Rachegeist - Campus des Grauens (German Edition)

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So war es schon unter Trajan. In Trajan erscheint z. Sein Sieg in Dacien ist Epist. Nichts kann antiker und heiliger sein, als Ebend. Er nahm, wie sich Aurelius Victor Epitom. Die Soldatenlager von Brittannien bis zum Euphrat inspicirte er mit dem Blick des Kriegsherrn und des unteren Offiziers. Neben der Inspection und Organisation der Armee hatte er auf seinen Reisen noch Zeit dazu, mit den Philosophen und Rednern in Athen und Alexandria zu disputiren und um den Ruhm der Beredsamkeit zu wetteifern, und war er von einer Armee von Architekten und Bauhandwerkern begleitet.

So nahm er Spartian. Die Sklavenzwinger die Bagno's der Privatpersonen , die zuweilen auch freie Leute bargen, hob er auf. Nero trug sich auch schon mit dem Gedanken, den fernen Osten seines Reichs zu bereisen. Seine geheimen Phantasieen, wie sie Tacitus Annal. Der Annalist sagt uns nicht, was den Kaiser in jener Ferne des Morgenlandes anzog; neuere Theologen, welche das im Feldlager "Vespasians geformte Orakel als eine uralte im Orient verbreitete Sage schon zu Nero's Zeit ins Abendland vordringen lassen, meinen, er habe das Geheimniss des Wunderlandes, von wo der Weltherr kommen solle, erforschen wollen.

Hadrian erwarb sich den Beinamen des Wissbegierigsten curiosissimus. Er wollte Alles wissen und sehen und Allem auf den Grund gehen. Wir kommen hiermit zu dem dunkelsten Punkte in der Geschichte des Kaisers, -- dem Geschenk, welches er der Welt mit seinem neuen Gotte, dem Antinous, machte. So verwebte auch Hadrian in die bedeutendste letzte Apotheose, die durch ihn das kaiserliche Rom vollbrachte, das Motiv der Selbstaufopferung, von dessen christlicher Verherrlichung die Weisheitsschulen Alexandrias sprachen.

Es fragte sich, wer von Beiden siegen sollte. Er entliess Spart, ebend. Der Senat liess sie in Italien umbringen. Dio Cassius, 69, 8. Selbst der Patriarch, wenn er nach Aegypten kommt, muss der einen Partei zu Gefallen dem Serapis, der andern wegen Christus seine Ehrfurcht erzeigen. Gab es aber in Aegypten eine Richtung, mit der er streiten und sich doch amalgamiren konnte? Es ist die Anerkennung eines Gemeinsamen, welches in Heidenthum, Judenthum und Christenthum unter verschiedenen Gestalten und Namen sich offenbart hat. So stimmt, richtig gefasst, der Brief vollkommen zur Zeit und Lokalfarbe des damaligen Alexandria.

Vopiscus nahm ihn aus den Schriften des Freigelassenen Hadrian's, Phlegon, der eine Universalgeschichte vom Anfang der Olympiaden an bis zum vierten Jahr des Antoninus Pius geschrieben hatte. Nur Ein Umstand erschwert noch die Entscheidung. Und woher ist die Lebensgeschichte des genannten Jochanan ben Saccai gekommen?

Leipzig befreite ich die Kritik von einer Uebereinstimmung mit der theologischen Apologetik, welche ihren Kampf mit dieser zu einem unfruchtbaren Zank gemacht hatte. Audi Gelehrte der neueren Synagoge, die, wie z. Zunz in seiner Schrift: Der Weg zum Evangelium. Das vierte Evangelium bildet am Schluss der Reihe den Uebergang ins Apokryphische, Gemachte und Uebertriebene, in welches die Kunstentwickelung auf allen Gebieten zu verlaufen pflegt. Allein weder der angebliche Hillel, der, aus davidischem Geschlecht abstammend und um das Jahr v. Hier wirkte es krystallisirend und die reichen Lebenselemente ordneten sich in der Seele, in die es als Ferment eintrat, unter einer gebietenden Einheit zusammen.

Und derselbe Horaz ward ein Bekehrter. Der Chrestus, durch den sie sich Suet. So fand die Satzungswelt des Alten Testaments gerade bei denen, die sich an seinen monotheistischen Grundgedanken anklammerten, ihre Kritik. Aber es gab doch zahlreiche Freie, die mit seinem Spiritualismus Ernsthmachten, Beschneidung und Sabbathsruhe zu den veralteten Dingen warfen und schwerlich dazu Neigung hatten, sich durch seine sorglichen Mahnungen zur Umkehr bewegen zu lassen. Hieronymus liess das Verdienst, welches sich Philo durch sein "Lob" der ersten Gemeinde zu Alexandria um die allgemeine Kirche erworben hat, diesem selbst zu Gute kommen und nahm ihn in seinen Katalog der kirchlichen Antoren auf.

Die Behandlung dieser literarischen Frage hat bisher unter dem Einfluss des praktischen Interesses gestanden. Die "korybantische" Begeisterung z. Diese Genossenschaften, welche auch Sklaven in ihre Mitte aufnahmen, waren die. Bunsen, "Hippolyt und seine Zeit. Aber diese Lichtblicke der Weisen sind den Gnostikern Auflehnung und Proteste der Inspiration oder des Herzens gegen das Heidenthum und gegen die Fesseln, in welche die Machthaber der untersten Welt die Seele geschmiedet haben.

Sie befanden sich wider denselben noch im Kriegszustand und ihre Stellung zum Judenthum war eine oppositionelle. Mitten unter diesen Anklagen und Irrungen des Augenblicks bahnte sich jedoch zur Zeit des Antoninus Pius die Ascetik und hochgespannte Innerlichkeit der Gnosis in die gleichzeitige Entwicklung der neuen Lehre ihren Weg. Caligula trat als Gottmensch und Weltrichter in die Oeffentlichkeit. Nero widmete sich als Menschenlreund dem Dienst der Menschheit.

