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Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther

29/11/2019

I have resolved, since moving house with dozens of boxes of books, including an entire bookshelf’s worth to be read, not to buy any more second-hand books if I can help it, but to use public libraries, except for books for birthday and Christmas presents, which I’ll purchase from independent bookshops. Libraries, in Austerity Britain, are under constant threat of closure . They are being forced to justify their existence, which includes tallying books taken out by library users. Since 2010, more than 478 libraries have closed in England, Wales and Scotland.*

There is a wonderful library in Brecon, staffed by exceptionally friendly, helpful librarians. It is currently in transit, having closed in November in order to make the move to a new site adjacent to the Brecon Museum. Before they closed, they allowed users to take out a nice big pile of books to keep them going over the break, and one of my serendipitous finds was Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther by Elizabeth von Arnim.

I had never read this author, and assumed she was German, but actually she was a New Zealander, cousin to Katherine Mansfield, and her first marriage was to a Prussian aristocrat, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin. This interested me, as my great-great aunt Lucy (pictured below with her two children), who was born in Kashmir, also married a Prussian - Count Radolin Radolinski, Chamberlain to the royal Prussian court; privy councillor; supreme steward to Kaiser Friedrich III and imperial German ambassador.

In this really excellent epistolatory novel, von Arnim lays out Fraulein Schmidt’s thoughts and a whole cast of beautifully-drawn characters so skilfully, using the device of a one-sided correspondence ie Fraulein Schmidt’s letters to Mr Anstruther. It was published in 1907, seven years before the First World War must have put a temporary stop to young English gentlemen travelling to Germany to learn the language and culture.

I loved reading this, and will definitely be recommending it not only to friends but also possibly laying in a copy for my baby granddaughters for some future reading. Yes, it’s that good!

*https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/15/tories-libraries-social-mobility-conservative

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Be Kind

13/11/2019

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We are in the middle of some reconstruction work in our garden, and we were moving a large pile of rubble from one place to another on a cold and wet day. It brought to mind a passage in Primo Levi’s book about his time in the work camp at Auschwitz (I have read many memoirs of the Holocaust, so I hope I’m right here regarding the author), when he gives an account of a particular work detail.
Arduous as our labour was, there was of course no comparison. We had warm, weatherproof clothing on, and we had eaten a good breakfast with two more square meals to come that day. We took a coffee break mid-morning. We were doing the work willingly, in order to rewild our garden. We have a safe, dry, warm house and comfortable beds to retreat to, and, most importantly, we were not under extreme duress. Art Spiegelman, in his graphic novel Maus, conveys, eloquently, in the character of his father, what it felt like to be in Auschwitz.

Those prisoners in Auschwitz, in extreme cold, were made to move a huge pile of stones from one place to another, only to be forced, the next day, to return them to their former place. Thus were they deprived of perhaps the only available meaningful aspect of the task, that is the small human pleasure of doing a job well - one of thousands of examples of the deliberate cruelty of the Nazi regime, where the bullying tendencies of those in power were given free rein over the powerless.

I distinctly remember, as a schoolgirl, seeing photographs of the extermination camps for the first time - my friend Geraldine was reading a book containing pictures showing piles of corpses discovered by the Allies. I recall the visceral shock it gave me. I used to think, as a teenager and young adult, that the Nazi regime could never have ascended to power in Britain - that we British were too reasonable for such extreme views to take hold.

With decades of life lived since then (and some highly valued friendships made with kind, mild, reasonable Germans), I have come to believe that no nation is more cruel than any other, but sadly, there is all too much evidence that individual human cruelty is alive and well in every part of the globe, even in those countries where past suffering has not resulted in compassion or understanding, but has led to further persecution of minorities. The list is long.

A great teacher of mankind exhorted “Be ye kind”, and thankfully there are many who strive to do just that. It doesn’t have to be of heroic proportions - perhaps just taking care to include someone who is sitting on the periphery of a group looking a bit shy. Which brings me to my further reflection while moving those stones in our garden - on a memorial I saw in Aachen, on a Christmas market visit, ‘In memory of all the women of Aachen, who ensured the survival of the people of our city through the war and who, after the end of the war, worked exceptionally hard to make it inhabitable again’ (English translation). The Trummerfrauen cleared away the rubble in Germany left from the Allied bombing with their bare hands, in the absence of available tools.

I was shown a kindness on that visit by a stranger, which prompted the following poem:

Aachen at Advent

Wardens at the bronze door allowed me in, having
confirmed I came to pray, not see the Emperor’s gold.
Sitting on the crowded pew beneath the dome,
my bladder protested in that cold it would not last through Mass.
I turned to my neighbour, a plain straight-faced German,
and asked directions. Instead, getting to her feet
and disdaining her crutch propped against the wall nearby
she grasped my wrist, pulled me the length of the aisle
lumbering from side to side with some difficulty but no complaint
waited for me and, we hurrying back just in time,
picked up our hymn books, the young men solemn
processing past with ceremonial swords,
and sang together the familiar tunes of childhood,
praises to a loving God shared through a century and more
echoed by Tommies and Fritzes on entrenched battlefields
where, interrupted by death and leave, occasional laughter
(Gott Mit Uns, We got mittens too), they sang their songs
and spoke our Lord's Prayer in our separate tongues.

In the street I watched the smiling hurdy-gurdy man,
his hand strapped to the turning handle,
and the riders in a row, they and their
gentle patient mounts black caped and capped
the Rathaus backdropped high behind the Christmas stalls.

Footnote:
The Pfalz in Aachen was the location of the most important
pilgrimage north of the Alps in the Middle Ages, and the site of Charlemagne's
tomb.

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Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther

Be Kind

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