, the last a special appeal to students and it began with the· shock the staggering German defeat at Stalingrad. the "intellectual w~rkers," prod~ced by The students, should not allow themselves to become the tools .of the regime, but put an end to it. A re- �-57cent incident at Munich university had shown that the students could stand up to the Party. stud.ents. The nation was looking to the It ended "Our people are rising up against the National Socialist enslavement of Europe in a fervent new breal(through of freedom and honor,"3 2 spec~acular The incident referred to had in fact been and encouragings but it had also been unique. The Nazis saw to it that it remained unique. At the 470th anniversary celebrations of the university. the Bavarian Gauleiter had addressed a crowd students, many of them in uniform, on the of abQut JOOO mea~ing q:f the e- vent and of the place of students in the German struggle. As for women students, he had no objec~ion to their occupying places at the university,· but he did not see. why th.ey should not present the Fuehrer.with children, for for every year at the universitya instanc~ a son if they were not attrac- tive enough to get a man by their own efforts, he'd be glad to send one of his adjutants to,.·each one of them and they could be assured of an enjoyable experience. At this there was unrest in the auditorium. Women stu- dents in the gallery stood up, prepared to'.leave. stopped. They were The other students, especially those in qniform on the ground floor booed so much that the Gauleiter had to interrupt his speech. Later he did speak on, but broken and he kept being interrupted. th~ spell was He was furious and gave the order for the women students to be held in custody. The leader of the Nazi studen~ organization demanded a volun- �-58tary identification of the women protesters upstairs. 24 identified themselves and were arrested at once. The SS pushed the other students out of the auditorium. When they emerged from the building they found all the rest of the men students standing outside, like a wall, and giving them an ovation. they They had stood there for over an ~roke stude~t hou~. In groups through the cordon, got inside, seized the Nazi leader, beat him up and held him as hostage until the women were set free. At that moment the police arrived. The students also turned on the police and fought their way through into the city. But some of them were atmosphere, however, was electric. The arre~ted. Students of the most di- vers,e disciplines suddenly found themselves acting together. And suddenly all were friends1 and the population qf Munich was on their" side. The Gauleiter called another meeting a couple of weeks la.ter and threatened to close the university if peace and order were not restored. The men·would be seQt to.the front, the women into the factories. his earlier speech. set free. But he also, apologized for Those who had been arrested had been Clearly the students had won, this round. But it was to be the only round. It may even have led to the end of the White Rqse. The Scholls and their friends were, of course·, immensely. heartened by this experience of spontaneous solidarity against a foulmouthed party functionary. But they may have overesti- mated the permanent potential that could be mobilized against �-59the Party. In any case they. now became bolder. things on the walls of Munich in the night• ler," and "Freedom." this. They wrote "Down with Hit- They managed not to get caught doing They were armed to shoot their way out if necessary.33 But on 18 February 1943 Hans and Sophie took a suitcase full of eopies of the last leaflet to the university, spread them about in corridors and on the stairs while lectures were in progress and doors closed, and finally threw the rest down the central lightsh~ft from an upper floor. The janitor saw them and took instant action to apprehend them. They were arrested and taken away. That was on a Thursday. Their trial, together with Christoph Probst, was on the following Monday. It was conai.. ducted by the People's Court and they were sentenced to death and beheaded the same day.34 week between th~ir There was less than a being caught and being dead. Graf, Schmorell and Huber were also arrested and tried, together with eleven other defendants, in mid-April• sentences ranged from acquittal to death. The Three women stu- dents, for instance, got prison sentences for failing to report treasonable activities,35 Graf, Huber, and Schmorell were sentenced to death, Huber having already been expelled from the Faculty of the university by his colleagues. doctorate,36 He had also been deprived of his ' . In the case of.the first three, incidentally, the Schells and Probst, there had been an assembly of the student body, called by the Nazi student organization, in the �-60evening of the day on which the three were executed, to denounce them and to declare the loyalty of the student body to the Fuehrer and the National Socialist Movement·. dance, again, at least according to the report of the Atten:.. Dis~ trict Student Leader, was about 3000,37 The parents of Graf and Schmorell asked for clemency. Hitler personally turned down the request,38 Huber's pub- lisher asked for a stay of execution, to enable his· author to finish his book on Leibniz, arguing that it would redound to the greater glory of German culture. He was allowed to work on it in his; -pr1son cell until July, b_ut he did not finish his book before they took him to the guillotine,39 There were about twenty of them in-use in Germany at that time, Willi Oraf died last, in October of that year, 1.94J. Before asking for your ·permission to add a postlude and a:.·postscript to our discussion on rhetoric in politics and the di.fference between manipulation and persuasion, I should like· to sum up in two sentences what the story of these students seems to me to shows In order to recognize manipula- tion and to think not only analytically but also constructively about politics, they needed Plato and Aristotle _and suchlike authors. To find the courage and strength needed to stand up to the power of the manipulators, they ~eeded faith, But here is a postlude, on a matter closely connected with the subject of rhetoric and persuasion. �-61~he five students of the White Rose all sang in the Munich Bach Choir, until the end. out .!h!!. they sang. was. One day I hope to be able to find But I can imagine what kind of thing it It was not all Bach but it was all serious music, I am sure, music whose words mattered. What you let out of your mouth always matters, of course. At a time when language has become debased, corrupted, mean-. ingless or prohibited, what you sing matters even more. It would be interesting to know what the Nazis allowed to be sung (and perhaps I shall have a chance to find out some time). I know that Haendel was censored -- some of Haendel. Willi Graf went to two performances of the Messiah in December 1942, his last advent season. After the first occasion he wrote in his diary that it was an indescribable experience. What pressed him ..were the faith and piety behind the work. • im~ He went again, though the second time there was standing room only. Again he was deeply impressed, especially by the ari~ "I know that my Redeemer liveth.". He mentioned it again in a letter to his sister -- they had heard it together -- his \_, last letter, dictated to the prison chaplain before his execution. 40 But Bach is much more powerful with his words than Haendel and I just w.onder what the Nazis did with cantatas and J. motets, or, for that matter, with the Magnificat -- - ... ~usicr . that, for instance, mentions God's son or servant Israel. Could they allow it to be sung when they had decided to force '-I; every male Jew to have the middle name "Israel" on his pap(:!rs? 1"'. �( \ -62This was for purposes of identification and segregation, like the later edict forcing all Jews to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes. Could the Na~is allow choirs to sing "Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints. h~m1 Let Israel rejoice in him that made let the children of Zion be joyful in their King ••• ?" That is Psalm 149, verse 1 and 2, which Bach set in his motet "Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied.• Or could they permit, even in Latinif: the singing of Luke 1, v. 54-55• 11 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy1 as he spoke to our fathers·, to Abraham and to his seed forever," seeing how .Bach hammers home the "Abraham" in his Magnificat .. and spreads the seed throughout the ages? Could the Nazis allow such words to be sung, especially when they were set in such persuasive and memorable ways? Or did they insist that only songs to the !l!U! lord or idol should be sung and those that did not too explicitly conflict with the new idolatry? I do not know all the relevant deliberations of the Ministry or Propagan.da or the Ministry of Education or the Reich Chamber of Music. that kind of thing. They were the.controlling bodies for But I know, for instance, that at one of his staff conferences in April 1942, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, ·the Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, explained that he prohibited a broadcast of the Mo~art Reguie~ the pre- vious December because, and I quote, "its very sombre and . ,. _·; ' . world-negating text would have had a bad effect on moraleln .. ... :. • • :'"~· • ·-·1-':·. the exceptionally serious situation then preva1l1ng1" adding" �-6Jthat this was, however, an exceptional case. One could not, hesa1d, "destroy or regard as non-existent the earlier cultural achievements of a people just because· the content of these cultural achievements .. ·ran "counter to a new ideology• and he explained "that a distinction must be made between a. historical approach and enjoyment of the cultural achievements or earlier periods on the one side and the development of one's own ideology on the other.• 41 The bodies charged with ideological control must have weighed the risk of dangerous Christian indoctrination on the one side against the risk, on the other side, not. only of jettisoning the German cultural heritage, but also of making the anti-Christian character of the. regime too clear. With the churches under pressure and severely circumscribed in 'what.they were permitted to do and say, and persecuted, and prosecuted, when they exceeded those limits, concert halls and choral societies were obvious places where the old creed might still be fostered surreptitiously. Lest you· think t.hat I overestimate this factor, .let me give you three examples, two on the Christian side, one on the Nazi side. A brother of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not a par- ticularly churchy man, was in a Berlin jail under sentence of death. When the only surviving brother who was still at li- berty {Dietrich, too, was in prison) vis'ited his br.other Klaus and said how nice it was that Klaus could hear, in his mind·' s ear, the music of the Matthew Passion when he read the score he had in his pri.son cell, Klaus said a "But the words �-64also! The words!"42 Willi Graf recorded in his diary on ? December 1942 (the day, incidentally, after that first Messiah) that he spent the first part of the evening singing in the Bach Choir. thought it went quite well and addeda He "The words of the Christmas songs and of the Schuetz motet have their special meaning. It is good to be able to do such things."4J Another thing he did right up to the end was to prepare and perform church litargies with his friends.44 Despite the soldiering and the medical stud.ies !!ll! the secret political work, he found time and clearly felt a need for it. The Nazis, on the other hand, made children, and grownups, sing songs .for their Movement and for Germany, and dinned into all the doctrine that there was arid would be no Germany but-.Hitler's Gerll8.ny. And the boys who had innumerable times sung the words -Germany, here we are1 we consecrate our death to thee as our smallest deeds when death comes to our ranks, we shall be the great .seed." were, of course, singing something plagiarized from Tertullian, a perversion of Tertullian, who said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians. These phild martyrs were sacrificed, and sacrificed themselves, !or the fatherland up to the last minutes of the war, manning the anti-aircraft guns and fighting the Russians at the approaches and in the streets of Berlin -- 15 and 16 year olds formed into local battalions. As a surviving female Hitler Youth leader put ita make true the vows of their songs."45 "They wanted to �-65However relaxed Goebbels may have sounded in that Propaganda .Miniatry conference in t942, the internal intelligence network .of the SS never relaxed its vigilance where the church.es were conce·rned and kept complai,ning about "church music as a means of denominational propaganda.• "Denomina- tional" meant roughly what in America is sometimes called Sectarian," The word was used instead of "Christian," which was what was reall;t: meant. The fiction, which was very. strenuously maintained, was that the Nazi Party and Movement -- which in its official Party Program, promulgated in 1922 and.never carried out, had subscribed to something nebuloua called 11 Positive Christianity"46 (a matter I shall be glad to enlarge upon if asked) -- the fiction was that the Nas1• wanted abo"-9. all to untte all Germans and therefore had to fight the divisive activities of the Protestant and Catholic 11 denominationa." But in thls Security Service report from which I have quoted, as in others, -it is crystal clear that what they were in tact fighting was the Christian faith itself, and any attempt to foster it, This report, in October 1940, complained of the systematic expansion of performances of church music all over the Reich, both in churches and in concert halls. These events, the report said, were of high quality and very popular, made most effective propaganda for the churches, and were apt to call forth' ovations from the audiences that amounted to demonstrations.4? In April 194J, a long report on church influence on the young had a special section on the dastardly use the churches �-66were making of singing as a vehicle of Christian education. 48 In January 1944, another long report on liturgical reform and the extra-mural promotion of church music, mentioned the fact that in Alsace, for instance, the Protestant church was sys- ' tematically replacing sentimental hymns of the 19th century by musically more valuable chorales of the mation. time of the Refo·r- Even brass music was being revived in the reform movement.49 All this caused. great and, I think, ·justified c·oncern to the watchdogs of the regime. did not even realit~ What they did not say, perhaps (like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear)50 was that brass in church music did not just add to the fun (or, as we might say here, enjoyment, as of cheese cake with. cherries) but has a rousing and invigorating effects they may not have known that the chorales of the time of the Reformation were not just musically superior to the soppy stuff of the Romantic era, but textually too. The Germans had begun before ·any other people to sing hymns in their own language. translated the Bible, creatin~ When Luther came, he not only something .that is worthy to stand beside the English Authorized Version (the American "King James Bible") but also, being very musi.cal, made the chorale into a most important and powerful vehicle of the new persuasion, making congregations sing. He put a lo~ lic Latin hymns into German and wrote more himself. of CathoSince !h!D, the Protestants in Germany have always had the better hymns than the Catholics -- until both declined in the cen- �-67tury of Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner. When the crucial contlict W:ith the neo-pagan movement approached and during the crisis itself, most musical Christians, but especially the Protestants, realized they needed more to sustain them than the spineless songs of the t9th century, the needed words and music that really meant something. And whereas the Catholics were largely preserved from apostasy by the clarity of their doctrine and the prescribed observances of their faith, Protestants may be said, I think, to have been pulled out of their.initial confusion.not only by some of the more clearheaded and courageous parsons.and. laymen and laywomen, but also by a return to the truths proclaimed in Bible and Hymnal. And perhaps even wordless music, provided it is pure, has some such power.51 Kurt Huber, this professor of philosophy, also taught -and wrote on -- music, both the physiology and psychology of hearing and music, and, his special love, .!2.!!! music, the real rooted stuff - ... that was in fact being rooted out, trampled underfoot, by "the march of history," by this mass movement that called itself "voelkisch." Though physically. somewhat handicapped -- he had. had infantile paralysis --· he · went to great lengths to hear and preserve what still existed · of such music. A companion he once took on a musical moun- tain trip to a rather inaccessible part of the Bavarian Alps, to hear the yodelling.of the dairymaids there, reports that �-68•he·n they left and had already gone a certain distance, these wpmen sent a kind of farewell yodel after them. Huber stopped in his tracks, asked his companion for writing material, and jotted down the yodel in figured bass notation, so, tears· of emotion streamed down his face,52 know.what that emotion was. As he did I th,ink I It was the emotion that. made Victor Zuckerkandl speak· of "the miracle of the octave• and on which, if I understand him aright, st. Thomas (Aquinas) bases one of his proofs of God, the one from·"governance.• That may be an odd one to think of when the world was -- and still is so visibly out 9f joint. All the more moving, I would say, to hear or see an ex·ample, a representation, or · symbol of that governance. harmony, To hear the pre-established �-------------.. -69Notes t, See, for instance, Peter Loewenberg, "The psychohistoric.al origins of the Nazi youth cohort," The American Historical Review, volume 76, No. 5 (December 19?t), PP• t4S?-1502, 2. The Treat of Peace Between the Allied and Associated Powers and German with amendments and Other Treat En a ements si ned at Versailles June 2 Part VIII was on Reparation. Its Section I General Provisions) started with Article 231 which read1 "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have .been subjecte4 as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies ... J. T.S, Eliot, Four Quartets (London 1944), P• 9~ 4. Max Domarus, ed., Hitler. 5. Theodore 6. Katholisches Kirchenblatt fur das Bistum Berlin, XXX, No. 28 (15 July 1934). Reden und Proklamationen 1 2t enossen.,. 1 4 • Kommentiert von einem deutschen Ze Munich 19 5 , p. 20 • c. So~ensen, Kennedy (New York 1966), P• 271. A copy of the film, what remains of it, can be seen and heard at the National Archives in Washington. A parti•l transcript of the trial also. survived. For one relevant fragment see Volksgerichtshofs-Prozesse zum 20,. Juli 1944 1 . Transkri~te von Tonbandfunden. Herausgegeben vom Lautarchiv des Deutschen Rundfunks (April 1961), p. 1221 for another see Gert Buchheit, Richter in roter Robe, Preisler, Prlsident des Volksgerichtshofes (Munich 1968), P• 24?. a. _ Bekenntnis der Professoren an den deutschen Universitaten und Hochschulen zu Adolf Hitler und dem.nationalsozialistischen Staat, tJberreicht vom Nationalsozialistischen Lehrerbund Deutschland / Sachsen (Dresden, n.d.), PP• 1Jt4 and J6-37 (Heidegger) and 15-17 and 38-40 (Hirsch). Ernst Nolte, "Zur Typologie des Verhal tens der H.ocnschullehrer im Dritten Reich," Aus Politik und Geschichte, Beilage. zur Wochenzeitung "Das Parlament," B 46/65 (17 November 1965), P• 11, For a series of lectures on the subject of the Germari universities in the Third Reich, �-10given at the University of Munich, see Die deutsche Universitat im Dritten Reich., Acht Beitr•ge (Munich 1966). Fritz Leist, one of ·the contributors, who discusses pos~ibilities and limits of resistance at universities, knew Willi Graf well and helped him and the White Rose group. 10. Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship.· The oriins structure and effects of National Socialism Translated from the German by Jean Steinberg ••• New York 1970), P• 268r it is a quotation from ·Heidegger's Rec.:. toral Address, Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universi tit. ( Breslau 19J4), J>P• 22 ff •. · 11. Walter z. Laqueur, Young German*. A history of the German youth movement {New York 19 2), p. 191. 12. Bekenntnis der Professoren (see note 8), P• 29, and for the original "Ein Ruf an die Gebildeten der Welt," P• 5. . . . . 1 J. Treaty of Peace .between the United Statee of America, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan, and Poland, signed at Versailles, June 28, 1919 -- especially Articles 2,J, · a.nd 7-12. Also the letter, dated June 24, 1919, addressed to M. Paderewski by the Presiden~ of the Conference transmitting to him the Treaty to be signed by Poland under Article 93 of the Treaty of Peace with Ger-· many. 14. For the most comprehensive treatment of the subject see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago t 961). 15. Hermann Rauschning, H"tler s eaks. A series of Conversations with Adolf Hitler on.his Real Aims London 1939), p. 220. The quotation went on1 ttlt is a blemish, like circumcision." 16. · Inge Scholl, Die Weisse Rose (Frankfurt 1955), PP•. 101-102. For an American version see Inge Scholl, Students Against T rann a The Resistance of the White Rose Munich 1 4219 3. Tran lated ••• by Arthur R. Schultz Middletown, Connecticut 19?0). · 17. This account of his life is largely based on Gewalt und Gewissen. Willi Graf und die "Weisse Rose." Eine Dokumentation von Klaus Yielhaber in· Zusammenarbeit mit Hubert Hanisch und Anneliese Knoop-Graf (Freiburg 1964). 18. Ibid,, PP• 24-25. 19 • .!ill•• PP• 37-JB. 20. !bid., P• JS. �-?1- 22, Ibid., Ibid., 2,'.l. llll·. PP• 18-19. 24. Ibid.• PP• 25-27. 21. PP• .38..; 39. P• 39. .. l; What follows is largely based on the bo.ok by his surviving sister, Inge Scholl, Die Weisse Rose (see note 16). Dietricb· Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung, Aufzeichnt!!ABlll aus der Haft. H.e.rausgegeben. von Eberhard Bethge {Munich 1964) 1 p. 1.0. cf.· :L'etters and Papers from Prison. Revised edition, 1967), P• 2. Edited by Eberhard Bethge {New York . Christian Petry, Studenten aufs Schafott. Die Weisse Rose und .ihr Scheitern (Munich t 968). PP• 36~42 • 28. . Ibid., pp. 1,5)-155. Translation of Schiller taken from Frederick Ungar, ed., Friedrich Schiller. An Anthology f'or our Tim.e. In new En lish tra.nsla.tions an the ori:-. gi.nal' German, • , New York 19 59 , pp.' 21 J-219, .29~ Ibid., PP• 156-158 • 30. Ibid., .l'P• 159-161, 31. Ibid., PP• 162-164,, '.32. Ibid., - JJ. Ibid., PP• 98-101. PP• 164-167, J4 • .!