View transcript: Ballad Feature No. 9: “Cold Death Interrupts Love”

Cold Death Interrupts Love

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10 to 11. TEN TO ELEVEN

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The cruel stepmother / The Cossack’s lament (Chechenia) / A horrible shipwreck / The Infanticide (Friedrich Schiller) / Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico / In the century of the plague (Heiner Müller) / My feelings (Ingeborg Bachmann) - -

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BALLAD FEATURE No. 9 “Cold death interrupts love”

Alexander Kluge/Text

“This is why writing poetry is the water that at times flows backwards toward the source, toward thinking-back - - "

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Martin Heidegger

Kluge/Text

A cruel stepmother, or: God is just

Cold death interrupts love,

and carries off the wife;

The husband takes another woman home,

But everything was a deception,

She was full of tyranny.

Outrageously, she threw the child

Into a pit.

But what she did to the child,

was done to her in return,

she sank to the very ground of dark night - -

as punishment for what she had done.

Kluge/Text

The victims of the labor unions in Sheffield, England

It’s horrible to hear what happened in Sheffield,

where one saw machines being destroyed and people murdered /

The class differences, how vast they were in England;

So the unions were founded to bring salvation,

their hearts were inflamed by the pure and noble sympathy of their souls.

But within Sheffield’s walls lived a secretary named Broadhead,

who thought he was helping by harming the enemy.

Lindley and Parker had to die by the hand of a depraved assassin.

Now there are unions everywhere in England.

They are free of guilt, and they are condemning it,

because no man should take revenge as it was made known through Broadhead.

But the workers’ valiant troop will always strive for more,

until they are given what always was their due.

Then no atrocity will trouble our free-spirited times

the brother will love his brother, because we are all brothers - -

Kluge/Text

THE HORRIBLE SHIPWRECK OF THE TIMBRIA on January 10th, 1881, in which 416 people drowned

Kluge/Text

In good spirits, with a favorable wind,

the proud Timbria raced past,

wanting to sail quickly

far away, to America …

Kluge

When Cuxhaven is behind her

a thick fog sank down

onto the wide, open sea.

Kluge/Text

Suddenly the sound of a crash

On one side of the ship

“Sultan” drove out of

the gray vastness of the sea

straight into the steamboat Timbria.

Only a few escaped

oh, maybe an eighth of them

still enjoys life.

Wolf Biermann (Song)

What will become of our dreams? What will become of our dreams?

In this torn land.

The wounds will not close, will not close

underneath the filthy bandages.

And what will become of our friends? And what will become of our friends?

And what will become of you, and me?

I would rather be gone,

and prefer to, prefer to stay here.

I would rather be gone,

and prefer to, prefer to stay here.

Kluge/Text

Death on the rails

She went from Hamburg to Bremen,

from there to the railway,

she put her head on the rails

until the train came from Barmbeck /

The engineers had indeed seen it

and hit the brakes with a firm hand /

however, the train did not stop,

her red blood trickled into the sand.

The people from the village came

and took possession of the body.

They gave her a beautiful burial

because she had done it out of love /

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FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER The Infanticide (1782)

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Now take, O world! my last farewell - receiving My parting kisses - in these tears they dwell!

Farewell, ye suns that once to joy invited, Changed for the mould beneath the funeral shade!

Proud flew the sails - receding from the land, I watched them waning from the wistful eye,

Thy mother - oh, a hell her heart concealeth, Lone-sitting, lone in social nature’s all!

Lifeless - how lifeless! - see, oh see, before me It lies cold - stiff - O God! - I feel, as swoops the dizzy darkness o’er me

Beauty to me brought guilt - its bloom destroyeth

Lo, in the judgment court I curse the boon.

Kluge

A Turkish man is being arrested for carrying a gun.

Polizist

You are Turkish, right?

Türke

Yes.

Polizist

You can’t walk around town with a gun today.

Türke

[INAUDIBLE]

Polizist

Yes, you bought it, sure …

Türke

[INAUDIBLE] … get rid of it …

Kluge

He explains that he wanted to shoot a pigeon for lunch.

Polizist

When did you buy it? Today, right?

Türke

[INAUDIBLE]

Kluge

About the murder of Alexander II. Frank Wedekind.

Horrible how the seed of evil grows!

Heavens, what an assassination!

Tomorrow two students shall

commit the wicked crime.

Just as they came quietly,

they now go their separate ways.

Woe betide you, Emperor Alexander,

your time is coming!

Voice-over

Hello!

Kluge/Text

He was assigned to the navy and became leader of the Austrian fleet as Rear Admiral in 1854,

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Maximilian

Kluge

which under his leadership gained a lot of importance and was heavily reinforced. In 1856 he got engaged to Princess Charlotte,

Kluge/Text

the daughter of Leopold, King of Belgium, whom he took home as his wife on the 27th of July that same year / Mexico, the oldest American country, has been in a constant uproar for years /

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Benito Juárez

Kluge/Text

This strange man is of indigenous descent, from a small mountain village in the Sierra de Djaca! Even as a little boy he had to earn his own living / He won his master’s favour and became the shopkeeper’s clerk, later he went to university, studied law and became a lawyer / Then he became minister of justice and in 1862 he became constitutional president / When Emperor Maximilian embarqued in the wake of Austrian and French troups, Juárez retreated.

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Benito Juárez as president of Mexico

Kluge

Nevertheless he remained president in the mind of the people

Kluge/Text

Emperor Maximilian’s situation had become untenable over time / Then, surrounded by betrayal, the Emperor moved to the sieged, fortified city Querataro / That’s where he met his fate / His adjutant Lopez betrayed him for 20,000 Reals and turned the unfortunate sovereign and his two generals, Miramon and Wejia, over to their enemies. Despite the efforts of all powers and the intervention of the US delegate, it was not possible to save the emperor / He was court-martialed and sentenced to death / His sentence and that of his two generals was executed on July 19th, 1867 / Maximilian’s waistcoat after the execution (bullet holes) / The dead emperor

Kluge/Text

In the century of the plague

A man lived in Bow, north of London,

A boatman, without means nor distinction, but

loyal to his family. Prudent too in

his loyalty.

From the towns downriver

where the plague was

he hauled food upriver

to the well-to-do, fearful

on their ships

midstream.

Thus the pestilence nourished him.

But in the hut

with this wife and the four-year-old,

the plague was too.

And every night he hauled a sack with provisions

fruit of a day’s work, up from the river to a stone,

a hundred steps from the hut.

Then, retreating, he called the wife. Watching,

how she picked up the sack, observing closely each of her movements,

he stood for a while,

in the safe distance,

and returned her greeting.

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THE COSSACK’s LAMENT

A pigeon-colored eagle sits /

and nurses the cossack, comforts him /

hops around his curly head.

“Grey eagle, be my brother!

And when you begin, o brother Uar,

to peck out my eyes,

fly, fly to my mother!

Bring my mother, consumed with grief,

a message from her son, who’ll never return” /

Kluge/Text

That I can see, that I can hear, are things I do not deserve; but my feelings, those I truly deserve, these herons over white beaches, these wanderers by night that take my heart as their highroad. Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year

Kluge/Text

See, there is the monster,

named Jakob Niedermeier!

Who, after he started as a clerk,

later turned into a murderer, and robber /

But when this was made public,

he was arrested,

and it was decided

that Jakob should be beheaded /

But people forgot,

that Jakob was hunchbacked;

And see, on the scaffold,

oh my! It didn’t work /

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BALLAD FEATURE No. 9 “Cold death interrupts love”

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10 to 11. TEN TO ELEVEN