London Decameron E-Book

Heinz Landon-Burgher

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 231

Beschreibung

The second part of the London Decameron covers the sixth day with a viewing of Hampton Court Palace. The center of the stories is the splendid court of Henry VIII and his wives. The evening in a nostalgically styled Russian restaurant in the style of the Tsar era turns to the beginning of the Russian campaign. The seventh day begins with a visit to Windsor Castle.

Leseprobe

Interim conclusions of the publisher

Several months have passed since the release of the first part of London Decameron, which covers days one to five, and the publication of the second part, covering days six, seven, and eight. Enough time to draw some interim conclusions. We can look at reader reactions in conversations and in reader letters about London Decameron. The diversity of the judgments on these London stories, depending on the interest of the reader, is surprising to behold.

Scapa Flow

A reader who had just made a trip to the Orkney Islands informed me that the statement that it is home to the biggest ship graveyard is not entirely correct. For a sum of 40,000 dollars, an American entrepreneur is said to have received permission to lift and scrap the shipwrecks. The monetary value of the proud imperial fleet was thus a mere 40,000 dollar.

Old postcard

He had attached an old postcard to the email, showing the German battle fleet in its full glory one last time before the self-ordered sinking.

Trial records

A second attachment held copies of the trial documents against the commander who had unilaterally ordered that these proud battleships simply be handed over to the English. Yet, he was now being convicted by the English.

Value in gold

A third addendum made the comment that defeated Germany had to pay out the value of the war fleet, but in German Goldmarks: in other words, the astronomical war reparations included several Goldmarks.

Literature in the digital age

These reader letters indicate something very interesting. The additional information they provide enriches the original literary text. A way of making this information instantly available to any future reader needs to be found. You could put novels and stories online so that anybody could add a link to the individual chapters or sections, allowing a potential reader to click on them if they so wished.

Incorrect date

An engineer from Heckler & Koch, the company that succeeded Mauser Werke, felt moved to share that Churchill received his Mauser pistol for his 21st birthday, rather than at 18. The pistol carries the designation G96 because it was, in 1896, the world's first self-loading automatic pistol on the market. Churchill was born in 1875, so by 1896, when his mother purchased the latest model for him, he would have already been 21 years old. This amendment is interesting and deserves to be recorded.

Anarchists

A highly noteworthy letter also disclosed that the last section in the story was contradicted by the raid on Sydney Street. They were by no means harmless hoodlums, but in fact belonged to a group of anarchists who had fled to London as refugees following the failed revolution in Russia in 1905.

Out in force

The deployment of 200 specially trained police officers by Scotland Yard indicates that it really was a major operation. The bandits had Mauser semi-automatic weapons that outperformed the weapons of the forces, which subsequently led to the London police force being equipped with better, more modern weapons.

Refugees

These revolutionaries entered the country as refugees when the revolution and the planned murder of the Tsars in 1905 ended with the suppression of the uprising and the agitators being prosecuted. In London, they were received sympathetically, but this did not prevent them from supplementing their financial requirements with bank robberies and lootings.

Expropriation of the expropriators

This was their motto. They also wanted to introduce the concept of the classless society to England, but this was not met with approval on all sides. While influential circles in London certainly considered it desirable in Russia, they did not necessarily want to accept it in their own country. The support that Stalin, Lenin, and others, who lived in London for a while, could draw on declined noticeably over time, resulting in the revolutionaries seeking refuge in other cities. Lenin, for example, went to Zurich.

Belittlement

The trivialization of these anarchist acts of terrorism also applies to the Sydney Street raid. In the end, there was only talk of two harmless crooks, though it was obvious that a large group of Baltic anarchists were involved in the attack. Georg Gardstein and Max Schmoller, the only two who were found charred in the basement and whose ashes were swept up with a broom, had long been part of the group that had previously been involved in the Tottenham Outrage and the Hunditsch murder, where they had dug a tunnel through the wall into a jewelry store. Since then, however, there has been no sign of Peter Piatkow. He was one of the main ringleaders. It is likely that he was completely incinerated on an upper floor. The other participants – Jakob Vogel, Luba Milstein, Fritz Schwarz and Jakob Peters – were acquitted because their direct involvement could not be proven. It is a bit like today, when it is stated that a victim of violence – a person whose temple is struck with a shoe, as occurred in Chemnitz – actually died of pre-existing heart failure, rather than the resulting head injuries.

