Schiller vs. the Congress For Cultural Freedom
Who knew: Christian Drosten, infamous PCR-test-inventor, delivered a Schiller lecture in 2020 in which he distorted Schiller's philosophy of Freedom. Irene Eckert sets the record straight.
First published at the Rising Tide Foundation and AKF-Europe. Republished with kind permission.
By Irene Eckert
No, there is a limit to the tyrant’s power!
When the oppressed man finds no justice,
When the burden grows unbearable, he appeals
With fearless heart to Heaven,
And thence brings down his everlasting rights,
Which there abide, inalienably his,
And indestructible as stars themselves.
-Friedrich Schiller, Rütli Oath, Wilhelm Tell
With the global call for FREEDOM as unifying theme of the day, the freedom poet Friedrich Schiller is back on stage. The German poet of the classical period (1759-1895), most popular for his Wilhelm Tell, describes beautifully “what brings man closer to mankind“. In his philosophical poem “The Walk”, he rhymes
“Strife brings great things to the fore, Greater their union brings forth”
Every freedom loving person’s soul in the four corners of the planet is touched by the call to unite in defence for inalienable rights. Schiller’s verses resonate because he combines beauty and reason, poetry and political thinking in the most remarkable way. “Wilhelm Tell“, the last of Schiller’s plays on stage during his life time advocates passionately for the right to resist unjustified power and Schiller’s complete work breathes the spirit of his time, the spirit of the American and the French revolution. It is the call for “Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood” that inspired his beautiful mind. As a historian Schiller laid the ground work for a universal approach to history, as a philosopher he provided a theory of the aesthetic and as a poet he coined the most beautiful verses in German language. But as a dialectic thinker he also saw:
The world likes to blacken the sublime.
How very true in a world where a Christian Drosten, specialist of the PCR test, is honoured with providing the annual ‘Schiller Speech’ of 2020. Referring to Schiller as medic colleague, a pretentious Drosten concludes: “Schiller would were a face mask.” How far can you cynically distort reality in your arrogant ignorance? Schiller’s ethics and the intentions of Drosten’s promotion of the PCR test could not be further apart. Whereas the fake professor belongs to the elitist world shaped by the mentors of the equally pretentious “Congress for Cultural Freedom“ (CCF) , Friedrich Schiller belongs to the freedom hungry masses.
Whereas Schiller sought a way out of slavery and saw the independence of mind and soul as a precondition to full liberation, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) is anathema to everything the freedom poet stands for. Whereas Schiller called for all round education, The CIA funded mission of the Cold War institution CCF was neither freedom nor liberating education. On the very contrary, the CCF’s mission was to keep people dumb and apart. The multiple branches of the agency fought for the class interests of a tiny minority in opposition to the labouring masses. Schiller’ s background was modest, his parents were small people, but his bright mind secured him the privilege of a “princely” education. He truly liberated himself and never became a “bread-fed scholar,” nor any nobleman’s servant at any time. This is why his poetry is authentic, his verses speak to everybody and he reaches mind and soul. The great man literally devoted his own life to freedom, enlightenment and beauty. He lived what he believed in, namely that
“Only through the morning-gate of the Beautiful do you make your way into the land of cognition”
– Friedrich Schiller “The Artists”, 1789.
Together with “The Song of the Bell” and “The Walk“ , “The Artist“, form a triad of historically and philosophically most important poems.
Again, whereas every word from Schiller reflects his authentic search for truth, everything that came from the collaborators of the CCF was fake and artificial [1]. Equipped with extraordinary foreign funding, their contributors had to be well paid for. The consequential CCF inauguration party was ironically held in the ‘Titania Palace’, a movie theatre in Berlin Steglitz. Madame Eleonore Dulles bore responsibility for the ‘thing’ that was in fact neither a “congress”, nor had it any serious connection with culture or freedom. It was a psy-op, set up as a global spider web for subversive intelligence, designed to engage artists for cheating peoples’ minds. The endeavour of all their hirelings was meant to hinder national liberation movements everywhere and to block their struggle for freedom and sovereignty. In many respects the German people had a very special role to play in that gambling for power that dated way back to Peace of Westphalia, beyond even Martin Luther’s days. That is another chapter one can gain an understanding of by reading Schiller’s historical works.
Here we are dealing with Friedrich Schiller as the epitome of not only German but European culture. And after WWII the CCF wage scribes were commissioned to destroy this very culture. To whom this sounds too fantastic may turn to everything that the Canadian historian Matthew Ehret has published [3]. The long term project was done in a Fabian way, gradually and often without even the awareness of their proponents. A thwarted metaphor for turning Schillerian imagery into their opposite was the notorious ‘Freedom Bell’ in the City Hall of Berlin Steglitz in 1950. It was sponsored by the Anglo-Saxon ‘liberators’ as a symbol of anti-communism. The freedom culture heroes used the beautiful image as a tool for directing the still NAZI infected minds towards yet another war against the eternally “evil Russians”.
In stark contrast Schiller’s most famous ballad “The Bell” ends with a call for harmony, joy and peace:
And “Concord” we will name her ! —
To union may her heartfelt call
In brother-love attune us all ! …
Fair bell to our city bode joy and increase,
And oh, may thy first sound be hallowed to peace !
Having said this, Schiller was by no means a naive idealist. The historian knew how men could be dangerously mislead against men. With reference to the derailed French Revolution he warned in the same ballad:
Man fears the tiger’s fangs of terror ;
And still the dreadliest of horror,
Is man himself in error !
Based on such insight Schiller focuses on all-round education as a precondition for authentic freedom and true democracy. Obviously dumb people can be mislead more easily. This is why Schiller did not believe in the uninformed majority vote.
“Feed the man and provide him with the means of education and the dignity will come along.”
“A slave will not be able to position himself against his master.”
or
“Weigh the votes, don’t count them”
– these are Schiller’s ideas explicitly laid down in his torso “Demetrius“, where the Polish nobleman Sapieha proclaims
“Majority is madness, reason has still ranked only with the few.”
Sapieha is the only voice raised against the sinister plans of the Polish oligarchy to attack Russia and to illegally enthrone Demetrius.
