EUROPE
A Cargo of Questions 1992
Germany
FRIEDRICHSKOOG
Subsidiarity, the principle that a central authority should control only those activities that cannot be satisfactorily undertaken at a more immediate or local level.
In the 13C the people of Dithmarschen expelled the nobility and founded an independent peasants republic. To think of a continuous German history is impossible, since there was no single nation called Germany until 1871, and even then it was not strictly speaking a country, but an empire made up of a number of sovereign states.
For the peasant there are natural disasters and the state.
Homeland is homeland.
Can Europe be a common home?
Is a homeland necessarily a state?
Is home too difficult to live in?
Why do people want to escape from home?
How can people feel at home in a foreign land?
What is the difference between a motherland and a fatherland?
Is being European a form of the anonymous urban identity?
In 1864 the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were part of Denmark. As the successes of industrial capital were consolidated, the creation of a single internal German market, preferably accompanied by a political union, became an issue of the utmost importance. Thus the Dithmarschen became part of Germany, not as the result of settlement by resolution and majority vote "but by blood and iron".
Is the E.C. a repeated image of the multi-national corporation? Are the great corporations the new feudal form?
The old nationalism dissolved the emotional system of family loyalties.
A shared image of social existence was shattered?
What is it that destroys national and corporate images?
Why when identity disappears is violence the only recourse?
Is violence the quest for identity?
As the old ideal of nation breaks up into older regional patterns, it is not the concept of nation that is retrograde; it is the idea that the nation must necessarily be sovereign.
High interest rates for all, and recession for some. The price of the unification of Germany? The IMF predicts that whether European Monetary Union succeeds or fails the Maastricht Treaties mean that European growth next year will be 0.75% lower than it otherwise would have been.
Szczecin, one-time capital of the Duchy of Pomerania, was captured by the Swedes in 1630. They sold it to Prussia for two million thalers in 1720 and until 1945 it was part of Germany. After the first partition of Poland in 1772, this city on the Odra River became the main port of Berlin, to which it was connected by canal. Today this is a Polish city, just across the border with Germany. After 1945, the millions of Germans of Pomerania, East Prussia and Silesia were evicted from this land. Millions of Poles from the L'vov region of the Ukraine were settled in the vacant towns and countryside.
As a state, Poland was wiped right off the map of Europe from 1795 until 1918. Poland endured a century of enforced Russification and germanisation.
So what makes a nation? A language? A culture? A religion?
Is solidarity identity?
Is resistance identity?
Is a sovereign state a state or a nation?
Or are we just confused?
Is politics searching for identity, or the exploitation of the crisis of identity?
The Re:LODE project relaunch of LODE in 2017 has proposed a number of questions that address contemporary situations in 22 places along the LODE-Line that follows a "great circle" girding our planet Earth linking the quaysides of Liverpool and Hull.
The questions proposed in 1992 that relate to the LODE-zone and the places (boundaries and borders) where the LODE cargo of compasses were assembled (and wrapped in packing from a newspaper of the day of assembly) have been used as touchstones to help explore contemporary realities in a local and global context.
The Re:LODE project aims to use the questions of 1992, and the questions formulated 25 years on, to reflect on how the underlying matrix of power, communication and technology, is shaping the present along this LODE-Line!
In the 13C the people of Dithmarschen expelled the nobility and founded an independent peasants republic. To think of a continuous German history is impossible, since there was no single nation called Germany until 1871, and even then it was not strictly speaking a country, but an empire made up of a number of sovereign states.
For the peasant there are natural disasters and the state.
Homeland is homeland.
Can Europe be a common home?
Is a homeland necessarily a state?
Is home too difficult to live in?
Why do people want to escape from home?
How can people feel at home in a foreign land?
What is the difference between a motherland and a fatherland?
Is being European a form of the anonymous urban identity?
In 1864 the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were part of Denmark. As the successes of industrial capital were consolidated, the creation of a single internal German market, preferably accompanied by a political union, became an issue of the utmost importance. Thus the Dithmarschen became part of Germany, not as the result of settlement by resolution and majority vote "but by blood and iron".
Information Wrap
Der Rechtsextremismus in Deutschland hat drastich zugenommen. Er drukt sich in einer Welle von Gewalttaten gegen Auslander Und Asylbewerber aus. Gegenwartig sind die Verbrechen des Rechtsextremismus bedrohlicker als die Aktionen der stagnierenden aussersten Linken. Allein in diesem Jahr wurden sieben Menschen OpferrechtsextremerGerwalt.
Right-wing extremism in Germany has increased drastically. There is a wave of violence against foreigners and asylum seekers. Presently, the crimes of right-wing extremism are more threatening than the actions of the stagnating left-wing extremists. Alone this year, seven people were made sacrificial victims to this wave of violence.HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT, 14 August, 1992.