Humor

Other trivial stories also attracted interest and inspired readers to put pen to paper. The fact that Churchill spat out the dry and, for him, too sour Riesling at the renowned Hotel Dolder inspired a writer to consider the following. He could not believe that Churchill would have spat in his neighbor’s plate on this occasion. But spitting on the floor would not have worked either, as he was sitting at the table after all. Spitting sideways was even less likely given the neighboring tables on every side. Spitting on the tablecloth would have been a real hassle at this large table. In order to clean up the damage, everything would have had to be cleared away. So, the only remaining possibility: Spitting into his own plate. The letter writer had made inquiries, but nowhere was it revealed where Churchill had spat. It remains a mystery, but perhaps he really did simply spit into his own glass. This grandiose idea was conveyed to me by my secretary Katrin.

Comparison

Nevertheless, the writer was also quick to offer a comparison. Hitler was invited to the Hanfstaengl family's home in Munich, a family with whom he was acquainted. It is well-known that he was a committed teetotaler. Mrs. Hanfstaengl succeeded, nonetheless, in persuading Hitler to try a small glass of a particularly outstanding Riesling. Anyone drinking wine or beer for the first time is unlikely to have a particularly pleasant first experience. This was also true in Hitler's case. He found the premium Riesling sour, but bravely gulped down the first sip. He then, however, asked Mrs. Hanfstaengl to bring him the sugar bowl. He sweetened what he called the "Sourling" with a heaped teaspoon of sugar. He did not want to be so rude as to leave the glass without drinking the wine.

Original idea

A friendly couple, well-traveled, though strangely never to London, were inspired by the narrative framework of my London stories and flew to London for a few days on a whim. Schedule: Proceed exactly as per the specifications of the short stories. Reading my book was the preparation. They even wanted to eat the same dishes at the restaurants described. So, on the first day, it's Hyde Park with fish and chips at The Swan. On the second day, the East End and The Tower with lamb and cherry tomatoes. On the third day, a Thames cruise, Westminster Abbey and Churchill's "War Rooms", followed by ratatouille at the French House in the evening. On the fourth day, it's an art gallery and the British Museum, then fish soup at Jaimie. The fifth day is St. Paul's and the City of London and, by necessity, burgers.

In the following book, covering the sixth, seventh, and eighth days, Hampton Court Palace forms the framework, alongside Windsor Castle and the Hampstead Heath.

Perhaps they are planning another three-day weekend in London.

Crete

Another family had seen the boneyards of German parachutists on their trip to Crete. They were particularly touched by the history of the parachutists. As long as they hung in the air, these were an ideal target for the enemy. Their equipment and rifles had to be discarded due to the weight on the special parachutes. This meant that when the soldiers landed, they were far from ready for action. They first had to search for their weapons, and the parachute they had sailed down on had often landed a long distance from their own landing site. This landing and the subsequent expulsion of the English military was only successful after the most monstrous losses; it borders on a miracle. It can be attributed entirely to the boundless heroism of the German soldiers.

Heroism

Heroism does need to be mentioned because, in addition to a British sea power that was entirely superior and 32,000 Brits on Crete itself, there were only 22,000 German paratroopers. Of these, more than 7,000 – one third – were shot down in the first hour. A paratrooper hanging in the air is an ideal target. It is almost unbelievable that the Germans managed to scare off the Brits in spite of this.

Churchill's fantasies

Despite the Germans' incomprehensible losses, England suffered a defeat which Churchill eventually had to take responsibility for as he had ordered the Greek adventure. He attributed the failure of the British to prevent the Germans from conquering Crete to an infamous deception by the Germans. They are said to have parachuted in disguise as monks and nuns. For that reason, the English did not shoot at them. However, this lie quickly began to seem too unbelievable and he corrected himself, saying that they parachuted in wearing New Zealand uniforms. Therefore, the English initially believed them to be allies. This did sound a bit more believable, it's true.

In any case, I was equally pleased to receive this letter. In the age of digital communication, readers can also make contributions to a book and need not limit themselves to passive reading.

Astonishing

The chapter which I expected to attract the biggest feedback was not mentioned by a single reader. I’m talking about the chapter concerning the assassination in the Bürgerbräu beer hall in Munich. If the British intelligence services had not passed on the information to the Gestapo on Churchill's orders – that Elser would receive 4,000 Reichsmark in Zurich in preparation for an assassination – then Elser would probably not have been placed under surveillance. His planned assassination could have been successful, which is to say, he might have succeeded in killing Hitler. In the style of devotional literature, you could put it thus: Churchill saved Hitler's life. Who should be grateful to him for this noble gesture?

