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I had no idea until I read this in Hugh Barnes’s Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg:
“Until the end of the eighteenth century, even houses of wealthy Russians were barely distinguishable from peasant huts.”
Who knew?
(File under Humor, Sarcasm.)
More on Gannibal and Gannibal to come.
The line is from Martin Heidegger’s resigned and despairing Der Speigel interview, shortly before his death in 1976.
At Rockford College we are hosting a showing of Jeffrey Van Davis’s film on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and his disturbing relationship with National Socialism. After the showing, we will have a panel discussion featuring director Van Davis, professors David Sytsma and Jules Gleicher of the Rockford College history and political science departments, respectively, and myself as moderator.
Heidegger is one of the most influential of all twentieth-century philosophers, yet he was also a strong supporter of National Socialism in Germany. Is there a connection between Heidegger’s philosophy and his Nazism or is the coincidence accidental? More generally, is there a connection between philosophical theory and political practice? Heidegger died in 1976 — what should we think of his never recanting his support for the Nazi movement even after the end of World War II and the Holocaust?
Time and place of the showing: March 4, 3 p.m., Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, Burpee Center, Rockford College (campus map).
From the film’s website:
“Only A God Can Save Us” 
Length: 118 min.
Shot in 16mm, mini DV
Country of Origin: Germany
Shot in: USA, Germany, France, Holland
Persons featured in film:
Kardinal Karl Lehmann, Bishop of Mainz
Alfred Denker, Heidegger Biographer
Hugo Ott, Freiburg University
Victor Farias, Free University of Berlin
Tom Rockmore, Duquesne University, USA
Richard Wolin, City University of New York, USA
Ted Kisiel, Northern Illinois University, USA
Rainer Marten, Freiburg University
Emmanuel Faye, University of Paris
Bernd Martin, Freiburg University
Iain Thomson, University of New Mexico, USA
Jürgen Paul, Dresden University
Silke Seemann, Freiburg University
Rangvi Wesendonk
Axel Graf Douglas, Schloss Langenstein
Some of the topics covered in the documentary:
1. Heidegger’s concept of Being and the “turning” from Dasein to Sein
2. His humble beginnings and staunch Catholic education.
3. The Rectorship and his denunciation of teachers such as Nobel Prize winner Staudinger. His enthusiasm for Gleichschaltung of Frieburg University.
4. His highly manipulative love affair with Hannah Arendt.
5. His relationship to Edith Stein.
6. His refusal to give a word of reconciliation to Paul Celan who visited him in his hut at Todtnauberg.
7. The denazification process and his refusal to recant his support for Hitler.
More information at Van Davis’s site.
I have written about Heidegger here, here, and here.
I attended a two-day conference at Wake Forest University on the Federal Reserve. The Fed is the U.S. central banking system and was founded in 1913 to replace the earlier National Banking System experiments that had been in place since the eighteenth century.
I enjoyed a paper presented by George Selgin (University of Georgia) and Lawrence White (George Mason University): “Has the Fed Been a Failure?” Jeffrey Miron (Harvard University) commented on the paper, agreeing with its central conclusions but offering some different policy suggestions.
Selgin and White’s method is to take the Fed’s mission and to ask whether it has achieved its self-stated goals of using monetary policy to (1) achieve maximum employment and (2) stable prices, (3) moderate long term interest rates, (4) contain financial crises and (5) the spread of crises outside the financial system.
Data from economic historians Christina Romer and Elmus Wicker figured frequently in comparing the pre- and post-Fed eras.
With all due qualifications about the complexity and evolution of the economy, here is my summary of Selgin and White’s findings:
(1) Employment: Since establishment of Fed in 1913, unemployment has been consistently higher than pre-1913 (except for one brief stretch). But lots of factors bear on unemployment, so we can’t say how much the Fed’s monetary policy has been a causal factor. But we can say that the Fed with its available tools has not been able to control unemployment.