Wir beginnen den Schluss unserer Arbeit mit einer Skizze dieses kaiserlichen Testaments und werden in ihm die Strahlenbrechungen desselben Sonnenlichts nachweisen, welches sich im Werk der Evangelien und in den neutestamentlichen Briefen ausbreitet. So mahnt der kaiserliche Lehrer: Gott macht es auch so. Wer tiefblickend genug ist 3, 2 , Alles, was nach der Reihenfolge des Ganzen eintritt, im Zusammenhange zu fassen, wird in Jedem seine besondere Annehmlichkeit erkennen.

Jener schreibt in einem Drama: Mensch, hoffe nicht, des Plato vollkommene Republik zu sehen. Ich spreche demnach zur Welt: Habe Geduld mit den Menschen 7, Seneca war das Mittelglied, durch welches dieses Bild in die Kirche kam. Der Geist des Alls, schreibt er z. Daher hat er die unvollkommenen Dinge zum Dienst der vollkommenen geordnet und die vollkommenen unter sich selbst in Harmonie vereinigt. Wenn ein Mensch Gutes gethan hat, schreibt er z. Ist es dir nicht jeden Augenblick erlaubt, in dich selbst einzukehren? Keine Einsamkeit ist ruhiger und anmuthiger, als die der eigenen Seele.

Ruhe nenne ich aber die gute Ordnung und Stimmung derselben.

THE BEST GET THE WORST TREATMENT – HORST MAHLER POLITICAL PRISONER FOR THOUGH CRIME

Begieb dich demnach in diese anmuthige Einsiedelei dvaxtopijatv. Einst wird auch' die Erde verwandelt werden 9, 23 ; wer wird also nicht alles Irdische und Sterbliche verachten? Aehnlich und von derselben Grundanschauung ausgehend, sagt der Paulus des Philipperbriefs 1, Das Elend und die Pein, mit denen die folgenden Herrscher zu ringen hatten, haben wir in den vorhergehenden Abschnitten darzustellen versucht.

Bei weitem besser als die angstvollen neueren Apologeten hat Bossuet in seinem discours sur l'histoire universelle die Stellung der Offenbarung zum heidnischen Alterthum gefasst. Seine Zeitgenossen, die Verfasser der bedeutendsten paulinischen Briefe, endlich haben den stoischen Weltleib, in dem sich Glied an Glied reiht und jedes sein vo.

Vernehmen wir einige dieser Zeugnisse! Brixia, woher Plinius Epist. Es lebten auf dem Lande noch Manche, die sich dem Landbau, der Erziehung der Ihrigen und der eigenen Bildung widmeten. So forderte Plinius Epist. Bin andermal stiftet er in seiner Vaterstadt eine Bibliothek und hebt bei dieser Gelegenheit Bpist. An Fabius Quintilianus z. Den ganzen April verging kein Tag, an dem nicht Einer eine Vorlesung hielt. Cicero's Epigramme auf seinen Tiro, schreibt er einmal, 7, 4 haben ihn auf den Gedanken gebracht, dergleichen Dinge zu verfertigen.

Ob sie ihre Sachen auch vorgelesen haben, weiss ich nicht. Ich scherze, lache, spiele. Es war diesseits und jenseits des Rheins, wie zur Zeit der ersten humanen Kaiser Roms die kindliche, oft kindische Variation des ernsten Themas: Homo sum, -- desselben Themas, welches die Griechen von Sokrates an in hohem Styl aufgestellt hatten.

Vielleicht hoffte er sogar, den jugendlichen Mitregenten in der Gemeinschaft mit ihm zu seinem eigenen Ernst zu erheben. Lebensjahr von einem Schlagfluss dahingerafft. Das Beispiel der beiden Verus beweist, dass auch das Adoptionssystem dem Staat keinen Nutzen brachte, wenn es junge Leute auf den Thron berief. Wir wollen ihn also nach seiner Art fortleben lassen, zumal er ein guter und strenger Feldherr und dem Staat unentbehrlicher Mann ist.

Nach der Angabe des Vulcatius Cassius cap. Der dortige Kampf, der ihn bis zu seinem Tode ununterbrochen in Anspruch nahm, war nicht mehr durch einzelne Schlachten, noch weniger durch die Vernichtung des Gegners zu Ende zu bringen. Die Astinger, die mit dem Ruf: Er starb einsam und allein und wollte wahrscheinlich auch so sterben. Lass dich nicht dahin fortreissen, wie es leicht geschehen kann. Haupt, welches schliesslich mit dem Machthaber zu Rom den Kampf aufnehmen konnte. Bedurfte es also, um dem Abendland zu helfen, erst des Nachtgesichts, in welchem dem Apostel Paulus Apostelgesch.

Obenan stehen die Seligpreisungen, die uns Lukas zum Theil noch in ihrer Urform mittheilt. Bei des Lukas letztem Selig, dem vierten, hat der Leser noch Alles im Geist zusammen und kann er die ganze Reihe auf sich wirken lassen.

HORST MAHLER – GEFANGENER FUER GEWISSE GEDANKEN – SEINE INTELLIGENZ BELASTED DIE JUDEN:

Vorher hatte er in seiner Compilation der Bergpredigt auf seine Seligpreisungen und Weherufe cap. Als ob der vom Bruder hervorgerufene Zorn gestattet sein solle! Richtung des alten Gesetzes bestimmt ist und, wie dieses nur den Mann als berechtigt anerkannte, der neue Gesetzgeber auch nur diesen im Auge hatte. Er gab daher in seiner Redaction des Spruches: Denn thun das nicht auch die Hurer? Wenn ihr nur denen leiht, von denen ihr Wiedererstattung hofft, -- was thut ihr Neues? Jedoch erzeugte es in diesem Fache keine originalen Gebilde mehr und war es nur noch auf Variationen der Muster des Urevangeliums angewiesen.

Vielleicht hat er auch Einiges von dem Seinigen eingeschaltet. Der Andere, der vor seinem Anschluss an den Herrn erst Erlaubniss haben wollte, seine Hausangelegenheiten zu ordnen, muss das Wort vernehmen: Damit nicht zufrieden, bildete man neue Sabbathsgeschichten, nm durch diese Wiederholungen den Eindruck einer Regel zu erwirken.

