THE BERLIN JOURNAL

A Magazine from the American Academy in Berlin Number Thirty-Four 2020–21

Race to the Top by Mosi Secret

The Roman Roots of Racial Capitalism by Nandini B. Pandey

An Interview about Whiteness with Claudia Rankine

Greta Garbo and Sarah Bernhardt by Lois W. Banner and James N. Green

Fiction by Alexandra Kleeman and Ayana Mathis

Artist Portfolio Amy Kurzweil

Someone’s Daughter by Naghmeh Sohrabi CONTENTS

We are deeply grateful to focus features notebook 4 32 84

6 Race to the Top 34 left ALONE 86 angela Merkel Receives by Mosi Secret by Lois W. Banner the Henry A. Kissinger Prize

10 little White Overcoats 38 sarah Bernhardt’s Knee 88 the 2019 Richard C. Holbrooke by Robert Reid-Pharr by James N. Green Workshop

14 the Subject Shouldn’t Change 42 Jellyfish 88 Beyond the Lecture STEFAN an interview by Alexandra Kleeman Podcast with Claudia Rankine 46 aRTIST PORTFOLIO 89 an Evening with VON HOLTZBRINCK 16 the Roman Roots of Racial Amy Kurzweil Kent Nagano Capitalism 54 fRanklin, 1969 90 pRofiles in Scholarship by Nandini B. Pandey by Ayana Mathis 92 book Reviews 22 a History of Violence 58 fResh Air by Liliane Weissberg, by Erik Linstrum by Susan Bernofsky Veronika Fuechtner, and Paul Reitter 26 ATtacking Zwarte Piet 60 No Refuge 96 alumni Books by Allison Blakely by Hakim Abderrezak 97 supporters and Donors 64 Gate of Tears for his generous support by Nathalie Peutz of this issue of the Berlin Journal. 67 someone’s Daughter by Naghmeh Sohrabi 72 the Andrew W. Mellon Workshop Ronald Radano, Gavin Steingo, Ciraj Rassool, Berit Ebert, and Moira Fradinger CONTRIBUTORS PRESIDENT’S NOTE

The Past in the Present

Fall 2020 Holtzbrinck Fellow Mosi at Boston University. University of Abderrezak, the spring 2021 history at the University of the Secret is a Brooklyn-based writer. Southern California professor Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Western Cape, South Africa. Berit Robert Reid-Pharr is a professor emerita of history Lois W. Banner is Humanities, is an associate profes- Ebert is head of programming and of African and African American the fall 2020 Anna-Maria Kellen sor of French and Francophone development at the American studies at Harvard University and Fellow. James N. Green, the spring studies at the University of Minne- Academy in Berlin. Moira Fradinger, the spring 2021 Anna-Maria Kellen 2021 John P. Birkelund Fellow, sota. Nathalie Peutz is an associate the spring 2020 Andrew W. Mellon Fellow. Claudia Rankine, the Fred- teaches Latin American history at professor of anthropology at New Fellow in the Humanities, is an erick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Brown University. Alexandra Klee- York University Abu Dhabi and the associate professor of comparative Yale University, was a Distinguished man is an assistant professor of spring 2021 Berthold Leibinger literature at Yale University. Spring Visitor at the Academy in fall 2019. creative writing at The New School Fellow. Spring 2021 Holtzbrinck 2020 Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow Nandini B. Pandey is the spring and a future Mary Ellen von der Fellow Naghmeh Sohrabi teaches Liliane Weissberg is the Christopher “All changed, changed utterly.” Is Yeats’s verse about the 1916 in Minneapolis, and a series of similarly shocking events. 2021 Nina Maria Gorrissen Fellow Heyden Fellow in Fiction. Cartoon- Middle East history at Brandeis H. Browne Distinguished Professor Irish uprising and its bloody end an epigram for 2020? The Academy-affiliated writers and scholars contend in this issue in History; she teaches classics at ist and writer Amy Kurzweil is the University. Ronald Radano is a in Arts and Sciences at the Univer- the University of Madison-Wiscon- fall 2020 Dirk Ippen Fellow. Emma professor of African cultural studies sity of Pennsylvania. Paul Reitter, disruption of ordinary life by the Covid-19 pandemic, which with the past and present of this subject: Fall 2020 fellow Mosi sin. Spring 2021 Axel Springer Allen is the cartoon editor of the and music at the University of a spring 2018 John P. Birkelund has claimed around a million deaths worldwide, surpasses Secret presents an excerpt from his forthcoming book, about Fellow Erik Linstrum teaches New Yorker. Writer Ayana Mathis Wisconsin-Madison; he was the Fellow, teaches in the German anything since the end of World War II. There is a sudden glut a 1960s effort to integrate a Southern boarding school; an history at the University of Virginia. is the fall 2020 Mary Ellen von der spring 2019 Andrew W. Mellon department at Ohio State Univer- of articles by international affairs analysts about an impend- interview with Yale professor and 2019 Distinguished Visitor Allison Blakely is the inaugural Heyden Fellow in Fiction. Fall 2020 Fellow in the Humanities. Gavin sity. Spring 2020 Anna-Maria ing restructuring of the global order. The future of globaliza- Claudia Rankine addresses white privilege and the mirage Gerhard Casper Fellow in spring Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow Steingo is an associate professor Kellen Fellow Veronika Fuechtner tion, a phenomenon that has shaped the period since the of progress that clouds discussion when “you can read the 2021 and a professor emeritus of Susan Bernofsky teaches writing of music at Princeton University. is an associate professor of German revolutions of 1989, has been thrown into question by both paper, turn on the television, and see that black kids are European and comparative history at Columbia University. Hakim Ciraj Rassool is a professor of studies at Dartmouth College. the virus and rising populism. Business leaders are recon- being killed.” Racism, of course, is hardly endemic to the US sidering their supply chains, and some American political alone, as Boston University historian and spring 2021 fellow leaders speak of “decoupling” from a rising China. Experts Allison Blakely examines in the continuing debate over the the berlin journal the american academy C. Boyden Gray, Vartan Gregorian, support agree that US–German relations are at a postwar nadir, and Dutch folkloric figure of “Black Pete,” a centuries-old char- in berlin Andrew S. Gundlach, Florian the talk of trade war between the US and Europe after the acter in Christmas stories and plays. Antiquity provides a Number Thirty-Four, Henckel von Donnersmarck, Stefan The Academy is funded primarily by November elections hangs in the air. It may be a characteris- somewhat hopeful counterpoint, as suggested by spring 2021 2020–21 president von Holtzbrinck, Dirk Ippen, private, tax-deductible donations. tic of modern times that we always feel we live in a moment fellow Nandini B. Pandey, a classicist at the University of Daniel Benjamin Wolfgang Ischinger, Josef Joffe, Contributions may be made: of crisis, but for once the claim seems justified. Wisconsin-Madison, in a fascinating essay on how ancient publisher Daniel Benjamin chief operating officer Michael M. Kellen, Michael S. Klein, in germany editor R. Jay Magill, Jr. Christian U. Diehl Joseph Koerner, John C. Kornblum, Quite a time to be assuming the leadership of an insti- Rome evolved a society of thriving diversity through the by bank transfer to: managing editor Tony Andrews Regine Leibinger, Wolfgang tution dedicated to deepening cultural and political ties extension of citizenship and the manumission of slaves. American Academy in Berlin advertising Mareike Clauß, Am Sandwerder 17–19 Malchow, Nina von Maltzahn, Berliner Sparkasse between the two greatest powers in the West. I arrived at Gender inequities and, conversely, the growing accep- Kelly Pocklington 14109 Berlin Kati Marton, Julie Mehretu, Nader BLZ 100 500 00 the American Academy in Berlin in August, after a flight on tance of individuals with hitherto marginalized or excluded design Susanna Dulkinys, Tel. +49 (30) 80 48 3-0 A. Mousavizadeh, Michael Müller Account: 660 000 9908 a near-empty plane and a stop at a nearby doctor’s office, gender identities, also focus the attention of Academy schol- Julia Sysmäläinen Fax +49 (30) 80 48 3-111 (ex officio), Sandra E. Peterson, IBAN: americanacademy.de Jeffrey A. Rosen, Volker where I was tested for the coronavirus. The Academy—with ars. Yale professor and spring 2020 fellow Moira Fradinger DE07 1005 0000 6600 0099 08 Copyright © 2020 Schlöndorff, Peter Y. Solmssen, its superb and innovative staff—was in full gear, arrang- and the Academy’s head of programs and development, Berit BIC: BELADEBEXXX American Academy in Berlin 14 East 60th Street, Suite 604 Anthony Vidler, Christine I. ing online programming, helping to acclimate three fellows Ebert, provide a lengthy overview of “Gender Dissidence in ISSN 1610-6490 New York, NY 10022 Wallich, Maureen White, Thomas in the united states who, because of dual citizenships, could get to Wannsee, the Twenty-First Century,” while fall 2020 fellows Lois Banner, Tel. +1 (212) 588-1755 Chatterton Williams, Andrew by check payable to: and working hard to secure the admission of the remaining of the University of Southern California, and James Green, cover image Morel Doucet, Jaded Fax +1 (212) 588-1758 Wylie, Leah Joy Zell American Academy in Berlin Moonlight (Gardenia), ceramic, 14 East 60th Street, Suite 604 scholars and writers still in the United States. of Brown University, examine how Greta Garbo and Sarah 2019. Image courtesy the artist founder Richard C. Holbrooke chairmen emeriti New York, NY 10022 My arrival in Berlin was genuinely exciting. I was in my Bernhardt each navigated and shaped the gender expecta- and Galerie Myrtis. Photo: David founding chairmen Thomas Gahl Hodges Burt, Karl M. von by bank transfer to: last months as a journalist here in 1994, when Ambassador tions of their times. Gary Lloyd. L. Farmer, Henry A. Kissinger, der Heyden ABA Number: 021000089 Richard Holbrooke announced the creation of the Academy. These are vital investigations at a time in which the calls Richard von Weizsäcker Bank: Citibank, NY Later, in spring 2004, I had the privilege of being an Academy for rectifying injustice are urgent. How serious the inter- Printed by Ruksaldruck, Berlin chairman Sandra E. Peterson trustees emeriti For the Benefit of: Morgan Stanley vice chairman Stefan von Diethart Breipohl, Norman Smith Barney LLC fellow. Even in today’s adverse circumstances, it is evident national and domestic divisions are now is something we Holtzbrinck Pearlstine Beneficiary Account: 40611172 that the Academy has grown tremendously, far beyond the will only be able to judge fully in hindsight. Nevertheless, to secretary John C. Kornblum FFC Account Name: American founding vision that inspired it. understand what is transpiring and why—through informed executive director emeritus Academy in Berlin The American Academy in Berlin is a Aside from the obvious health and economic conse- discussion, debate, reflection, and intellectual engagement— trustees Gary Smith FFC Account Number: 501(c)(3) organization under US tax law. quences of the pandemic, one unexpected effect has been to is the first crucial step in fully grasping the present. I’m proud Its latest annual financial report may Klaus Biesenbach, Manfred 876-043080-491 be obtained by writing to the American Bischoff, Leon Botstein, Martin throw into high relief a number of profoundly troubling soci- to be joining an institution dedicated to taking on these Academy in Berlin, 14 East 60th Street, Brand, Gahl Hodges Burt, Gerhard etal ills. None has been more prominent than America’s long, issues—one that is and will remain committed to the open Suite 604, New York, NY 10022 or the Charities Bureau, 28 Liberty Street, 15th Casper, Mathias Döpfner, Marina difficult struggle to achieve racial justice—a national ordeal exchange of ideas essential for doing so. Floor, New York, NY 10005. Kellen French, Hans-Michael Giesen, whose pain has been sharpened by the killing of George Floyd, Daniel Benjamin Race, Power, Empire

FOCUS Race to the Top by Mosi Secret 6

Little White Overcoats by Robert Reid-Pharr 10

The Subject Shouldn’t Change An Interview with Claudia Rankine 14

The Roman Roots of Racial Capitalism by Nandini B. Pandey 16

A History of Violence by Erik Linstrum 22

Attacking Zwarte Piet by Allison Blakely 26

Martin Waldseemüller, Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii alioru[m]que lustrationes (detail), Strasbourg, France (?), 1507. The Waldseemüller map is the first known document to name America ­(lower left), seen here with adjacent sheets of Europe and western Africa. The Waldseemüller map is comprised of 12 sheets of 16.5 × 23.25 inches, totaling 4.5 × 8 feet. The only remaining copy, of the thousand printed, was purchased in 2001 by the US Library of Congress from Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg, in whose ancestral castle the map was stored for 350 years. The Waldseemüller map is now housed at the Library of Congress (control number: 2003626426). 6 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 7

came. The privately financed experiment would become a Anne Forsyth, an heiress of the North Carolina Cannon turning point in elite high school education in the South, and Reynolds families, traveled in Winston-Salem’s emerg- and it would test, in very real terms, how much a black ing white liberal circles in the mid-1960s. One of her sons RACE child could achieve in a white environment, and the price went to a Northern prep school that had long accepted he would have to pay. black students, and Forsyth noticed that racial integration was beginning to occur almost everywhere except the prep lack people had emerged from slavery with an schools of the South. An idea took hold of her. What would TO THE TOP almost religious zeal for education. Historians note society look like if she exposed young wealthy white stu- Bthe intense and frequent anger of the freed for hav- dents to black scholarship students? Would the South change ing been denied literacy. “There is one sin that slavery com- if its future leaders were socialized to be less bigoted? Her mitted against me, which I can never forgive,” wrote James aim, using a few token blacks to mend the South’s racial Pennington, a former slave who escaped in 1828. “It robbed divide from the top down, was utopian to say the least. It Shaking up the me of my education.” Their collective desire for learning was also novel, a systematic effort by whites to help rid other segregated South drove the first great mass movement for state-run public whites of their prejudices. Providing a better life for black education in the South. Between the 1890s and 1915, white students was secondary. by Mosi Secret philanthropists supported pub- They wouldn’t choose just any lic schools and school boards for black students. Forsyth started the black children, ostensibly as an Stouffer Foundation, named for he road to Virginia Episcopal School was more se­ Another black boy, Bill Alexander, had also been sent that avenue for black advancement. her mother, and hired a small team cluded in those days, winding a few miles from the year. Bill had traveled by jet from his hometown, Nashville, But it was also an investment of like-minded white colleagues Twhite section of segregated Lynchburg through a wood to Washington and then on to Lynchburg aboard a propel- in subjugation. Philanthropists who toured the South coaxing of maple and oak to the school’s rolling campus, shielded by ler plane. He, too, was alone, though he brought more bags tended to support vocational schools to open their doors to trees and the more distant Blue Ridge Mountains. The usual than Marvin, coming as he did from Nashville’s black middle schools for black people that pre- blacks and scouting black public stream of cars navigated the bends on the first day of school, class. At the airport, Bill hailed a taxi driven by a black cabby. pared them for unskilled, low- schools for exceptional students. white families ferrying their adolescent sons. Like nearly “To Virginia Episcopal School,” Bill told him. But those were wage labor, to the exclusion of the In the years after Brown v. Board every other elite prep school in the South, it had been the impossible words to the man’s ears. He took Bill to a black liberal-arts education that was of Education, new private schools boarding school’s tradition since its founding, in 1916, that Baptist seminary instead. “I told the man, ‘No, I’m going to open to white people. The very popped up around the South, and its teachers guide white boys toward its ideal of manhood— Virginia Episcopal School on V.E.S. Road,’” Bill told me. “He concept of elite, private high- older private schools expanded erudite, religious, resilient. But that afternoon of September kinda looked at me. I must have said it two, three, four times school education was developed enrollment. The schools gave such 8, 1967, a taxi pulled up the long driveway carrying a black before he drove all the way up to V.E.S.” to provide whites an alternative reasons for their growth as “qual- teenager, Marvin Barnard. He had journeyed across the state, Bill and Marvin were part of a quiet but strategic exper- to those public schools, with the ity education,” “Christian atmo- 120 miles by bus, from the black side of Richmond, unac- iment, funded by a private organization called the Stouffer effect of maintaining class divide sphere,” “discipline,” and “college companied, toting a single suitcase. In all of Virginia, a state Foundation, to instill in Southern white elites a value then and long-held power structures. preparation,” but mostly they whose lawmakers had responded to the 1954 court-ordered broadly absent: a visceral and compelling belief in the socie- James Dillard, a prominent edu- were academies with nostalgia desegregation of public schools with a strategy of declared tal benefits of integration. From the beginning, the boys were cator who supported the found- for the Jim Crow South, schools to “massive resistance,” no black child had ever enrolled in a a pair, one hardly seen without the other, one name seldom ing of Virginia Episcopal School, which white families fled in order private boarding school. When Marvin stepped foot on V.E.S. said without the other to follow. Bill and Marvin. Marvin and was also the director of a philan- Marvin Barnard, 1968. Photo: Virginia Episcopal School to avoid integrated public schools. ground, wearing a lightweight sports jacket, a white dress Bill. To their white classmates and teachers, each existed as thropic effort to expand schooling Thirteen years after the Supreme shirt, a modest necktie, and a cap like the ones the Beatles one half of a singular whole: the new black boys on cam- for black people. For white stu- Court ruling made school segrega- were wearing, the white idyll was over. pus. Bill was more reserved than his roommate (of course dents and for his own sons, Dillard supported V.E.S.’s nur- tion unconstitutional, the Stouffer Foundation quietly sent Marvin had just turned 14 when he arrived, and at a little they would have to room together), with the look of some- turing of mind, body and spirit. For blacks: “Three years off its first class. over five feet tall and a hundred pounds, he was a tiny thing. one holding something back, behind bespectacled eyes and of high school work emphasizing the arts of homemak- V.E.S.’s headmaster, a New Englander named Austin His face was boyishly open, eyes and mouth big and bright, a half smile. He was six months older than Marvin, seven ing and farm life.” Montgomery, agreed to accept Bill and Marvin over the objec- with black hair that grew in waves toward a lopsided wid- inches taller, 35 pounds heavier, and his skin several shades Black leaders debated the merits of educating an elite tions of many parents and members of the school’s board. ow’s peak. His skin was yellow-brown. Marvin had the spirit darker. His face had already taken a turn toward manliness. leadership class versus more broad-based common school- “Why, why, why have you done this cruel thing to our beloved of a bouncing ball, and back home in Richmond he’d kept his A Presbyterian minister’s first child, Bill was preppy before ing, a divide famously personified by W.E.B. Du Bois and school?” one parent wrote. “A private boarding school like classmates and teachers laughing. In all his years of school- he knew what preppy was. A teacher would nickname the Booker T. Washington. At the beginning of the twentieth cen- V.E.S. is an extension, a part of the family,” another wrote. ing, he’d never earned a grade other than A. The old couple new duo Fire and Ice: Marvin, warm-blooded, with his heart tury, Washington endorsed a more utilitarian model of edu- “We have no intention whatsoever of integrating those of who raised him, his aunt and uncle, had given him a dime for on his sleeve; Bill so confident and cool. cation, including trade schools and workshops for industrial another race into our family.” The school’s tract of land had each perfect report, but money wasn’t Marvin’s motivation. That same fall, four other Stouffer students broke the training. Du Bois’s approach was characterized by the term been part of a working slave plantation until Emancipation. He lived to please them, and after his aunt died, when he was racial barrier at Saint Andrew’s School in Boca Raton, Florida. “talented tenth,” which he borrowed from a Northern philan- In the years before Bill and Marvin arrived, V.E.S. tore down 12, Marvin lived to please his uncle. Going off to V.E.S. had Another three enrolled in the Asheville School in the moun- thropist and used to describe the cadre of highly educated the remaining slave cabin on the grounds. Their dormitory delighted him and just about everyone else. “The neighbors tains of western North Carolina. Three more went to the blacks who would lift other black people up, an ideal that bedroom looked out on Jett Hall, the campus’s main build- and the other kids, they were just excited,” Marvin recalled. Westminster School on Atlanta’s affluent north side. Twenty grew deep roots in the culture. In 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin ing, and from their windows the campus spread out over “The thing that gave me such a rush was that I could see it in students in all integrated seven schools, a teenage vanguard Luther King, Jr. tried to enroll his son in an all-white prep 160 acres, with Georgian Revival buildings cropping out of their eyes. It’s like: ‘Well, you go, and you show them. You that left black America for the wealthiest white enclaves. Not school in Atlanta but was refused. The change would have red clay and open green space. The only other black faces show them what you can do. You show them for us.’” all of them made it. But each year that followed, a new class to start within the white community. belonged to the hired help, like the beloved custodian, Robert 8 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

Thomas, son of a man named Paul, who had worked at the members posted student rankings on a bulletin board, as school in the old days as one of the white-coated waiters they did at the end of every grading period. When the fresh- who served white boys in the dining room. man boys pressed up against the bulletin board in their jack- Marvin and Bill each came to V.E.S. with a belief that ets and ties, they saw Bill and Marvin at the top of their the Civil Rights movement was his to bear, and that the class, ahead of all 40-some white boys. “I wanted to get way to bear it was by proving himself in the classroom. their badges,” Marvin told me. “That became one of my mot- Bill, the preacher’s son, had seen the movement up close in tos. I want to get what you say is good, so that you have to meetings at his father’s church. Marvin’s inspiration came say I’m good.” from black cultural figures—Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther It’s possible that the stars aligned for the Stouffer King, and Malcolm X. “We recognized that, being the black Foundation’s experiment during the first months of Marvin kids, everything we did was going to be under scrutiny,” and Bill’s time at school. “Divine intervention,” Bill calls Marvin said. That meant no sneaking off campus, stealing it now. A high point came on the baseball field, where Bill away with girls, or missing class. “It would go beyond us as attracted the attention of white boys at another school, individuals, and they would say: the prestigious Woodberry Forest, ‘This is what all black kids do. This which had previously refused the is what the black race would do.’ foundation’s request to desegre- Representing yourself as an indi- gate. Forsyth, the heiress and vidual and then being a represen- philanthropist, later spoke about tative of your people—as I went the incident: “Now, I don’t know through school, that became a what Bill said to these boys, but struggle.” the next day during chapel, the head of student government asked reshmen at V.E.S. were called Mr. Duncan”—Woodberry’s head- “new boys” or, worse, “rats,” master—“if they were supposed Fand all were subject to haz- to be leaders in the South scholas- ing: fetching things for upperclass- tically, socially, and athletically, men or doing their laundry. Bill and why weren’t they leaders in inte- The world may have changed. Marvin accepted their places at the gration?” So Woodberry’s head- bottom of the hierarchy, assuming master accepted three Stouffer that status was based on seniority students, the program growing and not skin color, despite some of by word of mouth. Our commitment hasn’t. their white classmates’ reminding them otherwise. “You might hear On the evening of April 4, 1968, Bill individuals use the N-word while and Marvin were in their dorm you’re walking down the hall, and Bill Alexander, 1968. Photo: Virginia Episcopal School room when news came over the In uncertain times, one thing is certain. You need you turn around, and nobody would radio that Martin Luther King had say anything,” Marvin told me. “Or been shot and killed. The move- you may see something scribbled on the desk.” ment’s leader was dead, and they were away from home. someone by your side with the solutions, vision Montgomery, the headmaster, was a near-perfect arche- “I’m standing in the room,” Marvin recalled. “Bill is in the type of the patrician Northerner, with smart eyeglasses and room. And then we hear nothing but—I mean, it’s like the and resources to see you through. an old smoking pipe always between his teeth. He kept whole doggone dorm was celebrating and laughing and watch over his new charges from his office window. Just whooping. And I looked at Bill, and I’m just like, ‘No, this weeks into their freshman year, he informed the Stouffer is not gonna happen this way.’ I went out into the hallway, Foundation of a first triumph: “As I write, the two are play- and I looked up and down the hallway, and I yelled out that ing touch with a dozen others out on the lovely front cam- if anybody thinks that this is funny, then come out of your pus—a use to which I always like to see it put. The game rooms now and tell me. I wasn’t the biggest guy around or goes on without regard to the usual stream of Sunday vis- nothing like that. But they could feel I wasn’t taking no mess. itors and sightseers.” Calling Bill and Marvin by their last And there was quiet.” □ names, Montgomery wrote, “I thought you might be inter- ested that Friday, unbeknownst to me, the freshmen held The unedited version of this article was first published class elections, in which Alexander was chosen president by on September 7, 2017, in the New York Times Magazine, a solid majority—of which Barnard was not one!” as “The Way to Survive It Was to Make A’s.” With uncanny speed, Bill and Marvin did just what they nytimes.com/2017/09/07/magazine/the-way-to-sur- set out to do, rushing to the head of the class while shak- vive-it-was-to-make-as.html. To listen to This American Life’s complementary audio documentary, visit: Bank of America” and “BofA Securities” are the marketing names used by the Global Banking and Global Markets divisions of Bank of America Corporation. Lending, other commercial banking activities, ing up racial allegiances, seldom losing their footing, the and trading in certain financial instruments are performed globally by banking affiliates of Bank of America Corporation, including Bank of America, N.A., Member FDIC. Trading in securities and financial path they raced along hewing so closely to the one they’d thisamericanlife.org/625/essay-b instruments, and strategic advisory, and other investment banking activities, are performed globally by investment banking affiliates of Bank of America Corporation (“Investment Banking Affiliates”), including, in the United States, BofA Securities, Inc. and Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp., both of which are registered broker-dealers and Members of SIPC, and, in other jurisdictions, by locally imagined. A few more weeks into the school year, faculty registered entities. BofA Securities, Inc. and Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp. are registered as futures commission merchants with the CFTC and are members of the NFA. Investment products offered by Investment Banking Affiliates: Are Not FDIC Insured • May Lose Value • Are Not Bank Guaranteed. © 2020 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved.

1327129_Ad-annual-Berlin-Journal_V02.indd 3 17/08/2020 16:48:00 10 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 11

LITTLE WHITE OVERCOATS

James Baldwin and writerly trust

by Robert Reid-Pharr

September of 1974, Abel Meeropol—still reeling imaginative, is presented with a delicacy that thumps the from the sense of defeat and despair following heart and nips the breath. One can hardly believe that these IN the close of the “hot” part of the US Civil Rights effortless and kind words could come from a man whose life movement and the assassinations of Martin King, Medgar was so brutally punctuated by the realities of the country’s Evers, and Malcolm X—wrote to his remarkable former stu- ever-more-clipped retreat to right-wing hysteria. dent, the activist and literary genius James Baldwin. “I have Immediately after his paean to the young Baldwin, been wanting to write to you for many, many years and Meeropol reveals a basic truth about himself and his family since I am very, very much older than you, I had better do that had necessarily been kept private and discrete, if not so before I cease to exist,” Meeropol began. exactly secret, for many years.

I taught for eighteen years at DeWitt Clinton High My sons, Michael and Robert, were the Rosenberg School and I believe you were in my first or second term children born to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. My wife, English class. It is impossible to remember names at my Anne, knew that at some point in their lives, as well as age, but I do recall vividly incidents in the past and the I did, that Michael and Robert as adults would shed individual involved. I remember a small boy with big eyes their anonymity, which was essential when they were and the circumstances which impressed me so much. I young, and that they would expose the frame-up of their made it a practice to send groups of boys to the black- parents. My wife, Anne, died on September 13, 1973. I board to write one paragraph on a particular subject am glad she lived long enough to see Mike and Robby and then have a general discussion with the class as to fight to clear the names of their parents. We were both how well each boy expressed his thoughts and feelings so proud of the boys. (Abel Meeropol to James Baldwin, in the paragraph. The subject I suggested to the boys for September 5, 1974, n.p.) the paragraph was to describe some aspect of a scene of nature. You chose a winter scene in the country and Here one dreams a dispassionate Baldwin snapped into the one phrase I never forgot was “the houses in their quick attention by the slow motion spectacle of his former little white overcoats.” It was a beautifully imaginative teacher’s disrobing. The trial and June 19, 1953 execution of expression from a little boy. 1 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of helping to pass American nuclear expertise to the Soviet Union during the Abel Meeropol, sentimental and aging, could not have Second World War, was a singularly disastrous moment for written a more perfect, indeed more eloquent paragraph. the American Left, one recognized as the bellwether of the

Baldwin’s person, small bodied and big eyed, confident and increasingly vicious attacks on progressive activists and 4.0 Wikicommons / CC Courtesy Warren. Allen Photo: 1969. London, Park, James Baldwin in Hyde 12 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

intellectuals during the 1950s and beyond. The particularly intellectual situation was at DeWitt Clinton during his time I should pause for a moment to admit that I am weak case against Ethel Rosenberg was especially galling to there. Writing to Abel Meeropol on September 29, 1974, he surprised—perplexed, in fact—by the reality that progressive Americans who were outraged that this 37-year- admitted that he had no idea of the profundity of his teach- an individual with the remarkable talents and the old mother of two boys, six and ten years old, had seem- er’s involvement in Left American culture nor how much that no-nonsense erudition of James Baldwin actually ingly been put to death largely as retribution for her radical involvement had cost him and his family. “It never occurred had so little formal education, indeed just 12 brief politics. The fact that her execution was so gruesomely vio- to me, of course, that one of my teachers wrote ‘Strange years. I have shown already that part of the reason lent—a total of five electric shocks given until she lay dead, Fruit’—though that also seems, in retrospect, unanswerably he ended his schooling so well prepared was that smoke rising from the char of her flesh—was and is a none- logical,” he remarked. “Nor could it possibly have occurred from his first days in the New York public school sys- too-subtle reminder to progressive Americans of what the to me that one of my teachers raised the Rosenberg children. tem, gifted educators recognized the uniqueness of consequences of radical dissent can be. It’s a perfectly senseless thing to say, but I’ll say it anyway: his intellect, then actively—indeed courageously— Even as this surprising revelation undoubtedly left it makes me very proud.” 2 worked to cultivate it. Frankly, it should come as How do Baldwin stunned, perhaps reeling, Meeropol had at least no surprise that Baldwin seems barely to have even one more darkly iridescent object in his bag of rare tricks. to focus at this juncture less on the considered attending university, not bothering to Like the Harlem Renaissance writers Countee Cullen and I WANT matter of the vagaries of human con- attempt admission to either the City College of New you fight Jessie Fauset, who taught at Baldwin’s junior high school nection, the ways in which none of us can ever be certain of York or Columbia, both of which were in walking and high school respectively, Meeropol had been an artist how the actions of our neighbors and colleagues will impact distance of his home. Young, black, extremely poor teaching his craft in the New York public schools but always our lives, and instead on pedagogical practice, the teach- individuals from families supporting nine children looking outward toward the possibility of a larger, grander, ing of not only writing but also the ability to look, to see, are highly unlikely to gain access to the American an enemy and more public creative life. Years before leaving DeWitt and to transmit what one finds to a not-yet-formed audi- higher-education system in the early years of the Clinton, in 1945, Meeropol had already attained quite signif- ence, that clumsy entity composed of equal parts promise twenty-first century. We should not be surprised icant success. Writing under the pseudonym Lewis Allan— and menace standing just beyond the margins of the imag- then that this fact was doubly true in the first half with many itself a mark of unfinished mourning, as “Lewis” and “Allan” ination. “Get up! Go the board! Write something! Write it of the twentieth. were the intended names of Meeropol’s two stillborn sons— handsomely! Be succinct! Be quick! Take criticism! Return What inspires me, however, what massages the he established himself as a quite successful poet, lyricist, and to your seat! Repeat! Do not stop!” Abel Meeropol, commit- bleeding heart, is the commitment, the conspiracy, faces? songwriter, creating works performed by Frank Sinatra, Billie ted communist dialectician that he was, focused with his really, of a host of individuals to make do with the Holiday, Peggy Lee, and Nina Simone, among many others. students less on content and style than on form and process. scant resources that they had available to them in In particular, he wrote the anti-lynching dirge “Strange Fruit,” Though the lovely phrase “the houses in their little white order to snatch some bit of dignity and promise from made famous in 1939 when Billie Holiday’s plaintive perfor- overcoats” charmed his teacher, Baldwin recalled nothing the teeth of institutions designed to corral our bod- mance of the piece was released as a single by Commodore of that moment. Instead, his focus remained bluntly on the ies, dull our intellects, and blunt our spirits. These Records, with her rendition of the jazz standard “Fine and structure and stability Meeropol provided. “I don’t remem- teachers knew that boys like James could never Mellow” on the flip side. ber what you remember,” he wrote. “I remember only the expect to extend their formal training beyond the It is astonishing to consider that during 15-year-old blackboard and the bottomless terror in which I lived in sometimes exceptional opportunities afforded them plus types of cancer exist Baldwin’s sophomore year at DeWitt Clinton, one of his those days—but if I wrote the line which you remember, in Harlem and the Bronx. In the face of that real- 100 teachers, whom he would later barely remember, secretly then I must have trusted you.” ity, they taught the boy to extract beauty and vigor published a song that would become not only an anthem Here we see clearly the logic of any effective creative from the resources at hand. And in doing so, they let Up to times faster analysis of the anti-lynching, anti-white-supremacist movement, but practice. The forms we are taught, the stiff rules of gram- him know that even though he might never be wel- of data in the search also an emblem of the refusal of conscious and progressive mar, syntax, tone, and diction the competent writer must comed in Cambridge, New Haven, Berkeley, Berlin, 100 for a cure individuals in the US and elsewhere to turn away from or learn and re-learn, must allow himself to be captured by Oxford, or Paris, at least not through the front gates, ignore the systematic ritual killings of African Americans. if he is to achieve anything approaching “voice,” are nec- he still might seek something approaching safety and essarily secondary to the promise of connection that our solace in the “houses in their little white overcoats.” Southern trees bear a strange fruit, handiwork, however inadequate or clumsy, is designed He might take the lessons learned in his youth, mas- Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, to achieve. The act of writing is, first and foremost, an act sage them, bend them, discard what was worthless, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, of trust. It is a demonstration of the willingness to yoke hold tight to what was useful, and then turn his face Strange fruit hanging from the Poplar trees. the languages and sensibilities of one’s forebears to the in the direction of the great, aloof, always-promising stiff, exacting protocols of formal practice. And if we are world and begin again. □ Pastoral scene of the gallant South, lucky and stubborn enough, we might break through the The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, worlds of difference that separate us to show the every- Scent of Magnolia sweet and fresh, day, human-scale grandeur of our naked faces. Each time 1 Abel Meeropol to James Baldwin, September 5, And the sudden smell of burning flesh! we draw pen across paper, chalk across board, a prayer 1974, James Baldwin Papers, 1936 – 1992, Sc MG is released. For a moment, we are confronted by a basic, 936, Box 3B, Folder 2, n.p., Schomburg Center Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, vital, and uncomplicated truth. For those of us who run, for Research in Black Culture. For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, for those who leave behind the comfort of the familiar, For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop, for those with strong backs and empty hands, our faces 2 James Baldwin to Abel Meeropol, September Here is a strange and bitter crop. turned toward the promise of an ill-defined future, our 29, 1974, James Baldwin Papers, 1936 – 1992, tender hearts beating valiantly beneath damaged bone Sc MG 936, Box 3B, Folder 2, n.p., Schomburg CanWeLiveBetter.com Center for Research in Black Culture. Baldwin would quickly register his own shock about and thin winter coats, there can be no rest. Travelers all, Source 1: What is Cancer?: Types of Cancer. how impossibly complicated the social, political, and we can never stop. National Cancer Institute, 2015 Source 2: Exascale Computing Project Funds Three CI/ Argonne Projects. Computation Institute & The University of Chicago, 2016

