Open letter to Prof. Donald Muldrow Griffith, Producer and director of the Black International Cinema Berlin, Fountainhead Tanz Theatre
Anna Ngo Mang Epesse and Felix Kama
Dear Donald
Some months before Some months ago,
I had asked you whether you were willing to join me in a kind of conversation
about my family research, based on letters, memories of my childhood, and the
awkward melange of philosophy and violent self-destruction inherited as German
Post-NS-Legacy.
Dear Anna
A few months before A few months from now
I would have asked you if you were interested in accompanying me in some kind of
conversation around my family search, based on some memories of my childhood,
because dear Anna, there was a time when we discussed your childhood, your
mother leaving the depths of Cameroon for Paris and this hard-as-iron spirit,
walking on high heels towards a certain future and -
this time, bypassing the colonist, neo-colonialist past, drawing on European
philosophy and terribly weighed down by post-Nazi self-destruction, but in my
ears a few words still ringing - Nataly - who? - pretending to forget the weight of
dialogue, of self-negation necessary to balance the presence of others and the
weight of painful labour on which we have no longer worked together.
But, dear Donald, your answer pointed out that, for any this kind of undertaking
and with open hands (you would)
Your needing - a book, flm, or any other oeuvre which might help you in
understanding what we could talk about frst, is and was what seems to be the most
natural thing to ask for. But, you see, the reply you requested – the thing, I am
suppose to give, the material to deliver - is just this BOOK describing a very
diffcult beginning of a DIALOGUE: this notyet book this preliminary 'esquisses'
which might help us approach the approximative approach to the philosophical
truth on some inner NS circles or the slightest evidence of some unknown
acquaintances, of hidden Jewish pedagogues who had survived the Final Solution
(and those who did not) or some vague fumistigation, dreams about lost plans to
make deportations stop - at least temporarily - or whatever kind of possible
betrayal of The NS Final solution we could imagine in the hope to begin a TALK, a
DIALOGUE with somebody representing liberation and the military arms of
liberation
What kind of talk or conversation could I timidly propose to the director of a
festival whose last edition, the 40th in 2025, proudly called for „PEACE! NOW!
PLEASE! And whose 30th edition in 2015 lies on my table with the bold
exclamation „30 Times after Time“ -
Dear Donald, dear Anna, you both had met in 2007, if I am not mistaken, when you,
Anna and I, we presented our collaboration on Rudolf Douala Manga Bell in Berlin
in a small chapel near the cemetery in Berlin Friedrichshain and while we had
undertaken to keep faith and get some support from the Black International
Cinema - meanwhile you, Donald, listening carefully, showed us nevertheless a
raised eyebrow when we spoke of the exploit by the Cameroon people during the
First World War and my assumption that the Cameroon people got rid of the frst
brutal colonial rule by themselves despite the horrible broken fate of their hero
RDMB
Some months before their liberation was overturned by the Versailles Peace
Conference and Cameroon was put under French rule..
When „time“ means, in my research, an apocalyptic destruction of the core
population of mankind and - on the other side, the philosophical misunderstanding
of language and time, when expression and symbols are stretched beyond their socalled
epochs, when mental conceptions frame what you had questioned as
„Justifable Disaffection or Misunderstanding?“ by quoting the African proverb
„Only when lions have historians will hunters cease being heroes“.
Heroes, and especially African Heroes
Oh, I do see, your hands now raising in an awkward silent protest...and I ask you
still to keep a bit longer to yourself what you wanted to object -
Heroes in dark times - what the English literature would name „Heart of darkness“
which has to fnd an echo in one of the funnier episodes (there were not many of
them) my grandfather loved to play with: being an hero (Kant) or being an
forgotten hero (Hermann Cohen or Moritz Lowi or Richard Honigswald) or being
an unft hero (his uncle Siegfried).
Talking about time and heroes with a broken back, you may probably smile at my
earnest expression; this kind of German joke, we three of us, oh yes Anna , please,
would deal with very carefully even if I would never dare to compete with you,
Anna. Surely not.
In your programme of the 30th edition of The Black International Cinema
Festival Berlin, the column discussing the societal role of „Migrants or
Expatriates“ you presented (and I suppose, you would do today the same) two pictures of Liberators: one, a „Black soldier with a captured German Soldier“ and the
other „From the Buchenwald Camp 1945“, depicting US Soldiers in front of a bundle
of dead inmates laying on the ground. The text mentions „the exploit of the 761st
Black Panthers, the frst American Africans to be trained to fght on armour “.