Sollten sie das Fremde, bei dem sie Befreiung von ihren Beklemmungen suchten, nur angestaunt und keinen Blick in seine Geschichte geworfen haben? Auf die Angabe des Eusebius, Marcus habe seiner Stiftung, der Gemeinde zu Alexandria, sein Evangelium gewidmet, des Gregor von Nanzianz, er habe es zum Dienst Italiens verfasst, oder auf die Ueberlieferung der syrischen Kirche, er habe es in lateinischer Sprache geschrieben, ist Nichts zu geben. Bei dem Vierten dagegen, der dem Typus der evangelischen Geschichte so weit treu bleibt, dass er cap. Der Urevangelist schildert wirklich, wie sich Jesus als Mittelpunkt des Himmelreichs beweist.

Sie hatten ihm auch darin vorgearbeitet, dass sie dem im Evangelium offenbar gewordenen Logos schon im Alterthum eine grosse geschichtliche Wirksamkeit zuschrieben und von seinen Inspirationen die Entdeckungen eines Sokrates, Heraklit's und ihres Gleichen ableiteten, welche "einen Theil" des Christenthums enthielten. Ich schliesse meine Arbeit mit dem Beweiss, dass der Gnosticismus und mit diesem Philo's Verschmelzung der Weisheit Heraklit's und der Stoa auch die sogenannten paulinischen Briefe beherrschen. In allen diesen Angelegenheiten hat jedoch Petrus den Vortritt; Paulus folgt ihm in seinen Fusstapfen.

Wie Petrus an den Samaritern, einem Mischvolk, welches zwischen Juden und Heiden eine unentschiedene Stellung einnahm, das Taufwerk des Philippus vollendete, indem er ihnen durch die Handauflegung auch die Gabe des heiligen Geistes verschaffte Ebend. In seinen Reden vertheidigt er sich gegen den Vorwurf der Gesetzesfeindschaft, zu dem er im Lauf der Apostelgeschichte nicht einmal Anlass gegeben hat. Wenn es aber zum Ernst kommt und die Thatsache, dass der Pragmatismus der Apostelgeschichte eine eigene, besondere und jedes andere Bild des Apostels ausschliessende Geschichte erzeugt hat, keine Verschleierung mehr duldet, so erhebt sich die neue Frage, ob das entgegengesetzte Bild, welches in den Briefen erscheint, nicht auch das Erzeugniss eines mit Ueberlegung entworfenen Plans sein kann.

Ja, es ist, wie sich in meiner "Kritik der paulinischen Briefe" 3 Hefte, Berlin ergeben hat, im Gegensatz gegen die Anschauung, deren Vollendung uns die Apostelgeschichte erhalten hat, ausgearbeitet. Er hebt es geflissentlich hervor, wie er in Folge seiner Berufung bei Damaskus sich nicht nach Jerusalem, sondern nach Arabien begab und dann erst, nachdem er sich wieder drei Jahre in Damaskus aufgehalten hatte, nach Jerusalem zog und hier keineswegs, wie man voraussetzen musste, mit dem Kreis der Apostel verkehrte, sondern nur den Petrus sprach und bei ihm auch nur vierzehn Tage verweilte, -- der anderen Apostel aber, wie er feierlich in einem Nachtrag versichert, keinen als den Jakobus, des Herrn Bruder, sah.

Sie konnte den Raub versuchen; der Christus des Philipperbriefes aber, der von vornherein in der Gottesgestalt des Sohnes zur Seite des Vaters thront, konnte und brauchte den Gedanken einer solchen Gewaltthat nicht zu fassen. Das Pleroma, welches Kolosser 1, Und doch standen auch deren Verfasser unter dem Einfluss der Gnosis und zwar der ausgebildeten Gnosis des zweiten Jahrhunderts. Herabsetzung der Kreuzigung zu einem blossen Scheinbild und wollte die Thatsache um so mehr zum Mittelpunkt seiner Predigt machen.

Hier ist der Spruch motivirt und entstanden. In der ersten Kraft der Reformation schrieb Luther: Beide Seiten, die ich hiermit zusammenstelle, bewegen sich in der Bildersprache. In diesem Wetteifer beider Kreise erhielt Paulus 1. In dieser Beziehung sind besonders die beiden Korintherbriefe wichtig. Der Verfasser des Briefes kennt schon eine allgemeine Norm der Lehre und des Glaubens und sie besteht nach der Voraussetzung, dass der Apostel schreibt, in den Lehren und Verordnungen, die er in allen Kirchen niedergelegt hat 1. Der Boden, auf welchem der Verfasser des ersten Korintherbriefes arbeitete, glich einem Schutthaufen, auf welchem die Reminiscenzen und Formeln der ersten sechzig Jahrzehnte des zweiten Jahrhunderts zerstreut umherlagen.

Dasselbe Schwerdt wird in der Hand der Nachfolger der Stoa blitzen, so lange und so oft eine politische Gewalt im Zusammensturz einer veralteten Weltordnung nur den Freibrief ihres Vorrechts und nicht das Werk einer allgemeinen Befreiung erblickt. In philosophy, he was at first associated entirely with the Hegelian "right. At this stage of his development he reviewed, in and , Strauss's Life of Jesus in the Jahrbucher fur wissenschaftliche Kritik, and wrote in a "Criticism of the History of Revelation" Kritik der Geschichte der Offenbarung. In he had become Privat-Docent in Berlin, but in he removed to Bonn.

He was then in the midst of that intellectual crisis of which the evidence appeared in his critical works on John and the Synoptics. In August the Minister, Eichhorn, requested the Faculties of the Prussian Universities to report on the question whether Bauer should be allowed to retain the venia docendi. Most of them returned an evasive answer, Konigsberg replied in the affirmative, and Bonn in the negative.

In March Bauer was obliged to cease lecturing, and retired to Rixdorf near Berlin.

In the first heat of his furious indignation over this treatment he wrote a work with the title "Christianity Exposed," Das entdeckte Christentum. See also Die gute Sache der Freiheit und meine eigene Angelegenheit. He then turned his attention to secular history and wrote on the French Revolution, on Napoleon, on the Illuminism of the Eighteenth Century, and on the party struggles in Germany during the years At the beginning of the 'fifties he returned to theological subjects, but failed to exercise any influence.