Schiller knew a lot about the evil intentions of the mighty oligarchic forces situated above nation states. He understood their narrow minded egotistic visions and their need for a slavish people. Such knowledge put the poet in danger.
Friedrich Schiller “was shaped by the global republican movement of his time” says Canadian writer Cynthia Chung and, indeed, the famous “Rütli Oath” reflects the spirit of the American Declaration of Independence. Such spirit cannot be tolerated by the globalist elite and is an anathema to the financiers of a fake freedom culture.
The mission of the oligarchs’ ‘intelligence services’ of all days has been to ban free thinking. Their intention was to prevent that either a Benjamin Franklin or a Schiller or a Franklin D. Roosevelt for that matter was ever to disturb their games again. The intellectual foot soldiers of the CCF-CIA were sent out after WWII to spoil an eminent victory of the Red Army on the cultural field. The CCF was an answer to the multiple, very successful peace initiatives, such as the founding of the World Peace Council and the Stockholm Peace Appeal. Johannes R. Becher, poet and minister of Cultural Affairs in the young GDR called the CCF feathers “gangsters camouflaged as literary figures.”
The hysteria whipped up against Russia today recalls the most vicious distortion of everything the Soviets and their allied peoples had fought for. Without such atrocious Red Smear the battle of ideas might have been won by the Russians. While smearing then Soviet Russia for denying freedom rights in their hemisphere, the Anglo-Saxon Empire had of course not the faintest intention to grant freedom and sovereignty to the nations they had conquered.
Growing economic wealth hid for decades the underlying reality of falsehood. The German nation in the heart of Europe was one of their most cherished victims. Now, it has become obvious, the moor has served its purpose, he can go. Today’s Globalists under the ‘leadership’ of an empty suit are even going as far as to deprive Germans of affordable energy supplies. Light heartedly they will destroy the German industrial base if their leaders do not follow suit and refuse to open a new front against the Russians. And if they do obey, this will happen just the same. Narrow minded as these pseudo leaders of the ‘rules based order’ are, their demented brains seem unable to comprehend that the world has thoroughly changed since they inaugurated the CCF. Fortunately given the Chinese-Russian ‘Bond of Survival,’ a new paradigm shift is on the horizon. But those who seek a way out of the bondage must be able to understand the opportunities offered from those alleged suppressor nations. If the freedom seeking masses are able to cut of the mental framing, they will take the helping hand stretched out for them. The pathway to liberation has to first de-construct the enemy imagery.
Hopefully this is already underway. Those masses out there, struggling for human and humane survival, those out there in the streets will quickly learn how to differentiate between friend and foe. If they are successfully throwing off their chains, it will have been in vain that for 77 years the Anglo-Saxon secret services were throwing around millions of dollars. The heralds of a false freedom culture will have failed in their attempt to bring history to a halt.
Let us re-call that the devilish duo Churchill-Truman openly admitted, after the death of Hitler, that they had “killed the wrong pig.” They detested the anti-Hitler coalition. Once their monster baby had been done away with, their agents had to spin a world wide wire-trap-web of lies against those they wanted to kill next . ‘Concord and Peace’ were certainly not on their hawkish agenda . Nothing had their false notion of freedom in common with either Roosevelt’s famous “Four Freedoms” nor with Schiller’s idea of ‘free souls‘. Bringing forth educated human beings capable of developing their multiple talents, uniting duty and inclination in accordance, were not on their agenda.
They replaced the classical humanist idea of freedom with a narrow notion of ‘liberties’ sought to ‘free’ people from any social obligations. Humans should be free to do what ever their lust dictates them. Hedonism was to be the new freedom tune. “Anything goes“ was the post modern melody on the dance floor. The fate of women (and children) under such conditioned ‘liberties’ would be non of their concerns. If such policies would be detrimental for entire societies and would consequently diminish birth rates, all the better for their sinister Eugenic plans. These plans have been developed during Schiller’s lifetime by British priest Malthus.
When George F. Kennan, father of the Cold War “Containment Policy” congratulated the US composer Nicolas Nabokov, secretary of the CCF in 1959 by saying:
I can think of no group of people who have done more to hold our world together in these last years than you and your associates in the Congress [for Cultural Freedom]. In this country [the United States] in particular, few will ever understand the dimensions and significance of your accomplishment,
we see through the cynicism of his implications. Kennan’s “world” being that of the aggressive NATO military alliance, founded in 1949, with the intention to create a cold war. Kennan’s “world“ is the Western Hemisphere as opposed to the then Socialist two thirds of the planet. ‘His world‘ refers to an exclusive elitist oligarchical clique with the distorted mind set of psychopaths . It is high time that we, the people liberate ourselves from the disastrous ‘accomplishments’ of the institution he praises.
The Disastrous Long-term Dimensions of CCF’s “Accomplishments“
According to the New York Times the funding of the CCF/ CIA world wide spun network of intellectual cold warriors ended in 1966 . But its harmful influence on the global intellectual and artistic scene still remains, often covered by a false notion of modernity. The intellectual roots of such false progressiveness date back to the beginning of the last century or even beyond. We find them with the Cambridge ‘Apostles’, the ‘Fabian Society’, the ‘Bloomsbury Club’ and more like-minded elitist Bohemians with liaisons to the British secret services. See Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf’s husband, member of the Fabian Society, ex- colonial officer in Sri Lanka and their notorious circle which included, H.G Wells, Bertrand Russel, John Maynard Keynes and many more of such perverted Malthusian minds.
Had all the tax money and manpower at their disposal been spent in order to combat the mental impact of fascism, Friedrich Schiller himself would have approved of such an educational effort. But, alas the target of the CCF legions was beauty and reason itself. Given their perverted set of mind this may even make sense. If all you want is control “beautiful souls and cognition” are in your way.
Therefore the Dulles brothers, George Kennan and their affiliate intelligentsia did not like Schiller.
Churchill has even been quoted as saying in 1940 that Britain’s real target was not Nazi-Germany but the spirit of the German people as expressed by the spirit of Schiller.
By down-treading their culture the Germans were to be deprived of any love for their country. Pride for their classical heritage, intellectual and artistic achievements was ‘verboten’.