BerlinJournal_AZ_105x280+3_EN_Cancer_v7.indd 1 13.08.18 17:31 14 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 15

are being killed by the police, and the police are getting off; CR: One of the ways that people of color and women have that is a profound problem. It’s not a little problem, it’s a pro- been silenced by white people is that they’ve been classified found problem. That’s the thing they should have a moral as, if they’re women, hysterical, unable to be rational, and THE SUBJECT problem with, not that they’re being asked to account for if they’re black, they’re angry. And what that does is limit their kind of passive collaboration with this force of injustice. your possibility of reactions to certain responses coming from white people. Because the minute you say no, you’re BTL: There’s often a focus here on the question of time, like: irrational. The minute you say no, you’re angry. Rather than SHOULDN’T “How long are we supposed to feel bad about this?” maybe this moment, the legitimate and rational response to it is anger. But that has been taken off the table for any- CR: The problem with that is the idea that they’re being one who is not white. asked to be accountable to slavery, when that’s not what anybody is talking about. We’re talking about a system of BTL: At your lecture at the American Academy, you men- CHANGE mass incarceration. Do you know how many black people tioned the concept of a white space and how, as a black per- are in prison? We’re talking about the defunding of schools son, you can enter that space but it will always be marked. in certain neighborhoods. We’re talking about the inabil- ity to buy homes. We’re talking about vast discrepancy of CR: Exactly. People say, “What are you talking about? Anybody wealth in the United States between people of color and can come in here!” But if you go in there, everyone looks at white people. This is not about slavery, even though where you, and it’s not always hostile. Sometimes they look at you we are today is the afterlife of slavery; it’s the same policies in a welcoming way. But the idea is that your entrance has reinstated under a different name. been noted. It’s being noted because there was a time when you weren’t allowed into the space. Everyone is recognizing BTL: For people to feel psychologically good about them- the fact that it’s a new thing that you’re entering. It’s disin- selves, they need to feel like they’re good people. The discus- genuous not to pay attention to the noting of that. Because sion of white privilege seems to take that option away, and if the spaces in and of themselves are just spaces and why peo- you feel like you’re fundamentally bad or not doing enough ple believe that they are white spaces is because they only A brief conversation or have no access to feeling you’re a good person, maybe let white people in them for the longest time. [. . .] about whiteness that’s the kind of damnation that is being expressed here. We’re interacting with people every day; we’re mak- ing decisions about how people get treated every minute CR: Well, white people have to get over the idea that likeabil- of every day. And clearly that treatment has been wanting. ity is part of it. I am not talking about any individual specifi- It’s happening in restaurants, in banks, in hospitals. This The interview below was conducted with Claudia Rankine: Just Us is a book that seeks to investigate cally and their particular likeability. I am sure there are good double standard in terms of how one person is treated ver- Yale University professor, poet, and how conversations derail themselves. What kinds of emo- people, nice people, generous people. We’re talking about sus another. So we have to be accountable to the fact of the writer Claudia Rankine, a Distinguished tions we have that cause us to stop or will us forward in what it means to live in a system where certain people are matter, and the system is as the system is. I just think this uncomfortable conversations around race. Each section of outside systems of justice. Until we change the system, we magical thinking that we can just kind of wish it away and Visitor at the American Academy in the book is a recounting of a conversation with someone. are failing. And that “we” is collective. That’s including me. be good people without being accountable to the realities November 2019, as part of the Academy’s These conversations were then brought to a therapist, a fact- [. . .] I think societies have criminalized blackness to the point and to the systemic failures that happen is never going to Beyond the Lecture podcast series. checker, and a lawyer, before my memory rendition of the where white people feel afraid of black people. It’s not even get us anywhere. Rankine was completing her latest book, conversation was returned to the person I had the conver- something that white people understand is constructed in sation with, with an invitation for them to respond. their imagination. It is reinforced in films, in advertisements. BTL: The discourse around white privilege is similar to how Just Us: An American Conversation So the fear is a real emotion. The question is, Is it actually people feel after a climate-change documentary, in that they (Graywolf, September 2020), about the Beyond the Lecture: In the conversations you had for the attached to me? That’s what I would ask them to ask them- feel the enormity of the issue but also a certain sense of per- dynamics and difficulties of talking book, a lot of white men identify with a feeling of exacer- selves. Is the person standing in front of you acting in any sonal lack of agency or ability to change things. Is there a about race in America, and how those bation at the moral indictment that is implied in the term way to actually solicit that fear? There is this great thing in distilled directive you would give them? “Okay, now go and “white privilege.” Could you comment on that? the train station in Boston where they said, “If you see some- empower,” or “Now go and break down injustice”? Or would conversations might progress beyond their thing, say something,” but then they added, “Remember, you say that this issue just can’t be boiled down into six steps sticking points. The following interview, CR: I think it’s one thing to feel like the subject has been seeing something means seeing an action, not a person.” I that we could do to change the planet by 2025? conducted by producer Tony Andrews and addressed enough already. But if the reality of black people love that because it reminded me that they were thinking abridged here for space, can be heard in is not changing, then the subject shouldn’t change. People that we don’t want people to racially profile people. But that CR: Well, you know you could now go and vote in ways that are acting as if the times have changed and black people are is where the fear is. It’s inside the imaginative possibilities allow others to live, understanding that your life already has its entirety at americanacademy.de or on talking about something in the past rather than addressing of whiteness and not in actions of people. What one really a pathway. You could also now go and understand that no the Beyond the Lecture podcast on iTunes, something that is happening right now. And if the same needs to investigate is, as legitimate as that emotion feels, one is faulting your goodness but only asking you to look Spotify, and SoundCloud. things keep happening, then the same things will be said. what is soliciting it. at the realities as they reflect on the lives of people who What they might think about is why the same things are perhaps are not white. It’s a question of perspective. It’s a being said. So, clearly the reality hasn’t changed drastically BTL: That’s on one level, on the level of white person’s emo- question of what are you voting for, how you are continu- enough if you can read the paper, turn on the television, and tions. But on the black side there’s self-censorship, where I ing to limit the civil rights for other peoples. These are tan- see that black kids are being killed. Unarmed black children need to be emotionally inert so as to not rile anyone. gible things that can happen in a life. □ 16 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 THE ROMAN ROOTS OF RACIAL CAPITALISM

What an ancient empire can teach us about diversity by Nandini B. Pandey Triumph of Dionysus (detail), mosaic, Sétif, Algeria, ca. 200 – 300 CE. Photo: Sophie Hay

he images of Rome we encounter in our cinemas, image of Rome. To this day, far-Right hate groups are fond of I’ve worked, I hear people say they “value diversity” in the are behind the value we place on diversity and ethnic differ- museums, classrooms, and books rarely reflect its referencing Greek and Roman history, or rather their intel- abstract, but engage in behaviors that undermine, tokenize, ence. What good does diversity do, and for whom? Do other T true ethnic variety. The cold, white statues on dis- lectually dubious constructions of it, in order to fan fear that silence, or heap institutional labor on individuals of color. cultures reveal similar gaps between the rhetoric and prac- play in galleries were once brightly painted, reflect- “the European races” will be replaced by immigrants. Diversity measures, too—as well intentioned as they can be, tice of inclusion, and what can we learn from them? ing the many skin tones of Roman people from Spain to Fortunately, some classical scholars—among them Mary and as necessary to correct deeply embedded inequalities— Ancient Rome isn’t the only place we can look for answers. Syria. But the cold, white universities that codified the dis- Beard, Sarah Bond, Dani Bostick, Curtis Dozier, Shelley Haley, often backfire against minorities, fanning resentment of our It’s not the first culture to value diversity or the reason insti- cipline of classics had a vested interest in making Greco-Ro- Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Denise McCoskey, Dan-el Padilla successes and our very presence in white spaces. In a grow- tutions tout their inclusivity. And, of course, a brief discussion man civilization look as white as possible. Blond, blue-eyed Peralta, Patrice Rankine, and others—are fighting valiantly ing wave of criticism originating among minority scholars, will necessarily simplify evidence that is copious, complex, children cavort improbably through the pages of Latin text- to correct the record on ancient race and ethnicity, improve Sara Ahmed shows how diversity policies operate to alle- and sometimes contradictory. Nevertheless, Rome’s strat- books, acculturating new students into classics’ history of our teaching and outreach, and repair our discipline’s sys- viate white guilt while deflecting the need for real change. egies for handling diversity have never been so relevant to perpetuating white self-regard and excluding minorities. The temic racism and history of collusion with white supremacy. Nancy Leong places affirmative action within a system of the present day, with our increasing divisions along the fault 2017 controversy that erupted in response to a BBC cartoon’s My own book project on Roman diversity (for Princeton “racial capitalism,” whereby white people and institutions lines of race, ethnicity, immigration, and class. Rome not only historically valid depiction of black-skinned Romans in Brit- University Press) unites my research as a classics professor derive value from nonwhite racial identity. As a minority exemplifies Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper’s thesis, in ain shows just how successfully scholarship, films, and rac- with my experience as a first-generation Indian-American in scholar who strives to use the classical past to shed light on Empires in World History, that empires often handle ethnic dif- ist assumptions have conspired to whitewash the popular an overwhelmingly white field. At every institution where the present, I often wonder what the history and reasoning ference better than nation-states. When it comes to diversity, 18 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

as on so many other subjects, Rome can also serve as an some were born in Athens and others in Carthage (On Leisure obligations to former owners made most of them set- estranging mirror through which to recognize the good, the 4.1). The Romans’ appreciation for the role of providence in tle, marry, and have children locally, further diversi- bad, and the ugly around our own modern practices. determining human difference stands in refreshing contrast fying local communities and gene pools. Some even to modern America’s pernicious entanglement of race, class, spent the afterlife with people drawn from all cor- ontrary to what the far Right would have you believe, and merit. Rome rewinds us to a time before the codifica- ners of the Mediterranean world: one Roman tomb the city and empire of Rome were among the most tion of race and racism—the belief in qualitative hereditary contained a Theban eye doctor, a man from Smyrna, C diverse communities the world has ever known. At inequalities among people and the continuance of systems women from Phrygia and Carthage, and someone the height of its power, from around the first century BCE that perpetuate inequities. According to most ancient ethno- born locally to enslaved parents, all of whom had through the second century CE, the Roman Empire included graphic thinking, which obviously predates modern hered- once served the same Roman master (CIL 1.2965a). It’s large swaths of Asia, Africa, and Europe, drawing citizens itary science and the injustices perpetuated in its name, all an eloquent miniature of the forcible ethnic mingling and soldiers, authors and emperors from all three conti- humans were roughly the same before birth but developed that ultimately naturalized contact between peo- nents. It maintained peace, law, and a relatively high qual- differently in response to different environmental and cul- ple from different groups, whether as fellow slaves, ity of life among these varied ethnic groups, assimilating tural stimuli. Certain regions were known for producing fine coworkers, or spouses. them into the state and their gods into the Roman pantheon. soldiers or shepherds, much as some areas yielded good wine Successful freedmen enhanced their patrons’ Tensions and frictions arose, particularly with monotheistic or olives. But people who were transplanted would readjust income and status. Indeed, some attained levels of sects in Judea. All across the empire, war and human traf- to their new surroundings. The primary geographical bias prosperity that excited envy, admiration, and cari- ficking, along with commerce, voluntary immigration, and we find is a belief that Italy had an exceptionally healthful cature. The fictional Trimalchio’s tastelessly extrava- military service, were important drivers of the intermingling climate and was thus ideally suited not just to govern but gant dinner party in Petronius’s Satyricon has inspired and diversification of local populations. Indeed, Rome forces to welcome all peoples. In Pliny’s words, Italy was “both tributes from Fellini’s 1969 film to The Great Gatsby. us to confront—as smiling faces on diversity child and parent of all lands,” uniting scattered In Juvenal’s third satire, a favorite poem of the alt- brochures never do—the troubling causal con- ethnic and language groups as “the homeland Right, an Italian speaker rails against the foreign- nections between demographic variety in the of all peoples over the whole globe” (Natural ers who have taken over the city. But the joke’s on present and violent subjugation in the past. On ALL History 3.5). him: the speaker’s Latin name, Umbricius (meaning the other hand, Rome’s social and belief sys- HUMANS Mere luck, not hereditary worth, also “overshadowed”), suggests that he is jealous because tems were remarkably unbiased with regard determined whether someone was born free he’s been eclipsed by these immigrants’ remarkable to race or origin; belonging and advancement BELONG or enslaved, lived in a city that was captured success. While some feared or reviled the capital’s had little to do with blood or soil. TO and sold into slavery, or fell in circumstances increasingly cosmopolitan economy and society, Diversity was deep in Rome’s DNA. Cher­ through some other route (cf. Seneca, Moral many others delighted in its status as a crossroads AUSGANGSPUNKT ished foundation legends featured the Asian ONE Epistles 47.10). Roman elites saw no contra- of the world. To poets like Vergil and Ovid, Rome’s refugee Aeneas, the exile Romulus, the mot- UNIVERSAL diction in treating the fellow humans they walls were built not to keep others out but to embrace EINER GROSSEN ley asylum-seekers he welcomed into his REPUBLIC enslaved as “speaking tools.” On the other the world on seven hills; all peoples and nations were city, and the wives they stole from an out- hand, slavery as practiced in the Roman world at home in its borders. The Greek writer Athenaeus FREUNDSCHAFT side tribe. There are hints in these stories of did not systematically target certain races or wrote that Rome contained all the cities and peoples the violence and greed that would character- develop pseudo-scientific justifications for of the world within itself, finding “heavenly” won- ize Roman expansion. But these myths also provided prec- enslaving specific groups. People of any color or origin, from der in what we might nowadays call its diversity and M.M.Warburg & CO setzt sich seit jeher intensiv für die edent for the tendency to integrate and build buy-in among northern Europe to Africa, could find themselves laboring in inclusivity. Modern genetic testing, including a 2019 transatlantische Freundschaft ein. Die unabhängige Privat- conquered people that historians and politicians alike cred- the same household. In fact, Varro advised owners to com- report in Science, confirms the picture of the capital bank aus Hamburg war führend an der Gründung von ited with Rome’s success. Philip V of Macedon complained pose enslaved workforces drawn from diverse regions, in city as an ethnic melting pot. to the townsfolk of Larisa, around 215 BCE, that the Roman order to avoid infighting among clans (On Agriculture 1.17). But, as usual, the picture is far from simple. In Vereinen wie der Atlantik-Brücke beteiligt und fördert sie. practice of enfranchising allies and manumitting slaves gave In a sense, then, diversity was not just a winning geopo- the absence of widespread maps, rapid travel, high- Die Geschichte des Bankhauses zeigt, welche Bedeutung them a military edge over more closed Greek societies (Syll.3 litical strategy; it was also a tool for controlling the oppressed. speed internet, and other modern tools, most Romans diese Verbundenheit hat und welche Herausforderungen 543). Centuries later, in 48 CE, the emperor Claudius argued So, too, was the hope of freedom, equality, and opportu- knew and admired their empire’s expanse in tangi- gemeinsam gemeistert werden können. Warburg ist ein to expand the admission of Gauls into the Senate, on the nity, thanks to an “open” model of slavery that distinguished ble forms: through goods, pictures, people, and sto- Zuhause für die Freundschaft. grounds that his and many famous patriots’ families were Rome from the Americas. Long before modern psychology ries that came from distant lands. These were the once foreigners (Tacitus, Annals 11.23-24; cf. CIL XIII.1668). validated the efficacy of sporadic rewards, Rome developed information technologies of their day, tokens of Citizenship was gradually if sometimes grudgingly expanded laws and practices by which slaves could be manumitted the distant environments that produced Rome’s outside the city: first (after armed conflict in the early first and entered into the free citizen population on the whim ­ethno-geographic variety. This variety was an object century BCE) to Italy, and then to the provinces. This process or will of their enslavers. This was a carrot used along with of consumer delight. Romans from Plautus to Pliny culminated in 212 CE, when the emperor Caracalla, himself many horrific sticks to incentivize good behavior among the lovingly connect different kinds of people, marble, North African on his father’s side and Syrian on his mother’s, enslaved. Those with close personal contact with their own- dress, and food to the places from which they came. conferred Roman citizenship upon all free men regardless of ers—doctors, teachers, sexual favorites—were most likely Romans from Londinium to Alexandria loved collect- race. Rome was at its heart a nation of immigrants, built on a to benefit, and by some estimates might expect to serve as ing and contemplating these imported commodities foundation of pragmatic pluralism. And Roman identity was few as five years on average (though, as so often in classics, within their homes and towns. An aristocratic wom- an expansive category, based ultimately on shared practices limited evidence makes generalization difficult). an’s bedroom might put a Spanish lover, Greek hair- and values rather than accidents of birthplace. The resultant influx of new, often foreign-born people dresser, Arabic perfumes, Levantine glassware, and As the philosopher Seneca maintained, all humans into the citizen body was subject to certain legal controls Red Sea pearls at her command. Circus spectators of Ferdinandstraße 75 · 20095 Hamburg belong to one universal republic; it was mere fortune that but never regulated by ethnicity. Freed people’s continued all classes populated their mental maps of Rome’s Telefon +49 40 3282-2400 · www.mmwarburg.com

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empire with Libyan lions, African elephants, Cilician leopards, meant looking down on them, sometimes literally, just as Armenian bears, and Thracian gladiators. In such spaces, the spectators looked down on exotic animals in the arena and products of empire came to stand in for distant realities, allow- the emperor looked down on them. The more sources you ing people an intellectual means of comprehending but also examine, the more troubling Rome’s local ways of manag- a symbolic means of lording over Rome’s near-infinite vari- ing and using diversity become. Ovid’s praise for the eth- ety. Rome’s tools for knowing the outside world were inex- nic variety of Rome’s women helps male readers pick out ANSELM KIEFER tricably linked with possessing and controlling it ever since victims for assault. Petronius mocks the elite tendency to FÜR WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE the first Roman triumphal procession paraded captives, spoils, dine among exotic guests, slaves, and foods as one manifes- SALZBURG and other evidence of foreign victory into the city. tation of the Roman appetite for humiliating and dehuman- HERBST 2020 izing others. In Rome, diversity was very clearly cultivated he Colosseum is perhaps the most famous of the by elites, for elites, and served to the people on top. Why, many microcosms in which Romans staged and con- in modern America, do we keep pretending it really helps T sumed their empire’s diversity. This massive amphi- people on the bottom? theater, funded by the spoils of Rome’s violent suppression of a Jewish revolt, culminating in the 70 CE sack of Jerusalem, eorge Floyd’s May 2020 murder by Minneapolis was built by the labor of enslaved people to house global- police, during a global pandemic with radically ized spectacles of violence. The exotic animals and humans G disparate health outcomes by race, has drawn the who fell in the ring testify to the death and destruction that world’s attention to what black Americans have always accompanied Rome’s appetite for diversity. But the specta- known. Long after the abolition of slavery, they still lack tors who assembled were a spectacle in themselves. A poem equal rights to life, liberty, and property in the nation their by Martial (Book of Spectacles 3) commemorating the emperor ancestors were enslaved to build. Smiling brown faces and Titus’s 80 CE dedication of the Colosseum typifies Roman inspirational slogans splashed across institutional inclusiv- praise for diversity: ity brochures cannot begin to repair four hundred years of obstacles and injustices. “Diversity” has too long served as What race is so far-removed, what race so barbaric, symbolic padding between the harsh realities of systemic Caesar, that it has no spectator present in your racism and wishful thinking about fairness and equality. city? The inhabitant of Rhodope has come here from Comparison with Rome won’t solve these problems. But Orpheus’s Haemus: the horseblood-drinking Sarmatian it opens some thought-provoking connections. The United has come, and he who drinks the upstream waters of States’ much-touted diversity, like Rome’s, has ugly roots the conquered Nile, and he who’s beaten by the farthest in slavery, imperialism, and systematic inequity. Ironically, ocean’s waves. The Arabian has hastened here, the many measures purporting to remedy the latter continue to Sabaeans have hastened here, and the Cilicians drip commodify minorities for the benefit of elites. The Supreme here in clouds of their perfume. The Sygambri have Court, for instance, has ruled that race-conscious college come with their hair twisted into buns, and with hair admissions must serve compelling state interests and the twisted in different ways have come the Ethiopians. majority good. In entertainment and sports, too, minorities Though these peoples speak in diverse languages, are valued insofar as they entertain or enrich the powers nevertheless they speak as one, when you are hailed as that be. Affirmative action operates less to advance systemic the true father of your country. racial justice than to maintain the status quo and allow white people to continue reaping value—even the semblance of If Martial, himself a Spaniard, actually met one of his fel- virtue—from black and brown bodies. Even social-justice low foreigners at this event, you wouldn’t know it from warriors implicitly commodify individuals of color when this poem. It is little more than a catalogue of well-worn they reduce their complex realities to quotas or hashtags. stereotypes—that of the dreadlocked Ethiopian persists to But if modern racial capitalism bears troubling similari- this day—as colors in a human rainbow, arrayed in circu- ties with the ancient commodification of difference, it’s also lar benches that made the Colosseum a miniature replica worth noting what Rome got right. For all its brutality and of the globe. These spectators’ variety is wondrous, to be exploitation, Rome found ways to share peace and prosper- sure, insofar as it underscores their unanimity in testifying ity across multiethnic peoples, to tell inclusive stories about to the dominance of the emperor and Rome. Here, as often the past, and to free some of its victims from intergenera- when we sing diversity’s praises, people’s individuality and tional trauma and want. We’ve come a long way since then— humanity are less important than their collective variety and or have we? □ its service to those in power. Martial’s poem is just one of many Roman texts and artifacts that implicate the aesthetics and value of diver- sity with the subjection of individual experience to impe- rial power structures. When we pan out to feel-good long shots of multiethnic people, we often lose sight of the human details. In Roman times, to appreciate people’s diversity 22 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

and precedents. This two-way traffic—akin to what the -lit What I have found in my research is just the opposite: erary scholar Michael Rothberg once described as “multidi- that violence drew attention and stirred unease far from rectional memory”—suggests another way for historians to the conflict zones where it took place. This violence rever- think about the entanglement of the British and American berated along globe-spanning circuits that connected Nyeri empires: The traumas of the present have a way of reacti- and Nairobi, Penang and Kuala Lumpur, and Nicosia and vating those in the past, bringing neglected truths to light; Famagusta with Manchester and Hull, Oxford and Edinburgh, these events might anger us but also help us to see our his- and, of course, London. Many different “circles of knowing,” tory more clearly. It is this kind of “presentism”—no longer, to borrow sociologist Stanley Cohen’s phrase, traversed the incidentally, the epithet among historians that it once was— British imperial world, and they responded to reports of which makes colonial violence such an urgent subject now. atrocity in different ways. They all contributed to a larger phenomenon: the erosion id British society respond to the use of torture and of secrecy. Left-wing activists collected testimony from vic- other atrocities in its overseas empire after 1945? tims, printed pamphlets, held meetings and marches, and D How did it fail to respond? Historians have offered pressured politicians to take action. Soldiers pasted pho- many explanations for the apparent lack of outrage about tographs into albums, penned letters to their parents, and colonial violence in this period: feelings of solidarity with published memoirs and novels about their experiences. British settlers and soldiers; the demonization of anticolo- Journalists recorded evidence in their notebooks, swapped nial insurgents in the press and popular culture; the desen- stories with colleagues, and dropped unsettling details into sitizing effects of World War II and the Holocaust; and the the copy they filed. Missionaries and aid workers witnessed still-inchoate nature of legal and moral norms against torture. abuses committed by British forces, and then drew col- A HISTORY But the most common explanation for British complacency leagues back home into debates about the moral trade-offs about colonial violence is also the most straightforward: of counterinsurgency. Playwrights, novelists, and screen- the vast majority of people at the time simply did not know writers took audiences inside fictionalized versions of deten- what was happening. The true nature of conflict in the col- tion camps and interrogation rooms. Sometimes quietly and onies was, in the words of British cultural critic Paul Gilroy, sometimes not, violence reached beyond the battlefields of OF VIOLENCE “buried knowledge,” a “hidden, shameful store of imperial empire into the heart of British life. horrors,” an “unacknowledged presence.” Historians have largely agreed with Gilroy’s assess- many histories of decolonization are still written from the ment—and recent events have seemingly proven the point. central parts of national archives. But there are traces of In 2011, British government officials disclosed that their pre- colonial violence, it turns out, in county record-offices and Pursuing the ghosts decessors had removed thousands of embarrassing files from regimental libraries scattered across Britain; in the archives of the British Empire colonies around the world after imperial rule ended in the of elite institutions from the Church of England, to the BBC, 1950s and 1960s, then concealed them for decades at a secret the Times and the Guardian, to the British Red Cross; and by Erik Linstrum intelligence facility in rural England. Unearthed documents there are traces, too, in the questionnaires, diary entries, and about the counterinsurgency in Kenya turned out to contain survey data collected by social scientists, from Gallup and evidence of atrocities Britain had long denied, leading to an Mass Observation to studies of the East End of London and unprecedented settlement of £19.9 million for the benefit the New Town of Stevenage. o write about the history of colonial violence today Dominic LaCapra memorably invoked another psycho- of survivors. At the same time, new details have emerged Chasing these scraps of evidence—a large part of my is to be confronted with a past pressing ever more analytic concept, transference, to describe this process. about the scale of document destruction in the era of decol- work as a historian—can be dispiriting and sometimes maca- T insistently into the present. When American schol- Historians, he urged, should treat the passage of time “not onization. While officials retreating from empire absconded bre. I have read letters from soldiers outraged and appalled ars like myself are charged with dwelling on the dark side as simple continuity or discontinuity but as repetition with with some files, they shredded and burned many more. One by the beatings they witnessed. I have also read letters that of the now-vanished British Empire because of our own variation or change.” In this way, the British Empire bears on reason for the extensive attention given to these revelations mentioned far worse acts of violence in the most casual ways uneasiness about the current American Empire, I’m tempted the American Empire through comparison as well as connec- was that they confirmed longstanding assumptions about imaginable, with a shrug, a racial slur, or a joke. I have seen to respond: “Of course.” Every historian is the product of tion. It is a source of analogies, parallels, and echoes, many a paternalistic penchant for secrecy at the highest levels of the color-coded charts regiments used to track “kill compe- their own time and place, influences better acknowledged of them arising from the shared rhetorical habits of liberal the British state. With an elite so committed to governing titions” between units. (The highest body counts won brag- than repressed in an illusory quest for detachment. In fact, empires that profess to educate and liberate rather than in the shadows, what could people in Britain possibly have ging rights.) Most disturbing of all are the photo albums. I would not be pursuing the questions I am now if it were conquer and rule. It is also the starting point of a lineage known about the violence carried out in their name? Interspersed with snaps of parties and landscapes, soldiers not for a series of grim milestones over the past two decades: running directly from one imperial system to another, in The sanitization of the archival record is an import- pasted images of corpses: the bodies of insurgents killed prolonged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; torture at Abu the form of technologies and practices including free-trade ant story (not least for shedding light on the relationship after weeks of pursuit in jungles or forests. Some of these Ghraib; kill lists and drone attacks; presidential pardons for imperialism, gunboat diplomacy, client states, and counter- between methodological empiricism and ideological conser- images even show soldiers posing with the severed heads war criminals; the militarization of policing; and the per- insurgency. The 2006 US Army Counterinsurgency Manual, vatism in the writing of British imperial history). It is possi- of their enemies: ghoulish mementos that now sit in record sistent, deadly racism that has propelled the rise of Black compiled under the direction of General David Petraeus, ble, however, to draw the wrong lessons from stories about offices and regimental museums and, it is safe to assume, Lives Matter. even cites 1950s British campaigns in Malaya and Cyprus secret archives and shredded documents. That is, it would be many more closets and attics across Britain. But where critics see only the distorting effects of dis- as exemplars for the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. hasty to assume that the state’s grip on the flow of informa- To examine this evidence is to question the conven- placement—a venting of frustration against historical prox- History does not unspool in a straight line, in other tion was ever absolute, to draw a sharp line between knowl- tional characterization of Britain after 1945 as a “postwar” ies for contemporary villains—I see a productive dialogue words, because historical actors are always looking back- edge and ignorance—and to conclude, finally, that violence society. For Britain, as for other colonial powers, 1945 did between past and present. Cornell University historian ward as well as forward, ransacking the past for models in the colonies never echoed beyond the colonies. not inaugurate an era of peace so much as a different kind of 24 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

warfare: geographically diffuse, morally ambiguous, imper- impassioned debates were waged at the extremes. On the far this history so unsettling is precisely that it does not vious to neat endings or declarations of victory. What the Left, a welter of activist groups—including newcomers like belong to a distant past. novelist Graham Greene wrote from Malaya in 1950 could the Movement for Colonial Freedom—publicized disturbing Whenever we speak about the presence of vio- stand as an epitaph for Britain’s age of colonial emergencies: narratives of atrocity from the front lines of counterinsur- lence in everyday life, it is impossible not to think “The war was like a mist; it pervaded everything; it sapped gency. At a moment when contemporary ideas about human of Hannah Arendt’s famous argument about the the spirits; it wouldn’t clear.” rights were just taking shape, they employed first-person banality of evil, elaborated in more recent years by Why should these so-called “dirty wars” have posed testimony, drawings and photographs, public marches, and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Put simply, in this any problems for Britain at the time? After all, the particular letter-writing campaigns to convey the suffering of distant view it is modernity itself that makes extreme vio- forms of colonial violence employed in the 1950s were hardly colonial subjects. lence possible: by detaching decision-makers from new. On the contrary, they had featured in the repertoire of Styles of advocacy typically associated with the anti- the flesh-and-blood consequences of their actions Noerr British rule for decades, if not centuries. Nor was colonial vio- war and anti-nuclear campaigns of the 1960s were in many through technology and bureaucracy; by fragment- lence in earlier periods entirely unknown or entirely uncon- ways pioneered by the anti-colonial movement of the 1950s. ing moral responsibility across specialized roles, troversial. I would point to a few factors, though, which By the same token, leading figures of the New Left, including compartmentalized professions, and complex insti- did create a new atmosphere around colonial violence after Stuart Hall and E.P. Thompson, cut their teeth on criticism tutions. There’s a good deal to be said for this story, continued its World War II. of the wars in Egypt, Cyprus, and Kenya. On the far Right, and part of what I have found is that groups with First is the legacy of the war itself. This was not a simple meanwhile, a resurgent fascist movement exploited enthu- their own specialized or professionalized codes— matter of lessons learned about the horrors of state violence: siasm for racial conflict overseas and—by the end of the soldiers, journalists, even missionaries—felt bound the human rights regime that emerged from the war was decade—resentment about supposedly ignominious retreats by those codes in ways that made it harder to speak reign at the designed in large part to perpetuate empire rather than con- from empire. The groups that led directly to the formation of out against violence. In another sense, though, I strain it, and a transnational human rights movement in the the anti-immigrant National Front in the late 1960s, includ- think this account misses something about rever- contemporary sense was—arguably—still years in the future. ing the League of Empire Loyalists and the National Labour berations of violence in the 1950s and, perhaps, But the belief that Britain had fought a good war, in moral Party, drew maximum attention to their cause in the 1950s by in our own time as well. Bureaucracy and tech- top… terms, against Germany, did complicate responses to coun- staging provocative rallies, provoking brawls with anti-colo- nology have not, in fact, always anonymized, dis- mergermarket terinsurgency. Uncomfortable parallels, particularly in the nial campaigners, and running candidates for public office tanced, and depersonalized violence; they have also League Table use of torture, collective punishment, and detention camps, who blended imperialism, racism, xenophobia, and revan- brought it closer, made it more vivid, more inti- Analysis 2019 D-A-CH prompted critics of colonial war to decry what they called chist militarism. mate. Far from evading a sense of involvement in “Gestapo tactics” and “totalitarian methods.” Apologists for And fourth, the age of colonial emergency was also a colonial violence, people in Britain were repeat- colonial war, for their part, insisted on euphemisms like golden age of communications. Old-fashioned information edly confronted by it, as global networks brought “rough handling” instead of “torture”: not only to minimize channels between Britain and its colonies, always dense, them into contact with the front lines of colonial the extent of the brutality involved but to suggest a kind of transmitted huge volumes of information about colonial war: war. As a result, they had to work constantly to incidental, garden-variety callousness rather than the ideo- letters from soldiers and settlers, reports from missionaries justify their response—or, more to the point, their logically motivated violence of Nazism. and aid workers, stories from journalists and travelers. But lack of response. #1 Second, the colonial wars of the 1950s were fought in the vividness, the immediacy, which ushered colonial war As these theoretical problems suggest, there is significant measure by conscripts rather than career soldiers. into British homes was also a product of media: newspapers, a need to explore not only Anglo-American com- legal M&A Setting aside the exceptional circumstances of the two world which were never more widely read than in the 1950s; illus- parisons, but also comparisons between Britain and advisor in wars, this kind of mass conscription was unprecedented in trated weeklies such as Picture Post; radio, which is to say, continental Europe. Even without taking sides in British history. Between 1948 and 1963, every British man the BBC; and, of course, the new medium of television. In fraught debates about the “comparability” of the D-A-CH region between the ages of 17 and 21 was liable to be conscripted. print and on the airwaves, the coverage of colonial war was Holocaust, it is possible to observe that the kinds of 2018 and 2019 Tens of thousands of them did, in fact, serve in colonial con- less uniformly jingoistic than one might assume; troubling questions long posed by historians of Germany have flicts. Because the pool of potential colonial warriors—to say questions about the use of force against civilians and sus- relevance to arguments about the British Empire nothing of their parents, siblings, friends, and lovers—was so pects lingered in word and in image. On television, it was today. There are unmistakable echoes of the 1980s large, colonial war represented a looming, inescapable pres- not just news programs like Panorama that turned a skepti- Historikerstreit, for instance, in the ongoing debate ence in everyday life. With conscripts circulating in and out cal lens on colonial war, but also a new, edgy generation of over whether imperial history is distorted more by of conflict zones, letters, photographs, and other forms of evi- on-screen dramas about cracked-up interrogators and mor- focusing on extreme violence or on the everyday pat- dence reached far beyond the world of professional fighting ally compromised soldiers. terns and processes that unfolded around it. Even men. Some demobilized soldiers, radicalized by the brutality to broach these kinds of analogies is controversial, We ensure that your growth will never be of the fighting, penned explicit, sometimes gruesome mem- hile it is possible to situate the wars of the 1950s near though, because they inevitably collide with another constrained by limits of any kind – especially oirs and novels to justify the violence in which they partici- the end of a long tradition of colonial violence, there feature of contemporary politics: the idea of British by national borders. Our teams on both sides of pated. Others, appalled by the tactics they observed, turned W are also good reasons to see them as the inaugura- exceptionalism. As the Cambridge University histo- the Atlantic deliver seamless service, legal to left-wing activism when they returned home. Though tion of a distinctly contemporary moment. Then, as now, the rian Stefan Collini once observed, “It was for a long only a small proportion of men called up for service ulti- ambiguity of “emergencies” and “exceptions” that furnished time an unspoken premise of much British histo- excellence and entrepreneurial thinking. mately registered as conscientious objectors, their protests, the legal basis for war allowed its consequences to unfold in riography that nationalism was something that hap- Whether you are an investor or an ambitious too, revealed creeping unease with the morality of keeping a twilight state of limited accountability. Then, as now, states pened to other people.” The same could be said for enterprise – rely on us as we have just one an empire by force. proved adept at circumventing and co-opting protections for militarism, xenophobia, and political violence. thing in mind: our clients’ success. Third, the colonial wars of the 1950s fueled new kinds human rights even as they paid lip service to them. Then, as In the age of Brexit, de-provincializing British Strong characters make strong partners. of politics: antagonistic, sensationalistic, emotive. Because now, communication links and media coverage closed the history is an urgent project. Reckoning with the a broad swath of consensus among party leaders tended to informational gap between conflict zones and home fronts ghosts of its empire—a moral imperative in its own noerr.com dampen controversy where empire was concerned, the most without closing the empathy gap between them. What makes right—has value for this reason, too. □ 26 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 27