Au Hamburg - Vier Manner in Alter von 16 bis 26 Jahren, die der Gerwaltund Skinhead-Szene angehoren, haben Sprengstoffanschlage auf Telfonzellen und ein Auto in Bucholz (Nordheim) gestanden. Unterdessen wurde bekannt seit etwa einem Jahr Flugblatter des rassistschen Ku Klux Klan in Hamburg kursieren. Der Chef des Hamburger Verfassungsschutzes, Ernst Uhrlau, attestierte dem Klan “eine hohe Anziehungskraft” auf Rechtsextreme.
In Hamburg - Four men 16 to 26 years of age, who have belonged to the skinhead scene, have reportedly been found with explosive charges on cellphones in a car in Bucholz (Nordheim). It has been known for about a year that the Ku Klux Klan movement is spreading around Hamburg. The head of Hamburg constitutional protection, Ernst Uhrlau, attested to the Klan having "a highly attractive appeal" for right-wing extremists.HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT, 14 August, 1992.
LUBECK
In medieval times Lubeck was one of Europe's most important merchant cities and ports - now it is dwarfed by the North Sea ports of hamburg and Bremen, which replaced it as international seaports. This free Saxon community was governed by the merchants themselves,had its own magistrate and grew quickly in wealth and trading power; such scope for self-government and individual wealth contrasted with the feudal system outside the city. In affording one another mutual protection, Hamburg, Bruges and Lubeck formed the basis of the Hanseatic League, a vast and powerful trading network, that spread as far as Hull in the west to Novgorod in the east.
Is the E.C. a repeated image of the multi-national corporation? Are the great corporations the new feudal form?
The old nationalism dissolved the emotional system of family loyalties.
A shared image of social existence was shattered?
What is it that destroys national and corporate images?
Why when identity disappears is violence the only recourse?
Is violence the quest for identity?
As the old ideal of nation breaks up into older regional patterns, it is not the concept of nation that is retrograde; it is the idea that the nation must necessarily be sovereign.
Information Wrap
Trotz aller internationaler Appelle sowie der Uno-Entscheidung uber den militarischen Schutz von Hilfslieferungen stellten die serbischen Truppen ihre Angriffe in Bosnien-Herzegowina gestern nicht ein Beobachter gerwannen sogar den Eindruck, dass die Kampfhandlungen noch verschraft wurden.
Despite all international appeals as well as the UN decision on the military protection of aid supplies, the Serbian troops did not even blink an eye while continuing their attacks in Bosnia-Herzegovina yesterday.BERLINER MORGENPOST, 15 August, 1992.
Also
"A United States of Europe under capitalism is tantamount to an agreement on the partition of the colonies. Under capitalism, however, no other basis and no other principle of division are possible except force. Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production, and anarchy in production. War does not contradict the fundamentals of private property - on the contrary, it is a direct and inevitable outcome of those fundamentals. Under capitalism there are no other means of restoring the periodically disturbed equilibrium than crises in industry and wars in politics."V. I. Lenin, Sotsial-Demokrat, No 44, August 23, 1915.
Also
Why is the Bundesbank sensitive to the European cost of the recent rate rise?
Q. How important were international obligations, in particular in the Exchange Rate Mechanism, in your recent decision not to raise the Lombard rate?A. It is a matter of fact that we are not living alone, and that any change in monetary conditions in Germany has consequences for other countries. We are always forced to keep those consequences in mind. it is a question for the Central Bank Council what weight has to ne given to these considerations, because it is quite clear that our domestic task to keep the value of money stable in Germany has priority.THE GUARDIAN, July 30, 1992.
High interest rates for all, and recession for some. The price of the unification of Germany? The IMF predicts that whether European Monetary Union succeeds or fails the Maastricht Treaties mean that European growth next year will be 0.75% lower than it otherwise would have been.
LINKEN
In February 1945 it was decided at Yalta which parts of Germany would be occupied by the various allies, and after the war, all the boundaries and frontiers of Germany were re-drawn. Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, and about six and half million Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia. The Oder-Neisse line became the new eastern border. From 1945 to 1955 West Germany received $4 billion in Marshall plan aid from the U.S., while East Germany had to pay US$10 billion in war reparations to the Soviet Union. East Germany had to shoulder the full responsibility for the war.
Is the E.C. the politics of the abolition of European competition by means of war?
Change is like war, as war is change, creating the loss of identity that is violence.
Neighbourhood gives identity. Frontiers snatch it away!
What happens when you snatch the frontier away? Re-unification?
Is it the quest for new identities, or the struggle to regain old ones, that creates violence?
What is it to be German now?
What is it to be European now?
Are we European?
Who is we?
What does it mean to be European?
Is this the continent of ethnic cleansing?
Or is this part of the general human condition?
Is it true that we are pernicious, unstable, faithless, inconstant, fierce and bloody?
Can we put off bestiality and put on humanity, in short, to learn out of being a human being to make ourselves people?
Germany is the Europe's asylum for the economic and political refugees of Europe and the world. It is also a culture that has a place and a word for "guestworkers", Gastarbeiter, people who are not "immigrants", who work to build up society, but have no right to vote unless they are able to become German citizens.
Poland
Is the E.C. the politics of the abolition of European competition by means of war?
Change is like war, as war is change, creating the loss of identity that is violence.