£.!.g., PP• 175-183 for text of indictment arid press notice about tria~ and execution. Also Students against Tyranny (see note 16), PP• 105-118 and 148, for translation of indictment, se~tence, and press notice. (n~te 27)t PP• 195~211. for JS. Ibid., PP• 119-13? and Petry text of sentence. J6. ~., PP•· 219-220, J?, Ibid., PP• 220-221. JB.. ~., J9. Clara Huber, ed., Kurt Huber zum GedAchtnis. Bildnis eines Menschen,·Denkers und Forschers, dargestellt voo sei_nen Freunden (Regensburg 1947), PP• JO-J2. 4o. Gewalt und Gewissen (see note t?}, PP• 87, 89, and 12J •. p. 21 t. �ST. JOHN"S COLLEGE LIBRARY -'\#]£~ HUI lll 1 -72- _ 41. Willi A, Boelcke, ed., The Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels. The Nazi Pro a anda War 1 -1 • Transla.ted ••• by Ewald Osers :ew York 1970 • P• 234. 42. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Man of Vision. Man of Courage. Translated from the German by Eric Mosbacher, Peter and Betty Ross, Frank Clarke, William Glen-Doepel. Under the editorship of Edwin Robertson (New York 1970), p~ 8)2. 43. Gewalt und Gewissen (see note 17), P• 87. 44 • .!.!?.!9,., PP• 89~93 and 95. 45. Meli ta Maschmann·, Fazi t. Kein Rechtfertigungsversuch,., (Stuttgart 1963), p. 159. 46, Walther Hofer, e"d,, Der Nationalsazialisrnu,.c;;. 1933-1945~ (Frankfurt 1960), pp. JO-J1. Dokumente Heinz Boberach, ~d., Berichte des SD und der Gestapo ttber Kirchen und Kirchenvolk in Deutschland 1 4-1 44 Mainz 1971 , PP• 8, 48. .I.hi2·' p. 801. 49. .!.Q!g., PP• 877-880, 50 • Psalm 58.(57), verse 4. .51 I Willi Graf clearly felt something of the sort when he made the following entry in his diary, on 21 January 194), after hearing two cello suites by Bacha "This music has a tremendous seriousness and with it a structure of a kind rarely encountered elsewhere. It tells of an order of which at one time a man was capaple. We can only receive it for a future which is going to be quite different." (Gewalt und Gewissen -- see note 17 -- po 94.) Compare what Stravinsky wrote when he attacked the notion of music as "expression1" "The phenomenon of music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between .!!lfill and ~. · To be put into practice, its indispensable and single requirement is construction. Construction once completed; this order has been attained, and· there is nothing more to be said. It would be futile to look for, or expect anything else from it. It is precisely this con~truction, this achieved order, which produces in us a unique emotion having nothing in comm'On with our ordinary sensations and our responses to the impressions of daily life." (Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography -- New York 1 962 -- p. 54. ) Kurt Huber (see note 39). P• 113, � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 73 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Student rebellion and the Nazis (two parts) Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on in two parts on February 18 and 25, 1972 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-02-18 1972-02-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1972-02-18, 25 Relation A related resource Sound recording:  <a title="Part One (Audio)" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3598">Part one</a> Sound recording:  <a title="Part Two (Audio)" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3590">Part two</a> Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a59a3bcab27cc59ed0d5c118033a1c87.pdf 6f2e42ac31cea73d3b07b77169316628 PDF Text Text TRIAL IN BERLIN Beate Ruhm von Oppen A FORMAL LECTIJRE DELnrnRm AT ST JOHN-ts COLLEGE �The place of the trial was Berlin, the time January 1945; the court the so-called People's Court, the highest court for political crimes, such as treason. It was meeting in a requisitioned building, the court building having been destroyed by bombs. The presiding judge was Roland Freisler, the same that had tried and sentenced some rebellious students in Munich in 1943~ He had tried many cases since. The present one now was one of his laste Three weeks later he was killed in a massive air raid on Berlin. The chief defendant in this trial in the last winter of the war was a thirtyseven year old lawyer and landowner by name of Moltke, Count Moltke. He had a whole string of names. The court only used the first, Helmuth. The war was approaching its end. The British and Americans had sustained and defeated Hitler's last gamble, a winter offensive in the West, in the Ardennes. The Russians were about to enter Germany on a broad front in the East., The trial in Berlin was a treason trial@ But, as the defendant wrote to his wife, '~his affair is really somewhat better than the celebrated Huber case. For even less actually happened. We did not so much as produce a leaflet~" What hs meant by "the celebrated Huber case" was the case of those Munich students and their Professor, Kurt Huber, who had been sentsnced to death for writing and spreading leaf lets against the Nazis. The group had chosen "The White Rose" as its of years ago~ name~ I lectured about it in Annapolis a couple In the subsequent discussion the name of the group and the students who chose it were referred to as rather too "exquisite" and concentration on leaflets as a way of fighting the Nazis was criticized as unrealistic: why didn't they rather gather arms. My response was to ask what a handful of students could be expected to do against the kind of regime I had tried to describso I had probably failed to set it off clearly enough against a mare police stats, let alone pre-revolutionary America, or, for that matter, Richard Nixon's. Incidentally, thoss students had, in fact, carried arms, for strictly tactical purposes: when they went out at night to write slogans on walls and expected to have to shoot their way out if the police arrived@ That question "why didn't they?" and the counter-question "what could they do?" stand for a whole range of "why didn't they" questions, question• of methods and purposes, means and ends. And together they raise the question of �-2- what is sometimes called "realism,." Why did the defendant in the Berlin trial two years later consider his case "even better" than the case of the White Rose? Because, he said oddly enough, "even less actually happened." We shall have to see what in fact did happen. And then we might try to discuss whether we agree or disagree that such a case was "better." The discussion may be difficult and should be delicate; it muat be conducted with some awareness of the prevailing circumstances -- which there is now no time to describe. When I say that the Nazi system went beyond a mare police state I mean that its legal and extra-legal methods and instruments of persuasion and of coercion were more comprehensive and more dreadful~ It was a one-party state in which all rival parties and organizations were forbiddene The press, the media, !11 publications were strictly controlled, and so were the pulpits, though the regime did not dare go all out in a frontal onslaught on the churches. But National Socialism had the character of a counter-religion. It was especially intent on the indoctrination of the young~ Ta have any kind of career at all presupposed membership in the Hitler Youth, which was officially compulsory, though some managed to escape it. The Nazi Party, or, to give it its full name, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, was not only a party, but a Movement, one which swept much before it that had seemed quite stable before. Once in power it engendered and exploited psychological pressures among the people that ware unprecedented in modern society~ or, for that matter, in any society. There was, in addition to new laws, prisons and the legal administration of justice, the whole universe of concentration camps, even in peace time; during the war they proliferated and once Hitler had decided on tha destruction of the Jews of Europe, death camps we,re added in the East. Their existence and operation was secret, a State Secret. Rumor was always rife -and always punishable -- and reliable and comprehensive information impossible to coma by. In peace-time the unauthorized getting and spreading of information could be punished as defamation of the state or of the Party or Movement; in war-time it might rank as treason@ Anyone resisting the system had a hard time and a short expectation of life. ! I iJ �-3- For someone who had opposed the Nazis from the beginning, the defendant in that trial in Berlin in January 1945 had had a surprisingly long life. But then Helmuth James van Moltke, who achieved the age of thirty-seven, bore a name that 1JJas renowned in the annals of German history; and he was a trained lawyere Hitler hated lawyers. He knew why~ The defendant's great-grand-uncle Helmuth von Moltke was the general who had enabled the Prussian chancellor Bismarck to beat the Austrians and the French and to unite the German states in the second German Reich. The name of Moltke still had some magic in Hitler's Third Reiche The family estate Kreisau, in Silesia, which had been the old Moltke 1 s reward for his services to the fatherland, had passed to his great-grand-naphewe In fact Helmuth James had had to take it on, quite suddenly and not at all enthusiastically, in 1929, at the age of 22~ during the world economic crisis produced by the Wall Street crash, which coincided with the discovery that Kreisau was very heavily in debt, with bankruptcy quite probable. He sat to work with a will, and within a year he had, by dint of great skill, extremely hard work and negotiations, made Kreisau solvent once more, The defendant's mother was of British-South-African James Rose Innes descant~ her father, was a famous chief justice in South Africa, renowned for his liberalism His grandson Helmuth James van Moltke's legal flair and training may have been a factor that prolonged his life. In the end it did not save it, it enabled him to go exhaustively into all the possibilities of defence against the charges brought against him. He even had the effrontery to argue in mitigation the fact that he had never made a secret of his critical attitude, but on the contrary had, as he thought it was his duty and that of any servant of the state, warned against policies and practices he saw as dangerous and harmful~ The court's reaction to this line of defence is not recorded. In fact all we have on the course of the trial is Mcltke 1 s own fairly full account and comment which he smuggled out to his wife in three letters between being tried, sentenced, and hanged; and the official Top Secret text of the sentence, with reasonso �-4- What were those reaeone? That the defendant had had knowledge of a plot to overthrow the government, declined to join it and warned his friends against it, but did not report it to the authorities. And that he himself formed a circle to seize power, in case of a German defeat, with people who were not National Socialists. These reasons were spelled out in greater detail, as follows: The accused was administrator and finally owner of the family estate Kreieau in Silesia. He was also a lawyer, specializing in international law and admitted at the British Bar. His membership in Nazi Party organizations was minimal, just enough to allow him to carry on his farming and legal practice. In the war he was employed as legal advisor to the Supreme Corrmand of the Armed forces. He always took -- the official account now adds somewhat suddenly and incongruously -- an interest in religious and ec- clesiastical questions, iri the relationship between church and state and the question of "rechristianization", as well as in agrarian policy and the decentralization of administration. Around 1941, the official account goes on, he began to think about the future in case the war should be lost, and started discussing it with friends and acquaintances, none of whom were National Socialists and some of whom had since been convicted as traitors. In 1942 and 1943 there were two longer meetings at Kreisau, the first dealing with re-christianization and the relations of church and state. The Jesuit father Alfred Delp -- who was a co-defendant at this trial and also sentenced to death spoke about the Catholic view on social policy, with special reference to the papal encyclical Quadrageeimo Anno. And Moltke later checked with a Catholic Bishop that the hierarchy still endorsed that document. The second Kreisau meeting dealt with questions of administration and the relationship of the states and the Reich. There was also a search for people who would be suitable and willing to carry out the policies that were discussed. Meanwhile there had been contact with the conspiratorial circle of Carl Goerdeler, the former Mayor of Leipzig, to which Moltke was opposed because �-5- he considered it reactionary, (while he, let me interpolate, was interested in establishing common ground between socialists - many of them and v~ry anti-clerical - as wall as conservatives and liberals Christians~ between trade unions and the churches of both de- nominations; the Protestant church being far more to the Right in Garmany than the Catholic.) The official document summed the case up in the following words: "All Count Moltke did constitutes treason: high treason in the midst cf warw He cannot lessen its gravity by saying that he thinking and did not procs~d w~s only to carrying out planse For he did more than think : he also gathered a circle for the discussion and deuelcpment of plans; and finally he looked for msn to carry them 01.rtu,, 11 The reasoning of the sentence gees en ta argue that auen thinking about the case of defeat is criminal; and that the definition of trsaacn cannot be limited to a man out to rob us of our way of life his own exercise of force~ In peace that might be en acceptable limit. But in War the outer enemy counts on the internal opponent and vice versa~ Moltke 1 s treason must be regarded as a particularly grave case. He spread defeatism and helped the enemy@ At this point twc articles cf the penal code were adduced: paragraph 83 (on organizational cohesion) and paragraph 9lb (on aiding an ; in addition, paragraph 5 of ths Special Penal Ordinance for War which dealt with activities or utterances detrimental to the national def enca or to to Moltke's defeatism end its morale, and which was evidently made tc inf ectiaus effects or potential But, the cf the sentence went on, this was not all~ From 1940 onward Moltke heard about and mambara of his circle wera in contact with the gr·oup of Carl Goerdelar~ Beck This group was plotting to overthrow the gauarnmente Maltke was against itl' on the Lo~don former chief of general staff) end of ~ inteir alia~ that h~ knew from his visits to before ths war that Goardeler 1 s British contacts were confin~d to right-wing reactionariesg Yet finally he agreed to a meeting of the two groups at which he explained his opposition to Goerdeler~ The meeting broke up in �-6- acrimony. Moltke continued to warn his associates against the Goerdeler group. Yet he did not report it to tha authorities. This omission alone would be punishable by death under paragraph 139 of the Penal Code. But the real point was that all these things were part of a whole and meant that Moltke made himself into a servant of the enemy and therefore had to be punished by death. ~ So much for a summary of the sentence. Actually the death penalty was not mandator¥ under any of the laws that were adduced. Much therefore depended on the judge and his impression of and reaction to the accused. Ths judge was Roland Freisler, the most radical and ruthless of the Nazi judges Hitler himself once referred ta him as a 'Bolshevik' in his Table Talk@ He was~ as I have said, the same judge that had presided over the court that sentenced the l"lunich sh1dents,, But that was nearly two years earl!Gr, in February 1943~ During the last winter of the war and after the initial rage and vengeance against all who ware connected with the plot of July 1944 was spent, after thousands of arrests and hundreds of executions, during the winter of the Russian advance on Germany and the last German offensive in the West, it was observed that the Pecpla 1 a Court wee perhaps a bit more lenient in its sentences~ Therefore Moltke, whc had been cpposad ta asaassination, indeed ta any attempt ta overthrow the regime by force, and who had baen under arrest since January 1944, six months before Stauffenberg planted his bomb and failed ta kill Hitler, on 20 July 1944, Moltke had, it would seem, a chance of getting away with a prison sentence@ The official arguments 1 for all their harping on . .hi-a education .and elevated position and the greater responsibility these carried with them, were not very convincing on the naad to kill him and Delp, but not Eugen Gerstenmaier, a Protestant cleric, or church official, anoths:r Kreisauer and c:o-defem::ant who, unlike the other twc 1 was actually arrested at Stauffenberg 1 s conspiratorial headquarters in the war ministry in Berlin in the evening of 20 July 1944, and who nonetheless got af f with a seven year jail sentence@ There ~~,of course, plenty of other things Moltk~ had dona that the court did not know about and that would have laid him open to severe punishments In the absence of such knowledge and of convincing arguments in the aff icial �-7- explanation of the sentence, we must now turn ta the trial itself@ Moltke's own account of it is reliable and has been preserved -- I am tempted to say "as by a miracle" or a whale series of miracles., first the very fact that he was able to write it, able not only psychologically but physically. Usually those condemned to death were hauled straight off to the gallowse Moltke was taken back to his prison Then, the Protestant prison chaplain, Harald Pcelchau, was a friend af his and bean a member cf his circle, a fact that was never found out in the year of investigation. This to his wife and back He also to it out af to trial,. /:\nd shB to letters from Moltke out tha account cf the he hands of the all his other letters and the Kreiseu Silesia became a theatre cf war end ia now Whan we turn to Moltka's awn account, we find that all these flat in the official sentence about away amang other t Moltke~s interest in of and decentralization like that even the mention of Kr9isau discussions of Catholic views on social concealsd rather then ravealad ths drama the trial, and cancasled it reason, the same reason that made Moltke urge his wife to account cf the trial to known. Three times he steted it in his latt9rs The f 2t time caHsd ::1.t the of the tLrhole the third time the drama or What was that crux and the way the trial had him to death? It the trial t however much their actions cf the offic!sl sentence were flat, tortuous, and unconthe document put in what wa~ Top Secret, th® court did not dare bean elicited from the mouth cf the judge, farced from him by the complete and inccmtr·mJertibla non-violence of the dsfendant, a defendant who was able and willing to take his stand on principle, willing to �stake his life, able to manage his defense in a way that did not permit his accusers to pervert the cause of his condemnation as was commonly done. Let me give you those three places in Moltks's own words~ trans- lated: I am canuinced they are an accurate reproduction of what went on in that court. He had a lawyer's memory. The first. After the discussion of the charge of defeatism and of preparations for the time after the Nazis, Moltke goes on to FreislerWs diatribe: But now came the crux of the whole thing. "And who was present? A Jesuit father! Of all people a Jesuit father! And a Protestant minister, end three ethers who were later sentenced to death for complicity in the July 20 plat! And not a single National So~ialistl eey: that doss remove the ! No~ not ons$ I must A Jesuit father, end of civil disobedience! And you also knew the Drovincial Head of the ans of the off foials of • ha uieits Count Moltke not s most. Kreisau! And you are no decent German would touch who have been excluded f r:om all service bacauae of their attitude If I there is a Provincial of the Jesuits in a town, it is almost enough to keep ms out cf that town altogether! And the other rauerend gentleman. Whet was he after there? Such psapla should confine their attentions to the hereafter and leave us here in peace! And you went visiting Bishops! looking far something you had last, I suppose! Where do you get your orders from? You get your ordere f rcm the Fuehrer end the National Socialist Party! That goes fer you as much as for any other German; end anyone who takes his orders, no matter under �-9- what camouflage, from the guardians of the other world, is taking them from the enemy, and will be dealt with accordingly." "And so it went on," commented Moltke, "but in a key which made the earlier paroxysms appear as the gentle rustlings of a breeze." After this climax, he added, the end came in about five minutes. He summed up this first account of what went on in court in these words: This concentration on the chur.ch aspect of the case corresponds with the intrinsic nature of the matter and shows that Freisler is a good political judge after all. It gives us the inestimable advantage of being killed for something which (a) we really have done and which (b) is worthwhile. A bit later in the same letter he commented: The best thing about a judgment on such lines is this: It is established that we did not wish to use force; it is further established that we did not take a single step towards setting up any sort of organization, nor question anyone as to his readiness to take over any particular post though the indictment stated other- wise. We merely thought ••• And in face of the thoughts of ••• three isolated men, their mere thoughts, National Socialism gets in such a panic that it wants to root out everything they may have infected. There's a compliment for you •••• We are to be hanged for thinking together. Freisler is right, a thousand times right; and if we are to die, I am in favour of dying on this issue. But he hoped that their death could be turned to some immediate account and added: I am of the opinion -- and now I am coming to what has got to be done that this affair, properly presented, is really somewhat better than the celebrated Huber case. For even less actually happened. We did not so much as produce a �-10- leaflet. It is only a question of men's thoughts without even the intention to resort to violence ••• All that is left is a single idea: how Christianity can prove a sheet-anchor in time of chaos. And just for this idea five heads ••• look like being forfeited tomorrow 9 •• Because he made it clear that I was opposed in principle to large estates, tf-1at I had no class interests at heart, no personal interests ~t ~li, not even those of my outfit, but stood tor the cau·P of all mankind, for all these reasons Freisler has unwittingly done us a great service, insofar as it may prove possible to spread the story and make full use of it. And indeed, in my view, this should be done both at home and abroad. For our case histories provide documentary proof that it is neither plots nor plans but the very spirit of man that is to be hunted down ••• All this was written