My dear!

When I think of "Milky Way," it occurs to me that I once cycled along a street by that name. But that little lane in Bremen-Nord was only called that because there was in reality no milk there — not even a cow or a goat. But never mind.

Many thanks for your quick but brief letter! A letter that, given the origin of the expression "brevis," quite rightly keeps it short. I would have been more pleased, however, if you had written more cheerful things — as it stood, it was almost a medical bulletin. But one must take things as they come.

So I can only express my heartfelt sympathy (as if your trousers were sweet — and such objects, which might be called "sweet," don't deserve to be called leg-garment, since they don't clothe your legs at all).

A vein blockage, as I believe I understand from your letter, is no child's play and can, as one hears, be quite unpleasant. Unfortunately, one cannot always choose one's illnesses, and the consolation that there are worse things is a feeble one — more rhetorical than real. And with the prostate, you've also got your hands full. There are two things involved, as far as I can tell as a layman: 1) prostatitis — which, like any -itis, has to do with bacteria and/or inflammation — pills and warmth help against that. And 2) hypertrophy — when the thing is chronically swollen, so that the patient can't urinate properly — a typical old man's ailment. I had to deal with that. And when pills no longer helped, the urinary tract had to be bored open.

In the old days, the stomach was cut open and the thing was dealt with from the outside. In my case — here in Pforzheim, a very special specialist works in the field — something was injected into my spine. I was fully awake and alert, but from the navel downwards I felt nothing. First the vas deferens were severed; the assistant who did this the first time — a Bulgarian — then said to me: "When your girlfriend says now that she is pregnant, you can say: but not by me." The feeling for everything around love and Cupid remains fully intact, and the ability to "perform," so to speak, remains just as good — well, as good as age determines.

Then the chief physician came and guided the drill from the front through the urinary tract and removed the prostate down to its outer skin. The patient notices nothing of this — I could only tell that a person was doing something there. When the anaesthesia wore off, I felt nothing that could be called pain. I merely had a permanent catheter in and was supposed to drink a lot to keep the flow going. A cannula was inserted into a vein, secured with plaster, and then penicillin was administered prophylactically from a drip into my circulation. My stay in the clinic lasted exactly one week. Afterwards, I was told not to take hot baths for a while. Something bloody also came from the urinary tract for some time, but they said that was normal — and if you were to go through the same thing, my sympathy would be only moderate, as I had no reason to feel sorry for myself.

You say Ruth cannot be alone at home. Does she have so much trouble with immobility? Or does she get dizzy too easily? That could indicate a stroke. Perhaps you could write a little more about it so we can get a better picture. Does she have pain — headaches — joint pain? Has she resigned herself to fate, or is she rattling the bars, as they say?

As for your leg, I think one must recommend a lot of rest. But surely the doctor has already advised you of that.

But now a few words on your long letter from October. I wrote there about iatrogenic illnesses (15% of all sick Americans). Naturally it could be even worse elsewhere, but the Americans have compiled statistics, and of course it's not just every 6.666th patient — out of every 100 illnesses, the doctor has caused 15 cases, so to speak.

On Albania again: One hears that they swear by Stalin. Do you think the people have any idea what kind of man he was? They have been told that he was the guardian of the pure doctrine — that's all. Because religion, the upper classes, and the opposition have been destroyed, and after the various wars there is finally peace and everyone "has their chicken in the pot," and because they are told it is no better anywhere else, the people believe this to be wonderful. That is the impression of travellers, and not just from Dorette and her travel companions.

On America and Americans: You presume to have views about America and Americans. For my part, I consider America to be a continent with a great deal of beautiful landscape, many natural resources, and many interesting things — and I have no particular view of "the Americans" at all. A collection of races and peoples is at most a special mixture, but I suspect there are roughly 200,000 different views and characters within those approximately two dozen (?) states called the USA. And I am always astonished when I turn on the television and a few figures are acting, and I recognise at first glance that it is an American film — I don't even know exactly how that is possible. It contradicts my "axiomatic" notion of the boundless diversity of all those who are "Americans."

And in my eyes it is the boundless stupidity of Europeans — many Europeans — to treat everything that comes from America as "good." Because from America comes very different things: clever stuff, utter nonsense, and a great deal of normal things, which are now called by a different name — namely "American." Above all, the language — our language is being polluted in a ridiculous way by American vocabulary. But when I say "polluted," I don't mean to criticise the Americans at all. First-class strawberry jam on a door handle, or vitally important castor oil on a sheet of notepaper — that is ordinary filth. Filth is something that is in the wrong place — like American phrases that don't fit into a text in another language. But minor representatives of the press like to make themselves look interesting when they want to show how "international" they can snap their fingers.