Minor corrections

The Spanish translator very conscientiously noted some minor discrepancies. To the Romans, Mare Nostrum meant the entire Mediterranean and not just the Adriatic Sea. The Nietzsche quotation: "Humans will decline, but humans are only a transition" is found not in The Antichrist, but in Zarathustra.

Additional amendments

The same translator also made the correction that Unity Mitford's grandfather did not carry out the translation, he merely wrote the foreword for it.

Jokes and witty sayings

Some, especially those by Churchill, are well represented. But there are, of course, many more. The "No sports" quote is among the most well-known. For one Churchill admirer, this saying was wide of the mark. However, he also noted straight away that this saying only has limited application. In his youth, Churchill is actually said to have been quite sporty. He was even one of the best at foil fencing at his school. His first political deployment took him to India. There, he was considered one of the best polo players, a sport that requires a high level of agility.

Poker

He was also a passionate player of poker. To celebrate the victory over Hitler, it was decided that a poker game with President Truman should crown the celebration. Remember, Truman was the successor to Roosevelt, who had died a few weeks before the end of the war. In this game Churchill lost one million pounds sterling to Truman in a single evening. It was the entire profit from his war bonds. In 1938 he had already lost his entire fortune once because war had not broken out. If Strakosch had not bailed him out, even his private home, Chartwell, would have been auctioned off. Despite this, he took the risk of buying war bonds again in 1939. This time, however, he was more cautious and bought smaller sums, but nonetheless they still yielded one million.

Younger generation

Something more general also struck me. Regarding the reception of the London stories, all of the events lie so far back in the past for the generation born after WW2 that they have almost no conception of them. They will never have heard the famous names of the politicians, war heroes and artists of that period. Nor do they interest them. These are today's 50-year-olds.

The youngest generation

They have forgotten how to read. A hypotactic sentence with attribution and subordination can no longer be logically processed. A series of several of these sentences clearly overwhelms their ability to concentrate. Today WhatsApp is used to speak and record. Almost nothing is typed anymore.

Audiobook

A solution for 20 to 30-year-olds might be the production of an audiobook. Black letters on white paper that translate into ideas require the training of brain functions that the schools of today no longer aspire to. For the even younger ones, even this is out of the question. For them, only transferring it into a comic series remains as an option.

Screen adaptation

The only serious alternative that remains is a good screen adaptation. That's what I wish for. Or for the stories to be brought to life in the theater.

Preview

In the next year there will be a final, third part of the London stories. This will cover the ninth and tenth days.

Addendum

Two letters have just been tossed into the mailbox, but I would still like to tell you what they say.

Deceiving Poland

The first writer is particularly interested in Churchill's deception of the Poles. First, the broken promise to intervene in the event of Poland being attacked. That did not happen after the attack by the Germans and certainly not after the attack by the Soviet Union. Finally, a few weeks before the end of the war, Churchill and the US withdrew all support from the government-in-exile, leaving Poland as a vassal state to Stalin as bounty.

Gibraltar plane crash

The worst thing of all, however, was the murder of Sikorski and his entire government staff in an ordered airplane crash in Gibraltar, in which the pilot was the only survivor. That's how the writer Hochhuth describes it, at least.

Hochhuth

He featured this tragedy in a play, "Soldiers", that received international attention. Because the pilot was still alive at that time, and he was portrayed as an accomplice to the plane crash, he was awarded compensation on the grounds of defamation by the courts. No proper evidence for Hochhuth's theory exists. The papers are still locked away because they concern official secrets.

Katyn

Katyn was the cause of this tragedy. Gaining ground on the Germans, they discovered the mass grave of Polish officers and intellectuals on April 13th, 1943. It was clear that the Soviets were responsible for this massacre. However, given that Churchill had collaborated with Stalin in the meantime, there were difficulties. Responsibility was shifted onto the Germans, but the Poles wanted a factually accurate investigation. They turned to the Red Cross. However, Churchill could not get into difficulties with Stalin. For that reason, he chose to sacrifice Sikorski and his Polish government-in-exile. The pilot went into the cockpit with his lifejacket on. The only eyewitness of the crash testified that the aircraft did not crash, but rather made a wheels-up landing. During the investigation neither the eyewitness nor the only surviving pilot, Edward Prchal, were questioned. A criminal investigation of the incident was excluded for reasons of secrecy.

The second letter

The writer points out that Churchill wanted to conceal the fact that it was he alone who wanted to force the abdication of Edward VIII. This was why he gave a speech in parliament in which he was the only one to speak out against the abdication of the king. His speech was booed, though it is not clear whether those booing had been initiated into the deception.

