Namibia - The difficult Years. Helmut Lauschke
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to encourage Kristofina to go her last way given from the fate after lightning had hit her so severely. I had her burnt face in mind when her eyes ‘told’ that she cannot keep up her life. Now Kristofina should go her way even when she must do it alone, but bravely and with confidence in her soul.
The phone rang close to ten o’clock. The nurse from the intensive care unit told that Kristofina had passed away five minutes ago. I became tears in my eyes and wished this young girl the great peace by crossing the last bridge. I felt deeply sorry for her that she had to cross the bridge alone without taken on her mother’s hand. I was shaken by the fact that life on this planet could be so short and unfulfilled. After I had put down the receiver, I opened the ‘The Book of the Praises’ and sent her the following verses of the last psalm afterwards: “O praise him ! / Praise God in his sanctuary, praise him at the vault of his power./ Praise him in regard to his mighty, praise him according to the fulness of his greatness !”
I had fallen asleep when Mr. T. knocked at the door around eleven o’clock. He came from the Sunday service in the white painted church with the short and small bell tower over the main entrance where the pigeons sit in front of the small bell chair and shit the churchgoers on their heads and Sunday clothes. Pigeons could shit into the face, if the churchgoer looked up to the forth and back swinging bell with its small rings or was looking up for something else. Mr. T. had dropped his wife and the three sons at his house to have a chat with me. He took a seat in one of the two outseated armchairs and lit up a ‘Camel’-cigarette, while I went into the shower. When I came back barefoot with a clean short-sleeved shirt and shorts, Mr. T. leafed in the book ‘The great philosophers’ of the historical philosopher Karl Jaspers, who had taught this subject at Basel university.
It was the lack of understanding German language that he put the book aside and said that he had a great interest in philosophical books, when he was at school. He recently had read some essays of Martin Buber. I asked Mr. T. about the core of Buber’s philosophy. He said that the core of his philosophy is the I-You-relationship or the dialogue between the ‘I’ and the ‘You’ reflecting on man and mankind. I said that each philosophy should go about the personality in its cultural diversity from man to man to understand each other more and comprehensively and to control together the ‘it’ by examining the social aspects which go beyond the analytic scientific thinking what had led to the manipulation of minds by setting the materialistic priorities that had caused spiritual impoverishment and ignorance. People of the day do question the existence of God or any supernatural power. They ask, if such an existence could accord with the principles of natural or other sciences and with human reason and reasonableness. With the ‘disappearance’ of God, the values of ethics and humanity had dramatically declined.
The materialistic-oriented manipulation has led to the small-scale thinking and loss of the humanistic education and destruction of the personality with decadence and coarsening in human character and behaviour. It is demonstrated by examples to what human beings were able to do when they kill on a mass scale other people as done in the holocaust. The core in Buber’s philosophy is the dialectic contemplation in human life in which things are contrasted in dialogues that the subject is finding itself through and in other subjects. The way of thoughtful and you-related communication leads to a mutual understanding which has to be seen as the basic fundament in social life. It is the dialogue what gives the foundation that human beings respect and love each other in values of life and dignity.
In connection with the holocaust, Mr. T. mentioned the Boer war when British put thirty thousand Boers with women and children behind bars where most of them had starved to death. I mentioned the great and courageous conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler of the Berlin philharmonic orchestra, who had saved lives of some Jewish members of the ensemble by his personal intervention with propaganda minister Goebbels. There were musicians who left with other Jewish artists, doctors and scientists Nazi-Germany and emigrated to Britain or the United States, while others were still deported and killed in the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka.
It was the personal commitment of this sensitive conductor what was not without taking the risk. His dedication of saving other lives had made Wilhelm Furwängler immortal as he was as conductor in presenting the symphonies of Beethoven. The other savers were the families in the working-class areas of Berlin. These families kept circa three thousand Jews and some other thousands of victims hidden behind wardrobes, in attics and cellars. It were families of labourers which supplied them with food and washed and ironed their clothes and linen and were caring for them till the end of the terror regime. They risked their own lives, when the club-footed propaganda minister trumpeted with big lips that Berlin was ‘cleaned’ and free of Jews. I didn’t mention the chamber orchestra in Auschwitz concentration camp where the deported philharmonic musicians played Beethoven and Brahms and the SS-officers and other Nazi-bigwigs attended the concerts in their sparkling killer uniforms, who had sent these musicians afterwards as a matter of routine naked into the death chambers. I also did not mention Isabel the Catholic, the daughter of Philip II of Spain, who robbed the Jews of their belongings and ordered then the merciless massacre on them.
The topic of the conversation came on Buber’s Psalms’ translation into German which Hermann Hesse praised as an authentic linguistic creation close to the original Hebrew text. I cited the fifth and sixth and the last psalm of ‘The Book of the Praises’ that I read for Kristofina in the morning. It was the last psalm I has sent her as she had passed away. I told Mr. T. the story of Kristofina how she was hit from lightning that she had burns in the face, on the left arm and the right lower leg with the open and charred shin bone. I told that I have seen her on the trolley in the outpatient department shortly after three o’clock and was shocked about the severity and that a human being could survive such a strike though her eyes already signaled that she couldn’t keep up her life. Despite the necessary medical measures were taken, a few hours later she passed away. Her soul has left the physical body. The termination of her short life was not forseeable, since a human being belongs to both the soul and the physical body and both together determine way and length of life.
Mr. T. stood up and said that his family was waiting. He thanked for the conversation and expressed the wish to resume the talk which he assessed as substantial when he climbed into his Toyota ‘Hiace’. Mr. T. closed the driver’s door and left the place. I closed the gate and went back to the small sitting room and left the door to the veranda open to get some air movement. It was hot and the flat had no air conditioning. I made a cup of instant coffee added with chicory and put the cup on the small table in the sitting room. I lit up a ‘Stuyvesant’ and leant back in the outseated armchair with Karl Jasper’s ‘The great philosophers’. I continued reading where the philosopher said: “The value of the reality of the four most influential human beings (Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus) is the experience of the basic human situation and the assurance of the human assignment which had been spoken out by the four important people. They had touched and answered the ultimate questions by their lives and work. Each of these personalities is to us as following human beings as to mankind at large like a permanent and restless questioning.” [R. Piper & Co. Publishers, München-Zürich 1981, 3rd edition, Volume I page 227]
I reflected on my life and possible meanings and included the young girl Kristofina in this contemplation. Every second of thinking about life, new questions came up that I could not answer. I asked himself, if I had learnt something new to understand the basic things in life when I discovered that the answers became lesser and more doubtful the more I questioned the various aspects of life. The answers were more unsatisfying the older I got. It became difficult to understand the reason for the question-answer gaping. The fact was not compatible with the conception and meaning of life. I closed the book and put ‘The great philosphers’ back on the table. I worried about the inability in putting things together when I went for another cup of coffee and came back and lit up another cigarette. I sat back in the armchair and followed the smoke rings and trails when I remembered older people’s sayings not to look for an answer of everything what was going on in life.
Smoke trails moved under the asbestos mats in the ceiling and along the wall as I thought of Kristofina. I saw her burnt face and body with the charred shin bone and saw her eyes which told that she will lose her life what she gave up a few hours