ATTACKING ZWARTE PIET

Dutch folklore and racial history

by Allison Blakely

n the Dutch Santa Claus tradition, the beloved Sinter­ klaas is accompanied on his annual rounds by his equally beloved bogeyman, Zwarte Piet, or “Black Pete.” Since I the 1980s, Piet, whose role in this tradition can be traced back centuries, has become a perennial target of protests and public demonstrations charging that his blackface makeup makes him a racist symbol. Some protests have resulted in police arrests. In one notable case, an unsuccessful legal suit against the mayor of Amsterdam aimed at banning Zwarte Piet’s part in the city’s annual Sinterklaas parade. This rising criticism has grown apace with a sharp in- crease in the black population in the Netherlands since the 1970s, when its former colony Surinam became indepen- dent. Subsequently, the total black population in the coun- try’s seventeen million has risen to half a million, including the Caribbean islands that are still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Meanwhile, polls taken regularly show well over a majority of the Netherlands’ population favors preserv- ing the Sinterklaas tradition without changes. This majority insists that Piet’s arguably racist traits are harmless fun, and that those daring to break their societal taboo against accus- ing the Dutch of racism are themselves behaving in a racist fashion by even raising the question. It is particularly striking to encounter this cultural stand- off in a country with a distinguished reputation as a leading promoter of humanism, liberalism, pluralism, and tolerance. As early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, over 200,000 Flemings and French Huguenots, and several thou- sand Jews from Spain and Portugal, all fleeing religious per- Image from the book Sinterklaas en Pieterbaas, by S. Abramz. Illustrated by J. G. Kesler. Third edition, 1926 secution, settled there. The small group of English Pilgrims 28 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

who made their way to America in the early part of that cen- the propositions that in some areas of the Netherlands the within the Netherlands, once its colonial past led tury to found the historic Plymouth Colony had lain over in dark “companion” figures predated the Saint and were rel- to today’s increasingly multicultural society. the Netherlands for over a decade. To the present day, the egated to a subordinate role only with the increased domi- That the tradition calls him a Moor has become Netherlands has remained a welcoming destination for ref- nance of Christianity. In the Netherlands today, traces of the problematic—on one hand because the term ugees and asylum seekers from around the world. dual Christian–pagan heritage in the Sinterklaas tradition “Moor” was one Europeans had earlier used to are still evident in some of the more isolated areas, such as describe people of black African descent as well In weighing the extent to which Zwarte Piet can be fairly on the Waddenzee Islands of Ameland, Texel, Vlieland, and as North Africans; on the other, because some in viewed as a product of racial prejudice, it should be noted Schiermonnikoog. the Netherlands’ current Muslim population of that his dark color originally derived more from ancient The grip of this celebration on the popular imagination some 150,000 also prefer not being reminded of elements of folklore and religion than from modern racial was already evident in the late sixteenth and seventeenth the master–servant relationships in their European thought. But since those older customs also carried pejora- century, when the survival of the religious tradition fea- colonial past. In keeping with the tradition involv- tive connotations exploited by racism, modern societies with turing Sinterklaas and dark assistants in the Netherlands ing Spain, today’s Zwarte Piet is a Dutch man, growing populations of color will likely continue to experi- was threatened by the Calvinist Church and a government woman, or child in blackface dressed in the fash- ence unrest unless they find ways to modify racist aspects engaged in rooting out all vestiges of Catholicism. Much to ion of sixteenth-century Spain, walking alongside of cultural practices. the displeasure of the Reformed Church and city authori- the mounted Saint in parades holding the reins. In In different countries, counterpart St. Nicholas figures ties, the array of related booths stretched beyond the square most instances, the parade will have numerous have different names but serve the same purpose. St. Martin and into other parts of the city by the late seventeenth Zwarte Pieten [the plural form of Piet] who dis- is popular in France and Belgium and some parts of the century. Such merriment in honor of the Catholic Saint tribute sweets to children along the way. Netherlands, also often aided by a Zwarte Piet. An example of prompted ordinances in Dutch towns such as Delft and For assessing the moral character of Piet’s pagan influences in the St. Nicholas legend can be seen in his Arnhem against celebrations that in some cases included role in the Dutch Sinterklaasfeest, it is interesting With our occasional fusion with the Germanic supreme deity Wodan all-night revelry on the eves of St. Nicholas, New Years, to compare it with the Santa Claus tradition in (the Norse Odin), an all-powerful deity who was believed to and the Epiphany. the United States, a country founded on principles fly through the air on his eight-legged horse each December Neither the Protestant Reformation in general nor the similar to the Netherlands’ but where both color on the winter solstice. Karl Meisen, the main authority on triumph of Calvinism over Catholicism in the Netherlands consciousness and racism have played greater his- tailored the Northern European variations of the St. Nicholas legend, was able to root out this “vestige of popery.” The Church was torical roles. The Santa Claus celebration has never going to have to settle for transforming what had been a evoked the type of outrage in the United States more formal religious celebration of St. Nicholas into essen- that now surrounds Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet In pagan lore, tially a children’s feast. When it became more acceptable to in the Netherlands, though its innocence blurs darkness was show Sinterklaas, it is not surprising that the Sinterklazen in somewhat when studied in historical context. The experience effect lived on in the guise of Zwarte Piet, who himself did American tradition, which did not crystallize until also the color not appear clearly in graphic illustrations of the Sinterklaas the mid-nineteenth century, is an amalgamation of for death celebration until the early nineteenth century. He was, after Father Christmas, brought over by seventeenth-cen- all, a spiritual force. tury British settlers, and Sinterklaas, brought by the we provide and winter. The degree of uniformity the tradition practiced in the Dutch to their New Amsterdam around the same Netherlands achieved by the twentieth century was due to time. Father Christmas was just another of the myr- the wide dissemination of Mannekensbladen, or Volksprenten iad offspring of the St. Nicholas tradition. Piet did found innumerable names and modifications of the same (children’s prints or penny prints), a form of popular print not become part of the American tradition because, name. Among the most widely used in the Germanies, the literature widely disseminated in the Netherlands, France, although New Netherlands was mainly a Dutch col- value to Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland are Ruprecht the and Belgium especially in the nineteenth century through ony until ceded to England in 1673, only about half Knecht [servant], schwarzer Kaspar [Black Caspar], schwarze the press and schools. The advent of television, of course, the population of New Amsterdam was Dutch; both Peter [Black Peter], Zwarte Piet, Pieterman, Le More, Pére and the commercial incentives related to the celebration the Dutch Calvinist and English Puritan churches in Fouettard [Father Whip], Schmutzli [Dirt], Krampus, and have brought even greater standardization. This is also how that region shared the disdain for the St. Nicholas our clients. Leutfresser [People-eater]. All these terms originally referred the mode for public celebration most easily contributing to celebration of their church leaders in Europe. The to the devil. racist interpretation became the most popular. current traditional American image of Santa Claus Thus, the origin of Piet’s dark complexion seems trace- was shaped primarily in the nineteenth century by able to Germanic and Celtic folk traditions, ancient Oriental wo developments in Piet’s evolution over the cen- Clement Moore (1779–1863), an American Biblical and Roman traditions, and the convergence of Christian and turies were the most fateful in bringing about his scholar and professor of Oriental and Greek lit- pagan rites. Ruprecht the Knecht and some of the others were present predicament: his becoming a “Moor” and erature, and a Bavarian-born cartoonist, Thomas at times depicted as dark, hairy, and with horns. All were T his popular depiction modeled after the American Nast (1840–1902). The American Santa Claus also associated with darkness and debasement in contrast to the blackface tradition. The first derived from the Netherlands has European roots. noble white Saint. Ruprecht is also one of the nicknames for having been part of the Spanish empire until the seventeenth Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” Wodan, which makes the splitting of this Germanic chief century. Consistent with this account, Sinterklaas resides originally composed just for the enjoyment of deity another possible origin of the St. Nicholas pairs, com- in Spain most of the year and arrives in the Netherlands by the author’s own family, is clearly describing a parable to the Christian dichotomy between good and evil. ship toward the end of November. Zwarte Piet was a Moor- European “right jolly old elf.” The imagery surround- People portraying these figures have customarily covered ish orphan boy Sinterklaas adopted and trained as his assis- ing his “eight tiny reindeer” pulling his sleigh across their faces with soot or ashes. In pagan lore, darkness was tant. This fusing in the folklore of the historical meeting of the winter sky also conjures up the Wodan tradi- FINEST REAL ESTATE also the color for death and winter. This lends credence to “East and West” would come to fuel the current cultural clash tion featuring the Norse god on his eight-legged

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flying horse. Here it is also interesting to note that Moore gave A largely missing element from the majority position two of his reindeer, “Donder” (thunder) and “Blitzen” (light- in the current polemic in the Netherlands is recognition of ning), names of forces of nature that mix German and Dutch how this negative side of Piet impacts their own image of (though modern editors have chosen to just use the German). their fellow Netherlanders of color, and their image in society. In the broader American Santa Claus tradition that evolved, Such a responsible and admired figure should not be identi- all the human characters, including Santa’s elves at the North fied with the pure buffoon image projected by the American Pole, are white. In contrast to Sinterklaas’s Pieten, all are also minstrel tradition; yet this is the version of Piet that is the male, except for Mrs. Claus, his homemaker. most commercially marketable. His lucrative market value is While this does not necessarily represent racial or gen- surely one reason it is so difficult to modify Piet’s portrayal. der discrimination, black American counterparts of the main An amicable solution to the present impasse must protesters against Zwarte Piet, suffering from the legacies of include a willingness to at least modify Piet’s portrayal in racial and color prejudice, have not failed to notice that the a direction that harkens back to his early modern incarna- Santa tradition has been traditionally “white,” and that this tion as a respectable servant, before his morphing into an has served to reinforce the predominant perception that the image that immediately brings to mind colonial subjugation most important figures in society and culture are all white. or racist denigration. The white majority indignant at being The Santa tradition also evolved against a historical back- called racist is largely unaware of the Netherlands’ colonial drop that featured slavery becoming replaced by the struc- history, because school curricula have deliberately omitted ture of debasement called Jim Crow that would prolong legal the important contribution of the colonies to Dutch wealth inequality for another century. This was also the era that saw and power. Thus, complaining black Netherlanders are gen- blackface emerge, a grotesque nod to African American cul- erally viewed as outsiders who should be grateful just to be ture that aided some black and white entertainers’ careers, part of Dutch society. There is slight awareness that they have even as blacks were becoming excluded from respected to some degree been members for centuries, but invisible trades and sports they had engaged in even during slavery. because of the distance from the colonies that most Dutch The close historical connection between blackface and Jim have been taught rendered them too peripheral to be import- Crow is undeniable, since the term “Jim Crow” derived from ant for the nation’s success. The issue of racism simply must the name of a dimwitted, clumsy black slave character in be addressed. an early nineteenth-century minstrel show. Color replaced Another possible way of offsetting the negative impact chains as the main device for social control and economic of celebrating a black clown figure in the Dutch tradition exploitation. would be promotion of developments that would bring more people of color into greater prominence in high positions of uxtaposing the American and Dutch Santa Claus tra- leadership and respect. There are, after all, caricatures and ditions, it seems that in some ways the Zwarte Piet stereotypes of white people too in predominantly white so- component of the Dutch celebration might be trans- cieties, but those carry less negative impact within a broader J formed from a liability into an asset. In an era of ram- context that renders them comical. There also needs to be pant cultural diversity and elevated political correctness in wider public attention drawn to the private dimension of the all major Western societies, in Zwarte Piet the Dutch happen Dutch Sinterklaas tradition, the part that transpires within to already have a culturally diverse figure in this ancient tra- the home rather than at parades and in commercials. It is dition—one reflecting both racial and gender diversity and in the home that the deepest meaning of the celebration who possesses power to shape the morality of the society that occurs: exchanging simple gifts, reciting poems, and offer- has produced him. Could one possible way for the Dutch to ing an annual renewal of vows to uphold shared moral val- rescue Zwarte Piet from his current dilemma be to embrace ues that bind together family and community. this duo as a national symbol of cooperation between whites During one of my frequent visits to the Netherlands over and people of color for the common good? Piet’s age-old role the past five decades, a Dutch friend pointed out that another as a bogeyman could continue; but the more recent compo- deeply ingrained tradition in Dutch culture is a penchant nent, a visage that evokes and popularizes the racist black- for long deliberations over important issues. He shared a face tradition, would need to be abandoned. The history of joke about the Dutch entering heaven: On their way, they the American experience with blackface shows that this is encounter an additional obstacle, a crossroads with two not easy to accomplish, since although no longer respect- signposts. One sign points toward Heaven, the other toward able, it still lingers in many guises in American popular cul- ’t ­vergadering (the meeting). The Dutch history of finding ture, including overt and subliminal advertising. But the social harmony bodes well for a national vergadering that American experience also shows that pivoting away from will end the current discord over Zwartze Piet in one of the that practice’s respectability is possible. A history of flir- country’s most important holiday traditions. □ tation with blackface has not indelibly stained the public images of some of the most revered icons of American pop- ular culture, including Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Frank Sina- tra, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, Will Rogers, John Wayne, Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Recent Work by Academy Fellows and Friends

Left Alone FEATURES by Lois W. Banner 34

Sarah Bernhardt’s Knee by James N. Green 38

Jellyfish by Alexandra Kleeman 42

Artist Portfolio Amy kurzweil 46

Franklin, 1969 by Ayana Mathis 54

Fresh Air by Susan Bernofsky 58

No Refuge by Hakim Abderrezak 60

Gate of Tears by Nathalie Peutz 64

Someone’s Daughter by Naghmeh Sohrabi 67

The Andrew W. Mellon Workshop Ronald Radano, Gavin Steingo, Ciraj Rassool, Berit Ebert, and Moira Fradinger 72 34 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 35 LEFT ALONE

Greta Garbo’s search for solitude

by Lois W. Banner

hen screen star disparate group, but their lives display the sex revolution of the 1920s. They and legendary beauty similar themes: a sense of showman- called for trial marriage, free love, free Greta Garbo died, in ship, a charismatic appeal to others, divorce, birth control, and “The Single 1990, at the age of and a greater or lesser commitment to Standard,” a slogan for ending the W84, she was one of the most famous advancing women’s freedom. centuries-old double standard, under women in the world. She had become Greta Garbo offers a special which men had sex with impunity, a top Hollywood star in 1926, at the challenge. She lived much of her adult while women were supposed to age of 20, when she made the film life in the era between the two world remain virtuous. Flesh and The Devil, less than a year wars, when feminism seemed in the after she came to Hollywood from doldrums; she never identified herself In many of Garbo’s early movies, she Sweden. She retained that stature for with a feminist group; the majority plays a modern woman who ­challenges 17 years, until 1941, when she retired of her audiences were in Europe, not traditional moral values. Even though from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), in the United States; and many film Hollywood censors required that her studio, at the age of 36. She then scholars regard her as consistently they end by approving heterosexual moved to New York and made no playing in her films the ur-romantic monogamy, she is not punished for more movies. Rather, whether by acci- heroine whose life revolves around violating middle-class values. In 1929, dent or design, she became a celebrity, love—and suffering—for a man. In she even starred in a movie called The famed as a leading member of the his acclaimed history of Hollywood Single Standard, written by feminist international “jet set,” led by Aristotle films, film scholar Lewis Jacobs screenwriter Adela Rogers St. Johns. In Onassis, the Greek shipping tycoon. described Garbo as “the prototype of that film, she travels on a yacht with a As a feminist and a scholar, I the ultra-civilized, sleek and slender, lover around the South Seas. In the end, have long been fascinated by the knowing and disillusioned, restless she remains with a husband and a son histories of feminism and of beauty and oversexed and neurotic woman she has acquired along the way, but she as well as by the lives of prominent who leads her own life.” isn’t punished for having lived with a women who defined and reflected the I began to crack that stereotype man to whom she wasn’t married. histories of their eras. Thus far, my about Garbo when I determined Garbo’s early period of what might biographical subjects have included that feminism in the interwar years be called “proto-feminism” in her films Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who led the differed from the women’s rights culminated in Queen Christina, which American woman suffrage movement movement that went before it and she made in 1933. The movie is a biopic in the nineteenth century; Margaret the feminism that followed it. After of the seventeenth-century Swedish Mead, an anthropologist and public woman’s suffrage was won—by queen who cross-dressed and was intellectual in the United States in the 1921 in Germany, the Scandinavian bisexual, pacifist, and reform-minded. mid-twentieth century; and Marilyn countries, and the United States— Garbo later stated that the movie Monroe, a Hollywood cinema star and many feminists turned from political was as much about herself as about symbol of beauty from the 1950s to the and legal goals to focus on ending Christina. Garbo cross-dressed off the present. These three women form a Victorian sex restrictions, in line with screen, considered herself to be more Greta Garbo, 1933. Photo courtesy Les Archives du 7eme Art. Colorist: Olga Shirnina 36 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

male than female, and was as respon- usually praised as a favored Nordic femininity of her costumes in them sible as film star Marlene Dietrich race, but an opposing belief held that propped up her reputation as “the for making trousers popular among they were lazy, dumb, and too tall. world’s most beautiful” woman, a title women, as well as turtle-necked Slavic immigrants were attacked as MGM publicists bestowed on her. sweaters, previously worn by jockeys dark-skinned peasants, and Garbo Always suffering from shyness and and prizefighters. looked Slavic. All these epithets were melancholia, deeply afraid of strangers, In contrast to all other MGM stars, directed against her, while quotations in her later years Garbo found security she challenged the studio’s dictatorial from her were published in a fractured among wealthy and titled friends. head, Louis B. Mayer, by engaging in Swedish. “I t’ink I go home,” a state- Beginning with the famed Swedish a seven-month sit-down strike after ment Garbo often made when she left director Mauritz Stiller, who discov- finishing Flesh and the Devil, to end a film set, became a national joke. ered her for films, she always had a CMS_LawTax_Negative_28-100.eps her typecasting as a siren/vamp. She Garbo was visited with a cacoph- mentor to guide her. In the 1930s and also demanded a new contract with ony of conflicting opinions; some of 1940s, Salka Viertel, an actress and a higher salary, input into choosing her fans were so devoted to her that screenwriter from Germany, served co-stars and directors, and the they were called “Garbo-Maniacs.” in that capacity, followed by Gayelord promise of dramatic roles. Given the They dressed like her and wrote letters Hauser, the founder of the whole huge box-office returns on Flesh and foods movement in the United States, the Devil, Mayer gave in to Garbo’s “The story of my life is and Georges Schlee, an émigré to demands; profits were his bottom line. the United States from the Russian But her Hollywood career was about back entrances Revolution. (She probably would have never easy. In the 1920s era of and side doors and married Schlee, but he had a wife who ballyhoo and celebrity stalking, fans secret elevators and wouldn’t agree to a divorce.) and street photographers wouldn’t let A natural athlete, Garbo did yoga her alone. And she was the favorite other ways of getting and pilates and walked the streets subject of the Hollywood movie fan in and out of places of the cities in which she lived. She magazines, whose writers engaged in so that people won’t was famed for doing that in New York. an endless debate about her appear- But she always had a friend along For the best protection, ance and her acting. Many of these bother you.” with her, and she often visited another writers celebrated her; some criticized friend for tea and snacks along the her. When she came to Hollywood, in to the fan magazines defending her. way. Those friends included Katharine know the risks. 1925—the first Swedish star to doso— Louis B. Mayer increased her salary Hepburn; Garbo was never a hermit. small women with round eyes, baby until she was the highest paid woman Nor did she say, “I want to be alone.” faces, and tiny bodies were in fashion; in the United States. But Garbo, who She contended that she always said, Mary Pickford, hardly five feet tall, was fixated on becoming wealthy “I want to be left alone.” reigned supreme. Garbo was consid- because she had grown up in poverty, Garbo found that the fame she had Take the opportunity to review ered too tall—she was five feetseven finally resigned from MGM and moved craved as a child and later achieved inches. She had broad shoulders and to New York. She became fed up with as an adolescent was a Frankenstein your current structure and make a chunky body; she was built like a her inability to escape the fans who monster. Although she had moments man. Extensive dieting on her part to stalked her—even though she dressed of great happiness in her films and her your business fit for the future. meet the day’s fixation on thinness in in disguises—and with being cast in friendships, her final judgment on her women brought out her deep-set eyes, second-rate films. life is tragic. “The story of my life is high cheekbones, and sunken cheeks. After Queen Christina, she gave up about back entrances and side doors She looked more Slavic than Swedish. trying to effect reform in Hollywood; and secret elevators and other ways In 1930, one reporter called her “an she did what the studio wanted. She of getting in and out of places so that anemic, over-slender girl, with straight made period dramas in which she people won’t bother you,” she stated. and rather stringy tresses, a skin kissed suffered over love of a man; the most And, from the age of seventeen until Your contact: to washed-out pallor by the cold famous was Camille, the story of a she died, she chain-smoked, suffering Dr Maximilian Grub Northern Lights, shoulders too broad nineteenth-century tubercular French from many ailments smoking causes T +49 711 9764 322 and angular for her frame, oversized courtesan in love with a young man. or worsens, from chronic bronchitis extremities.” Although Garbo and her In her period films, she was usually to weak circulation to her final death E [email protected] cinematographers tried to hide these costumed in frilly feminine garb, from kidney disease. In the final features, they are apparent in most of which concealed her masculinity analysis, Garbo is a monument to hard her films, including A Woman of Affairs and quashed the many rumors that work and artistic talent and to the (1928). she was lesbian. Such behavior was appreciation and mistrust of female The racism of the 1920s was forbidden by Hollywood’s draconian beauty in our modern world. □ directed against her. Swedish Moral Code, which was put into effect immigrants to the United States were in 1934. Her period films and the cms.law 38 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 39

families and gentlemen of society,” reported O País on June 3. They were joined by members of the French colony and the imperial family in attending a presentation of La Dame aux Camélias, one of Bernhardt’s signature performances. SARAH Mademoiselle Bernhardt’s Rio debut, however, did not go as smoothly as anticipated. Students occupying the inexpensive seats began a ruckus when the actor BERNHARDT’S portraying Armand Duval entered the scene. Commentators attributed the youthful rowdiness to the fact that the French actor was beardless and thus inappropriately matched to his KNEE manly, virile character. Adding to the commotion, a lighted cigarette from the second gallery fell on the evening dress of the Baronesa of Mamanguape, destroying her garment. The perfor- Feminine “respectability” mance continued only because of the intervention of the famed playwright on the Brazilian stage Arthur Azevedo, who stood up and demanded respect for the great French by James N. Green actress, and of the theater’s man- ager, who offered to refund patrons’ tickets. No need. By the evening’s end, Bernhardt had won over the audience entirely. urn-of-the-twentieth- Some women took to the stage. In 1886, Sarah Bernhardt, France’s Bernhardt’s visit was marked by century Rio de Janeiro was The acting profession afforded a hand- preeminent dramatic actress, made other incidents. Another actress in the the bustling capital of the ful of Brazilian women freedom and her first of three South American French company accused Bernhardt of newly established Brazilian independence unusual for the elite or tours. Three thousand people awaited having slapped her during an alterca- Trepublic. Slavery had been abolished bourgeois milieu. They could frequent her at Rio’s docks. Politician and tion outside the box office. Bernhardt, in 1888, and 14 months later, the public spaces, move about relatively abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco exalted never one to shy away from publicity, 67-year-old empire had toppled. Tens freely, and enjoy a life unfettered Mademoiselle Bernhardt on the front ended up at the police station, where of thousands of freed people of color from familial restraints. The theater page of O País. “In Brazil the great the admiring politician Nabuco sought work in Rio, and tens of thou- also offered some adventurous and artist [. . .] is still in the intellectual successfully defended her. Officials sands more Portuguese and Italian free-spirited white women, especially territory of her homeland. In no dropped all charges. At another gala Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, 1899. Layfayette Photo, London. Wikimedia Commons immigrants crossed the Atlantic to those from humble backgrounds, other country will she better verify performance, in Bernhardt’s honor, the seek new opportunities in the tropics. upward mobility and access to men with precision that verse that one audience’s enthusiasm seemed bot- While enslaved and work- of other social classes. Yet, because of often hears on stage: All men have tomless: having exhausted the stock of the Alcazar Lyrique Theater, located they exposed their ankles, knees, or ing-class women of color occupied an association between women of the two countries, their own and France.” flowers that they showered onto the near Rio’s fashionable shopping thighs, while singing such French hits public spaces in Brazil throughout stage and loose morals, they occupied Having the “Divine Sarah” perform in stage, the male public began to toss street lined with French-owned as “Nothing is Sacred for a Soldier,” to the colonial period and during the a tenuous liminal position in elite Rio was grounds for praises doubly items of clothing. Her send-off was no stores, restaurants, and cafés that arouse the interest of potential clients, Empire (1822–1889), among mid- society. On one hand, high society declared: “At this moment,” Nabuco less tumultuous, as hundreds bid their targeted the sophisticated Francophile among them many members of the dle-class women, new opportunities embraced women who appeared in wrote, “the first of all French theaters last adieu. A professor of the military upper class. In 1864, Arnaud brought Brazilian elite. As the can-can became and possibilities only opened up plays or operas representing high is not the House of Molíere but the São academy delivered a farewell address back from Paris a group of actresses, popular entertainment for elite in the later half of the nineteenth culture, European values, and sophis- Pedro Theater.” Bernhardt’s visit to the and then presented Bernhardt with a singers, and dancers to supply French audiences in Brazil, dancers gener- century. By the end of the century, tication. On the other hand, however, imperial capital offered the elite the Brazilian flag, which she dramatically entertainment to a Brazilian public. ously revealed their undergarments the majority of primary-school female performers could suffer opportunity to experience firsthand draped over her shoulders, eliciting Many of these French performers, as and normally hidden flesh to the teachers were women. Middle- and public scrutiny and bitter gossip for noble French culture. further adoration from the crowd. it so happened, supplemented their excitement of the male audience. upper-class women had broken leading unconventional lives. Through On opening night, confusion income as prostitutes or as mistresses. What distinguished a proper elite into the legal and medical profes- negotiating this complicated status reigned. Police struggled to maintain arah Bernhardt was Their embodiment of French culture woman in Rio from a French cocotte—a sions. Women also produced a flurry as pariahs and as public performers, order, and ticket scalpers offered not the first French actress increased their appeal over that of the fashionable prostitute—was her public of feminist journals and initiated these women pushed outward the exorbitant prices for available seats. to elicit such enthusiasm polacas, the Eastern European Jewish performance. University of Florida campaigns for equal rights, including possibilities for women in a patriar- Inside, the audience was composed of in Rio. In 1859, French prostitutes, or Brazilian sex workers historian Jeffrey Needell writes in the right to vote. chal and traditional society. the “finest, most select, and intelligent Sentrepreneur Joseph Arnaud opened of mixed racial backgrounds. On stage, A Tropical Belle Époque that for elite 40 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 41

