One Small Act of Martyrdom

Börsenplatz, Köln (Cologne), Germany

You would've expected this memorial to be in a place of prominence for the city of Cologne; instead, it is a few kilometers away from the heart of the city (Cathedral Square), assigned to a humble street where the tourist buses unload their passengers.

What I speak of is the memorial to  Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, otherwise known as St. Edith Stein.

First about the cathedral.  The mighty Cathedral of St. Peter was started in the middle of the thirteenth century (Approximately 500 years before things started to get interesting in the soon-to-be United States).  The completion of the project took place in the 1880's, only to be nearly undone in the 1940's by World War II.  More than a dozen bombs fell on the church, but somehow the walls remained intact.  (The Allies had quite the pragmatic reason for leaving the cathedral intact: it was a massive marker for the rest of this industrial city).

All major cities in Europe have their crests; Köln (Cologne) has an insignia with twofold significance. The upper portion has three crowns, a reference to the Reliquary of the Three Magi enshrined in the cathedral.  The lower portion has eleven tears, indicating the fabled thousands of virgins and St. Ursula who were murdered by Attila the Hun (and by this sacrifice claiming the city for Catholicism).  It's a fantastic story, and regardless of its veracity assured the footprint of the faith – the Cathedral of Saint Peter stands in witness to this.

But as I said, a few kilometers away, standing only about six feet tall (as opposed to the 515 feet of the Cathedral) is this striking monument.  

Created by Bert Gerresheim in the 1990's, it shows the evolution of Edith Stein from a young Jewish woman to a divided soul searching for truth, and finally, to a Carmelite nun carrying forward the crucifix of her dying Savior.  These three figures are clearly on a journey, which is represented at the other end of the statue's platform. What appears there is both appalling and immediately recognizable as the piles and piles of empty shoes – sole evidence of what took place in the gas chambers built by the Nazis.

Edith Stein was drawn deeply into the Catholic faith after reading the works of the woman she chose to name herself after: Teresa of Ávila.  After joining the Carmelites, the order sent her to the Netherlands to escape the grasp of the Nazis, but this proved to be futile, for in 1942 all baptized Catholics of Jewish origin were arrested and eventually transported to Auschwitz.  

Sr. Teresa was given an opportunity to escape before the Gestapo got their hands on her.  But she refused.  She died in the gas chambers of Birkenau in early August, 1942.

I ponder the immensity of this woman's witness, her refusal to abandon the road that would lead to her martyrdom, and the fact that this memorial to her bravery sits, almost ignored, near a bus depot.  Our world is filled with both atrocities and absurdities, especially when it relegates its heroines to a place that would seem to be an afterthought.

Car Talk

Heading out of Amsterdam, the Netherlands....

Now, about those "quadracylces that I spoke of yesterday – they are these measly little things that look like a cardboard box on wheels, usually painted a mettalic grey (or another equally depressing color).  Too small to be a car, too big to be a bicycle, it is a "vehicle" in the loosest sense of the word, with an amazing identity crisis.  But hey, you can park them in about the same amount of space as a garbage can.  They make Smart cars look like Cadillacs..

I think, though, that I'd rather not shell out for such a contraption.

Oh, and I mentioned the vehicles that looked like they stepped out of a Star Wars set.  That would be called the "Microlino."  Talk about small... try stacking this up against an American Ford F-150!  I think you could fit four of them in the bed of that pickup!

Over the next few days, my words will be written from the Rhine River, as we continue on to the Continent.  To all of you who have been reading and sharing my thoughts, thank you for taking the time to do this!  Click on and become a follower  – in that way you'll not miss out on my musings.

What You See When You Look Up

Bloemgracht, The Jordaan District, Amsterdam

Amsterdam (the city that grew up around the dike of the Amstel River) is reported to have about 900,000 people in it.  It is also estimated to have about 800,000 bicycles as well.  Which means that, if you're walking throughout this city, you'd be very wise to keep your eyes to the right and to the left of you: cars, bicycles, trams, motorcycles, vespas, quadracycles (more on this tomorrow), vehicles that look like an afterthought from the set of Star Wars –  they all move around this city at a dizzying pace.

But if you have the courage to look up, if only for a moment, you'll see some curious things gazing down on you. Whales, references to the Bible, Latin inscriptions – they are all here just begging for you to notice them.

However, in order to do this, you need to look up – which means taking your life in your hands when wheels are flying all around you.

In the Jordaan section of Amsterdam, where we are staying, the majority of the homes are hundreds of years old.  And the vast majority of these are crowned with gables as unique as the buildings are ancient.  At the top of one, I saw a huge, half-story statement: "AMOR VINCIT!" it proclaimed – "Love Conquers!"  

At yet another home, perched on a street corner, was a Biblical reference looking down on us, something that would've totally been missed had I not stopped and taken in my surroundings.  There, emblazoned in Dutch, was a huge tile labelled "Noah's Ark;" above the craft sat a huge dove, holding an olive branch.  I wondered: Who decided to interrupt the brickwork of this building to make such a proclamation?  Why this Bible reference?  Did it have anything to do with flooding (and the fact that where we were standing was below sea level?)

Every building tells a story.  You just have to slow down and listen to what they're saying.

And watch out for the bicycles.

A Teenager vs. the Reich

Anne Frank Huis, Westermarkt 20, Amsterdam

Of course I read her diary in high school.  Didn't you?  But there is the aspect of being here, walking through (and under) the doorjamb behind the fake bookcase that led to the Secret Annex: the three story bungalow that served as the hiding place for the Frank family for more than two years. 