While the cultural ‘freedom fighters’ were waving their false freedom flag over West-Berlin’s Titania Film Palace, their dollar waving handlers had just divided Germany and provoked a hot war against the Korean people. When that one ended in 1953 they used the same ‘liberating’ strategy against the Vietnamese. And it was to be only the beginning of a long period of never ending wars, initiated by the trumponists of the free world. In their ongoing “freedom fight” they would destroy ancient cultural treasures and put the world into shambles. As a result of their manifold nefarious activities
“we see the spirit of the age wavering between perversity and brutality, between unnaturalness and mere nature, between superstition and moral unbelief.”
– Schiller NA XX, 320–21/E 97
Once again, barriers are being erected. Beginning with the double veto of Russia and China in the UNSC of 2012 the satanic measures against Syria came to a halt. The geopolitical chessboard is changing gradually. This is the time to rise with the tide and to re-discover the actuality of Schiller’s works. Interesting enough Schiller has always been highly appreciated in Russia and he is treasured in China.
It is also time for a closer look again into Schiller’s ballad “The Cranes of Ibycus“. With this poem he demonstrates the power of poetry and dramatic art over the mean and brutal instincts of robbers and murderers. The ballad’s symbolism also offer a clue to another unaccounted for crime. Goethe as Schiller’s friend must have seen a lot during his long life. But he also must have had reasons to remain silent. Only after his own death Goethe speaks. With verses in Faust II, he takes up Schiller’s “Cranes of Ibycus“ and covered in an anagram, he says what he didn’t dare say during his lifetime. See Goethe’s verses in German below. Schiller rhymes as follows:
‘The Cranes of Ibycus“
Deep-wounded, down he sinks at last,
When, lo ! the cranes’ wings rustle past.
He hears, — though he no more can see, —
Their voices screaming fearfully.
By you, ye cranes, that soar on high.…
Be borne to heaven my ‘murder’ cry !
– Schiller
If there are many ways to kill a man, distorting the legacy of a great person is even worse than murder.
Legacy of Germany’s Poet of Freedom and the Purposeful Neglect of National Liberation
While Schiller’s plays have almost disappeared from curricula and stage, story telling and symbolic policy remain to be of greatest importance for the maintenance of control. It is not a small issue, that Schiller’s birthplace in Marbach, on the River Neckar, is maintained as an attraction for the sole purpose of tourism and folklore. Nothing in the poet’s home points to the mental legacy of the famous author. What we see there are portraits of his parents, baby clothes and a statue of the adult, not to forget a quote over the entrance door suggesting that Schiller liked beer. There is method behind such dumbness and neglect.
Neither the “Schiller National Museum“ (SNM) in Marbach of 1903, nor the literary archive there are explicitly devoted to Schiller’s work. What is more, the museum is closed again. Its recently appointed director announced a review of the entire exhibition. Its reopening is scheduled for February 2023. In the meantime Schiller’s aesthetic theories will be put under scrutiny. Another irony: this review of Schiller’s exhibition will be conducted under the supervision of two individuals whose qualifications bear no references to Schiller.
This goes to show the ongoing ambiguity concerning Schiller’s legacy . Not only does Schiller’s skull still, to this day, encourage the now and then satirical remarks from journalists. In reality the poet’s bones are lost forever. It seems as if the legacy of the classical author has become the spoils of a dubious rabble. While Schiller is quoted as the German Shakespeare abroad respective decency is missing at home.
The author of “Wilhelm Tell,” “Maria Stuart,” [4] “The Virgin of Orleans” and the anti-war trilogy “Wallenstein” would have had some ideas of his own about such nonsensical sarcasm. He might have seen “Ghosts“ at work, gangsters of a similar mindset as those depicted in his unfinished novel the “Ghostseer“. Interestingly enough it was Canadian writer Cynthia Chung, co-founder of the Rising Tide Foundation who recently provided a thorough analysis of the fragment, explaining how Schiller knew how to declassify evil by means of aesthetic [5].
No Nationalistic Undertones in Schiller’s Work
While Schiller created some of the most beautiful and popular literature in German verses, his dramatic art, his philosophical and historical contributions are void of any “nationalistic overtones“. “Don Carlos“ and “Wilhelm Tell“ were banned between 1941-45. The Spanish nobleman “Marquis de Posa” speaks truth to power and the Swiss national hero “Tell” denounces dictatorship by his actions. Schiller’s characters and metaphors reach out far beyond all national borders. They are telling and timeless and universal. The notorious greeting of the “Gessler hat” has become a strong symbol of seemingly senseless repression. Today the greeting of the dictator’s hat reminds everybody in the know of the debasing muzzle and mind cuff, unnaturally forced upon humans in public on a global scale.
With growing repression we also see, that the Globalist clique has gone too far. The actuality of Schiller’s “Tell” has perhaps never been more to the point than at this very moment of history. How desperate must the still governing clique be, if they need to send out children, camouflaged as ‘ANTIFA heroes’ and make them call out tax paying citizens and democrats in defence of their legal rights as “NAZIS”. Ironically this tactic is applied on a global scale.
Those poor kids should rather go to school again and learn that the historic NAZIS were neither. They were neither national nor socialist as pretended by their name giving. Questions must also be raised as to why patriotic feelings are okay in a football stadium but tabooed outside. The fashionable call “NAZI“ is just another spin, applied internationally now to denounce people’s right to protest against anti-democratic, anti-constitutional, anti-freedom measures.
Remarkable in this context that the governing Green Party in Germany recently even went so far as trying to delete the term “Deutschland“ (Germany) from their election platform. But will such shrewd ideas contribute to wiping out national sentiments or will they rather assist real Neo-Nazis in leadership positions to do their job unattended?
Fact is that only a small fraction of the German electorate voted for the Greens. Their globally trained leaders have never the less miraculously been maneuvered into key government positions. Such maneuvering was done to the Germans before. But name avoiding will only prevent some people from understanding the true nature of the phenomenon which is a transnational disease.
