Chapter 26 german requiem

Although he will kill me, I still trust in him. "Job" chapter 13:15 My name is Otto Dietrich Lind.One of my ancestors, Christoph Lind, was killed in the charge of the cavalry that decided victory at the Battle of Endorf.My great-grandfather, Ulrike Forkel, was shot dead by French snipers in the Marchenot Forest in late 1870; my father, Captain Dietrich Linde, was at the siege of Namu in 1914 Erhe made many achievements in the operation of crossing the Duomiao River two years later.As for me, I will be shot for torture and murder of innocents.The trial was fair and reasonable; I pleaded guilty from the outset.Tomorrow, when the prison clock strikes nine, I shall be executed; and it is natural for me to think of my ancestors, for I have come close to their shadows, and in a sense I am them.

During the trial (fortunately it was not long) I was silent; defending myself at the time would have interfered with the verdict and seemed cowardly.Now the situation has changed; on the eve of the execution, I can speak freely without fear.I don't ask for forgiveness, because I am not guilty at all, but I want to be understood.Those who can listen to my confession can understand the history of Germany and the future history of the world.I know that situations like mine, as appalling as they are at the moment, will be trivial in the near future.Tomorrow I will die, but I am a symbol for generations to come.

I was born in Marienberg in 1908.Two tastes, music and metaphysics, now almost forgotten, have enabled me to face many unhappy years with courage, even with happiness.I can't list all the people who have benefited me, but there are two names that must be mentioned, that is, Brahms and Schopenhauer.I also dabble in poetry; to those names I would add another great Germanic name—William Shakespeare.I used to be interested in theology, but Schopenhauer's blunt reasoning diverted me forever from this wonderful discipline (and the Christian faith); the colorful worlds of Shakespeare and Brahms captivated me.The works of those masters make others feel admiration and admiration, and it will also shock me, a hateful person.

Around 1927, Nietzsche and Spengler came into my life. An 18th-century writer said that no one would like to learn from his contemporaries; and I, trying to get rid of the repressed influence of my premonition, wrote an essay entitled "A Discussion with Spengler" by pointing out what the writer called The indisputably Faustian tome is not Goethe's promiscuous poetic drama, but a poem written two thousand years ago; "On Nature".Nevertheless, I have done justice to the historical philosopher, to his thoroughly Germanic martial spirit. In 1929, I joined the Nazi Party.

I don't want to talk about my years of training in the party.Those years were much more difficult for me than for many others, because, while I had courage, I lacked a gift for violence.Despite this, I understand that we are on the verge of a new era that, like the founding of Islam or Christianity, calls for a new generation of people.My comrades resent me as individuals; I try to convince myself that we are not individuals for the noble purpose to which we are dedicated, but I cannot. Theologians affirm that if the care of God leaves my writing right hand for even a second, the hand disappears, as if consumed by an unlit flame.But I say that no one can exist for no reason, drink a glass of water or break a piece of bread for no reason.Everyone's reasons are different; I look forward to the merciless battle that will test our faith.It is enough that I know I will be in that war.Sometimes I worry that British and Russian cowardice will fail us.Chance or fate completely changed my future: On the evening of March 1, 1939, there was a riot in Tilsit, which was not reported in the newspapers; in the back street of the synagogue, two bullets went through my thigh, which leg Had to saw off.A few days later our troops marched into Bohemini; when the whistle blew to announce the news, I was lying motionless in the hospital, trying to forget myself in Schopenhauer's book.A huge, lazy cat sleeping on the window sill was the symbol of my disillusioned fate.

I re-read the first volume of "Appendices and Supplements", and saw that Schopenhauer said that everything that a person can encounter from the moment of birth to the moment of death is determined by himself in advance.Therefore, all negligence is deliberate, all encounters are prior agreements, all humiliations are punishments, all defeats are mysterious victories, and all deaths are suicides.There is no better comfort in the thought that our misfortunes are self-inflicted; this peculiar theology reveals to us a hidden purpose, and marvelously confuses us with God.I thought to myself, what unknown purpose brought me to that evening, those bullets and that amputation?Not the fear of war, of course, I know that; but something deeper.I finally thought I figured it out.It is easier to die for a religion than to live it up; it is easier to fight the beast at Ephesus (as many obscure martyrs did) than to be Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ; Time is much more than an action.Battle and glory are not difficult; Raskolnikov's career was harder than Napoleon's. On February 7, 1941, I was appointed deputy director of the Tarnovitz concentration camp.

I don't like the job; but I do my duty and never slack off.Cowards show their true colors in swords and swords; merciful men are tested in prison and in the pain of others.Nazism is essentially a moral issue, a process of abandoning the old for the new, getting rid of the corrupt old man and becoming a new man.In the shouts of the officers on the battlefield and the shouts of the soldiers, that kind of transformation is a common thing; the situation is different in the cramped prison cell, and the deceptive compassion often moves us with the warmth of the past. .I say mercy not without reason; Zarathustra sees no crime greater than to show mercy to the eminent.I confess that I almost committed that sin when the eminent poet David Jerusalem was transferred from Breslau to our concentration camp.

