Mephisto

"It seems to me that the greatest works of literature deal with the human soul caught in the stampede of time, unable to gauge the profundity of what passes over it. like the characters in Yeats who live through terrifying events but cannot understand them: in this way history passes over most of us. Society is caught in a convulsion, whether of growth or death, and ordinary people are destroyed. They do not, however, understand that they are 'destroyed'." - Joyce Carol Oates.

MEPHISTO by Klaus Mann, translated from the German by Robin Smith New York, Penguin Books: 1977 (1936)

Hendrik Hofgen is a man obsessed. A journeyman actor, when the Nazis seize power in Germany, Hofgen renounces his Communist friends and deserts his wife further his career. His diabolical performance as Mephistopheles in Faust becomes his stepping-stone to fame. Hermann Göring makes Hofgen head of the State Theatre where he enjoys the adulation of the public, entree into high society, and his own mansion. Ultimately, the state of depravity that Hofgen portrays so brilliantly on stage envelops his life, his profession, and his country.

Klaus Mann wrote Mephisto while living in exile in Amsterdam. The protagonist, actor Hendrik Hofgen, was based on Mann's merciless observations of his brother-in-law Gustaf Grundgens (married to the novelist's sister, Erica Mann). Grundgens, an active Communist in the 1920s, had changed course smoothly in the 1930s, acquiring Hermann Goering as his protector and a prestigious job as Director of the German State Theater. Of Hofgen (Grundgens), Mann wrote that he was "the abject type of treacherous intellectual who prostitutes his talent for the sake of some tawdry fame and transitory wealth." Hofgen's female counterpart, Lotte Lindenthal, an actress of meager skills, owes her position to goverment protection.

Though the book was published in Amsterdam in 1936, the Mann family's attempts to suppress the book led to decades of legal battles, the longest running lawsuit in German publishing history, and the banning of Mephisto in Germany in the 1960s.

Son of Nobel Prize winning novelist Thomas Mann, Klaus Mann (1906-1949) began his writing career as a drama critic in 1920s Berlin. Though born into a succesful family, his life was difficult. Relations with his famous father were painful, he was harassed because of his homosexuality, and tormented by his early perception of the evils of National Socialism, Klaus fled Germany in 1933, moving to Amsterdam and eventually to the United States, becoming a citizen in 1943.

After World war II ended, Klaus Mann returned to Europe, where he died from an overdose of sleeping pills at Cannes. Despondent at the growing hostility between the West and the Soviet Union, Mann feared another war and wrote that European intellectuals should protest by committing a wave of suicides. His publisher, Themistocles Hoetls, was the last person to see Mann alive. Mann's Der Vulkan (1939), a story of German exiles, is one of 20th century germnay's most respected novels. Mephisto is just as remarkable, a relentless vision by a man who saw it coming.

"The River That Flows Two Ways"

BEFORE ALBANY: An Archaeology of Native-Dutch Relations in the Capital Region 1600-1664. By James W. Bradley, Albany, University of the State of New York: 2007 974.743 BRA

Archaeologist as historical detective, that is how James Bradley approaches this story of the material reality that still exist under present-day upstate New York. The Mahicans were foragers and fishers, living on the rich soil of the Hudson River flood plain south of Troy. The Mohawks (or people of the flint), much better known today, were the eastern-most members of the Iroquois Nations. The major Mohawk settlements were situated in Montgomery County, about thirty miles west of Albany. Although the two groups were reputed to be long time enemies, it appears, writes James Bradley, that their relations were cordial before the appearance of European traders and settlers. The river and its resources had been a source of cooperation among tribes for centuries.
Moving on to the Dutch Republic, where the population of Amsterdam tripled between 1600 and 1650, the end of hostilities with Spain enabled the Dutch to turn their energies to trade and exploration of the route across the North Atlantic to the New World. Bradley uses artifacts from sites on both sides of the Atlantic to demonstrate the growth and importance of trade. For native people the use of brass and iron quickly passed from novelty to necessity, as they established steady contacts with the Europeans.
However those relations changed drastically under the pressure of settlement. The New Netherland Corporation that settled Manhatta after 1624, was bankrupt by 1639. Rensselaerwijck, run by Killian van Rensselaer, diversified from fur trading to farming for export, but even after the establishment of Fort Orange at Albany, competition was fierce, allies were sought and native peoples began to resist the turmoil caused by the imported concept of private land ownership, not to mention the attentions of proselytizing Christian missionaries. The 1640s were the decade when trade became secondary to political arrangements in maintaining alliances.

As native peoples became dependent on new tools, this undermined their traditional way of life, as did new (European) diseases and the introduction of alcohol. The 1650s saw the first of many Anglo-Dutch wars in North America. Although the Dutch (notably Arent van Curler) had made efforts to deal fairly with native peoples, their presence still caused stress. By 1664, although Beaverwyck was an established and prosperous community and the Mohawks had made treaties with them, most of the Mahicans had decided to leave their traditional settlements and move elsewhere.
Bradley urges us to see in these relationships the origins of many ideas we now accept unquestioningly: “We still value hard work and making money. Community remains fundamentally important to us, even if the definition of it continues to change. Tolerance – the need to get along, to live together even when we don’t like each other – is still one of our core values.”

Before it was named for Henry Hudson, the river was Muhheakunnuk, meaning 'great waters constantly in motion, owing to the tides. One of the world's great rivers, the Hudson has its source in a small lake on the side of a mountain in the southwestern Adirondacks. From there it winds it way east to Albany where the Atlantic tides make their presence felt and the river turns south, heading for its outlet at New York Bay. Two hundred miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, the force of its movement has dug a trough on the ocean floor.