WORLD MATTERS

WORLD MATTERS: 

The Brexit sorrow of an Anglo-German couple


By Uwe Siemon-Netto for World Tribune on June 24, 2016

“Oh dear, I’d better stay in bed,” groaned my English wife, Gillian,
when I woke her on Friday morning with the sad news 
that her compatriots had voted to leave the European Union. 
Before pulling the blanket over her head she said, 
“Life will never be the same again.”

Four hours later, she rose, showered, dressed in black and
went out with three elderly, black-clad Englishwomen to have lunch 
in the restaurant “La Lavalette” in our little market town 
of Villebois-Lavalette in the Charente region of France.
 
All four have had reasons to mourn. As for Gillian, her reason was evident.
 
Indeed! More than half a century ago, 
we fulfilled for our part the vision of conciliation Winston Churchill 
had confided to his wife, Clementine, shortly after World War II: 
“If only I were ten years younger, 
I could perhaps become the first president of the United States of Europe.”
 
We wanted to leave our gruesome wartime memories behind us.
We had both lost our homes to bombings, 
Gillian in Southampton and I in Leipzig, Germany. 
We had stood before smoldering piles of rubble 
knowing that they contained the shredded corpses of people we loved. 
I was eight years old when my family buried my aunt Martha’s right hand, 
the only recognizable part of her body; 
it was identified by the wedding band on her ring finger.

We had witnessed the bloody consequences of hatred and vowed
to never let that sentiment enter our lives again, 
but now we note with sadness, disgust and fury that the next generation
succumbed to demons we believed exorcized once and forever.
When we met and married in 1962, 
we were so full of hope and buoyancy, 
dancing the Twist in the Saddle Room on Park Lane, London’s first discotheque.

Like many other young Europeans at that time, we just wanted to
love each other, and we kept our marriage vows for 54 years so
far, eleven years longer than the United Kingdom managed to
persevere in the European Union where by all logical measures,
economic, political and otherwise UK should have remained,
especially with the world around us in turmoil.

Yes, we are angry beyond measure because we have seen, 
heard and read the gradual buildup of bigotry 
that was the handiwork of narrowminded ideologues and 
– I state this based on my 60 years in international journalism – 
contemptible tabloid reporters and editors, 
notably those working for Rupert Murdoch’s Sun and his now defunct News of the World.

I myself was the managing editor of a German tabloid once composing wicked headlines. 
But never – and I also can say for all my competitors in Germany – 
never ever were these intended to stir hatred against the people of other nations. 
This much we had learned from our dreadful past. 
In fact there exists no equivalent in the German language for “Hun” and “Kraut” (German), 
“Frog” (Frenchman) and “Wop” (Italian), invectives denigrating England’s European neighbors.
As a journalist, I may borrow a line from Emila Zola: “J’accuse”! 
I accuse irresponsible poseurs in my noble craft of devoting decades 
to undoing gratuitously the conciliatory work Winston Churchill, a former journalist, 
had started when he initiated the process of reconciliation by suggesting 
the formation of the United States of Europe in his Zurich speech of September 19, 1946:

As a journalist, I accuse those who fraudulently call themselves
journalists of helping to create an atmosphere of odium that might
well have contributed to the murder of Jo Cox, 

a pro-EU memberof parliament and mother of two children. 

Oh, you had nothing to do with this, you say? 

Pray dive into those cesspools ofcontemporary online journalism, 

those venomous readers’ blogs
under your repulsive diatribes against the European Union and its
British advocates; plumb the spirit in which they were written: 

This wasn’t the spirit of Winston Churchill; it was the spirit of Joseph Goebbels!

Once I challenged a star columnist of the Daily Telegraph, another EU-hating London paper, 

after reading one of his habitual broadsides against our community of nations,

 which included one the British Europhobes’ constant allusions to World War II. 

Not that I would ever deny how annoyingly the E.U. is often run, 

but for all its shortcomings it has contributed strongly to the prosperity
and peace Gillian’s and my generation desired so fervently.
But explaining this to him in an email, I gave him an opportunity to dig into his treasure of clichés. 