You, Anna, undeterred, had continued your historical lesson you gave me by
speaking about Ruben Um Nyobe, his dreams, his speech before the UN and his
assassination and the beton plate his dead body was covered with - Achille
Mbembe was talking about Liberation - Leadership - which seemed to me a
consequent and logical idea and I can easily understand that you,the authentic
source of true authority which is rapidly transformed, under my hands, into a
current of German philosophy, torn between Heideggerian eschatological liberation
and the apocalyptic destruction of the heart of humanity - the other of thought -
which is the favorite feld of my research, of my family and in our relations between
you and me and on the other by a relationship between language, language and
time crab, turtle or African heroes - sometimes, you have replied- hesitantly
„Yeeeeeeeees“ or „of course, Félix Eboué“
- with a distant anchor point of a historical connection, that my wacky works on
Malaria, the fever of evil, „Paludisme, Berlin“ and the expropriation of cities,
houses, cultures and myths have left them in suspense -
Perhaps, you allow - TIME does not look like being the easiest way to begin with
THE National-Socialism’s beginning and ending, so I am still wondering how to
start a discussion without having to develop a distinctive and clear vision of the
entire history and the fnal ending – the fnal judgement. By blocking any kind of
investigation with some absolute metaphysics by which I mean / intend/ some
absolute Ideas and fnal Expectations concerning the LAST words coming out from
the Third Reich:
„Yet say this to the Possum: a bang, not a whimper, with a bang not with a whimper to
build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of the stars“ Ezra Pound refutating
TS Eliot’s „Last Land “.
So I thought I could introduce you in my „developing story“ with the unft hero
Siegfried Otto Fath, becoming an employee of the US forces.
S.O. Fath biographical sheet shows a very tumultuous picture, making for a
questioning of this double part of a Liberation which NOW must be considered on
an ethical level, with something of a change of ethos, moral, cultural concepts or...
philosophical etc
Siegfried Otto Fath certainly does not pose an alternative of research - today- and
was certainly in no way comparable to Felix Eboué - and back then, I do not think
that he was remotely, vaguely or very precisely - informed of his existence,
although Fath worked for a German organisation that served - cultural -
information - of the outpost - in preference to insurgents of all colours.
It seems daring to talk about it from a German bookseller, who hardly distinguishes
himself from history - anywhere and from anything - and especially not from
literary knowledge. Even his copy of Rimbaud or Verlaine, the autumn leaves were
annotated with scribbles of the author's biographical dates, indicating that Fath did
not know who exactly or what he was reading; this kind of thing is happening - and
the fact that I, NR, need him, SO. Fath, to get into a discussion about African
literature - hurts me.
SO Fath , having left Germany in 1933 for Athens, came back to Munich in 1938, left
again in 1939 and was sent to Paris - conquering Hachette, as they had imagined, I
think, in autumn 1940. If he had had the chance to read books by Ezra Pound, I will
never know, despite the fact that Ezra Pound was one of the last subjects I
discussed with my grandfather Wolfgang Ritzel, SO Fath's nephew and
„same-kind“.
Selling books, making books, reading those written in otherlanguages , Black
Orpheus - and talking about culture in a philosophical concept - have made others
too, other members of my family and perhaps their relationship to language, to the
languages of others, to the offcial rhetoric and the one that chases a double
discourse, a discourse linked to Libération and perhaps not to exile... Who would
want to exile himself from his own thought? Is not thought the last entrenchment of
liberty - if it were only to recount the insignifcant links between the Ritzel and Fath
families and philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Cohen or Buber - which
would allow us to analyse more deeply their criticism and reticence in relation to
Heidegger -to the anthropological question of Kantian inspriration, as François
Rastier calls it, himself today in the pillory of all those who play into the hands of
Trump and refacsization - and I believe strongly my family ploughed into the dark
center of the debate - but the abyssal hatred - des coupures epistemologiques as
Althusser would have called it - will close the debate ...the insignifcance of my
remarks be allowed to me.
Hachette – the global distributor at that time, L'EPOQUE, who is not interested in
my story at all. That's fne for me, because like that I can ignore them; the question
of whether SO Fath had tried to gain infuence in the mighty international Hachette
seems insignifcant. Hachette knew how to get rid of this question... by SO Fath or
by me, both far too ridiculous.
In the beginning I thought to start with Odysseus Elytis and the great Greek poets
like Georgios Seferis - or, at least, Henry Miller, friend of the former Greek
ambassador - in the Eleftheroudakis bookshop where Fath worked, Boche, you
know, in the Boche section.
Starting with the old Greek bookstore ELEFTHEROUDAKIS
I thought it would have been a very exciting starting point...in the place of all those
burning stoking suffocatingly gleaming books in German townsbut
my contacts in Paris, today, do not allow this, for fear of importing Nazi
cognitive structures into French thought - which had forced me to go back and
search the political archives of the Auswärtige Amt in Berlin to fnd a letter from SO
Fath asking to become private secretary to Graevenitz, the German ambassador in
Athens by the end of 1943. Not exactly the same moment.
(Or rather, and more precisely, it is Graevenitz who asked for permission to give a
diplomatic status to poor SO Fath, who would receive a very surprising
remuneration plus his newly acquired diplomatic status).
