Schöner durch Streifen

Last evening over an early dinner in New York a dear old friend visiting from Australia gave me this postcard which he found lately in a museum bookshop in Germany. The caption reads Schöner durch Streifen. Mitteleuropa um 1910. The first phrase is difficult to translate with equal concision, but surely means [men made more] beautiful by stripes, and presumably therefore drips with irony. This image of vital, vigorous, certainly self-styled manhood is made the more baffling by those frightful little shoes and, on the far left, the striped ankle socks as well. And surely the strangeness of the photograph arises from the total disjunction between the self-satisfaction, even pride, that these mixed-aged gentlemen swimmers obviously exhibit on the one hand, and, on the other, the almost inconceivable hideousness of the whole effect. One even wonders what occasion the photograph was specifically intended to mark. Mitteleuropa suggests that in the view of the publisher these gentlemen, so attired, were perhaps other than German nationals, but I am not so sure. Perhaps they could have been Austrian, or German-speaking subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for I fancy a Nachklang of this in certain of their Schnurrbärte, and a pleasing Sezession flavor in the Badebekleidung third from the right, but can there be any doubt as to the overriding impression that this weird image must belong to the Germanic Kulturbesitz, and to none other? One wonders, too, about the slightly wan Formalität of the Haltung: three and three facing inwards, Ja!, but the two on the right are looking in die falsche Richtung!!! The classicizing architektonischen Elementen which frame them seem congruent with a suite of Umkleiderräume in an Edwardian Turkish or electric bath establishment, though the absence of orientalisierenden Keramikfliesen suggests a more Spartan, almost preußischen Geschmack. This is to ignore the appalling cut of the garments themselves, and the total impracticality of the fabric, which, when fully immersed, must have assumed the character of so many portions of sodden blanket or bath mat. One shudders also at the mostly above-the-navel point of suspension, in other words what in couture circles one might describe as the Drapierung, to say nothing of the drawstrings, pert but limp, and inexplicably exposed; the slightly sinister bagginess of the nether portions, and the desperately ill effect of horizontal stripes upon the fuller figure. I cannot possibly accept that these were cavalry officers, railways officials, advanced psychiatric specialists, pupils, perhaps, of Dr. Freud, or civil engineers from Krupp or some other Konzern. Obviously they must have been senior executives of the Deutsch-Asiatische or one of other German banks. I am afraid there is no other possibility, and is it not curious to note how little bankers, in general, especially those with global reach, have evolved physically over the past 100 years? I fear that, were one to confiscate the drab, dark and unimaginative suitings from those bankers who currently inhabit certain boardrooms high above Wall Street, and substitute sensible German Badebekleidung, this is most probably what they would still look like. Hardly reassuring in these dark days of economic sluggishness but nevertheless, as the Hon. Paul Keating has remarked on more than one occasion lately, a vital key to understanding global finance is to grasp that most bankers are pretty ordinary.

Theodor Storm

Earlier this week a learned friend and colleague of mine asked me if I was familiar with the fiction of Theodor Storm, the nineteenth-century German lawyer, man of letters, and committed advocate of the removal of his native Schleswig-Holstein from Danish hegemony.

Although this name rang a distant bell, in due course I had to be reminded of his light-hearted way with titles, such as Im Nachbarhause Links (In the Neighbor’s House on the Left), that capricious novello of 1875 which has been described as “a study of the eccentric and miserly Frau Jansen, with flashbacks to her childhood and early youth, revealing that the old lady was always a repulsive miser.”

This natural comic flair was already evident in Waldwinkel: “Richard, saddened by years as a political prisoner for his liberal views and by the unfaithfulness of his wife, lives withdrawn from the world. He has taken Waldwinkel, a remote house in the woods, to pursue his botanical studies. Chancing to visit an old friend, a judge, when the latter is presiding over the case of a man who is eventually convicted of indecent behavior in respect of his [the man’s] beautiful ward Franziska, Richard is so struck with the victim that he engages her to help his old housekeeper, and to make sketches of his botanical specimens. He falls in love with Franziska and feels able, with her at his side, to face the world again and take up a chair in botany. However, just before the day fixed for their wedding, Franziska elopes with a young forester.”

If you liked Waldwinkel, you’ll love Wenn die Äpfel reif sind (When the Apples Are Ripe), “a humorous tale of a lovers’ moonlit rendezvous, interrupted by a boy stealing apples.”

One detects a strain of slapstick in Der Herr Etatsrat (The Dyke Administrator): “Sternow is a clever dyke administrator, but completely amoral. He wastes his evenings drinking with callow students and bellowing lewd songs, always attended by his factotum Käfer. The Etatsrat’s two children are utterly neglected. The son, Archimedes, is a good mathematician but kept at home to help his father, and, when Sternow at last relents and sends him off to university, it is too late: Archimedes works, but also drinks excessively, undermines his health, and dies of a fever. Phia, the daughter, leads an utterly solitary life. The scheming Käfer takes advantage of this lonely girl, and in due course she dies shirtly after giving birth to a stillborn child.”

True, German humor does require some perseverance. Fortunately, we may gain certain insights from a useful compendium sifted and arranged in 1903 by Mrs. Minna Sophie Marie Baumann Downes. It is entitled German Wit and Humor (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs and Co.), and the following teaser (p. 7) will demonstrate its immense value:

“A Good Shot”

A man passing through a forest saw an old blind bear. A young bear, whose tail was in the old bear’s mouth, led him. The man took his gun and shot the bear’s tail off. Then he took hold of it, and led the blind bear for two miles to market at Stuttgart.

I am told that this one still elicits loud guffaws from Saarland to Brandenburg, and from Lower Saxony to Bavaria.