“You just proved again that Germans have no sense of humor,” he wrote back.

“My father was blinded in World War I,” I answered. 

“My wife and I spend our childhood in air raid shelters fearing for our lives night after night. 

When it was over I experienced a legacy of shame, 

I caught tuberculosis I was only allowed 700 calories a day. 

Given all that, I am not ashamed of being called a humorless Hun after
responding to flippant remarks about the war.”

To his credit, he apologized. 

But this didn’t stop his anti-European polemics.

In the eyes of my generation of reporters, 

an alien new tribe of journalists has shaped half of British public opinion on the subject of Europe 

(and, I hasten to add, American opinion as well, to wit Peggy Noonan’s inanely one-sided 

“Declarations” in the Wall Street Journal on the weekend before the Brexit vote). 

When I was a war correspondent in Vietnam and the Middle East 

I always traveled in the company of splendid British colleagues, 

and we teased each other mercilessly, but always in a self-deprecating manner. 

One of my most amusing friends in the trade was Donald Wise of the Daily Mirror, 

a former major in the British commandos with the looks of David Niven.

Once following the Six-Day War in 1967, which I had covered from
the Arab side, Donald and I met on the banks of the Jordan River. 

Israel had just opened the Allenby Bridge allowing Palestinian refugees
to return from Amman back to their homes on the occupied West Bank. 

I accompanied them to the checkpoint. Donald stood on the
other side of the Jordan surrounded by comely Israeli women soldiers.

“Hey, Uwe, you old Nazi, see what you are getting for being such
an old Nazi,” he shouted pointing at the veiled women I was with.
 

“And see what I’ve got for not being an old Nazi,” he continued
squeezing two delicious wenches in mini-skirted uniforms.

The Israeli soldiers hissed and threatening to lob rock against me.
“Stop this,” Donald commanded them with a crisp British officer’s voice. 

“This chap is no Nazi. He is my best friend. 

Don’t you dopey birds have a sense of humor?”

It is the staggering lack of this sense of self-irony combined with
an absence of generosity among the current agitprop types posing
as journalists Gillian I lament so much. Je les accuse! 

I accuse them of shamelessly conspiring with demagogues such as 

Boris Johnson, the Europhobic former mayor of London whose willful
muddling of truths and facts in the Brexit campaign fits the
unkempt way he presents himself in public: 

like an unmade bed. 

I charge them with two unforgivable offenses:

Firstly, they led the British electorate astray at a time when in the
face of Vladimir Putin’s Russian menace, the huge international
refugee crisis and the apocalyptic war declared on all of us
nothing could be more important than European and transatlantic unity.

Secondly they persuaded the muddle-brained generation that
followed Gillian’s and mine to vote against their very children who
according to every poll fervently desired to be proudly British 

but committed Europeans. 

I wonder if they will ever forgive their parents.

*

With great thanks to my dear friend Uwe for this article

*

also thanks

to Karen from  Pas Grand-Chose  for her post:

"To Europe with love"
here 

*
*




A bientôt....

*
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Every comment is very much appreciated and any opinion will be respected.

*
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Remark:

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United
Press International, has been an international journalist for 60
years, covering the U.K., North America, Vietnam, the Middle East
and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto is the
founder and director emeritus of the League of Faithful Masks and
Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Capistrano Beach, California.

Books by Uwe Siemon-Netto: 

Triumph of the Absurd: 

A Reporter's Love for the Abandoned People of Vietnam

available at Amazon     here

*

The Fabricated Luther  -  available at Amazon  here

 

Reflection

Watching the images of the civilian victims of war from South Sudan to Syria and Afghanistan
on daily TV-News is wrenching, especially as I consider the unspeakable fate of the children.
 Strangely, it makes me think almost nostalgically of the few sparks of humanity
 that brought the light of Christmas to the trenches during the fratricidal catastrophe 
the centenary of which we will commemorate in the New Year.

