GERMANS AT EASE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 672, 26 October 1933, Page 2

GERMANS AT EASE

A BERLIN PANORAMA MOST COMPLEX DISJOINTED COUNTRY IN WHOLE EUROPE. f THE SIEGRET OF THE REIGH. Teri o'olock, the air is blue grey. and opaque, the cafe jammied, but the Berlin cafe is like the London ©mnibus in that there is. always roomj for one mere — ior a score rpore, writes Idwal Jones in the Siain Francisco Chrbnicle. I have a table with a cartoonist, who draws types for a funny Mlunich paper. We aigiree there is not "a" Germjan ityipe, fbut that there are hundreds of Germaai types. And that the Berliner is almos't extinct. Sixty per cent. of Berlirier.s corrie from, elsewhere, the old Berlin is gone, arid outside crashes and thunders a neiw Berlin, with electric ligihts glittering in the praises of camieras, gargles, aspirin, cigars, motors, tooth-paste, and chetwing gum. A stiff group of men dn frock coats march to a table, headed by a spare prof&ssi'onal type, with ribbon and silk ha't, and hiei is greeted stiffly by the host, who has a iboar's head, with, thick folds on (his neck, and bristlinig up-ended. moustache. The host bows, with clicked heels, registers hauteur, but looks only pompoUs and arrogant. His politeness looks forced. After ia round of Pilsener the combined groups mellow and tafk music. They are Brahms devotees, the cartoonist says, and in a few minutes they wdll all he genial and charming, even the iboar's head host — Iwho is one of the finest amateur 'ceilists in Germany, also a glassware manufacturer. His head is shaved, except for a small tuft in front to take the parting. You . could crash a stein on his. occiput without getting more than a blink from hina. They will argue on Brahms until 3 o'clock, and all except the Lower Saxons — .the host is one — iwill agree that Brahms is muddy in the liighter passages ibeeause he wias born in Hamhurg. German musical appreciation far transcends the American, because when a concert is over with us it is time to go to bed; and since Gtrman concerts .start at 6.30 and are over by 9, the post-mortem and the beer drinking merely continue a well-be-gun night. One Mere Club. This ds a great} placei for types, th'e cartoionist remafks, as he draws a i boar's head in five strokes, because lall Berlin conventions windj up herej The long table in the aniddle is cfowded with delegates to a meeting of the Association for Conserving Provincial Gostumes. The intent is to induce peasants of Franconia and. Swabia to keep on wearinigi their linen sroocks, the Frisians itheir bodicesand filigree buttons, the Bavarians theif knee trousers and feathers, the Thuringians their sticks and Grimim!Js tfairy-tale garb, and so forth. A useless but charm'ing ddeay for the peasants keep on wearing themi anyway, as they always have done. Peasant garb disappears only in those countries that have a national eapi'tal, a capital with a racial hrain .and a heart. Berlin has not these. Berlin is a clearing house, a power station, a phenomenon which has nothing to do with the rest of Gerinany. But dt is an excu&ei for one more club. Germany is the most complex, disjointed and "organised" country in Europe. The Gernaan seems powerless to get along with his colleaigfues ias an individual, but takes refuge in a club in the hope that this club wdll get in rapport with some similar club for ends social, industrdal, political, or what not. In Frarice culture may be witnes&ed in its finest flower when one cultivate.d Frenchman is talking ivith another, dn Germany, when one group talks, smokes, and drinks with another that has the same opinion. Eugen Diesel was saying the other day that "Societies among us, spring up like a stupendous cellular state round anythinigi that supplies the fain1 test vestige of a nucleus for such' a cell — hay fever, cigars, mietaphysics, nudism, or Richard Wagner." Miany and Various. The town of Anhalt, With hardly miore than 6000 people, has a hundred associafions. In Potsdam there is an .association for the sons of master hakers. Dresden has one for the sons of former Burgomaisters ; Munich ha"s a society composed of th'e descendants of famous hrewers whose tbrands are stiil extant. Not a national ideal, but the calling or hobhy is the beacon for gregariousness. Not so much the Reidh ais the town or province, with its racial roots, dialefets, landscape, hrew, and costume has the. living meaning for the Germans. •In short, the salient phenomenon in Germiany is its "split-uppityness." Our Costume Association delegates just now! were not worryinigi imiuoh about the lack of .a valid social ideal. They had switched from Pilsener to1 !the Berlin lager, Schultheiss-Patzen-hofer, made .in the. largest brewerY in the world, and which is recommend•ed to go best with cigars. Th'ey werfe having. a sumptuous time, and talking on ©verything except filigree buttons and feathered haits. The cartooriiist swiftly limned Swabians, awkwardly built, with expressive, bony features; shaggy and giarrulous Bavarians, of a. rough hearti.ness; comic and rather shabhy Saxons wh0 made all smile when they talked. A Saxon diotator, wS are told, would be impos&ible in the Reich', for his manner iand accent wouldi prevent his being taken seriously, though I dispute this. Anyone can be taken seritously — leven the dark wai'ter-Hitler type — if he is serious and talks iricessantly dn a girding screech. And there were three or four Jews., with intelligent, animated ivory faces, from villages oh the Firianconian Miadh, where Jewish villages have existed for centuries and will exist for centuries to come. . . . . 4 .Beer Table Buddhas. There were the uSual 'Simp'licissimius' types — (Buddhas of the beer' table, with straight Tbacks to- their

heads, sitting in detached groups, and who, prohaibly .did nothing all day or night but pour Schultheiss-tPatzenr ■hofer down their gullets, exhale colunins bf sinoke, and look nvonumehtally German — the Bismarck ideal. From any ideal magnificently achieved it is difficult to withhold admiration. Though there were only ab'out 20 such in the oafei that seated a thousand, I suppose (such' is the tenacity of symbols) their sort will stand for another century as the universal German type. At least this type isn't a, myth, a creature of the cartoonist only. To the Scandinavia.ns the GermaPs are small, dark people — iand iso they are cartooned hy these Northemers, who regard German blondness as almost black in comparison with their own pink-iaind-white blondness. The teeth of the English are not couspicuous beyond the ordinary, but no selfrespectin'g French or Germjan cartoonist would dar,e to depict a Briton without teeth that project like a gift horse's or a Chinese washerman's in a burlesque show. In once dropped into a music hall in Lyons, a.nd a comedian was having a hard time of it. N'othing that he could isay could puncture the gloom that weighed on the audience, who were bored with his impersonations. He clapped on a horn spectacle frame. The effect was instantaneous. An American! The house simmered in imiirth and relaxed to hear something really funny. Tbe odd part of it was that half the men in the audience and a good sprinkling of the women wore horn-rimmed spectacles. It would take a philosopher to. work this out. As a fashion, hom spectacles are universal; as a symbol they are American., I was diseussing this with th'e cartoonist when the boar's head rapped his stein on the table. He delivered la note of miraculous sweetness, Which wais taken up in a humming tone, and the Brahms table rose to sing from the cantata of "Rinaldo." That done, the costume conservers insisted on buying Pilsener for the Brahmists. the rest of the evening, their generosity overflowed, and the cartoonist and myself, who could not sing a note ■if our lives depended oh it, were elected to the Brahmls society on sight without caring a pfenhig Wh'ether we were anti-Nazis or othe'rwise.