When you arrive, you can choose between two handheld audio guides.  The first choice is a sort of professional documentary, dispensing facts as you move through the old house and Annex, given in a professorial manner.  But the second audio guide is perhaps the more powerful, because it is narrated by a young girl, a voice that would've been the same age as the adolescent who endured living through the reality of a Nazi invasion.

Her young voice sets the stage early on: you hear her cheerfulness as she describes her classmates; you comprehend her love of socializing with her young school friends; you participate in her cautious dread as she begins to understand (especially after Kristallnacht) the kind of societal evil that was headed toward the Netherlands. 

This child's voice takes you through the ground and first floors of the Frank business and home.  But when the threshold is crossed into the Annex, her voice becomes silent, just as Anne's own voice had to be silenced throughout the day, in order not to be heard by the workers below.  The effect is both ominous and reverential at one and the same time.

Kristallnacht, the November pogrom, took place in 1938.  Anne was nine years old at that time, and by then Jews in Germany began to leave the country en masse.  The Frank family was no different, choosing Amsterdam as their city of relocation.

To hear an innocent voice narrate the litany of restrictions placed upon their faith and culture was chilling in its own right: shopping at restricted times; no provision for transportation (bicycle or automobile); Jews fired from their jobs, both artistic, professional, and administrative; no athletic facilities or parks to be used; curfews were set; and, of course, there was the accursed yellow star.

For more than two years, with the assistance of a handful of highly trusted friends, the Frank family hid under the noses of the Gestapo.  Food stamps and necessary goods were purchased by their secretive supporters on the black market.  But in early August, 1944, the Annex was raided.  The family was sent first to Auschwitz, where they were then separated from one another.  Only Otto Frank, the father, survived the concentration camps. (His own odyssey back to the Netherlands after being liberated, and discovery of the deaths of his wife and daughters, is its own heartbreaking tale).

Anne's notes, her diaries and her short stories, were miraculously saved by one of those confidantes – Mrs. Miep Gies.  The courageous salvaging of a teenager's journal served to inform the world of atrocities from a completely different perspective than those reported by the liberators of the concentration camps.

Just how much money, GDP, propaganda, paper and ink, matériel and pure bloodshed was let loose by the Third Reich?  None of it endured.  But a simple, naive and thoroughly honest journal by a young teenager has now been translated into 70 different languages; the Secret Annex that they once called home for more than two years has become a place of international pilgrimage, drawing more than a million people annually.

This teenager did, indeed, make her voice heard around the world.  Though she lost her life in Bergen-Belsen, her writings have, indeed, gone out into the world.  There, they continue to witness and to work for all humankind.

Through the Eyes of the Artist

The Van Gogh Museum, Museumplein 6, Amsterdam

When one embraces the labors and identity of being an artist, there is much that comes from such a decision.  In the early unfolding of such a choice – dare I say vocation? –  there are all the carrots that might seem alluring: the admiration of others, the chorus of praise, the attempted contributions to an ever-evolving landscape of beauty.

But not long into the journey, one finds that there are many other truths, perhaps even shadows, that lurk around the bend.  Artistry is a lonely place, a desert place.  Your ideas, even if they need a group of people to carry them out (e.g., with a theatre or musical work), can haunt you constantly, waking you up in the middle of the night, pulling the rug out from underneath whatever security your psyche has managed to cobble together.  You begin to hear not just from the admirers, but from the critics.  In the realm of sacred music, you also begin to hear from the hierarchy, some of whom most definitely have agendas that perhaps do not match your own.  

But you accept this, because in the end, the only goal is the sacred pursuit of beauty.  "Find beautiful things as much as you can; most people find too little that is beautiful."  These are the words of Vincent van Gogh.  Or, in the simple words of Dostoyevsky: "The world will be saved by beauty."  The desert is indeed tolerable, even needed, when the goal is to bring more beauty into the world.

We have just spent half a day in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. For reasons that I think can be legitimately blamed on Don McLean (Vincent: Starry, Starry Night), I have always been drawn to this artist, to his work, to his story, and to his singular, artistic vision.  But today, partly as a result of the superb presentation of this world-renowned museum, I was drawn all the deeper into the vision of an artist. Which meant partly that I was also exposed to the crosses he had to bear.

Van Gogh did many self-portraits.  And part of the reason for this was because he was so broke that he couldn't afford models to sit.  

He was also deeply enamored of peasants and their own labor intensive lives.  He often did works on the backside of these self-portraits, because he couldn't afford canvasses upon which to work.  

In the end, depression took him from the world – he was just thirty-seven when he took his own life.  Of the more than 850 oil paintings he created (the majority of which were done in the last few years of his life), only one was sold during his lifetime.  Recognition came only after his death, a reputation stewarded by his sister-in-law and nephew (whose name was also Vincent).  The museum we visited today is the living legacy of these two people.

Those of us who work in a community of artists – mine would be with composers of sacred music – we would know something of these crosses that must be borne.  To have music rejected.  To work very long hours in solitude.  To put forward ideas that ultimately are deemed inappropriate by people who are not musicians.  To be placed at the heart of both praise and blame, and to be sought out by strangers at conferences, especially when blessed with an introverted soul.  

For they could not love you, but still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight on that starry, starry night,
You took your life as lovers often do.
But I could've told you Vincent, 
this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you....

                                      - Don McLean

The world is saved by beauty.