 I am thinking of World War I where on Holy Night allied and German soldiers
sang their common chorals together and then surfaced from their dugouts
to celebrate the birth of the Savior the men on both sides believed in.





It is beyond my imagination how these moving scenes, 
so vividly described by Erich Maria Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front, 
can be replicated on today’s settings, which are culturally so utterly different 
and yet display even more insistently the need for the love and decency 
implanted in all human beings by their common Creator.

*

The Christmas Truce:

Out of the hundreds of Christmas Truce letters transcribed to date, 
this letter by Private Frederick W Heath 

(transcribed by Marian Robson) is perhaps the most remarkable. 

A beautifully-written account from the start of the truce until its end:

"The night closed in early - the ghostly shadows that haunt the trenches came to keep us company as we stood to arms. Under a pale moon, one could just see the grave-like rise of ground which marked the German trenches two hundred yards away. Fires in the English lines had died down, and only the squelch of the sodden boots in the slushy mud, the whispered orders of the officers and the NCOs, and the moan of the wind broke the silence of the night. The soldiers' Christmas Eve had come at last, and it was hardly the time or place to feel grateful for it.

Memory in her shrine kept us in a trance of saddened silence. Back somewhere in England, the fires were burning in cosy rooms; in fancy I heard laughter and the thousand melodies of reunion on Christmas Eve. With overcoat thick with wet mud, hands cracked and sore with the frost, I leaned against the side of the trench, and, looking through my loophole, fixed weary eyes on the German trenches. Thoughts surged madly in my mind; but they had no sequence, no cohesion. Mostly they were of home as I had known it through the years that had brought me to this. I asked myself why I was in the trenches in misery at all, when I might have been in England warm and prosperous. That involuntary question was quickly answered. For is there not a multitude of houses in England, and has not someone to keep them intact? I thought of a shattered cottage, and felt glad that I was in the trenches. That cottage was once somebody's home.

Still looking and dreaming, my eyes caught a flare in the darkness. A light in the enemy's trenches was so rare at that hour that I passed a message down the line. I had hardly spoken when light after light sprang up along the German front. Then quite near our dug-outs, so near as to make me start and clutch my rifle, I heard a voice. there was no mistaking that voice with its guttural ring. With ears strained, I listened, and then, all down our line of trenches there came to our ears a greeting unique in war:
"English soldier, English soldier, a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas!"

Following that salute boomed the invitation from those harsh voices: "Come out, English soldier; come out here to us." For some little time we were cautious, and did not even answer. Officers, fearing treachery, ordered the men to be silent. But up and down our line one heard the men answering that Christmas greeting from the enemy. How could we resist wishing each other a Merry Christmas, even though we might be at each other's throats immediately afterwards? So we kept up a running conversation with the Germans, all the while our hands ready on our rifles. Blood and peace, enmity and fraternity - war's most amazing paradox. The night wore on to dawn - a night made easier by songs from the German trenches, the pipings of piccolos and from our broad lines laughter and Christmas carols. Not a shot was fired, except for down on our right, where the French artillery were at work.

Came the dawn, pencilling the sky with grey and pink. Under the early light we saw our foes moving recklessly about on top of their trenches. Here, indeed, was courage; no seeking the security of the shelter but a brazen invitation to us to shoot and kill with deadly certainty. But did we shoot? Not likely! We stood up ourselves and called benisons on the Germans.
Then came the invitation to fall out of the trenches and meet half way.

Still cautious we hung back. Not so the others. They ran forward in little groups, with hands held up above their heads, asking us to do the same. Not for long could such an appeal be resisted - beside, was not the courage up to now all on one side? Jumping up onto the parapet, a few of us advanced to meet the on-coming Germans. Out went the hands and tightened in the grip of friendship. Christmas had made the bitterest foes friends.