Which raises the question: in what kind of position was he before? And before
when exactly?
What makes the situation and my storytelling even worse, because by this move
(and please don’t think of a chequers game) Siegfried Otto Fath had found the fnal
apotheosis of a kind of turning-around after having obtained a more „private“
position in the German occupational forces in January 1944 as private secretary to
the Sonderbotschafter von Graevenitz and - after a second move - by becoming
THE German Sonderbeauftragter für Theater, Musik und Literatur in Athenes.
(which explains (please imagine my strong German accent) his beginning dislike or
openly expressed contempt for German opera-singers perhaps charmed by the
talents of one young Grec woman.. called Callas and here we could listen to some
notes of Fidelio - of a simple and illustrative note because by this move was SO Fath
obliged to clarify his situation, his remaining in Greece (and his Unabkommlichkeit
– the so called U.K-Stellung – which means his NOT becoming a soldier.
Then fnally, once all was lost in October 1944 - Oh Augustin, alles ist hin - after The
German Defeat in Greece, Fath returned to Vienna. In fact, he would fnally have to
fght and was captured rapidly in spring 1945 by Russian forces -
But as my assumption goes – the fact of fghting for the German Wehrmacht does
not seem to have been a very conclusive affair, but - But – PLEASE – not now ! -
means that some months before or some months ago
Siegfried Fath might have been an interesting character from all perspectives which
represents at least in one respect one certain „detail“ (luckily for me) and one of
those clarifying circonstances under which SO Fath had to declare himself before
the Party commitee or NSDAP Mitgliedsamt des Braunen Hauses deciding over his
stay and venues even in Greece, obliging him to bring to their attention that he has
never been a member of the NSDAP but that, in fact, he had been from 1939 until
1943 worked as simple and modest scientifc assistent (wissenschaftlicher
Hilfsarbeiter ) for the AA -German Foreign offce.
For the moment it is not important to know if this is true. The Institut für
Zeitgeschichte seems to suspect him of being a kind of member of the SS – but
unable to produce more detailed information about it. I haven’t found – even with
the assistance of some students (and with a historian paid by my father) any further
evidence about his real whereabouts – but I do believe one couldn’t lie about his
NSDAP membership in front of the party’s committee.
This is the moment, so to speak,, where I would like to start with a temporary
renunciation of this kind of certainty... of having got an absolute idea of history.
Perhaps due to the fact that I must start NOW by translating his sister Hildegard
Fath’s notes about her interrogation sessions with her US chief of stuff (sic).
Hildegard Fath has not been without work after she had been released of the KL
Dachau in 1941, where she had been „incarcerated“ after her boss, Rudolf Hess, had
fown to England. She had found - months later then - a job in a laboratory and
obviously in a hospital. I do possess a machine-typed copy of Hildegard Fath
„Meine Lebens-und Wohnverhaltnisse Herbst 1944 bis Herbst 1945 einschliesslich
Mutters Hohenrieder Zeit (zum besseren Verstandnis der Familienbriefe von 1944 –
1945)“ by Hildegard Fath, starting with the death of her mother Mathilde Fath.
26.6.1945 „7h30 Beerdigung (Mathilde Fath) Dorffriedhof Bernried. Die Leichenfrau
sagte: „ I habs no a paar Protestanten gsagt, daß’s a amal a protestantische
Beerdigung mitkriegen.“So kamen ...-sonst war ich allein. Sehr bald gestartet mit
Mobeltransport in die Klinik, Mutters Sachen sind nicht dabei.- Sehr müde und
abgespannt.“
27.6. „Schwab.Krankenhaus in Aufregung, weil wahrscheinlich alles entlassen soll.
Nachdem im Mai alle deutschen Patienten aus dem Schwabinger Krankenhaus
herausmußten (außer Kinderabteilung) um Platz für aufzupäppelnde Kzler zu
machen (wobei dann die barmherzigen Schwestern, keine „Nazi-Meinung“
verdächtig, sich bei uns im Labor ausließen über die Ferkeleien der neuen
Patienten), fogen nun die Kzler ebenso schnell wieder heraus, weil das
Schwabinger Krankenhaus zum amerikanischen Krankenhaus wurde, 89th General
Hospital.
30.6.“ Fleckfeber-Impfung.“ 2.7. „Brotzulage widerrufen 3./. „Fragebogen zum
Ausfüllen.“ Es war uns überlassen, ob wir unter den Amerikanern bleiben wollten.
Da ich fest damit rechnete, früher oder später doch interniert zu werden, blieb ich,
um sie mir anzuschauen.
5.7. „Angestanden für die für die Polizeiregistrierung. 6.7. Bleiben vielleicht. Viele
amerikanische Kommissionen. Fragebogen abgeliefert.
10.7. Vom Colonel nach Vorbildung und Facherfahrung gefragt. Wirrwarr überall.
14.7. Col.Lev gibt uns die Einteilung: Serologie 1st Lieutnant Tucker Eberle, Fath,
Moore.