(2) Prices: The price index was relatively flat from 1779 to 1913, but since then it has increased dramatically. If instead we look at price volatility, the data sets differ but tend to show trivial differences between pre- and post-Fed eras. So either the Fed has been no better at controlling price volatility than the pre-Fed era, or the Fed has contributed to the large price index increases, or both.
(3) Interest rates: I didn’t catch this part of the presentation. (But the interest rate is the price of money, and the Fed’s setting the interest rate is a government price control, so general lessons about the effectiveness of price controls should apply here.)
(4) Contain financial crises: Panics have not been more or less frequent since the Fed’s founding. Defenders of the Fed might say that after March of 1933, panics have been fewer, but Selgin and White point out that that was because (a) by then half of the banks had failed and didn’t reopen, so the banks that could cause panics were out of the system, (b) one couldn’t get gold anymore, thus eliminating that as a cause of bank runs, (c) a Hoover bank-recapitalization program was helping many banks, and (d) FDIC kicked in and helped in a minor way. The Fed, they conclude, had nothing to do with it the fewer bank panics post-1933.
(5) Prevent the spread of crises outside the financial system: The Fed failed to prevent the Great Depression and, many economists now agree (see the conclusion), turned a recession into the Great Depression. But, defenders of the Fed can say, the Fed learned from its mistakes in the G.D. and has since done a good job. If so, say Selgin and White, the Fed seems to have unlearned those lessons in the last few years.
So, has the U.S.’s monopoly central banking system been effective? The Fed’s 100th anniversary is approaching, so that is a timely question. All of us have grown up with the Fed in place and so we tend to see it as a set-in-stone, not-to-be-questioned, necessary institution.
A working paper of Selgin and White’s results is available at the Social Science Research Network.
Related post: Money and Monetary Systems
Selgin is also the author of this fun book.
Franz Schubert was a great lyrical composer of the early nineteenth century. He died at the relatively young age of 31, and while his music is usually too melancholy for my taste, what a sadness.
Franz was lucky to get that many years. Biographer Christoper Gibbs reports that Schubert’s parents had fourteen children and “nine of their fourteen children died in infancy.” That’s from The Life of Schubert (Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 23).
The death rate for infants was appallingly high before the twentieth century, as it was even for those who survived to adulthood.
Among musicians, here’s a partial list: Mozart died at 35, Carl Maria von Weber died of tuberculosis at age 40. Bellini died at 36, Chopin at 39, Bizet at 34, Glinka died after a cold at age 52, Mendelssohn at 38, Mussorgsky at 52, Schumann at 46, and Tchaikovsky died at age 53, most likely of cholera.
What a carnage.
Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio [Die Entführung aus dem Serail] has a charming scene indicating England’s eighteenth-century reputation
in Europe as a land of liberty.
A woman named Konstanze and her English servant Blonde have been abducted by pirates and sold to Pasha Selim. In Act II, the Pasha’s crude overseer, Osmin, attempts to get a resistant Blonde to submit to him, whereupon these excellent lines are uttered:
OSMIN: Aren’t you forgetting that the Pasha gave you to me as a slave?
BLONDE: Pasha this, Pasha that! Girls are not goods to be given away! I’m an Englishwoman, born to freedom, and I defy anyone who would force me to do his will!
Osmin retires from the scene startled by this plucky display of courage and principle from an unexpected source — a woman and a servant at that.
The opera was composed late in 1781 and premiered in July of 1782 in Vienna.
All from the first decade of the twenty-first century:
Sorcerers stealing or shrinking men’s penises in Congo.
Black magic murders in Brazil.
Witches beaten and humiliated in in southern India.
God punishes Haiti for its witchcraft and other immoralities.
But progress in Ghana: a call “for the immediate abolition of witches camps and witchcraft accusations against women and young girls.”
So globalization still has work to do — to spread not only free markets and free politics, but the core cognitive principles and practices that enable us to live as free human beings. And it is important to remember that, in cultural time, it was not long ago that many in Europe and North America were still in the grip of superstition and spooky supernaturalism.
Here is a classic example from 1587. In that year, Michelangelo had been dead for 23 years and Galileo was 23 years old, but the Europe that could produce artists and scientists on that scale could still persecute women like Walpurga Hausmännin for witchcraft.