On tact and understanding for one's environment: Various peoples at various times have behaved like madmen — "the" French under Napoleon, "the" Germans under Hitler, "the" Europeans in the colonial era, and so on. The bigger a group is in number or power, the more its people feel their country is the navel of the world and their way of life the correct one. Just as little as the world will be healed by the German spirit, so little is it good for the world what is good for America. But all of this is purely human — one can say so with a smile and move on.

But the second law is the fact that the world couldn't care less whether the Albanians believe in Stalin, and if they got the idea of threatening us with a boycott when we sell aeroplanes to the Japanese. But when a great power throws its weight around to dictate to others what they should do — that looks quite different. It is therefore highly alarming when one doesn't know what will next occur to a Reagan, since we are after all dependent on the USA if we don't want to end up under the thumb of the other great power. The only thing that sets the "Big Brother" in Washington apart — politics doesn't care about our interests. But that is purely human. And the Oxenstierna quote gives you good reason to be afraid.

You say that with some presidents we have also had cause to fear. Hitler was not entirely wrong, and we have also experienced what came of it. Quite right — and how will things turn out differently in the future? You could write about this for pages on end. But you can rely on me having been enlightened in the meantime, as far as is accessible to me, and my judgement formed carefully and without personal bias. I will wash my hands — tomorrow I will presumably vote SPD, which is repugnant to me, but I will vote for them because I consider them the lesser evil.

So, and now it is Sunday, the 6th of March '83. I have in the meantime voted SPD — but only because it horrifies me that Strauss could become Foreign Minister, and otherwise several unpleasant figures could also become ministers. Poor Germany! But what are you moaning about?!

You think I'm spinning a yarn because I mentioned the Morgenthau Plan. But you can look it up in any encyclopaedia, where it says that this plan was given to Roosevelt and Churchill and was initialled by them in September 1944. And of the extensive demolitions that followed — you must have read in the newspapers that this was necessary so that the evil Germans should never again be in a position to produce weapons. And when the Henkel soap factory in Hamburg was being dismantled, I was astonished — since the inventive Nazis had apparently waged the war with soap. Then it was said that the nations damaged by us should be compensated with the help of our dismantled industrial plants. But the dismantled plant components were just rusting away at the quayside, because those concerned couldn't get started on anything with the scrap. The city utilities of Bremen were offered a brand new power station to be built from such a reparations project — they declined, and large parts of the Hastedt power station were demolished.

In hindsight it is clear that this was neither about preventing war nor about reparations, but about destroying German industry, as the Morgenthau Plan envisaged. Smart people, like the President of the USA, soon recognised that this plan was a foolish idea, and so it was quietly dropped. Then came the Marshall Plan. From then on things were given — then American banks began demanding higher interest rates again, and malicious tongues claimed the whole thing only served to allow the Americans to become even richer through scarce money and high interest rates. My humble opinion is that there may have been people who wanted the Marshall Plan purely for self-interested reasons. But I also believe that others genuinely wanted to help the exhausted Europeans. Others may also have thought: if the Europeans are starving, they can buy things abroad — for example American weapons. And weapons the Germans should as far as possible still not produce themselves; they should buy them American if possible.

You mention the pacifism of the 1930s. Oh yes, that existed. But the wish — or plan — to break Germany apart and reduce it to political and military insignificance was already present in certain circles in England towards the end of the last century. Renate Riemeck covers this in detail in a book whose title escapes me at the moment. Naturally it wasn't "the English" but circles around one of the kings of that time.

The First World War didn't bring much in that regard. Naturally the broad mass of the population wanted no war — one still had one's fill from the first one. Politicians too were not necessarily fond of it, and least of all the boys who had to serve. Perhaps in the 1930s not even many of those who had been saying for decades "Ceterum censeo Germaniam esse delendam" actually wanted a war. And of course Hitler's behaviour made the notion plausible even to those outside that camp — the idea that this must be brought to an end.

But they didn't declare war for the sake of Poland — otherwise they would have done something to ensure that Poland could live in freedom. If in 1945 they truly believed Stalin to be a champion of democracy who would do nothing bad to the peoples between the Finnish Gulf and the Balkans — then the victors were even more stupid than one could imagine. Perhaps they were all survival-scale idiots — that would be a mitigating circumstance. In any case, the results of the war's end were roughly what the victors had intended, weren't they?

I also find it rather nice that the Russians are getting American wheat again — above all it is nice for the American farmers who don't then have to burn their harvest to keep prices up, and the Russians get used to buying their wheat elsewhere. A boycott in the long run almost always ends up helping oneself or one's neighbour in other ways.

I also find it decidedly amusing that people on the other side of the Atlantic are getting worked up about forced labour in Russia, as if that were something new. If the intention were for "the" Americans to tar everyone with the same brush: the Americans let Stalin grow quite big first, and only a political ignoramus didn't know before the war, at its end, and since then right up to today, that forced labourers have been working there.