after the prosecutor had asked for the death sentence for Moltke and four co-defendants, but before the court had pronounced. The next day, January 11, brought the decision: Moltke and Delp and one other were to die, Gerstenmaier got off with a prison sentence. On that day Moltke once more returned to the drama of the 10th when he wrote: The following, as it turned out was the really dramatic thing about the trial. During the procedings all factual charges had proved to be untenable and were dropped ••• Schulze (the prosecutor) in his summing-up expressly stated that this case "differs radically from all parallel cases, for in the conversations there was no mention of violence or organised opposition" -- whereas the question under discussion was the practical demands of the Christian ethic, nothing more. And it is for this alone that we stand condemned. Moltke continues: In ona of his tirades freisler said to me: "Only in �-11- one respect does National Socialism resemble Christianity: we demand the whole man. I do~'t know if the others sitting there took it all in, for it was a sort of dialogue between Freisler and me -- a dialogue of the spirit, since I did not get the chance actually to say much -- in the course of which we got to know one another through and through. Freisler was the only one of the whole gang who thoroughly understood me, and the only one of them who realized why he must do away with me. There was no more talk of me as a "complex character" or of "complicated thinking" or of "ideology," but: "the figleaf is off." But only so far as Freialer was concerned. It was as though we were talking to each other in a vacuum. He made not a single joke at my expense, as he did agai~t Delp and Eugen. No, in my case it was all grimmest earQest. "From whom do you take your orders, fr~m the other world or from Adolf Hitler? Where lie your loyalty and your faith?" Rhetorical questions, of course. At any rate Freisler is the first National Socialist who has grasped who I am. Then there was a pause during which the Catholic prison chaplain visited Moltke and he was shaved and given some coffee and something to eat, and then he resumed the letter: The decisive phrase in the proceedings was: ".... Cmietiufty has one thing in common with us National Socialists, and one thing only: we claim the whole man." And later this letter, which supplements and amplifies his earlier report, goes on to describe how the Christian component of the case came to be singled out, by the providential elimination not only of all connections with plans for a violent overthrow of the regime but also of co-defendants and charges and motivations that would have enabled the court to pin blame on individual �-12- or sectional interests. "And so finally I am selected," Moltke writes, as a Protestant, am attacked and condemned primar.ily because of my friendship with Catholics, which means that I stood before Freisler not as a Protestant, not as a big landowner, not as an aristocrat, not as a Prussianj not as a German elimin~ted ~- all that was definitely earlier in the trial •• ~No, I stood there as a Christian and as nothing else@ "The figleaf is off," says Freisler. Yes~ every other category had been removed. Yau can read those letters in a little.book~• There is also a full-length ** biography that gives some of the historical and sociological context of the life that culminated in this trial@ The question is figure very prominently in that biography ~~ ~ though i t doss not whether there is a real and necessary connection between the Christian convictions of this political convict end his life end actions up to that final dialogue~ I think there is@ Moltke himself certainly thought there was. * * * It was in the summer of 1940, when France had fallen, Russia was still neutral and in with , and Hitler was at the pinnacle of his power and seemed invincible, that Moltke had started, , to collect the secret standing seminar cf ccnasruatives 1 liberals, socialists, Protestants and Catholics, far the discussion af a human order ta supersede the Nazis' so-called New Order. One of the first things the group found itself in agreement on and that included the socialists ~~ was the need to rechristian~ ize Germany if it was to be re-humanizeda This did net mean a clericalization cf politics or education. It meant a restoration and defence of the freedom of religion and of conscisnceg *A German of the Resistance .. The last Latters of Count Helmuth James van Third Edition® Berlin: Henssel **Michael Balfour and Julian Verlag~ Frisby~ 1972~ Helmuth von liJoltke; A Leader Against Hitler. London: Macmillan, 1972 9 and NGw York: Ste Martin's Press, 1973. l"loltke~ �-13- Thi9 experience of the rediscovery of the central political relevance of Christianity during the years of Nazi rule is described at greater length in a chapter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics. I hava often been struck by the way Bonhoeffer's writings era exemplified or paralleled in Moltke's life. The two men knew each other. They even travelled together to Scandinavia on a wartime mission, in the spring of 1942, for the Abwehr or Counter-Intelligsnce department, the "outfit" Moltke referred to in his prison letter, a hotbed of conspiracy against the Nazis, whose heads, Canaris and Oster, were later executed too. Otherwise Moltke and Bonhosffar had little contact and they did not see eye to eye on the desirability of assassinating Hitler. But more of that anon© What matters hers is the discovsry both men and many others mads in the Nazi years that there was a close connection between Christianity and civilization and between apostasy and barbarism, Bonhaeffsr put it, that or~as 11 R~ason~ culture, all these concepts which until had served as battle ver::y the Jesus Christ himself 1 had Ch:r come very near indaed ta '? also in lJ~consc1ous which deeiree not to fall victim to the Antichrist to take comment an the truth cf both statements that "He that is not is not with me It could, or course is ove:r~ be 9 is e.nci often is :i could be restored and defended without religious that Moltke himself sanction~ ht so in the earlier phase of the Nazi regimso But subse= quent experience taught him otherwise® During the war, in the spring af 1942 1 in a long letter en the German situation which he managed to get ta a friend in England 1 he wrote: Perhaps you will remember that, in discussions before the war, I maintained that belief in God was not essential for coming to the results you arrive at* To-day I know that I wee wrong, completely wrong. Yau know that I haue fought the Nazis from the first day, but the amount of risk and readiness for sacrifice which is asked from us now, and that which may be aak~d from us tomorrow, require more than right �-14- ethical principles, especially as we know that the success of our fight will probably mean a total collapse es a national unit. But we are ready to face this. This last consideration must have been a very serious one. Among his oppositional friends and associates Moltke was probably unique in not only not being a nationalist but not even a patriot. The others felt that in opposing Hitler they were the real patriots, however much the Nazis might arrogate a monopoly of patriotism to themselves. But Moltke was above even those considerations and the consolations and conflicts they gave rise to. Yet he knew that the fight against the Treaty of Versailles had been Hitler's trump card at home and abroad and that the threat of another such treaty or a worse one made domestic resistance a desperately lonely undertaking. In such an undertaking one needed a faith to sustain one, faith that fortified one against being overwhelmed by the historic events of the moment and their massive psychological effects, and faith that had indeed a connection with "another world'' from that dominated not only by the Nazis but by all those who thought like them elsewhere: or those who, at any rate, could not free themselves from the coils of collective thinking. This, of course, is natural enough in time of war, even one that, like the second world war, has an aspect of international civil war about it. Even in peace people find it difficult or even undesirable to think of themselves and others except as parts of collectivitiesQ In fact nowadays that is how "identity" tends to be defined: in terms of menbership of this or that collective: black, white, red; racial, religious, national, or sexual. But in war the need to feel one belongs to some group or other becomes even stronger. And nations~ naturally, lay claim to their nationals and require them to perform services and observe loyalties. Moltke, incidentally, did at one time think of emigrating, leaving his Silesian estate -- to which he was very much attached leaving his law practice in Berlin, leaving his German roots and connections, and trying to make a go of �-15- it in England where he qualified as a lawyer by virtually commuting across the Channel in the late 193~!e;but he had understandable hesitations, and when the war broke out, he was in Germany. He then worked as a legal advisor to the German High Command and did his utmost to persuade his superiare of the benefits of international law. He laboured to prevent or reduce breaches of it by the Germans, even to interpret infractions by the other belligerents in ways that favoured them. In human terms this meant, for instance, getting people classified as prisoners of war whose status under the Geneva Conventions might be rather dubious, or arguing against the slave trade that foreign labour should not be forcibly drafted to Germany but that people should rather be allowed to man their own industries at home in the occupied countries, or it might mean fighting against Hitler's order that any captured Russian political Commissars should not be treated as prisoners but were to be shot at once. Moltke was indefatigable in this work and achieved an amazing amount of success considering his relatively junior rank. Some of his successes might not be lasting -- but even just prolonging someone's life or liberty was worth the effort. His powers of persuasion must have been prodigious. What he ascribed them to himself, apart from hard work (he was always in command of his facts), was the appeal he could make, beside all arguments of expediency he might marshal, to the residual decency in people, who might even be relieved, on some occasions, to hear someone say things that had once been generally accepted as true and good, but which were now as generally relegated to the status of sentimentality or worse. In the pursuit of such "sentimentality," or one might call it "justice" or "humanity", he had to keep and use his head. Theatrical gestures would have helped no-one. But this need to keep his head worried him at times, when he wondered whether he was getting hardened, just as he had already worried earlier whether the mere fact of staying and carrying on might not help maintain the facade behind which the Nazis did their devilish work. The strain of this sometimes became almost unbearable. �-16- A latter of October 1941 may give you an idea of this~ It was written at a time when Russia was but America was not yet in the war. In his official position Moltke had access ta classified information, the kind of thing that never got into the press~ He writes: The day has been so full of ghastly news that I can't write collectedly although I came back at 5 and have had tea= What I mind most at the moment is the inadequacy of the reaction of the military. Falkenhausen and Stuelpnagel [they wars the generals in charge of Belgium and France] have returned to their places instead of resigning after the latsst incidents, n~w and horribl~ orders are going out and nobody seems to care@ Haw can one bear oneYa share of guilt? In one part of Serbia two villages have been reduced to ashes and of the inhabitants 1,700 men and 240 women have been executed® This was called the "punishment" for the attack on three German soldiers@ In Greece 240 men were shot in one village® The uillaga was burnt down, the women and children were left on the apct to mourn their husbands and fathers and hcmsso In France extensive shootings are going on as I writs© In this way c9rtainly mora than a thousand and thousands more Germans are being habituated to murder® And all that is child's play compared to what is happening in Poland and Russiae Is it right for me to learn of these things and yet sit at my table in a wall~haated room and drink tea? Do I not thereby make myself into an accomplice? What shall I say when I am asked: "And what did you do during this time?" I ! I �-17- Since Saturday they have been herding the Berlin Jews together. They are collected at 9.15 in the evening and shut into a synagogue overnight. Then they are sent, with what they can carry to Lodz and Smolensk. The authoritues want to spare us the sight of how they are left to perish in hunger and cold and that is why it is done in Lodz and Smolensk. A friend of Kiep's saw a Jew collapse in the street; when she wanted to help him get up, a policeman intervened, prevented~her and kicked the body as it lay on the ground, so that it rolled into the gutter. Then he turned to the lady with a last vestige of shame and said: ''Those are our orders." How can one know of such things and still walk about a free man? His actions gave the answer. It was not a question of the "right" to refrain from an instant reflex. It was a case of duty. There were things he could do or could try to do, and those he did, accepting the risk of arrest, but not courting it. Hatching or joining a plot to kill Hitler was not among those things. This was not because he lacked the courage but because, unlike Bonhoeffer, he judged it to be wrong, for several reasons. One of them was his conviction that the assassination of Hitler -- even if it succeeded, and he had his doubts about that -- would not cure the Germans of Hitlerism but might, on the contrary, make a martyr of him and give rise to another legend, worse than the one that had vitiated politics after the first world war, when it was said and widely accepted that the undefeated German army was stabbed in the back by traitors at home. Moltke was convinced that the only cure for the German disease was a clear military defeat -- not the whole cure, of course, but a necessary part. And the Nazis would have to be in charge until that def eat was accomplished so that the responsibility for it should be unmistakably theirs. This does not mean that he was enthusiastic about the Allied policy of �-18- demanding "Unconditional Surrender~" especially about the way that slogan affected propaganda. It was launched by Roosevelt and accepted by Churchill at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, at a time when the Russians were bearing the brunt of the war and clamouring for a second front in the Westo The battles at Stalingrad and in North Africa were, at last, turning the tide of the war, and Roosevelt probably got carried away by historic echoes, by the elation of Amarica~s growing power, and by the desire to assure the hard-pressed Russians, and more particularly the ever-suspicious Stalin, that the Western allies would never conclude any kind of negotiated peace with whatever kind of German regime* Whenever Germans opposed to the Nazi regime tried to establish contact with the West, Roosevelt refused to have anything to do with these "East German junkers" as he called them and the British government rejected all such fselars as aiming at a "soft peace" or a split in the coalition between the Wast and Soviet Russia" When Stauffsnberg finally tried and failed to kill Hitler and remove his regime, the official mood in London was one of relief at the failure; the reason given was Moltke 1 s: that the plot, if-it had succssdad, would only have meant another stab=in-the-back legendQ Publicly Churchill made a scathing comment, in the House of Commons~ on the German top-dogs now being at each other's throats. Much later, after the war, he mads amends for this and paid tribute to the plotters. But there was another reason for the unwillingness in London and Washington to consider any oppositional German approaches" It was the feeling that Germany needed a thoroughgoing social revolution or re-construction and that this would have to be brought about or facilitated by Allied occupation, by American, British, and Russian occupation (the Franch were included at a later stage, at de Gaulle's insistence). The Russian part has, actually, happened. Moltke and his friends had their own plans for social change -- including, incidentally, the nationalization of some key industries. They proposed to take mining, iron and steel, the basic chemical industries and fuel and power into public ownershipo They also had their own plans for the purgation of the body politic and the punishment of war criminals and of Nazis who had committed crimes in Germany. They were convinced that punishment J2y Germans in conjunction �-19- with the International Court at The Hague, rather than by the victors1 was not only desirable and possible, but would also be more efficacious. Others of the Kreiaau discussions and proposals still have a curiously prophetic ring about them, especially those concerned with the need to create smaller social and political units, units in- which people can once more feel they belong and amount to something, feel responsible. The plans for a federal structure of Germany and for a united Europe anticipated some actual later developments. The need for the re-christianization of Germany that they felt so strongly in the hell of the Nazi counter-religion may have found some counterpart in the growth of Christian Democratic parties in Western Europe; and it is probably no accident that it was the Christian Democrats in France, Germany, and Italy who made the first bold moves after the war to get away from the stranglehold of nationalism and the nation state, to found some kind of European unity. These developments may not quite have taken the form that was or indeed could be envisaged by the internal opponents of Hitler's Fortress Europe, but their recognition of the dangers of totalitarianism in all its forms and of the manipulability of mass societies, their search for remedies, retains its relevance to the problems of our day. The People's Court in Berlin knew of the Kreisau discussions and their outcome only in vaguest outline. The incriminating evidence was very sparse. Moltke and his associates had been extremely careful and circumspect while at liberty, and brave and resourceful under interrogation, some of it -- though not in Moltke's own case -~accompanied by torture. The court did know of the selection of Regional Commissioners that were to take over after the removal of the Nazis and of the instructions that the Kreisauers had drafted for them. But the chief emphasis in the trial was on their temerity in thinking of and providing for a German defeat; not on working for it, but on thinking about it. Freisler knew as well as Moltke what narrow limits are set to effective action against a totalitarian regime. He had no inkling of Moltke's effectiveness within those limits. But he sensed and said what was the basis of that effectiveness and the real danger to the regime: the faith that was opposed to the Nazi faith. �-20- The Christian faith had, since the Reformation, split Germany into mutually hostile Protestant and Catholic factions and had been subject to erosion in the decades before Hitler, exploiting the split and the loss of faith, offered himself as the new Saviour. It must have been this realization that made Moltke, the Protestant, so determined and methodical in his contacts with the Catholics, not only with the Jesuits, but also with layman and with the Catholic Bishop of Berlin, Count Preysing, who happened to be the most clear-headed and recalcitrant member of the German hierarchy as far as the Nazis ware concerned. (Incidentally, Preysing had written a rather interesting article on Thomas More on the occasion of MoreYs elevation to the sainthood, in 1935, lJillim and at a time when such a canonization had clear political overtones.) Moltke saw Preysing quite regularly for the discussion of current problems and what could be done about them, right down to the content and style of pastoral letters~ Moltke had the reputation -- rightly or wrongly -- of being incapable of telling a lise He was certainly capable of telling less than the whole truth. In the conduct of his court case he withheld as much incriminating information as hs could, and that was a lot. Ha was very careful~ as were his associates, to limit tha damage, and blame what could not be denied on the dead or on those who were for other reasons beyond the reach of the regime. The prosecution never learnt of the third Kreisau meeting (one concerned with foreign policy, the punishment of Nazi criminals, and the instructions to ba given to the post-Nazi Regional Commissioners)© It did not know what want on at countless smaller meetings in Berlin, at meetings with resistance leaders abroad or with representatives of the German occupation SS ~on ~ military or even whom Moltke got to work to reduce the harm they were doing and ta increase the good. He did not volunteer information to his interrogators about his part in the rescue of the Norwegian Bishop Beraqrav or of the Danish Jews~ So what he says in his letters about his trial is true: he was condemned not for what he had dona but for what he ~· His widespread and energetic and dangerous activities on behalf of victims of the regime, his �-21- efforts to foil and counteract the purposes of the Nazis and to prepare for a human political order to supersede theirs (and that very preparation, those discussions, were, of course, invaluable for the preservation and fortif ication of mental health in Hitler's madhouse) - all these activities were the expression of tte kind of man he was, a man who took his Christianity more and more seriously. George Kennan, who only knew him in the early stages of his clandestine activities, described him, in his Memoirs, as "the greatest person, morally, and the largest and most enlightened in his concepts" that he met on either side of the battle lines in the second world war. I did not know him at all. I have only read hundreds of his letters, letters in which he is very much alive, in his integrity, his intelligence, his seriousness, and his caustic wit. They give a picture rather different from that in the literature about him. On the basis of my knowledge of the period and of those letters I would even suggest that he was a realist. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Trial in Berlin Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on November 28, 1973 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-11-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1973-11-28 Relation A related resource <a title="Sound recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3599">Sound recording</a> Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e2ee3693b486071a34482bbb3b2c94cf.mp3 458ea8bb595ce4bbe8ccffed972e1286 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiotape (Tape 144) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:54:34 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Song and dance and faith and prayer: the case of J. S. Bach's <em>Magnificat</em> Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on February 09, 1996 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-02-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3586">Typescript</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1996-02-09 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/19741270cc4fd19cbd9f8dd17d2ccdea.pdf 1c293e13c2940eafba9327f905694eb4 PDF Text Text Beate Ruhm von Oppen February 9, 1996 Song and Dance and Faith and Prayer: The Case of J. S. Bach's MAGNIFICAT I. This lecture will deal with the subject of words and music. It will examine what words can do for music and, more importantly, music for words -- and both, in the case of a sacred text, for believers and unbelievers. Words are needed as a vehicle for the human voice -- unless the singer is content to sing, and the composer to compose, just hummed notes or nonsense syllables. The singer has the obligation -- which not all singers fulfill -- to enunciate the text clearly and with a sense of its meaning. Some singers quail before the meaning of some texts. The question is: should they sing them? They may have to impersonate someone who does believe the message of those words. What will not do is slovenly diction, disrespect for the words -- treating them as though only the voice of the singer (or the vocal line of the composer) matters. Singers who have no respect for the words -- their sound and their meaning -- should confine themselves to singing "lalala" or "mimimi," but preferably not in public. What can music do for words? That is a vast subject. A good poem is not necessarily made better by being set to music. Different composers can set the same text quite differently. Sometimes the same composer sets the same text in different ways at different times. There are such examples in Bach's Passions, cantatas, and motets, and in his Latin and German Magnificats. For example, he set even a famous phrase like ''The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" differently in the Matthew Passion and in Cantata No. 70 (Watch ye! Pray ye!), where it gets quite cursory treatment in a tenor recitative about heavenly aspirations and the body as the jailor of the spirit. The Matthew Passion is the more memorable, and no wonder: there Bach gave it his full attention. He was setting Holy Scripture. It comes in its biblical context, as part of a �3 pronouncement by Jesus when he finds his disciples sleeping, instead of, as he had asked them, watching with him while he prayed. So Bach illustrated and musically embodied it, imitated, if you will, the willingness of the spirit and the weakness of the flesh. I do not have time to discuss the question of singing translations - it would require at least a whole hour to itself. We can, if you want to, discuss it in the Question Period. But there is a more profound question, and one that worried church authorities and reformers: Does music detract from the word of God? Popes and church councils have at various times issued edicts about how sacred texts should be set: for instance, not floridly, in a display of the voice, but on the principle of "one syllable one note." Martin Luther, who was very musical, was determined not to let the devil have the best tunes and welcomed music into the church service and himself wrote hymns. He said that the notes make the words come alive. The Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli, who was even more musical, banished music from his church as too distracting; there was the vanity of the singers and the concentration of the congregation on their performance rather than on the Word. Calvin came somewhere in the middle. He allowed the sober singing of metricized psalms. Augustine had been tom in two directions. In chapter 33 of Book X of his Confessions Bishop Augustine of Hippo had this to say about sacred words and music, or music in church: The pleasures of the ear did indeed draw me and hold me ... but You have set me free. Yet still, when I hear those airs, in which Your words breathe life, sung with sweet and measured voice, I do, I admit, find a certain contentment in them, yet not such as to grip me too close, for I can depart when I will. Yet in that they are received into me along with the words which give them life, such airs seek in my heart a place of no small honour, and I find it hard to know what is their due place. At times indeed it seems to me that I am paying them greater honour than is their due - when, for example, I feel that by those holy words my mind is kindled more religiously and fervently to a flame of piety because I hear them sung than if they were not sung: and I observe that all the varying emotions of my spirit have modes proper to them in voice and song, whereby, by some secret affinity, they are made more alive. It is not good that the mind should be enervated by this bodily pleasure. But it often ensnares me, in that the bodily sense does not accompany the reason as following after it in proper order, but having been admitted to aid the reason, strives to run before and take the lead. In this matter I sin unawares, and then grow aware. �4 Yet there are times when through too great a fear of this temptation, I err in the direction of over-severity - even to the point sometimes of wishing that the melody of all the lovely airs with which David's Psalter is commonly sung, should be banished not only from my own ears, but from the Church's as well: and that seems to me a safer course when I remember often to have heard told of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who had the reader of the psalm utter it with so little modulation of the voice that he seemed to be saying it rather than singing it. Yet when I remember the tears I shed, moved by the songs of the Church in the early days of my recovered faith: and again when I see that I am moved not by the singing but by the things that are sung - when they are sung by a clear voice and proper modulation I recognize even more the usefulness of this practice. Thus I fluctuate between the peril of pleasure and the profit I have found: and on the whole I am inclined - though I am not propounding an irrevocable opinion - to approve the custom of singing in church, that by the pleasure of the ear the weaker minds may be roused to a feeling of devotion. Yet whenever it happens that I am more moved by the singing than by the thing that is sung, I admit that I have grievously sinned, and then I should wish rather not to have heard the singing .... Time marched on, and with composers like Monteverdi and Bach church music began to add instruments and to dance. II. Now let us look at the specific case of the Magnificat. The story, the text, comes from the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Here we have it in the wording of the Latin Bible, the Vulgate, which was kept even in Bach's Protestant church for especially festive services. The pregnant Virgin, Mary, is visiting her cousin Elisabeth, whose pregnancy is sufficiently advanced for the babe in her womb -- who will become John the Baptist - to leap for joy at the approach of the unborn Saviour. And Elisabeth blesses Mary and the fruit of her womb. Then comes Mary's song of praise. The Magnificat became a liturgical part of the daily Vespers. Bach wrote his Magnificat first for Christmas 1723, his first year in Leipzig. That first version was in E-flat and was interlarded with Christmas songs. The later and deservedly better-known version is in D. It is leaner and sticks to the pure text of Luke. Bach gives the opening number, verse 46, to a five-part chorus and festive orchestra, with three trumpets, flutes, oboes, and kettledrums. I won't play the �5 whole of it, just enough to give you an impression. (Ex.1) The next verse, the next number, is given to one of the solo sopranos: "And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my saviour." Again, let us hear a part of it. (Ex. 2) The next verse, minus the two last words, is given to the other solo soprano, with an oboe d'amore to emphasize the humility (or low estate) of the handmaid whom all coming generations will call blessed. Listen to those two linked numbers, especially the cunning preparation of the boisterous entry of the generations and their proliferation. Some of the cunning lies in the way the solo voice leads up to it, some in the build-up of the chorus, starting with eighth notes, then splitting into sixteenths, and ending with a final flourish for all the voices together. It makes you think. I think Bach means to make you think, not just to be exhilarated. (Ex.3) After all that tumult comes the solo Bass with verse 49 or No.5: "For he that is mighty hath done to me great things .... " Is there something incongruous in these words in the mouth of a booming Bass? Clearly he is not impersonating Mary -- despite the pronoun "mihi" "to me." Does the incongruity -- if that is what it is - affect the message? To me that aria is one of the less thrilling, but not necessarily for that reason, in an otherwise consistently compelling work; but I know that there are people who are particularly fond of it. It has such a jolly bounce. Is that just a matter of taste? It is clear why that verse had to go to the Bass: because of its mention of the "might" of the Lord, the words "qui potens esf'. Bach was that literal. Might belongs to the mightiest voice. (Ex. 4) The later word "power" or "might", "potentia," goes to the chorus, in No. 7. There will be no further distractions of that sort in this work. With No. 6 begins what I call the revolutionary sequence. It extends to Nos. 7,8, and 9, and possibly -- this is discussable to No. 10. It speaks, it sings, it dances of God's mercy for them that fear him and his humbling and punishment of the proud. It is very explicit -- musically as well as verbally. But it is not a call to revolutionary action. God does it all. No. 6 is a lovely Siciliano, in 12/8 meter, for Alto and Tenor and two flutes and muted �6 strings, singing of God's mercy on generation upon generation of those that fear him. The "fear," the words "timentibus eum," get very special musical treatment. (We will have copies of the notation in the Question Period, for those who are interested in it.) The "timentibus" starts ,., I\ harmlessly enough, but then builds up to a cry of a diminished fifth (on 2-6b!) and just before the peaceful close a trembling in the Tenor. He quakes as he descends. The instruments maintain the peace, almost an air of Paradise, throughout. (Ex. 5) No. 7 is another loud chorus, with trumpets and kettledrums, on the power of the Lord's arm and his scattering of the proud. Their dispersal is described quite graphically before the challenging shout on "superbos" (the proud), in a chord as startling as the "Barrabas" in the Matthew Passion. It is followed by a shocked silence and then, and only then, for "the imagination of their hearts," the "mente cordis sui," a broad Adagio, a double cadence, first on b-minor, then on the relative D-major. (Ex. 6). The electrifying Tenor aria, No. 8, in £'-minor, elaborates the Lord's putting down the mighty, with one of Bach's favourite, strings only, whiplash accompaniments; and then there is the audible lifting up of the humble. (Ex.7) That verse is the revolutionary heart of Mary's song. The outcry against the proud prepared it, with its interlocking tritones in the diminished seventh chord. Relief comes in No. 9, which is given to the Alto and two flutes. The flutes hug each other in mellifluous parallel thirds and sixths, occasionally imitate each other, and at the end have a most eloquent, a downright punitive, perhaps even vindictive silence. Why? Because "He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent away empty: dimisit inanes." The alto also sounds gleeful about it. They play ,. A. " ,.,.. "' ,. 1 2 3 4 5 3 4, or do re mi fa so mi fa f\ ,..,..,.,..,..,. 171231 2, do ti do re mi do re then NOTHING. Only the continuo sounds a discreet 1 below; an empty plate with a vengeance, if you will. (Ex. 8) After that bit of wit, that dangling silence, that broken-off cadence -- and Bach can speak �7 volumes in a bar, even a beat - after those four numbers against the proud, powerful and rich, and for the lowly and humble, there comes, at last, the traditional tune of the Magnificat, the 9th Psalm Tone, also known as the Tonus Peregrinus. Here it is given, wordless, but instantly recognizable, to two oboes playing in unison and slow motion, while a trio of upper voices delivers No. 10: "Suscepit Israel, puerum suum ...": "He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy." A quiet and most moving quartet. (Ex. 9) It leads to the movement most of you know and have sung, the fugue "Sicut locutus est," the reference -- or appeal? - to God's promise to our fathers, to Abraham and his seed. (Ex. 10) And that ends the Virgin's song in Luke. But in the Vespers liturgy this canticle is followed by the doxology, the "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit." It is in common time, 4/4, dominated by triplets, and then, with a switch to 3/4 for the words "Sicut erat in principio ... ," "As it was in the beginning... ", we return to the musical_beginning, once more with all the instrumental splendor of trumpets and kettledrums and flutes and oboes. And a single, lapidary "Amen" concludes the work. (Ex. 11) III. It is an amazing work. So rich, and so economical. It has no da capo arias, no symmetrical structures that take time to repeat their first section after a contrasting middle section. The whole thing takes half an hour or less. Just think of the very different pace of the Matthew Passion, whose da capo arias, especially in the second part, where they interrupt the trial and execution, can at times strike one as excessively ruminative, so that one may wish that Bach would get on with the story. The burden of getting us back to it, and to the biblical text, then always falls on the Evangelist, with his recitativic account of what happened. Nothing happens here: God has done it all, and the baby will be born in due course. The listener is kept constantly on his toes, so to speak, and never has to be dragged back to the action from a soulful excursion into commentary, �8 beautiful music, but with texts that can strain credulity and patience. True, the Passion scores with interspersed chorales, hymns known to all, with great dramatic and homiletic effect, inserted at suitable moments in the plot, bringing in the congregation. And they, of course, have texts that are next in distinction to those of the Gospel itself. But the Magnificat is pure, unalloyed scripture. IV. The musico-rhetorical devices serve the text, are its handmaiden if you will, willingly subordinated to the message. But what uncanny skill she displays! Bach's music makes words come alive that have suffered from misuse or neglect or inattention. There is the wordless eloquence of instruments and there is the eloquence of silence - the appalled silence after the outcry against the proud, the silence of the flutes leaving an empty space in the last bar of the "Esurientes" (for the rich that are "sent away empty") where they refuse to conclude their cadence; or the oboes with the Magnificat tune, as wordless cantus firmus in the "Suscepit Israel." v. What about the "dance" in my title? The song and dance? Take the slow, rocking "Et misericordia" in 12/8 meter, with its muted strings. You could dance a slow waltz to it. You could cradle a child with it. Is it not perfect to bring home the peace of the Lord's kindness or the motherliness of the Virgin? Yes, but there is a condition: fear of the Lord - which, as we know, is "the beginning of wisdom"; and so we have the special attention Bach gives to the words "timentibus eum." The "Esurientes" dances too, in slow duple meter with some syncopation. The flutes lead; and then the singer comes in with his (or her) "implevit," the plenitude, the filling with good �9 things, the liberality, the generosity of the Lord, with melismatic flowing sixteenths, three and a half bars of them, 53 of them on one syllable. There is something physical in such flow, especially if it is, as here, highlighted by off-beat, detached, wordless monosyllables in the flutes. This physicality has a message - just as, for instance, David's dance before the Ark had a message. It is up to us to listen to those messages. When the instruments dance, there is a message in that, too, as there is in the human voice when it makes the very words dance. In the Alto and Tenor duet "Et mzsericordia" the music rocks and u lvv/uu sways against the "natural" or prosaic declamation of the words: instead of "Et misericordia" we get "e{ m'fse/.i%o{d'fa~' Such verbal and physical rhetoric (you might almost call it body-language) does seem to me to do something that mere words cannot do. If it does not inculcate faith, it does at the very least suspend disbelief. VI. If you sing it, do you express that faith? The music certainly fixes the words in the mind and will keep bringing them back to you -- often out of the blue, when you may be thinking of something else or nothing in particular or, most interestingly, in answer to a question in your mind. What about the "prayer' in the title? If you utter such words, are they a prayer? If you are incapable of prayer, or have been put off by some "free," preachy, opinion-conveying, non-liturgical prayers in church, is it not a good thing to sing what you cannot say? Like the stammerer who cannot get a sentence out but can sing it? Or is such singing a mere substitute that gives you an illusion of piety, or, as Augustine put it, a feeling of devotion? If you refuse to make the message your own, even for the duration of rehearsals or performances, you may have to refrain from singing it. But by refusing to sing, or even to listen, you are depriving yourself of the bulk of the best of Western vocal music. Some people have �10 suggested changing the texts, some have even done it. I may as well say here that I am against doing that. (In the case of Bach's St. John Passion it would mean changing the Gospel text). It just is a fact that the world would be immeasurably poorer without church music - and that deprivation would affect unbelievers too, perhaps them especially; likewise believers who may be shaken and alienated by what goes on in their churches. They have the refuges: the concert hall or recordings or choir rehearsals. There they can magnify the Lord to their heart's content. Or they can, if they like, belittle or insult or deny him. Bach just makes that much harder. It was no empty formula or flourish when he ended all his works with the letters S.D.G.: Soli Deo Gloria: "to God alone the Glory." �Luke I Magnifies my soul 46 (And Mary said.) My soul doth magnify the Lord. 47 No. 1. IMagnificatlanima mea ldominuml And my spirit hath rejoiced the Lord No. 2. Et exultavit spiritus meus And rejoiced my spirit in Deolsalutarilmeo in God my Saviour. in God my Savior No. 3. Quia rexpexit [humilitatemJ 48 For he hath regarded the low estate For he has regareded the humility ancillae suae; of his handmaiden: of his handmaiden ecce enim ex hoc for, behold, from henceforth or, behold, from henceforth beatam me dicent all generations shall call me blessed. blessed shall call me No. 4. lomnes generationesl all generations No. 5. Quia fecit mihi lmagnal 49 For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. 50 And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. 51 He hath shewed strength with his arm. For he did to me great things Quilpotenslest et sanctum nomen ejus. who is mighty, and holy his name No. 6. Et lffiisericordiaJ a pro genie in progenies At his mere om generation to generation timentibus eum. of them that fear him. No. 7. Fecit ~rill§] in brachio suo, He made strength with his arm, ldispersit superbosl he hath scattered the proud he scattered the proud mente cordis sui. in the thinking of their hearts. in the imagination of their hearts. �·'· ·-·· ~·L.:=::.: _ ""''"""'.::.! _ f-\:.·-'~-•i:t;.., u'- ::;cde He ut down the mi hty from their seat. Et exaltavit humiles and exalted them of low degree. and raised the humble. No. 9. Esurientes jimplevitJ bonis 53 He hath filled the hungry with good things; The hungry he filled withl good th(ngs et divites dismisit inanes and the rich he hath sent empty away. and the rich he dismissed empty. No. 10. Suscepit Israel puerum suum 54 He hath holpen his servant Israel. He rotected Israel his servant recordatus misericodiae suae mindful of his mercy No. 11. SicutllQciiiu~est ad patres nostros As in remembrance of his mercy; he spoke [Abraham] 55 As he spoke to our fathers, to our fathers, et semini ejus,-Jin-'--sa_e_c_u_la-,.I To Abraham and his seed No. 12. Gloria Patri, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever. down the ages. gloria Filio Glory be to the Father and the Son, Glory be to the Father, glory be to the Son, Gloria et Spiritui Sancto and to the Holy Ghost; ql<!.!1t. be also to the Spirit; [Sicut erat in principio] As it was in the beginning, As it was in the beginning, et nunc, et semper is now, and ever shall be, and now, and always et in saeculajsaeculoIUilll world without end. down the ages. Amen. Amen. Amen. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 11 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Song and dance and faith and prayer: the case of J. S. Bach's <em>Magnificat</em> Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on February 09, 1996 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-02-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1996-02-09 Relation A related resource <a title="Sound recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3587">Sound recording</a> Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/5d6446b67380dda9fb019a0c9e518e3a.pdf 763e2fd919b1334c7ad8c07379d0ead8 PDF Text Text BACH'S. RHETORIC Beate Ruhm von Oppen 27 October 1972 I r DI>- ar I GI r fGl~rrl fl f rl rG §D 4 I �B A c H I s RHE T 0 R I C Beate Ruhm von Oppen Those of you who have read Albert Schweitzer's great book on Bach may remember the genesis of it from the preface by Charles Widor. He describes how he, Wider, told Schweitzer one day when they were playing the chorale preludes that though he could easily see the logic of Bach in his preludes and fugues, he found much obscurity in his treatment of chorale melodies 0 excessive contrasts of moods? Why these Why the use of contrapuntal motifs that bore no relation to the mood of a hymn tune? Young Schweitzer told the master that all this became clear from the texts. most. Widor told him which pieces had puzzled him Schweitzer told him the texts by heart, and translated them into French on the spot. The riddles were solved. The two then spent afternoons going through all the 'choral'e pieludes and Schweitzer showed Wider, as Wider says in his preface, a Bach whom he had only very dimly divined before. He then asked young Schweitzer to write an essay on the chorale preludes for French organists. Schweitzer soon found that he had to include the cantatas and passions, to explain things. And that was the beginning of his book on Johann Sebastian Bach, the musicien-po~te, or musician-poet, as he called him. The man who was to have spoken here to-ni~ht, Nicholas Nabokov, ., once said to Mr. Klein, many years ago, that Bach's texts do not matter, that they did not matter to Bach. In proof he mentioned the fact that Bach often re-used music with a new text that had previously been composed for another texto I am here to refute that view and I propose to address myself not only to that objection to taking Bach's texts seriously, but to other objections too: that the declamation is often not the declamation such texts would have were they read or spoken, even in a heightened form; that often they are submerged in the music, inaudible or unintelligible; and that some of the texts, some non-biblical texts his librettists served up to him, were uninspired, weird, or in doubtful taste. �- 2 Let me dispose of this last point straightaway and say that I am not unduly impressed or depressed by it. Tastes have changed since Bach's day and some of the conceits, some banking or cooking or medical metaphors in a few of the texts may strike us as odd as may some of the loving, almost amorous exchanges between the soul and the savior in others. But one can live with such oddities and they are neither numerous nor important. important is Bach's musical treatment of themo What is And I for one am against editing them out, as some pe.ople, even Albert.Schweitzer, have suggested. Though Bach could do wonders with almost any text, he was, it seems to me, at his best when setting and interpreting the Bible. Indeed I would not call him a fifth evangelist, as has been the fashion for some decades now, but a church father, an interpreter, an exegete of Holy Scripture. I could now proceed in Thomistic fashion, giving the other mostly but not only secularist -- objections one by one, and then my answers. fact that I What makes that procedure impossible is the can only detain you for about one hour and that I want to leave half of that to Bach himself. You ought to hear at least as much of what he does as of what I have to say about it. What he does takes time. and with time. Music takes time; it works in To allow Bach to have his say means that one must listen to what comes before a certain crucial point, even if one .1.' vnen brutally cuts off or fades out after that point. ~ I might as well start with the Nabokov objection, the existence of what are called "parodieso" The most massive case of re-use of pre-existing music is the Christmas Oratorio. Some wri te rs have argued that this cluster of six church cantatas was composed before the secular cantatas with which it shares a dozen numbers. I am not convinced. I think that here, too, as in all other known cases of parodies, the ~ecular work came first, the sacred later -- though some parallel numbers of the one and the other may go back to a common earlier source. · �- 3 - The Ch:·istmas Oratorio is not only the most massive case of parody, but it is also the one that comes closest to convincing people that parodies do prove Bach did not really care what words he combined his music with. however, th·~ As far as I am concerned it is, only case where one could say an original number .was "better" than the later adaptation. For the Christmas Oratorio Bach drew fairly extensively on a secular cantata (BWV 213) about young Hercu:.es at the crossroads, of Virtue and Voluptuousness (or Pleasur1!). a tenor aria. You'will hear the beginning of both versions of In the secular version it is sung by Virtue who tells young Hercules that on her wings (yes, it is "her" despite the tenor voice) the budding hero shall soar and rise as on the wings of an eagle, towards starso schweben, r·~ally, The soaring, on the word sensibly, "soars," hovers, floats in the air, having been lifted up, off the ground, most powerfully and elegantly b~- the octave swoop to a syncopated tonic and run up to the domiJLant, all in the first bar, on the words "Auf meinen Flti.geln" -- "QEon my wings. 11 Let us hear it. EXAMPLE 1) Cantata Ho. 213, Hercules at the Crossroads, and Christmas Oratorio ··i'. •rt J1._ . · . . . - -· ,t' c~ iuZ~ t ~t tl -F})l 'ffi\"'~-!DI: :: R0 <.~J"' <solc.;;t to <)~'<- -----~-----~..:> ( b~-; J.if .tu., &-f<'..v\ Ir(be.V\_:. . {\Li r / In the Christmas Oratorio this E-minor aria is lowered to D-minor and the tenor sings it as a song of dedication to the infant savior and asks for strength and courage for a Christian lifeo The first words are "Ich will nur dir zu Ehren leben. 11 The "leben" comes where the "schweben" did before. As we shall see later, i1eightlessness was a feature of Bach's music on the effects of ,~race. But in this one instance I myself feel the music has a more immediate connection with the explicit verbal �- 4 metaphor "schweben" (for "to hover, or glide") than the implied metaphor of "leben" (for "to liveo") But let us listen to both, the D-minor version iri the Christmas Oratorio, and for contrast, once more, the E-minor version in the Hercules cantata. (EX.AMPLE 2 and EXAMPLE 3) So now you have heard the one example which I myself consider somewhat superior in the original, secular versiono In all the other cases of adaptation I find the sacred "parody" superior to its secular original and, where it is an adaptation of an earlier sacred composition, not inferiorq The traffic was all one way, from secular original to sacred adaptation or "parody," or from secred original to sacred adaptation -- never the other way round, from sacred to secular. The four short Masses are cases in point here. Greek 11 They are Kyries 11 and Latin "Glori as'" short Lutheran Massee, which use music previously composed for German ohurch cantata.a. In the original the music often seems tailor-made for the verbal cadence of the German text, with such a close fit that even vordless instruments seem to say the words of the text or at least clearly refer to it. And yet that music re-combines with the different and shorter Greek and Latin texts of the Mass with triumphant success. Does that prove the texts did not matter to Bach? bit of ito Not a The meanings of both texts are connected and in the setting of the words Bach has been both inspired and metioulous about fit and fitness. One last word about the Christmas Oratorio. You have heard the first bars of the arias sung by Virtue and the Christmasversion of it.. There is not time -- but neither is there need -- to play the lullaby sung by Voluptuousness in the cantata about young Hercules and the cradle song in jhe Christmas Oratorio -- same song, the one in B, the other in Go One can choose to be shocked or amused by the transformation of the singer of that lovely tune from Voluptuousness to the Virgin Mary. I am amusedo But I see no reason why the nativity scene should not have the tenderness previously given to the allegorical figure of Pteasure. Neither �- 5 - can I get too excited about the fact that the Christmas Oratorio begins with a ket t ledrum taken over from the original of the opening number, a secular cantata beginning or "Sound ye drums." (B\l.1V 214) "T~net, ihr Pauk:en," It was a nice literal touch to delight the groundlings in the secular work. It is in no way out of place in the jubilant first number of the Christmas Oratori o , which starts with words that do not have an explicit mention of drums. So much for the problems posed by the parodieso With my next example I want to illustrate two points connected with the question of declamation. I could, of course, just take one piece by Bach and use the hour to show and discuss what happens in that. But I have decided to accept the challenge of our absent lecturer and to attempt a systematic refutation. Different pieces must be used to make different points, though one piece never illustrates one point I would therefore ask you to listen in a . bi-focal sort only. of way: for the main point to be made in a pi~ce that is played, but not to the exclusion of all else that may be relevant to the subject of Bach's rhetoric. cantatas and the Magnificato My examples will be drawn from the To include anything from any Motet would, I decided reluctantly, take too long. to St. Matthew I take as read (and heard) Sophomore~ The Passion according or, for Freshmen and still in the offing -- and f or the Passion according t o St. John there is, alas, no time. Nei t her is there for the B-minor Mass. Of the roughly two hundred extant church cantatas only a portion are available on record; cantatas a much higher proportion. of t h e rough dozen secular A couple of examples I wanted to use were once available on records, but no longer are. The ones I have now chosen seemed best for the purpose, but may not be; in any case it was quite difficult to make a choice, a necessarily invidi~us are available. and painful choice, among the riches t~~t Some of you can certainly think of equally good or even better examples, and I hope you will mention them in the question period. Yo 1 may ask: i on records? why restrict the examples to what is now available My answer is that the voices, both human and instru- �- 6 - mental, are very important for an assessment of Bach's rhetoric and I want to give you as much of them as I can. If you want to read about the subject and try things out on the voice or piano, there are the books by Westrup and Whittaker, Spitta, Gchweitzer, Pirro, Parry, Terry, Tovey, and others. And there are all the scores in the libraryo And do consider Bach's texts and his treatment of them, listen to what he tried to !22:X when he sango of translation. Consider, also,the problem We might discuss it in the question period. For words did matter to Bach; they assuredly and audibly mattered to him when he set them to music in the service of his church and of his Lord and God, the word made flesh. Most of the cantatas were written when he was cantor of the church and choir school of St. Thomas in Leipzig. Bach was deeply concerned about the meaning of the scriptural and other texts which he used in his church music. Re searched ' for the meaning and thought about it and conveyed it in a variety of ways, some of them taken straight from the art of verbal rhetoric, some of them not available to that art; but these latter, too, were governed by the word. Verbal and musical rhetoric were seen as connected arts at his time and rhetoric was still taken very seriously and taught in the schools and universitieso The connection with music was made in a whole body of teaching called the doctrine of affects or of figures. The feelings or affects were represented bl musical figures, somewhat analogous to figures of speech. Johann Sebastian Bach -- unlike his sons,, who in their day became more famous -- was a keen and educated rhetorician. This must be clear to any careful listener to his vocal music. It was also attested by Johann Abraham Birnbaum, a teacher of rhetoric at the university of Leipzig, who wrote of Bach that He so perfectly knows the parts and advantages which the elahoration of a piece of music has in common with the art .of rhetoric, that it is not only a most satisfying pleasure to hear his thorough discourses on the similarity and greement between the two; but that also one can only marvel at the skilful use he makes of them in his work. �- 7 - Birnbaum was defending Bach against an attack by a contemporary musician and critic, Johann Adolph Scheibe, who had asked: Bow can a man be faultless as a writer of music who has not sufficiently studied natural philosophy, so as to have investigated and become familiar with the forces of nature and of reason? How can he have all the advantages which are indispensable to the cultivati on of good taste who has hardly troubled himself at all with the critical study, the cultivation and the rules which are as necessary to music as they ~re to oratory and poetry, so that without their aid it is hardly possible to write with feeling and expression? What Scheibe called "the forces of nature and .of reason" v.ras now being asserted against the theology and biblical exegesis of Bach; and the new rhetoric of emotion and expressiveness began to prevaii over Bach's homiletics, his preaching oratory. Scheibe was not alone in his criticism. the rise and antagonistic to revelationo Rationalism was on But quite apart from the con tent of his vocal compositions, Bach was attacked-for their form, too. There is no time to go into the technicalities of the doctrine of figures, though every example that follows could be discussed in technical termso Suffice it to say that a man like Johann Mattheson, though on the one hand aware of -- indeed a writer on -- the system of "figures," on the other ridiculed Bach for what he took to be faulty or unnatural declamation. He found a ready target in the opening chorus of the cantata Ich hatte viel Bektimmernis (BWV 21) which, as he put it, "for a long time does nothing but repeat" I, I, I, I had much grief, I had much grief, in my heart, in my hearto I had much grief ••o and so on, and so fortho But the The repetition is undeniable. chances are that Bach knew what he was doing. Re may have wanted to present the troubled "I" imprisoned in its self-centered grief and in its self-echoing heart -- then to contrast it with the consolations of the Lord delighting the soulo lation of the German translation of verse 19 The English transof Psalm 94 (and I give you that, because tense and structure differ somewhat) would be: "I had many cares in my heart; but thy consolations cheered my soul." Ich hatte viel Bekfimmernis(se) in meinem Herzen; aber deine Tr6stungen erg6tzten meine Seelec �- 8 - It was that ~' the "but", that Bach wanted to highlight, the contrast he wanted to bring out, both directly and indirectly, in the musical treatment of the word itself -- a 0 mere" conjunction and in that of the two halves of the whole statemento It is conjunctions -- and I could give you a whole list of them -- that show more clearly, perhaps, than anything else how concerned Bach was with sentence structure, grammar, and syntax -- and not just with imagery. Indeed the word ABER is put in a musical equivalent of capital letters triply underlinedo It could not be more arresting and (Very unlike an "aber" in Brahms, I would say o) emphatico It is preceded by an instrumental sinfonia or introduction, slow, sad, with sinuous oboe and violin parts int~rplaying over a shifting base of sustained and strangely modulating string and organ ch(; :ds o Then comes the chorus, with the triple exclamation "Ich, ich, ich," followed by quasi-fugal or canonic entries, maintaining the sadness with many suspensions, seconds, and sevenths, and introducing some agitation with hu.mmering syllables. Cantata 21, Ich hatte viel Belctf:mrnernis Ich hatte vial Bektl.mmernis in meinem Rerzen; abe£_ deine Tr6stungen ergBtzt~n mAine SP.,le• v b b C2 @ ~ =1 • t{ lc.t., ( I had many cares in my heart; but Thy consolations cheered my soul. f" "f fc}\./ This goes on for thirty-six bars, and then comes that lapidary ABER: �- 9 - It is the pivotal point of this number and the pivot of the message of the entire work. In this chorus it prefaces a lively section on the consolations of the Lordo The rest of the work has the same contrast, which is in this number, of anxiety and prefigure ~1 solace, even joy, culminating in a triumphal chorus of great splendor at the enJ.o The whole work -- it is .Bach's longest cantata -- is about that ABER. So let us listen to the beginning o (EXAMPLE 4) You may have found the first choral portion somewhat repetitious too; but you probably saw the point in retrospect. .Bach's contempoTaries objected to it because it was "unnatural." But can "naturalness" be the sole or even the chief criterion in the musical delivery of a message? Under that heading there is also the question of the natural stress and length of syllables in speech and what happens to them when speech is sung, or becomes song. In one of his Motets -- that is, as its name might indicate, a vocal composition with words all the time, no independent in8trumental parts or interludes -- Bach set the text of verses 26 and 27 of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, chapter 9: Der Geist hilft The Spirit helpeth unsrer Schwachheit auf, our infirmities, denn wir wissen nicht, for we know not wie wir beten sollen, what we should pray for wie sich's gebfihret; as we - v ..__, - .__) sondern der Geist selbst v - u -v ~ ought~ but the Spirit itself vertritt uns auf's beste maketh intercession for us mit unaussprechlichem Seuizen. with groanings which cannot be uttered. After a cheerful and vigorous first line, clearly indicative of the hel:J givAn us in our weakness -- especially, and most graphically, in a. long, low first syllable of Schwachheit, which after more than four bars is swung up an octave, in the sopranos, for the sylla"t:iles 11 -heit auf" (in the German the Spirit helps our weakness u_;,.) , there is due stress on the need f01.· such help, �- 10 - in the repeated conjunction "denn" (for "for we know not~ •• '' J separated from the rest of the clause by rests and echoini :from one choir to the other. After "we know not what we should pray for as we ought" comes: "but the spirit makes intercession for us with inexpressible groanings." And what does Bach do? At that ''but, 11 just before the word "sondern, 11 he switches from 3/8 to common time (or ~common 4/4) which, however, he treats in a way so as to lift the listener out of his seat and shift the singer from foot to foot, uncertain where the beat comes, as you can see in the bit of notation I have given you of the clause of liberation introduced by the "sondern:" The declamation on that "sondern der Geist selbst vertritt ur.s auf's beste" is, of course, what the experts of the day would pronounce "faulty." and our day -The musical accents, put in very deliberately and consistently by Bach himself, do not fall on the stressed words or syllableso It is like a sudden off-beat bit of danceo But unfortunately it i10uld take too long to play it now. I put the squiggly line under the word "vertritt" because I suspect a pun there: the verb treten means "to step," vertreten. to step in the plac6 of someone or something eI.peo What better ·, way to illustrate the mediation or intercession of the Spirit than by a shift of beat or tread? Strangely enough the ABER in the earlier example was off-beat too. The spoken aber is a trochee. And it is interesting that Bach, in the example from cantata No. 21 which I played before, did not bring it in on the downbeat, but on the naturally weak beat after it, and gave both syllables an unnatural, artificial stress. �- 11 - Albert Schweitzer, though most keen on the imagery and pictorial aspects of Bach's music and quite capable of casting occasional aspersions on Bach's way with words, quite rightly referred to the next example we shall hear as one that shows the immediacy with which Bach's music arises from the natural declamation of the text: - v \) Selig ist der Mann, v-v der die Anfechtung erduldet; u -- v u - v \.) denn nachde:m er bewlihret 1st, u-uv v v -1......> v -'-.,J wird er die Krone des Lebens \../ v empfangen. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of lifeo But now, if we do what Schweitzer tells us to do; simply read that sentence with the values and accents given to the syllables by the lengths and stresses of the notes, we discover something rather more interesting than "natural 11 • or - correct declamation. (For notation see next page.) After the threefold "Selig" (Blessed, blessed, blessed), the sentence gets going: blessed is the man ••o and straightaway we have misplacements of stress or lengtho clause that follows it gets "worse." In the relative And the most playful, \J v dancing distortion of the spoken rhythm comes on "Wird er die -\._jv-vv-- Krone des Lebens empfangen. 11 The hemiola and its variant on the final "empfa.,'Ylgen" are not just what one might expect in any dance of those dayso It performs a rhetor1cal function by its very linguistic "unnaturalness." by grace. Li st en. It overcomes gravity (EXAMPLE 5) The music is mellifluous and the overall emphasis is on grace, beatitude, and the crown of life. �~£, -vi~ -d~r~ I~-· dyl 1 Sa,y 4\t 1' .f.. ·---.....1"'- --u.. -·---..--·-un -- .. .IJ u rl-F . QJ/] O'!'ff u - -- ---- - --· __ . ... - . . \f i( w.I 1()) I (1' (if l\JI [j i /"'~b~~'D"Dq-'J)~d11-G~'rJ) ~;JJ )JitrnnTr \l ..,,Q )'1A~"')l't1! WJ~"fll-~Q _p IM(>Yr\.,,,,oif 1 r( if f.I r1<1} rrlu u r/Jf) u.cr; (- ~~~ g-~-S1B'f--ryrf?'~QJ)J ~. ~J~ 1'> P[ ·f' 1 · r 1-J · 1 If I( r r r rr I ri- rtf"('34 / ~b -\~}~.. ~-a) ~r a'4-- v) r r "ft· f ~mf' -oq /~ 1 rdrullt /i " - - ;1· ----, - j?>! 1+1.J r r f / ii' -I'T~r I/I I-I.-rf I ~~ --~~-:Tq 1 ... , I _A V!!o;:f~ "ffUyV /n u nn-rr-uJ~~n~~~ ·__ f.>~ ~------ . f I1 I ~~ro r~~ J'~ "". ~~ ~'11'9 u tf7 l-f' 1 r ), 1 r !' } +af-~ Jc>f :J;; '"'"f-';nf-~ ':J' Pf I (\ r~ I~ ,,. t<J~-- . . ·r uft nl( r rI< ,. (f( 1c\p-~_,td-f}¥0~ ~?J}-"-V \ 1fiG r(h} 0 ) /~~ ( J1 .lb'!t--- Du11fr71 ifJJ . "dtp - Yf (f 1~F r t~~ 1\1 11~uYr +s1 1)-. r rI ' u d 1 -vs ~ I j 'f I g) 2 J J~ fJ~C'' rrfn I(( u u Iu Lli\ / _f -;ilif 11 r;.)1 -ps r r /G1 L - - - - - - -7.>s r.>lS tTuh n·u· ~rA 0 ) ·- GT - �- 13 Compare this with a cantata that also deals with the overcoming of temptation but which does it very differently, both in text and music. It doe s not st art and end with the blessedness ihat is the reward of virtue, but on the contrary starts with the imperative: "Resist sinl": "Widerstehe doch der Stinde", and supports it not with a promise but a. warning: "le3t its poison take hold of you" : "son st ergreifet di ch ihr Gift. 11 It is all struggle and conflict and even the music is "unnatural" or strained with the singer, like th8 fiddles before her, coming in on the leading tone, then going down to -~he dominant and up to the A subdominant, I\. ... 7 --- 5, 4, outlining a dominant ~eventh chord, " over an equally astonishing, inoistant 1, and an opening chord of 7 D 4 Ab 2 F 1 Eb. I In the opening phrase the root STER of Widerstehe, or "stand," as in "withstand," comes on the repeated subdominanto Later that root syllable is sustained first on the 5, th~n on tJ1e 1, standing its ground against the pressures of changing and conflicting harmonieso Let us hear the beginning: ~ \iji - cJer-<k ~e., J~tt.... lti ~diA.~ ch... (EXAMPLE 6) �- 14 - After this sombre battle song against sin, with its musical insistence on the need for steadfastness, let me just mention so~~ other words that Bach is apt to stress by long notes, some verbs, - v - v notably, like beten, to pray, or halten, to hold. And he gives them ·1ong notes not only when they are in the grammatical imperative, 67, Halt im Gedl!chtnis Jesum Christ (Hold in remembrance Jesus Christ), or No. 70, Wachet, betet (Watch, pray), as in cantata No. but in §:!