His work was simply ignored. Radical though he was in spirit, Bauer found himself fighting, at the end of the 'fifties and beginning of the 'sixties, in the ranks of the Prussian Conservatives -- we are reminded how Strauss in the Wiirtemberg Chamber was similarly forced to side with the reactionaries. He died in His was a pure, modest, and lofty character. At the time of his removal from Berlin to Bonn he was just at the end of the twenties, that critical age when pupils often surprise their teachers, when men begin to find themselves and show what they are, not merely what they have been taught.

Investigating Messianic History s In approaching the investigation of the Gospel history, Bauer saw, as he himself tells us, two ways open to him. He might take as his starting-point the Jewish Messianic conception, and endeavour to answer the question how the intuitive prophetic idea of the Messiah became a fixed reflective conception. That was the historical method; he chose, however, the other, the literary method.

This starts from the opposite side of the question, from the end instead of the beginning of the Gospel history. Taking first the Gospel of John, in which it is obvious that reflective thought has fitted the life of the Jewish Messiah into the frame of the Logos conception, he then, starting as it were from the embouchure of the stream, works his way upwards to the high ground in which the Gospel tradition takes its rise. The decision in favour of the latter view determined the character of Bauer's life-work; it was his task to follow out, to its ultimate consequences, the literary solution of the problem of the life of Jesus.

How far this path would lead him he did not at first suspect. But he did suspect how strong was the influence upon the formation of history of a dominant idea which moulds and shapes it with a definite artistic purpose. His interest was especially arrested by Philo, who, without knowing or intending it, contributed to the fulfilment of a higher task than that with which he was immediately engaged. Bauer's view is that a speculative principle such as Philo's, when it begins to take possession of men's minds, influences them in the first glow of enthusiasm which it evokes with such overmastering power that the just claims of that which is actual and historical cannot always secure the attention which is their due.

In Philo's pupil, John, we must look, not for history, but for art. This was now for the first time appreciated by one who was himself an artist. Schleiermacher, indeed, had at an earlier period taken up the aesthetic standpoint in considering this Gospel. But he had used it as an apologist, proceeding to exalt the artistic truth which he rightly recognised into historic reality, and his critical sense failed him, precisely because he was an aesthete and an apologist, when he came to deal with the Fourth Gospel.

Now, however, there comes forward a true artist, who shows that the depth of religious and intellectual insight which Tholuck and Neander, in opposing Strauss, had urged on behalf of the Fourth Gospel, is Christian art. In Bauer, however, the aesthete is at the same time a critic. Although much in the Fourth Gospel is finely "felt," like the opening scenes referring to the Baptist and to Jesus, which Bauer groups together under the heading "The Circle of the Expectant," yet his art is by no means always perfect.

The author who conceived those discourses, of which the movement consists in a kind of tautological return upon itself, and who makes the parables trail out into dragging allegories, is no perfect artist. The Synoptics he deals with only in a quite incidental fashion, "as opposing armies make demonstrations in order to provoke the enemy to a decisive conflict.

The Synoptic Gospels When Bauer broke off his work upon John in this abrupt way for he had not originally intended to conclude it at this point how far did he still retain a belief in the historical character of the Synoptics? It looks as if he had intended to treat them as the solid foundation, in contrast with the fantastic structure raised upon it by the Fourth Gospel. But when he began to use his pick upon the rock, it crumbled away. Instead of a difference of kind he found only a difference of degree.

The "Criticism of the Gospel History of the Synoptists" of is built on the site which Strauss had levelled. Weisse had divined in Mark the source from which criticism becoming barren in the work of Strauss might draw a new spring of vigorous life; and Wilke, whom Bauer places above Weisse, had raised this happy conjecture to the level of a scientifically assured result.

The Marcan hypothesis was no longer on its trial. But its bearing upon the history of Jesus had still to be determined. What position do Weisse and Wilke take up towards the hypothesis of a tradition lying behind the Gospel of Mark? If it be once admitted that the whole Gospel tradition, so far as concerns its plan, goes back to a single writer, who has created the connexion between the different events for neither Weisse nor Wilke regards the connexion of the sections as historical does not the possibility naturally suggest itself that the narrative of the events themselves, not merely the connexion in which they appear in Mark, is to be set down to the account of the author of the Gospel?

Weisse and Wilke had not suspected how great a danger arises when, of the three witnesses who represent the tradition, only one is allowed to stand, and the tradition is recognised and allowed to exist in this one written form only. The triple embankment held; will a single one bear the strain?

Similar authors to follow

The following considerations have to be taken into account. The criticism of the Fourth Gospel compels us to recognise that a Gospel may have a purely literary origin. This discovery dawned upon Bauer at a time when he was still disinclined to accept Wilke's conclusions regarding Mark. But when he had recognised the truth of the latter he felt compelled by the combination of the two to accept the idea that Mark also might be of purely literary origin.

For Weisse and Wilke the Marcan hypothesis had not implied this result, because they continued to combine with it the wider hypothesis of a general tradition, holding that Matthew and Luke used the collection of "Logia," and also owed part of their supplementary matter to a free use of floating tradition, so that Mark, it might almost be said, merely supplied them with the formative principle by means of which they might order their material. But what if Papias's statement about the collection of "Logia" were worthless, and could be shown to be so by the literary data?

In that case Matthew and Luke would be purely literary expansions of Mark, and like him, purely literary inventions. In this connexion Bauer attaches decisive importance to the phenomena of the birth-stories. If these had been derived from tradition they could not differ from each other as they do. If it is suggested that tradition had produced a large number of independent, though mutually consistent, stories of the childhood, out of which the Evangelists composed their opening narratives, this also is found to be untenable, for these narratives are not composite structures.

The separate stories of which each of these two histories of the childhood consists could not have been formed independently of one another; none of them existed by itself; each points to the others and is informed by a view which implies the whole. The histories of the childhood are therefore not literary versions of a tradition, but literary inventions. If we go on to examine the discourse and narrative material, additional to that of Mark, which is found in Matthew and Luke, a similar result appears. The same standpoint is regulative throughout, showing that the additions do not consist of oral or written traditional material which has been worked into the Marcan plan, but of a literary development of certain fundamental ideas and suggestions found in the first author.