"Money rules the world"

Churchill's ordering party, which enforced the abdication, was actually Baron von Rothschild. He also tried to disguise this fact. He pointedly invited the King and Wallis Simpson to a grandiose dinner, during which he openly expressed his deep regret regarding Edward VIII’s desire to abdicate. The King was smart enough to play along, although of course he knew exactly what was going on. But what use would a scandal have been if it had become public? He who has the money, and owns all of the newspapers, has more power than even the king. In principle everybody knows: "Money rules the world". Only then one would have also learned that the money also has a name and that its name is Rothschild.

One more correction

An acquaintance who is a history teacher pointed out that Houston fell for a piece of fake news: when he assumed that Franco's generals had refused to obey orders as a result of the extreme bribery. In reality, the reason is thought to have been a different one. Franco would have insisted that if he were to conquer Gibraltar, the mainland opposite, Morocco, where Spain has only two enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, would have to be part of the area captured. This area was still, despite the surrender, answerable to the Vichy government. And Hitler definitely did not want to mess things up with them.

Amusing

I have not seen one of my closest acquaintances for a long time. He is extremely wrapped up in his job. Finally, last night, he stopped by for a brief visit. This was especially important to me because I knew he had purchased the London stories, and I wanted to know what he thought of them. "These stories are amusing", he said shortly after the greeting. I was especially happy about that, so I would like to add this remark as a last supplement to the reader's reactions. The author is particularly keen to provide stories that not only arouse interest, but that the reader also finds pleasure in reading. Schiller wrote down this contradiction in five words:

"Life is serious, art carefree."

Table of Contents

The sixth day

Bus journey to Hampton Court (6.1)

Hampton Court Gardens (6.2)

Homosexuality (6.3)

Beginning of the tour (6.4)

Henry VIII and his six wives (6.5)

The most illustrious court in Europe (6.6)

The most difficult and consequential divorce of all time (6.7)

Anne Boleyn (6.8)

Jane Seymour (6.9)

In the Mercedes (6.10)

Arrival at Mila's (6.11)

En route in the taxi (6.12)

In the Mari Vanna (6.13)

Presentation by Vladimir (6.14)

Call me John (6.15)

John's speech (6.16)

Vladimir's lecture, continued (6.17)

The seventh day

Windsor Castle (7.1)

Couscous Darna (7.2)

In Zaibatsu (7.3)

The eighth day

Hampstead Station (8.1)

"Ella, elle l'a" (8.2)

The big brother (8.3)

The parallel Europe (8.4)

Change of scenery (8.5)

Franz Werfel (8.6)

At Antonio's (8.7)

The sixth day

Bus journey to Hampton Court (6.1)

Houston promised me something very special for this day, something that London visitors rarely get to see. Namely, the beautiful gardens surrounding Hampton Court Palace. Hampton Court is located up the Thames, quite far from the center on the outskirts of the city.

To get there, we took one of the London double decker buses, because we wanted to see London's neighborhoods on the way; these are more reminiscent of small towns, idyllic with their small front gardens and the typical houses for just one family.

Miroslav

During the journey he also told me that we were going to meet one of his best friends there, a person who is always part of the small group who gather for regular discussion evenings. His father came to London in 1941 with the Polish government-in-exile.

Flight of the Polish government

The government in Warsaw fled immediately after defeat by the Germans. Normally, a government stays and negotiates a peace treaty with the victors. In this case, the Poles would probably have had to agree to a connecting road and railway between Germany and East Prussia. The government officials, however, presumably assumed that Hitler would make short work of them and took themselves over the Romanian border to safety. The Romanians were allies of the Germans, and so they were interned there. This led to a new Polish government-in-exile being formed under Sikorski.

Polish government-in-exile

Sikorski had already been president once and was known to detest the Germans. He said: "We need to capture the homes and fields of the Germans" – meaning the Germans whose territory was awarded to the Poles following the First World War – "and if they do not run away themselves, we will have to kill them." These words of a statesman sound quite alarming from today's perspective. More than one million Germans were driven out in this way, straight after the end of the First World War, well before the outbreak of the Second World War. According to accounts from the Nazis, more than 65,000 Germans were also killed in massacres. Churchill, however, reduced this number. In his ten-volume history of the Second World War, he writes that the figure actually stood at 8,000 and was therefore not worth mentioning.

Temporary seat of government

Sikorski initially went into exile in Paris along with the members of his government. The disappointment with Churchill was too great. It was he who had pushed them to war, and who, in spite of a pact of assistance, had abandoned them so ignominiously. After the defeat of France, however, the exiled government had no choice but to go to England.