men of Rio, “The cocotte’s attractions many new professions and industries traditional roles of women into Of humble birth, Polonio’s Joanna Richardson writes, in Sarah was on October 17, in Shakespeare’s derived not only from studied that had heretofore been occupied something new. entrepreneurial parents successfully Bernhardt and Her World (1977): Hamlet, where presumably her knees association with Parisian paradigms exclusively by men, society needed to Likewise, Bernhardt made use of managed a fashion shop in downtown were indeed exposed to the audience, but from the contrast they made with hold the line at granting them political an array of tropes assigned to women Rio that allowed them to send their On 9 October, at Rio de Janeiro, albeit covered by tights. In Europe, the perception of elite women.” When rights. Doctor or lawyer, perhaps, but to create a public personality that only daughter to study in Europe. she met with one of the great Bernhardt had played the role of proper women from the Rio elite did voter or politician, never. The bello sexo, afforded her freedom, independence, Returning to Rio, she began her disasters of her life. She was Floria in the dramatic version of Tosca, go out, Needell writes, “there should as journalists so often called women, and immense popularity at home entertainment career in opera, but playing in La Tosca. At the end of but there is no indication that she be nothing of the cocodette about them. may move into new occupations, but and abroad. According to Roberts, was not very successful. After her the last scene, Floria committed performed the piece during her tour. The cocottes’ style was well known, their beauty, elegance, and eternal “Bernhardt’s womanly woman would 1886 imitation of Bernhardt, Polonio suicide by leaping off the parapet In fact, the same night as Bernhardt’s and one took pains to avoid it and femininity needed to remain in place. be immensely appealing to those men became a popular actress, first in Rio of the Castel Sant’ Angelo. Usually, farewell rendering of Hamlet, at the to maintain the silence, respect, and [. . .] who, lost in the turmoil of fin-de and then in Portugal. of course, the stage behind company tradition demanded.” siècle gender relations, feared la grande Rather than trying to replicate the parapet was covered with In the eyes of her Brazilian séductrice to be an endangered species.” Sarah Bernhardt, Polonio created a mattresses; that night, for some audience, Bernhardt was not a cocotte. BY EMBRACING Even her famous cross-dressing roles parody of mannerisms that were associ- unknown reason, the mattresses THE KNEE INJURY Although her personal life involved a BERNHARDT such as Hamlet intervened in the ated with European sophistication that had been forgotten, and Sarah ULTIMATELY LED series of somewhat public affairs, in AS A SERIOUS tension between the traditional woman poked fun at the French and Rio elites. fell heavily on her right knee. She TO THE AMPUTATION Brazil her public persona linked her to and the New Woman. Roberts argues: Unlike Bernhardt, however, Polonio fainted with pain; her leg swelled French refinement and sophistication. DRAMATIC ACTRESS, did not restrict her repertoire to plays violently, and she was carried to OF BERNHARDT’S By embracing Bernhardt as a serious RIO’S ELITE In an era of debate about gender consecrated by the elites as high culture. her hotel on a stretcher. Next day, LEG, FORCING dramatic actress, Rio’s elite reaffirmed REAFFIRMED THEIR norms, Bernhardt’s star image The limited audience for sophisticated when she embarked for New York, HER TO PERFORM their social status as connoisseurs of SOCIAL STATUS presented a similar fantasy European fare, and the growing urban a doctor was called to her state- WITH A CORK European culture. Although Brazilian scenario that fulfilled a need on market seeking popular entertainment, room, but his hands were so dirty men showered her with flowers and AS CONNOISSEURS the part of her public for unity, drew her to lowbrow musical comedies. that she refused to let him touch SUBSTITUTE. their garments, they received no OF EUROPEAN resolution, and reassurance. To Her performance at age 51 as an elegant her. In vain, her friends protested exposed knees or undergarments in CULTURE. her more socially conservative francesa won rave reviews. Her playful and insisted they would make him return. Proper women could attend fans, Bernhardt appeased fears French accent and her piquant double take a bath. Sarah would see no and applaud her performance because concerning the threat of the New entendres thoroughly amused the doctor until she reached New York Lyrico, Senhora Jacoby and Mario her role as the conveyor of continental Woman and the demise of female lower- and middle-class audiences. Her three weeks later. Cavaradossi gave their last perfor- culture to a less civilized Brazil In analyzing the New Women seduction as an everyday pleasure. imitation of the sophisticated French mance of Puccini’s Tosca at the Apollo diminished any possible negative of turn-of-twentieth-century France, She transcended the perceived woman no doubt also played with a The knee injury ultimately led Theater, several blocks away. association with indecency, immo- historian Mary Louise Roberts, in conflict between the independent certain disdain that the popular classes to the amputation of Bernhardt’s leg, What does one make of this? Were rality, scandalous love affairs, and her 2002 book, Disruptive Acts, points New Woman and the séductrice. experienced toward the haughty airs forcing the Divine Sarah to perform Bernhardt’s biographers wrong with illegitimate children. Her performance to the strategy employed by certain [. . .] [S]he was a living example of of Rio’s elite, who indiscriminately during her final years with a cork details but right about the incident? Or on stage compensated for any moral women to “define a ‘personality’ apart Marguerite Durand’s contention embraced all things French. Like many substitute. was Bernhardt engaged in myth-mak- transgressions committed off stage. from social convention—beyond that a woman need not lose her other New Women of her time, she When I began doing research for a ing, presenting herself as the tragic Emperor Pedro II could receive and their otherness to men—without femininity to compete in a man’s learned how to manipulate male images project about Bernhardt and the urban heroine of Tosca, who so thoroughly admire her. She could be the envy of getting trivialized or demonized by a world. (p. 79) of the feminine to her advantage. She life of Rio at the turn of the century, her played her part that she injured herself elite society. set of stereotypes.” French feminist appropriated and incorporated the knee incident seemed to me the perfect permanently? Wasn’t self-re-creation journalist Marguerite Durand, the Soon after Bernhardt’s first tri- exaggerated elegant feminine French illustration of her dual personae. While and the public performance of a series ix months before editor of the all-female-staffed La umphal Brazilian tour, Cinira Polonio, figure into her stage performances, the elite male audience could enjoy of expected personae an essential Bernhardt set foot on the Fronde daily newspaper, for example, the daughter of Italian immigrants, while off-stage she refused to marry and the knees, thighs, and undergarments element in these actresses’ lives, as Brazilian stage for the first carved out new spaces for women by made her dramatic debut on the became a successful theater entrepre- of French entertainers, the public they constantly battled offstage for time, Revista Illustrada embracing and then subverting many Brazilian stage, imitating the Divine neur. Like the Brazilian modernists performance of Bernhardt or of any relative independence and freedom Spublished a two-page article entitled of the notions attributed to la belle Sarah in the musical review O Carioca, three decades later, she borrowed and Brazilian actress who aspired to her as adventurous and free-spirited “The Eternal Feminine,” which heralded sex. Her stunning beauty, blond hair, written by Arthur Azevedo. Following reshaped (or cast off) elite foreign theatrical heights required propriety women in a society still hostile to such certain advances of middle-class and elegant style undercut masculine the conventions of the revistas de año, cultural norms and created something and decorum on stage and a modicum behavior and inclined to immediately and elite women. But these changes criticism and deflected anxieties about in which actors parodied prominent uniquely Brazilian. of discretion off stage. classify them as immoral? merited a certain caution. Citing the new realms into which the women figures and events of the previous Yet oddly, when reviewing If Bernhardt did, in fact, re-create expanding educational opportunities reporters had stepped—the courtroom, year, Polonio played an unspecified arah Bernhardt returned Brazilian newspapers, I found no refer- herself as a tragic heroine, sacrificing for Brazilian women, the newspaper parliament, and the political world. celebrity who spoke Portuguese in a for her third and final series ence to the knee incident. To a certain herself or her leg for her art, it is hard noted, on January 16, 1886, “It’s time Using the age-old vision of woman as thick French accent. Cinira reenacted of performances in Rio in extent, this made sense. Supposedly not to see her as also creating a larger- to verify if these educational means actress and seductress to counteract an exaggerated version of Bernhardt’s 1905. She was, however, not the tragedy occurred in the last act of than-life figure that could withstand should be broadened; if women the stereotypical notion of feminists as quarrel with her fellow actress and Swell. Her right knee bothered her, and Bernhardt’s last performance, October the social and moral aversions to her should be given rights and establish shrill, ugly, masculinized man-haters, made various references to the she walked, painfully, with a cane. 9, 1905. But the dates didn’t match. “real life” or off-stage performance as a equality with men in carrying out she caught her critics off guard and negative audience responses to the According to several biographers, Bernhardt first arrived in Brazil on “new woman.” □ certain positions.” Acknowledging managed to fashion new possibilities beardless Armand during the opening she suffered an accident in Rio that October 10, 1905, a day after the alleged that women were capable of entering for women by transforming seemingly night of La Dame aux Camélias. affected the rest of her life. Biographer accident. Her last performance in Brazil 42 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 JELLYFISH

Fiction by Alexandra Kleeman

he was truly happy for dye, making everything look the first time in her life. unreal, retouched, somehow It felt like living in a small staged. Seeing her own hands room, painted all white, foregrounded against this blue Swith windows looking out onto an filled her with the sensation of impenetrable forest. Walking past dreaming, in those hazy moments strangers unwashed in the middle just before you wake up. Off in of the day no longer bothered her, the far distance, fishing boats nor did forgetting a newly bought floated at the horizon, the only bag of groceries on the subway indication that this country had a seat. Crossing the street, she real economy of its own, separate paused to look up at an airplane from the all-inclusive resorts that etching a thin white stroke in the lined this stretch of land, which sky and was nearly hit by a taxi. resembled utopian communes but Though it had been over a year, operated secretly under cutthroat she floated through the world like capitalist principles. someone freshly bludgeoned by The water was cool, and love. looked as clear as a glass of water: Now they were at a resort you could see shells strewn on hotel by the beach, though the the ocean floor. But the unusu- beach was really a five-minute ally hot weather had caused drive away. All they had here jellyfish to multiply unchecked. was a 40-foot strip of damp sand They populated the shallows, a visible during lowest tide, and slight distortion in the shifting, a staircase that led directly into flashing patterns of sunlight on the sea. Karen looked down at sand. Beachgoers descended the the blue water frothing against staircase to steep their bodies the last visible stair. The water in the tropical blue, but once they had a mouthwash color, some- got out into the sea they stopped, thing usually achieved through looking down and moving around 44 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

nervously, a few steps to the left, then “That sounds nice,” Karen said, a small white bowl. Karen prayed that The plate signaled great abundance and great Why would you adapt to the right. One woman was stuck uncertain. Dan’s plate contained a he would not do something tragic like waste at the same time, cancelling itself out. in waist-deep water, crying, her face horrifying amount of meat from all try to escape. Karen chewed at a massive piece of under-ripe yourself to your work deeply pink. She kept wiping it with different cultures and civilizations. “The worst part of it,” said Karen cantaloupe and swallowed. The hard angles short, rough motions that looked like “It was nice. My mom would bring thoughtfully, “was how happy he pressed against her inner throat, sliding. She environment?! slaps. Over and over she turned back us all virgin daiquiris from the bar was. I watched him paddle around, do thought to herself that she’d probably become toward the staircase, but she was and we’d pretend they were getting handstands, splash in the water, while a vegetarian, someday. too far away. The man she had come us drunk. My dad and I would use she wept twenty feet away. He might A few hours later, it was time to eat again. with was several feet away, doing the them like lances and try to joust in the as well have been whistling jauntily.” They ordered at their seats by the pool from breaststroke in tight circles. “You have water.” “Who?” Dan asked, looking up. a menu as thick as a book. Turning its huge Turn it around! to kick their heads,” he shouted to her. “Daiquiris?” Karen asked, trying to “Nothing,” she said. plastic-covered pages made Karen feel like a “Kick them out of your way!” picture it, the novelty straw pointed Her own parents had not known child again, gaping at the pictures of odd-colored Daniel had proposed to her that outward, weaponized. how to vacation at all. Once a year, food shot too closely, curiously shiny. morning, and she said yes in an instant. “No,” said Dan, “My mom and usually in the spring or summer, they “No thank you,” Karen said to the waiter who He went to take a shower. Karen had sister. They tried to make themselves would take Karen with them on a trip tried to fill her water glass. left the bungalow, identical to every perfectly rigid and narrow at the tip.” to some place similar in climate and “Stay hydrated,” Dan said, pushing his own other in the resort, and walked out into “Oh, I see,” said Karen. Karen had geography to the place in which they glass over to her. the swelter. It seemed strange to be never heard of a happy childhood like lived. When this happened, there was It was too hot to move, and they sat by the apart from him in this moment, but it Dan’s from anyone, but she had seen always a reason: to visit a great-aunt or pool with their laptops on, waiting for more felt even stranger to wait for him there things like it on TV. When he told her a friend of a relative, or to go to one of food to come to them and be consumed. As the in the overly cold hotel room, trying her father’s professional conferences staff door swung open, Karen could hear several vaguely to read a magazine while he where archivists gathered to listen to people laughing together in a language she did washed each part of his body with panels on database administration. On not understand. scrupulous care. She expected the Dan smiled and these trips, they stayed in motels or world to feel different now that she hotels some distance from the center Dan seemed to be working on an architecture had achieved a new life state. Instead, stabbed at of town, where diverse locations such project next to her, though he had promised it was deathly hot. Karen walked out his breakfast as Atlanta, Tallahassee, and Richmond that he would not bring any work along on their to the railing and stared down into the converged in an interchangeable span vacation. He stared into his screen at a contorted sea. It looked beautiful enough, but ­sausage. He had of franchises and family restaurants. orange shape, zooming in and out on it, rotating the water was haunted. If you waited chosen this For years, they ate the motel it to one side or the other, sighing deeply. patiently and let your eyes adjust, it waffles and the croissants of the nicer Meanwhile, Karen had become obsessed would come into focus: the faint pale resort for its high hotel chains together, but since she with reading about jellyfish. The Nomura jellyfish outline of a jellyfish, like a ghost of had graduated from college, her par- could grow up to two meters in diameter and the jellyfish you had seen on TV or ratings on décor. ents had found a new joy in traveling weigh up to 450 pounds. A ten-ton Japanese in photographs, a bland white space without her, recreationally. Last year fishing boat had capsized after trying to haul up waiting to be colored in. they traveled to Morocco and stayed a load of Nomuras caught in the net. She stared “She stood there wailing. Every about the sunny, lively experiences in a converted inn that had once been at a photo of giant jellyfish clogging a water Ready to individualize few minutes it got louder, then she’d of his past, she often thought of a small summer palace. Attached to treatment plant, their heads like plastic bags full shout out ‘I’m so scared!’ or ‘They’re them as synopses or, if there were their mass travel email, Karen found of dirty water. She clicked on one link and then your work? everywhere!’ He just swam around. At many, a montage. She tried to ask photos of her father looming over back to the search screen to click on another and the end, he picked her up and carried the questions that would make these a bowl of dried apricots, his mouth another. She learned with horror that a jellyfish her out.” stories take on mass. Was this while exaggeratedly open in an expression of stinger was not just a stinger: it was a sac of It’s our goal to ease your daily business “I love how easy it is to pick people his mother was working in prison law, surprise. She found her mother grin- toxins that ruptured when touched, shooting out by establishing a company-wide collaboration up when you’re in the water,” Dan said, trying to stop the construction of new ning at a small tame falcon perched a ridged, wicked-looking spine. This structure, which fits your requirements. For almost 30 years, tilting a small full glass of orange juice facilities? Were his lawyer parents on her open hand. Her mother was called a nematocyst, was intelligent—it knew the we assist companies like yours with strategic into his throat. troubled by their work, did it make his wearing a huge straw hat encircled by difference between random pressure and human consultation focussing on communication, knowledge “What?” Karen asked. childhood less bright? Did his father small, multicolored bells, a tourist hat. skin. In the drawings of the jellyfish nematocysts, “That’s what we used to do when regret training so hard, when it was Her father had captioned the photo the stingers resembled harpoons shooting into exchange and process documentation. Additionally, we went on family vacation. Once I a marathon that had blown out his “my wife has all the bells & whistles!” the flesh and burying themselves there, lodging we individualize your business by customizing was a teenager, my dad used to let me knee? She looked out the restaurant Karen had the uncomfortable feeling like insect splinters below the surface. Karen Microsoft cloud offerings to your specific needs. pick him up and carry him around window at the perfect blue water that they had advanced, leaving her suddenly felt like she was going to throw up. □ In the end, our customers end up with a tailored the pool. He was a big guy then, that’s full of stinging tentacles, then at the behind. solution enriching their daily business! when he was still training for mara- resort-goers crowding the omelet bar, Dan went to the buffet for seconds, This story was originally published in thons. It was hard to do, but it was still several of them calling out their orders leaving behind a plate on which INTIMATIONS. Copyright © 2016 by Alexandra possible.” Dan smiled and stabbed at at once. Behind the counter, a boy no Teriyaki chicken chunks abutted slices Kleeman. Reprinted here with permission his breakfast sausage. He had chosen older than 16 regarded the ingredients of smoked ham piled askew, stratified from Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins this resort for its high ratings on décor. with terror as he cracked two eggs into and resembling steep cliffs or canyons. Publishers. www.oneassist.de Amy Kurzweil

Artist Portfolio 48 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 49

[PREVIOUS SPREAD] Two pages from Kurzweil’s first graphic memoir, Flying Couch (Black Balloon Publishing, 2016), about the author, her mother, and her grandmother, the ­latter an escapee of the Warsaw Ghetto. Flying Couch weaves together their stories into a moving portrait of a family’s experience and how its history continues to imprint the present.

[LEFT] “Meet the Author,” from the New Yorker, November 20, 2017.

[RIGHT] “Grandma Digest” from the New Yorker, April 8, 2019.

escape from the Warsaw Ghetto and Amy’s sometimes certainly as we know it. But, as Amy so wonderfully “I’m always mining life for a good story, but tense but always tender relationship with her psycho­ illustrates time and again, we make jokes not just to all I ever see, I fear, is just my own reflection,” Amy HYPER-SPECIFIC therapist mother as it is about Amy herself. At one sublimate pain or to keep reality at bay, but because laments, in Flying Couch. Yet the fact is that each of point in the memoir, Amy is traveling with her mom, sometimes terrible things are absurd things—just pick our reflections, each of our sometimes claustropho- feuding about something insignificant, mulling the gaps up any American newspaper for confirmation. And the bic-feeling experiences is rich with comedic and nar- OBSERVATIONS in her family tree—erasures of war. “I wonder if shorter ways in which we survive impossible situations can make rative fodder. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Amy’s upcoming roots are thicker roots,” Amy writes. “Thicker roots fools of us, the only sane response to which is to laugh. book, Artificial, is another family memoir, this time have more knots and snarls.” At a time when we’re all Amy explores how trauma manifests over gen- about her inventor-scientist father’s quest to resur- either cooped up, tripping over our connective roots, erations, not just through historical data points but rect his father through artificial intelligence (fittingly, or finding ourselves separated by a gaping vastness through the most minute details of how we live. And Amy has also published single-panel cartoons about (Zoom notwithstanding), this image feels particularly that’s what single-panel, New Yorker cartoons are—­ enlightened self-driving cars and a robot cat passing poignant. As I bicker with my own mother (with whom hyper-specific observations and juxtapositions concisely the Turing test). We know that “happy families are all I’ve been quarantining for five months), I think about conveyed that reveal something greater than their alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” Amy’s musing: “I never know exactly what we’re fighting parts. Take, for instance, one cartoon of Amy’s that (per Constance Garnett’s translation of Tolstoy). By Emma Allen about, but it usually has something to do with leaving features the cover of an imaginary magazine called Purely happy families are also uniformly not funny each other.” We are living in a moment of too-closeness, “Grandma Digest” which teases such deliciously specific (hence the TV laugh-track). The hilarity in being a too-farness, and neverending anxiety about potential articles as, “Who Called/ Who Never Calls,” “Fun Quiz!/ part of a family that bickers, that is unique in its pain loss, or losses already accrued, but, as Amy eloquently When are you getting married?”, “What’s in the Freez- and its perseverance, is what allows for what Amy puts it, “Humor is mortar. It binds the bridge between er/ It’s half a loaf of rye bread,” and “Top Ten Pieces of describes as “the moment of relief in the drawing of There’s a line from Amy Kurzweil’s graphic memoir Flying the real and the unimaginable.” Furniture/ to wrap in plastic.” From the micro, we infer lines.” What she doesn’t name is the parallel moment Couch that’s been running through my head throughout Thank god for humor. My uniquely odd job as the macro. As Amy puts it in another cartoon depicting of relief and pure delight we feel in the consumption the pandemic. The book is about three generations of Cartoon Editor of the New Yorker these days is to review two scientists, one looking into a microscope: “Kind of of those drawings, for which I, and my mother, are women—as much about her grandmother’s harrowing a constant deluge of jokes about the end of the world, makes you feel large and significant, doesn’t it?” exceedingly grateful. □ [LEFT] From Kurzweil’s forthcoming graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, which explores her inventor/ futurist father’s ambition to “resur- rect,” with AI, the identity of his own father, a Viennese musician who narrowly escaped the Holocaust.

[RIGHT] “Zoom Call,” unpublished cartoon, spring 2020

[BOTTOM] “Three Google Cars,” from the New Yorker, April 4, 2016 [TOP] Draft page from Artificial: A Love Story (forthcoming)

[top RIGHT] Draft page, “Beethoven,” from Artificial: A Love Story

[RIGHT] “Scientists,” from the New Yorker, May 30, 2016.

[OPPOSITE] Draft page from Artificial: A Love Story 54 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

I don’t know where Mills gets all of this beer. We’ve been drinking since reveille. I smell like stale cigarette smoke and rancid meat. I taste the smell in my mouth—my tongue and teeth are mossy. I We ate a can of tuna earlier, and some crackers; my other meals were beer and coffee. I am always nauseous, I can’t remember the last time I went FRANKLIN, 1969 an entire day without feeling like vomiting. My beard has grown in irregular patches, beneath the appraise hairs, red bumps flare in clusters. I’d like to think Sissy wouldn’t recognize me, but that’s a lie. She’s seen me this ugly. When I get back to the ship I’ll start a new regimen: I’ll limit Fiction by Ayana Mathis my beers to the evening after chow, I’ll stay out your art of fights and the brig. I think that I can do that, get myself together. I’ve done it before, though sometimes I think I am just a bleary drunk, and sampan appears. Low to the trusted. In our briefing, the Lieutenant through the sand, I remembered the the periods when I am clean and shaved and black water and grenade said it should not always be assumed sound of his knife cutting through flesh. useful, I am only hiding from myself. A distance from my post on the that they are fisherman. They paddle I am afraid that the mist over the I got a letter from Sissy last week. She wrote: shore, it sails out of the mist that along in that quiet way they have, then water will creep onto shore and settle You have a baby girl, born September 13th. I wasn’t 365 days descended at nightfall. reach under their bundles of fishing net over the sand so that I can’t see snakes going to tell you but she looks just like you, down Yesterday morning, I was given and pull out grenades or MAC-10s. coming toward me. My neck aches with to the flecks of hazel in her eyes. I don’t know what my assignment: I am one of a ten-man “Stand up! Stand up with your hands the strain of scanning the sand for them. you’re going to do now that I’ve told you, I don’t squad to be deployed to an island at the in the air.” I squeeze the trigger of my rifle, softly, know if I want you to do anything. I was going to edge of a large bay. I’ll keep watch on I hear the wet suck of boot falls on slowly until I feel the pressure building keep the secret but I know enough to understand a year. the beach while the others plant mines. the sand behind me. Mills yells, “Drop it! under my fingertip, until I am a fraction that the things you try to hide come out when We sail out at 04:00. In the briefing, Fucking drop it!” even though none of of a second away from the satisfying pop you least expect them to. I don’t want my baby I was told to look out for indigenous ves- the men in the boat is carrying anything. of the trigger’s release. I light another to have a liar for a mother. She is five months old. sels, junks, and sampans. Later that day, First one stands and then another. cigarette. I have written a letter to my Her name is Lucille. Pinky and Mills and I were walking to the The boat trembles and lurches. They wife—my ex-wife, I suppose I should call chow hall when the Lieutenant yelled look at us like we are a bunch of wilding her—our first communication in over a year ago, I went to see Sissy on my over his shoulder, “Seaman Shepherd! monkeys. year. My Sissy. She’s back in Philadelphia. leave. She’d taken up with some cat after Don’t fuck this up.” Mills and Pinky “What’s in the sack?” I call. They I think she’s really finished with me this A she left me. The two of them were living laughed. Pinky said, “You can’t watch don’t respond. time. I’ll never be finished with her. in a little place on a block in West Philadelphia for sampans on the bay at night.” I asked “They don’t speak English.” Mills says. where neither of them knew anybody. I wore my why and all he said was, “You’ll see.” “They understand, they’re faking. When we crossed the threshold dress blues. The brass buttons shone in the sun. Three men ride in the sampan, two Dump the sack!” I motion toward the into our apartment on the day that we I felt like the son of a king come to claim his bride. at either end and one in the middle; bundle with the butt of my rifle. got married, a maple leaf blew into I didn’t deserve to feel that way, it was a lie, but the conical peaks of their paddy hats I fire another warning shot, this the living room. It had turned a deep the fantasy helped me keep my head up. As I are pressed close to their heads. They one into the water near the sampan. crimson that darkened to burgundy climbed the steps to the apartment I realized paddle out of an inlet at the far end of The man at one end reaches down and around the edges. Sissy said that the that it was remarkable that Sissy hadn’t found the beach. Their arms move in graceful heaves the sack over the side. It sinks fall was all blood and gold and I held another man before now. I’ll tell her, I thought, downward arcs. The one sitting in the silently into the bay. the leaf and said, “Well, here we got that I had come to offer her a divorce. We could middle trails his hand along the surface “Move along! Fucking move!” I say. the blood.” We went back outside to go down to the courthouse that same afternoon. of the bay. Between his legs a large sack “Shit, Shep. They leaving!” Mills says. look for the gold. I found a yellow leaf I’d free her so she could have an honorable life of something heavy and soft is creased “Get the fuck out of here!” I shout on the sidewalk across the street, not with this man she’d found. But then she opened in the middle and slumping over on itself. once more, though one of the fisherman a speck of brown on it. I can’t imagine the door and she was every inch my Sissy, with The sampan is black and wooden, less has begun to paddle with the remaining doing that with anyone else— some- the mole on her cheek and her iron gaze. than two feet high with ends that turn oar and the sampan is creeping forward. thing as silly as looking for fallen “I came to get you,” I said. up like a banana’s. The men sit straight Mills walks away, shaking his head. leaves in the street, but with her it She stood on the threshold looking at me as toothpicks, squinting against the In a few hours, we’ll have completed wasn’t silly at all. I gave her that gold and blinking quickly. I thought she might cry, beam from my flashlight. The boat does our mission and then we’ll load up the leaf and she put it on top of the red but she wouldn’t give me the satisfaction. not list. junk and sail away from here. Behind me, one inside of a handkerchief that she “We’re still married,” I said. “What kind of I fire two warning shots in the air. my squad is busy digging holes in the pressed into a flat, neat square with way is this to live?” “Identify yourselves!” beach. I lived near a butcher when I first the iron. We didn’t have any ribbon, so “I’m living like a woman, Franklin,” she The men in the boat throw up their got married. He was always working she cut a scrap from the lining of the answered. “My mother and my sisters won’t hands and in their haste one of their whenever I walked by. He hummed dress she got married in and she tied speak to me, but it’s worth it to live like a oars falls into the water. while he worked. He was a happy man. up that handkerchief. That was only woman. I don’t know when you suddenly got Fishermen in sampans are not to be Listening to the shovels pushing wetly two years ago. so concerned about my sacrifices.” grisebach.com/consign 56 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

And there we were in a movie She got up and took my hand. I my missions are at night. I shoot into the with me as the penitent husband and didn’t understand how she could hold darkness and sail away before I have to Sissy as the wronged wife. I said my my hand like that and tell me no. She count bodies. It was the same with Sissy. lines and she said hers. I don’t know stroked my palm with her fingers. I I was a violence in her life and left before why I didn’t take my hat and go. leaned into her because I needed some I had to face the damage I’d done; with “I came because I love you,” I said. strength to walk out of that door and Lucille there would be more recklessness, “I believe you think that’s true,” she was the only one I could get it from. more hurt, more promises I don’t keep, Sissy said. We hugged for a long time and then more destroying the people I love. She never moved from the I kissed her neck, and her shoulder. I make a wager: if I see any evidence door­way. Her hands hung at her sides I kissed her eyelids and the hollow of the boy’s life we took I will never drink and she made little fists then released between her collarbones and we sank again. I set my beer on the deck and them again like she did when she down onto that white couch together. wait. I scan the water. A light-colored was nervous. Little circles of gold, the After, while she was buttoning her unrecognizable something floats toward sunlight reflecting off of my brass blouse, she said she’d walk me out to me. I lean so far over the starboard buttons, played across her face. I the corner, and you know we walked side I nearly topple into the water. looked over her shoulder into the living out to that corner holding hands like Behind me Pinky calls, “Suicide ain’t the room. It looked all right; it was cozy. we did when we were dating, before I answer!” I hear a round of guffaws. I Everything in the room was light and messed everything up. lean and squint. The floating object lifting, white curtains, a cream sofa, “You take care of yourself,” she said appears to be a finger, then a leaf, then a pale rug on the floor. and turned quickly toward the house a discarded bandage. The current shifts “I’m a better man after being in the before I could reply. and the thing is carried away from me. service.” I knew better than to say that That was a year ago. I have not I pick up my beer, finish it off. When to her, but I couldn’t think of anything heard from Sissy since then—until I we get back to the ship I’ll go to sleep else. “I arranged for a truck to help got her letter about Lucille. and when I wake up I’ll have the shakes you move your things. I can call right and I won’t have the will power to sit now, it’d be here in ten minutes.” e steer the junk toward the on my bunk sweating and throwing up “A truck!” Sissy laughed in spite of gulf. It’s slow moving, but we until the liquor’s out of my system. I’ll herself. W are making distance. The take a swig of the whiskey stashed in She knew I didn’t have a truck. I stars and fog fade in the pre-dawn and my footlocker and the days will go on don’t know what I would have done if the sky brightens. Behind us the island is as they’ve been. And it’s not like I don’t she’d agreed. a ridged black silhouette, ever receding. know I bet my family life on an exploded “A truck!” she said again and shook A sampan glides along the surface of the boy’s body parts. I know that, I know Diverse companies, diverse employees, her head. water near the shore of the island. what it means about the kind of man She let me into the apartment. Probably a fishing boat, they come out I have become. Or always was? I can’t I sat on her white couch. She sat at this hour. The occupants, a boy and quite tell anymore. It is almost a relief equal opportunities, equal goals opposite me in a straight back chair an old man, look into the water and then to know that the people I love are free with wooden armrests. at us. The boy is pointing at our junk, at of me, that I don’t have to lie to myself, “I haven’t had a drink for days,” I me, I swear he’s pointing right at me. that I don’t have to pretend that Lucille said. The old man pushes the kid’s arm down. would be better off for knowing me. “I can’t go with you this time, The sampan is lifted on a low wave, I reach into my pocket and throw Franklin.” gently, like a ballet dancer lifting his my letter for Sissy into the bay. There “So you’re just going to live like partner, and pushed closer to the island. was a picture in the envelope, which Founded in Germany in 1949, today the Otto Group is a global retail and services this with this man!” There is a boom. The boat is lifted higher lands in the water next to the folded group with around 52,000 employees in 30 major company groups. It does business in “You wore me out, Franklin.” on an upward moving column of water. paper swan. In the photo I am standing I caught my reflection in the living The explosion echoes and echoes, it at the dock with my ship behind me. over 30 countries in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. All Group companies room window. I looked like a pile of bounces from one island to the next. It I’m in my dress blues with my white hat demonstrate a high degree of corporate responsibility and are committed to offering fool’s gold, you had to squint from all knocks in my brain and chest. I am hold- pulled low over one eye. On the back the shine coming off of me—buttons, ing my breath but do not notice until it of the photo it says: For you and little all employees equal opportunities and a working environment free of prejudice. We shoes, epaulettes. I asked myself why is quiet again and I take a deep inhale Lucille. Love, Franklin. Saigon, 1969. □ I wanted her back so badly. I couldn’t that makes me cough and sputter. Mills are convinced that living and appreciating diversity has a positive effect on society in answer the question, but I couldn’t lets out a low whistle, says softly, “Shit.” From THE TWELVE TRIBES OF Germany and all around the world. leave that apartment either. I get another beer and drink half HATTIE: A novel by Ayana Mathis. I got up from my place on the in one gulp. We will get back to the Reprinted by permission of Vintage couch and stood crying in the middle ship in two hours. I look into the water Books, an imprint of the Knopf of the room. for floating body parts. I want to see Doubleday Publishing Group, a divi- Find out more about our approach on diversity: “I love you,” I said. the boy’s head. I ought to be forced to sion of Penguin Random House LLC. “We have to be finished, Franklin.” acknowledge what I have done. Most of Copyright © 2013 by Ayana Mathis. www.ottogroup.com 58 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

protest, not a series of discrete blasts but a hideous feeble flailing and wallowing in a muck of organic decomposition.”