These developments, as is shown by the accounts of the Sermon on the Mount and the charge to the Twelve, are not carried as far in Luke as in Matthew. The additional material in the latter seems indeed to be worked up from suggestions in the former. Luke thus forms the transition stage between Mark and Matthew. The Marcan hypothesis, accordingly, now takes on the following form. Our knowledge of the Gospel history does not rest upon any basis of tradition, but only upon three literary works.

Two of these are not independent, being merely expansions of the first, and the third, Matthew, is also dependent upon the second. Consequently there is no tradition of the Gospel history, but only a single literary source. But, if so, who is to assure us that this Gospel history, with its assertion of the Messiahship of Jesus, was already a matter of common knowledge before it was fixed in writing, and did not first become known in a literary form?

In the latter case, one man would have created out of general ideas the definite historical tradition in which these ideas are embodied. Messianic Expectations an Historic Fraud? The only thing that could be set against this literary possibility, as a historical counter-possibility, would be a proof that at the period when the Gospel history is supposed to take place a Messianic expectation really existed among the Jews, so that a man who claimed to be the Messiah and was recognised as such, as Mark represents Jesus to have been, would be historically conceivable.

This presupposition had hitherto been unanimously accepted by all writers, no matter how much opposed in other respects. They were all satisfied "that before the appearance of Jesus the expectation of a Messiah prevailed among the Jews;" and were even able to explain its precise character. But where apart from the Gospels did they get their information from? Where is the documentary evidence of the Jewish Messianic doctrine on which that of the Gospels is supposed to be based?

Daniel was the last of the prophets. Everything tends to suggest that the mysterious content of his work remained without influence in the subsequent period. Jewish literature ends with the Wisdom writings, in which there is no mention of a Messiah. In the LXX there is no attempt to translate in accordance with a preconceived picture of the Messiah. In the Apocalypses, which are of small importance, there is reference to a Messianic Kingdom; the Messiah Himself, however, plays a quite subordinate part, and is, indeed, scarcely mentioned.

For Philo He has no existence; the Alexandrian does not dream of connecting Him with his Logos speculation. There remain, therefore, as witnesses for the Jewish Messianic expectations in the time of Tiberius, only Mark and his imitators. This evidence, however, is of such a character that in certain points it contradicts itself. In the first place, if at the time when the Christian community was forming its view of history and the religious ideas which we find in the Gospels, the Jews had already possessed a doctrine of the Messiah, there would have been already a fixed type of interpretation of the Messianic passages in the Old Testament, and it would have been impossible for the same passages to be interpreted in a totally different way, as referring to Jesus and His work, as we find them interpreted in the New Testament.

Next, consider the representation of the Baptist's work. We should have expected him to connect his baptism with the preaching of "Him who was to come" -- if this were really the Messiah -- by baptizing in the name of this "Coming One. When the disciples in Mark viii. Peter is the first to attain to the recognition of His Messiahship.

But as soon as the confession is made the Evangelist makes Jesus forbid His disciples to tell the people who He is. Why is the attribution of the Messiahship to Jesus made in this surreptitious and inconsistent way? It is because the writer who gave the history its form well knew that no one had ever come forward publicly on Palestinian soil to claim the Messiahship, or had been recognised by the people as Messiah.

The "reflective conception of the Messiah" was not, therefore, taken over ready-made from Judaism; that dogma first arose along with the Christian community, or rather the moment in which it arose was the same in which the Christian community had its birth. Moreover, how unhistorical, even on a priori grounds, is the mechanical way in which Jesus at this first appearance at once sets Himself up as the Messiah and says, "Behold I am He whom ye have expected. For Hengstenberg the whole life of Jesus is the living embodiment of the Old Testament picture of the Messiah ; Strauss, a less reverent counterpart of Hengstenberg, made the image of the Messiah into a mask which Jesus Himself was obliged to assume, and which legend afterwards substituted for His real features.

If a conception was to become dominant which should unite heaven and earth, God and man, nothing more and nothing less was necessary as a preliminary condition, than that a Man should appear, the very essence of whose consciousness should be the reconciliation of these antitheses, and who should manifest this consciousness to the world, and lead the religious mind to the sole point from which its difficulties can be solved. Jesus accomplished this mighty work, but not by prematurely pointing to His own Person.

Instead He gradually made known to the people the thoughts which filled and entered into the very essence of His mind. It was only in this indirect way that His Person -- which He freely offered up in the cause of His historical vocation and of the idea for which He lived -- continued to live on in so far as this idea was accepted. When, in the belief of His followers, He rose again and lived on in the Christian community, it was as the Son of God who had overcome and reconciled the great antithesis. He was that in which alone the religious consciousness found rest and peace, apart from which there was nothing firm, trustworthy, and enduring.

With His appearance and the rise of belief in Him, a clear conception, a definite mental picture of the Messiah became possible; and thus it was that a Christology first arose. While, therefore, at the close of Bauer's first work it might have seemed that it was only the Gospel of John which he held to be a literary creation, here the same thing is said of the original Gospel. The only difference is that we find more primitive reflection in the Synoptics, and later work in the representation given by the Fourth Evangelist; the former is of a more practical character, the latter more dogmatic.

Bauer's Controversy with "The Theologians" Nevertheless it is false to assert that according to Bauer the earliest Evangelist invented the Gospel history and the personality of Jesus. That is to carry back the ideas of a later period and a further stage of development into the original form of his view. At the moment when, having disposed of preliminaries, he enters on his investigation, he still assumes that a great, a unique Personality, who so impressed men by His character that it lived on among them in an ideal form, had awakened into life the Messianic idea; and that what the original Evangelist really did was to portray the life of this Jesus -- the Christ of the community which He founded -- in accordance with the Messianic view of Him, just as the Fourth Evangelist portrayed it in accordance with the presupposition that Jesus was the revealer of the Logos.