You think the Americans can't be blamed for what happens in the Middle East — Begin does what he wants. Well, why shouldn't he, when he can say publicly on television: let the Americans rant and threaten — they'll calm down and in a few days deliver weapons again, which is then exactly what happened. But once, when the Israelis wouldn't stop bombarding Beirut, Reagan said a few words in all seriousness — whereupon little Begin sulked: one simply can't speak to one's best friend like that. But from that moment on there was a de-escalation in Beirut. When the Palestinians and Lebanon are so important to the American public, as Jewish voters at home and something like a base in the Eastern Mediterranean — then they could settle the Palestinian question in the shortest time, insofar as it is American co-responsibility. But I say this is ira et studio — I am no one's judge. I only say what one can see if one looks.

On Goethe and the Word: You say Goethe's inner conflict shows itself in his using "the Word" as a symbol for the endless fullness of what John means at the beginning of his Gospel with Logos.

Faust is the myth of Man as such. Mephisto says of him: "He is half aware of his own madness; from Heaven he demands the finest stars, from the Earth every highest joy" — and Goethe lets him speak of the two souls within his breast: "One clings with rough desire to the world with clinging limbs; the other lifts itself mightily from dust to the fields of noble ancestors." That is the better part of Man's nature. The lesser part is the one Mephisto "complains" about to the Lord: "Hadst thou not given him the glimmer of heavenly light — he calls it Reason and uses it only to be more bestial than any beast." All of this is Man. The judgements made about him are highly topical — they could have been spoken today.

But we came from Logos to Jonny W. Goethe. When it says: "In the beginning was the Word" — today's person either thinks nothing of it at all, or thinks: now! At some point one arrives at exactly those reflections that Goethe has old Faust make. On the first page of Genesis it says: And God spoke "Let there be" — and it was. There we already have the Word through which all things became. And this Word is scarcely a vocabulary item but highest wisdom and highest potency — yes, and deed — exactly what Faust hinted at.

I have heard the opinion that a truly cultivated language was originally a cultic matter altogether. And when one thinks of Mantras and of magic — white and black — which worked through utterances, then one can value the Word a little higher than today's person tends to, for whom language has been reduced to a pure means of communication. One can speak of the "Word" with the awareness of what John says: In the beginning was the Word, it was a God, all things came into being through the Word. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And then he describes in 21 chapters what this incarnate God did, said, and inspired — and finally, that if one wanted to write all this down, the world would not have room for all the books. When one bears this in mind, it almost feels like a transgression to speak of it in a few sentences.

On language: For me, language is a high cultural treasure, a value in itself, which must not be corrupted — because to do so is a sin against the spirit. If someone has been bald for 20 years, he probably finds his mirror image halfway "normal" — but as long as his hair loss is ongoing, the bald patches bother him.

Perhaps I should wait until I am 100 before accepting that a pipeline is called a Paiplain, that one calls not only a Latin Computor but also a Kompjuter, that perhaps the tutor will then be called a Tjuter, and that no more Tumoren will be operated on but only Tjumers. Perhaps until then they will also spread Bjutter on our bread, and I find it quite normal — perhaps. Latin, Greek, French words etc. that have long had a firm place in German, words that we have known and used since childhood, don't bother me so much. But this new invasion of Americanism from ordinary fashion-mongering — that bothers me like a developing bald patch.

Perhaps I am also so allergic to it because American does not embed itself organically into German. But among other things it is also the case that so many Germans love to lick the boots of whoever happens to be winning. Besides, everything else that brings dissonance into language also bothers me: false vocabulary, false cases, false stress patterns.

You are now entitled to ask why my letters have no better style. That comes from the fact that I begin sentences without thinking through to the end and then cannot complete them without a struggle. The result bothers me greatly, but I would have to rewrite almost every other sentence, and I have no desire for that — and instead blame the recipient for my poor style. But I read good Thomas Mann precisely because every sentence is apt and aesthetically constructed. Naturally meaning is everything. But the sound and rhythm of a sentence have their own artistic value. You surely know the reliable Morgenstern, who handled words and sounds and rhythms with elevated humour. And to quote Faust once more: "The words are exchanged enough — let me now finally see deeds!"

But you ask after Renate. I have not seen her for longer. She does give a monthly lecture at the local anthroposophical care home, and these lectures are very interesting — but I hear about them mostly too late. I would like to invite her for coffee sometime — rhetorically we have already done so, but what does one not have in mind, mon Dieu!

What are all your children actually up to and where are they? Could not one of them look after the dear mother while you are in the clinic for a while? Of your total of 5 children, if I have counted correctly, one hears from you about only rarely. Does Harald have his own congregation, so to speak? Do you see him and the others often? How many grandchildren do you have?

This all just shot through my head as I was about to close — but I also find that on almost every point there would be more to say. And my style by no means meets my own standards.

Despite all of that — be all best greeted from your continental relative.

Der Klee