The tuberculosis treatment practiced at Berghof Sanatorium as described in The Magic Mountain emphasizes the value of fresh air in FRESH AIR vanquishing the disease. In the Davos of the novel, sitting out on a balcony in the cold air of a wintry afternoon is understood as cutting-edge therapy. Tuberculosis was only in the 1880s found to be caused by a bacterium—a discovery for which physician Robert Koch won the 1905 Nobel Thomas Mann and the Prize. The disease had earlier been thought to be literature of contagion hereditary. With the new understanding of germs causing the illness, the importance of sanitaria We are by Susan Bernofsky located in mountainous regions replete with lots of fresh, cold, bacterium-banishing air was grateful to paramount. Faith in fresh air’s ability to combat infection is s I sit in my apartment ended, Mann’s thoughts returned to who had been diagnosed with tuber- also responsible for the impressive size of the radia- in New York City, at work Davos and the story of the “simple culosis in 1917, contracted influenza tors in my own New York City apartment, in a on my new translation of young man” Hans Castorp, who travels one year later, which contributed to the building that dates from 1922. During the 1918 pan- Thomas Mann’s great novel from Hamburg to the Alps to visit his rapid decline in his health; he died in demic, influenza spread especially fast in the city’s AThe Magic Mountain, I frequently have consumptive cousin, Joachim. Hans’s 1924, at the age of forty. It is remarkable many tenement buildings, where large numbers of occasion to consider the relationship three-week stay extended to seven that Kafka, for all his frustrating years residents lived crammed together in underheated between illness and mobility. If not years, and Mann’s projected hun- of illness—including a series of partial close quarters; windows were generally kept closed for the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, dred-page work sprawled to a thousand recoveries followed by inevitable down- to preserve the little warmth available. In fact, this my partner and I would be packing by the time it was published, in 1924. turns—produced few texts in which is one reason why in 1918 (as in 2020) lower-in- our bags for Berlin to begin an eagerly The Magic Mountain is set in the illness plays a significant role. He wrote come communities were particularly hard-hit by WHITE & CASE anticipated residency at the American years leading up to the Great War and The Metamorphosis, his most important the illness. Soon after the pandemic, under the Academy. Instead, we anxiously watch concludes when Castorp is drafted, fol- work about physical infirmity, two years influence of the Fresh Air Movement, the New York the news for signs that the European lowing the outbreak of hostilities. The before he began to cough blood. Board of Health mandated that all new buildings Union’s restriction on travelers from storyline thus ends prior to the global The influenza pandemic hit close were to be supplied with large boilers and radiators, the United States will soon be eased, if influenza pandemic. If Mann had to Mann’s own home: his daughter the goal being to intentionally overheat apartments. not lifted. decided to include it in his novel, he Monika—eight years old—fell ill Residents would be forced to open their windows Thomas Mann began his novel con- would have had to completely rethink with the flu but recovered. He was to maintain a comfortable temperature, facilitating cerned with a very specific contagious his story to incorporate it, since the well acquainted with the particular the circulation of healthful, germ-dispersing fresh illness—tuberculosis—in 1913, shortly pandemic arguably devastated Europe agony endured by those forced to air. In 2020, while environmental considerations after Mann’s wife, Katia, spent several even more decisively than the dev- watch their loved ones suffer from make us lament the wastefulness of the steam heat for their generous support months recuperating from a pulmonary astating war itself (which Mann also this severe illness that, still poorly still a ubiquitous part of New York City life, the infection at a sanatorium in Davos, bracketed out of his novel except for a understood, was taking so many lives. recommendation to keep indoor spaces well venti- of this issue of the Berlin Journal. Switzerland. Mann envisioned a short, single impressionistic battle-scene, at I believe this experience influenced lated to reduce the spread of Covid-19 is just as satirical companion piece to Death the end). Indeed, the epidemic killed his descriptions of lung ailments in important now as in 1918. in Venice. But the scope of the project more people worldwide than World the novel. Protagonist Castorp—truly Of course, the purpose of the chilly balconies expanded once he started writing, Wars I and II combined. The disease an innocent abroad in the Swiss in Davos, where Mann’s tuberculosis patients and it was soon clear that it would was misleadingly labeled “Spanish flu,” sanatorium—begins the novel shocked aired out their lungs, was to cure existing infections become a substantial work. The book’s though it probably did not originate to hear the “utterly horrifying sound” rather than ward off new ones. Even so, I can’t path to completion was anything but in that country; news media in neutral of a tuberculosis patient hacking help wishing I had my own nice private balcony direct. Mann kept interrupting work Spain were merely the first to report his lungs out. Castorp himself later as I huddle in my New York apartment translating on it to return to the perpetually on the pandemic. They could because becomes fluent in the language of this novel. Berlin seems very far away. And like in-progress novel he expected to be they were not subject to the press consumptive expectoration. Here’s his Hans Castorp, who begins The Magic Mountain his post-Buddenbrooks magnum opus: censorship imposed in neighboring first impression of the coughing of the by embarking on the longest journey of his life, The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence combatant countries, whose govern- (as yet unseen) “gentleman rider”: it and then trades in this mobility for a seemingly Man. Once the Great War began, he ments feared weakened morale. “bore no resemblance to any coughing endless stasis, I find my life, too, newly defined immersed himself in politics as well, The influenza’s many casualties Hans Castorp had ever heard before. by immobility, watching time endlessly telescope with magazine pieces that eventually in the sphere of German-language Indeed, compared to this, every other as I translate my way through page after page of became the 600-page nonfiction culture included Gustav Klimt, Egon variety of coughing known to him was Mann’s masterpiece, highly conscious of the irony volume Reflections of an Unpolitical Schiele, Max Weber, and Sigmund merely a glorious, healthy expression of translating during one pandemic a novel that Man, published in 1918. After the war Freud’s daughter Sophie. Franz Kafka, of life. This was coughing done under took shape during another. □ 60 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 61 NO REFUGE

Burning the Mediterranean Sea by Hakim Abderrezak

hroughout my childhood, common practice among Moroccan “ill” before, during, and/or after their my family would travel to families to maximize space and make sought maritime passage. Second, this T Morocco, where my mother it more comfortable for the children literary subgenre has been dominated was born. The six of us would make to sleep. That small space, however, by male writers (“il” is the masculine the multi-day journey by car from also contained a teenage boy, who obvi- personal pronoun in French). Third, in Normandy, crossing much of France ously had been instructed to remain these stories—many of which were and all of Spain. One August, on our hidden until onboard the ferry. He never written by North African writers in the return to France, I witnessed a scene crossed over the Spanish border. I French language—the Global South is that has stayed with me to this day. remember searching for that family portrayed as an island (“île” in French) As I later came to realize, it would on the ferry, but I never found them. that must— along with its inhabi- influence both my scholarship, which Maybe they were all detained. Maybe tants—be kept at bay at all cost. Hakim Abderrezak, Unflappable, oil on canvas, 36 × 48 inches, 2018. Image courtesy the artist. in 2008 began to focus on clandestine the teenager became one of the “Illiterature” is primarily concerned migration, and, more recently, my many migrants who tried to cross the with the idea of the Mediterranean own artwork about unauthorized sea Mediterranean Sea on fishing boats Sea as an impediment to northward crossings. in the 1990s. I will never know; I will travel. Illustrative titles include One night at the port of Melilla, always remember. Mahi Binebine’s Welcome to Paradise a Spanish enclave in Morocco, car (2004), Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other and desensitizing numbers that flash of the century, as exemplified by deceiving idea (and deceptive ideal) drivers were directed to park in Before incidents like this made Dangerous Pursuits (2005), Youssouf across our television screens. Unlike Maati Kabbal’s short story “Patera that the Mediterranean is a sea for straight lines in preparation for pass- it into the international news in recent Amine Elalamy’s Sea Drinkers (2008), the news, fiction tells us about the Express” (1999). The often-deadly all. It is instead a sea that has inter- port inspection and vehicle searches. years—or, rather, before tragedies and Laurent Gaudé’s Eldorado (2008). dream shared by refugees to make endeavor has also appeared in films rupted travel for many and permitted While Spanish officers were checking that had been transpiring for decades The perilous crossing is undertaken the discriminating sea disappear— by directors hailing from a variety of free movement for a few. ferry-boarding passes and examining were deemed as such and then lumped by individuals who, in other media, either behind them (in the case of a Mediterranean countries, including passports, agents had their dogs circle into what has since been termed are often dehumanized and depicted successful crossing) or in front of Nabil Ayouch’s Mektoub (1997), he desire of refugees to cars and vans and encouraged them “the refugee crisis”—capsized boats as threatening masses, hordes, their eyes (in the case of a highly Mohsen Melliti’s Io, l’altro (2007), Chus change their conditions is to jump inside if they became more were covered by local news, mostly and invaders. This literary category coveted and impossible passage). Gutiérrez’s Return to Hansala (2008), T encapsulated in the term that animated than usual. Andalusian networks that reported comprises alternative narratives While the above novels and and Merzak Allouache’s Harragas many migrants and refugees employ The people in front of us were next on captured migrants and corpses that attempt to address and redress novella—as well as the accounts com- (2009). Music, too, has commented to refer to themselves: harragas. in line for the security check. I saw the washed ashore. For several decades erroneous conceptions and to raise prising the book Tu ne traverseras pas on the tragic topic. For instance, in This Arabic word means “burners,” security dog become very excited. The now, literature—among other forms awareness of refugees’ plight. For le détroit (2001)—deal primarily with the track entitled “El Harraga” (2012), derived from the Arabic hrig or hriq officer asked all of the passengers to of representation—has also addressed example, representatives of illiterature the crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar, the iconic Algerian raï singer Khaled (“fire”). Originating in North Africa, get out of the vehicle. The compact car the topic of Mediterranean migration. such as Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Leaving separating Morocco from Spain by a sings about a father who mourns the the designation applies to migrants was packed with suitcases, blankets, Since 2009, when I first published Tangier (2009) have brought attention mere 14 kilometers, the more recent drowning of his two young sons. A and refugees alike in that it names clothes, souvenirs, and many other about the tragic crossings taking place to the existence of sophisticated tech- corpus has dealt with different lands wide artistic realm, including fine art individuals (in real life) and characters objects. Standing by, the family looked in the Mediterranean, I have called nology used to screen and sieve Global and islands, and other straits, stretch- and other domains, has collectively (in works of fiction) who share similar distressed as the dog kept sniffing a this body of literary works illiterature. South citizens and their movements. ing out eastward to the Strait of Sicily, reflected the aspiration of a growing modes of travel (clandestine), means bag located under the back seat. The This neologism teases out three major With a focus on individual characters, Tunisia, Lampedusa, Lesbos, Turkey, number of individuals and characters of transportation (boats), itinerary (the family had not only stuffed their features in fictional accounts on illiterature makes concrete the human and more. The widespread to “burn away” the immense body Mediterranean Sea), place of origin belongings on top of the vehicle and the topic. First, the novels, novellas, lives that suffer; it voices a humane goal of reaching Europe by sea has of water in their way. Literature, film, (Global South), destination (Europe), in the trunk; they also filled the space and testimonies, written in various way of understanding those lives in been treated in a variety of creative music, and visual art have all con- and pull and push factors (which, between the front and back seats—a languages, feature characters who are order to denounce the dehumanizing mediums since before the beginning veyed characters’ longing to dispel the contrary to widespread belief, are 62 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

not limited to lack of economic The term “burners” in Arabic also political terminology. And neologisms officials downplayingthe dangers opportunity, and may include denial of crystallizes a vision of the world, from can be useful for teasing out the migrants and refugees face and fundamental rights, which also affect the point of view of human beings implications embedded in a native questioning their reasons for those labeled as “economic migrants”). who consider their leave-taking to vernacular. These tools are crucial leaving. Downrising aims to make In the context of furtive be legal, ethical, and essential, rather in lending nuance to a hegemonic asylum-seekers ineligible for rescue trans-Mediterranean migration, “burn- than criminal. Their forced passage (or, perhaps more aptly, hegemaniac) and refuge. ing” is mainly explained as an action— symbolically advocates for rights, and discourse—a narrative long obsessed In the end, tragedies, uprisings, namely, harragas literally burning it highlights wrongdoing. To call harra- with its own supremacy. and unrest go down in history. But will their identification papers to prevent gas and their acts of migration “illegal” In 2015, the expression “refugee the untold stories of the uncountable deportation to their countries of is a problematic misrepresentation; crisis”—a misnomer—became the number of anonymous individuals origin. Moreover, in Arabic, one either it implies criminalization, regardless official way of naming something who drowned in the Mediterranean “burns” or “cuts” the sea rather than of the legality of refugees’ movements that had been happening for decades. make it into collective history? To as acknowledged in international law, One of the implications of this remember the heroic deceased, one which nations have signed and vowed deceptive appellation is that the crisis must re-member their bodies that to uphold—but, more often than not, is intrinsically European, despite have been dismembered by electronic The Arabic language hold up instead. the fact that the impact of forced nets and hungry fish; one must pay In our reckoning of maritime migration has struck hardest in West homage to their memories for losing reveals how the tragedies, it is important that we Asian nations—most notably Turkey, their lives while seeking safety and Mediterranean has abstain from characterizations like Lebanon, and Jordan, who have taken shelter in times of danger, persecution, this, to avoid reproducing improper in the greatest number of refugees. The or war at home. To re-member, we long been conceived and potentially unethical narratives. mass movement of people across the need memorials, for when a nation as a barrier requiring It is similarly important to retain Mediterranean was deemed a “crisis” does not memorialize, citizens do strong means for harragas’ own terms (or at minimum when it began to take place in large not memorize what must be learned to be conscious of their existence numbers and in a more frequent fash- from past mistakes. Struck by a tragic ­getting past or over it. and meanings) in order to better ion, forcing Europe to worry about its end, migrants and refugees do not  grasp their plight. When discussing handling of the situation, in addition to leave behind memoirs; they leave a phenomenon specific to a society its own future and responsibilities. only memories maintained by others. FOR NEW expressing itself and acting through This worry was first sown in Memorials thus serve as alternatives simply “crosses” it, as in English. In specific languages, religious obliga- December 2010, when the Jasmine to missing personal narratives. PERSPECTIVES other European languages, transiting tions, regional traditions, cultural Revolution occurred in Tunisia, paving To write, film, sing, and paint the sea also invokes smooth passage: impetuses, and so on, generic terms the way for the Arab Spring, which today about migrants departed under überqueren in German, traverser in can easily minimize and distort the then unfolded over the years that the sea is a form of popular memorial. French, atraversar in Spanish, atraves­ ordeal of those living through it. followed. The Jasmine Revolution is Fictional and artistic memorials have sar in Portuguese, and attraversare thus still tightly linked to the “refugee proliferated in the quasi-absence of in Italian. But “burning” must also be his is all to say that in order crisis,” because social unrest in North institutional memorials that honor the understood in its allegorical sense: it is for us to better comprehend Africa spurred thousands of people to memory of burners and acknowledge a kind of intense wishful thinking— T why and how the “refugee set off to sea in the hopes of reaching the deadly character of a phenome­ “a burning desire”—a doing away with crisis” has come to be, we must calmer shores on the other side, non with global repercussions. The a sea-obstacle that obstructs people’s include Southern perspectives in our southern Europe. scarcity of such memorials is all the right to migrate. thinking and research. This implies Seen this way, recent migration more surprising as the phenomenon of In this way, the Arabic language fully acknowledging the “objects” of across the Mediterranean began Mediterranean crossing has been reveals how the Mediterranean has discourse as the subjects of their own as a form of rebellion, which must occurring for decades. Politicians have long been conceived as a barrier history, endowed with their own side be understood both literarily and thus had ample time to “officialize” requiring strong means for getting of the story. This entails lending our metaphorically. Migration is an act of their nations’ mourning of those who past or over it. Though the idea of ears and giving voice to Global South activism, a personal struggle under- sought their aid. Instead of creating “cutting” the sea did not necessarily citizens—both of the harragas and taken collectively, oftentimes within a this kind of memorialization, however, connote clandestineness a few those residing on the southern and community of strangers embarking on the European Union in 2018 began decades ago, today the language eastern rims of the Mediterranean, the same boat, trying to rise up from forbidding NGO ships from rescuing indicates that if one must “cut” the who have been overlooked or silenced a low status in various spheres of life drowning men, women, and children at sea, it is because the Mediterranean altogether. Their perspective, cognizant (economic, societal, political) and amid sea. It also began enabling law enforce- is not associated with fluidity and of noteworthy regional idiosyncrasies mediatized depictions of harragas ment to use oppressive and repressive motion but rather with rigidity and (linguistic, cultural, societal, religious, as ill-intentioned evildoers, ranging methods against refugees trying to set immobility. Burned down to its bed, historic, political, geopolitical) is cen- from dangerous criminals to potential foot on European soil. These measures New core exhibition - the Mediterranean basin could be tral in piecing together a fuller picture terrorists. Modern-day exilic endeav- and the silence of the thousands Jewish Life in Germany: Book your timed entry traversed by walking over it, rather of what migration means and why it ors from Africa, the Levant, and the of dead harragas have turned the Past and Present ticket online: jmberlin.de than forcing migrants and refugees happens. In so doing, local vocabulary Middle East have led to what might Mediterranean into the world’s largest to “burn” or “cut” it. is preferable to administrative or be called a “downrising”—European maritime cemetery—a seametery. □

With funding provided by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media on the basis of a resolution by the German Bundestag. 64 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 65

them departing from the beaches sheltered by the center had worked moved to Sanaa, Yemen, where he north of Markazi. The following month, previously in Saudi Arabia but were married an Ethiopian-Yemeni woman just before the outbreak of the Covid- deported; some had made it to Yemen from Harar and began his life anew. GATE OF TEARS 19 pandemic, would see the number but were captured by Houthi forces In 2015, fearing that their eldest sons of migrant arrivals in Yemen reduced and held for ransom; some were aban­­- would be conscripted by the Houthis, by as much as 90 percent (in part due doned in the Djiboutian desert by their they fled to Djibouti. Like many other to the closure of the Ethiopia-Djibouti smugglers. At times, the number of new arrivals in Markazi, Ibrahim and border), the International Organization migrants seeking assistance exceeds his family hoped that their refugee for Migration designated this Eastern the center’s capacity to house them; cards would lead to third-country Route “the busiest maritime migration then, for each group of Ethiopians resettlement: an escape from this gen- route on earth.” repatriated to their country, another erational circuit of displacement and The Markazi refugee camp in group is waiting and sleeping outside. alienation. To be clear, most of these northern Djibouti is located just five It is the refugee camp across the refugees from Yemen were fleeing the kilometers south of the town of Obock, street that provides both aspiring and acute brutalities of war: bombs drop- Migration and impasse where African migrants congregate returning migrants with additional ping on their neighborhoods; missiles in Djibouti before being trafficked across the Red sustenance and diversion. hitting their loved ones at distribution Sea. The camp, one of three United The refugees I have come to know points; Houthi rebels threatening by Nathalie Peutz Nations High Commissioner for during the course of my research to conscript their sons; corpses lying Refugees (UNHCR) camps in Djibouti, in Djibouti share more than these in the streets. At the same time, for was established in April 2015 to accom- geo­graphical coordinates and their Ibrahim and many other socioeco- modate the influx of refugees arriving food rations with the Ethiopian nomically and politically marginalized from Yemen following the eruption migrants. Many had also worked as Yemenis, the occasion to become a October 2018, a Yemeni- refugees who had fled aerial bombings, a population of less than one million), of the civil war and its regional esca­ labor migrants in Saudi Arabia or had bona fide refugee with international In Ethiopian refugee living in a military conscription, and a devastat- Djibouti has one of the world’s highest lation, in March 2015. Since then, more migrated repeatedly between Yemen protection and the prospects for camp in northern Djibouti showed ing humanitarian crisis in Yemen often number of refugees per capita. In than 3.6 million people have been dis- and the Horn of Africa. Nasir, the third-country resettlement was a risk me photographs of several corpses try to help the Ethiopian migrants addition to hosting nearly 30,000 placed within Yemen and more than shopkeeper who prepared meals for worth fleeing for. lying on the roadside just south of heading into the very warzone they refugees and asylum seekers from 24 million people (out of a population the Ethiopians, had been part of the In keeping with its openness the camp. These were the bodies of escaped. It is not just that the neighboring Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, of 29 million) require some form of mass exodus of some 800,000 Yemeni toward refugees, the Republic of Ethiopian men who had died that “refugees” pity the “migrants” whose and Yemen, Djibouti is a key transit humanitarian assistance. By com- migrants who had been forced to Djibouti is one of a dozen nations June of cholera or acute diarrhea after day-to-day travails seem even more country for migrants heading toward parison, the numbers of refugees and leave Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during worldwide to pilot the Comprehensive traversing Djibouti’s scorching desert precarious than their own; many of the Arabian Peninsula in search of asylum seekers who fled Yemen are the Gulf crisis in 1990–91; others had Refugee Response Framework laid on route to Yemen and, ultimately, these refugees, who had themselves work. Each year, tens of thousands relatively small—indicative, perhaps, lost their jobs and were expelled out by the New York Declaration for Saudi Arabia and beyond. Although migrated previously between Yemen, of Oromo and Amhara walk across of how difficult it has been for many from Saudi Arabia at the outset of the Refugees and Migrants in 2016 and Ibrahim and his friends were incensed Saudi Arabia, and the Horn of Africa, Djibouti’s arid desert and alongside Yemenis to leave their country due to current war. Moreover, as many as eventually adopted as part of the Global by the migrants’ ghastly deaths, they evaluate their own trajectories in light its coastal highway toward the Red airport closures, mobility restrictions, a third of the refugees living in the Compact on Refugees by the United had long become inured to their of these passersby. Sea towns of Tadjoura and Obock, and lack of financial resources. Still, Markazi camp until recently are the Nations General Assembly in December routine presence in and around the A crossroads for migration to and where they are crowded onto wooden by October 2017, at least 190,000 descendants of Yemeni men who 2018. Although the Compact calls for Markazi camp for refugees from Yemen. from the Horn of Africa and the Arabian dhows crossing the Bab al-Mandab refugees and asylum seekers had fled had migrated to Somalia, Ethiopia, increased support for third-country Indeed, during a visit in January 2020, Peninsula, the Republic of Djibouti strait to Yemen: “the Gate of Tears.” If to neighboring countries, including Eritrea, or Djibouti in the early resettlement and voluntary repatria- I observed tens of young Ethiopian receives mixed and multidirectional these Ethiopians do not drown, and some 38,000 Yemeni nationals who twentieth century to escape desperate tion, it also aims to enhance refugee migrants entering the camp daily migration flows of refugees, asylum if they are not imprisoned or held entered Djibouti, from where the conditions in Yemen. Their children, self-reliance and to ease pressures on through a gap in its chain-link fence. seekers, economic migrants, environ- for ransom in Yemen, they continue majority sought onward passage to born of African women, returned to host countries located in the Global Many of them rifled through the mental migrants, and other migrants their journey northward to Saudi other destinations. Over the past Yemen to flee warfare or anti-Arab South. Described as “a new deal for camp’s overflowing garbage heaps, moving both into and out of conflict. It Arabia. In 2018, approximately 160,000 five years, the number of registered discrimination in the Horn. And it is refugees,” the Compact thus endorses searching for food. Others walked is thus a productive site through which migrants and asylum seekers crossed Yemeni refugees remaining in Djibouti their African-Yemeni grandchildren, the greater inclusion of refugees within among the narrow rows of the to examine the legal, political, racial- the Red Sea (departing from Djibouti) has hovered between 4,000 and 7,000 anxious to escape the marginalization their host societies through improved air-conditioned container homes that ized, and gendered distinctions drawn and the Gulf of Aden (departing from individuals divided between its capital, and alienation they suffered in Yemen, access to education and employment. were donated by Saudi Arabia, begging between refugees and migrants—both Somalia). In 2019, more than 138,000 Djibouti city, and the Markazi camp. who are now refugees in Djibouti, To this end, the Government of the refugees for their leftovers. Some African and Arab—who often encounter, migrants and asylum seekers entered Situated directly across the street Somalia, and Ethiopia. Djibouti—which had already extended of the younger Ethiopians hung discriminate against, or marry one Yemen. Notably, this was the second from the Markazi refugee camp is Ibrahim, the Yemeni-Ethiopian prima facie recognition to refugees around the camp’s largest shop, eyeing another; share trajectories; traverse consecutive year that the number of a Migration Response Center, run by man who showed me the photographs from Somalia and Yemen—has taken its goods. Its Yemeni shopkeeper, these categories; and disrupt or migrants crossing the sea from the the International Organization for of the deceased migrants, is the son substantive steps toward socioeco- continuing a charitable practice he re-enforce social hierarchies as they Horn of Africa to Yemen exceeded Migration. Established in 2011 and of a Yemeni man who had migrated nomically “integrating” refugees into had adopted during Ramadan, pursue “a future” through or within the number of migrants and refugees rehabilitated in 2017, the center assists to Harar, Ethiopia, where he married a the surrounding communities. In prepared large platters of rice daily the confines of a fitful mobility. crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. and helps to repatriate migrants local Oromo woman. When Ibrahim’s January 2017, Djibouti’s President that he shared with the migrants who Albeit one of the poorest and In January 2020, another 11,000 returning to their home countries. “Arab-owned” pharmacy was burned Guelleh promulgated new refugee laws congregated there. By and large, the smallest countries in the world (with migrants arrived in Yemen, 5,000 of Some of the migrants temporarily down by Oromo nationalists, he aiming to safeguard and strengthen 66 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 67

the refugees’ access to education, to be resettled in countries such as human traffickers to truck them across healthcare, employment, and eventual Sweden or Canada, these houses are the desert into Libya. After two years naturalization. Most immediately, these nothing more than a gilded cage. Even in transit, including imprisonment in laws paved the way for the inclusion were the Framework to meet its lofty Libya, they boarded a dinghy to cross SOMEONE’S of refugees in the national health and goals, the refugees I interviewed do not the Mediterranean and landed in Malta. education systems—a move that, inthe trust that they will ever be “integrated” Currently, they are seeking asylum in realm of education, will enable refugees in a region from which they, their northern Europe. following the Djiboutian curriculum parents, or their grandparents once fled. Ibrahim’s Ethiopian-Yemeni wife to receive nationally recognized cer-­ In the view of the “marginalized” (often had become so fed up with life in DAUGHTER tificates to facilitate their employment. racialized as black) Yemenis born to the camp that she paid a smuggler In December 2017, these new laws Yemeni fathers and Somali, Ethiopian, to take her and her young sons to came into effect by presidential or Eritrean mothers, neither Yemen nor Ethiopia—walking against the flow of decree. And, to much UNHCR fanfare, the countries in the Horn of Africa had the Ethiopians headed toward the Gate Recollecting the revolution the government announced that the ever fully included or accepted them. of Tears. Unable to support her children in Tehran country’s camps would henceforth It is for this reason that they crossed in Ethiopia, she took them to Yemen, be considered “villages.” In fact, in the sea, yet again, to become refugees: where she opened a small shop. After by Naghmeh Sohrabi the Markazi camp/village, this seman- refugees who, through the prospect a few months in Sanaa and renewed tic shift was accompanied by the of third-country resettlement, could fears that her eldest son was in danger refugees’ move from what had been leverage themselves out of this regional of being pulled into the conflict, she temporary shelters to the more durable migratory circuit and into a more open brought them back to Obock to live they checked out a meeting of the container homes donated by Saudi world. with Ibrahim as she again crossed Confederation of Iranian Students on Arabia’s King Salman Humanitarian the border into Ethiopia to pursue their university campus in Los Angeles. Aid and Relief Center. so, with integration family reunification through a cousin I was six, and my father had swung In theory, Djibouti’s implementa- And signaling a new kind of in Canada. Their decisions and so many me on his shoulders to give me a view tion of the Framework provisions would impasse, the refugees from Yemen are of the refugees’ and other migrants’ of the large conference room teeming help shift support from the parallel taking cues from the migrants heading trajectories can be characterized by with dark haired men and women, structures created for its refugee toward Yemen. Despite recognizing what Lauren Berlant (2011) calls “cruel all dressed in bell-bottom pants and population to its national educational their material and legal privileges as optimism”: in this case, the fantasy for wide-collared jackets. I had quietly and health services, which are now “refugees”—relative to their own past a better life that is the very obstacle to watched as the arguments between available to all. In practice, however, the experiences as migrants and to the its achievement. Bound by the “cruel the activist students got so heated transition away from NGO-led services conspicuous hardships of the optimism” that his refugee status they began to shove each other. “Let’s has reduced the refugees’ access to good “migrants” passing by—many have would eventually open doors to his go,” my mom had said to my dad, and medical care within the camp as well come to realize the increasing family’s resettlement, Ibrahim refused then looked up at me and smiled. as their ability to shape their children’s devaluation of refugee status in today’s to leave the camp. He did not want The difference between me and education. Whereas initially the inhospitable world. With dwindling his sons to grow up in Ethiopia, from Rahaa wasn’t just in our families. It development of what is now officially hope for third-country resettlement, where he feared they would eventually was also in the kind of nine-year-olds designated “the Saudi village” appeared one of the only ways to escape be compelled to migrate, like the young we were. I was a child of the 1970s in to provide support for the UNHCR’s permanent and effectively captive Oromo boys who sifted through the San Diego, immersed in Star Wars and At home in Tehran, 1982. Photo courtesy the author push for local integration, its viability displacement is through movement. camp’s garbage for its scraps. Tragically, secretly reading Judy Blume novels. is increasingly unclear. Many of the ref- One of the men I know waxes Ibrahim suffered a stroke in the She was the child of a revolution in ugees feared that if they were to move philosophical on this theme: “To autumn of 2019 and was brought back hey arrested only had political thoughts but flaunted Iran, witnessing the thrills of a mass physically from their impermanent migrate is to know God,” he tells me. to Ethiopia to die. It is not inconceiv- Qotbzadeh,” Rahaa said, them whenever she could, which, in movement that toppled a monarchy, tents to these durable containers they Migrating through the world is a way able that his sons—once refugees in “Tignoring the thud of my 1982 Iran, was often. She had revealed and its subsequent turn to violence. would be moving jurisdictionally from of venerating it. Despite the ongoing Djibouti, now refugees in Ethiopia— heavy book bag, which I just dropped to me early on in our friendship that When, two years after the revolution, the tent of United Nations protection armed conflict and the increasing risk will one day embark as migrants on on the floor. “Move over,” I said, and she came from a family of communists. my parents returned to Iran with 16 to the de facto prison of permanent of the country sliding into famine, the Eastern route to Saudi Arabia, shoved myself into the bench next “My father, my older sisters, even I suitcases and two children in tow, I displacement. Moreover, the increase many refugees have returned to Yemen. possibly passing by the camp in which to her. “Who?!” I asked, and then, myself am a member of the Tudeh was oblivious to all of that and to the in Saudi humanitarian aid to Markazi Boarding cattle boats from the port of they once lived. In this climate, the hesitantly, “Was he a communist?” party,” she had told me in a whisper as war that had already been underway portends to create yet another parallel Obock, they cautiously embark on the UN Global Compact for Refugees reads Rahaa sent me a sideways glance of we stood in the middle of the play- for six months. system. Rather than being “integrated” Eastern Route: the route into the war. less like a global commitment than it disappointment: “Of course not, you ground at recess. “The Revolutionary Once in Iran, I slowly began to within national institutions or within “Here, we are dying slowly,” several does a form of Southern captivity and donkey,” she said, shaking her head. Guards have even come to our house learn about politics from the stories the nearby town, the refugees living men and women have told me. “In Northern abandonment. To the extent Rahaa was my best friend in fourth looking for party pamphlets.” I was floating around in my grandmother’s in the gated and air-conditioned Saudi Yemen, I’ll die quickly but at home.” that there is a refugee “crisis”—as grade. The first friend I made in my new star-struck and confused. neighborhood, which stuck to me as I village may become even more isolated One group of five young Yemeni men opposed to a mobility deficit—it is that school. She had big brown eyes and an My own family was the opposite flitted from adult to adult. Or, snippets from the local environment and more decided to join the African migrants this “new deal for refugees” may erect oval face and carried an air of sophisti- of Rahaa’s. As far as I could tell, the of news that streamed out of my dependent on outside assistance than heading northward to Europe. They a new and more pernicious form of cated intellectualism. I felt a magnetic only time my parents came even father’s shortwave radio, incomprehen- they were before. For those who yearn flew to Khartoum, where they paid encampment. □ pull towards my new friend, who not close to political activity was when sible voices garbled by static. I longed 68 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 69

to be like Rahaa, a real intellectual, a to a gentle stop. We had arrived at a had made me realize that there was “Ey baba, you don’t say?” (Said now. Either go to sleep or go do your enough, she’d eventually have to Leftist perhaps, whatever that meant. checkpoint manned by men not even more going on than just checkpoints with either a shake of the head or a homework.” acknowledge me. She was sitting That summer, months after old enough to grow a full beard. My on the streets. I found this “more” slap to the knee). Sometimes when the But I couldn’t do either. These next to Mrs. Moradi, who had tears Rahaa told me about Qotbzadeh, I uncle rolled down his window and, in increasingly terrifying. So I began to topic was dangerously close to home, stories quickly blended into the one I in her eyes and kept shaking her sat cross-legged next to my dad on a voice gravelly from years of smoke listen to the whispers that whirled all a relative, say, who was napping in the had begun to tell myself every night: head. Finally, Mr. Moradi responded, the rug. I knew that guy on the TV, and drink, said “Good evening sir. Is around me. other room, the use of “folani” would A beautiful woman steps out of the “Some young innocent girl. Someone’s sitting behind the desk alone, dressed everything ok?” His voice was covered The best time to catch a whisper soar to new heights. bank, shakes her mane, and then is daughter. Someone like you and my in a dark suit, blue shirt, tieless, and in disdain for these joojehs, and I mid-air was during siesta, when “Did you see folani at lunch giving shot dead as a lesson to all the other Mina.” Then he gently touched his leg bearded, was him, the guy whose could sense my aunt tense up in the my mother, aunt, and grandmother the cold shoulder to folani?” beautiful women. This woman looked and sighed, “Oh God.” arrest had made my friend so sad. passenger seat. I quickly sat up but would all sit cross-legged on the rug “Yea, didn’t you know? She invited like my mom. That summer, as I sat on the carpet It was clear from the look on my folani, the sister-in-law that the other “Mommy!” I would plead every and read or took a break from chasing dad’s face and from the drone of the folani can’t stand, to dinner and folani time she was getting ready to leave my brother around my grandmother’s guy’s voice that something important found out, and now qahr kardan so the house. “Mommy!! Please, why can’t courtyard, I would catch images on TV was going on, but I had no idea what. they’re not talking anymore.” you just cover your hair? You’ll get of men and women staring vacantly My Americanized Persian barely Sometimes, the conversation killed!” into the camera and confessing their got me through recess at school, let veered towards the ominous. “Did you “Stop it!” my mother would say, supposed crimes against the state. The alone a televised confession by a hear what Rajaee’s wife said?” I lifted “Nothing is going to happen!” revolution had begun to swallow its revolutionary. I caught some stuff: my head from my mother’s lap. Here own, and a bloody struggle had broken acknowledgement that he received was a name I recognized: The prime ne Friday around this time out between the various groups that money to bomb the house of the minister’s. But I quickly put my head my family traversed the length just two years prior had taken to the leader, Ayatollah Khomeini; some down and closed my eyes. O of the city from the south, streets together. I knew all of this kind of plot to overthrow the nascent “Na, chi?” where we lived, to the north to spend because, by then, almost every night, post-revolutionary regime. My “She said if they take one unveiled the day at my parents’ oldest and best my family would quietly sit together dad told me Qotbzadeh had been woman from every intersection of the friends, the Moradi family. The Moradis and listen to the sound of automatic Khomeini’s friend. So then why was city and shoot her dead, then all the were religious: The women, including rifles rip through the darkness. My he trying to kill him? And if he really women would start veiling.” their daughter Mina, who was just parents had explained to me that the was confessing to all these things, My eyes were now wide opened. a year older than me, veiled, and at government forces were breaking up why was his face like stone and his My mom’s chin stared back at me. various times of the day the family khooneh teamys, safe houses where Leaving New York for Tehran, 1981. Photo courtesy the author voice so matter-of-fact? After a while, “Well, did you hear about that members would take turns excusing the counter-revolutionaries were I just stopped listening and focused woman from the neighborhood? The themselves to go and pray. My family, hiding. instead on his hands grasping the didn’t know what kind of face to put or with their legs stretched out. Their one who went to the bank on the on the other hand, was decidedly not “Are there khooneh teamys on corners of his written confession and on: I was curious and I was afraid. The hushed voices filled the room with corner?” religious. No one veiled and no one grandma’s street?” I had asked once releasing it once in a while to make 18-year-old little chicken stuck his head grievances—such as the price of “Na?” prayed. God’s existence, in fact, was when the gunfire seemed to be coming his tortured points. His hands were in the car, sniffing. No one said any- food, fears over what was happening “She’s gorgeous, perfectly made up, just not an issue we discussed one from outside her door. large, and when he placed them on thing. I tried to smile, but his eyes just and what was going to happen, or with long blond hair, wearing a dress, way or another. But the families were “No,” my dad had assured me. “It’s his face in a rare show of fatigue, they skimmed over my head. My uncle held just everyday gossip. I would rest and high heels. She walks up the steps so close that they strangely mirrored nowhere nearby.” But I did not believe swallowed him whole. His hands. his breath. He knew that little chicken my head on my mother’s lap and of the bank, takes a tiny handkerchief each other: The two dads, the two him. I was convinced it was only a They were mostly what made me sad. was sniffing to see if anyone had been pretend to sleep, hoping to catch some out of her bag, and ties it under her moms, the two oldest daughters, the matter of time before we too would be “Did you hear him say he wants drinking. Drinking and smoking opium juicy tidbit I could then share with chin. She goes in, does her thing, then two middle sons, and, later down the taken out and left for dead in the dark. either to be forgiven or executed?” had quickly become my uncle’s favorite Rahaa. But these women were not so comes out. She doesn’t even bother to road, the two youngest daughters. That What was riveting the adults—and Rahaa asked me the next day, sound- way of giving the middle finger to easily fooled, so they would change wait! Right on the steps of the bank, we didn’t have a god in common was quickly us girls, too—that Friday after- ing proud. “His hands were so big,” “these pimps and sons of whores,” as he the name of whomever they were right in front of the guards, she takes never an issue. There was so much noon was this someone’s daughter was all I could muster. liked to call the people now in power. talking about to folani, the proverbial off her scarf, shakes her hair several more between us. refusing to confess: “What right do you Several long seconds passed. I was “so-and-so.” If I ever dared ask, “Who?” times then leaves.” On that particular Friday after- have to sit in judgment of me?!” she hile I knew that the worried that even a whiff on my uncle’s my mother would say, “Go to sleep. “Na baba? Good for her! Bilakh to noon, Mina and I, having exhausted screamed at the interrogator who was world around me was breath or less—just the defiant look in It’s none of your business who,” and them all!” said my aunt, then she all the gossip and games we could off camera. “No, I have nothing to W changing fast and against his eyes—would be enough for him to they’d all laugh. For a while, I thought made a fist but straightened out her think of, walked into the living room confess,” she would say, shaking her the adults’ expectations, I didn’t know get dragged out of the car and lashed. folani was a real person, a person who thumb. By then, I had already learned to see our four parents staring at the head repeatedly. why. One day, I was in the car with But the joojeh just pulled his head back seemed to lead a fascinating and, at that the gesture for “good job!” in one television screen. A voice commanded Then, cut. She disappeared from the my aunt and uncle, coming back from out and, without a word, gestured for times, sad life. of my countries meant “up your butt” a young woman, sitting alone behind a screen and a picture of green meadows visiting yet another relative. It was us to go. “May God protect you,” my “Folani was on a diet again, did in the other, but still, it was jarring. desk in a veil tied crookedly against her dotted by bright-red poppies took her dark, and I was in the backseat, half uncle said, with as much contempt as you hear?” “Mommy!” I tugged at my mom’s jaw to “please enumerate your crimes place accompanied by the jarring sound paying attention to whatever was being he could muster. When the window “Na? I just saw her put away a kilo shirt. “Mommy! Why’d the lady wear a against Khomeini and the Islamic of a revolutionary march. There was said in the front, half watching the was fully rolled up and we were well on of cream puffs.” handkerchief on her head?” My mother Republic.” silence in the living room, but before still-unfamiliar city whiz by. I knew our way, he muttered: “I shit on your “Did you hear about folani’s didn’t even look down. “Who is she?” I asked everyone I could say, “Daddy what happened?” something was up when my aunt and heads.” No one said another word. husband?” “Banks are government buildings. loudly. No one answered. “WHO. IS. this someone’s daughter showed up on uncle lowered their voices to a whisper Qotbzadeh’s stony-faced robot-like “Nah, chi?” So you have to cover your hair when SHE?” I repeated impatiently, and the TV again, this time visibly beaten and my uncle slowed the car down confession and his nervous hands “He’s an addict. Opium.” you go into a government building stared at my mom. I knew if I stared and almost unrecognizable. 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70 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