It was only in the course of his investigations that Bauer's opinion became more radical. As he goes on, his writing becomes ill-tempered, and takes the form of controversial dialogues with "the theologians," whom he apostrophises in a biting and injurious fashion, and whom he continually reproaches with not daring, owing to their apologetic prejudices, to see things as they really are, and with declining to face the ultimate results of criticism from fear that the tradition might suffer more loss of historic value than religion could bear.

In spite of this hatred of the theologians, which is pathological in character, like his meaningless punctuation, his critical analyses are always exceedingly acute. One has the impression of walking alongside a man who is reasoning quite intelligently, but who talks to himself as though possessed by a fixed idea. What if the whole thing should turn out to be nothing but a literary invention not only the incidents and discourses, but even the Personality which is assumed as the starting-point of the whole movement? What if the Gospel history were only a late imaginary embodiment of a set of exalted ideas, and these were the only historical reality from first to last?

This is the idea which obsesses his mind more and more completely, and moves him to contemptuous laughter. What, he mocks, will these apologists, who are so sure of everything, do then with the shreds and tatters which will be all that is left to them? But at the outset of his investigations Bauer was far from holding such views. His purpose was really only to continue the work of Strauss. The conception of myth and legend of which the latter made use is, Bauer thinks, much too vague to explain this deliberate "transformation" of a personality.

In the place of myth Bauer therefore sets "reflection. The representation of this experience of the Church in the Life of a Person is not the work of a number of persons, but of a single author. It is in this twofold aspect -- as the composition of one man, embodying the experience of many -- that the Gospel history is to be regarded.

As religious art it has a profound truth. When it is regarded from this point of view the difficulties which are encountered in the endeavour to conceive it as real immediately disappear. We must take as our point of departure the belief in the sacrificial death and the resurrection of Jesus.

Everything else attaches itself to this as to its centre. When the need arose to fix definitely the beginning of the manifestation of Jesus as the Saviour -- to determine the point of time at which the Lord issued forth from obscurity -- it was natural to connect this with the work of the Baptist; and Jesus comes to his baptism.

While this is sufficient for the earliest Evangelist, Matthew and Luke feel it to be necessary, in view of the important consequences involved in the connexion of Jesus with the Baptist, to bring them into relation once more by means of the question addressed by the Baptist to Jesus, although this addition is quite inconsistent with the assumptions of the earliest Evangelist.

If he had conceived the story of the baptism with the idea of introducing the Baptist again on a later occasion, and this time, moreover, as a doubter, he would have given it a different form. This is a just observation of Bauer's; the story of the baptism with the miracle which took place at it, and the Baptist's question, understood as implying a doubt of the Messiahship of Jesus, mutually exclude one another.

The story of the temptation embodies an experience of the early Church. This narrative represents her inner conflicts under the form of a conflict of the Redeemer. On her march through the wilderness of this world she has to fight with temptations of the devil, and in the story composed by Mark and Luke, and artistically finished by Matthew, she records a vow to build only on the inner strength of her constitutive principle.

In the sermon on the mount also, Matthew has carried out with greater completeness that which was more vaguely conceived by Luke. It is only when we understand the words of Jesus as embodying experiences of the early Church that their deeper sense becomes clear and what would otherwise seem offensive disappears.

The saying, "Let the dead bury their dead," would not have been fitting for Jesus to speak, and had He been a real man, it could never have entered into His mind to create so unreal and cruel a collision of duties; for no command, Divine or human, could have sufficed to make it right for a man to contravene the ethical obligations of family life.

So here again, the obvious conclusion is that the saying originated in the early Church, and was intended to inculcate renunciation of a world which was felt to belong to the kingdom of the dead, and to illustrate this by an extreme example. The mission of the Twelve, too, is, as an historical occurrence, simply inconceivable. It would have been different if Jesus had given them a definite teaching, or form of belief, or positive conception of any kind, to take with them as their message. But how ill the charge to the Twelve fulfils its purpose as a discourse of instruction!

What the disciples needed to learn, namely, what and how they were to teach, they are not told; and the discourse which Matthew has composed, working on the basis of Luke, implies quite a different set of circumstances. It is concerned with the struggles of the Church with the world and the sufferings which it must endure.

This is the explanation of the references to suffering which constantly recur in the discourses of Jesus, in spite of the fact that His disciples were not enduring any sufferings, and that the Evangelist cannot even make it conceivable as a possibility that those before whose eyes Jesus holds up the way of the Cross could ever come into such a position.

The Twelve, at any rate, had no sufferings to encounter during their mission, and if they were merely being sent by Jesus into the surrounding districts they were not very likely to meet with kings and rulers there. That it is a case of invented history is also shown by the fact that nothing is said about the doings of the disciples, and they seem to come back again immediately, though the earliest Evangelist, it is true, to prevent this from being too apparent, inserts at this point the story of the execution of the Baptist.

All this is just and acute criticism. The charge to the Twelve is not a discourse of instruction. What Jesus there sets before the disciples they could not at that time have understood, and the promises which He makes to them are not appropriate to their circumstances.

Many of the discourses are mere bundles of heterogeneous sayings, though this is not so much the case in Mark as in the others. He has not forgotten that effective polemic consists of short, pointed, incisive arguments. The others, as advanced theologians, are of opinion that it is fitting to indulge in arguments which have nothing to do with the matter in hand, or only the most distant connexion with it.

They form the transition to the discourses of the Fourth Gospel, which usually degenerate into an aimless wrangle. In the same connexion it is rightly observed that the discourses of Jesus do not advance from point to point by the logical development of an idea, the thoughts are merely strung together one after another, the only connexion, if connexion there is, being due to a kind of conventional mould in which the discourse is cast.

The parables, Bauer continues, present difficulties no less great. It is an ineptitude on the part of the apologists to suggest that the parables are intended to make things clear. Jesus Himself contradicts this view by saying bluntly and unambiguously to His disciples that to them it was given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to the people all His teaching must be spoken as parables, that " seeing they might see and not perceive, and hearing they might hear and not understand. The disciples, however, do not even understand the simple parable of the Sower, but need to have it interpreted to them, so that the Evangelist once more stultifies his own theory.

