Under Weimar, especially immediately after Word War I, German society
was under great stress. Soldiers returned home, some without severe
mental and physical disabilities, to a Germany under heavy reparations
burdens. Most soldiers had no jobs, maybe no families either, no food,
inadequate clothing, no home to live in (except the parks and streets).
Due to reparations and blockades on food and medications, starvation was
rampant (not just oldiers, the people too), as was crime, prostitution,
rapes, murders, the Flu pandemic, strikes, bank robberies by the
French, uprisings, trains and buses sabotaged, etc. Perhaps this sounds
familiar? This is descriptive of "Die Dreigroschenoper" (The
Threepenny Opera). The Three Penny Opera was just like a London "dooky"
or a "penny-gaff" theatre. The poor might have difficulty paying more than two
or three pence (pennies, groschen) for their entertainment. One might recall the
Vaudeville type of theatre depicted in the German film "The Blue Angel"
(1932). Bertoldt Brecht's political views were appreciated in a Weimar
where Communists were murdered by the government, and the soldiers
(soon to be known no longer as the Freikorps, but as NAZIs) murdered children,
and the music of Kurt Weill was what the people understood. After all, It wasn't
actually theatre any longer, now it was reality. However, was this new?
Heinrich Heine wrote "The Silesian Weavers", inspired by the weavers
Peterswaldau uprising of 1844.
"The Silesian Weavers", by Heinrich Heine
No tears in their eyes, darkened by gloom,
They snarl, sitting by the loom:
Germany, we weave your shroud, bit by bit,
And it is the triple curse that we weave in it -
We are weaving, we are weaving!
A curse to the God, whom we used to pray
In the cold of winter, every hungry day;
We hoped in vain, we waited in vain,
He has mocked us, fooled us in our pain -
We are weaving, we are weaving!
A curse to the king, the king of the wealthy,
Who could not be moved by our misery,
Who squeezed from us our last penny,
And like dogs, let us be shot and die in agony -
We are weaving, we are weaving!
A curse to our fake country,
Where every flower gets snapped too early,
Where only shame and infamy can thrive,
Where rottenness and decay keep the worms alive -
We are weaving, we are weaving!
The shuttle flies, the loom crackles loud
Old Germany, we are weaving your shroud,
We weave day and night, we do not quit -
And it is the triple curse that we weave in it,
We are weaving, we are weaving!
The memories of the Peasants' War of 1524-1525 were likely a causitive
factor. This is when the Stühlingen peasants rebelled against their
Feudal Lords. The rebellion was sparked when the countess, in the middle
of the harvest, ordered the Peasants to stop work, and instead to gather
snails' shells on which she wanted to wind yarn. 1
Interrupting the harvest at this critical time would likely result in
loss of crops, and the ensuing starvation of the peasants. The peasants
were not soldiers, thus were armed with pitchforks, etc. The peasants were
opposed by a coalition of aristocrats and their armies, using defensive
castles, armed cavalry, and artillery. The peasants appealed to Martin
Luther, and Luther's response was to condemn the peasants for not supporting
the god-given social order. "Luther himself did boast on later occasions
that more peasants had been slain with his writings than with the weapons
of the princes." 2 Luther was
merely stating the Christian view:
"... Luther's response to the third of the Twelve Articles [Peasants' Demands].
That article demanded the abolition of serfdom on the basis of an appeal to
the freedom for which Christ set us free. Luther said in reply: "That is
making Christian freedom a completely physical matter. Did not Abraham [Gen.
17:23] and other patriarchs...have slaves? Read what St. Paul teaches about
servants, who, at that time, were all slaves. This article therefore, absolutely
contradicts the gospel. It proposes robbery, for it suggest that every man should
take his body away from his lord, even though his body is the lord's property.
A slave cn be a Christian, and have Christian freedom.... This article would make
all men equal, and turn the spiritual kingdom of Christ into a worldly, eternal
kingdom; and that canot exist without an inequality of persons, some being free,
some imprisoned, some lords, some subjects." 3
Luther was a theologian, a scholar. Isn't it a pity that
Luther forgot that the patriarchs were also Jews, and that by Jewish law,
slaves must be freed after the "sabatical" seven years.
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