In Christian Morgenstern’s poem Die unmögliche Tatsache, the impossible fact, Palmström reasons his way out of something that happened to him. The poem ends: Und er kommt zu dem Ergebnis: / Nur ein Traum war das Erlebnis. / Weil, so schließt er messerscharf, / nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf. He comes to the result that the experience was only a dream, because, as he concludes with razor-sharp logic, what must not be cannot be. The poem appeared in the collection Palmström in 1910. Its last lines became a common saying.
literature
The Town Hall Without Windows
The Lalebuch, printed anonymously in 1597, became known through its second edition of 1598 as Die Schiltbürger. It tells of the citizens of Schilda. They build a triangular town hall with a large gate but no windows. To bring light inside, they try to catch sunlight in buckets and sacks and carry it in. Duden defines a Schildbürgerstreich as an action that misses its actual purpose in a foolish way. Today the word is used for absurd rules and the excesses of bureaucracy.
Goethe Against Newton
Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre, Theory of Colors, appeared on 16 May 1810. One part of it is a polemic against Newton’s theory of color. Between 1810 and 1832 many natural scientists and mathematicians commented on the work. Almost half of them opposed Goethe. Among the statements from natural science, a third supported him. Hermann von Helmholtz admired Goethe’s scientific work, but he called its main thesis simply wrong. Goethe himself valued his research on color more than all his literary work. He told Johann Peter Eckermann: Auf alles, was ich als Poet geleistet habe, bilde ich mir gar nichts ein. (I think nothing of all that I have achieved as a poet.) What made him proud, he said, was that he was the only one in his century who knew the truth in the difficult science of color.
In Praise of Doubt
Around 1939 Bertolt Brecht wrote a poem called Lob des Zweifels, In Praise of Doubt. It begins: Gelobt sei der Zweifel! Ich rate euch, begrüßt mir / Heiter und mit Achtung den / Der euer Wort wie einen schlechten Pfennig prüft! (Praised be doubt! I advise you, greet cheerfully and with respect the one who tests your word like a bad coin.) He goes on: Ich wollte, ihr wäret weise und gäbt / Euer Wort nicht allzu zuversichtlich. (I wish you were wise and did not give your word too confidently.)
I Hear the Message
In the first scene of Goethe’s Faust, the scholar Faust sits alone at night and raises a cup to his lips. Easter bells ring, and a choir announces the resurrection. Faust answers: Die Botschaft hör ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube (I hear the message well, but I lack the faith). The line became a familiar quotation in German, a skeptical answer to good news.
The Bridge on the Tay
On 28 December 1879 the new railway bridge over the Firth of Tay in Scotland collapsed under a train. In the first days of January 1880 Theodor Fontane wrote the ballad Die Brück’ am Tay, The Bridge on the Tay. In it Johnie, the bridge keeper’s son on the train, trusts his engine: Ein fester Kessel, ein doppelter Dampf, / Die bleiben Sieger in solchem Kampf. (A solid boiler, a double steam, they will win in such a fight.) Three witches frame the poem, and one of them has the last word: Tand, Tand / Ist das Gebilde von Menschenhand! (A trinket, a trinket is the work of human hands.) Today the ballad is a classic of German lessons in school. German Wikipedia calls it a warning against a hubris that believes in technology.
The Tailor of Ulm
On 31 May 1811 Albrecht Ludwig Berblinger, the tailor of Ulm, tried to fly his self-built glider in public. He took off from the 13-meter wall of a bastion on the Danube, the site the town had demanded. He fell into the river. Fishermen pulled him out while the crowd jeered. Afterwards people called him a liar and a fraud. The customers of his tailor’s shop stayed away. He died in 1829 in a hospital, completely impoverished. Today it is thought that the cold water of the Danube creates downdrafts along the walls. In 1934 Bertolt Brecht wrote the poem Ulm 1592, which was taken into many school readers. In the poem a bishop declares after the tailor’s fall: Der Mensch ist kein Vogel, / Es wird nie ein Mensch fliegen. (Man is not a bird. No man will ever fly.)
A Song Against Plans
Die Dreigroschenoper, The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, opened on 31 August 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. One of its songs is the Lied von der Unzulänglichkeit menschlichen Strebens, the song of the inadequacy of human striving. It is also listed under the title Ballade von der Unzulänglichkeit menschlichen Planens, the ballad of the inadequacy of human planning.
Mother Courage Haggles Too Long
Bertolt Brecht’s play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, Mother Courage and Her Children, had its first performance in Zurich on 19 April 1941. It is often read in German schools. It is set in the Thirty Years’ War. Anna Fierling, called Mother Courage, follows the armies with her wagon and sells goods to the soldiers. Her son Schweizerkas is arrested. She could buy him free. German Wikipedia sums up what happens next: Doch sie verhandelt zu lange um die Auslösesumme für ihren Sohn … But she negotiates too long over the ransom for her son. He is shot.
Goethe on Double-Entry Bookkeeping
In the first book of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, published in 1795 and 1796, the young merchant Werner praises the account book. Welche Vorteile gewährt die doppelte Buchhaltung dem Kaufmanne! Es ist eine der schönsten Erfindungen des menschlichen Geistes. What advantages double-entry bookkeeping gives the merchant! It is one of the finest inventions of the human mind. Werner adds that every good householder should use it in his own household. Wilhelm answers with irony. People busy with Addieren und Bilanzieren, adding and balancing, forget das eigentliche Fazit des Lebens, the real sum of life.