20.7. „Die ersten Kahn gemacht „( bei uns nicht gebräuchliche Lues-Reaktion)
2.8. Zur Militärregierung gefahren mit Capt. Branca. Das kam auf die korrekte
Ausfüllung meines Fragebogens!. Es wurde mir dort Fragen vorgelegt wie z.B:
„Wenn Sie von einem versteckten SS-Mann wüssten, würden Sie ihn uns dann
melden?“ Es war ja nicht schwer, hier „nein“ zu sagen. Oder: „ Wenn sich eine neue
Ortsgruppe der NSDAP bilden würde, was würden Sie tun?“ Ich sagte etwa, ich
würde ihnen sagen, dass das jetzt absolut sinnlos sei usw.
3.8. Lev erklärte, dass er mich behalten werde: „We prefer an honest enemy to false
friend“. Auf dieser Basis kann ich hier mitarbeiten, ohne mir was zu vergeben. 1.9.
Lev mit „Gettysburgh Address“ (Lincoln??) will mich zur Schnecke machen, weil
sie damals schon über alle Rasseschranken erhaben waren. Ich hab mir von einem
Theologieprofessor Heckel alle einschlägigen Untaten aus dem Alten Testament
sagen lassen; er gab mir aber noch eine amerikanische Arbeit aus der Mitte der
dreißiger Jahre über die dortigen (von Hand durchgestrichen und ergänzt durch:
heutigen) Rassen-Gegensätze; die sog. Jim Crow Laws, nach denen Wohnblocke, in
denen Neger einzigen, nicht mehr für Weiße bewohnbar waren usw. Als ich damit
versuchte Lev zu kontern ( Lev war Jude), sagte er, das sei nur bei einigen ganz
rückständigen Staaten! – aber er ließ mich dann in Ruhe, bis ich ohnehin abgeholt
wurde in die Internierung.“
Hildegard Fath's diary 1945:
5.7. "Queued for the police registration.
6.7. Maybe stay. Many American commissions. Questionnaire delivered.
10.7. Asked by the Colonel about previous education and professional experience.
Confusion everywhere.
14.7. Col.Lev gives us the classifcation: Serology 1st Lieutenant Tucker Eberle, Fath,
Moore.
20.7. "The frst barges made" (Lues reaction not common in our country)
2.8. Went to the military government with Capt. Branca. That came down to the
correct completion of my questionnaire!. I was asked questions such as: "If you
knew about a hidden SS man, would you report him to us?" It wasn't diffcult to say
"no" here. Or: "If a new local group of the NSDAP was to be formed, what would
you do?" I said, for example, that I would tell them that it was absolutely pointless
now, etc.
3.8. Lev declared that he would keep me: "We prefer an honest enemy to a false
friend". On this basis, I can work here without forgiving myself.
1.9. Lev, with the "Gettysburgh Address" (Lincoln??) wants to come heavily after
me because they were already above all racial barriers back then. I had a theology
professor Heckel tell me all the relevant misdeeds from the Old Testament; he also
gave me an American work from the mid-thirties on the racial antagonisms there
(crossed out by hand and supplemented by: today); the so-called Jim Crow Laws,
according to which apartment blocks in which Negroes were the only ones were no
longer habitable for whites, etc. When I tried to counter Lev (Lev was Jewish), he
said that this was only with a few very backward states! – but he then left me alone
until I was picked up for internment anyway."
Her situation compared to that of her brother - given her situation as former
secretary of Rudolf and Ilse Hess and her staying in or near Ilse Hessen's household
after R.Hess' fight to Scotland, captivity andlifelong imprisonment after the
Nuremberg trial - might look like a bold and very arrogant introduction to
somebody of the American Forces in Baden, let’s say those in Karlsruhe, confronted
with a person named SO Fath, in the end of October 1946, ten days or less than fve
days after besaid person had escaped Sibiria, Russian custody as a P.O.W . SO Fath,
however, says my source of ..................– I went to archives in... to „fx“ him... to
identify him ... and there I found the formula and the self-description by which he
had declared himself in front of US investigators, I suppose: US-American Forces,
just before they accepted to take him in their ranks...
How had SOFath managed to switch his status of Russian P.O.W.to being a
sergeant of US Forces...I do not yet know...had he made contact some months
before.. .. his capture in February or March 1945, or some months since his last trip
to ....? So, when and where had the enrollment taken place and when did a certain
promise occur?
This, again, is the moment, so to speak, where I would like to start with a
temporary renonciation of a kind of certainty. By which I understand a certainty of
having got an absolute idea of history.
BUT- by saying, PLEASE ! Keep in mind that I never intended to deny the
accusations of crimes against humanity brought up against the NS. These are
beyond doubt. Nobody in my family, as far as I remember never ever tried to deny
the crimes of the NS State and of the genocide. They told me very early in my
childhood what „they“ had done.