“Please enumerate your crimes “Get me all the blankets!” my mom them. She would travel across this against Khomeini and the Islamic ordered. sprawling city, doctor to doctor, with Republic,” the voice commanded her I felt the weight of a thousand me in tow, convinced that the answer again. “Yes,” she meekly answered, her comforters press against my body and would lie behind a yet-to-be-opened head bowed down, “I have committed loosen my neck. One second of calm. door. crimes against the Islamic Republic.” Then shivers again. I couldn’t hear After several weeks, we landed No one uttered a word. Then Mrs. anything from underneath the layers at the state-run Tehran’s Children’s Moradi sighed, hit her thigh with her I was buried under, just the muffled Hospital. The hospital, unlike many hand and said, “Help us, God,” and sound of my parents’ and grand- of the doctor’s offices my mother had rocked her body from side to side. mother’s voices. I knew I was going taken me to, was not in a nice part of On the long ride home, I tried to to die, now, in the darkness, under all town, nor did it look very new. As I sat imagine what had happened to that girl these blankets, so I poked my head out. on a plastic chair next to my mother in the time that we had blankly stared My father was sitting cross-legged next in the hallway waiting for test results, at the picture of a green meadow, but to me with one arm draped around the I focused on the dirty yellow paint my imagination only reached as far as mountain I was trapped under. “You’ll peeling off the walls. Bored, I swung my life would go: school, home, family, be OK,” he said. my dangling legs as hard and as high friends, books, and playgrounds. That My mother and grandmother as they would go. face, bruised and battered, defiant returned from the kitchen holding a “Stop!” my mom sternly said, with and angry, hovered over my thoughts glass full of steaming white liquid. “Sit a quick hand on my arm. “The doctor’s and filled me with the feeling that up, my love,” my mom said. I shook here,” and she shot up straight and something was about to go wrong, that my head. “Drink it. It’s hot milk, and walked towards her. somehow this revolution was going to honey,” but I knew there was a raw I knew they were going to whisper swallow us too, that someone I knew, egg broken into it. to each other, for here in this place, in someone I loved, was going to die in a I sat up, managing to still make this city, in this country, important C prison, or in a safe house, or on some a face to express my dislike of her information always came in whispers. M random street corner. concoction, and with my father’s arm I tilted my head towards them, sat real Was it then that the night-shivers wrapped around my shaking shoul- still and tried to hear. Y began? One night, I woke up to the ders I slowly sipped the hot liquid. The “It’s not physical,” the doctor said. CM sound of rattling. The sound was so heat traveled down my gullet and into “Something is frightening her. You have MY loud it woke up my grandmother, my chest where it branched out to my to find out what it is.” CY sleeping on the other side of the room. limbs, fingers, and toes. The shivers My mom turned to me and gave “What’s wrong?” she asked in the dark. stopped. Color returned to my parents’ me a strained reassuring smile. I CMY I tried to open my mouth but it was face. My grandmother plopped herself smiled back and swung my left leg as K locked, and clank clank clank, was the down on the bed in relief. hard and as high as it would go. only answer I could give. My grand- “What happened?” my mother mother slid off the bed, turned on the asked no one in particular. “I’m too hot I don’t know when it was that the lights, and sat down on the floor by my now,” I whined as I frantically kicked nightly sound of gunfire stopped. mattress. I was holding my arms to my off comforters. “Ok, she’s better,” my Nor do I know when my mother went body and tightening my neck muscles mother said quietly, all emotion out into the streets veiled—as all to make the shivering stop but all it did drained out of her voice. women eventually were forced to do. was make the sound of my teeth bang- But I wasn’t better. My parents I don’t know Rahaa’s reaction when ing against each other louder. I closed and brother began to sleep downstairs Qotbzadeh was executed by a firing my eyes, and felt my grandmother get with my grandmother and me—five squad at the end of the summer, nor up and leave the room. people cramped into a small room. do I remember mine. By then, my “Sedi!” she shouted from the Sometimes we all slept through the family had moved out of my grand- bottom of the stairs, trying to wake up night. Sometimes the shivers came mother’s house into a recently built my mother. She hadn’t even reached early, before anyone had had a apartment complex, and I was about the second “Se” before my mom came chance to fall asleep. Sometimes they to start a new school with new friends. flying down the slippery stone stairs came late, only hours before dawn. I will never know who that girl, that and into our room. Sometimes the warm milk, raw egg, someone’s daughter, was. She was Today is where “What is it, my love?” she said and honey did the trick. Sometimes first a memory, and then a metaphor and touched my forehead. “Does she nothing helped. for the myriad ways in which a impossible ends. have a fever?” she asked my dad, Everyone recommended “the revolution gives rise to a defiant who was by now kneeling by my side. best pediatrician in Tehran” to my generation and then attempts to crush With an unmatched portfolio of digital technologies, Siemens is empowering a new generation of thinkers He moved forward and kissed my parents, none of whom could tell that spirit of revolt. What I do know to unlock the potential of their ideas. And to improve forehead as he has done all my life to what was going on. “There’s nothing is that one day, one ordinary day, I how we live, work, and understand the world. measure my temperature. “No, she’s wrong with her,” they would say to stopped shivering in the night and life not warm.” my mother, who refused to believe went on. □ siemens.de 72 The berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 73

“modern” technology and colonized a kind of modernist magic, the pho- “primitive” labor; an inanimate speak- nograph had disaggregated a ghostly Sonic ing machine capable of reproducing fragment of audible history from the THE living sound, lofted above the head of body of its living maker. Racialized, a silent and thingly black subject. black sound had transformed into an Afterlives of In Kentridge’s stage work, which object, the ownership and mastery of Slavery and received its premier in December 2018, its “voice” carrying forward as a chief ANDREW W. MELLON at New York’s Park Avenue Armory, the point of contest within public culture phonograph as playback device was and commercial markets. In its mul- Colonialism presented as part of the assembly of tiple African and diasporic iterations, creature comforts that accompanied the black sound-object would arise as British and European occupying the dominant musical resonance of the WORKSHOP forces during World War I. Yet Africa global modern era. also knew of this technology years The Academy’s second Mellon before, when colonizing expeditions Workshop took as its subject the by Ronald Radano first undertook what would become a creation of the black sound-object and grand extraction of resources from the the many layers of complexity that The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the both the workshop and in meetings Barenboim Said Academy; several took continent. Phonographs were put to accompanied its place in the making Humanities was established to address with experts from the Ethnological part in a public panel-discussion, includ- service to preserve for scientific study of modern, musical knowledge. It themes of mutual and global intellec- Museum and the Sound Archive of ing T. Alexander Aleinikoff, a professor The image of Nhlanhla Mahlangu what were thought to be the natural asked two key questions: How and tual responsibility. Generously funded the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. at The New School for Social Research playing the role of an African porter sounds of “the Negro,” the putative why did a putatively inferior, negative by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Collaboration with Berlin’s Haus der and the director of the Zolberg in William Kentridge’s The Head and resonances of a primal, human origin form of racialized music become, the program consists of a fellowship Kulturen der Welt resulted in a public Institute on Migration and Mobility; the Load is a strange rendering, one that had somehow miraculously by way of the doubling effect of and subsequent workshop, organized discussion with composer Philip Miller, Thomas Bagger, the director-general suggestive of colonialism’s profound endured into the modern present. reproduction technologies, a superior, by each semester’s Andrew W. Mellon conductor Thuthuka Sibisi, and previous for foreign affairs at the office of the incongruities. The photograph What Mahlangu, as colonial porter, hyper-positive expression across Fellow and focused on three designated Mellon Fellow Rosalind Morris. German president; Naika Foroutan, the fascinates precisely because it brings may have ultimately carried as his Africa, Europe, and the United States? themes considered in a transatlantic The third Andrew W. Mellon director of the Deutsches Zentrum für together so many subtle, intensely load was a sonic representation of How, moreover, might a music that context: migration and integration; workshop was convened from January Integrations- und Migrationsforschung; doubled oppositions: a reified body himself, a present-day contrivance of carries the burden of white Europe’s race in comparative perspective; and 6–10, 2020, by Roberto Suro, a Julia Preston, a contributing writer and fetishized thing; an imperial an ancient, primal essence. Through and America’s racial fantasies—for exile and return. Key outcomes of the professor of journalism and public for The Marshall Project and a visiting workshops are published in the Berlin policy at the University of Southern research scholar and lecturer at Journal and online. California. “Mixed Motive Migrations Princeton University’s Program in Latin This issue includes two essays and the Implications for Public Policy” American Studies. The panel was from the second Andrew W. Mellon challenged longstanding assumptions moderated by Anna Sauerbrey, the Workshop, “Phonographic Knowledge about immigration politics and deputy editor-in-chief of the Berlin daily and the African Past: Sonic Afterlives policies. Its participants sought to find Der Tagesspiegel. of Slavery and Colonialism,” which new formulations of humanitarian The fourth Andrew W. Mellon took place from June 3–7, 2019, chaired obligations and national interests Workshop, “Past and Future Genders: by Ronald Radano, a professor of that connect in meaningful ways. They Latin America and Beyond,” will be African cultural studies and music at discussed factors impacting migra- chaired by Moira Fradinger, an associ- the University of Wisconsin-Madison. tion—globalization, climate change, ate professor of comparative literature Following Radano’s summary, Gavin failed states, military conflict—while at Yale University. Originally planned for Steingo, of Princeton University, also looking at recent developments in June 2020, it was postponed to June assesses the legacy of French sound destination countries, including nativist 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic. theorist Pierre Schaeffer; and Ciraj national movements, demographic As a prelude, we include here the article Rassol, of the University of the change, and shifting labor market “Gender Dissidence in the Twenty-First Western Cape, in Cape Town, South dynamics. The topics of trauma and the Century.” □ Africa, considers Rudolph Pöch and rights of children were also addressed, the Phonogramme Archive of the as were existing norms in international – Michael Steinberg Academic Austrian Academy of Sciences. These law, which were challenged for their Consultant to the Andrew W. Mellon two scholars were part of a group of selection and control of humanitarian Fellowship 16 participants who explored various admissions, multinational policies, and – Berit Ebert Head of Programs & dimensions of phonographic archives the role of third and transit countries. Development, American Academy in of transnational black music as they As part of the workshop, the group of Berlin relate to the legacies of slavery and 28 experts met with peers from the Nhlanhla Mahlangu in a scene from The Head and the Load, by William Kentridge, at the Park Avenue colonialism. Key questions about power Museum for Islamic Art and Museum Armory Drill Hall, New York City, December 3, 2018 (dress rehearsal). Photo: Stephanie Berger and remembrance were addressed in of Near Eastern Art and visited the 74 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 75

example, in the enduring belief that The black sound-object as In a series of recordings, Louise capital of Senegal, and co-founded uses the term objet sonore to refer to black music is imbued with a racially modernist contrivance became an Meintjes demonstrated how this vocal the ethnographic record label Ocora, the thing being recorded. But over the authentic essence—become the voice orienting theme for several presen- technique phonographically escaped in 1957. For there is reason to suspect course of the 1950s, the “object” in no longer of an imagined past but of a tations. Linda Cimardi demonstrated its generative location, circulating in Sound that his notion of the “sound object” both his compositions and in his writ- progressive future? how a UNESCO-funded effort to global pop as the ghostly presence of owes as much to colonial radiophonic ings drifts increasingly further away In order to tackle these problems, document the seemingly pure, the “sound of Africa.” Objects practice and field recording in Africa as from the thing being recorded. Instead, we assembled a group of interdisci- “tribal” sound of the Bariba people Sounds from the past in the it does to his compositional style and “object” begins to designate sound plinary specialists from Africa, Europe, of Dahomey (present-day Benin) making of the present bring hope of philosophical orientation. I’ll explore itself—split from its source through and the United States whose expertise was the work of a skilled sound a positive future. This is the line of this critical position in what follows. technology—as it is manipulated to encompassed many arenas of thought technologist’s fanciful editing of thought that oriented the public forum Despite the careful historical work become music. that black music has inhabited: from field recordings. Nomi Dave revealed at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, on a serious biographical reassessment One can hear this contrast in two early sound-recording to colonial how documentary procedures have featuring the work of composer Philip by Gavin Steingo of Schaeffer, many composers and compositions: Étude aux chemins de African history; from the legal study imparted a kind of sonic masculinity Miller and sound artist/conductor sound theorists remain unaware of fer (1948) and Étude aux objets (1959). of ownership to black critical theory on the West African archive, issuing Thuthuka Sibisi. During the forum, Schaeffer’s African sojourns. Very few The first, based on a recording of a and musical composition. The five-day claims of ownership to the men the two South African artists, who African music specialists who have train, is manipulated in several ways, project began with visits to Berlin’s who performed and recorded it. collaborated with William Kentridge French polymath Pierre worked extensively with Ocora record- but the train is clearly audible. The two main archives of traditional Gavin Steingo (also featured ahead) in the production of The Head and the Schaeffer (1910–1995) is remembered ings (over seven hundred) realize that second piece, Étude aux objets, by music: the phonogram archive of the argued that the hidden background Load, presented Scratching against today equally as a composer and as Schaeffer had anything to do with contrast, is not obviously a recording Ethnological Museum, in Dahlem, for Europe’s invention of the sound the Kaboom and Blare of Trumpets, a theorist of sound. As a composer, the label. But staging an encounter of any particular physical object. and the Lautarchiv of Humboldt object traced to the composer Pierre a sound-art media extraction of the he is canonical in at least two ways: between Euro-American sound theory Rather, Schaeffer recorded bells and University, the two institutions joining Schaeffer’s radio and recording larger stage work, whose composi- Schaeffer is typically covered in surveys and postcolonial historiography other objects and then processed those this fall as part of the new Humboldt experiences in Francophone Africa. tional materials included the voices of of twentieth-century “classical” music, provides a pathway for rethinking sounds, but what the listener hears Forum. And Rosalind Morris introduced African POWs that Miller first heard on and he is also beloved by contemporary the notion of the “sound object,” for it is a panoply of shimmering, clanging By the early twentieth century, the re-mediating effects of recorded recordings housed at the Lautarchiv. electronic musicians, who routinely offers a meaningful way to understand sonorities, not physical bells. One Berlin had already been recognized sound among informal (zama zama) The lively discussion that ensued bequeath to the composer grandiose phonographic knowledge and the would be hard pressed to identify, sim- internationally as the home of the mine workers of South Africa, whose developed on the workshop’s theme monikers such as “the godfather of afterlives of slavery and colonialism. ply by listening, what the sounds are foremost collections of world music, creative listening to familiar music of colonialism and slavery’s paradoxes sampling.” His legacy as a theorist, actually of. (Here, I am leaning on the the Africa archive being its center- uncannily re-familiarized the most of burden and upliftment, of abjection meanwhile, is largely attributable to In his roles as composer and work of American music theorist Brian piece. Through the generosity of the precarious and dangerous of foreign turning toward the miraculous. several major figures writing in his theorist, Schaeffer examined what Kane, of Yale University’s department institutions’ executive staff—notably, places. A closing session with Miller wake—most notably French composer happens to sound when it becomes of music.) at the phonogram archive, Lars- With the presentations of Eric and Sibisi, led by Tejumola Olaniyan, and scholar Michel Chion, a central fig- progressively removed from the As a theorist, Schaeffer was Christian Koch and Frauke Fitzner, and, Lott and Anthony Reed, the workshop secured the future as our collective ure in film studies who was a student original context of its recording. As committed to understanding precisely at Humboldt, Viktoria Tkaczyk and her turned to the other side of the Atlantic, project: How the burdensome load of Schaeffer’s—and to his conception a composer, he continually experi- this kind of transformation from graduate assistant, Céline Couson—we observing how another scene of of history embodied in the black of sound as an object (objet sonore), mented with this kind of sound repro- real-world sound source to abstracted gained first-hand knowledge about the subjection, the legacy of US slavery, sound-object might set the ground enabled by the revolution of phono- duction; his compositions were in sonority. To do so, he developed a early history of the collections, while provided the structural basis for a for collective awakening, a way of graphic recording. It is this conception many ways experiments in reproduc- rich lexicon of terms, which have inspecting the contents of the archives parallel iteration of black music’s speaking to the force of racism’s that underlies his resurgence in the ing sound. Much of his music was become standard in the relatively themselves, which included hearing double character. What could be audible legacy in the making of a new field of Sound Studies. meant to be an alternative to what new discipline of Sound Studies. The a disk recording of an African POW simultaneously abject and miraculous new, conscious tomorrow. In this, the Ronald Radano’s description of he viewed as the overly abstract term “sound object” has been widely captured in Europe by German armed becomes, in Lott’s interpretation, workshop would be musically and last year’s Mellon workshop at the compositional practice of the time, deployed; it invites us to give greater forces. (France sent colonized African an indicator of aesthetic power, its temporally resonant with so many American Academy made repeated particularly the serial techniques of priority to unanchored, deracinated soldiers to Europe, where, upon presence taking form in the wah-wah- pasts present and new beginnings. reference to “sound objects,” asking composers such as Pierre Boulez and sound than to sound-producing capture, they were placed into prisoner pedal-induced “wacka-wacka” sound I would like to thank Michael where a racially sensitive version Karlheinz Stockhausen. He called his objects. It asks us to define sound as camps. The Lautarchiv amassed a large of the electric guitar, heard across the Steinberg, Berit Ebert, Johana Gallup, of the concept might fit in studies style of composition musique concrète pure form, as “sound as such.” collection of POW recordings; many of global expanse of 1970s soul and funk. and John-Thomas Eltringham for their of recorded music of Africa and (the French word concrète does not Why did the meaning of “sound the recordings were of Francophone Reed, in a presentation focusing on the tremendous support. This second the African diaspora. Participants mean “concrete” as much as some- object” shift from sound-producing Africans.) Tkaczyk’s presentation, sound artist Matana Roberts, helped Mellon workshop is dedicated to the in the workshop were asked to thing that is “palpable” or “non-theo- object to sound-as-object in Schaeffer’s which described the development of us to consider how the interplay of memory of Tejumola Olaniyan, Wole examine “critical questions about the retical”). In some of his most famous oeuvre? What happened between German sound-studies after World mediated expression in the creation Soyinka Professor of the Humanities, power and significance of the black pieces, Schaeffer recorded simple Étude aux chemins de fer and Étude aux War I, raised the question of Germany’s of black arts impacts the production University of Wisconsin-Madison, sound-object,” to inquire into “what objects such as bells and then played objets? At the same time this transi- repression of its colonial past in the of meaning and value, suggesting a whose provocative commentary over might distinguish the black sound-ob- the sounds backwards, slowed them tion was happening in his musical name of a new, seemingly deracinated kind of deep-seated intermediation the course of the five-day event proved ject from other recorded forms,” and down, or chopped off points of attack compositions, it was also happening in science. Her paper, paired with Ciraj in contemporary black composition. energizing and uplifting. For us, as he to explore what kinds of “lives” these and decay. He also made special his writing about music. There’s a long Rassool’s commentary (featured Such gestures to innovation, to would say at moments of celebration, sound objects have lived. It is interest- phonographic disks with a locked break between Schaeffer’s two main ahead), proposes the imperial archive futurity, returned us once again to “more grease for the elbows!” □ ing in this light to think of Schaeffer, groove to produce repetitive cycles. books—À la recherche d’une musique of Africa to be a material documenta- the African continent and to the prac- who, in the 1950s, worked as a radio Writing about his earliest concrète (1952), written as a series tion of occupation and subjugation. tice of ululation among Zulu women. engineer in Dakar, the peninsular compositional experiments, Schaeffer of diary entries with some elliptical 76 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 77

sketches of the “sound object,” and the various aspects of his work—and, object fulfills the “thingly” status of Archive, working in close cooperation the conference, Pöch was celebrated a means of integrating and recon- Traité des objets musicaux (1966), a not least, Africa. In a 1987 interview, the incorporeal African “body” in the with Erich M. von Hornbostel of the as one of the pioneers in field-based necting different media formats that, full-blown theoretical treatise in which he recalled, “I was involved with the colonial imagination. Phonogramme Archive in Berlin. (Pöch sound recording. The intention behind having been “scattered across different he conceptually elaborates on all his radio in Africa in the same period as From the perspective of the was appointed to the first professor- digitization and publication was to Austrian institutions,” were now musical ideas, including the “sound I was doing concrète—I was doing present, it is possible to see and hear ship of anthropology and ethnology at make the early holdings of the archive “fragmented and almost forgotten.” object.” both at the same time. I was deeply Schaeffer’s work as part of a much the University of Vienna, in 1913.) “easily accessible, especially in the An internet-based, digital database In trying to understand the afraid that these vulnerable musical larger double-movement: the accel- Some of Pöch’s recordings were countries and regions of their origin.” would facilitate new opportunities for motivation for Schaeffer’s insistence cultures—lacking notation, recording, eration and dizzying circulation of accompanied by photographs and The Kalahari recordings were also “critical review” by scholars. It was that we study “sound as such,” cut cataloguing, and with the approxi- black music, on the one hand, and the films that documented hand clapping included in the “historical” collections hoped that the outcome would be a off from its source (rather than how mative nature of their instruments— incarceration and enclosure of black and dance movements. As a form, (1899–1950) produced as part of virtual museum that would meet the sound relates to the things that would be lost.” bodies, on the other. If black lives mat- the recordings and their supplements the UNESCO Memory of the World requirements of archiving and public produce it), most scholars have taken If preservation was indeed import- ter, then we are in need, additionally, reflected a moment of new institu- International Register, underlining dissemination. This was first and Schaeffer at his word. For example, ant to Schaeffer, then the logic of the of a revolution in how we think about tional commitment to research across their “universal significance.” As his- foremost a project of Austrian heritage Brian Kane notes that in the Traité, “sound object” comes more clearly sound in general, and in particular disciplines, bringing closer unity torical documents, the phonographic consolidation, albeit framed through Schaeffer attributes his conceptualiza- into focus. The valorization of sound when it comes to the African continent between field collecting and scientific collections carry value in their sheer the logics of world heritage, with Pöch tion of the sound object to his reading severed from its source as articulated and its diasporas. □ laboratory study. As the world’s first historicity: they represent “the oldest positioned centrally as a pioneer of of German philosopher Edmund in Schaeffer’s theory means that sound archive dedicated to audio-vi- sound documents” (Tondokumente) of heritage stewardship. The project’s Husserl, whose writing on the method recorded sound provides a completely sual research, the Vienna archive Khoesan languages, of the “animated leaders expressed their opposition of phenomenology stressed the adequate record of a musical culture. embodied this new, cross-disciplinary testimonies of the Bushmen,” and of to any form of material restitution, importance of attending closely to And let us be frank: it was not simply perspective. their polyphonic singing. Pöch’s expressing their desire instead to one’s experience and consciousness, the case, in Schaeffer’s time, that Looking back at its accomplish- recordings became the basis of an “repatriate [. . .] material by way of by bracketing things as they might “vulnerable” African musical cultures ments over the past 120 years, the institutional and disciplinary edifice of digital restitution” to the people who exist outside of ourselves. But the “would be lost”—as if using the Phonogramme Archive portrays itself preservationism driven by an ideology had been studied. attempt to interpret Schaeffer’s ideas passive voice somehow absolves the The Sounds as a protector of heritage. On its of stewardship advocating permanent This preservationist paradigm this way misses something important: perpetrators of their theft. Instead, one website, it notes that it is “the world’s availability through care, digitization, came unstuck when it became the sections on Husserl in Schaeffer’s cannot help but infer that Schaeffer of Violence oldest sound archive.” Founded in and scholarship, all brought together increasingly apparent that Pöch’s 1966 treatise make up a total of eight was aware, somewhere in his mind, 1899, it stands as one of the major under the aegis of the Austrian Kalahari sound-collecting had pages in a book comprised of over five that French colonialism was directly institutions that “safeguards a consid- Academy of Sciences. These curatorial taken place as part of a climate of hundred. The treatise covers a massive responsible for the destruction of erable part of the worldwide heritage commitments to stewardship and heightened violence and colonial range of topics, from anthropology to African music and culture. of orally transmitted cultures [that preservation were an outgrowth of the disruption, reaching an initial apex physics to art history. The decision to Irrespective of his intentions, existed before] the impact of Western archive’s celebration of Pöch’s seminal in the first decade of the twentieth focus on eight pages of Husserl can Schaeffer’s theory of the sound object by Ciraj Rassool civilization.” It understands its main work. century. Pöch’s phonographic legacy only be attributed to a prioritization had this specific echo of the broader work as having generated, collected, This meeting of stewardship and of Kalahari recordings needed to of philosophical discourse over other political context in which he was and catalogued audio-visual research heroic celebration took on its most be understood as part of the wider matters. living: African music could survive recordings from many disciplines and developed form in the digital assembly multi-disciplinary collecting projects But if the major shift in the 1950s even if colonial France wrought Among the significant collections regions, its curators attending to a of Pöch’s “fragmented and almost generated at the time, with significant was not due simply to Schaeffer’s destruction on its occupied territories. housed at the Phonogramme Archive longterm commitment to preservation forgotten estate” through a multi-in- components of their accumulation engagement with the work of Husserl, Accepting Schaeffer’s theory of the of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and making the collections accessible stitutional Viennese cultural project having been carried out unlawfully what did happen during those years? sound object, it’s possible to say that in Vienna are the audio-visual field to the public. supported by the Austrian Research and largely concealed from authori- The answer—or at least one answer— today African music has not only recordings of the medical scientist and This work began in earnest in Fund. For many who gathered around ties. Setting the context for collecting is that Schaeffer had spent several of survived but even thrived in the hands anthropologist Rudolf Pöch, which he the 1960s, when the metal negatives this project, Pöch was a “ground- efforts was the genocide in southern those years in Africa. “It is crucial to of electro-acoustic composers and produced in German South West Africa served as the basis for creating new breaking” and “pioneering” media Namibia (located today in the bor- note that the Schaeffer who returned DJs in the intervening decades—even and Bechuanaland in 1908. Created recordings employing epoxide resin. scholar, noted for his phonographic, derlands of Namibia, Botswana, and to France in 1957 after three or four as contemporary France continues expressly for the Vienna archive by (The original wax recordings were photographic, and cinematographic South Africa) occurring in the violent years absence […] when he dedicated its aggressive assault on African life employing sound reproduction tech- lost in World War II.) These, in turn, field work in the Kalahari, together and disruptive transfrontier colonial himself to working in Africa,” writes through monetary dependency and nologies developed by Thomas Edison provided the basis for re-recording with expeditions to German-occupied landscape of the Kalahari. Michel Chion, “no longer thought, other forms of neocolonial violence. and the archive itself, the recordings and the eventual transfer of Pöch’s New Guinea, between 1901 and 1906. These conditions contributed to said, or wrote the same things he had Schaeffer’s valorization of the featured the songs and speech of recorded sound to audio CD and (He also worked with Robert Lach in speakers of N|uu and other Khoesan four years earlier.” Oddly, this is about sound object over and above its source the Khoesan people (known at the CD-ROM. the recording of Russian, Turk-Tatar, people being forced across the Gariep as much of a mention of Africa as suggests a more general dehumaniza- time as “Bushmen”), who lived in the In 2003, on the occasion of the Armenian, and Jewish POWS during River into the northern Cape, itself one will find in the vast literature on tion, of turning sounding people into Kalahari and spoke the Naro language. Thirty-Fourth Annual Conference World War I.) Pöch was described the locus of a violent, disruptive Schaeffer’s music or theories. audible things whose sonic afterlives Initially produced on wax moulds, of the International Association of as “one of the last to lead multi-dis- history, of widespread displacement While Schaeffer focuses on suggest the continuation of sound as they were subsequently transferred to Sound and Audiovisual Archives ciplinary, scientific expeditions and loss of access to land, the out- densely theoretical matters in his “dead” life. The forms of theory and nickel-plated copper negatives or “gal- (IASA), held in Pretoria, South Africa, on a large scale,” who undertook come of which was that many were Traité, in interviews and other less compositional practice bequeathed to vanos,” the process overseen by Pöch Pöch’s recordings were published by documentation through “a wide range turned into seasonal farm laborers. formal publications, he sometimes us by Schaeffer created a kind of phono­ himself, who from 1909 to 1913 served the Academy of Sciences as part of of media that were state-of-the-art Pöch’s research and collecting ben- mentions the relationship between graphic reification, where the sound as a research assistant at the Vienna a multimedia historical edition. At at the time.” The project aimed to be efitted from colonial administrative 78 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 79