Here was no desire to kill, but just the wish of a few simple soldiers (and no one is quite so simple as a soldier) that on Christmas Day, at any rate, the force of fire should cease. We gave each other cigarettes and exchanged all manner of things. We wrote our names and addresses on the field service postcards, and exchanged them for German ones. We cut the buttons off our coats and took in exchange the Imperial Arms of Germany. But the gift of gifts was Christmas pudding. The sight of it made the Germans' eyes grow wide with hungry wonder, and at the first bite of it they were our friends for ever. Given a sufficient quantity of
Christmas puddings, every German in the trenches before ours would have surrendered.

And so we stayed together for a while and talked, even though all the time there was a strained feeling of suspicion which rather spoilt this Christmas armistice. We could not help remembering that we were enemies, even though we had shaken hands. We dare not advance too near their trenches lest we saw too much, nor could the Germans come beyond the barbed wire which lay before ours. After we had chatted, we turned back to our respective trenches for breakfast.

All through the day no shot was fired, and all we did was talk to each other and make confessions which, perhaps, were truer at that curious moment than in the normal times of war. How far this unofficial truce extended along the lines I do not know, but I do know that what I have written here applies to the -- on our side and the 158th German Brigade, composed of Westphalians.

As I finish this short and scrappy description of a strangely human event, we are pouring rapid fire into the German trenches, and they are returning the compliment just as fiercely. Screeching through the air above us are the shattering shells of rival batteries of artillery. So we are back once more to the ordeal of fire."

By Pvt. Frederick W. Heath, 1914

 It was December 25, 1914, 
only 5 months into World War I, German, British, and French soldiers, 
already sick and tired of the senseless killing, 
disobeyed their superiors and fraternized with "the enemy" 
along two-thirds of the Western Front (a crime punishable by death in times of war).


Here is a very moving documentary film from the BBC:
 

A well made film showing some of the good sides of human beings.
(Don't be put-off by the first few scenes, I urge you to watch the whole film;
best on full screen.)
 

On Christmas Eve, 
the miserable wet weather of the season relented a little, with a hard frost that made life easier for 
all on the front. Fighting continued, but meetings were held between the sides to collect and bury bodies. 
This fraternisation continued into Christmas day, tolerated but not approved of by the British army authorities: it is the Germans who generally initiate contact. Some men share cigarettes and cigars; 
elsewhere beer and plum pudding; letters are passed on; often the erstwhile combatants simply talk. 
You can read some of the fascinating first-hand accounts at the well-sourced Hellfire Corner. 
There’s something genuinely humbling about the tales the soldiers tell: 
 and a wonderful sense of perplexity and delight amongst those taking part that such a thing could occur:

"They finished their carol and we thought that we ought to retaliate in some way, so we sang ‘The first Noël’, 
and when we finished that they all began clapping; and then they struck up another favourite of theirs, ‘O Tannenbaum’. 
And so it went on. First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words ‘Adeste Fidéles’. 
And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war"

*

25 December 1914,  
On Christmas Day, many soldiers from both sides – as well as, to a lesser degree, from French units –
independently ventured into no man’s land, where they mingled, exchanging food and souvenirs. 
Food and supplies were exchanged on a one to one basis, while in some areas men borrowed tools 
and equipment from the enemy, in order to quickly improve their own living conditions. 
As well as joint burial ceremonies of the dead, several meetings ended in carol-singing....


....or – famously – games of football.


  In the front lines, the fraternisation of Christmas Eve is continued throughout the day; not all units know about it, and it is not universal but is widespread over at least half of the British front. Many bodies that have been lying out in no man's land are buried, some in joint burials. Many men record the strange and wonderful events; may men exchange tokens or addresses with German soldiers, many of whom speak English. 

 

 26 December, Boxing Day

British and German troops meet in no man's land. Boxing Day, 1914.

Some snow. In some areas, the friendly spirit was resumed. Gradually however, officers and men on both sides began to resume normal trench caution. The atmosphere in general remained relaxed as Brigade and Battalion officers took a pragmatic view of events. The chance was taken to carry out work that would otherwise have been hazardous. By now, however, news of the truce was reaching higher commands. 
General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien requested particulars of those units and officers who took part, 
with a view to disciplinary action. In the event, no action was taken against any unit or officer. 





