Belgo Geordie an the oonbearable weight of being a pooblic interlectural; Ostend, lessons from history

Etkar Andre

This all started when sum un at me wurk said "Your trouble Belgo is, you think too much." It were not a compliment, boot delivered as if thinking were a poor thing ter be filling yer time with. Over long years, even at school, then in me teenage years like, folk have told oos I over-think things. The most withering of such statements have been from girls that I fancied. As if thinking were summat unnatural like, certainly with no place in romancing and not, in southern hemisphere, acceptable behaviour from a man. Or a man without letters behind his name! "Hold on pet while we have a good chin wag before getting down ter business of smooching". So arrows and slings may have been fired and slung, boot it did not stop the odd heavyweight thought popping inter me brain leading ter discourse! Fat needing ter be chewed, wurds spewed ter bruise the air and the switched on light allowed ter burn oot the bulb. Boot the latest delivery against oos?  Waal, it set oos thinking...like.

Mr Zweig and Mr Roth enjoying Ostend, I know, I know...

First off, what is this thinking stuff? Why do we have it, if it is not mooch use. At 64, should I be concerned that I still get excited when grey matter fizzes.Nae chance if it keeps dementia at bay. Nowt like a good, hard think as Tony Benn used ter say! Like at moment, I'm pondering the communist thinkers and writers that were around the time of the Weimar Republic and were the last line of defence before Europe plunged into fascism. Aye it were triggered by a small book "Ostend" by German writer and journalist Volker Weidermann. Aboot two Austrian Jewish writers and intellectuals Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth meeting oop in Ostend, Belgium in the summer of 1936. Although Mr Zweig had parked his good wife in their country abode and bought his secretary and lover, Lotte Altmann, with him ter Ostend. While, Mr Roth was escaping his long time mistress Manga Bell, a Cameroon princess by marriage. Aye Zweig and Roth were a right pair of old goats boot they were genuine then in thinking they were trying ter break shackles of a conventional life. "More straight laced corset with yer tea vicar...is that God I see on your lapel?" Aye, times were changing rapidly, clouds of war were on the horizon and tide of fascism were coming but this was also a lads away trip. This small 164 page book, translated inter English is summit worthy of spending time with. Although at first, it were as dry as batshit on the sun baked asphalt that is Australia now. It creaks inter gear and then takes off. And with relevance ter wurld today. Aye, lessons ter be learned, as we repeat same mistakes. Fascism on the rise and many claim "nowt ter see here!" The rise of Trump, the stranglehold of Putin. Bolsonaro of Brazil. Yon Boris. In Oz- ScoMo the PR, happy clapping nowhere man. Aye the worlds in a hand cart pushing itself terwards human extinction. Plenty ter see here unless yer name is Murdoch. And he doesn't want yer ter see.

How can it be we don't see what's happening around oos? Boiled frog anyone? Weel, in the summer of 1936 enough were happening fer folk paying attention ter know things were getting ugly. Nationalism were on the rise. Hitler were in power. Fascism openly in Germany, Italy and Spain. Spreading its tentacles throughout Europe and America. Anti-semitism were poisoning European countries. The communists (not Stalinists - boot the progressive communists who were antifascists) had lost their fight in Germany and were in jail. In Spain, civil war and a coup were looming. England, France and USA were sitting on their hands. Nowt ter see her with herr Hitler. Just a few broken eggs, communists, jews, anyone getting in way of progress, writers, artists, film makers, intellectuals, unionists, teachers and so on...

The writers and activists meeting oop in Ostend against this background, many were already in exile or close to it. Their books, newspapers banned and works burned. The unbearable weight were that, no matter what were being written, dramatised, painted, discussed, argued, reported on and actioned - darkness, a pitiless darkness of the soul were closing in. Fascism is a belief about crushing folk...seen as not the right sort, if yer like the other. Truth, joostice, were not going ter win oot. Reason were already being reduced ter nowt of consequence. Writers, artists, playwrights, intellectuals - there works banned were being forced outta of Germany - soom ter be stateless or caught oop in the tides of war and fascism and then too many murdered for their ideas and what they stood oop for. To be Jewish, prominent in the intellectual debate was downright dangerous. To quote Stefan Zweig "The only way to fight hatred must come from ourselves." Brave, boot harder to stay afloat in these times.

Aye, it is a hard ask when all is turning ter a dark and rancid coostard.

For example the Ostend emigres were following the court proceedings for the trial and probable fate of Etkar Andre. A political activist and communist, arrested following the burning of the Reichstag. Imprisoned and tortured and at the mercy of an increasingly corrupted legal system, lick-spit judges following the dictate of Hitler and the nazis. And on 4 November 1936, Hitler had Etkar Andre beheaded. This was after Etkar Andre had already spent three years in prison being beaten ter a pulp. He went through a sham trial and despite international protests, was still murdered. Etkar Andre had strong connections to Belgium having grown up there and cut his teeth in the Belgian labour movements before returning to Germany. He fought for the Germans in World War One but came out of that experience with opposite views to Hitler. Internationalism of workers instead of nationalism of the elite. Ektar Andre was virulently anti-fascist. He was a part of the communist opposition on the streets of Germany to Hitler's nascent nazis. A dock worker seaman's union man and internationalist. A fighter and comrade to the end. To the puppet judges he declares "Your honor is not my honor, for we are divided by our worldview, divided by class, divided by an abyss. If you are going to make the impossible possible here and send an innocent man to the block, then I am ready to walk that hard road. I want no mercy! I have lived as a fighter, and I will die as a fighter, and my last words will be: 'Long live Communism!'" He was 42 when he was murdered by the nazi state. Even then, in defiance of the nazis (see it could be done!), five thousand prisoners went on strike at Fuhlsbuettel Prison.