networks of officials, missionaries, pioneering and preservationist frame- preservation and stewardship that have To better understand the zeitgeist, new political movements. As early as accelerated the development of and police, with local officials none- work for understanding his legacy. This attached themselves to all aspects of it is helpful to briefly trace key 1897, for example, German sexologist international law. theless declaring human remains doubt was caused initially through the ethnographic enterprise, including moments in the genealogy of these Magnus Hirschfeld founded the In 1945, 51 states founded the collecting or assembly of rock research on the ways in which Pöch the recording of music and sound. new visions of gender and sexuality Scientific Humanitarian Committee, in United Nations (UN). In 1948, they engravings by him as illegal. This and his assistants had acquired human Colonialism’s violence took the form of across the past century. Discourses of Berlin, advocating for the decriminal- adopted the Universal Declaration of served to protect the interests of the remains and rock engravings, which plunder, rapaciousness, and defilement gender, sexuality, mental health, and ization of gay relations in Europe. The Human Rights. Twenty-one countries new South African settler nation that had been the subject of a legal inquiry of the human body of physical anthro- the human as such that had begun committee had the support of no less founded the Organization of American was emerging, whose scientists and that took place immediately after his pology, but it was also an unacknowl- in the early twentieth century have than Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, States (OAS), and 61 states established museums laid prior claim to research departure from southern Africa. As a edged and repressed characteristic of recently accelerated or seen shifts in Hermann Hesse, August Bebel, and the World Health Organization (WHO). access to the remains of “Bushmen” result of negotiations between the gov- ethnological praxis and imagination. direction, resulting in further blurring Leo Tolstoy. Hirschfeld also joined the The Council of Europe was founded who were deemed to be living fossils. ernments of South Africa and Austria The phonographic records of the African of the lines between the traditionally League for the Protection of Mothers in 1949, and the following year it Notwithstanding these proscrip- during 2012, the remains of Klaas and past in Austrian and German museums “normal” and “abnormal.” What was and supported the legalization of adopted the European Convention on tions, Pöch ensured that he and his Trooi Pienaar, which had entered the are not sounds of lost or disappearing once considered a mental disease—and abortion in 1905, the same year Human Rights, which is based on the assistants were able to assemble collection of the Academy of Science as cultures. They represent instead the his- for that reason at times criminalized— Sigmund Freud presented his first category of the individual, emphasiz- human remains and rock engravings, corpses, were returned to the Northern torical sounds of violence. □ is now gradually being depathologized theories of sexuality in Vienna. In ing the worth of the human person. with many corpses boiled down to Cape in South Africa, where they were and decriminalized in some parts of 1919, at the time of the unprecedented The Convention’s Article 14 prohibits bone immediately after disinterment. reburied at Kuruman. Subsequent the world, paving the way for future movements against traditional discrimination on a vast range of Pöch also had a special interest in research in South Africa and Vienna social change. notions of sexuality during the grounds: “sex, race, color, language, the collection of soft tissue, and this has resulted in the matching of records Weimar Republic, Hirschfeld founded religion, political or other opinion, was achieved by the disinterment of the illegal disinterment of the Berlin’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. national or social origin, association of two corpses at Gamopedi, in the remains of three more named persons In 1928, he gathered international with a national minority, property, Kuruman district, which were broken from the Kuruman area with skeletons Activism, International sexologists in the World League for birth or other status.” at the knees and transported in a held by the Department of Physical Gender Sexual Reform. While today Facebook While the foundations of human barrel of salt. Anthropology at the University of Organizations, and offers as many as 71 gender options rights stem from the postwar era, this Pöch’s effort to preserve and Vienna. In addition, two of the stolen Dissidence Depathologization and Instagram users can type their paradigm gained global momentum collect grew directly out of the and illegally exported rocks, now gender identity as they see fit, in the in the 1970s, during the latter part recognition of loss. His ethnological with faded art images, have been in the Arguably, among the most 1920s Hirschfeld had already proposed of the Cold War, when most of the and physical anthropological research identified in the collection of the newly important factors to consider when 64 possible forms of identity, well collective narratives of the political sought to archive that which had rebranded World Museum. Twenty-First looking at the shifts in gender beyond the modern Western fixation Left collapsed and the Third World not yet disappeared or become Over the past half-decade, a new conversations are the development of on a stable binary grid of “feminine or project was weakening. The decade extinct. His initiatives generated official willingness has emerged in Century international organizations, transna- masculine.” of the 1970s also linked gender and a large, incongruent aggregation European countries such as France tional movements, nonconforming The 1920s opened roads not only human rights: the UN declared 1975 of objects, a kind of assemblage of and Germany to inquire into the ethics interest groups, and depathologization to the decriminalization of sexual the International Women’s Year personhood and things that included of their museum collections acquired initiatives, which sped up at the turn behaviors considered deviant but also and it held the first World Women’s ethnographic materials and cultural under colonial conditions. They are of the twentieth century and into our to the reimagination of the “normal.” Conference, in Mexico. That same documentation as well as skeletons, forced to face up to a new era of own. Activism for the protection of This was also the time for a resurgence year, the legendary women’s strike in skulls, corpses, and body casts, which restitution of human remains and the sexual diversity was making head- of political movements toward the Iceland saw 90 percent of its female were then separated and distributed possibility of the restitution of colonial by Berit Ebert and lines—from the landmark achieve- unification of Europe, among others population take to the streets to protest across a number of institutions in artefacts, artworks, and documen- Moira Fradinger ments for women’s voting rights in the Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi’s for the indispensable nature of their Vienna. Pöch had covered 6000 tation, especially those assembled 1920s to movements for reproductive Paneuropa-Union in 1922. Its mem- work, and demand fair employment kilometers across southern Africa, within a “context of injustice.” At freedoms in the 1960s to recent move- bers included Gerhart Hauptmann, practices. In 1979, the UN adopted and apart from the 67 phonogramme present, these advances have been ments toward decriminalization and Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, the Convention on the Elimination of recordings, 1000 meters of film, and contained within disciplines and All around the world since the depathologization of same-sex desire. Ortega y Gasset, Sigmund Freud, All Forms of Discrimination Against 2000 photographs he produced, disciplinary museums, and delibera- dawn of the twenty-first century, new In the new sciences, research discov- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Franz Werfel, Women (CEDAW), outlining a way to the expedition generated a sizeable tions have not paid sufficient attention ideas about the gendered aspects of ered the “sex hormones” (estrogen Richard Strauss, and Stefan Zweig. gender equality by highlighting gender supplementary archive of 1500 letters, to how the collections were often human life have prompted unprec- and testosterone), strengthening the After WWI, internationalism and discrimination in education, politics, together with 30 parcels of 100 boxes acquired together, as part of the same edented advances in national and connection between ideas about gen- international law set common stan- employment, healthcare, economic containing 1000 ethnographic objects, expeditions, often by the same schol- international law, transnational social der and biology. Nineteenth-century dards of dignity for human life, with and social life, and in both urban and 4 historic art images and inscriptions ars, and to how these were distributed movements, interest groups, and disciplines such as psychiatry and the establishment of the International rural contexts. Still, while women’s carved into rock, 80 skeletons, 150 between collecting institutions and grassroots feminist initiatives. Creative psychology advanced in the confine- Labor Organization (ILO), in 1919. Its movements were questioning notions skulls, and 2 corpses. disciplines, and how these disciplines alliances against patriarchal power, ment, disciplining, and “correction” nine instituting states increasingly of womanhood and maternity, the Pöch’s Kalahari recordings need were later reorganized. It might seem racism, and speciesism appear across of gender and sexual deviance. The understood the need for cooperation CEDAW took them for granted. to be reassessed alongside this wider more reasonable to consider colonial generations and regions. So much medical sciences were granted more to obtain similar working conditions Women’s international mobilizations collection of ethnographic objects, collections of skulls and skeletons as so, that magazines such as Time and authority in determining the meaning in varying countries, including as well as the development of repro- stolen rock-engravings, and illegally being marked by violence. National Geographic as well as other of normal human experience. granting special protection for women, ductive technologies, the first of which disinterred corpses, skeletons, and The time has arrived to also international outlets have called our These forms of control generated mothers, and child workers. After was the contraceptive pill, started to skulls that pose doubt about the reconsider the frameworks of times one of “gender revolution.” intense social protests and launched WWII, human rights as a paradigm change forever the control that women 80 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 81

could now have over their bodies, and Platform for Action for the twenty-first Name and Sex in the National Registry. the multinational state of Bolivia bases apply the frame of human rights to to call it “same sex” was to avoid lim- ideas about biological motherhood. century, aiming at full gender equality. Uruguay eliminated the requirement its gender identity law on the principle sexual orientation and gender identity. itations in the definition of marriage). The 1960s and ’70s also saw the The end of the 1990s also saw larger for medical intervention as “proof ” of equality, establishes the difference Gender identity is not defined as Most importantly, it also came on the emergence of the “anti-psychiatry” trans* activist associations across the of a person’s decision, though it still between “sex” (biological and binary) biological; it can be different from the heels of the radical 2010 Mental Health movement. In 1973, same-sex desire globe. stipulated that a person must live and “gender” (cultural and multiple), sex assigned at birth and depends on a Law and the 2012 Right to Euthanasia was eliminated for the first time from Twenty-first-century gender according to their new gender for the and allows for changes when the subjective experience. In the Argentine Law, which was ratified the same day the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual activism has brought transnational two years prior to the official change in person is single, widowed, or divorced. law, these notions were translated as the Gender Identity Law. Both laws (DSM) categories of mental illness. (The women’s strikes, massive social move- records. The 2015 Ecuadorian Organic Law with the term “self-perceived identity.” grant more autonomy to patients, who DSM is used today around the world ments against gendered violence, and The 2012 depathologization in of Management of Identity and The refusal to define gender can now refuse treatment. alongside the WHO International unprecedented activist pressure on the Argentina immediately made a world- Civil Data, which retains the binary categories in the text of Argentina’s The adoption of the international Statistical Classification of Diseases international medical community to wide media splash: Justus Eisfeld, options “man/woman,” requires two law makes room for a vast range human rights discourse after the fall and Related Health Problems [ICD], to remove the remaining pathologizing the co-director of Global Action for years of living in a different gender of gender experiences. In 2018, for of Argentina’s dictatorship (1976–83) monitor, collect statistics, and provide categories for gender experience from Trans Equality in New York, told the than the one assigned at birth. As of instance, citizens were allowed to is also crucial for understanding uniform tools for diagnostics.) The the DSM (5) and the ICD (11). While Associated Press, “It is a real game 2019, a number of lawyers have been select “non-binary” in their national the grounds on which the new laws connection between mental illness as of May 2020 many countries have changer and completely unique in the arguing that the law should follow identity documents. In 2019, Argentina were advocated and accepted. Even and social discipline was placed on the legalized gay marriage, there is still a world. It is light years ahead [. . .] of the paradigm of human rights. In registered a new identification during the dictatorship, human rights progressive global agenda. Asylums for lot of work to do. In 2011, the United even the most advanced countries.” Canada as of 2012, several provinces category: “travesti femininity.” Travesti became a defining type of activism in the mentally ill were considered forms Nations passed a resolution urging all In 2018, Uruguay modified its law fol- began liberalizing their gender laws, is a specific type of Latin American all Southern Cone countries. Perhaps of incarceration. In 1978, ten activist member states to protect the rights lowing the Argentine model, including but some provinces kept requirements trans-feminine identification that does the most renowned embodiment of organizations in England founded the of sexually diverse people. The DSM a one-percent labor quota for trans* until a 2017 federal law based on the not coincide with any English catego- human rights in the region are the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, (5) and the WHO, in 2013 and 2019 people in public administration and, Canadian Human Rights Act allowed rization of “cross dresser.” Argentina’s women who defied the military during Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), respectively, removed “gender-identity like Sweden in 2013, established for legal gender recognition. Oregon activists are seeking a change in the dictatorship by disobeying the curfews which now brings together over 1,600 disorder” from the list of mental compensation for trans* people who in 2017 became the first state in the law so that the option “non-binary” and going out to the streets under organizations from 158 countries. illnesses. Until 2012, in every country, suffered institutional violence. USA to allow a non-binary option becomes available for everyone. life-threatening conditions to reclaim In 1979, the World Professional gender nonconforming people had The Argentine law influenced the in drivers’ licenses without medical In a sense, Argentina’s leap for- the “appearance with life” (aparición Association for Transgender Health to go through either bodily modifi- Global North and had a profound effect certificates; as of 2019, 14 states allow ward cannot but be a sign of the times, con vida) of their “disappeared” rela- (WPATH) was created. Though at cations or psychiatric evaluations to in Latin America. In December 2012, for a “third gender” option. as technology is available to reshape tives. Two Argentine groups—Mothers the outset it followed the 1980 DSM be allowed to live according to their the European Parliament referred to Argentina’s leap forward was our bodies more than ever before, and of the Plaza de Mayo and Grandmothers (4) classification of trans* people as subjective experience of gender. This the Argentine model (see next section). to shift from pathology to human neoliberal politics valorize individual of the Plaza de Mayo, both founded having a “gender identity disorder,” has been rapidly changing since 2012. Then, in 2015, Colombia permitted rights. In no case, the law established, self-determination as they withdraw in 1977—were of importance. The the association has lent its voice to the What follows is an account of a change of name in the national will it be necessary to have judicial state intervention from certain areas Grandmothers in particular dedicated decades-old plea of social movements the latest legal reforms concerning registry. Although similar in effect, this authorization, or surgical, hormonal, of life (while increasing surveillance in their lives to looking for the children demanding that gender be completely nonconforming gender-identity law came about in a different context or psychological treatment to register others). But it is useful to note some of who were born to mothers in captivity, depathologized. In 1972, Sweden was recognition. It focuses exclusively on from its Uruguayan and Argentine a change of identity. All that the law the latest national particularities that taken away from them and distributed the first country to legalize trans* the Americas and the European Union counterparts: the Colombian decree demands is the individual’s autonomy: made such change possible, especially among families that the military identities, albeit only with medical (EU), examined separately insofar as responded to Sentence T-99/2015, in its bet is on the individual’s desire. because these advances occur in favored. Human rights activism led to approval and bodily modification EU states belong to a supranational a judgement from March 10, about Even more radical are the law’s pro- the paradoxical context of other Argentina becoming the first country requirements, which included steril- system. the enlistment of trans* people in visions for free access to bodily modifi- stagnations, including the absence of in the world whose citizens sent ization until 2013. the military and established gender cation within the public healthcare a complete legalization of abortion (as its own military to trials for crimes The 1990s saw a global explosion identity, sex, and sexual orientation system, along with the recognition of May 2020. Malta is a similar case, against humanity, in 1985. of activism and legal advancement as “cultural categories in permanent of children’s gender identity rights. with likely the most advanced gender During the transition to democ- that laid the groundwork for today’s The Americas transformation [. . .] according to Argentina had the world’s first case of identity law but still criminalizing racy, the Grandmothers advocated acceleration: the WHO eliminated individual experience.” As of 2019, a six-year-old child, known as “Lulú,” abortion). for the right to truth and identity of same-sex desire from its list of In May 2012, Argentina increased Colombia started discussing a national petitioning for a gender and name Argentina’s gender identity law children born in captivity. When the mental illnesses; the UN issued its the stakes for the global conversa- gender identity law based on human change. belongs not only to the political first children were found, it became declaration for the eradication of tion about gender identity when it rights. In 2015, Mexico City eliminated The law’s definition of gender momentum generated by previous known that they had been registered domestic violence; the OAS wrote the became the first country in the world all previous pathologizing requisites identity leaves ample room for a laws and a coalition of political activist with false names and wrong dates Convention of Belém do Pará, which to legalize the depathologization of from its 2008 laws. In 2015 and 2016, variety of gendered experiences. groups, but also to the importance of birth. The Grandmothers authored upholds the rights of women to lead gender on the grounds of human Ecuador and Bolivia followed suit. In The Argentine lawyers and activists that the human rights discourse holds slogans including “Do you know who a life free of gendered violence. (The rights. The Argentine Gender Identity 2019, Chile issued its Gender Identity who had been working on the legal in its civil society. In Argentina (as in you are?” and “You have the right to Council of Europe adopted a similar Law requires only a simple bureau- Law citing depathologization as a first shift since 2007 decided to follow the Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, an identity,” which set the tone for a Convention in 2011.) The EU advocated cratic mechanism, eliminating all principle. so-called “Yogyakarta Principles,” Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico), human social discourse about identity as a for a gender perspective in public pathologizing vocabulary, to allow Some of the legal models above agreed upon in Indonesia in 2007 rights were incorporated in the human right. This right gave impetus policy encompassing all areas of life, an individual to define their gender are hybrids and lie somewhere in by international experts, activists, reformed National Constitution (1994). to the trans*communities to advocate insisting on this principle at the 1995 identity. In 2009, neighboring Uruguay between total depathologization and former officials of the UN. These The gender identity law came on the for the registration of a gender identity Beijing Conference of Women. The already had its own Law for the Right and changes in classificatory (and principles do not specify how many heels of the 2010 legal protection for that does not correspond to the one latter agreed upon the Declaration and to Gender Identity and Change of diagnostic) vocabulary. For example, genders exist or what they are. They egalitarian marriage (the decision not registered at birth. 82 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 83

European Union organized labor in Europe. In Italy individuals. The directive, however, did assessment; after age 17, if unmarried, Lithuania, and the EuroPride, in Vienna. as early as the 1920s, the twentieth there were widespread women’s not address the national requirements a juridical process. Still, eight EU It also organized and supported several century always saw setbacks, if not Unlike the politically diverse movements opposing the integration for gender recognition or aspects of Member States require sterilization, LGBTI human rights conferences and backlashes, too. As late as in the 1940s, example of Latin America, 27 European of women into male-dominated social violence. and 18 Member States demand a men- workshops for government officials and women in other countries were still states form a supranational entity that systems, such as the Demau group or Only recently did a new tal health diagnosis. A comprehensive civil society representatives, both from considered irrational or unruly if they can issue binding law for all member the Movimento di Liberazione della development set in, advancing the protection against discrimination on EU Member States and beyond. held opinions of their own; some would states. The result is a multi-level Donna. Carla Lonzi published the antidiscrimination discourse to the basis of gender identity or sexual In its final report, issued on May even be sent to mental asylums. In system of intertwined legal, political, feminist pamphlet Sputiamo su Hegel include human rights, both on the orientation does not yet exist within 15, 2020, the Commission, while England, sexual activity between men and social structures added to the (Let’s Spit on Hegel). Many of these national as well as on the European the Union’s legal framework. recognizing a positive trend in public was illegal until 1967, and “non-conven- national dimension. figures attempted to translate these level. Although the Treaties of the Nevertheless, the European opinion, warned about anti-LGBTI tional sex” between men and women The European Union originated feminist ideas into the contexts of 1950s made no reference to human Parliament has been actively working incidents in the Union and stressed its until 1994, while Denmark became the from the European Coal and Steel trade unions. In the 1960s, the famous rights, the 1986 Single European Act on the promotion of a comprehensive efforts to curb them. In this context, third country in Europe to fully legalize Community (ECSC), founded in 1951. Herstal factory strike brought together and the 1993 Maastricht Treaty both legislation related to LGBTI rights. issues such as same-sex marriage same-sex relations, in 1933. Its guiding principles—the guaran- women workers who called for the mention their protection. But it was In December 2015, the Commission must be addressed because of the Minorities, whether in gender tee of permanent peace as well as application of the equal pay provision only at the 2000 Nice Summit that issued a List of Actions to Advance specific architecture of the EU and the identity, sexual diversity, mental economic and social progress—follow in Article 119 TEEC. The far-reaching the EU announced its own Charter LGBTI Equality, covering non-dis- freedom of movement of persons and health, race, religion, or disability, have the ideas of the international organiza- public attention paid to this case, of Fundamental Rights with a direct crimination, education, employment, residence. This is why in its landmark a long history of being categorized tions established in the 1940s. The two along with the determination of the reference to trans* people, in Article 21, health, free movement, asylum, hate decision Relu Adrian Coman, Robert as abnormal. Social-progressive world wars encouraged the creation of advocate Éliane Vogel-Polsky and her and made the Charter legally binding speech/hate crime, EU membership, Clabourn Hamilton, Asociaţia Accept v. movements of the 1920s and 1960s, an economic and political community arguing of the Defrenne cases in the with the adoption of the Treaty of and foreign policy. As it had done in Inspectoratul General pentru Imigrări, along with the more recent promotion that extended beyond competing 1970s, are still considered the founding Lisbon in 2009. Among the Charter’s the 1960s and 1970s when addressing Ministerul Afacerilor Interne, from June of a human-rights paradigm, have nationalisms. The founding member moment of the EU’s women’s policy. sections are “Dignity” (right to life, social policies, the Commission also 5, 2018, the CJEU obliged member broadened notions of human auton- states, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, This further led to legislation regarding integrity of the person, among others), engaged with civil society groups and states to recognize marriages that omy. Activism has grown stronger by Luxemburg, and the Netherlands, thus social security, access to work, “Freedoms” (respect for private and non-governmental institutions when were legalized in other member states, becoming transnationally connected. built a supranational structure that is affirmative action, parental leave, and, family life, freedom of thought, con- developing its new human rights even if the legalization of same-sex Our century is witnessing seismic neither an international organization more recently, sexual orientation and science and religion, the protection of approach. These organizations include marriage remains the prerogative shifts in what we consider the normal nor a state. It develops instead binding trans* rights. personal data, and the right to marry), ILGA and Transgender Europe (TGEU); of each member state. At present, and abnormal. decisions in specific policy areas. It has But it was not until 1997 that “Equality” (non-discrimination and the latter was founded in 2005 in 13 EU Members recognize same-sex But we also live in a century its own jurisdiction and its legislation Article 13 in the Amsterdam Treaty equality between men and women), Vienna and currently has 145 member marriage: Austria (2019), Belgium of technological surveillance and has direct effect on its citizens, as provided the European Union with a “Solidarity” (worker’s rights, including organizations and 255 individual mem- (2003), Denmark (2012), Finland (2017), consumerism, which have also gone Giandomenico Majone wrote in a legal basis to address “discrimination collective bargaining, access to health bers in 44 countries across Europe and France (2013), Germany (2017), Ireland against the paradigm of human rights. March 1998 European Law Journal arti- based on sex, racial, or ethnic origin, care, environmental and consumer Central Asia. (2015), Luxemburg (2015), Malta (2017), Individuals lose autonomy in some cle, protecting “the rights and interests religion or belief, disability, age or sex- protection), “Citizens’ Rights,” and The inclusions of human rights in the Netherlands (2001), Portugal (2010), areas while gaining freedom in others. (as defined by the Treaties) of the ual orientation.” The first legaltrans* “Justice.” the Union’s discourse and the (non- Spain (2005), and Sweden (2009). Moving forward, however, the synergy citizens of the EC/EU, even against the case, P v S and Cornwall County Council, At the same time, national binding) initiatives by the European While the Netherlands was the first of technology and human rights can majoritarian decisions of a Member which reached the Court of Justice of legislation beyond the EU’s labor Parliament and the Commission have country to legalize same-sex marriage, help us avoid losing sight of humanity. State, or the unanimous position of all the European Union (CJEU) in 1995, market provisions differs with regards yielded no concrete political results. Austria protected it explicitly in 2019 This is why our critical vigilance Member States.” was also the first case worldwide to to gender identity law. In 2014, A 2008 proposal for a Council Directive with the constitutional prohibition must be permanent. The above In 1957, however, the adoption prohibit discrimination in employ- Andalucía became the first EU region, on Implementing the Principle of Equal of discrimination enshrined in the developments show that it is up to of the equal pay provision—the ment or vocational education against and Denmark the first EU country, Treatment between Persons Irrespective principle of equality. the strength of our social and political forerunner of the Union’s gender a trans* person. No EU law had previ- to do away with all medical and of Religion or Belief, Disability, Age, or This multilayered legal system spe- activisms to expand our notion of the equality policy—in the European ously addressed the topic. Referring psychological requirements. France Sexual Orientation outside the labor cifically reveals the interdependency human and value all forms of life. □ Economic Community Treaty (EECT) to the member states’ common was the first country in the world to market has not reached required between national and supranational was driven neither by the protection legal traditions and decisions of the declassify trans* as a mental illness in unanimity in the Council. Continuous law, social and political developments, 1 See European Court of Justice: of the individual nor women’s rights European Court of Human Rights, the 2010, while maintaining the obligation efforts by activists have not yet civil society activism, and our views Case 117/01, K.B. v National Health or social justice but rather by the logic CJEU broadened the paradigm of anti- for surgery until 2017. Today, Belgium, gained sufficient access to the Union’s on life as such. Service Pensions Agency and of fair competition between member discrimination—but at the same time Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta, and political process. Secretary of State for Health, states of a common market. disclosed its limits and ambivalence. Portugal allow a change of name and The Parliament reiterated the available online at https://eur- But little would have come from The dismissal of a trans* individual gender in the national registry without urgency to act upon the List of Actions lex.europa.eu. See also Sarah the equal-pay provision were it not for was declared to be contrary to the EU any requirements other than an proposed by the Commission in By Way Of a Coda Margaret Richards v Secretary women’s activism. French Sociologist law, as were national provisions that autonomous individual decision. Since February 2019, stressing the Union’s of State for Work and Pensions Évelyne Sullerot was among the first hindered trans* people from receiving 2017, Greek citizens have been under priority of advancing equality and The recent wave of liberalization (2006), MB v Secretary of State to develop a European perspective on salary components, such as pensions.1 no obligation to undergo surgery or a non-discrimination. That same year, of gender norms is guided by the para- for Work and Pensions (2018). women’s work and to structure activ­- The CJEU rulings finally led to a new mental diagnosis, but legal assistance the Commission also actively rein- digm of human rights, and it encom- ities through existing institutions, as Equal Treatment Directive 2006/54/ to register a gender identity change is forced gender rights as human rights. passes all minorities. While Magnus did Belgian trade unionist Émilienne EC, which, for the first time, explicitly still required. Moreover, people aged It also took part in the human rights Hirschfeld defended gay rights and Brunfaut, who helped to shape recognized the legal concerns of trans* between 15 and 16 require a medical conference of Baltic Pride, in Vilnius, women’s right to obtain an abortion News from the Hans Arnhold Center

Angela Merkel Receives the Henry A. Kissinger Prize NOTEBOOK 86 The 2019 Richard C. Holbrooke Workshop 88

Beyond the Lecture Podcast 88

An Evening with Kent Nagano 89

Profiles in Scholarship 90

Book Reviews By Liliane Weissberg, Veronika Fuechtner, and Paul Reitter 92

Alumni Books 96

Supporters and Donors 97

When Berlin health authorities mandated a coronavirus lockdown in late March, most staff members could work from home. Residential fellows, however, could not; the Hans Arnhold Center was their home. Although three spring 2020 fellows had to return to the United States for family or professional reasons, seven remained at the Wannsee villa, where they could continue work on their projects, taken care of by a core team of Academy staff. Here, fellow Liliane Weissberg, of the University of Pennsylvania, prepares to celebrate the beginning of Passover on April 8, in a photo taken by senior coordinator of guest services, Mathias Buhrow. Throughout the lockdown, the spring 2020 fellows continued to contribute to the Academy’s program, writing essays for the Berlin Journal online, joining podcast episodes, and partaking in online lectures and interviews. For the results of their many generous efforts, please visit americanacademy.de. “Holding Europe together ata “Chancellor Merkel setthebar O Awarded annually since 2007 American Academy inBerlin. A. Kissinger Prizefrom the 86 video message), and former US year’s prizerecognized Merkel Palace toaccept theHenry Henry Kissinger, former US Laudations were delivered by European figureof inthefield transatlantic relationship. to arenowned American or in thiscentury,” Kerry said. for courage, determination, for hermoral andpolitical international diplomacy, this decades ofpublicservice and and boldnessinthefirst de cades ofhercountry’s history onto astage inCharlottenburg president George W. Bush (by her steadfast supportofthe leadership inmore thanthree secretary ofstate John Kerry. the berlin journal · thirty-four ·2020–21 Angela Merkel stepped 21, 2020, Chancellor n the evening of January THE HENRY KISSINGER PRIZE A. - ANGELA MERKELANGELA RECEIVES “I amgrateful for themany Women and Youth inthefirst was appointedMinisterfor to thepoliticalleader ofa the GDR. Much haschanged that hemetthefuture chan time ofenormouschallenge towards amore peaceful, free electioninwhat was then is forever Merkel’s mark—a democratic state,” Kissinger defender oftheliberal order, at anEastGermanuniversity able future, nomatter the odds always pointinghercompass occasions shegave metofol process, buteffective asto or obstacles.” cellor atthevery beginningof has beengladtobear witness: prosperous, just,andsustain low herrise—from researcher her politicalcareer, when she said. “Unobtrusive about the since then,henoted,and struck apersonal tone,noting substance, sheworked for Kissinger’s laudatio - - - And shehadtodeal simulta weight inglobalaffairs: “We Kissinger, andalsoseized the Europe andEurope more European debtcrisis. Angela Merkel managed thesechal the Merkel Style. Speculations that would make Germany in tions didnotinterest her.” the refugee problem and the media, paidhomage toher moving acceptance speech, neously withcrisesemerging global significance, suchas issue ofdeeply shared con deal withChina’s increasing about thepersonal motiva opportunity toaddress an covered by theinternational outside ofGermany thathad creasingly competitive within economic andsocialreforms cern: How the West should lenges withwhat Ihave called have tobuildonthebasisof competitive internationally. longtime friendshipwith Chancellor Merkel’s - - - - - The Kissinger Prize ceremony was what thisprizemeant to But Idon’t want ustofall thropies, Robert Bosch GmbH,thropies, Robert Beteiligungsberatung GmbH. German chancellor, continue tic relations, andthisaward to advocate for good, inten to shapemultilateralism so that thesamerulesapply to fairness,” shesaid.“We have in office (until2021) andalso into anew bipolarity. Iwant and Cerberus Deutschland us built, intermsofresults and a nodtoherremaining time and to, attheleast, treat them am, andfor awhile longer as everyone; thismuchisclear. energizes meinthiswork.” equally.” Sheconcluded with experience inmultilateralism, support ofsupport Bloomberg Philan her. “Iwillalways, wherever I like China inwhat we have made possibleby thegenerous sive, values-based transatlan to tryincludeacountry

- - □ -

All photos: Annette Hornischer Front row (L to R): Angela Merkel, Kissinger, Henry A. trustees and Hodges Gahl Burt Andrew Gundlach and Kati speak Marton with John Kerry AcademytrusteesChatterton Williams Thomas Academy trustee Wolfgang Ischinger andguest Michael Almond

Henry A. Kissinger, Henry A. Angela Merkel, Gerhard Casper, and John Kerry and trustee Gerhard Casper Academy chairmanSandra E.Peterson 2020–21 · thirty-four2020–21 berlin journal· the

87 88 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 89

was particularly formative. “Sarah Caldwell was a genius,” he said, “but geniuses are not always nice people.” Nagano recounted the harrowing de- mands Caldwell put upon her staff. “The nights were short,” he said, with a war veteran’s nostalgia. Even on days when rehearsals ended at midnight, he would often be awoken at 3 a.m. to come down to the opera house to “work out a problem.” While this expe- rience disabused him of any sense of professional glamor, Nagano credits Caldwell with teaching him that the process of creating music demands “endless energy and complete humility.” One afternoon, Monika Queisser, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Michael Schönstein. Photo: Annette Hornischer Kent Nagano at the American Academy in Berlin, February 26, 2020. Photo: William Glucroft Caldwell told Nagano to com- pose, fully orchestrate, and hand-write all of the orches- landscape—and, crucially, tra parts for an aria—in seven THE 2019 what the US might learn AN EVENING hours. “You never really know from Germany’s strategic what you can do until you’ve RICHARD C. HOLBROOKE management of the digital WITH been asked to raise your level transformation. The two-day of performance,” Nagano WORKSHOP workshop was concluded KENT NAGANO said. Though he managed to with a public panel discus- complete the task, he had sion with Michael Schönstein, written the brass section of of the German ministry of the score in a different key he second annual efficiency, it also threatens to and policymakers from a labor, and Monika Queisser, lexander Steinbeis, Renaissance music,” Nagano was required to elicit more than the rest of the orchestra. Richard C. Holbrooke displace a large percentage variety of academic disci- of the OECD. Essays stem- the managing direc- said. Studying this early nuanced performances from When the brass section came TWorkshop, “The of the labor market in the plines, labor and business, ming from this and previous Ator of the Deutsches work gave him a firm grasp musicians. He smirked as in, the dissonance caused the Effects of Automation on coming decades. Convened and the German federal workshops may be found Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, of the “building blocks of our he remembered an instance entire orchestra to burst out Employment, Wages, and by fall 2019 Holbrooke fellow government to discuss how online in the Holbrooke first met Kent Nagano 15 repertoire.” He mastered the when he struggled to get into laughter. An unamused Inequality in Germany,” Laura D’Andrea Tyson, of the digital technologies are Forum publication series: years ago, when Nagano was concepts of polyphony, har- the performers to grasp the Caldwell assumed her as- acknowledged that while au- UC Berkeley Haas School affecting German workers, americanacademy.de/ in his last season as music mony, counterpoint, modality, subtle Mol (minor) tone he sistant conductor could not tomation holds the promise of Business, the workshop how workers’ organizations holbrooke-forum/publica- director of this Berlin orches- and atonality. Thereafter, in was striving for in a piece. have made the mistake; the of higher productivity and brought together researchers are adapting to the changing tions. □ tra. Since then, he has become Munich, he gained an appre- No matter what he tried in problem must be with the one of the most esteemed ciation for aesthetic boldness, rehearsal, the result still felt trumpets. “‘You idiots, can’t conductors in the world, when he joined the Bayerische major. He asked who in the you sight-read properly?’ she holding various positions, Staatsoper. “I was terrified,” orchestra had been to see yelled, ‘Let’s do it again.’” The the imaginative powers of Harvard literary historian including music director of he said, describing his initial Monet’s work on display at section was repeated; again BEYOND THE LECTURE democracy­—among many Martin Puchner, who walks the Orchestre symphonique de intimidation. “I was the the permanent collection of the trumpets came in a fourth other guests. listeners through a personal Montréal and general music first long-haired Japanese the city’s Museum of Fine too low. “I was fired that day,” PODCAST Over the past year, the history of the Rotwelsch director of the Hamburg State American to lead the institu- Arts. “Who looked carefully at Nagano chuckled. “But at Beyond the Lecture series sociolect; with spring 2020 Opera. Over the years, the two tion.” But his recollection of how Monet painted the water three o’clock the next morn- has gone a step further, fellow Dominic Boyer, who, men have continued to work the music debuted there by lilies?” Everyone raised their ing, I got a phone call: ‘Kent, fusing the conversational with fellow Rice University together and to maintain once-avant-garde composers hand. “Do you remember we need you at the opera ince 2016, the Beyond New York Times executive tone of the interview with anthropologist Cymene Howe, a mutual high regard. This Mozart and Strauss galva- where the violet dissolves house.’” □ the Lecture podcast has editor Jill Abramson on fake narrative-based storytelling takes listeners on a journey to camaraderie formed the back- nized the aspiring conductor. into black? But there’s a lot of Sfeatured interviews news; musicians Yo-Yo Ma to provide further definition Iceland to cover the death of drop for their conversation He saw himself as working movement and agitation tak- with Academy fellows and and Wang Lu, on the unifying and broader scope to topics an Icelandic glacier; and writ- on February 26, 2020, when in a place where “courageous ing place? That’s Mol—would Distinguished Visitors in over influence of music; architect that transcend the standard er Paul La Farge, who created Nagano was at the American thinking beyond the status you play like that?” 50 episodes. An illustrious list Sir David Chipperfield on interview and provide enough a special fiction podcast script Academy as a Marina Kellen quo was taking place.” Another key ingredient to of scholars, artists, musicians, social responsibility; Claudia material for an hour-long for multiple voice actors. French Distinguished Visitor. Later, working with the Nagano’s growth was working and journalists has joined Rankine on white privilege; show. These feature-length You can listen to these and In front of a packed Orchestre symphonique de with respected musicians and the program, including Nobel the New Yorker’s Elizabeth podcasts have been created other episodes by visiting the audience, Steinbeis asked Montréal brought insights into fellow conductors. His tenure economist Joseph Stiglitz, on Kolbert on the dire state with writer Anne Finger, who Academy website, or head to what it took to become the art of leadership. Though as an assistant conductor the future of the euro; journal- of the biosphere; and staff wanders through Berlin for Spotify, iTunes, or SoundCloud Kent Nagano. “I began an the orchestra was highly to the great American opera ist Steven Hill, on the impacts writer Masha Gessen on a show on disability and the to download them and sub- unusual career as a scholar capable and technically conductor Sarah Caldwell, at of the gig economy; former cynicism, doublethink, and politics of memory; with scribe to the RSS feed. □ of early music, medieval, and flawless, Nagano’s creativity the Opera Company of Boston, 90 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 91