£l. mood or tense, ever mindful of the need for sustained effort and concentration, vigilance, prayer, and steadfastness. Even the evangelist's reference to Jesus prayine in the Matthew -vv Passion is lengthened somewhat on betete, though in recitative -- which is closer to the spoken language -- the length must be less than in an aria or chorus. · From this hortatory kind of preaching let us go to something q_11ite different, a rhetoric that works by a choreography of layout, an art of positioning or deployment, almost what one might get in a piece of typography. It comes in the Christmas Ich freue mich in dir (I rejoice in Thee, P,WV 133)0 cant~t~ The words of the first part of the soprano aria say: "How sweetly it rings in the ear, this word: heart." How it penetrates my my Jesuf is born. Even the repetition pattern of phrases and words may give you an inkling of how Ba..Jh went about setting this text: Wie lieblich klingt es in den Ohren~ How sweetly it rings in the ear Wie lieblich klingt es, wie lieblich klingt es in den OhrE:n, · wie lieblich kling:t es in. den Ohren, wie lieblich kling! es in den Ohren, wie lieblich klingt en in den Ohr~m, dies Wort -- dies Wort Mein Jesus ist geboren dies Wort: geboren. Wie dringt es in das Herz hineini this word: my Jesus is born. How it penetrates the heart! You will hear the loveliness of the ringing before the focussing starts in <:!arnest, on "the woi·d, thP word, the wordo" &nd when, afte~ all this very pointed preparQtion, the word comes, �- 15 - "Mein Jesus ist geboren," the first three words of it are delivered on a monotone dominant -- the l!lost concentratPd '.Nay of communicating anything, I suppose, in the- midst of music -- after which the word "geboren 11 (or "born") comes dov.11 to the tonic and up A again, to remain susp•3ndeil on a A vulnerable 6, then a 4, or SQbdominant, which may indeed pierce the heart as much as any verbal or pictorial account of incarnation and nativity. Let us hear ito (EXAMPLE 7) In the example we There is another use for the monotone. have just heard it gave an almost hypnotic concentration on the word8 "Mein Jesus ist . II Another Christmas cantata, No. 64, Sehet 1 welch eine Liebe (See how great a love), has, in its soprano aria, a monotone emphasis on the firmness, durability, eternity of the things that Jesus gives, compared with the vanities of this world, which on8 can hear going up in wisps -- of smoke o 'l'he words for what endures are bleib2t fest und ewig steh'n and they are deliver£-d on monotone quarter notes; with the "stehen" lasting for over two bars. The alto aria in the sam ( cantata supplies the opposite e)._treme: upward leaps of major sevenths, :intervals wbich are hard to sing but have their clear rhetorical function. the singer sings about gladly giving ~ When everything for the sake of heaven, she leaps from the lower tonic to the upper leading tone, on the word 11 hin, 11 or "up. 11 The aria is about the insignifican<)e of tbe world w11en the inheritance of heaven is assured. Freedom from care and for an unencumbered pi l grimage through life, a dancing pilgrimage, are put to us in the ,iaun.ty and at the same time steadfe:.lt musi<' scored onl;r for alto, oboe d'amore, and conti..'1UOo Over the steady eighths of the 6/8 time th8 reed instrument and human voice interplay in wonderfully free and varied rhythm and the singer's words are placed, both in time and l)i.tch, in ways that are much more telling than they vu-u-u 1Nould be if spoken. "Of the world I'm asking naught" -V v v v 11 Von der Welt verlang 1 i<'h nichts": spoken German ¥Jould have very little stress on the "~", none on "der" and much on "Welt." �- 16 - But Bach comes down with a bounce, an unprP.pared downbeat, on ".YQ!!" and keeps doing it with tireless resilience. Von der Welt verlang 1 ich nichts, From the world I 1 m asking naught wenn ich nur den Himmel erbe. if only I inherit heaveno Alles, All, all I give up, All~s geb 1 ich hin, weil ich genug versichert bin, bev.ause I am suffioiently assure d dass ich cwig nicht verderbe. that I shall not perish in all eternity. The way he dismisses natural gravity and ocatters the "nichts 11 sets the world at naught with an inspired and physical immediacy. Bach does not only say it, he does it. As we shall now h~ar. (EXAMPLE 8) So much, then, for the delivery of texts with linguistically usual or unusual and interva:'.s: acc .~n+,uation and lengths and a variety of pitches tbe rhetoric of declamation and gesture and dance. It is an oratory of breat hing, tooo In the motet Singet dem Herrn ein neuas Lied (Sing unto the Lord a new sonf;) Bach not only sings, rejoices, dances, and plays, as the text of the psalm enjoins, but at the end, on the words "let everything that has breath praise the Lord" -- in German "Alles was Odem hat lob:: den Her-rn, 11 he enacts, brings home, thP. breathing, th e breath of life, in loud, long, large-lunged "!"s and "Q"s, a clear allusion to Alpha and Omega and at the sg,me time a i·eligiouD breat h:~ng must lister L to it for yourselves one day. exercise o You Or better still, sing it. ·~ Thus there is preachment, and there is enactment of what is preachedo And, of cou.;.-se, the content of the preaching the whole range of faith, hope, charity, R.l1d the rest.. to exemplify them all; cov·~rs Impossible but they are all there, as one would expect, in cantatas for every Sunday and Holiday of the church yearo But there is one more objection to sung s9rmons as such that I should deal with: not so much that they are ineffectual -- and I don't believe they are; more effectual tha~ on the contraryj I believe they are spoken sermons 9 on the whole -- but that they uan be u1intelligible o I was going to say "inaudjble," �- 17 - but actually what I mean is the kind of piece, mostly a choral pieoe, where the proliferation of polyphonic parts makes it hard to hear the wordso My answer to that is that indeed the words ' may at t:imes b13 indistinct, but that at other times, sufficient times, they are clea·cly audibleo Take~ for instanc3, a very the opening nu~ber of cantata Noo th~..:e, verse 8: "He hath shewed 45 compl~x pi•1oe like that has as its text Micah oh man, what ~s good; 6, and what does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbJy with thy God?" The German differs a little and has some . . . hing like: "You have been told, man, what is good and what the Lord demands of you: God. and to Godo 11 pra~tice namely: to keep the word of loving-kindness o.nd to be humble before your The German is: "Es ist dir ge~mgt, Mensch, was gut ist und was der B.err von dir fordert, nfunlich Gottes Wort halten 1md Liebe tib ·m und demtltig sein vor deinem Gotto" And this is what happens: (We won 1 t have time to play it and you w.i ll just have to take my word for it): An a:ngulo.r and fairly agitated instrumental prelude prepares us for a grand choral fugue.. i:"1::1trwnent s keep on with their intror~_notory The music, while the vocal entries over this ritornello do not invariably have on-= set of music for one ~et of words and some of their declamation is rathnr "instritmer.taJ.," i.e., not exactly tailored for voio3 or wcrdso But we hear successive fugal entrios ''~~ a long "-sagt '' for "you have been toldo" ist dir gesg.gt," with Then the four voices sing that first phrase all together, homophoni~ally. This happens three times, with polyphonic announcement followed by homophonic repetition. All these come through clearlyo After the third homophonio repetition, the sopranos immediately and audibly carry the sentence a bit further: gesagt 1 _~a~§ch, wa3 ~_:Lis_:!'._un£_~as 11 Es i st dir der Herr van dir forde-rto" The way the other voices come in and combine on those words makes them only moderately audible. But Baeh has taken care to get each part of the phrase across clearly somewhere or other. The altos have a clear, slow descent with a half-note to each syllable on "was der Herr ~ dir for-dert" when the agitation �- 18 - of the mu5ic seems otherwise too complex for comprehension of the wordso But the domination of the "instrumental" rather than declamatory way of writing means that it is expedient for Ba.ch · to conclude the instalment on the first part of the sentence more homophonically, with the words more clearly audible in the last bar or two because the voices sing them all together. The orchestra then has a few bars of this angular music by itself before the choir, all voices together, homophonically and with great chordal resonance, crash in with an ultra-audible "N..!MLICH" on two half-note chords, followed by a bar's rest and another homophonous "n.!!mlich" to launch the rest of the sentence after the "namely:" "n.!!mlich Gottes Wort halten und Liebe ttben und de m iitig sein vor deinem Gotto" There are long, emphatic notes on "halten," for keeping, holding on to, the word of God, and there is a slow and very distinct whole-note descent of the sopranos in the phrase about walking humbly before Gode The whole sentence is then delivered again, in a similar though somewhat abridged form and with only one "ntl.mlich, 11 the one that runs into the phrase about what God wantso The earlier more dramatic "n1:!.mlich" -- with the first one quite alone, followed by a pause before the repetition -- shows Bach's rhetorical method clearly. That is how an orator might stress ito "!hat preceded it in the cantata might have made the music run away with the words; what follows it is what matters and he has to draw attention to ito So we get the audible conjunction, the "namely," or "to wit. 11 The biblical context, what precedes the text of Bible, calls for the arresting 11 n1:!.mlich" ·~he cantata in the it is a even~: stream of verbose questions about how the Lord may be propitiated: ' "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? ~~th thousands Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Uone of these things, comes the answer, and refers the voluble enquirer to an earlier communication -- "you were told" -- and then, patiently, sternly, spells it out once �- 19 - more: NAMELY: obedience to the word of God, love, and humility. And in case the musical excitement of it all is too great for the congregation - to take it in -- ioe., the prose of it -- as clearly as it should, the tenor, before himse+f singing his electrifying aria on the consequences of the knowledge of what is due to God, recapitulates what the opening chorus has sung, in the clearly audible (and very expressive) paraphrase of his recitative, stressing the need · for fear of and obedience to the Lord, for humility, and loveo From this discussion of the audibility or intelligibility of a text let me finally go on to a much more ·difficult matter: wordless messages. There are what is known as cantua firmi in many of the cantataso A cantus firmus is a hymn tune or ohant sung in slow motion in the midst or on top of a polyp1tonic pieo e. There is the advantage, here, of simultaneity: several thin gs at once in musico you can say But that is not all. The ripieno choir's entry with the slow soprano line 0 Lamm Gottes unschuldig in the opening number of the Matthew Passion, on the cue, the word "lamb," provided by the com pl ex double chorus below, is very powerful when it happenso What would be the effect of that passion hymn -- a German adaptation of the Latin Agnus Dei -- if it were not su_ng, but played on a wind instrument? That, in fact, is Bach's more usual procedure, and the wordlessness of such ca~tus firmi may increase their power -- provided, of course, the listener re g isters them, as any attentive listener willo Bach wrote for a congregation , that not only registered but recognized them. Bach's familiarity with the hymnal was such that he drew on whatever verse of whatever hymn was most apposite at any given moment -- witness the reshuffling of the original order of stanzas in the passion chorales, for instance, in the Passions according to St. John and St. Matthew, and, of course, with different, ap propriate harmonizations. An instrumental cantus firmus is just a melodic line and leaves it to the listener to think of the intended words, perhaps even to choose between two or more possible sets of words. �- 20 - It is in part this ~mbiguj_ty and appeal to the listener to think, to articulate for himself, that gives a wordless cantus firmus such force. Its increasingly arcane nature, the growing secrecy of the message with the waning of the tradition that :Bach could still take for granted in . his day, may actually add to its force -- provided the listener attends and engages himself. is less a matter of "research," though that may help~ It than of attention. Once one knows that Bach is up to such tricks as cantus firmi, registering them is the first step t6 identifying them, either by instant recognition or by a little effort. ·rhe immediacy of a lost tradition may be gone, but familiarity with a surviving bit ef it may help, and so may familiarity with other works by Bach or by other composers. Let me give you an example. The traditional tune of the Magnificat is not sung in Bach's Latin Magnificat. It is played by the oboes over the singers' Suscepit Israel puerum suum, He helped his servant Israel recordatus misericordiae suae. in remembrance' of his mercy. TONUS PEREGRINUS in the Magnificat (Suscepit Israel) f:lf ~-~ f . lf , l f' Tr Ir. 1f>' I fTP . f ~ ~~~ )~r· -1r· \ F' \ r-c - r ·-\ -r· r · \ t-· 1- r :r -;: r l '1\t f _f~F · \ fT(Rtf ·Tf~r1171'r '. !I \ �- 21 - It is, on the other hand, sung as well as played in various movements of Bach's so-called German Magnificat '· the cantata Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn (My soul doth magnify the Lord, BWV 10); and in the alto and tenor duet "Er denket der Barmherzigkeit und hilft seinem Diener Israel auf" which corresponds to the Latin "Suscepit Israel," the cantus firrnus is also given to the a'boes while the s ingers and continua sigh away in a phrase dominated by descending minor secondso Let us first hear the Latin version (EXAMPLE 9) ••• and now the German version (EXAMPLE 10) Er denket der Barmherzigkeit He remembers his mercy und hilft seinem Diener Israel auf. and helps his servant Israel up , TONUS PEREGRINUS in alto/ten>:Jr duet of cantat<::. No. 10 One strange thing about that tune is its age and long history. (And tradition is another kind of simultaneity.) : The tune is known as the Tonus Peregrinu..s and was originally, from the 9th century onward, associated with psalm 114, In exitu Israel, the one the pilgrims sing in Dante's Purgatory: "When Israel ,went out of Egypt ••• " It now survives in the doxology of some English-speaking churches. I am glad to say ~hat two of Bach's settings of it are included in the il'iusic for Freshman Chorus. And I would like to end with yet another, the setting that begins Th e German words mean: "My soul doth magnify For he hath the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior. cantata No. 10. regarded th~ lowliness of his handmaiden: for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." The words are spoken by the Virgin Mary after the annunciation, when she visits her cousin Elisabeth (Luke 1, 'verse 46-48)0 But you may prefer to think of the pilgrims in the Divine Comedy or, for that matter, anywhere. (EXA~IPLE 11) �- 12 - Maine Stell e~hebt den He~ren und main Ge!~t freuet sich Got tee, meinea HeilaHdes; · ~eine soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my · ea.Vi I denn er hat My elende Magd our; for he has his lowly handmaiden angesehen, regarded. Siehea von nup. 8,ll verden mich eeli~ preisen ~lle Ktndes Kind. Behold, from now on I shall call ·(German word order) m~ blessed all children's children. 1 TONUS PEREGRH1US in soprano a.nd alto parts of cantata. No. 10, op1ming chorus .... ..... -~ · · · · ·:Of~-~(!.· 1 ··- ·-··- -·-·-· ·1· P- - .~ .l . ._· 1···- ?;;h;-:=.;· ~-- --·1··.. ~~-·-·:··· · ·· · - -- -~- - . )··G : P~.r·. r-:·r-~-r:~·: -1 --~~~r·· - ·o . - -~~ -- - - - fP• (.:(_- ~ · -~--•-· . --··_- · · ~ ~ -- . _ ·l·-~:· M" .. . . ... · ·-:.... . -·· -- -K- ~I' -t.r'"'- f..ebt &'e~ . ··- , - I . . - . . l+ef"- t'<h - -- . · �' \... ,- ~ . '<. J . r·"\...J . 1J,... t I , \ r. .<. ' . ___ _________________ .. " I had many cares in roy heart; a1Jer deine Trost1u11s..~_rn hut Thy consol at i ons err:-ot~te-1 F 0 i- ·e (,e_el" e . ::!_ L'. _ _r.~~~---_:~ _::_ _ c'i1ee :red my sou l • f i~k ~t:~= ~~~~- ;-G~ -;;{ i~~ -v Jt \,1 ~~Jt~~~*l~~§t~ �Der Ci-e i s t 11 i 1 ft our i nf'i rn-]t ies , f 01· '.Je kn o ~.-1 not vlnt we shou l a 1c'l '"" ,I •.• .._,, ~1 "'-ich ,::) -'-- .J f c ..J v r e_':__l;;_ __ c__ , -·J~ilir 0 t -- <._] sondern der Geis t selbot u - :: rtr itt v .._ ) \_J un s auf f or as we ou::J1t : ·, - ~ray ___ ---·-, \..J' ' ~=: ____ ,, l)ezt c: but t he Spir i t itself mal:et h inb;rGe ssion for us '.VJth groan1~1gs -;;r~1ich c annot b e uttered. �-· +£'.{_ ..., . t , .. ·,,.:: ' ( C ...,,I '·, . v ' .. . i·c :•..i.-; ... 'l . r· o· ·'.--....r " ~~.I~ r "':( -------er----·-·-·-·-···---..... . v · \.J Selig ist der Hann, ...___ v \,.) . .___..,-. \ ,i '. ) ,..., . .,,_J~WO de r die Anfec htm1 .~. >e-rdnldet: ; -----··.o--.L----·--, \ ~'-~-..-~.,. ,_..,..} -._..,.,,......... 1., .~ clenn nachd.en er ._ ..,., ,. ~ .._, \ __, }' • .. ,:~ \ _...,.! • .) , _ -. ··- ··· \ ,_ } h~v;ii t!:..r..~L I Ble sse d is t h e man ist, >:"" " ·"' ' _\ \ ,_ w :i r _S:t.__er __ c!.ie _Eron~:__<:!:_~.§_ Le1~.~ns .,. .... , ' . ~E:".l?J_~i. ' .." ' ~ ~- -- f or '.:r h en h e i s t r 1 ed., .) ~ , w:e 1~ • he s h all r c cenre t he crown of life. ��1 /iderstehe aoch (\er - sonst er ~ r ei fet :~\i..i nd e ., ---· d i c h ihr Gift. lPst its ~oison t a te hold of you. ~-- -----· --· - -· --~·~ · ·--- =r-~L::f~ :-==~~~-~~f 1~: ~~cl~~= ~\\I - J'd - C:fr (.1 r:1e c{,._ tf k(j ·~ . U{\-- 1~.•-e_, l �k ' j h ."'<l·.0 · ~. ·f· •,. Ll V .....- V ~··---··~. 1..,.) - -·-· \_j u _\T_o_n_a_P_:::r_'_'Y_e_l_t_·v'-'~ l?::..~£_1.£.b......:'.!J c ht s , er ·Prom the wenn icb nur CJ.en Eir:JY1el erbe . if only I inherit "heaven. ~lles, All, all give I up, Alles v eb 1 k'1 h]:T~.~ lleca.n se I am suff ic ientl3r assured da. ss icl: ev1i r;. nic1it Yerderbe. that I sh a ll not perJsb in all eternity. �' -- - ·--- ·-- - - - - · · - -- - - - .,... ·- -- -----~ -" ~- ~'- --· - --, : ·\~ . co' - t ~ ~ l ( , • (. 1 ~ l,. ~ l I ~ ( I (~ ..,__ __ ___ ---- ·· ···- - l ) . )t (! ~ l ~ -\ r ,1 1 l "'" Ir --- --. - . ..... -- - ' ~ j I ~1 f Ito tt ~ t.L ; ,• j' 4 I l I ~~ l D t ~ ,J I:> ,... I r\ '-~ ~ !'- ) ' ~ h ..--- ·· ·-- ·-- ' ' 'I l - -. • 7 • r. ... g [:; ···· ··- l . t (. ~ I t ~ . ( k . g; j 1 j "' li. i ; - ·~-· . ~- �(cl" f rf~u c . ,,~ .., <---0-~~oAo... ;,"\.,,,-c [<\ -- · ·· ·---· -';;-- ·---------. - -~ . ____n .-den Ohren ! _ i .----·-------- '.T i - -- e lieblich k lirw·t. _.,_.,._ ~;~3 ··-. (i, ------··-· . ..... ··-- .,, ·-· --· -·· ------ ..·- · 7Iow 8'.7ee tl y it d .nf's in the ear Tie lieblich k l i n <, ,G P s --.., -- -.!i- ~.:...-.--.C:w ,.,. • 9 ,,.,,-ie lie1::i lic r• k l in t e s 5.·:1 c.:len Ohren, · ------------ ----- wie lieblic h klin ~ t ______ es in den Ohren. , --------.~-· ---·-- · die s './ o T ~ . , .. Cl t es ·.~;r ort : my Je sus is b orn. Wie drinpt es in das rerz h inci nl · --· -~------~-·-- -- -·------ F o0Y it :pe netra tes the heart. �<6bG) 71 70 Oboe I II &ll'1u:.isono ::- A oJ. 10. Suscepit Israel II " ....... - -- iJ Alto I Su - •ct:- pit ~ e - - ru m IU -- - 'ED.1 Su- ace - pit a a I " I II JI or&-el - JJ IJJJ~. sra. -el pu - e I ' 1 J J J J IJ. 1 .,. ____..,. pu -e - rum r- SU um, - ~ ~ au-see-pit I sra. - tj, A. J [01 an-el, r s u - sce-pit I - - see - pit, - - - ~- - sra - el ~n. .. el pu - e - - pu J J j I J-r.J J J j J I J su- see - pit rum I sra. - el - J j I J 9f t a 7 -..._;__.... e-rum_ nJ~ pu - - e .fl.+ a a ' ~ -· ../II " Ob . pu - 811- Sce - piL _, *#2 Co a tin uo e Vio loocelli Fa.~ o Ui •ra-el I"' I- ae.a.1&. Violo ne e - I~ . .:11~ -.:r Soprano I Soprano II Ob. ., ~.:~: :: : ! : e - g:!' rum = ~ ; :" w : !',,, J; J : n-1ce - fiL sra.-el, su - 1c e - pit pu - 20 r ... um, A. T ....... pit IL #JL IL "" - ace - ptL " IL IL . - Is - um, 0£ re - cor ~ au -~ 11 1ra.-e l , IL sra.-el, '" - ace - pit .. II " 5U - • Ce - - 611 t t j rum r um um, ., re • au - A - cor A 11 re Jn Jo IJ J 0 0 ! - um, IJ - d& - mi <la - tus - cor J 4 4 4 tus -- ... mi - se - ri ·- ... 10 n -sce - pff 1r1..- el, . Jiu - ace . pit JJ pa - e - ram r ·1 J J 111 - um, I el se - r I' J sra:-d, IJ ill - I .... "' - •ce - pit ~ •c o - pit I ...... ri da - tus . cor - mi - se .,; ·~#~~ ~ cor a • - - ri c;r-: ~"fl~*~ - - --.. -1'1 •• #* • 4[· .___ di -- �<6b(F) 78 72 11. Sici..;t loc.utus est .' G :s Soprano I rn~ •a(~ di - ae ae, su .. ae, re • ffieO I ffi r ;LJ . ro da. car J 4 tus mi ae, di - re • car ... Cont .e Vcl. "'" • Soprano II . d1. • tus liJ mi A Alto . I J '[:J {) I cor se • ri OJ • " Tenore tJ ~ I I I I . liJ ae • ~ - #~ ~ 1t ri I ~ Si - cut lo - ~ mi d.o: - tus - • di cor ·'"· " .. ~ Basso 1t - Si - cut lo - cu Continuo ::::::::JO tus est ad pa-tre-s no stros, A - bra.- ~ :::::::10 ee - ri di • cor - ae ~u - ae, Si • cul lo - cu - mi .... tus cu • ae, mi - - ~e car - ri B. ,~ ~· car vc\ . ~e !!& ~ ~ Cont. e ¥" ..... di ... - 1' . ae, nu- "fl 1! 4 ri cor .. 1t ...... - II.a Cont. - lfMg r -. stros, .--- -,.--, A - bra-ham et se - uii-ni pa-tres no jus in se - cu - la, si-cut lo - cu - tus est - - se- mi-ni j r ham et --:ir"""·. .......__ e L1 I EftJ ur Ir r f' Ir Ir ii I J :::::::- :::::::- Ob~ ·= Sopr. II est ad tus se- ri - di cor ae i, ''"""~:: A "'--' ae. su T. 111-t?-!1. Si l l -l est ad J cul lo :; ; - pa • tres jus se stros, no • A - ..... cu br;L- ham -= .., el tua se - mi-ni 2. A -11 .. II~ 11.. di • a.e, Cont.e Vd. ';;;;: ~ ~ ~ -.. ir.i .. ae ~ ... - y ri - ifdi- ae ~- f!• 11· car • di • 1.e su ~ - • -it.:. I.e. · "i.J ~"· ae. yf. B. e --- lli'Ma ,J in Ir in Cont.~"}: •u j J se E J Ir cu - la, si • cut !' I' .l cu i la, i' I .l lo tus . est r I cut lo • r· r r t~• I r I r r f' I Si I cu l'U �~c.,,.- " If ~· .. tJ ... Dtrtn'O. Ohot" I. II Tru1ul.Ja. . - ·~ Alto. Er dt"ll_kd /. li.iln M"i _ urm l Dif'.MT1 lailn lliit.i - nrw ..,_. j.,. ~ on - Te11ore. I i.. ..... /., /. ~ Er I.. • . . . . . :- • : : Cunlinuu . u · ,... .... d1•r Harmhet_ U;;-_ JnLL;1-( n . .. .' • • a.11 "~ uoJ ~ ... ~ " I aaar, Di" - •l·r .... - ... _d .., . ,_ ..... drr . "):::.- r _ ,,. ... ' _ 1i;,r ~ttit, 1~rlNrWht".l-.1i~ ~ L;.. it, &rmb1~r hil, rr i.lru_L: .. t ; ~ ..... d' .... T .. I ~ &nu.b1·r.1.ii' ~ kril, J17r' .- - ... .. ·~ .. -- t-. i : K - d1•11.hl kr.il, ,: Hts _ ~ k• ~ •"l ~ .-C. .. f i... • • • :' :; • ~ .... t ... ., I '"' . . : a_P-~~--E"'+~ J;•·il, rr J1·u _ 1:d :t,'}- _ _ .r. ~·, d~..- loeit, er drtLkd d rB11nnbn-.1ic;~ t:it, .. . ~ -~ Ti,. Bannlii"- ~- r.r dea.kr.I • I ¥ a ~ • • . .; 8.111rmbt'r-1i~ ~ kril, d'"1' Banu-•cr- 1iKJ k.. il 1. _ . I _ rad, Li._ra.d I aur. ., • • • dru_ kel I drr I • .i .~. 1' • ~ I • ....... '·. . . . .. . . .. .- . Di,.._orr ls..n._d I •al'. ., :.I t " .A..1:.,,1 ~ ~: ~ I":'\ ~ ;a ,,,. RI:CITATIVO. . \"iulioo I. ~ '1olioo II I~ 6•'• I I! I • k. ... H. .•.. . 1n Uarm-bt>r- ti;,: _I L:ril uud biln I;: 'l cu pQ . , . ll ~ Tenore. ' l'!f' j biln ,,.; ._ _ - r r \\"IPL Gull dna \'i_t"1t al.Jrr IZrilr11 .;it, ,: ·I:·d I•W, I Viola. ~ .... llll..'11-rl ~- fl"9' k• • ,. .. • • ...