This man is fifty years old.Penniless, persecuted, denied, and rebuked, he devotes his talents to singing the praises of happiness.I remember Albert Segel comparing him to Whitman in The Poetry of Time.The comparison is inappropriate; Whitman sings of the universe in a precocious, generic, even indifferent way; Jerusalem rejoices in everything with meticulous love.He never enumerates the list directory.I can also recite many hexameter lines of that meaningful poem called "Yang Zi, the Master of Painting the Tiger", as if strings of silent tigers run through the whole poem.Nor can I forget the monologue called "Rosencrantz to the Angel," in which a 16th-century London usurer dies begging to justify his mistakes without doubting the truth of his life. The cryptic reason was to arouse the image of the character of Sherlock in the mind of a debtor (whom he had only met once, but could no longer remember).David Jerusalem has impressive eyes, sallow skin, and almost black beard, and although he belongs to those wicked and hideous Nordic Jews, he seems to be descended from Spanish Jews.I was hard on him; I did not allow pity and his glory to soften my heart.I've learned over the years that anything in the world can be the germ of hell; a face, a word, a compass, a cigarette ad, if not forgotten, can drive a person mad.Wouldn't a man be crazy if he couldn't forget the map of Hungary?I decided to apply that principle to the discipline of our institution, and at last... Jerusalem lost his mind at the end of 1942; on March 5, 1943, he committed suicide.

I don't know if Jerusalem understands, if I destroy him, my starting point is also to destroy my hidden heart.He didn't seem to me a person, not even a Jew; he had become a symbol of that odious area of ​​my soul.I suffered with him, died with him, and in a sense disappeared with him; so my heart was as hard as a stone, without mercy. Meanwhile, the great days and nights of a successful war unfold around us.There is an almost loving emotion in the air we breathe.There was wonder and excitement in the blood, as if the ocean was suddenly near.Everything was different in those years; even the mood of the dreams was different. (I may never have been entirely happy, but misfortune, as we all know, needs a lost paradise.) Everyone yearns for all the experience a man can;But my generation has been through it all because they got the glory and then the failure.

In October or January 1942, my younger brother Frederick was killed in the Second Battle of Alamein in the Egyptian desert; a few months later, an air raid destroyed our old home; An air raid blew up my lab.Under siege from several continents, the Third Reich is dying; it has made enemies everywhere, and is now under siege from all sides.A curious thing happened then, which I now think I understand.I thought I could drain the cup of bitters, but in the dregs I tasted an unexpected taste, a mysterious, almost terrible, bliss.I tried to find various explanations; but none satisfied me.I thought: failure makes me happy, because I secretly know that I am guilty and that only punishment can save me.I thought: failure makes me happy because it's the end and I'm very tired.I thought: failure pleases me because it is inextricably bound up with past, present, and future events, because it is blasphemy against the whole world to blame or deplore a single true event.I searched for all kinds of reasons until I matched the real reason.

It is said that people are born either Aristotelian or Platonic.This is equivalent to saying that any debate of an abstract nature is a fragment of the debate between Aristotle and Plato; throughout the ages, names, dialects, and faces can change, but the protagonist will never change.The history of the people also records the hidden continuity.When Arminio defeated Varro's legions in the marshes, he did not know that he was the herald of the Germanic Empire; Luther, who translated the Bible, did not expect that his purpose was to cause the complete annihilation of the people of the Bible. ; Christoph Lind, killed by a Muscovite bullet in 1758, was in a sense preparing for victory in 1914; Hitler thought he was fighting for a country, but in fact he was Fights for all nations, even those he invades and hates.His ego may not know it, but his blood, his will know it; the world is dying because of Judaism, because of Judaism's fault - faith in Jesus; we teach with violence and faith in the sword World, that sword is killing us now; we are like the wizard who built a maze and got himself trapped in it; and David, who tried a man whose name was withheld, sentenced him to death, and heard the revelation : You are the one.What cannot be broken cannot be built, and many things had to be destroyed in order to establish a new order; we now know that Germany was one of those things.We gave more than our lives, we gave the fate of our dear country.Let others curse and weep; I am glad that our talents are perfect. An age of incompatibility hangs over the world today.We are the ones who created this era, and we have become victims of the era.What does it matter if Britain is the hammer and we are the anvil?It is important that violence reign, not Christian slavish cowardice.If victory, injustice, and happiness are not for Germany, let other countries enjoy them.Let heaven exist, even if our destination is hell. I look at my face in the mirror so I know who I am and how to act when I face my fate in a few hours.My flesh may be afraid; I am not.