PROFILES IN SCHOLARSHIP

animations. The works will Sohrabi is working on her next Douglas is working on a book of art objects challenged ideal critically reflect on figurations book project, The Intimate Lives entitled Aggression, Atrocity, and visions of art’s transformative ANDREW W. MELLON ANNA-MARIA KELLEN Erik Linstrum (Spring 2021) DAIMLER FELLOW of the artist, her/his creative of a Revolution: Iran 1979. Based the “Verbrecherstaat,” which of- powers in the social and FELLOWS IN THE FELLOWS Associate Professor of History, activities, spatial contexts, and on several years of ethno- fers a historical and conceptual political order during an age of HUMANITIES University of Virginia Nora M. Alter (Spring 2021) roles in relation to political, graphic interviews with former look at how law has sought to liberal revolution. Lois W. Banner (Fall 2020) Linstrum is a historian Professor of Film and Media social, and economic power. revolutionaries, her book is a gain dominion over the most Laila Amine (Fall 2020) Professor Emerita of History, of modern Britain in its Arts, Temple University reconstruction of the intimate extreme crimes. It aims to Nandini B. Pandey Assistant Professor of Global University of Southern imperial, European, and Alter is completing her book Gerhard Casper Fellow lives that were folded into the show how these efforts have (Spring 2021) Black Literatures, University of California global contexts and will be Harun Farocki: Forms of vastness of the 1979 Iranian unmoored the law’s traditional Associate Professor of Classics, Wisconsin-Madison Combining biography with working on his book man- Intelligence, which examines Allison Blakely (Spring 2021) Revolution. In doing so, it anchors to time and place, University of Wisconsin-Madison Amine’s project is a mono- history and feminist theory, uscript, “Age of Emergency: the work of the late Berlin- Professor Emeritus of European illuminates the small-scale ex- altered the law’s relationship to Pandey’s project explores graph entitled Return Banner’s project concerns the Living with Violence at based artist, filmmaker, and and Comparative History, periences that together—and victims and victim groups, and ancient Roman ways of envi- Literature, Affect, and the Black history of beauty by examin- the End of Empire,” which writer. Alter will provide Boston University after the fact—came to define volatized the basic distinction sioning and practicing ethnic Diaspora, a comparative study ing the meanings of feminism, explores how British society a conceptual lens through Blakely’s project, “The African “revolutionary experience.” between war and policing. pluralism, with particular that examines the ubiquitous fashion, gender, and ethnicity responded—and failed to which to understand Farocki’s Diaspora in Modern Europe: interest in the spaces where though overlooked motif of in the life and times of the respond—to the brutality of media production, from his an Interpretive History,” is a INGA MAREN OTTO FELLOW MARY ELLEN VON DER consumers collected tokens of return in black Anglophone international film star Greta colonial wars after 1945. In early films of the late 1960s continuation of a book project IN MUSIC COMPOSITION HEYDEN FELLOW IN FICTION their empire’s variety. By trac- literature since 1945. By Garbo. mapping the networks of through his television work of treating the presence, status, ing historical links between “return literature,” Amine activists, soldiers, journalists, the ’70s and ’80s to his recent and social agency of people Anna Webber (Spring 2021) Ayana Mathis (Fall 2020) imperial exploitation and the refers to literary works and Robert F. Reid-Pharr missionaries, and novelists contemporary art installations of Black African descent in Composer, Flutist, and Writer commodification of difference, critical discourses that have (Spring 2021) who exposed the dark side of in the new millennium. selected European societies, Saxophonist Mathis is working on her sec- her project seeks to write a been cordoned off: the African Professor of Studies of Women, these conflicts, the book asks the prevalent attitudes Webber is a flutist, saxophon- ond novel, A Violent Woman, new chapter in the history of diaspora returning to an an- Gender, and Sexuality and why the same mechanisms DIRK IPPEN FELLOW toward them expressed by ist, and composer whose the story of a retired itinerant diversity with relevance to cestral homeland, immigrants African and African American that eroded secrecy about white Europeans, and the interests and work lie in the Blues singer in rural Alabama modern social thought. or their descendants visiting Studies, Harvard University violence also undermined Amy Kurzweil (Fall 2020) impact of the current wave of overlap between avant-garde and her estranged daughter’s familial homes, and exiles Reid-Pharr’s project, “James action to stop it. Cartoonist mainly Asian immigration on jazz and new classical music. involvement in a radical po- rediscovering their country Baldwin: The Making of an Kurzweil is working on her all of this. At the Academy, she will litical group a thousand miles Fall 2020 Distinguished Visitors of origin. In Berlin, she will American Icon,” delves into BERTHOLD LEIBINGER second graphic memoir, pursue a new project focused away, in Philadelphia. The and Speakers explore African American the life and career of the FELLOW Artifical: A Love Story, which HOLTZBRINCK FELLOWS on a study of just intonation novel explores the complexi- writers William G. Smith American writer and activist explores her father’s ambition and tuning theory. ties and heartbreak of familial and Audre Lorde’s respective James Baldwin, extensively Nathalie Peutz to “resurrect”—through a Mosi Secret (Fall 2020) love as well as South/North American Academy engagement with individuals utilizing the recently opened Associate Professor of Arab marriage of machine learning Writer; Investigative and JOHN P. BIRKELUND migration, women and rage, Lecturer of African descent in Berlin. Baldwin Archives held at Crossroads Studies, New York and the documents saved in Literary Journalist FELLOWS IN THE HUMANITIES and the racial and political David W. Brady the Schomburg Center for University Abu Dhabi a storage unit—the identity Secret is writing a narrative climate of 1980s Philadelphia. Professor Emeritus of Political Hakim Abderrezak Research in Black Culture as Peutz’s new book project, of his own father, a Viennese history called Teaching James N. Green (Fall 2020) The political group in which Economy, Stanford University; (Spring 2021) well as materials held at Yale Gate of Tears: Migration and musician who narrowly es- Them: The 1960s Experiment Carlos Manuel de Céspedes the protagonist becomes in- Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution Associate Professor of French University’s Beineke Library. Impasse in Yemen and the caped the Holocaust and died to Desegregate the Boarding Professor of Latin American volved is inspired by MOVE, a and Stanford Institute for and Francophone Studies, The work tracks the develop- Horn of Africa, examines the of heart disease fifty years ago. Schools of the South, about a History, Brown University radical separatist group active Economic Policy Research University of Minnesota ment of Baldwin’s celebrity ramifications of the UN’s little-known group in North Green is engaged in a new in Philadelphia from the 1970s In “Burning the Sea”: status, asking how a desper- Global Compact on Refugees ELLEN MARIA GORRISSEN Carolina called the Stouffer book project, “The Crossroads to the present day. DAIMLER LECTURER Clandestine Crossings in the ately poor, black, “queer” New in an era of gated nations FELLOWS Foundation, which in the late of Sin and the Collision of William J. Burns Mediterranean Seametery, Yorker could rise to become and shrinking humanitarian 1960s and early ’70s financed Cultures: Entertainment, NINA MARIA GORRISSEN President, Carnegie Endow­ Abderrezak examines the one of the most prominent spaces. Based on ethnograph- Susan Bernofsky (Fall 2020) the racial integration of Commerce, and Pleasure in Rio FELLOWS IN HISTORY ment for International Peace global refugee crisis through intellectuals of his generation. ic research in a refugee camp Associate Professor of Writing, boarding schools. The founda- de Janeiro (1860–1930),” which the lens of ethics, aesthetics, in Djibouti between 2016 and Columbia University tion’s effort was an ambitious examines the transformations Alice Goff (Spring 2021) JOHN W. K LUGE poetics, and politics. With AXEL SPRINGER FELLOWS 2020, the project analyzes a Bernofsky is newly translating social experiment that sought in Brazil’s capital that reflected Assistant Professor of German DISTINGUISHED VISITOR a focus on media, art, and complex set of displacements Thomas Mann’s classic novel to test whether elite white reconfigurations in Brazilian History and the College, The Susan B. Glasser literature, he teases out the Matthieu Aikins (Fall 2020) in a geopolitically sensitive Der Zauberberg (The Magic children would become more society and urban life at a time University of Chicago Staff Writer, The New Yorker deleterious implications of Contributing Writer, The New region where encamped Mountain, 1924), set in a tuber- racially tolerant after being of transition from slavery to Goff is completing a mono- misnomers by analyzing York Times Magazine Yemeni refugees come into culosis sanatorium in Davos exposed to talented black freedom, mass immigration graph on the upheaval of AIRBUS DISTINGUISHED dominant narratives and Aikins has reported from direct daily contact with on the eve of World War I. scholarship students. from abroad, migration from cultural property in German VISITOR by integrating a crucial south- Afghanistan and the Middle Ethiopian migrants walking the hinterland, and a revolu- states during and after the Nicholas Schmidle ern perspective in the study East since 2008. At the toward Yemen—thereby Tony Cokes (Spring 2021) Naghmeh Sohrabi tion in gender norms. Napoleonic wars. Working at Writer, The New Yorker of migration and refugeeism. Academy, he will be working unsettling boundaries Professor of Modern Culture (Spring 2021) the hinge between intellectual In Berlin, he will explore the on a book about the global between refugees and mi- and Media, Brown University Charles (Corky) Goodman Lawrence Douglas and cultural history, the book Lloyd Cutler productions of local German refugee crisis, based on his grants, Africans and Arabs, Cokes is producing a series Professor of Middle East (Spring 2021) follows the stories of royal and Distinguished Visitor and Middle Eastern artists experience traveling with and states of captivity and of essays and quotations that History; Director for Research, James J. Grosfeld Professor of religious collections and their Jeffrey Sutton proposing alternative narra- Afghans, to be published by abandonment among those will become the basis for his Crown Center for Middle East Law, Jurisprudence, and Social custodians to explore how the Judge, US Court of Appeals tives of tragic sea crossings. Harper in 2021. crossing the Red Sea. new video text and sound Studies, Brandeis University Thought, Amherst College intimate and profane world for the Sixth Circuit 92 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 93

of the essay is important. While the and domestic violence. Still, her story “Gradiva” to learn about human are the afterlives of this incredibly BOOK REVIEWS English translation, “Flirtation,” can be interest in flirtation dominates, and desire. Nagel takes fictional characters rich political, cultural, and scientific viewed as gender neutral, Koketterie, passive aggression and domestic similarly seriously—not by putting “laboratory of modernity”—as Weimar like the French word from which is violence, cases that she subsumes to them on a couch but by entering Germany is often referred to by its derived, is anything but. A coquette is the notion of “ambiguous aggression” them into a study of the psychology scholars and aficionados? sexual freedom. “The liberty to a woman, and one whose reputation as well, take a bit of a back seat. of emotions. She cites theory and When writing about Weimar seduce and importune was essential,” may be at stake. Aesthetically argued, passive writes about literature, but she is not Berlin, it’s all too easy to slip into Deneuve declared. “Rape is a crime. In her own study, Nagel is eager to aggression is an issue between Sein a literary theorist. In the end, she is a the well-established shorthand of But insistent or clumsy flirting is not consider the gender of the person who and Schein, “being” and “appearance.” deft cultural critic: she wonders what “glitter and doom,” the narrative of an a crime, nor is gallantry a chauvinist flirts and the one who receives the A person presents herself in a weaker these texts can mean for us today— unbound hedonism that contributed aggression.” A macho man’s behavior attention. Flirtation can be unsettling, position while simultaneously using it not for German readers of the past but to its eventual brutal suppression. may be improperly aggressive, but a she claims, because women can flirt to manipulate her counterpart. As in for American readers now—and if a Lance Olsen’s latest novel, My Red gentleman should be allowed to flirt. as well as men. Nagel focuses on flir- the case of flirtation, passive aggres- reflection upon them could contribute Heaven, masterfully steers clear of Barbara Natalie Nagel, an assistant tatious women, although, importantly, sion offers women the opportunity to to contemporary discussion of the those clichés. Instead, it patiently professor of German at Princeton her examples are female characters in conform to expected behavior on the broader meanings of #MeToo. In this explores a multitude of everyday lives University, has published widely the works of male authors. Even the surface but aim for something else way, Nagel has provided us with her on a single day: June 10, 1927. It pays on the topic of flirtation, a subject “young maiden” in Theodor Storm’s underneath. While flirtation may or own open letter. □ homage to the idea of Weimar as a that also occupies the center of her novella The Rider on the White Horse may not result in a sexual encounter, laboratory; the ingredients are a mix of recent, intellectually ambitious book, seems to be able to flirt without the aim of passive aggression may genres, media, citations, avant-garde Ambiguous Aggression in German much previous instruction. Storm is, have other goals. (It is also a medical movements, and characters—histor- Realism and Beyond: Flirtation, Passive of course, a writer of the nineteenth term and may be assigned to a mental ical, literary, and entirely fictional. Aggression, Domestic Violence. Nagel century and a canonical author of disorder.) Nagel discusses the exchange Reminiscent of Wim Wenders’s AMBIGUOUS is not interested in preserving a German Realism. If the early period of of letters between Fontane and his iconic 1987 Berlin film Wings of Desire, AGGRESSION IN GERMAN gentleman’s freedom to touch a a theoretical reflection on flirting can wife, Emily, but she moves into the readers follow the words, images, REALISM AND BEYOND: woman, wink at her, or engage in be located in the turn of the twentieth twentieth century as well, by offering and sounds on the pages of My Red suggestive banter. If Deneuve views century, Nagel chooses her examples the reader glimpses from Franz Kafka’s Heaven as they lead from one story FLIRTATION, PASSIVE flirtation as harmless, Nagel argues from an earlier time; theory catches epistolary exchange with Felice Bauer. and location to the next. As the AGGRESSION, DOMESTIC that it is not at all harmless. For up with fiction. In both cases, it is once again the man murdered politician Rosa Luxemburg VIOLENCE her, it is a powerful and subversive In the second half of the nine- who is seeking to keep his upper hand is thrown into the Landwehrkanal, her BY BARBARA NATALIE concept—and in that she is not alone. teenth century, bourgeois values were in the relationship, and he uses the let- consciousness settles on a butterfly on Walter Benjamin too, was interested in firmly established, and Nagel does ter as an instrument of domestication. Pfaueninsel (peacock island), which NAGEL flirtation as an exchange of undecided not look for examples among poor In the case of domestic violence, is immediately crushed by the boot outcome. He described it as an implicit miners or factory workers, but rather no partner disguises his or her inten- of retired sommelier Anton, who Bloomsbury Academic critique of the capitalistic system, among this new middle class, which tions. If something remains hidden, it “doesn’t register the dainty crunch one October 2019, 176 pages. since capitalism relies on ownership would self-confidently settle on “love” is the nature of the relationship itself hundred and seventy-two centimeters A review by Liliane Weissberg and on clearly delineated and stable as a precondition for marriage, while that the protagonists want to hide from MY RED HEAVEN below his current thoughts.” Anton power-relationships. transforming older court rituals into a the outside world. Domestic violence and his love, Julius, buy a bratwurst The #MeToo movement began by Benjamin’s remarks were but brief. casual language of gestures and winks. may involve two adults, but also more BY LANCE OLSEN from Carl Fischer, who turns out to charging a male Hollywood producer The most prominent early German In literature, prose ruled, and authors than two, and perhaps even children. slaughter people in the privacy of his Dzanc Books with rape and aggressive behavior theorist of flirtation was Georg Simmel, were no longer eager to depict ideal Neither passive aggression nor domes- home bathtub—“the concept being January 2020, 200 pages toward women; by late 2017, it had who also insisted on flirtation’s beauty and elusive ideals of love; they tic violence necessarily rely on the economy”—evoking the violence of spread beyond the American film subversive nature. Following Plato, instead strove for the interesting—or existence of an erotic relationship. Still, A review by Veronika Fuechtner WWI that continued to haunt streets industry. Such male behavior had been he described it as a middle ground even the ugly. Flirtation and human Nagel has chosen examples involving and homes after soldiers returned. in place for a long time, of course, but between having and not having. In aggression, whether ambiguous or heterosexual couples, and her book From the Netflix series Babylon Fischer’s last thought is inadvertently the outcry now seemed universal. Yet 1909, Simmel devoted a whole essay not, turned into an acceptable literary turns into an unveiling of sorts, one in Berlin to the exhibits celebrating one picked up by Albert Einstein, as he on January 9, 2018, the New York Times to the subject, “Psychologie der subject. which the partners’ behavior reveals hundred years of the Bauhaus, Weimar recalls anti-Semitic attacks on his reported on an open letter from Paris Koketterie,” published in English as Nagel chooses primarily German, increasing violence as the ambiguity of Republic Berlin is enjoying a moment. “Jew science” and relives a traumatic that took many by surprise. Catherine “Flirtation.” Simmel wrote it not for a but also Austrian and Swiss, examples what is unseen diminishes. As we witness the fragility of democ- childhood tonsillectomy: “I sat there Deneuve, together with around a scholarly publication, but rather for for her study, and in the work of Storm, Nagel does not embed her racy around the globe, the economic stifling a cyclone, thinking about my hundred additional female signers, the Berlin newspaper Der Tag, which Theodor Fontane, Gottfried Keller, subtle overall argument in a historical uncertainty caused by the Corona school, my teachers, how now they protested the #MeToo movement by was billed as a “modern illustrated and others, she finds poignant cases context; she transforms literature into crisis, and violent expressions of were inside me, too—.” The reader declaring #BalanceTonPorc (call out journal.” Moreover, he did not write as of flirtation that drive the plot and a set of data as her analysis of writers racism and anti-Semitism, we look to then returns to the bratwurst hut your pig). While refusing to condone an academic sociologist—a field quite at times unsettle deeply held moral and their letters competes with that Germany between the two world wars and spies on young Erika and Klaus overtly aggressive behavior, these new at that time—but as a public convictions. She dedicates the first of the fictional characters they create. for answers. How did people cope making out in the woods, where they women criticized American puritanical intellectual. His main audience was chapter to a discussion of flirtation Just a few years before Simmel’s with dramatic historical and economic are surprised by philosophers Hannah morals, and warned of a witch-hunt probably neither macho men nor gen- and dedicates two further chapters publication of “Flirtation,” Sigmund upheaval? Where did the slippery Arendt and Martin Heidegger, who against men that would threaten tlemen, but female readers. The title to a discussion of passive aggression Freud had analyzed Wilhelm Jensen’s slope of fascism begin? And what are carrying on their famous affair by 94 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21 2020–21 · thirty-four · the berlin journal 95

peacefully collecting mushrooms in Red Heaven is thus also a novel about ingenious 1996 graphic novel Berlin: bookstore and scanned the shelves for men left for their fellow travelers. As a on a journal with a distinctly absurdist the Düppeler forest. In exile in Lisbon, our contemporary desire for Weimar City of Stones. Severing writes in My Red one of the great literary doorstoppers boy with dyslexia, Puchner felt an easy aesthetic. When Puchner goes through Arendt will recall how that day ended Berlin and its fallacies. It would be Heaven that the most any novel can a person heading to graduate school in affinity for a language that is mostly Günter’s papers looking for information at the Arnhold Villa on Lake Wannsee, completely beside the point to look accomplish, despite its best intentions, German studies should be able to talk oral and partly pictorial. It also helped about the family and the language of where “people pour out to smoke for historical accuracy, even though “is to confirm that everything is made about. Instead, the acclaimed essay that his charismatic uncle Günter thieves, he finds that Günter made cigars” on the veranda “and watch the many details relating to biographies, to be broken.” From his ideal novel he collection Jenseits von Schuld und was a kind of independent scholar of some attempts to translate the New sunsets last forever.” locations, or fashions are meticulously demands that they “know they can’t do Sühne, by the Holocaust survivor Jean Rotwelsch. Günter imparted to him a Testament into Rotwelsch. Luther And so it continues, from Marlene researched and lovingly animated. anything and yet try to do it anyway.” Améry, caught my eye. It proved to be sense of the linguistic elements of the would not have been amused. Dietrich’s laughter to Alban Berg’s While Hannah Arendt never accom- My Red Heaven leaves the reader with a good choice. I remember standing on sociolect—Yiddish, Hebrew, German, As it turns out, moreover, Günter’s music, from Werner Heisenberg’s and panied Walter Benjamin on his flight the certainty that in contrast to its last a very noisy platform—backpackers, and more—as well as some knowledge own father was a Nazi, a fact he did Niels Bohr’s exploits in physics to the across the Pyrenees, she was surely legible, ambiguous, and unfinished beer, sandals—astonished by the essay of its history. Puchner was only 12 not learn until the 1960s. Puchner sexual exploits of two pickpockets, there in spirit “taking in this informa- lines, “everything will be all-.“ “Torture” and the quiet force of its first when Günter died, unexpectedly. And himself doesn’t find out about it until from Käthe Kollwitz losing track tion” with “an empty face” that the But nothing, absolutely nothing pages. Some of that force eluded me, it was only later that he would develop 1995—in, of all places, Harvard’s of time in her studio to her maid group of refugees had to prepare for is going to be alright, certainly not however, because I couldn’t make a deep understanding of the embattled Widener Library. Then a graduate keeping track of to-do lists. In these deportation back to Germany, just as for the characters of this novel, and sense of a word Améry uses toward status of Rotwelsch—its reputation for student spending a lot of time in many “daymares” and moments of they believed they had reached safety. probably not for its readers. The the end of the opening paragraph: being the language of thieves. Widener, he happens upon an article arresting beauty, we catch glimpses Towards the end of the book, the experience of reading this novel also Rotwelsch. I knew that Welsch could be It’s not clear when Rotwelsch his grandfather wrote about Rotwelsch of the characters’ childhoods, but the mystery of its title is revealed. The confirms that there is something left combined with other words to form became a functioning sociolect, a and Jewish names. It bears the inaus- narrative also momentarily speeds up painter Otto Freundlich steps out of of Weimar Berlin that still speaks to us a term meaning “incomprehensible sort of secret argot of beggars and picious date of 1937, and both relies on like a film reel to reveal their deaths. the subway at Kurfürstenstrasse and immediately—and that also remains dialect,” as in Kauderwelsch. And the vagabonds in territories where and bolsters anti-Semitic stereotypes Like Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, ponders painting a new abstract work, unbroken. □ context here—Amery’s phrase is “in German was spoken during the Middle about Jewish linguistic deviance the readers turn their faces toward the My Red Heaven. It was branded “degen- the Rotwelsch of the Third Reich”—sug- Ages. By Martin Luther’s day, it was and disguise. A prominent notion in past, while being violently propelled erate art” shortly after its completion gested a dig at Nazi-speak. But “Red associated with criminality and Jews. German anti-Semitic culture was that into the future, the wreckage of his- a few years later, and Freundlich was Welsh”? What in the world was that? (Améry thus turned the tables on the Jews’ otherness comes to light tory piling before their helpless eyes. murdered on a train to Majdanek. In The Language of Thieves, Martin the Third Reich and broadened the in their use of German and language My Red Heaven is profoundly Horizontal swaths of squares, different Puchner—a professor of comparative significance of the term “Rotwelsch” generally, but that, at the same time, indebted to modernist works like reds towards the top, blues and whites literature at Harvard University and when he used it to describe the Nazis’ Jews are able to use the language to Alfred Döblin’s cinematic novel Berlin in the middle, and black squares general editor of the Norton Anthology language.) Luther, one of the first to cover over their otherness. This is why Alexanderplatz (1929) and modernist towards the bottom curve along the of World Literature—answers this use the word, strengthened such the Nazis’ practice of insisting that techniques such as multi-perspectivity, canvas—surely an evening sky but question with admirable insight and associations. When he republished books written by Jews in German carry but it is still decidedly contemporary; maybe also its deconstructed, glossy erudition, wielding his knowledge with the anonymously authored Book of the label “Translated from the Hebrew.” Olsen’s very own “laboratory of reflection on city street cobble stones. a light touch. But he does more than Vagrants, in 1521, he added 225 words It isn’t hard to see how Rotwelsch modernity” percolates with the Weimar surfaces are everywhere in offer an account of a dialect (or more of Rotwelsch, while making evident might be invoked by someone looking addition of Michael Kroetch’s photos this novel, and the sky reflects the precisely, a sociolect); he also relates his distaste for it. As a scholar of the to prop up such ideas. of empty ruins in contemporary Berlin. agony of what is below. a fascinating family memoir whose Bible, Luther was able to recognize Having joined the Nazi Party The results are hauntingly poetic, as Death bookends the narrative: it mysteries circle around the Third Reich the influence of Hebrew, which, along several years before Hitler became the images and words simultanously begins with the dead assembling in and the study of language. In the with his general antipathy toward chancellor, in 1933, Puchner’s grandfa- explore the void that the silencing their very own avant-garde version of nineteenth century, German scholars Jews, led him to conclude, erroneously, ther made a career for himself during of the work of Billy Wilder, Magnus heaven on the rooftops overlooking such as Karl Lachmann pioneered a “Es ist freilich solche rotwelsche the Third Reich as a racist philologist. Hirschfeld, or Otto Dix left behind. My Berlin. Led by the flying red mane of THE LANGUAGE OF “genealogical” method of philology that Sprache von den Juden gekommen” (It At first, Puchner knows only about Red Heaven also gives space to voices the dancer Anita Berber, the dead raise involved working back to a lost original is clear that the Rotwelsch language the one article. The revelation has left silenced by their peers even before “their faces to the first marigold traces THIEVES: MY FAMILY’S text, the archetype, by identifying comes from the Jews). him stricken, though he acknowledges National Socialism, for example that threading the sky.” It ends with an OBSESSION WITH A how different textual variations had This layer of context helps explain that, for all its drama, it is hardly of Bertolt Brecht’s co-author Elisabeth airplane leaving Berlin behind, leaving SECRET CODE THE NAZIS been passed down in what amounted the appeal of Rotwelsch for Puchner’s unique. When Puchner’s father comes Hauptmann, or that of the artist in its wake burnt kerosene and the TRIED TO ELIMINATE to manuscript families. In a poignant uncle Günter. It made embracing to Cambridge for a visit, he confronts Hannah Höch. Peers such as Hans foreboding smoke of total destruction twist, Puchner, who was born and Rotwelsch a political act, one very him about it in an Irish pub, and Richter belittled Höch’s work and that fascism will bring upon the city BY MARTIN PUCHNER raised in Bavaria, tracks his own much in keeping with the kind to a conversation begins—only to be praised only the sandwiches she made and that reaches into the future to family’s elusive history through the which Günter seemed drawn. A mem- cut off abruptly, forever: Puchner’s W. W. Norton and served. “The manifesto hannah blacken the last pages of the book the philological activities and obsessions of ber of the generation that “came after,” father dies in a boating accident not October 2020, 288 pages höch never wrote” is one of the most reader is now holding. This Weimar his uncle, great uncle, and grandfather. Günter partook of a collective desire to long after returning to Bavaria. In his touching and powerful passages of laboratory goes up in flames. A review by Paul Reitter Puchner became interested break out of social and cultural patterns quest for more information about the Olsen’s novel: “The grammar of art, Here, My Red Heaven executes in Rotwelsch when he was still a in postwar Germany thought to be family, Puchner must rely mostly on I wanted to prove, is doubt.” This the stated literary program of one Late in the summer of 1994, I child. He heard it spoken by men continuous with the country’s fascist his research skills. He visits archives intervention points to the fact that of its characters, journalist Kurt found myself in Berlin’s main train sta- who wandered through his town past—authoritarianism, the marginal- in Germany and learns more about his the Weimar avant-garde might not Severing, based on the famous critic tion with a long trip in front of me and and seemed out of place in its tidy ization of difference, and so on. He and grandfather’s career. He also discovers have been progressive in all the ways and publisher Siegfried Jacobsohn nothing to read in my bag. I also didn’t bourgeois milieu. Not only that, he saw Puchner’s father lived for a time in a that his great uncle Otto enjoyed a we still might like to see it today. My and borrowed from Jason Lutes’s have much time, so I dashed into a the symbols—carved into trees—these commune, where they worked together similar livelihood. 96 the berlin journal · thirty-four · 2020–21

Puchner speaks of the weight of for himself as a respected architect to flee also played a role. Rotwelsch the German past and the shame it and professor. This situation is, of abounds with wonderful ways SUPPORTERS AND DONORS has caused him to feel, but he isn’t a course, a commonplace of midlife, to express the idea of just taking self-lacerating or handwringing writer, but Puchner suggests that his father off (“make a rabbit,” for example). The American Academy in Berlin is funded Papsthart, Joanne Pateas, Gisela & Bernhard at least not in this book. In fact, his experienced it with an unusual Fittingly, one of the neat “Rotwelsch almost entirely by private donations from in- Individuals and Family von der Planitz, Hans-Friedrich von Ploetz, tone is so evenhanded that it can be a intensity that may run in the family: lessons” Puchner offers at the end dividuals, foundations, and corporations. We Foundations Elizabeth Pond, Susan Rambow, Christa little hard to imagine him experienc- the ancestor after whom Puchner is of each chapter carries the heading depend on the generosity of a widening circle Freifrau & Hermann Freiherr von Richthofen, of friends on both sides of the Atlantic and Alexander Ritvay, Henry W. Sapparth, Haun ing the emotional unrest he describes. named had abandoned his wife and “How to get away in Rotwelsch.” But wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to those FOUNDERS’ CIRCLE $1 million and above Saussy, Harald Schmid, Hannes Schneider, Here Puchner seems to resemble his children without warning and hit the you don’t need to feel tempted to who support us. This list documents the con- Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation Frank Scholz, Russell E. Schulz, Mr. & Mrs. father, whose life he also looks further road as a traveling musician. “Perhaps chuck everything to be drawn to the tributions made to the American Academy and the descendants of Hans and Thomas E. Sherwood, Meike Schumacher, from August 2019 to August 2020. Ludmilla Arnhold Manfred von Sperber, Brenda Stevenson, into in this book. Underneath the he was even inducted into Rotwelsch,” language of thieves; it’s really, in many J. Miller Stevens, Suhrkamp Verlag AG, The staid exterior of his father’s mature Puchner writes. ways, a language of the open road. CHAIRMAN’S CIRCLE $50,000 and above Teagle Foundation, Volker Thießen, Mari years, there were powerful longings In reflecting on the deep roots of Given how hard travel has become C. Boyden Gray, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, Thorkelson & Patrick Foley, Thomas D. Vaughn, Fellowships and Distinguished Sandra E. Peterson, Maureen White & Steven Lili & Stuyvesant Wainwright, Lutz Weisser, for escape—escape, that is, from the his family’s connection to Rotwelsch, these days, that should resonate with Visitorships Rattner, William A. von Mueffling, Leah Joy George Will (Will Foundation), Marilyn & Irvin thoroughly bourgeois life he created Puchner muses that this tendency us all. □ Zell, Joy Foundation D. Yalom, Pauline Yu

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