Orwellian Tricks Applied to Distort Schiller’s Brotherhood of Men into its Opposite
The transnational evil minds who brought about not only the NAZIS, but are responsible for fascism on a global scale, still hold the riches they sucked in from the four corners of the world, riches that the labouring masses produced. Therefore they can command an army of mercenaries in their totally controlled media. Profit hungry, war mongering and scrupulous as they are, they hold even the tools to de-root entire populations and implant them elsewhere. The merciless sociopaths, bereft of any conscious, moral or reason continue to destroy age old cultural achievements. Latest most mind boggling example was Palmyra in Syria. Like Palmyra, Schiller is an emblematic symbol of human culture. Honouring Schiller and remembering Palmyra in one breath, we defend the cultural heritage of humanity.
What is being done to one of us, is being done to us all.
With the ongoing global uprising the healing process has already begun. Struggling for freedom, for peace and democracy also demands an inclusive understanding of the intrinsic and forward looking value of the classical culture at home and abroad.
It is good to sense that Schiller’s “Don Carlos“ breathes the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Europe. It is good to know that it gained the young playwright French citizenship. “Liberte et Fraternite” are Schiller’s intrinsic moral values. These ethical standards characterise his entire work which reflects the ideas of the American and the French Revolution before they were hijacked and turned into a caricature of itself.
Un-Spinning Narratives More Important Than Ever
During the last two years the oligarchical imperial forces have literally driven people into the streets everywhere. The vicious tools applied to suppress and even kill large parts of the population under a Malthusian, a Green or Great Reset Agenda are not working as smoothly as intended. The master minds of an internationally organised clique, a bankers guild, a Bilderberg club, a Davos Forum, a Fabian Society, a fake chorus of writers and “creatives” with their pretentious accusations against the rest of the human race will eventually meet their maker. Once people understand what is being played, human beings will not allow themselves to be deprived of their livelihood or to be selectively murdered. Real people with brains and brawns and beautiful minds do not want to be replaced by AI robots either . The meant-to-be disposables will fight for their inalienable rights as Schiller most preciously predicted in his Tell drama.
Young Canadian historian
has contributed much to make the underlying stream of history visible. His publications help us to see hitherto unknown aspects of what he calls the “Unfinished Sympathy” and which he deals with the US and also the latent Canadian anti-colonial struggle. When Matthew finished his two volumes, he could not know, that it would be in his hitherto very calm country Canada, where the waters would be boiling up to the cooking point.The brainwashing machinery is now confronted with serious trouble. The warping of terms, the spinning of metaphors, the turning of symbols into their opposite and the waving of false flags, basic elements of the ideological warfare are becoming toothless when people raise up and experience the reality of the naked force behind the false promises. You can only fool some of the people some of the time. Human weaknesses will of course always be targeted by the manipulators. But once confronted with the naked truth of power, people will long for literature like Schiller’s “Tell“ but also “The Ghostseer.” The latter provides a most useful guide through the eternally applied dirty tricks of the ruling “intelligence”.
As foreseen by Schiller with the intensification of historic battles, narratives become more and more important. As the battle for ideas intensifies, the mind itself becomes a target. The very existence of rationality is at stake and the idea even of the beautiful, too. But as we are witnessing: “If the burden becomes unbearable, people rise up and take back their inalienable, their natural rights“ as said in the Rütli Oath.
With the founding of the CCF the Orwellian distortion of reality had already reached a historically new level. An Orwellian spinning of notions into their opposite, the creation of black legends, the propagation of a spirit of misery and negativity was spread. In 1950 the ruling elites saw the need to sponsor a massive brainwashing industry, because they knew that the Red Army had defeated Hitler. They did not like it. With their artificially created monster puppet gone, they quickly stigmatised the entire German people as the eternal ‘NAZI‘. The German nation, which was never identical with the REICH, was falsely declared responsible not only for Hitler but for the two Great Wars. Paradoxically while pretending to rein in such ‘epitome of evil’, they prepared the same evil people for another attack on (Soviet) Russia. The nation of poets and thinkers whose cultural achievements were once admired by the world, in particular in Russia was humiliated by targeting its cultural heritage. The memory of classical Weimar, site of Goethe, Schiller, Herder was to be wiped out by connecting the place with the concentration and death camp Buchenwald on the Etterberg. Following generations should not know Bruno Apitz’ novel “Naked Under Wolfs“. They should not learn about Teddy Thälmann’s murder there, just days before the war ended. The amazing fact that the camp inmates of Buchenwald liberated themselves was to be forgotten.
In the age of a mysterious, everlasting pandemic and a newly unleashed cold war hysteria, novels of the 40s of last century are propagated anew. Negativity spreaders like Camus’ “Pest“, “The Stranger“, Sartre’s “Nausea“, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm“ and “1984“ reemerge on the bookshelves . It was such literature that prepared the stage for animosities that we are witnessing now.
But as life for the masses has become shallow, without any purpose or beauty, literarily on the “Eve of Destruction“ as predicted by those paid for “existentialist“ novelists, people will throw away such junk. They soon will also have had enough of brutality advocating cartoons, games, texts, theatre plays, films, even operas. Antonin Artaud and the theatre of the absurd will be forgotten, whereas great writers like Louis Aragon will be rediscovered and cherished again. Primitive rites, intended to shock the audience into “an awareness of life’s cruelty and violence“ will no longer be welcomed on the stage. Dramas like Peter Weiss’s “Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade“ or his equally provocative play “Trotzki in Exile“ will quickly lose attraction. Such negativity provided by wage scribes under the influence of the CCF-handlers and their multiple follow-ups was meant to weaken the spirit of resistance. With the re-awakening of this very spirit authentic literary and philosophical achievements will be rediscovered such as Schiller’s:
– Idea of ‘a beautiful soul’, that humans are capable to develop
– Trust in the possibility ‘to edify the human spirit through the arts’,
– the notion of ‘love in the sense of agape’, that reaches beyond sensual satisfaction,
– the idea of courage voluntarily displayed for the defence of higher values even at the cost of one’s life,
– the insistence on educating humanity in order to create better conditions for breaking the chains of slavery and oppression,
– the conviction that the search for truth is worth the effort. Such constructive Schillerian ideas will no longer be treated as idealistic trash.