The Judgment of a Witch
FUGGER NEWS-LETTER
THE HEREIN mentioned, malefic and miserable woman, Walpurga Hausmännin, now imprisoned and in chains, has, upon kindly questioning and also torture, following on persistent and fully justified accusations, confessed her witchcraft and admitted the following. When one-and-thirty years ago she had become a widow, she cut corn for Hans Schlumperger, of this place, together with his former servant, Bis im Pfarrhof by name. Him she enticed with lewd speeches and gestures, and they convened that they should, on an appointed night, meet in her, Walpurga’s, dwelling, there to indulge in lustful intercourse. So when Walpurga in expectation of this sat awaiting him at night in her chamber, meditating upon evil and fleshly thoughts, it was not the said bondsman who appeared unto her, but the Evil One in the latter’s guise and raiment and indulged in fornication with her. Thereupon he presented her with a piece of money, in the semblance of half a thaler, but no one could take it from her, for it was a bad coin and like lead. For this reason she had thrown it away. After the act of fornication she saw and felt the cloven foot of her whore-monger, and that his hand was not natural, but as if made of wood. She was greatly affrighted thereat and called upon the name of Jesus, whereupon the Devil left her and vanished.
On the ensuing night the Evil Spirit visited her again in the same shape and whored with her. He made her many promises to help her in her poverty and need, wherefore she surrendered herself to him body and soul. Thereafter the Evil One inflicted upon her a scratch below the left shoulder, demanding that she should sell her soul to him with the blood that had flowed therefrom. To this end he gave her a quill and, whereas she could not write, the Evil One guided her hand. She believes that nothing offensive was written, for the Evil One only swept with her hand across the paper. The script the Devil took with him, and whenever she piously thought of God Almighty, or wished to go to church, the Devil reminded her of it.
Further, the above-mentioned Walpurga confesses that she oft and much rode on a pitchfork by night with her paramour, but not far, on account of her duties. At such devilish trysts she met a big man with a grey beard, who sat in a chair, like a great prince, and was richly attired. That was the Great Devil to whom she had once more dedicated and promised herself body and soul. Him she worshipped and before him she knelt, and unto him she rendered other suchlike honours. But she pretends not to know with what words and in which fashion she prayed. She only knows that once she heedlessly pronounced the name of Jesus. Then the above-mentioned Great Devil struck her in the face and Walpurga had to disown (which is terrible to relate) God in heaven, the Christian name and belief, the blessed saints and the Holy Sacraments, also to renounce the heavenly hosts and the whole of Christendom. Thereupon the Great Devil baptized her afresh, naming her Höfelin, but her paramour-devil, Federlin oft received the Blessed Sacrament of the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, apparently by the mouth, but had not partaken of it, but (which once more is terrible to relate) had always taken it out of her mouth again and delivered it up to Federlin, her paramour. At their nightly gatherings she had oft with her other playfellows trodden underfoot the Holy and Blessed Sacrament and the image of the Holy Cross. The said Walpurga states that during such-like frightful and loathsome blasphemies she at times truly did espy drops of blood upon the said Holy Sacrament, whereat she herself was greatly horrified. . . . She confesses, also, that her paramour gave her a salve in a little box with which to injure people and animals, and even the precious fruit of the field. He also compelled her to do away with and to kill young infants at birth, even before they had been taken to Holy Baptism. This she did, whenever possible. …
She rubbed with her salve and brought about the death of Lienhart Geilen’s three cows, of Bruchbauer’s horse, two years ago of Max Petzel’s cow, three years ago of Dun Striegel’s cow, two years ago of Hans Striegel’s cow, of the cow of the governor’s wife, of a cow of Frau Schötterin, and two years ago of a cow of Michel Klingler, on the village green. In short, she confesses that she destroyed a large number of cattle over and above this. A year ago she found bleached linen on the common and rubbed it with her salve, so that the pigs and geese ran over it and perished shortly thereafter. Walpurga confesses further that every year since she has sold herself to the Devil she has on St. Leonard’s Day exhumed at least one or two innocent children. With her devil-paramour and other playfellows she has eaten these and used their hair and their little bones for witchcraft. She was unable to exhume the other children she had slain at birth, although she attempted it, because they had been baptized before God.