In school, I did voluntary work and got some family mentions for that. My
grandfather offered me „uncle Siegfried's“ writing machine, very proud.
And - on the other hand (using a phrase coined by Jacques Derrida) I witnessed a
kind of public confession by my grandfather who was professor at that time - and
he confessed of his participation in a mass murder - crime.
A true confession, starting with ( I did to him) ...but every time I tried to put it into
words, it was too boring for my Germans readers. Perhaps German confessions are
- boring, unessential. Not the real stuff. So, I do remember clearly the unease of the
other listeners in the public - and I understood, it wasn't the frst time my
grandfather had „confessed“.
Confession - Knowledge are the keywords: Being informed about what „had
happened“ was a key process in my childhood.
It does not mean they spoke about everything.
Once, somebody brought up a kind of Weizsäcker complex ( I have forgotten who
coined the phrase ), concerning Richard von Weizsäcker, the later RFA président
and during the Nuremberg trials defendant of his father Ernst von Weizsäcker.
Richard von Weizsäcker's defense line started with admitting the NS crimes - but
not any personal involvement. Admitting the general „catastrophe “ is, however,
only the first step. The problem starts when it comes to the question: what did they
do with this knowledge? That's MY question and the frame of my work.
What did Ernst von Weizsäcker do - as undersecretary of Foreign Affairs?
Von Weizsäcker, by the way, is a kind of cousin to von Graevenitz. But this without
any signifcance, mere gossip talk.
The Wilhelmstrassenprozess.
Or my research is on the Dr.Mertens process. No picture here; why should I have
one?
Perhaps I should return to the translation of Hildegard Fath’s notes about her
interrogation sessions. Hildegard Fath, during the discussion with her interrogation
CIA offcer (at least she calls them so), might have had to explain herself because,
you see - this was 80 years ago, the starting point of historical examination. May I
quote your Liberator’s standpoint from 2015 again?
Aborder avec mes mots niaises le cadavre de l'intelligence camerounaise affranchir
les épineuses questions de La LIBÉRATION dans le pays de l'histoire interdite avec
votre aide qui m'a été si précieuse pour retrouver des lignes d'un horizon plus
sain... une complémentarité de mon passé allemand malade bien que consciente de
la complexité des souffrances permettant de voir 1945
non pas comme une date limite. epochale sous couverture .....
m'a permis de commencer ce projet (que j'appelle BUNKERNACHT ) en
complétant ce que je trouve - sur les penseurs allemands ou juifs avec ce qui en
manque par des textes des penseurs africains ou arabes ou indiens qui se pointent à
l'extérieur… les horizons sont nombreux qui font naître le monde.
Bref: la littérature compromettant en parlant de „mon oncle“ SO Fath qui savait, au
moins, epeler Verlaine mais était supposé de diriger Hachette, ( je suppose) et je
suppose aussi, que c'est lui qu'il devrait le diriger parce qu'il arriva à Paris le
premier et en tête d'une liste du „personnel“ - puis, une fois son ineffcacité averée
en mai 1941, continua d“avoir travaillé“ (toujours ma suggestion) pour le trust
Hibbelen, car Hibbelen avait compris ce qu'on lui avait demandé, pendant que
SOFath retourna vers Athenes où il avait vecu depuis 1933...Ce qui, bien sûr, ne
faisait pas un exilé de lui ni une sorte d'expatrié (parmi les ex) - quand il s'agit des
Boches, on n'arrive pas à émigrer, même pas si on voulait aller toucher la fn du
continent, courir jusqu'à Lisboa, on n'y arrivera point.
Aborder la frontiere - culturelle, idéologique, nationale, géographique - la frontiere
qui sépare la pensée de l'action c'est diffcile depuis que j’ai quitté la France , la
Haine a repris.
Car le probleme, c'est que vous vous connaissez mieux que moi ce qu'ON AVAIT
FAIT avec le savoir sur les exterminations, ceux dont on a parlé, dont a rêvé, ceux
qu'on a planifé et ceux qu'ont a mis en place, n'est pas:
Mon savoir est celui, pour emprunter de nouveau une désignation de Mbembe.
Une sorte de dalle sur un génocide.
Mais ce qui pose déjà probléme. „Un génocide caché“ n'est peut pas être à l'origine
de mes recherches. Dans un monde aussi clair et éclairé, c'est diffcile de parler de
„Dalle“. Ici à ce moment-là̀ - avec ce savoir si certain et sûr de lui - j'aimerais
suspendre pour quelques minutes - parce que j'ai des doutes sur les conséquences
logiques,éthiques, philosophiques qui sont à tirer de cette certitude.