Friedrich Schiller, Michael Ballweg and The Summer of Freedom
And indeed, it was in Berlin in July 2020 that Schiller’s Bell rang again for harmony and peace [1a]. And the tune of “Ode to Joy“ was back when John F. Kennedy’s nephew Robert spoke to hundreds of thousands of fearless, friendly and freedom shouting people around the Victory Column. Michael Ballweg, an IT expert, form Suabia like Friedrich Schiller, main organiser of the mass rally quoted Schiller’s famous words:
Das ist nicht des Deutschen Größe
Obzusiegen mit dem Schwert,
In das Geisterreich zu dringen
Männlich mit dem Wahn zu ringen
Das ist seines Eifers wert.
Höhern Sieg hat der errungen,
Der der Wahrheit Blitz geschwungen,
Der die Geister selbst befreit.
Freiheit der Vernunft erfechten
Heißt für alle Völker rechten,
Gilt für alle ew’ge Zeit.
The essence of these verses in English, although not the beauty of the verses is:
“What makes Germany great is not winning the battle of the sword. Whoever penetrates the realm of the spirit and struggles bravely with false conceptions has achieved a superior victory. Whoever grasped the flash of lightening of truth, who ever fought for the freedom of the mind and who defended reason has fought for all humanity and this is an eternal truth.“
Friedrich Schiller’s vision, his love for beauty, cutting through all artificial boundaries has re-emerged. As Suabian Michael Ballweg demonstrated, Schiller’s ideas are stronger than any threadbare fake intelligence. Wolf von Schierbrand, at the beginning of the 20th century, commemorating the centenary of Schiller’s death told his US audience what has made the freedom poet unique in his eyes. He mentions non measurable spiritual qualities like noble pathos, extraordinary wealth of imagery, love of liberty and insisting on human worth, plus contempt for caste or rank distinctions, purity of thought, polish of expression, and appreciation of women. These qualities, says Schierbrand, explain why Schiller then was the most popular poet among German youth and women, much more popular than Goethe or even Heinrich Heine. And with Hegel and Hölderlin, Novalis and Mörike, Uhland and Hermann Hesse, Schiller’s home region contributed more intelligence and beauty than any other German Laender of far bigger size. With that in mind and with a profound knowledge of Schiller’s complete work, the next generation is well prepared to overcome the long term devastating results of destructive ‘intelligence strategies‘ that aimed at wiping out patriotism.
“Thank-you CIA“
However, just as if to remind us, that we must not triumph before the end of the day. Only last summer the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung ironically titled “Thank-you CIA“ and went on:
“With the CCF the US secret service intended to bring the LEFT on the right path“ and ‘And Funfact: Much good came out if it.’ Everything that the CCF undertook was meant to weaken the communist ideology, …ex-communists like Arthur Koestler and Ignazio Silone warned the West against Stalin’s realm of terror“.
George Orwell: Predecessor of the Pseudo “Culture for Freedom”
George Orwell’s dystopia “Animal Farm“ belongs to the realm of the fake freedom culture defenders. Subsidised by British Intelligence it was meant as a political satire on ‘Stalin’s Russia.’ When it was first published in England on August 17th in 1945 it came just in time to help divert world public feelings away from the negative mental effects the dropping of the Atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, steering the public conscience towards the Russians. As an agent for a secret propaganda wing of the UK Foreign Office Orwell provided a list of “unsuitable“ persons and suggested possible writers for the anti-communist propaganda effort. Disinformation warfare was the declared intention. Among the high ranking and most popular individuals qualified there as unworthy for the dirty job was Paul Robeson, great black US-artist, then of enormous popularity around the world, a trained lawyer, an all-American football player and above all a baritone singer and actor whom the intelligence services destroyed in the 50s through MK-ultra techniques and more. Orwell helped destroy Robeson, accusing him as “anti-white” but also campaigning in support of the Welsh coal miners. Target one – no matter how – and get them all. Here is the Empire’s way to Cancel Culture at its worst in a nutshell.
“Worthy intellectuals“ in Orwell’s eyes were creatures like Robert Conquest, Arthur Koestler and pseudo pacifist Bertrand Russel who willingly composed the wanted tune. Orwell’s satire “Animal Farm“ was also directed against Schiller’s vision for a ‘brotherhood of men‘ at the same time a key contribution to the Cold War. This nefarious ideological War was unleashed immediately after FDR’s premature death on April 12th in 1945. The Dulles’ CIA/CCF-combattants in fact continued the NS warfare against Bolshevism under their false freedom flag . Like the NAZIS did before they targeted the USSR. Their intention was identical, to dismantle and destroy it. While the likes of Orwell targeted the Soviet leaders, in reality they projected their own empty souls onto them. A slavish character like the British agent sees in the call for brotherly love nothing but a Red Ruse. Orwell and his MI6, CIA, CCF-collaborators ideologically contributed to the nefarious purpose of the Empire in their endeavour to colonise, enslave and even diminish the peoples of the world.
Whereas not all of the individuals on the CCF or the Ford-Rockefeller-Foundation payroll, or recipients of their scholarship programmes, mostly left-leaning intellectuals like Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Ernst Reuter, Willy Brandt among countless others, may have understood what purpose they served. Some might have had scruples, others consented but none of them did raise questions. And if anyone did step out of line, like Günter Grass “with his last ink”, they were smeared as NAZI followers.
Circumstances will always push weaker human beings into being enmeshed with friendly providers of money and fame. All the more so as truly liberated women and men, able to make their own choice and courageous enough to live what they believed in, have always been targeted by the mighty ones. Schiller’s own fate is telling . His friend and colleague Johann Wolfgang von Goethe rhymes in Faust I : Those who saw the truth and called it out have always been nailed to the cross and burnt:
Wer darf das Kind beim rechten Namen nennen? // Die wenigen, die was davon erkannt, // Die töricht g’nug ihr volles Herz nicht wahrten, // Dem Pöbel ihr Gefühl, ihr Schauen offenbarten, // Hat man von je gekreuzigt und verbrannt.
[Who may call the child by its right name? // The few who recognized it, // Who foolishly did not keep their full heart, // Revealed their feeling, their vision to the mob, // Have always been crucified and burned.]
