Beware of the mother who gives her non-German speaking child the middle name of Heinrich. Never mind, that it runs in the family, and that it was the name of the few German authors who truly stood against the menace of their times: Heinrich Heine and Heinrich Mann. Who would want to live with a name one can hardly pronounce?

Heinrich Mann is one of my favorite authors; he managed to turn his opposition to German nationalistic outrage against democratic values, liberalism and rational thinking into artful satire. His seminal novel, The Loyal Subject, was written between 1906 and 1914, skewering the Wilhelmian epoch and presaging the rise of an authoritarian state. That title, by the way, is one of many translations for the same book.

Mann himself joked that “every time the Germans loose a war, they publish my book.” And the English titles were echoing the Zeitgeist: The Patrioteer (1921), Little Superman (1945), Man of Straw (1947, 1972, 1984) – sort of in tandem with the interest in nationalism, fascism and eventually the authoritarian personality.

(No wonder the book in full form was first published in Russia…)

The novel describes the rise of a small town parvenue who learns to love his emperor Wilhelm II, to outsmart the competition and destroy his liberal home environment in favor of rising nationalistic power. He himself is weak, but desires to be hard, brown nosing his superiors while mistreating those below. He adores and condones violence as long as he is not its victim, except for masochistic tendencies in the bedroom. He is the reincarnation of conformism. The book provided an early blueprint for Adorno’s authoritarian personality, but was more than that. Mann understood and conveyed the roles that capitalism and the ideology of German imperialism played in the destruction of enlightenment ideals. (Which is part of why Heinrich and Thomas Mann really didn’t get along…..)

Now, why am I bringing all this to your attention? Because for years I have been photographing what you see in today’s musings: ubiquitous, varied forms of Lieb Sein glued to or sprayed onto the walls of the cities. The literal translation is: Be nice.  And it could be seen as a playful instruction to increase peace in the world and diminish conflict. Or put some innocuous color into the world. However, every German child knows that the words “Sei lieb!” are the equivalent of “You better obey!” Are these stickers satire then, encouraging disobedience in sly form? I’ve yet to find out. Probably overthinking it, as per usual – yet for the political mind it rings slightly ominous.

The stickers do, regardless, remind me of the quote attributed to some old Prussian:

The loyal subject is forbidden to measure the actions of the authorities with the yardstick of the subject’s limited insight.

I guess I have limited insight into the meanings of graffiti, however I put any yardstick I want to my evaluation of governmental   action….. in Germany and anywhere else!

 

Here is a clip from the movie Tales of Hollywood where Alec Guiness plays Heinrich Mann.

Auf Wiedersehen!