• . ... . . .,. . • _ Oarm_b1·r _ ai~ . . d1~r " I D:' _•.-r .. •t. ~I' .., Pt.W I":'\ .. .. . drr Bxrmbrr . .zi~ ~. - d1·r H•nn.h1•r sei _ uma I Dit:ner, ililR ....a_ . -:-t;. Der .~ rr deu.ht d,.,.J-JMrwhr.r.1i"-fkeit, ..r dr.11-kd 1•uf,uuJ hiln ... Die _ /., /. ~ . ~ /.:. I":'\ - i:i~- d('u...kr.l dt".r BanoL h1•r Oirurr,ltiln ir.ci._u,... :M· u · /., / . . kL DCID - 'ls....ra..rl I ~ ~i:.. • Jru.kr.l ·~ I ...... I UH· _ u.-r .. -, , .... . .. -- t ) I .. '* . • ~ -H biln •• •• ,...j _ Ota ' ' .. Oirltt"r, hitn """--- _,. .~. t •• •• • • Cuuliouo . . ~ -. ~-~t:I uud nr_bt·i~tit'U • . I li.t, t:-rf'V ll l w aw.a. U. �He in recordatus miser j cor diae suae . -------·-·------ h el ~J e d re m0n~ r ance his servant Israel of h is mercy. E e re rne rnbers his mercy .if\ , . ·I\.,.· c J. unci hilft s e iner<,!___~;:)j._e n~12.__I.s rae3::_ _5u f. !3.nd hel J) S his servant Israel up. Heine Seel' erh ebt den Herren My soul m2, g nifies the Lord und mein Geist freuet sich Gottes, m~ines Heilandes; a nd my - s mr-j. t r e joices in God, my sainour; f denn er hat se_i~'1~- el_encl.e _J:. figd__a.1~_§_e1~. his lowly hancima id.en re t:;arded. 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Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 36 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bach's rhetoric Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on October 27, 1972 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-10-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1972-10-27 Relation A related resource <a title="Sound recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3605">Sound recording</a> Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2b66946e1eeb355fb495897daa404d7c.mp3 1dca57a9d8d03ce832e3c78a099070fa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiotape (Tape 266) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:08:45 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bach's rhetoric and the translation of his texts: with examples taken mainly from the <em>Passion According to St. John</em> Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on May 02, 1975 by Beate Ruhm von Oppen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975-05-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Ruhm von Oppen 1975-05-02 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ed53c39435a793fa526519101f85bc6a.mp3 801748a8f9d24fe1fd0c689dfdab5aa0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:03:13 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Significance of Quantum Mechanics Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on December 1, 2017, by Bernhardt Trout as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Trout, Bernhardt L. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-12-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Trout_Bernhardt_2017-12-01_ac Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6844d2c102abe00b3c1dea89e7353e3c.pdf 6a4f2192255d183ae6ecde065d665824 PDF Text Text Lecture Be a Sinner and Sin Boldly: Martin Luther and Christian Freedom Tom May, tutor Friday, November 10, 2017 534th Anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther 500th Anniversary year of the Ninety‐Five Theses Prelude The name of Luther is not to be found in the formal listing of our program among those author teachers who return to St. John’s every year but his presence and influence are very much with us, nevertheless, in the work of the freshman and sophomore years. As freshmen we learn to sing four chorales from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. The chorale, a singable, metrical tune with a sacred text, is a musical form that originates with Luther, who wrote the words and sometimes the music to some thirty chorales. The most famous of these is Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A firm stronghold is our God), inspired by the words of Psalm 46: God is our refuge and strength. Bach’s Matthew Passion is written some 200 years later, and his chorale settings are both more regular and elaborate than any of Luther’s, and he is but one of the legatees of a rich tradition that begins with Luther and the reformed liturgy of the Lutheran church. The rich and varied tradition of hymns and spirituals since that are integral to worship and prayer, building up community, all flow from this innovation of Luther’s, no matter how simple or how elaborate, no matter which Chrstian denomination, Catholic or Protestant. The chorale is thus the musical expression of the faith of a community of believers using soul and voice to express the deepest yearnings of the human heart for God, whether in greatest joy or deepest sorrow. I think we have all felt some sense of the directness and power of this distinctive musical form as we learn and sing the Bach chorales and African American spirituals in Freshman Music. We should note here as we begin, too, that the biblical text of the Bach’s Matthew Passion is itself a setting of Luther’s vigorous German translation of Matthew’s narrative of the suffering and death of Jesus. Luther translated the entire New Testament, using the second edition of Erasmus’s Greek New Testament, the Textus Receptus of 1519, in a mere matter of ten to eleven weeks while in hiding in the Wartburg Castle, after the imperial ban pronounced upon him by the Diet at Worms in 1521. Luther’s was the first German translation from the original Koiné Greek text, and it was published in 1522, a media event when its first printing sold out in two months, followed by a series of others, which put this part of the Scriptures in 1 �the hands of whoever could read them. Luther thus initiated a truly revolutionary project that culminated with the publication of the entire Bible in German twelve years later, in 1534. Its appearance inspired in turn the numerous editions that subsequently appeared in other modern languages throughout Europe. Fast forward now to all of us here: Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, or Buddhist; believer and non–believer alike, using an array of translations old and new, who first read and ponder, then discuss and question and argue about the longest single series of readings in the Sophomore reading list all taken from this book—or is it a library?— called the Bible. This is not all “just history,” but begging your indulgence a bit longer, let me provide a brief account of how Luther “arrives on the scene,” to borrow a favorite phrase from Hegel. Faith and Reason, Conscience and Freedom In 1513, Albrecht, the younger of the two young Margraves of Brandenburg, having graduated from the University of Frankfurt‐am‐Oder and aspiring to a high ecclesiastical position, became the Archbishop of Magdeburg. Yet he also sought to become one of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire, like his older brother Dietrich, who had become Elector of Brandenburg, with the privilege and power of electing the next Emperor. So when the electoral see of Mainz became vacant the next year, Pope Leo X agreed to make Albrecht the Archbishop of Mainz if he would make a substantial contribution to the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and to this end he authorized the sale of indulgences in Albrecht’s two dioceses, thereby enabling him also to pay back the substantial loan he owed to the banking house of Fugger. It was the preaching and sale of indulgences that provoked a monk named Martin Luther to challenge the very principle of and corruption rife in this practice, and ultimately the power and authority of the Roman Catholic Church, with its spiritual, intellectual, political, and moral hegemony over a largely Christian Europe. Who was this Luther? It’s perhaps as important to know something about his experience and life in order to follow his thought as it is to know about Augustine’s life as we read the Confessions. Born in Saxony, Luther at age 19 is sent by his father, a manager of mines in Mansfeld, to the University of Erfurt, ultimately to qualify his son for the practical and profitable study of law. Luther studies philosophy for four years, earning a master’s degree from that faculty in 1505. In that same year, shortly after he has enrolled as a law student, he abruptly withdraws and enters the monastic Order of St. Augustine, a teaching order of strict religious observance. What accounts for Luther’s sudden change? On the way back home from Erfurt, he is caught in a powerful storm when a flash of lightning and a deafening thunderbolt bring him to his knees. In terror for his life and the state of his soul, he cries out, “Help me, St. Anne, “ and vows to become a monk. A year later (1506), he makes his final vows as a monk at Erfurt, begins his formal study of theology, and is ordained a priest in 1507; transferred the next year to the Augustinian monastery in the small town of Wittenberg with its newly founded university, he earns his bachelor’s 2 �degree in biblical theology there, and continues his studies for four more years, in order to become a doctor of theology in 1512. Theology frees him from duties he finds onerous as a lecturer in moral philosophy, such as teaching the Ethics of Aristotle and scholastic moral philosophy. Luther now can begin teaching biblical theology, lecturing first on Genesis and Psalms, and perhaps most importantly, Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians, using the controversial 1516 Greek New Testament of Erasmus, with a Latin translation that corrects the Latin Vulgate of Jerome, which until this time was the only version of the Bible known by Western Christians for nearly a thousand years. He is also reading extensively in the writings of Augustine, Jerome, and other early church fathers. Throughout this time of intensive study, Luther is a scrupulously observant monk, with a rigorous spiritual life of penance, fasting, and self‐mortification, sometimes spending as much as 6 hours in a single agonizing session of confession. Here is Luther’s own account of his state (see handout to follow text): Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sin‐ ners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God and said, “As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!… (Luther, Preface to Latin Writings, Dillenberger, p.11) How dreadfully paradoxical: that one who devotes himself to the ascetic life of strict monastic observance with its daily round of community prayer and common life, and who has immersed himself in biblical study, including the learning of both Greek and Hebrew, in order to go beyond the limits of the Latin Vulgate and bring himself even closer to the original words and text of the Scriptures, should find himself in such a disturbed state. Luther despairs of his own salvation and finds nothing that he either has done or can do to be capable of providing a remedy. His words are reminiscent of the words of Eliphaz rebuking Job: Distress and anguish fill him with terror/ troubles overwhelm him…because he shakes his fist at God/ and vaunts himself against the Almighty....(15.24‐25) Luther is aware that such profound despair approaches the negative limit of the human soul. In the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas, whom Luther called “the greatest chatterbox among the scholastic theologians,” sees despair as an aversion from the immutable good that is God and thus contrary to the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, each of which has God as its object. It is thus among the greatest of sins; it leads to the death of the soul, and is thus unforgivable 3 �(ST IIa IIae, 20, 1 & 3). Nevertheless, the distraught Luther keeps raging—and reading: Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place… (which is the first chapter of Romans, where Paul, quoting the prophet Habakuk (2.4) states: For in the gospel the righteousness (dikaiosunē) of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous (˙ò díkaios) will live by faith.”(Romans 1.16‐17, NIV) Luther continues: …most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted…There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous (one) of God—(the just man) is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which the merciful God justifies us by faith. Here I felt that I was altogether born again and entered paradise itself through open gates. Thereupon I ran through scriptures from memory…and I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word ‘righteous of God.’ Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to Paradise. What does this passive righteousness mean? Could it really be so that the arguments of moral philosophy from the ancients and the scholastics whom he was studying and teaching; his following the strict rules of his order; and the prescriptions and mandates of the Old and New Testaments; and his regimen of fasting and prayer, with frequent reception of the sacraments—that all of this effort and these works were needless and useless for salvation? That God imputes or attributes righteous‐ ness or justice to the believer because of the obedience of Christ? Is this the paradox of the cross, that in it death and gift coincide? — the paradox that Paul says is at once a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks (1 Cor 1.23) This is Luther’s seminal—what should we call it? — insight, epiphany, experience, which comes to him while “beating importunately upon Paul.”— as life‐changing as his being thrown to the ground in the storm earlier. From his Table Talks, we learn that this realization occurred to him in the heated room (think of Descartes 100 years later, in similar circumstances—two vastly different kinds of certainty!) of his study in the tower of the Augustinian cloister when he was pondering Paul —his celebrated Tower Experience of 1519—two years after he has sent his famous Disputation on the Power of Indulgences (Ninety –five Theses) to Archbishop Albrecht. It’s analogous to the moment described in Confessions VIII.12.29, when Augustine hears the voice of a child on a swing from a neighboring garden singing, “Tolle, lege; tolle lege—Take up and read; take up and read,” which prompts him to open his Scriptures to a passage in Romans 13, whereby “instantly…by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart—all gloom of doubt vanished away.” 4 �Certainty –at last! Suffice it to say that these moments of realization for both are not simply the work of reason, but neither are they wholly ineffable. Augustine writes, “For You converted me to yourself –Convertisti enim ad te.” Both leave us wondering about exactly what has happened and how; both move from being heart sick to being heart struck. Augustine leaves his common law wife of many years, mother of his son Adeodatus, and his profession as a rhetorician, and then presents himself for baptism to Bishop Ambrose of Milan. Luther now reads Augustine’s lengthy, late treatise On the Spirit and the Letter, finding his own reading of Paul on righteousness confirmed, for the most part. For both Augustine and Luther, it might be said that the way up and out is only by means of the way down. As different as each is as an individual, the anguish felt by both of them is a necessary, integral part of what each comes to experience and realize. Augustine summarizes the process with the most famous line of his Confessions: “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless (inquietum) until they rest in thee. (1.1.1) Luther’s disquiet has been more harrowing and agonizing, bringing him to the brink of the spiritual death of despair. He is convinced that whatever he might do cannot count for anything as far as justifying him before God. All of this endless, active, toilsome, fruitless labor of achieving salvation on his own, would be like me trying to get across College Creek by rowing ever more vigorously on my ergometer. As he looks about him first at the life of the monastery and university, and then at the devotional piety of the ordinary Christians of Wittenberg, Luther sees two varieties of bondage that appear to him to stem from a common source: adherence to law. What may surprise us is that this includes all laws—the human laws of the social order, the natural law so central to the philosophers, and even the divine law of the Torah, as he just said explicitly. But then there is the gospel itself, transformed into a moral catechism, an additional set of prescriptions “threatening us with righteousness and wrath.” In his Lectures on Galatians 1519, Luther claims that such a reading is tantamount to a perversion and betrayal of the gospel, “teaching people nothing but decrees of popes and traditions of men….treated in such a way that it does not differ at all from laws and moral precepts.” (LG I.176) He recognizes a deep spiritual kinship with Paul, the apostle who was thrown off his horse on the road to Damascus, hearing a voice that turned him around, who was the first to come to the Galatians, proclaiming what God had achieved through Jesus the Messiah both in justification and with the gift of the Holy Spirit; the very Paul who then finds upon his return to them that his message had been modified by other preachers from Jerusalem who claimed that justification is incomplete without also observing the works of the law, such as circumcision and the ceremonial law of the Torah; Jesus himself had observed these laws and so‐‐these preachers say‐‐must the Galatians. Paul, with characteristic zeal both rebukes them and underlines his original message: You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus 5 � Christ was portrayed as crucified… Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? So Abraham “believed God and it was cre‐ dited to him as righteousness.” (Paul here quotes Genesis 15.6) Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. (Galatians, 3.1‐8; see also Romans 4. 9 ff) In Paul’s reading of Genesis, Abraham’s righteousness is credited to him not because of his adherence to or reliance upon the works of the law but through his unwav‐ ering faith in God’s promise that despite their advanced age, he with Sarah will become the father of many nations. Luther notes that in this Paul… …totally demolishes reliance on our own righteousness, because there is need of a far different righteousness – a righteousness beyond all works of the Law, namely, a righteousness of the works of God and His grace. (LG 2.223) Luther realizes from this that it is by faith alone (sola fide) and divine grace alone (sola gratia) that he was relieved of the torments of despair he experienced. Recalling the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector who go up to the temple to pray, as related in Luke’s gospel (10.9‐14), he identifies himself with the latter, who, standing at a distance, beats his breast in contrition and prays, “God have mercy on me a sinner.” Luther emphasizes the importance of the final lines of Jesus in this telling parable: I tell you this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled , and those who humble them‐ selves will be exalted. (10.14) Is this the only way then? Where is this faith: in the heart? in the head? in works? Luther throughout his Lectures on Galatians, both this early work of 1519 and the larger later Lectures of 1535, stresses that there are two ways in which human beings can be justified, and they are as contrary as the ways of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke. Listen and consider here his critique of the Philosopher: …there is the external way, by works, on the basis of one’s own strength. Of such a nature is human righteousness, which we acquire by practice and by habit. This is the kind of righteousness Aristotle and the other philosophers describe – the kind produced by the laws of the state and the church in cere‐ monies, the kind produced at the behest of reason and by prudence. For they think that one becomes righteous by doing righteous things, temper‐ ate by doing temperate things, and the like…the kind of righteousness the Law of Moses, even the Decalogue itself, also brings about , namely, when one serves God out of fear of punishment or because of the promise of a reward, does not swear by God’s name, honors one’s parents…etc. This is a servile righteousness; it is mercenary, feigned, specious, external, tempor‐ 6 � al, worldly, human. It profits nothing for the glory to come but receives in this life its reward, glory, riches, honor, power, friendship, well‐being, or at least peace and quiet, and fewer evils than those who act otherwise. This is how Christ describes the Pharisees and how St. Augustine describes the Romans in the first book of The City of God. (I.8) (LG, 2.219) Luther speaks here not only from his knowledge of Aristotle, whose Ethics he has taught at Erfurt and Wittenberg, and from the Scriptures to which he now devotes himself exclusively, but especially from his own immense struggle to make himself worthy. A preoccupation with laws and traditions leads to the kind of busyness with works that leads to a forgetfulness of love. As Luther reads in Galatians 5.14, “For the whole Law is fulfilled in this one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” he is prompted to ask: Why then do we busy ourselves with many books? Why do we look for many teachers? Why do we exert ourselves with works and righteousness? All laws, all books, and all works must be tested according to this inward feeling and disposition of the heart…external patterns do not motivate us us sufficiently, because they are not felt and are not alive. This pattern however is felt within; it is alive, and it teaches most effectively, not with letters, not with words, and not with thoughts, but with the actual feeling of experience... a living indication, an inward reminder, a proof…of what you owe your neighbor. You owe him exactly what you owe yourself, and…from the same disposition of heart. (LG, 5.351) In contrast to this inner disposition, seeking indulgences, keeping vigils, building churches and chantries, observing memorials, and anniversaries “serve gain more than love.” So this inward disposition of love, this feeling is the pattern then?! Isn’t this going back to nature, Aristotle’s central notion in his Nicomachean Ethics, which, by the way, neither enjoins love of neighbor universally nor allows the possibility of friendship with a god because of the problem of inequality in both instances (1158b29‐1159a5). So is this disposition of love that Luther finds not only in Paul, but in Deuteronomy 30.14 –“the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so you may obey it (and I Peter as well) simply and purely good? Luther here remembers that moral theology might warn that “nature is a most deceitful emulator of grace,” to which he replies, ”I admit that nature tries mightily to emulate grace, but only as far as to the cross” where “it turns aside completely and fights against grace,” being offended. (LG 5.353) The cross becomes “the Lydian touchstone” (used to assay silver and gold) enabling me to assay whether I am truly a friend of my neighbor. How so? Because it points to, demands (?) something beyond what is pleasant or advantageous or useful or even agreeably virtuous in my neighbor, viz., in its highest form the agapē that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13, the highest , ever enduring love. Luther recalls the formulation in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 7.13) where Jesus says, “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them,” and then confesses the “bold opinion” that perhaps the self‐ interested love that forgets neighbor and looks intently on its own interests alone 7 �can become “the right kind of love when one forgets oneself and serves only one’s neighbor.” The love that is wrong when it is simply “in itself” is of a different order when it is “outside itself in God.” (LG, 5.35) He then continues: …with my affection for myself and my love for myself completely dead, I look for nothing but that God’s completely undefiled will be done in me. This is arduous and very difficult, and for nature it is impossible. (LG, 5.356) This becomes possible only “once the spirit of love has been received by the hearing of faith.” Self‐serving adages such as “I must first be a neighbor to myself” or” I’m my own best friend” or “Charity begins at home,” unqualified by the recognition that “You must be a neighbor to someone else,” are “heathen” and “perverted,” contrary to the spirit. As political beings we must look beyond the self to the field of the other as neighbor and to the even larger social realm, where each must be subject to “the laws of emperors, of popes, of towns, of states, and of provinces only”—here he reminds us – “as Christ says, (Mt.17.27) to avoid giving offense to them and in order not to injure love and peace.” (LG, 5.358), thereby avoiding schisms and dissensions. Luther now confesses that he is “in the habit of calling certain papal laws acts of tyranny”… because they “are merely devices for snaring money by means of indulgences “ serving “godlessness,” destroying “true righteousness and love.” Then, quite surprisingly, he adds, “Nevertheless, for the sake of love they should be observed wherever contempt for them would cause offense.”