The mental munition of the Empire has always been slander, lie, distortion of reality, negativity, pessimism. Many of their instrumental voices in the 20th century were Trotskyites. Trotsky himself having been nicknamed “The Feather“ is a telling example.
has recently published an enlightening series of articles on the nefarious undermining influence of such key Trotsky adherents such as James Burnham and their changing colours [6]. Other key Trotskyites like Arthur Koestler and Melvin Jonah Lasky [1] formed the back bone of the CCF. Lasky was a proud US publisher of the “anti-Stalinist Left”. In Germany the “prestigious“ journalist became known for editing the well paying Der Monat – magazine and was a frequent guest with “Der Internationale Frühschoppen“ – a popular Sunday morning TV Show [2].Just as today, Russia, Soviet or not, was the supposedly evil enemy to be brought down to its knees. This goes to show their adversary targeted peace and harmony, barriers to their greed for the Russian riches.
CCF Target No. One: Stockholm Appeal
As Johannes R. Becher rightly saw, from the get go the CCF and their follow up bodies were a direct answer to the enormously successful reach out by the “Stockholm Peace Appeal“ launched in 1950. Frédéric and Irene Joliot-Curie, both French physicists and Nobel laureates were heading the campaign to ban nuclear weapons before the Soviet Union had achieved such devices combat ready. In this context the fraudulent trial and horrific death sentence of the Rosenberg couple over the effort to keep the atomic secret in the hands of the West must be recalled. They shared concerns with their like minded colleagues of “The Appeal“ . With the support of a wide range of prestigious signatories like Anna Seghers, Thomas Mann, Pablo Picasso, Pablo Neruda, Ilia Ehrenburg, Lionel Feuchtwanger, Anglican Bishop Hewlett Johnson, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall and many others the Appeal won hundreds of millions of supporters world wide in no time. But with its success the Red Smear began. On August 10th 1950 the New York Times titled “PEACE PARTISANS LISTED 273,470,566 Sign ‘Stockholm Appeal’.” The East coast “quality“ paper downgraded the survival instinct and the sense of social responsibility of all the involved artists, intellectuals and co-citizens.
Trotskyite Red Smear and Hate Speech
In spite of the blood toll of two major wars, in spite of the brain drain caused by the NAZI regime, the German nation still counted a considerable number of creative minds. So did every nation on this planet. These intellectuals were eager to contribute to the peaceful reconstruction of their country, its transformation into a democratically constituted, free, neutral and unified Germany. Exile had been no fun. Even the most privileged, holders of US citizenship like Thomas Mann did not escape the Witch Hunt of McCarthy. Anna Seghers, Bert Brecht, Helene Weigel, great actor and later director of Brecht’s Schiffsbauer Damm Theater in Berlin (GDR), Ernst Weinert, Johannes R. Becher, Ernst Bloch, author of “Principle Hope“, back from exile, ready to start again from scratch. They were more than happy to express themselves again in their beloved German mother tongue. It was the language they had missed most, the language of Goethe, Martin Luther and of Friedrich Schiller.
Targeting Beauty and The Spirit of Schiller in order to Maintain Hegemony
The German language could express everything, the most profound, the most subtle, the most volatile, the spirit and the soul, it was a language full of meaning, the mirror of the nation
The nation of poets and thinkers was never identical with the Reich. The Hitlerites had not only slaughtered millions, they also did not spare their own people. And the occupying intellectual foot-soldiers and their hired media assistants continue to gradually destroy not only the vocabulary but also the grammar of the German language. But in those days many of Schiller’s beautiful verses were still vivid among the common people, “words with wings“ as a German expression has it.
The anti-colonial New Deal which president Roosevelt had foreseen would have included the cultural field and would certainly have done a lot of good repair work. It would have mended bridges instead of opening an abyss between East and West. But with Roosevelt gone “a great dream was lost“, as Stalin said, hitting the nail.
But for the first post-war moment a seemingly solid, even radiant Eastern bloc still existed, busy to overcome the terrible damages of WWII. Stalin was alive, good patriots were leading the young GDR. With Johannes R. Becher as minister of cultural affairs and Otto Grothewohl as prime minister the classical heritage was cherished at least in the Eastern part of Germany. However, Stalin prize laureate Brecht and the poet Johannes R. Becher would soon die another early death and honourable anti-fascist Walter Ulbricht would be ousted by a coup.
Erstwhile the re-patriates are full of energy and good will. In 1955 Nobel prize laureate Thomas Mann was invited to Weimar to commemorate Schiller’s passing away 150 years ago. The city of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Humboldt, Wieland, the city were the first German democratic constitution was drafted in 1919 was well chosen for the event. But West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer under the thumb of his Trans-Atlantic friends would find excuses.
Thomas Mann, back in Europe, sought to bridge the abyss when declaring his “Love for Schiller“ in Stuttgart first , the poet’s home province Suabia before he went on to speak in Weimar (GDR). Thomas Mann’s last contribution to save German culture. But as Schiller explained once with reference to the French Revolution:
Recent history had shown with painful clarity that if the moral character of the people is not developed, even the most idealistic revolution will fail. A vicious cycle suggests that without the state there can be no morality and without morality there can be no state. Despite the Enlightenment’s lofty goals.
– Schiller (NA XX, 320–21/E 97)
But it is good to know that saviours of culture are everywhere. We must not forget, that not only Schiller’s way of thinking was shaped by the ideas of the American Revolution, Schiller’s influence radiated back to the American continent. US professor Lydia L. Moland from Stanford university rightly points out Schiller’s thought has steadily influenced some of philosophy’s most prominent debates. Friedrich Hegel and Wilhelm von Humboldt were early promoters of Schiller’s aesthetic and political theories, Marx and Engels were praising his revolutionary spirit and diagnosis of the modern age. And Lydia Moland goes on to explain: Because we recognise in the beautiful soul an image of human perfection, such harmony elicits our approval and love and it continues to have this effect on whoever discovers his writing.