Non, parce que je voudrais nier l'Holocauste ou le génocide. Les déportations de
masse ni l'exploitation. Je me répete. Mais c'est diffcile d'aller au-delà vers un
moment de non-certitude, un moment juste avant qu'eux ils ont dû savoir. Une
image comme celle-là - un journal nommé „Moscow News“ qui a été vendu par
Hachette à Istanbul et qui a dû causer probleme à Athenes comme à Paris.
le texte concernant le Militärbefehlshaber a été effacée - la haine sure d'elle sait ou
placer le silence pour faire apparaître l'absurdité verbale des boches.
Mon texte à moi depuis je suis de retour en Allemagne n'existe plus que dans un
brouhaha de malade mentale et souvent tout ce que je répare est le lendemain
confus absurde noncorrigé - un travail interminable, minable de Sisyphos
Mais ce que je voulais dire : La Progandastaffel n'était pas d'accord avec cette
publication. Ce qui fait penser (sic) que Siegfried Fath suivait son courant
d'ineffcacité, car je suppose que Hachette Istanbul affectait Hachette Grece, ma
suggestion, fautive.
J'aurais bien voulu chercher Elytis et les grands poetes grecs comme Seferis - ou, au
moins Henry Miller, ami de l'ancien ambassadeur grec - dans la librairie
Eleftheroudakis où Fath travaillait, Boche, quoi, dans la section boche
mais mes contacts parisiens d'aujourd'hui ne le permettant pas par crainte
d'importer des structures cognitives nazies dans la pensée française
ce qui m'avait obligé de retourner fouiller les archives politiques de l'Auswärtiges
Amt à Berlin pour y trouver une lettre de SO Fath demandant de devenir secrétaire
privé de Graevenitz, l'ambassadeur allemand à Athenes (ou plutôt et plus
précisément c'est Graevenitz qui demande l'autorisation de donner un statut
diplomatique au pauvre SO Fath qui recevra une rémunération bien surprenante au
plus d'un statut)
Puis fnalement, une fois tout perdu en octobre 1944 - Oh Augustin, alles ist hin -il
retourna à Vienna pour y devenir soldat, bref, enfn et grâce à son ineffcacité, fut
prisonnier de guerre en Sibérie. Juste avant de devenir une sorte de
ABTEILUNGSLEITER dans les forces américaines en 1946 juste apres son retour de
la Sibérie.
On aurait pu chercher, je me suis dit, quand j'ai appris la nouvelle (avec 70 ans de
retard) le moment sur le plan des invasions en Afrique du Nord, pour trouver
l'endroit, où SO Fath ait pu entrer en contact avec des Américains avant de partir
vers la Russie bien malgré lui et juste avant la fn de la guerre pour comprendre
pourquoi que les américains acceptaient si facilement ce qu'aucun français ni même
80 ans apres la guerre pense être sensé..
La faute, pourrait-on dire, à sa soeur qui avait servi, avec l'aide du StF, comme une
sorte de levier professionnel au libraire des livres vides avant, quelques mois avant
ou quelques mois apres la défaite française… et puis apres il a dû penser, je pense,
qu'il prendrait mieux en charge son destin à lui tout seul.
Hildegarde Fath, en somme, fut plus qu'une seule fois une sorte de monnaie
d'échange, mais je ne vais pas en parler maintenant. Sauf que cela pourrait
constituer un indice... Quels sont les vrais trucs qu'on peut échanger...
Les femmes et la politique, les femmes et l'humiliation ne sont pas toujours un sujet
agréable. Alors voici Hildegarde Fath et un extrait de son journal avec la
description des derniers jours du Reich. Et cette fois, encore une fois, je n'ai pas
envie de traduire. Désolée, car je pense, c'est un de ces problemes qui sont à la base
du probleme Hachette. Ou des Livres ou de l'épineuse question de la traductabilité
tout court, à commencer avec la traductabilité d'Edmund Husserl, puis celle de
Franz Rosenzweig et Martin Buber et du livre Saint - et bien, même celle de Martin
Heidegger...ou de Jean Wahl Groethuysen André Malraux ou Kojéve
Picture Paestum. American soldiers, and grec columns.
Perhaps would you like to illustrate this moment with the poem „Paestum“ ? Or
with the picture? American forces typewriting on the columns of Paestum,
antiquity
who gave me the letter 50 years later. My fascist grandfather had (let’s say):
„hoped“, his juvenile and rebellious son would have loved to get in some deeper
conversation with a „combattant“ of The Red International Brigades in Spain -
which is obviously a very fascist and very quirky manoeuvre by besaid fascists.
"Dear .-.....but I'll be on my way again tomorrow, and the next address is: 25, Via Fr.
Carrarro in Rome at BLOCH. I spoke to your father, whose intelligence I greatly appreciate;
we were often interrupted by visiting students, with whom he seems to have a particularly
good contact; he lectures on Kierkegaard and intellectual history, including Hölderlin,
whose landscape you have around you there.