Neighbourhood gives identity. Frontiers snatch it away!
What happens when you snatch the frontier away? Re-unification?
Is it the quest for new identities, or the struggle to regain old ones, that creates violence?
What is it to be German now?
What is it to be European now?
Are we European?
Information Wrap
150,000 Auslander in diesem Jahr illegal nach Deutschland.
150,000 foreigners have entered Germany illegally this year.
WELT AM SONNTAG, 16 August, 1992.
Also
"We belong to the part of the world where the dead pile up hugger mugger in charnel houses . . . . We belong to Europe; it's here in Europe that we are shut up together confronting the rest of the world. Around us are the same oceans, the same invasions, the same wars. We are of the same race as those who were burned in crematoriums, those who were gassed at Maidenek; and we are also of the same race as the Nazis . . . . If you give a German and not a collective interpretation to the Nazi horror, you reduce the man in Belsen to regional dimensions . . . . The only possible answer to this crime is to turn it into a crime committed by everyone. To share it. Just like the idea of equality and fraternity."THE WAR: A MEMOIR, Marguerite Duras.
Who is we?
What does it mean to be European?
Is this the continent of ethnic cleansing?
Or is this part of the general human condition?
Is it true that we are pernicious, unstable, faithless, inconstant, fierce and bloody?
Can we put off bestiality and put on humanity, in short, to learn out of being a human being to make ourselves people?
Also
Yesterday, the last six trains carrying more than 5,600 Bosnians pulled into Germany. as those refugees headed for reception and dispersal centres, the authorities in Bonn announced that they would be taking another 5,000 refugees on top of the 200,000 already agreed. Out of well over 400,000 refugees and displaced ex-Yugoslavs seeking sanctuary abroad, Britain has taken just 1,100.THE GUARDIAN, July 28, 1992.
Germany is the Europe's asylum for the economic and political refugees of Europe and the world. It is also a culture that has a place and a word for "guestworkers", Gastarbeiter, people who are not "immigrants", who work to build up society, but have no right to vote unless they are able to become German citizens.
Poland
SZCZECIN
Szczecin, one-time capital of the Duchy of Pomerania, was captured by the Swedes in 1630. They sold it to Prussia for two million thalers in 1720 and until 1945 it was part of Germany. After the first partition of Poland in 1772, this city on the Odra River became the main port of Berlin, to which it was connected by canal. Today this is a Polish city, just across the border with Germany. After 1945, the millions of Germans of Pomerania, East Prussia and Silesia were evicted from this land. Millions of Poles from the L'vov region of the Ukraine were settled in the vacant towns and countryside.
As a state, Poland was wiped right off the map of Europe from 1795 until 1918. Poland endured a century of enforced Russification and germanisation.
So what makes a nation? A language? A culture? A religion?
Is solidarity identity?
Is resistance identity?
Is a sovereign state a state or a nation?
Or are we just confused?
Is politics searching for identity, or the exploitation of the crisis of identity?
Information Wrap
Deutsche Grenzchuster griffen in den ersten sechs Monaten dieses Jahres 18,000 illegal eingereiste Auslander auf, fast zweieinhalb Mal so viele wie im gleichen Zeitraum des Vorjahres.
In the first six months of this year, German border police arrested 18,000 illegal immigrants, almost two and a half times as many as in the same period of the previous year.
WELT AM SONNTAG, 16 August, 1992.
Re:LODE & A Cargo of Questions
Re:LODE and 22 places and a Cargo of Questions from 1992 and, 25 years' on, re-launching in 2017!
The questions proposed in 1992 that relate to the LODE-zone and the places (boundaries and borders) where the LODE cargo of compasses were assembled (and wrapped in packing from a newspaper of the day of assembly) have been used as touchstones to help explore contemporary realities in a local and global context.
The Re:LODE project aims to use the questions of 1992, and the questions formulated 25 years on, to reflect on how the underlying matrix of power, communication and technology, is shaping the present along this LODE-Line!
This section on the LODE locations in Europe explores the "idea" of Europe and the "actuality" of Europe under the hading of "in search of Europa"!
Q. Why "in Search of EUROPA"?
A. An artistic use of the "arbitrary" LODE-Line offers a method for exploring everyday realities, concerns, issues and challenges, in precise local contexts that relate to a precise global context.
Q. Where is EUROPA? Europe is where this project originates, but Europe means many things to many people. Perhaps Europe is out there somewhere in the perceptions of our fellow inhabitants of a wider world, and the world wide web?
Q. Why "in Search of EUROPA"?
A. An artistic use of the "arbitrary" LODE-Line offers a method for exploring everyday realities, concerns, issues and challenges, in precise local contexts that relate to a precise global context.
Q. Where is EUROPA? Europe is where this project originates, but Europe means many things to many people. Perhaps Europe is out there somewhere in the perceptions of our fellow inhabitants of a wider world, and the world wide web?
Each of the links below lead to an Information Wrap relevant to the relaunching of the LODE project in 2017.
Friedrichskoog
Lübeck
Linken