His words reflected almost 37 years later on 11 September 1973 in Chile by President Salvador Allende under attack in a fascist coup against his elected government. He knew he and his comrades were going to die when he last addressed his people through public broadcast: "This is the last time I shall be able to speak to you...I will repay with my life the loyalty of the people. I am certain the seeds we have sown in the conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans cannot be completely eradicated. Neither crime nor force are strong enough to hold back the process of social change. History belongs to us, because it is made by the people." Two brave men, both murdered for what they strongly believed in and both stood firm facing their end. How many of us would be able to do that?

This is too often the fate of the movers and thinkers on the progressive front. The writers and political activists meeting in Ostend could see clearly what was coming but were dismissed by society at large as being defeatist and alarmist. Watch a movie with a friend, Hitler might a said, and chill. In short the Ostend lot thinked too much! After all, it was the summer of the infamous Berlin olympics. The last charade of civilisation and deception where world leaders kowtowed to appease Hitler. How then to keep some hope that the approaching cataclysm might recede and somewhere change, so as a better society could come about? More Jesse Owens. Fer them in Ostend it most have felt like the end, most knew war was inevitable, but few could predict how cataclysmic it would be.

So what happened to them? Many of the group died not long after this last Ostend get-together.  Zweig and Roth, both Austrian they see the rise of the nazis 'Anscchluss -Austria's  annexation to Hitler's Germany, and the return of the prodigal son, Hitler was born in Austria - is Austrian - overlooked by Germans.

Ernst Toller and Christiane Grautoff

Christiane

The playwright, Ernst Toller, already in exile who had turned oop with his young wife the actress Christiane Grautoff. Toller wrote:"No one can flee the present fight, particularly in a time where fascism has raised the doctrine of the totalitarian state to the level of law. The dictator demands of the writer that he become the mouthpiece of the ruling world view." In May 1939, Toller committed suicide in America. Yes, he and Grutoff had separated boot he was in despair that the world, and America, would ever improve.  A few days later Joseph Roth, his body deteriorating already from the poisons of alcohol dies having received the news of Toller's suicide. He is with Zweig's brother. Stefan Zweig is in London when he hears of the death of Roth. Their relationship has become strained by Roth's drinking but Stefan Zweig is devastated.

Freidl Roth

Freidl Roth, hauntingly beautiful in her youthful photographs, is Joseph Roth's estranged wife. In 1929, labelled in a historic footnote of Joseph Roth's life, that "she became schizophrenic" and incarcerated in a psychiatric institution. She was in July 1940 murdered by the nazis. Stefen Zweig commits suicide with Lotte in Brazil in February 1942. His suicide letter states "I greet all my friends! May they all see the glow of dawn after the long night! I, all too impatient, am going on ahead," It is said by his friends he was too weary to start life again. In Brazil he is no longer standing up to condemn fascism. Lotte Altmann, his faithful lover and secretary does not leave a farewell letter or note of any kind. Christiane Grautoff dies, many husbands and a full life later, in Mexico City in 1974, drifts into unexpected death in the presence of her granddaughter.

Willi Muenzenberg the communist fighter, publisher and global newspaper proprietor. Working class to the core, a leader and charismatic but became an enemy of Stalin's Moscow. In June 1940 while escaping imprisonment in France he is found hung in woodland. It is recorded as suicide but many of his comrades believe it was murder with Stalin implicated.
Arthur Koestler, the writer and journalist who will go to Spain and risk his life infiltrating Franco's inner circle. In Ostend in 1936, Koestler is still a communist. Two years later he writes "Darkness at Noon." A justified slap in the face of totalitarian communism and Stalin's show trials. It is published in 1940 as war ascends. He commits suicide in 1983.

Egon E Kisch in Australia

Egon Erwin Kisch, the journalist, took part in the Spanish Civil War. Went into exile in Mexico and returned to his home city Prague post war where he died in 1948 following two heart attacks. The Internationale is sung at his funeral. A postscript is in 1934 Kisch was turned away from Australia as a danger to the country's safety. He was seen as a communist. He was but progressive and anti-fascist. The year before, 1933, following the Reichstag fire, he had been imprisoned by the nazis. Freed from prison he was invited to speak at a peace conference in Australia. In Fremantle, he was denied entry. Determined to make land in Australia he broke his leg jumping ship onto the dockside. In an attempt to deny him entry he was instructed to complete a dictation test in Gaelic - which he failed and on this basis barred as a prohibited immigrant from entering Australia altogether. This was overturned by the High Court. He remained and made public appearances for three months before being strong-armed out having embarrassed Joseph Lyons right wing leaning nationalist government of the day.

Irmgard Keun

The writer Irmgard Keun who began an affair and drinking partnership with Joseph Roth one that flourished in Ostend but lasted for two years. In May 1940, she goes into hiding in Holland. She survives the war but as a literary figure is forgotten until the 1970s when her anti-nazi novels reemerge. She dies in 1982. Her books are still available.

Ostend is bombed beyond recognition and post war is rebuilt beyond recognition. I was there in 1970 on the waterfront where teenagers playing pool were listening to Johnny Halliday. There is not a whiff of communism, idealism or creativity. I am fourteen, have joost read Bobby Seale's "Seize the Time". Not in Ostend.

Part Two ter follow: a personal journey inter the darkness of thought... PS all photographs liberated as being helpful ter the reader ter see them being written aboot. If any offence is committed, it were not me, it were the ghost of Willi Muenzenberg, who said Belgo, go ahead, post and be damned...thanks comrade!!!