(LG 5.358) All the same, Paul tells the Galatians to walk by the Spirit and not to gratify the desires of the flesh (Galatians 5.16), and here Luther, again citing Augustine, (Retractations 1.24) notes that not having or not acting on these desires can happen only “when we no longer have our mortal flesh;” even the saints are still partly carnal, though spiritual inwardly: No one can avoid desires, but it is possible for us to keep from obeying them.(LG 5.361) Those in the church are indeed in the process of being healed, but are not fully healthy: “For the latter reason we are called ‘flesh’; for the former, ‘spirit’”(LG 5. 364) “It is the whole man who loves chastity, and the same whole man is titillated by the enticements of lust ‐‐ willing and unwilling.” Thus he recalls Augustine’s struggle with the divided will in Confessions 8. And Luther surprises us readers again: “Yet this too is the glory of the grace of God; it makes us enemies of ourselves…this is how it overcomes sin…the leaven is hidden in three measures until the whole is leavened ,” citing what is perhaps Matthew’s shortest parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” (Mt 13.33) “Until the whole batch was leavened.” This process takes time and effects a substantial change; flour and water and salt and yeast become bread once the bread has risen and been baked. Paul goes on to say to his Galatians, “For these (flesh and spirit) are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would.” 8 �Luther here exclaims in amazement, ”Look at how bold the apostle is!” saying “what we want cannot be done even though we ( the scholastic theologians) have established the will (certainly on Aristotle’s authority) as the queen and mistress of all our powers and actions. Luther is perhaps recalling the passage in Book 3 of the Nicomachaean Ethics, where Aristotle identifies the rational human being as the source of actions, and deliberation (bouleusis) sets out to discover actions within one’s own power to perform. He then says that what is deliberated and what is chosen are the same thing, adding that “if, among the things that are up to us, the desired thing that has been deliberated upon is what is chosen, choice (proairesis) would be the deliberate desire of things that are up to us.” (1113a 3‐10) Desire is thus modified and informed by thought and choice, and acts in accord with what one of good character would do. But Paul, in Romans, clearly contradicts this and says, ”But I am carnal, sold under sin. The good that I want I do not do. The evil that I do not want, this I do.” (Romans 7.14) Now Luther asks: “If one who is righteous and saintly complains of his sin in this way, where will the sinner and ungodly appear with their works among those who are good in general, and morally good at that? The grace of God has not made the will per‐ fectly free. Will the sinner make himself free? Why are we not showing good sense? (LG, 5.364) Philosophy is to no avail here and has even led us astray in our quest for self ‐ knowledge. The Book of Psalms is a better resource for self–knowledge than the Nicomacean Ethics; remember King David’s pouring out his heart to God: “in sin my mother conceived me.. Still you insist upon sincerity of heart; in my inmost being you teach me wisdom…My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; O God, do not spurn a broken, humbled heart.” Psalm 51. 7‐8; 19. This struggle between spirit and flesh is not resolved in this life, even when the flesh is subdued in some respects—I‘m reminded of the colleague who having stopped smoking for a number of years told me that if she were to be diagnosed with a terminal illness, she would take up cigarettes again.—If the heart is irresolute, no work is resolute either, which “prevents us from fulfilling the law perfectly.” (LG 5.365) Paul has no knowledge of Aristotle, but Luther who does understands that the flesh ‐‐ the whole human being as descended from fallen Adam ‐‐ the flesh is the one condition that mitigates and impairs the life of the spirit. The battle between spirit and flesh prevents us from fulfilling the Law perfectly, so that “in every work we need the forgiving mercy of God and must say, and here Luther remembers Psalm 143.2 “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for no man living is righteous before thee.” Luther in his later, longer commentary on Galatians of 1535 9 �encapsulates this paradoxical condition of the human being as “simul justus et peccator” – at once/at the same time righteous and a sinner. To consider further the meaning of this formulation, we can now turn to what Luther calls with uncharacteristic understatement his “little book.” On the Freedom of a Christian In the year after Luther publishes these lectures on Paul to the Galatians, he writes one of his most popular, concise, and influential works, On the Freedom of a Christian, a mere twenty‐five pages in length in the online version. In it he sets out to determine what a Christian is and what the nature of the freedom obtained for the believer by Christ is. It begins with the enunciation of two apparently contradictory conclusions (see handout): A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all things and subject to no one. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant in all things, subject to everyone. (FC, 18) Both of these are distilled from two passages in Paul: I am free in all things and have made myself a servant of everyone. 1 Cor 9.19 You shall owe no one anything, except that you love one another. Rom 13.8 As menschen, anthropoi, persons, we are at once spiritual and physical beings, soul and body, and thus what Luther terms the internal and external man. The soul itself as the internal aspect of our being is ultimately unaltered by the states that affect the body‐‐health or sickness, freedom or imprisonment. There is nothing but the word of God in the gospel as preached by Jesus that can bring life to this interior, spiritual man; Luther here quotes the Gospel of John: I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me lives forever (11.1); and of Matthew: Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (4.4). Everything else is dispensable; belief in these words is the fulfillment of all the commandments and the only piety. Faith alone is sufficient and the only work is the establishment of the word and Christ within the soul, by constantly exercising and strengthening it. (FC,22) It is apparent how crucial for the believer access to the Bible, the word of God, is. More specifically, though, what of the commandments and the law? It seems they are to be studied and what they prescribe is to be attempted only “So that man might see within them his own incapacity and learn to despair of himself,” and of all that she might hope to do by her own efforts. Proof? Consider the prescription in Exodus 20.17: You shall not covet… Who doesn’t have such desires; who, then, can fulfill the law? Self‐knowledge again: no one, save God, who declared these laws and alone fulfills them in Christ, the Word, who is at once commandment (as divine 10 �Word) and fulfillment (as incarnate Word). (FC 24.) Recall the words of Jesus in Matthew 5.17: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. These are the words of promise to whoever firmly adheres to them in faith, enabling them to become children of God (John 1.12) Good works alone are incapable of this. Thus released from commandments and laws by the life, death and resurrection of Christ, a radically new freedom is born. Luther continues: That is Christian freedom: faith alone, which does not lead us to live in idleness or do wickedness, but instead means that we require no works to obtain piety and salvation…there is no greater dishonor than for the soul not to believe God (about this, thus denying God, and raising) her own mind up as an idol in her heart….(whereas to honor God through faith, God honors her in turn, and deems her pious and truthful…FC 25) This is all effected through Christ. Luther now presents one of his most striking images, that of the believing soul as a bride wearing the wedding ring of faith, “dowered with the eternal righteousness of her bridegroom Christ,” now absolved in this joyous exchange and unfettered from all her sins. He sees this as the fulfillment of the first commandment of the Decalogue (Exodus 20.2‐3): I, the Lord, am your God…You shall not have other gods besides me; the only act on the part of the soul is to ‘plight its troth’ and thus “faith alone fulfills all commandments…without all other works.” (FC 26). Note here that Luther speaks movingly of the individual soul. His use of the marriage simile is thus not the traditional one of the church as the bride of Christ, derived from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (5.22‐33), where the apostle compares the intimate relationship of Christ to the church (ekklesía) to the marriage relation of husband and wife in becoming one flesh. Moreover, the “You” of the Exodus passage is addressed to all of Israel. As Luther continues his reflection on the internal man, he adds that faith empowers the believing soul with both priestly and kingly powers: as a priest standing invisibly before God and interceding for others; as a king having spiritual sovereignty over the body and all material things, so that … I can improve in my soul without the aid of any object, and even death and suffering must serve me and be useful to my salvation (FC 28) As he completes his exposition of duties of the Internal Man, of the soul as priest and sovereign, he looks to the current teaching and preaching practice of the church: There are also many who preach and lecture about Christ in order to evoke sympathy with Him, to rage against the Jews, or thereby to act in some other even more childish manner. However, Christ should and must be preached such that faith grows and is preserved in me and you. (FC 30) 11 �Even without the perspective of the past 500 years, it is striking how distant in tone this passage is from Luther’s later horrific diatribe (1543) Of the Jews and their Lies, which calls for the civil authorities to banish the Jews and to burn their synagogues. Luther now turns to the external man. If faith does all of this and is in all things sufficient to make one righteous, how can good works have any place in the life of the believer and why are they commanded? Aren’t things as fine as if I’d won the spiritual lottery? What a bargain! Nothing needs be done. By now we should not be surprised at Luther’s reply: No, my dear man, not so. It would be fine if you were solely an internal man and became completely spiritual and internal, but this will not happen until Judgment Day…there is only a beginning…which the apostle called…the first fruits of the Spirit. (FC 31) Paul also says that creation “yearns and groans inwardly, eagerly awaiting the adoption and redemption of our body” (Romans 8.22‐23). The flesh wants to serve the world and follow its own desires—the will balks despite the faith of the soul. Idleness gives free rein to concupiscence, requiring the restraining discipline of good works, done “gratuitously and freely out of love,”(FC 32), not seeking from this any benefit or salvation, “but only to please God.” (FC 34) Our nature is such that it wants to plume itself on its acts of virtue, laying belief and its promise aside, making both the works and the worker “evil and damned.”(FC 36) The commandments and the law each have their place, but they must be understood as the source from which self knowledge begins and contrition” flows, “ the heart must first be broken, and faith then “flows “from the assurances of God. Luther earlier neatly summarized this in this way: We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds, but having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds. (Disputation Concerning Scholastic Theology,§ 40, 1517) Luther continues to use this metaphor of flowing in the final section of this treatise as he considers our relationships to each other. Once I realize that my freedom flows to me from a loving God through Christ, requiring that I do nothing more than believe it is so with a truly believing heart, I look to my neighbor and become a Christ, so that there ”flows from faith and from love a free, willing, happy life of serving one’s neighbor.” (FC 39) Note here the intended range of this flow. It is meant to be universal, so that the work of love, of charity or agape, is the work of all of the faithful by virtue of their baptism and is not restricted to the religious professionals and specialists—priests, monks, nuns, and all professed religious, and Luther again affirms that this work is quite distinct from the saving power of faith. Sin boldly… Each of us thus has a vocation, a Beruf, a calling that is more than a mere job, which puts us at the service of others and not for our own benefit, whether material or spiritual. This call is an immense challenge, in which we can never achieve 12 �perfection here. The reformation is thus neither a single moment of history that occurred 500 years ago nor a single event in a human life, but an ongoing endeavor, to be accomplished only at the end of time and with the coming of Christ. THE Reformation has not happened yet. Meanwhile, the demands of this life can be daunting and discouraging. Luther’s close friend, Philipp Melancthon, 24 years old, a brilliant Greek scholar and theologian, found himself overcome with uncertainty, indecision, and a feeling of utter inadequacy while Luther was away, secluded in hiding at the Wartburg Castle, after the Diet at Worms. He wrote to Luther asking him what he should do in the wake of the rapid and chaotic developments in Wittenberg and elsewhere in Saxony during the reformer’s long absence. Luther as pastor and friend replies to his young colleague with a concern and compassion that at once embody his understanding of Christian freedom and at the same time shows his great pastoral sensitivity to Melancthon’s anguish and hesitation: If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are in this world we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13). It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. (Letter to Melancthon, August 1, 1521) Grace is not a fiction, and neither is sin. This life is a struggle and a battle in which choices must be made, work must be done, often without the requisite knowledge and resolve that make them right and certain. We need to recall again how and why Luther comes to this understanding of sin and grace -- his account of his own existential struggle, which we considered as we began here. He began with his ardent desire for God and his experience of willing the good, yet being unable to control the direction of his will, which resulted in sin. This led him first to the depths of despair and then to the recognition that he could only do what he ought, what he truly wanted in the highest sense to do, by going outside of himself, by living in Christ the creative Word who made and redeemed him and all who believe. In his anguish, Melancthon, whom Luther recognizes as a “preacher of grace,” demonstrates this same striving and transcendent belief. It is to such a one that Luther can say with discernment and compassion: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world.” It seems we then come full circle. Luther concludes this letter with the image of the Agnus Dei, the spotless lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the very image that Bach and Picander celebrate and lift up in the music and poetry of the opening chorus, the Exordium, of the Matthäus Passion, when the ripieno choir of sopranos sings the chorale O Lamm Gottes Unschuldig in the brilliant key of G Major over the turbulent double chorus beneath in the key of e minor, the key of grieving yet with hope, here, where we all are. 13 � Bibliography Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1. Fathers of The English Dominican Province, trans., New York, 1947. Arisotle. Nicomachean Ethics, H. Rackham trans., Harvard, 1982. Hendrix, Scott H., Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer, Yale, 2015. Kolb, Robert; Dingel, Irene; Batka, Lubomir, eds. Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, Oxford, 2014. Luther, Martin, Luther’s Works, Vol. 27, Lectures on Galatians, 1519, St. Louis, 1964. (LG) Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, 1535, Middleton Edition, London, 1953. On the Freedom of a Christian with Related Texts. Tryntje Helfferich, Indianapolis, 2013. (FC) Mellers, Wilfrid, Bach and the Dance of God, Oxford, 1980. Oberman, Heiko. Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, Eileen Walischer‐ Schwartzbart, trans., Yale, 1987. Roper, Lyndal. Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, New York, 2016. Shilling, Heinz, Martin Luther: Rebel in an Age of Upheaval, Ronald Johnson, trans., Oxford, 2017. 14 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. 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Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 14 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Microsoft Word document Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Be a Sinner and Sin Boldly: Martin Luther and Christian Freedom Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on November 10, 2017 by Thomas May as part of the Formal Lecture Series. 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Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Relation A related resource <a title="Audio Recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3454">Sound recording</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context May_Thomas_2017-11-10_Typescript Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/91e10cd46e110e7cd7721a227a44a306.mp3 492b9be77965bbc93606f0d9031b2391 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:01:23 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource At the Crossroads of the Cave: Plato and Heidegger on History and Nihilism Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 17, 2017 by Gregory Fried as part of the Formal Lecture Series. 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Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Fried_Gregory_2017-11-17 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d0c7b6450475c58968f5ffb667e0d2d4.mp3 9da145a137668977246b0d0ecb6043c5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:58:33 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Be a Sinner and Sin Boldly: Martin Luther and Christian Freedom Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 10, 2017 by Thomas May as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource May, Thomas Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-11-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context May_Thomas_2017-11-10 Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3457">Typescript</a> Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a704208e72c40428abc052f69004b701.mp3 edce5fa96846e8e65c88525d493057a2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:03:15 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The Student</em>, by Anton Chekhov: A Story About Us Told and Glanced At Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 3, 2017, by Louis Petrich as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Petrich, Louis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-11-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Petrich_Louis_2017-11-03 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ebc24ecf310415e9cefbb4c4d417dcb2.mp3 5f6ca98b53a7bceaddc8a40bfcb0a0a7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:00:06 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource God and Philosophy in Descartes' <em>Meditations</em> Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on October 27, 2017 by Henry Higuera as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Higuera, Henry, 1952- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-10-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Higuera_Henry_2017-10-27 Relation A related resource <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/4052" title="Typescript">Typescript</a> Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/96f39e087be09ec42c5c1ae1cdc5462f.mp3 79cd7eae95159a64a4845a249fe6dab2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:57:00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recognizing Odysseus Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 22, 2017 by Margaret Kirby as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kirby, Margaret Anne, 1956- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-09-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Ancient Greek Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Kirby_Margaret_2017-09-22 Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3186">Typescript</a> Friday night lecture Tutors