Thomas Mann in Weimar, the humble home of the German muse
This must have happened with Thomas Mann shortly before his death. While during most of his life he had preferred Goethe, in Weimar in 1955 he honoured his late colleague Schiller in a most remarkable way. His speech underlined not only Schiller’s importance but was the first one to finger point to his premature and most likely unnatural death. Thomas Mann begins his speech with describing the mysterious circumstances of Schiller’s most unconventional funeral, at midnight, without family or friends or public admirers. He points out to the various allusions in Goethe’s Faust II. His speech would belatedly open the path to more in depth research into the peculiar circumstances of Schiller’s unduly passing away.
Today we know, that no excuse can explain the fact that the poet’s corpse was cut up without delay by a doctor, who did not have Schiller’s trust during the poet’s life time. With the unexplained fact of his wife and his four small children absent at the time of his passing away, it is unknown who gave the order and the permission for the autopsy. None of his dear ones participated in the hastily arranged funeral. The then already internationally treasured author’s body was literally thrown into a mass grave. Schiller, who had always acted in a most responsible manner had left no last will, but a lot of unfinished projects. In many respects he was at the height of his career. With his bones vanished, the truth about the death of the great poet may be “lost on the bottom of a bottomless well”. (Tennessee Williams) But humanity has a right to raise questions as to who might have had an interest in the early passing away of a genius like Schiller.
People in their struggle for survival, for freedom and dignity, the salt of the earth must acquire full knowledge about the dirty tricks of the evil doers because the same tricks are played against their leaders time and again. It is utterly important that people learn how to protect them. The search for truth, the love for beauty and expressive language is a most precious precondition for liberation which always begins with conquering hearts and minds. Rediscovering some of Schiller’s poetry might be a good start to save his legacy for future generations. Learning the beauty of their verses can undo the premature death of humanity’s greatest poets Schiller, Garcia Lorca or Pablo Neruda.
Recalling the death of an antique poet also reminds us :“Only through the morning-gate of the Beautiful do you make your way into the land of cognition” Schiller „The Artists“, 1789.
Of Ibycus! — That name so blest
With new-born sorrow fills each breast.
As waves on waves in ocean rise,
From mouth to mouth it swiftly flies !
Of Ibycus, whom we lament ?
Who fell beneath the murderer’s hand ?
What mean those words that from him went ?
[Ibycus was an Ancient Greek lyric poet, a citizen of Rhegium in Magna Graecia, probably active at Samos during the reign of the tyrant Polycrates and numbered by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria in the canonical list of nine lyric poets.]
Irene Eckert is the Editor-in-Chief of Arbeitskreis for Peace Policy and Nuclear Free Europe and teacher of German literature and history. She recently delivered a lecture on this topic which can be viewed here:
Goethe calls out the Poet’s murderers in Faust II in the following anagram
Ängstlich Flügelflatterschlagen!
Welch ein Ächzen, welch Gestöhn
Dringt herauf zu unsern Höhn!
Alle sind sie schon ertötet,
See von ihrem Blut geröthet.
Mißgestaltete Begierde
Raubt des Reihers edle Zierde.
Weht sie doch schon auf dem Helme
Dieser Fettbauch-Krummbein-Schelme.
Ihr Genossen unsres Heeres,
Reihenwanderer des Meeres,
Euch berufen wir zur Rache
In so nahverwandter Sache.
Keiner spare Kraft und Blut,
Ewige Feindschaft dieser Brut!
BIO: Irene Eckert is a retired college teacher of English, German language and literature, history and political science. She is a long term peace worker and member of WILPF (Women’s International League For Peace Freedom) and has lectured internationally. Irene also edits the German anti-war magazine Arbeitskreis für Friedenspolitik.
Footnotes:
[1] Lors de la conférence de Berlin, Nicolas Nabokov proclame :« Avec ce Congrès nous devons construire une organisation de guerre[3]. »Le lieu du Congrès n’est pas choisi au hasard, puisque Berlin sort tout juste d’un blocus imposé par l’Union soviétique. Parmi les personnalités présentes au Titania Palace on dénombre tous types d’intellectuels anti-staliniens : des conservateurs et, en plus grand nombre, des membres de la gauche non communiste : Franz Borkenau, Karl Jaspers, John Dewey, Ignazio Silone, James Burnham, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Arthur Schlesinger, Bertrand Russell, Ernst Reuter, Raymond Aron, Benedetto Croce, Jacques Maritain, Arthur Koestler, James T. Farrell, Richard Löwenthal, Robert Montgomery, Tennessee Williams et Sidney Hook. Ernst Reuter, maire de Berlin-Ouest de 1948 à 1953, préside le comité d’organisation, tandis que Melvin J. Lasky, citoyen américain installé en Allemagne, assure la fonction de secrétaire général[4]. Source: https://thereaderwiki.com/fr/Congrès_pour_la_liberté_de_la_culture
[1a] Since 1950, the bell has been located in the Rathaus Schöneberg, the former city hall of West Berlin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Bell
[2] The composer Nicolas Nabokov, an agent of the American Military Government in Germany from 1945 to 1947 soon replaced hysteric Koestler as general secretary of the Congress for Cultural Freedom 1951 -1967 (Lors de la conférence de Berlin 1950, Nicolas Nabokov proclame : « Avec ce Congrès nous devons construire une organisation de guerre[3]. Source: https://thereaderwiki.com/fr/Congrès_pour_la_liberté_de_la_culture)
[3] The Clash of the Two Americas, Open vs Closed Systems Collide by Matthew Ehret with contributions by Cynthia Chung, Canada 2021 (see Chapter 28 “Why must aesthetics govern a society worthy of political freedom? Ask the CIA p. 297 f. and Schiller as antidote to the CCF p.301)
[4] Maria Stuart/Talbot “Nicht Stimmenmehrheit ist des Rechtes Probe“ act one, scene 3)
[5] Cynthia Chung’s Ghost Seer paper can be found at https://risingtidefoundation.net/2021/08/10/a-study-of-schillers-ghost-seer-part-i/and here’s her class:
[6] Cynthia Chung’s series on James Burnham can be found at https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/09/17/the-great-reset-how-managerial-revolution-was-plotted-80-years-ago-by-cia-neocon/
Some More Notes:
https://thereaderwiki.com/en/Congress_for_Cultural_Freedom
https://www.bueso.de/kongress-fuer-kulturelle-freiheit (April2004)
https://www.schiller-institut.de/seiten/friedrichschiller/schill.htm (2003)
https://www.dw.com/en/friedrich-schillers-works-have-withstood-the-trials-of-revolution/a-4784153 (10. 11.2009)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schiller/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schiller/Firstpublished Fri Apr 21, 2017; substantive revision Mon Apr 26, 2021
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schiller/
Eine neue Frau an der Spitze: Vera Hildenbrandt wird Mitte Dez. 2021 Leiterin des Schiller-Nationalmuseums und des Literaturmuseums der Moderne in Marbach.https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/vera-hildenbrandt-wird-chefin-in-marbach-a-3c7def23-49b5-4a84-801c-60aadafc669f
Sandra Richter bleibt Direktorin des ganzen Literaturarchivs https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Richter, Present Director of the Literary Archive in Marbach has no specific qualifications about Schiller, nothing publicised on behalf of his works
(see Wolf Von Schierbrand „The Centenary of Schiller’s Death“ The North American ReviewVol. 180, No. 581 (Apr., 1905), pp. 566-575 (10 pages https://www.jstor.org/stable/25105386?seq=6#metadata_info_tab_contents)
The Nazis maltreated the German language, too . See Victor Klemperer’s study LTI / Lingua Tertii Imperii, The Language of the Third Reich https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=7844 .