27-31 December 1914
 The weather turns wet again, with rain, sleet and storms. There were instances of men disappearing in the flooded trenches. Yet in some areas the friendly mood remained for several days and there was almost no firing, although open fraternisation gradually died away. On New Years Eve, there was a certain amount of singing and exchange of messages, but no truce as such.




 

 ...The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been taught about people. 
It gives us a glimpse of the world as we wish it could be and says, "This really happened once." 
It reminds us of those thoughts we keep hidden away, out of range of the TV and newspaper stories 
that tell us how trivial and mean human life is. 
It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true:  
The world really could be different.

 by David G. Stratman from his book   We Can Change the World 

What happened on that Christmas of 1914

may inspire the peacemakers of today—for, now as always, 

the best time to make peace is long before the armies go to war.

*
*
*

Postscript

The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was over 37 million.

There were over 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history.

The total number of deaths includes about 10 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians. 

At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead.

*

Syrian Civil War  

33 months of conflict since 2011

 This unrelenting war has continued for over two years 

with devastating consequences for the Syrian people

On 24 July 2013, 
the United Nations put out an estimate of over 100,000 that had died in the war.

 

UNICEF reported that over 500 children had been killed by early February 2012. 

Another 400 children have been reportedly arrested and tortured in Syrian prisons. 

Both claims have been contested by the Syrian government. 

Additionally, over 600 detainees and political prisoners have died under torture.

By early December 2013, 

the opposition activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) 

reported the number of children killed in the conflict had risen to 6,627, 

while at the same time 4,454 women were also killed. 

According to the UN, 6,561 children were killed by mid-June 2013. 

The Oxford Research Group said that 

a total of 11,420 children had been killed in the conflict by late November 2013.

 The UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) says that millions of Syrians 

living in perpetual suffering are in need of aid, 

and this number will reach 9.3 million by the end of next year.

There are currently 2.4 million Syrian refugees 

living in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. 

The number will nearly double to 4.1 million by the conclusion of next year.

*

Private Frederick W Heath

here 

Remembrance Day - A Letter from a close Friend

Đức 

A reporter’s love for the wounded people of Vietnam 

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

Dear Karin,

I would like you to know that on this Veterans’ Day I am thinking particularly fondly of you.
Your wonderful media pub in Hamburg, Funk-Klause became my favorite watering hole
and provided me much comfort when I needed it most.

When I arrived in Hamburg in 1973 to assume the post of managing editor of a local tabloid,
I had just drawn the line under an exciting but also wrenching assignment as a war reporter in Vietnam. 
Almost half a century has gone by since I was first sent there by Axel Springer Verlag, 

West Germany’s most important newspaper publisher.

  As you know I have finally written my memoirs.
They are now out in English, and a German-language edition will follow early next year.

Uwe (right) in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, 1965, 
the first major clash between division-size U.S. and North Vietnamese units.

The book is titled, “Đức":
A reporter’s love for the wounded people of Vietnam.
 The word, Đức, in the title refers to the Vietnamese term for German,
and Đức was the nickname my Vietnamese friends gave me.

It reflects my experiences as a journalist but also discusses my work
as a chaplain for Vietnam Veterans in the 1980s.
I don’t know if I have told you this but partly as a result of this Vietnam experiences
I turned to theology, earning an MA and a Ph.D. in this field
and writing a textbook on pastoral care to former warriors,
titled, “The Acquittal of God, A Theology for Vietnam Veterans.”

I have never quite got over the dreadful treatment
these brave young men received at the hands of their compatriots
when they returned from the front with wounded bodies and, worse, injured souls.
All of the nearly 100 vets I provided pastoral care for during my years
as a student of Lutheran theology told me that they had been called
“baby killers” literally on their first day home.
  

The WRONG Side Won
 (Please note my story in the upcoming December 2013 issue 
of the American Legion Magazine. Uwe)

In the words of Peter R. Kann, the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal,: 

“Uwe Siemon-Netto, the distinguished German journalist, has written a masterful memoir… 

He captures, as very few others have, the pathos and absurdities, the combat, cruelties 

and human cost of a conflict, which -- as he unflinchingly and correctly argues -- 

the wrong side won."