She had used the said little bones to manufacture hail; this she was wont to do once or twice a year. Once this spring, from Siechenhausen, downwards across the fields. She likewise manufactured hail last Whitsun, and when she and others were accused of having held a witches’ revel, she had actually held one near the upper gate by the garden of Peter Schmidt. At that time her playfellows began to quarrel and struck one another, because some wanted to cause it to hail over Dillingen Meadows, others below it. At last the hail was sent over the marsh towards Weissingen, doing great damage. She admits that she would have caused still more and greater evils and damage if the Almighty had not graciously prevented and turned them away.
After all this, the Judges and Jury of the Court of this Town of Dillingen, by virtue of the Imperial and Royal Prerogative and Rights of his Right Reverence, Herr Marquard, bishop of Augsburg, and provost of the Cathedral, our most gracious prince and lord, at last unanimously gave the verdict that the aforesaid Walpurga Hausmännin be punished and dispatched from life to death by burning at the stake as being a maleficent and well-known witch and sorceress, convicted according to the context of Common Law and the Criminal Code of the Emperor Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire. All her goods and chattels and estate left after her to go to the Treasury of our most high prince and lord. 
The aforesaid Walpurga to be led, seated on a cart, to which she is tied, to the place of her execution, and her body first to be torn five times with red-hot irons. The first time outside the town hail in the left breast and the right arm, the second time at the lower gate in the right breast, the third time at the mill brook outside the hospital gate in the left arm, the fourth time at the place of execution in the left hand. But since for nineteen years she was a licensed and pledged midwife of the city of Dilhingen, yet has acted so vilely, her right hand with which she did such knavish tricks is to be cut off at the place of execution. Neither are her ashes after the burning to remain lying on the ground, but are thereafter to be carried to the nearest flowing water and thrown thereinto. Thus a venerable jury have entrusted the executioner of this city with the actual execution and all connected therewith.
[From The Fugger News-Letters, ed. Victor von Klarwell, trans. P. de Chary (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd., 1924, pp. 259-262). Also reprinted in The Portable Renaissance Reader.]
The third printing (!) of the 2006 documentary is now officially available at Amazon and at a new, lower price.
Here is a full image of the cover wrap of the third printing.
(And of course, this being the Christmas season, who wouldn’t want a book about the Nazis as a present?)
For more information about the documentary and book, please visit my Nietzsche and the Nazis page.
[Bibliography].
[Return to the StephenHicks.org main page.]
We all know that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to … well … uhhh … something or other.
But I digress.
Last weekend we went to a school-sponsored Santa Shop. The idea of the Santa Shop is that while the parents eat cookies and sip punch and listen to carols, volunteers help the kids do their Christmas shopping and wrapping so that the parents and siblings won’t know what they’re getting until the big day.
As we dropped our son off, we noticed that a large number of the volunteers seemed to be high-school aged, and shortly after that I ran into a former student who is now a history teacher at a well-regarded high school in the area. During the ensuing conversation, I remarked on the many high-school volunteers helping out, and the history teacher told me that most were students from his class.
It turns out, he explained, that he thought many of his students seemed stressed about their end-of-term history essays. So he decided to give them an option: Either (a) do the paper or (b) volunteer for a day at the Santa Shop.
Hmmm …. I found myself thinking: Equivalent academic credit for writing a history essay and helping kids buy and wrap gifts. (Insert sarcastic remark here.)
Which naturally raises the question of how much such teaching explains the dismal results from surveys of students’ historical knowledge such as this, this, and this.
And I can’t help but wonder, as I work my way through grading a stack of essays and exams this week, whether part of the teacher’s calculation was to avoid having to read and evaluate those papers. Mutual accommodation reached by teacher and students, and the downward spiral continues.
Rant finished, let me now get back to grading that essay on Aristotle, the great German philosopher.
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