Urs Bigler, Der Fall Schiller – Anklage Mord/ „Ehre ist Meer von Blut“, Neunkirchen 2015
ISBN: 978-3-906240-23-7
Wikipedia: Vorstand des Vereins Otto Günter im Mai 1920 um neue Mitglieder mit den Worten: „Der wertvollste Besitz des deutschen Volkes und der einzige, den ihm niemand rauben kann, sind seine geistigen Güter. Zu ihnen hinzuführen hat sich der Schwäbische Schillerverein, der im Mai 1920 auf 25 Jahre seines Bestehens zurückblicken kann, zur Aufgabe gesetzt. Er sucht diese zu erfüllen durch seine Veröffentlichungen und durch die ständige Ausstellung im Schillermuseum in Marbach, in dem unter dem größten unter ihnen auch die andern Dichter aus Schillers Heimat vereinigt sind und das eine Volksbildungsstätte im besten Sinne des Wortes genannt werden darf. – Die Not unseres Volkes gibt den Bestrebungen des Schwäbischen Schillervereins erhöhte Bedeutung. Aus den reichen Schätzen seines Schrifttums kann das deutsche Volk innere Kraft gewinnen und damit die Zuversicht, daß es sich aus seiner Erniedrigung wieder erheben werde.“ Am 13. Mai 1922 wurde die Umbenennung des Museums in Schiller-Nationalmuseum beschlossen: „Die Pflege des Schillerschen Geistes […] und […] Erhaltung und Förderung der […] Erinnerungsstätte (sind) eine gemeindeutsche, nationale Sache.“ Auch das Weimarer Goethe-Museum wurde 1927 in Goethe-Nationalmuseum umbenannt. 2009 von Pres. Köhler wiedereröffnet im Mittelpunkt der neuen Dauerausstellung stehen Leben und Werk Schillers sowie die deutsche Literatur des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Wegen Sanierungsarbeiten gab es bis zum Schillerjahr 2009 keine festen Ausstellungen und somit auch keine Schiller-Ausstellungen.
Museum und Archiv verfolgen gemeinsam das Ziel, Texte, Dokumente und Lebenszeugnisse der neueren deutschen Literatur zu sammeln, zu ordnen und für die Forschung bereitzustellen
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Literaturarchiv_Marbach
Addendum: In times of war and crisis, the government and citizens almost always join forces. In the ongoing "war against corona" and its ever-new "dangerous mutants", things are now similar to Orwell's "1984", where people are constantly being mobilized and hounded into fictitious wars against new enemies that no one ever gets to see. The narrative (concocted by US secret services and think tanks) of an invisible, corrosive enemy that can strike at any time and anywhere and that can lurk in any of us, in your neighbor, your work colleague, even in your dearest relatives and even more so in yourself, is even more sophisticated, indeed of an almost sadistic genius (in the sense of psychological warfare). Michael Schneider
Bertrand Russel: according to wikipedia, shortly after the end of the war he even spoke out in favor of a preventive war against the Soviet Union, which did not yet have nuclear weapons
Swiss dramatist and Rockefeller scholar Max Frisch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Frisch wrote 1970 an anti-Tell https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Tell_für_die_Schule
The 5 verses under the line "Mordgeschrei und Sterbeklagen" can be completely broken down into charades. No letter remains, and each line contains a reference to Schiller's murder. https://www.adelinde.net/wortkunstler-goethe-macht-eine-zeugenaussage-im-mordfall-schiller/ (30. 01. 2011)
“They have filthied up the FREE world and placed a chill over what used to be an exuberant culture. Everything they touch, dries up and blows away as dust on the winds of hell they make. All through history, they leave a trail of devastation in what was once prosperous and full of hope.” (comment on Canada’s Premier withdrawing Emergency Act on RT 25.02. 22
“I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
“If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us—the dignity of man.”
Nabokov had also worked for the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey in Germany in 1945 on the suggestion of British dramatist W. H. Auden another CCF collaborator. After the war Nabokov stayed on to work as a civilian cultural advisor in occupied Germany.
https://newcriterion.com/issues/1990/1/what-was-the-congress-for-cultural-freedom
The Criterion Vol. 40, No. 5 / January 2022
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/12/pint-d09.html
1959 George F. Kennan to Nicolas Nabokov, general secretary of the Congress for Cultural Freedom 1951 -1967
NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND SCHILLER “Schiller’s humanitarianism and cosmopolitism“
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0483.1983.tb00280.x„
Austrian master's thesis on Arthur Koestler: https://core.ac.uk/reader/11584830
“Arthur Koestlers Verhältnis zum Kommunismus und seine Rolle im Kongress für kulturelle Freiheit“ Verfasser Stefan Flamisch
Drosten was not the inventor of the PCR. That was Kerry Mullis.