Bruno Bauer is right in his observation that the parables offer a serious problem, seeing that they were intended to conceal and not to make plain, and that Jesus nevertheless taught only in parables. The character of the difficulty, however, is such that even literary criticism has no explanation ready. Bruno Bauer admits that he does not know what was in the mind of the Evangelist when he composed these parables, and thinks that he had no very definite purpose, or at least that the suggestions which were floating in his mind were not worked up into a clearly ordered whole.

Criticism of the Gospels s Here, therefore, Bauer's method broke down. This is the reason why they demand immunity from the International Criminal Court. Such an admission is not in the interests of the US, who presumes to set an example for the world. The US has no choice except to hinder exposure with every means at its command. Norman Mailer describes killing prisoners and other atrocities in his novel The Naked and the Dead, published Buechner, in his book Dachau. Reviewed in Frankfurter Allgemeine Dec.

Breslau — Kaiser Wilhelm. American Cities Early 20th Century. BRD-Regime in Gesinnungshaft gehalten. Exemplarisch seien hier genannt: And they are not brain dead either because without the brain functioning the rest of the body will die immediately. So what are they? How would you like to be hacked to death whether you can speak for yourself or not?

Will you feel less pain at the age of 3 months than at the age of 80? And furthermore, what about that human being that is being destroyed and thrown in the garbage dump? Would you like to end up there? Furthermore, the damage to the uterus opening often causes miscarriages in the future. Dis double destruction has been purposefully planned in the West! Are these fetuses sold to the Japanese elite for their meals?

Human placenta is also traded. There must be a huge profit to be made. Cannibalism is alive and well! But they are not dead. These people by the law of the U. Eyes, skin stripped off, liver, kidney, hearts, and so on, cut out. Imagine becoming conscious during this procedure but unable to speak or signal. Imagine feeling the pain of having your body parts carved out and being totally frozen to signal anything?! Lorraine Day proved it. It requires change in lifestyle, vegan food, and only natural foods as they grow on the earth.

Millions of people are slaughtered slowly with the conventional cancer treatments. One day, usually no longer than 5 years, the body can no longer handle the abusive treatment and dies. Millions of graves are filled every year with the cancer victims of this brutal killing machine. Any doctor who teaches natural healing is hunted down by the Medical Mafia, and his career is ruined. Body parts are splattered and blood flows in rivers. Humans end up being nothing but a peace of dead meat for lack of reverence. After all, they are all considered terrorists by the Americans.

And the Americans do not know that they are useful idiots. Those who instigate them are using the issues of the locals to heat them up against each other, providing weapons for both sides. The blood flows and dead bodies accumulate. The country heads down economically. Property prices drop and the scavengers come, those who have instigated the revolution or participate in he big scheme of injustice. Then in order to build the country up, loans are handed out. Soon the country becomes heavily indebted and must do, in all cases, what the lenders say.

This scheme never fails for the instigators and has been practiced for many centuries. My professional reputation has been destroyed by jews. My law practice has been destroyed by jews not difficult, since virtually every power point [position] in the profession is occupied by them. Those who control the past control the future.

Jews have been the problem since before they saw to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, in fact. Books, indeed, libraries, have been written on this topic. I scarcely know where to begin. Admittedly, I have a somewhat different take on things, inasmuch as I have become such a target for them, daring as I have to stand up for free speech, against government tyranny and actually represent real, live racists in my legal practice. I and my children have received death threats from jews.

My law practice has been destroyed by jews not difficult, since virtually every power point [power source] in the profession is occupied by them. All because I thought it was unfair to hammer the defenseless for being a little stupid. Little did I know…. The more activist among us come in for special treatment. The Matrix is a must-see movie for its allegorical take on society today.

Most jews play their roles, right along with the rest of us, in furtherance of the schemes of the NWO architects they have so many names, but Olympians is the self-chosen one they seem to like best , but most jews are just batteries, too. They are as deluded as the rest of us, busily scurrying to deliver us all to their masters. They made me their enemy even before I knew they were my enemy, just as they have done for eons, in country after country. Is every jew part of the problem?

But there is such a concentration of them in the nub that it can be called nothing but a jewish problem. There is a reason that America has become the second most-hated country in the world after Israel, of course. We have bound ourselves to Israel and given over our media and our government to zionists. Again, do your research and find out that all the media is now jewish controlled, as are most of the government power positions, virtually all of banking and education and a good percentage of corporations.

History has been rewritten. The truth about so many things is starting to emerge: Pearl Harbor, Lincoln, etc. My favorite is the Holocaust shakedown, which now is becoming too threadbare to be sustained. A friend of mine puts it best: In all of German-occupied Europe, there resided 2. After the war, 3. There were no gas chambers and ovens at Dachau and Auschwitz. Even the jews have been forced to acknowledge these facts. The Diary of Anne Frank was partially written with a ball-point pen.

Ball-point pens were not commercially available until after World War II. Guess who is trying to get the laws passed in America to jail us here, too, merely for saying the same thing? I propose to employ the same sort of thing, in order to keep us focused on what I perceive to be the real problem in the world today:. The present is being rewritten as we speak.

Thus, it becomes possible for them to write the future, just as foretold by Orwell. Sad to say, the future does not bode well for the likes of thee and me. I conclude that the jews cannot help it. Their need to get on top of us, all the while whining about what victims they are, is a part of their basic structure.

Most jews with any honesty will attribute it to their culture. True, so far as that goes, but it does not go nearly far enough. Many on my list will never see this message. I find that my internet access is being cut off incrementally. My equipment is clean, of course. ISPs, thinking I am the source, put my domain name on black lists, so that, henceforth, none of their customers ever see anything from me.

If it were just me, I would chalk it up to paranoia.

So much so, that I suspect the bugbear virus is simply a cover for shutting us down. That was coincident with the huge upsurge in in the WormKlez virus, you may recall. Please pass this on to others. If you know you are on my list and not getting this firsthand, please raise a stink with your ISP about it. This is how censorship on the Internet is taking place these days. And there is so much to say…as I said — books and libraries. Lots of this stuff gets traced back to Israel directly or close by, such as to Palnet.