“From the street cafes of Saigon to special forces outposts in the central highlands,
from villages where terror comes at night to the carnage and war crimes visited on the city of Hue at Tet, 1968,
Uwe brings a brilliant reportorial talent and touch.  Above all, Uwe writes about the Vietnamese people:
street urchins and buffalo boys, courageous warriors and hapless war victims,
and the full human panoply of a society at war."

Women and children crouch in a muddy canal 
as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, 20 miles west of Saigon. 
In the background, the paratroopers of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade escorted the civilians
 through a series of firefights during U.S. assault on a Vite Cong stronghold. Jan.1, 1966"
 by Uwe's friend, the German photographer Horst Faas

*
 

“As a German, Uwe had, as he puts it, ‘no dog in this fight’, 

but he understood the rights and wrongs of this war better than almost anyone and his heart,

 throughout the powerful and moving volume, is always and ardently with the Vietnamese people.”

Bestseller author Barbara Taylor Bradford calls Đức
“...one of the most touching and moving books I have read in a long time.
It is also hilarious… I did cry at times, but I also laughed.......”
read full review on Barbara's blog
 here

*

Former UPI editor-in-chief John O’Sullivan, my ex-boss,
describes Đức ” as an “angry account of a betrayal of a nation,”
adding, “But there is hope about people on every page too.”

In my epilogue,I raise the timely question 
of whether contemporary democracies are politically and psychologically equipped 
and patient enough to fight guerrilla wars to a victorious conclusion.
Citing the former North Vietnamese defense minister Vo Nguyen Giap’s assessment that they are not,
 I observe in Đức with an eye on Afghanistan,
“Even more dangerous totalitarians [than the Vietnamese Communists] are taking note today.”

Much love,Uwe

*
Thank YOU my dear friend Uwe, 
karin

**
**
**

Written in English, Duc is available on Amazon. 

It is also on offer in Vietnamese, and a German edition will be published by Brunnen-Verlag Basel 

in Switzerland under the title, Đức, der Deutsche: Mein Vietnam, in early 2014. 

Cover of Uwe Siemon-Netto's book, Duc, 
showing  the author in a lull of the fighting during the 1968 Tet Offensive in Hué.

“This brilliant book reminds me of Theodore White’s In Search of History,”
commented Maj. Gen. H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty: 
Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. 

 “Uwe Siemon-Netto challenges facets of our flawed historical memory of the Vietnam War,” McMaster continued.
 *
As Herbert Kremp, the former editor-in-chief of Die Welt writes,
“Uwe Siemon-Netto took nearly 50 years to sum up the Vietnam War –
a seldom practiced historian’s virtue presented in reportage style. What a combination!”

*
"Excellent background and history of the Vietnam war as told by a reporter who was there. 
Important book for all students of history and anyone interested in this aspect of American foreign policy 
with numerous applications to the struggles going on today. 
An engaging and well written book which is a delight to read."
Review by  By Cornelia Richardson on July 17, 2013, at Amazon
here

Order your book from Barnes And Noble:  

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/duc-uwe-siemon-netto/1116031951?ean=9781482692808
Or on Amazon.com:  

http://www.amazon.com/Duc-reporters-wounded-people-Vietnam/dp/1482692805

 *

 War is Hell.

An unidentified U.S. personnel wears this sign on his helmet. 
He is with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Battalion on defense duty 
 at Phuc Vinh airstrip in South Vietnam. June 18, 1965
by Horst Faas, 
German photo-journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner

  

War is Hell.

*
******
*
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Links:

Book description and reviews:  here

Barbara Bradford Taylor blog: here

Uwe Siemon Netto:  here

Horst Faas:  here   and  here

before there was wikipedia...Diderot's 300th Birthday

"A thing is not proved just no one has ever questioned it.

What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into.

Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth .

It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone."
 Diderot

Grande figure de la philosophie des Lumières et créateur de l’Encyclopédie,  
Denis Diderot, né à Langres (Haute-Marne) 
le 5 octobre 1713, mort à Paris le 31 juillet 1784.

Diderot by Louis-Michel van Loo, 1767
*



Before there was Wikipedia, there were encyclopedias — 
 October 5th marked the 300th birthday of the father of one of the world's most important.

18th century French philosopher Denis Diderot 
was the driving force behind the Encyclopédie,  
one of the first compendiums of human knowledge of its time.


 

*

The anniversary of his birth has prompted calls for Diderot to receive France's highest honor: 
have his remains reinterred in Paris' Pantheon, 
a mausoleum of sorts for France's national heroes.

*
*

'The Major Intellectual Adventure Of The 18^th Century'

Diderot was one of the major figures of the French Enlightenment, 
a time when thinkers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau 
expounded on the freedoms of religion and expression, 
as well as the power of reason over blind faith.
As a philosopher, though, Diderot has kind of been lost to history. 
Walk down into the crypts below the Pantheon and you will find huge, 
glorious tombs to Voltaire and Rousseau — but no Diderot.

At 300, Encyclopedia Pioneer May Yet Get A Hero's Burial.....

	'Une diner des philosophes'
	by Jean Huber Voltaire
	Denis Diderot is the third from the right

 *
“Our observation of nature must be diligent, 
our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. 
We rarely see these three means combined and for this reason, 
creative geniuses are not common."

Portrait of Denis Diderot, by Fragonard.

*

  “Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism."

*

A block or so away at the Sorbonne Library, Philippe Marcerou flips through an original, 
leather-bound edition of Diderot's crowning achievement. 
The 28-volume Encyclopédie was first published in 1751 
and took Diderot more than 20 years to complete, 
with the help of more than a hundred other writers.

"The Encyclopédie is the major intellectual adventure of the 18^th century," 
says Marcerou, the library's director.
The collection's big innovation was Diderot's system of cross-references that link disparate 
but related articles together — what Marcerou calls a kind of search algorithm for the 1700s.

"Today everybody knows Google," Marcerou says. 
"The major invention of the Encyclopédie is the same system: 
The cross-reference is a way of making a kind of web out of the knowledge."

Caroline Warman, a French scholar at the University of Oxford, 
says even the simplest of entries can lead readers on a wild journey. 

Take the definition for apricot: 
It's just a run-of-the-mill, botanical entry, but at the end there's this little asterisk.
"The asterisk introduces a recipe written by Diderot himself about how to make apricot jam," 
Warman says. 
Diderot recommends using green apricots and filling a basin half full with water, 
but the sugar is where things get really interesting.

And if you're Marcerou, that might prompt you to look up liberty, 
which he says is one of the Encyclopédie's most important entries.

"The definition is: 
'Liberty consists in the power of an intelligent being (to do) 
what he wants according to his own determination,' " 
Marcerou says, reading from the Encyclopédie.

"This particular definition, in the middle of the 18^th century, 
is something absolutely incredible."

Ultimately, he says, 
Diderot challenged the authority of the French monarchy and the Catholic Church.

“Only passions, great passions, 
can elevate the soul to great things."

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...Some scholars say the ideas circulated in the Encyclopédie helped lay the foundation 
for the French Revolution, and even the American Revolution that came before it.

Andrew Curran, an expert on Diderot at Wesleyan University, 
explains that with over 20,000 copies in print, 
Diderot's encyclopedias were among the most widely distributed 
 and influential books of the era.

"Commercially, the encyclopedia did extremely well," he says. 
"Diderot himself made very little money off the whole project, 
but the publishers became extremely rich."....

read all     here


 
Statue of Denis Diderot 
in the city of Langres, his birthplace

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“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge. . . 
observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. 
Observation collects facts, 
reflection combines them, 
experimentation verifies the result of that combination."
Denis Diderot

 
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links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Diderot  http://www.npr.org/2013/10/05/228892676/at-300-encyclopedia-pioneer-may-yet-get-a-heros-burial