Es Geloybte Aretz - a Germanwank
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He's just another one of the non-noble heroes the war threw up by the dozen: bourgeois-born, wealthy, cavalry reserve commission, transferred to regular regiment to fill up casualty gaps in the early weeks of the war, promoted over the dead bodies of brother officers to become major, then lieutenant colonel, leading raids behind enemy lines. Then made full colonel after a reserve cavalry regiment needed one. Ennobled for his merits, back in Berlin after his regiment was demobbed. The kind of person who'd want to join a Herrenclub.
As an aside, neither Mackensen nor von der Goltz are exactly 'old Prussians'. Mackensen was a late bloomer, eccentric, and in many ways infra dig for the cavalry officer corps. Von der Goltz was a staunch believer in 'Volkskrieg', the national levee en masse, and always opposed noble privilege. He embraced the idea of equality, just not in the sense of this conferring any actual voting rights or stuff: All equal servants of the all-powerful nation.
its not progressivism, for one it is military solidarity, second it is trolling.
the herrenclub most likely would be seen as snobs, so giving them a 'treatment' to put them in their place is to be expected.
edit: ninja'd by the man himself
Rather, they would like to be. Depending on clientele, most of them were more Colonel Blimp than Phileas Fogg.
hence my remark about them being seen as snobs.
i think the generals would get quite a lot of amusement out of the chance to seriously troll one of them
From my reading of history, the Prussian military also usually wasn't too conservative; it was privileged, sure, but it also tended to reinvent itself when events (e.g. Tilsit) or just general passage of time suggested a change was overdue. This war undoubtedly spurred on plenty of modernity even if as carlton says above, not liberal modernity.
I recognized the name but I can't place any of his works, I certainly have not read them. Funny thing; Wikipedia says he is particularly popular in the USA. But that would be among poetry fans, and apparently New Age people. I've actually been on the fringe of both but I'm apparently not hardcore enough; looking over the article not one work rings any bells or resonates in any way with me.
When I say I am a fringe poetry fan, I mean I don't run screaming from it and a good fraction of the time I encounter poetry embedded in prose I read it--though I can also just skip right past it. I like song lyrics and William Blake--his short stuff anyway. I liked the sort of poetry set before me in middle school and high school lit classes; the common feature being these were short!
I suppose to a true poetry appreciator I am basically a kind of Orc.
But damned if the name of Rilke itself--not any work of his I know of, but the man himself doesn't ring lots of bells. Now I wish I could figure out where he is familiar from!
When I say I am a fringe poetry fan, I mean I don't run screaming from it and a good fraction of the time I encounter poetry embedded in prose I read it--though I can also just skip right past it. I like song lyrics and William Blake--his short stuff anyway. I liked the sort of poetry set before me in middle school and high school lit classes; the common feature being these were short!
I suppose to a true poetry appreciator I am basically a kind of Orc.
But damned if the name of Rilke itself--not any work of his I know of, but the man himself doesn't ring lots of bells. Now I wish I could figure out where he is familiar from!
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Rilke was a bit of a Jack Kerouac figure - everybody was convinced at the time that he was quite profound, but it is hard to see today exactly why anyone would think that. He wrote poems about deeply emotional subjects that resonated with the educated bourgeoisie in its ennui and alienation with industrial society, ballads about hopeless, reckless love and self-sacrifice, impressionistic short pieces about sublime moments of beauty, about faith, art, and transcendence, that kind of stuff. In technical terms, he was very good (and it is hard to be a good serious poet in German - most good German poetry is humoristic or satirical), but today, his work is mostly reduced to the romantic aspects. He is popular with the aesthetic set and in some conservative quarters for his rather muddled political theology, for want of a better word.
Rilke visited Russia twice IOTL, and he loved every bit of it, the more 'authentic' and 'peasant', the better. He made friends of many Russian artists and writers. ITTL, that kind of man, fashionably popular in Germany and deeply enamoured of the same kind of nonsense the PU has embraced, will be useful.
Rilke visited Russia twice IOTL, and he loved every bit of it, the more 'authentic' and 'peasant', the better. He made friends of many Russian artists and writers. ITTL, that kind of man, fashionably popular in Germany and deeply enamoured of the same kind of nonsense the PU has embraced, will be useful.
As fellow Austrian I must dadmit, I knew the name - actually quite famous here, but could not mane one of his works - nor have I read one...
So no non-german speaker has to be ashamed not to know him
So no non-german speaker has to be ashamed not to know him
As fellow Austrian I must dadmit, I knew the name - actually quite famous here, but could not mane one of his works - nor have I read one...
So no non-german speaker has to be ashamed not to know him
Swiss here. Same - I know the name, know he was a poet, but we never read anything in school from him.
So I am trying to recall why and how I know the name. Presumably from his name being dropped a lot--OK, who did that? Who ever, in the kind of books I read, wrote "In the words of the immortal Rilke," then quoted a line or two. Was he featured in any of my classes? No, I think not! Perhaps some famous artwork, a play or movie, is based on something of his? I just can't finger it, but apparently just about everyone knows Rilke is a big deal poet though no one reads the big deal poems.
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Croat here, same thing. At least I can't remember... Actually, now when I looked at Wiki, I remembered that I once heard something about him being dressed as a girl during a childhood... I heard that somewhere, but I can't remember where.
I looked him up on project Gutenberg.
In both the first poems I read there, he commits the crime of breaking a sentence for a rhyme and continuing it in the next line, rather than rhyming the whole sentence.
This is why I rarely like the poets who are called great. They throw in these fancy tricks rather than actually making the poetry fit... generally only great songwriters (or speech-song; Homeros is quite good too for example) manage to mostly keep language and poetry aligned.
In both the first poems I read there, he commits the crime of breaking a sentence for a rhyme and continuing it in the next line, rather than rhyming the whole sentence.
This is why I rarely like the poets who are called great. They throw in these fancy tricks rather than actually making the poetry fit... generally only great songwriters (or speech-song; Homeros is quite good too for example) manage to mostly keep language and poetry aligned.
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