Hitler's concessions

Hitler had almost reached an agreement with Poland offering the Poles astonishing concessions, far greater than the Weimar government had ever agreed to.

Indeed, he had even planned to take action against the Bolsheviks together with the Poles. The middle and upper classes in Poland were opposed to a communist revolution, just like in Germany. For this, Poland was promised the whole of Lithuania, as in the Jagiellonian era. Areas in Ukraine where Poles resided, although in the minority, were also to be annexed to Poland.

Churchill's promises

Churchill, however, had promised the Poles vastly more than this if they did not cooperate with Hitler. They were to receive all of East Prussia, Silesia, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with the entire Baltic Sea coast. What’s more, this is along with the Mark Brandenburg together with the capital of Berlin, which were particularly important to them for historical reasons. For people today, this is almost inconceivable. The Poles fell for these promises.

Cover-up

After the Second World War, however, Churchill acted as if the Poles had enforced the displacement of the Germans from their homeland entirely autocratically, against their wishes. In the Iron Curtain speech before American students at Fulton University, he even spoke of the injustice of the displacement. He knew exactly, therefore, that he had contravened international law and human rights, yet deemed it clever to cover it up.

"Brandenburg"

"Brandenburg" was the biggest stronghold of the then-Gentile West Slavic region. The Poles saw their ancestors in these tribes. It was for this reason that they reclaimed these branches for themselves. These branches were forced to convert to Christianity at the time of the Crusades, around 1200. The population, however, was not driven out. Over the centuries they mixed with the Germans and took up their language. The remnants of the Slavic languages are only retained in the Spreewald area and are spoken by Sorbs and Wends. But to this day, the family names in this area are proof that the majority of the population have Slavic roots. One million German surnames are of Polish origin. I thought of a story about that.

Thomas Gottschalk

He is a popular entertainer in the Federal Republic. He comes from this area. Curious as he is, he allowed his DNA to be analyzed and was completely astonished when the results showed that 50% of his genetic makeup is of Polish origin. For all intents and purposes, though, this is not really that surprising. The same result is likely for all those who originate from Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, if I take your information as a starting point, dear Houston.

Shitstorm

Gottschalk made a harmless joke on that point. This surprising discovery about his "roots" inspired him to say, rather self-deprecatingly: "Now I know why I shoplifted so happily as a child."

It is after all well-known that Poles in border areas were particularly active in stealing cars. That this self-deprecating joke unleashed a shitstorm is, however, not a sign of a relaxed relationship and interaction.

Displacement

In principle, the Poles had also expropriated and driven out their own compatriots after 1945, though they had simply taken on the German language over the course of 800 years.

Ignorance

I admitted to Houston that I had only heard of this historic situation through him. I knew nothing about a lot of things. My impression is that German history is simply edited out of the syllabus in German schools.

Racial purity

In the horse and dog breeding spheres, purity of breeding is an imperative. Many believe that racial purity should also be of utmost importance in the human race. Hitler, for example, was convinced that the high level of intelligence among the Jews could be traced back to the fact that the Jews had attached great importance to racial purity throughout the entire course of their history. A Jew could be someone with a Jewish mother. The identity of the father didn't even come into it. Perhaps even the mothers were not entirely sure.

Coudenhove-Kalergi

The eminent politician Coudenhove-Kalergi, himself of mixed-race origin with the most extraordinary of abilities, was convinced that the mixing of races produced inferior subjects. His father was from ancient Bohemian nobility, which had mixed with Dutch bloodlines, while his mother was a Kalergi, a Japanese aristocrat woman.

Interbreeding

We are discussing this theory. It seemed more probable to me that miscegenation is in fact better than racial purity. Coudenhove-Kalergi is the best example of this. This is also hardly depicted anywhere better than in Saxony and Brandenburg, as we have already seen from the example of Thomas Gottschalk, where the 50–50 mixture of Germanic and Slavic is usual. The great geniuses: Bach, Handel, Schumann, and Nietzsche are most likely the result of the successful mixing two races. However, it would still be a shock if DNA analysis of Martin Luther were to show that this essential German was possibly genetically half-Polish.

Hitler–Stalin pact

Hitler was unable to carry out his plan to act in concert with the Poles against Bolshevism, as the Poles had promised the English that they would provoke Germany into war. This meant that Hitler had to change fronts and formed an alliance with Stalin. Hitler wanted to avoid a war on a second front, as had happened in the First World War, under all circumstances.

Fire and water