My nearest address is the Roman one: 25 Via Fr. Carrarro, near BLOCH, Roma - Italy. I'll
mention them twice. I'll send you the one from Palermo as soon as I see clearly. So a little
patience with the vagabond poet friend! I am very busy for 14 days; in Milano with the old
friend Leo Valiani (who had the death sentence carried out on Mussolini and has now
become a very discreet man in a bank) and the remnants of my Spanish brigade, and in
Palermo with Peggy and the Greek ruins. Let us hear from you!"
Concerning REGLER he should have squizzed interrogated Wolfgang Ritzel a bit
more....longer .....wouldn't you say so ?
What is the message in the letter Regler sent to WR's son? About Globke? Or
Mussolini's death ? What is the message here? An invitation - really?
Paestum is important, you see, and it played a certain, but surely small role
(compared to History and Philosophy and German Idealism and Kant and .....) in
my family //upbringing and of course in the hindsight of the botched situation
afterwards... but - but today this brief moment of..... the beginning of the falling
empire..the moment where .... the beginning of the beginning of the end.
The end as interlocuteur ...... as if Hildegard Fath was unable to see and to deal with
REAL authority. Your authority. As it seems so obvious in her diary. „Honest
enemies...“
Q/ Answer of the american sergeant in 1945 - adressed to Hildegard Fath: If she
could, would she start it all over again. Hildegard Fath’s answer: Yes of course.
Q A about the documents of Hess and his fight to Scotland...as if the Gestapo
would have left any...
You see in this kind of REPURGING the process of history...This cleaning and
cleaning and purging and humiliating and to confess again and again this is a
tricky situation; your frst reaction is probably: I should have hanged myself. It is
tricky because I am asking you to put aside some ideas about historical certainty
you might have, and by doing so, it looks like I was undermining your moral right
The problem is that for US Forces just after 1945 and especially for those not being
white supremacist ones historical lessons are tight to everyday life but here - there
another problem lies hidden...a timelapse of 3 years... before Hildegard Fath could
become an honest enemy.
"On April 4, 1945, soldiers of the 1st French Army marched into Karlsruhe contrary
to previous agreements and took over the military government here for three
months. After the fnal determination of the zone boundaries, the Americans
offcially took over the occupation sovereignty on July 8, 1945.... Over the years, a
kind of small American town with an almost self-suffcient infrastructure
emerged..... The denazifcation was initially carried out by the Americans in
Karlsruhe as well as in their occupation zone in general with great consistency. This
also applied to the ban on fraternisation. Instead, the focus was on re-education"
But perhaps you could read now a statement of Philippe Sands concerning US
Forces helping NS war criminals Out s241 The Americans gathered German scientists
and former Nazi intelligence agents, and set them to work. General Reinhold Gehlen, an
intelligence offcer who served as chief of department ‚Fremde Heere Ost‘ at the Fuhrer’s
HQ...was brought to Washington with his intelligence fles to be interviewed and recruited
by Allen Dulles...“
SO Fath worked then, after 1949, in the Wiedergutmachungsabteilung...?
of the Finanzamt ...(Obviously SO Fath – at least to my actual knowledge - had
NOT been detected as a potential War criminal, but my research is that of a
But I must warn you: every time I am hoping to describe some contra-fctional or
antagonist possibilities, my computer will show dysfunctional wording.
Unfortunately for you, I do have this inability to express myself correctly ( or, more
precisely in your terms: I don’t have the ability to express myself correctly)
Cultural Superiority is – I fear - at stake here. And my (quasi existential ) denial to
produce REAL CULTURAL STUFF like books or flms or movies, you see, because
this is what everybody is expecting me to do, WRITE THE BOOK or write a proper
book at least as if the book alone and the publishing house would guarantee the
REALITY of my fndings – any other sort of historical fnding (which may be a part
of historical truth, a reliable source) will be a mere nothing instead and here we
could immediately deal with some Heideggerian stuff – but this is not your topic.
Time, chronology, historicity, traces, documents spill over a clear-cut line.
Perhaps linked to publication standards, starting with German booksellars (sic)
with French distributor Hachette, now with your expectations of a
„PROFESSIONAL WRITING and Distribution“
Hachette – the global distributor at L'EPOQUE who is not interested in my story at
all. It's fne this way, so I can ignore them; the question if SO Fath had tried to direct
Hachette seems insignifcant from 1940 on until the end.
The problem in editing, publishing distribution („Vakuumsogpumpe von leeren
Bedeutungen“ in meinem Mund) Hachette Doula Hachette Yaoundé more than
American publishing houses ....... In fact, it looks like I MUST search for Jean
Paulhan as a counterpart of SOFATH , quite a distinctive person, somebody with a
hidden agenda - with some GESTAPO experiences despite being accused of
„Collaboration“ later, or Drieu la Rochelle in France. But NOT, but not Henrik de
Man. Or the young the very young Julius Nyerere... Perhaps I could start with
Leclerc...somewhere August1940 in Douala or Brazzaville....
The UN Ruben Um Nyobe's 1952 speech is of course located on a plan
after this liberation of 1945... or a little above... if we understand by then
Independence in 1961
raises the questions about the diffculty of differentiating between Liberation and
Independence on a spiritual, political, civic and... almost theological level if we
return to the ethical forces of the individual – hampered by authoritarian,
totalitarian, abusive or "parasitic" political systems (exploiting forced labour, etc )
The African horizon... because from a strictly German perspective and THIS is the
only one, I am allowed to use .. could permit ( a )referring to the Cameroon
historian Prince A Ndumbé III and his statement about German Quête of global
dominance and never ever there would any possibility to see something else,
dynamics contrarities in Industrial NONKnowledge, missing felds General
Haushofer, the German geopolitician and mentor of Rudolf Hess.
Intentionalität ist ein philosophisches Konzept, das was in meinem Bächlein einem
Gedanken vorhergeht - das was Gedanke werden kann, das was zu Sprache
gerinnt. Das ist, lieber Felix, liebe Anna, meine Reformulierung, keine
allgemeingültige Defnition von Brentanos Intentionalität die
Gerundiumformen oder elliptischer Satzbruchstücke... die einen Gedanken in einen
Gedankenfuss umwenden
Time being ..
denn die Logik die zwar als DAS abendländische Grundkonstrukt gilt, das
universellen Anspruch hat mit dem Satz der Identitat, der Satz von der
Widerspruchsfreiheit und dem ausgeschlossenen Dritten
man kann, wenn man logisch denken will, ja nicht sagen es regnet und e s regnet
nicht. Das Regnen bereist der Sonderfall von von Wasser und Nichtwasser ist, tut ja
dem deutschen Sachverhalt keinen Abbruch.
Das brauche ich Ihnen nicht zu sagen und Sie beide wissen sicherlich, dass mein
Sprachritzeln (denn für Leute wie Bommarius ist es lächerlicher Wahnsinn von
Versagern, der vernichtet oder ausgeschaltet gehort) , was eine Art Sprachspachtel
ist, mit dem ich über Sinnschichten hinunherfahre, denn Sinn ist nicht
widerspruchsfrei, meine Version. Sinn liegt VOR der Sprache und fiesst durch sie
hindurch.
Hassattacke. Layoutzerstorung as usual. Der Zensor hat Philosophie im
Existenzabonnement und weiss, was zur Existenzvernichtung anderer gehort.
Die Teleiose ...Brentano...Vom Koninuierlichen....“obwohl die vertikalen Linien in
jedem Punkte, insofern er nach anderen Richtungen Grenze ist, eine unvollkommene
Teleiose aufweisen. So hat denn der Körper in den 3 Dimensionen, nach welchen er
gegen-wärtig ist, in der Tat den Charakter eines Kontinuums“
„For example“, wrote Jorge Luis Borges, „there is no noun that corresponds to our word
„moon“, but there is a word which in English would be „to moonate“ or „to emoon“.
In einer Sprachlichen Relation, in der Das DIALOGISCHE aber nicht benannt
werden darf, eines der vitalen Zentren, die verbarrikadiert wurden – zwingt mich
mein Fadenspinnen zum Monologisieren - es mondet nicht - schliesslich wie ein
kleines Rädchen in einem Ritzelzahnradmühlenwerk von Wassersturz angetrieben
gehort dies zu einem familiären Ährenbündel, in dem ich auf meine lächerliche
Weise von Dantes de vulgari eloquentia in das Unfätige abstürzen muss
(Hassattacke: „ muss“ wird zu „mussolini“... textergänzungen textkorrekturen
konnen nicht abgestellt werden oder beginnen von neuem)
das Fluchen Teil der Spracharbeit, zu der Sie mich einluden, ohne dass es mir
glückte, Wege anzubieten, die Ihnen gangbar wären.
Das Fluchen wie das Untertauchen in die Bay der Krabben
gehort zu einer Arbeit mit kulturellen Symbolen – die Anstandsgrenzen aufweisen.
Wie Gondar – wie Radarkarten – wie banale Verschlüsselungsübungsheftchen, die
Bletchley Park zu banal sind wie die aufgehobennen Broschüren über die Cachette
versteckter Mitteilungen.
GedankenPicture. Wasserfall. Schaffhausen oder Nyasa
SOLISTICE -seen as an ulimate moment by Karl Haushofer, of hybris, as
greek people would say: The course having reached his climax, missed it and then
collapsed
could not be taken into consideration... „jene Anteile an Deutungsversuchen des
Nationalsozialsimus aufzunehmen und sie nicht aus der Teilhabe an der katastrophischen
Bundelung zu entlassen“ , wrote Dan Diner, 1984, 32Jhg.H1 Viertelsjahresschrift des
Instituts für Zeitgeschichte