I have done it, time and again, as well as to one jew or another in New York. Those who have not researched this are totally unaware of the massive bulletin board campaign being waged out of Israel, orchestrated by jews everywhere against those of us here in America trying to awaken our countrymen. Yes, there is a conspiracy. Yes, it is being run by jews. Yes, it is being condoned by our government, which has become jewish. And who, exactly, do you suppose is behind the recent eradication of the Bill of Rights in America?

So, why do even the most ridiculous jewish interests still get all the state funding they want, led by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in LA, as evident from the most recently-approved state budget? Just as they were in Russia, jews have become the American ruling class. Just as they did in Russia, they are bleeding America dry. Just what do you think Lenin, Marx and Trotsky were? Just who you do think was responsible for killing over 20 million Russian Christians in the early s?

Solzhenitsyn — Russia and the Jews. No, the jewish mafia.

And the mob in America is, and has been for the past hundred years, jewish. Who do you think is behind the move to eradicate Christianity from America, starting with every public venue? Check out the names of the plaintiffs and attorneys and judges involved with those Pledge of Allegience, Ten Commandments, Christmas lights, cross cases…they rhyme.

What a sick joke. This was a Christian country when founded. It has become a zionist country. Judaism is anathema to Christianity. Read the Talmud before you reject this line of thinking. You will be shocked, I promise you. Read the New Testament. Christ said it straight out. Things have not changed in two thousand years. Who do you think has been behind the racial polarization in America during the last forty years? The Synagogue Of Satan. His family was shabbas goy for the jews did their forbidden work on the sabbath. The price for the White House? Selling out to jewish interests.

He, Clinton before him and most of the presidents of modern times are traitors, pure and simple. They sold their country, including you and me, for a turn at the trough. Yes, you heard me right: George Bush is a traitor. Why does America lionize people like Clinton and Bush, both of whom dodged the draft?

They are going to get a large number of Americans killed, and soon. They are going to impoverish almost all of us. The party is over. Something is coming at us, and coming fast. The market is in freefall again. It is one month until general elections here in America. Several major banks are literally on the edge of failing.

Deflation is actively taking hold, along with its cousin, Depression. Bush has been slamming through his domestic crackdown agenda, designed to cope with all of us when the wheels come off next year. Monday night brings some sort of major presidential address about Iraq. The 8 am work population for the WTC was about 40, Countless jewish companies moved out just in advance of or had their entire staffs elsewhere that day.

Jews, laughing gleefully, were witnessed photographing the entire disaster. That has all changed now, of course. Wake yourself up fully, then awaken the others. An idea whose time has come. Forward as you wish. Permission is granted to circulate among private individuals and groups, post on all Internet sites and publish in full in all not-for-profit publications. Liebe deutsche Landsleute, liebe Freunde der Wahrheit in aller Welt!

Gedenkt im Kerzenschein auch Professor Dariusz Ratajczak, der in Polen ermordet wurde, weil er nicht widerrufen hatte. Ein Friedensvertrag wird uns verwehrt, die Kriegsziele sind also noch in Kraft [1], die nicht nur die physische, sondern auch die geistige Vernichtung der Deutschen zum Ziel haben. Und so lautete auch das Kriegsziel Nummer eins des 2. Der Ausspruch Hennig Eichenbergs war deshalb nie zutreffender als heute: Das Aufbegehren fing mit Marschierern an, aber schon am Dezember waren es in Dresden Diesmal war es anders.

Nach dem Brandanschlag in Vorra durch Staatsbedienstete Geheimdienstler kamen mindestens mehr Demonstranten in Dresden zusammen als in der Woche zuvor. Doch das ist verboten: In diesem Sinne beziehe Hitler seine Macht durch sein Volk. Bachmann hat seine Vorstrafen nie verheimlicht. Der bis dahin als Kaisers Geburtstag gefeierte Der wirkliche Geburtstag wie auch der Todestag Jesu ist uns unbekannt geblieben.

Und eine Weltmacht, Russland, hilft dabei. Er fand es im Evangelium: Vergleicht man heute die Epochen von Jesus und Hitler, kommt man zu dem Schluss, dass es sich bei beiden um Sendboten des Weltgeistes gehandelt haben muss. Nur er sei dazu imstande, macht er sich weis, und es wird ja auch bestimmt so kommen. Aber schon an den Mitteln, die er anwendet, sieht man, dass es ihn insgeheim zu etwas Anderem treibt. Wenn ihm nicht Halt geboten wird, vernichtet er sie.

Er kann nicht aus, er muss es tun. Er hat die Weichen gestellt. Und die Deutschen werden wieder mutiger werden, was sich am Ende des Jahres in den Pegida-Demonstrationen, wie auch in den Friedenskundgebungen in Berlin zeigt. Der neue Mut der Deutschen nimmt Gestalt an. Hier sind die starken Wurzeln Deiner Kraft. In the fight, one cannot grant the Jew the same means that we give every honorable opponent, because he is not an honorable opponent; he only takes advantage of magnanimity and chivalry to trap his enemy. All issues are frequently debated openly in Germany, and every German practices his right to decide all questions this or that way.

One is a Catholic, the other a Protestant, one an employee, the other an employer, capitalist, socialist, democrat, or aristocrat. One commitment or the other is not dishonorable, per se, for our contemporaries. It happens in all openness, and where the oppositions seem unclear and muddled, they clear things up with an address or reply. This is a taboo in the Republic. The Jew is immune against all insults: Rogue, parasite, swindler, and racketeer.

These run off him like water of a rain jacket. Call him Jew, and you will notice with amazement how he startles, how he becomes concerned, and shrivels down collapses: Quickly, he will turn his opponent into that which the opponent was trying to fight in the Jew: Nothing could be more wrong but to defend oneself against this.

This is what the Jew wants. Because that way he will invent every day new lies about his opponent to which the opponent will have to defend himself again with the result that all his justification will prevent him from getting around to do that which scares the Jew the most: One cannot fight the Jew with positivity.

He is a negative force, and this negative influence must be eradicated from the German equation, or he will always ruin the results. One cannot discuss the Jewish question with the Jew. The Jew has nothing to say in German questions. He is a foreigner, a stranger to the Volk German race , who is enjoying guest privileges among us, and, without exceptions, in abusive ways. The Jew is not smarter than we are, but only more cunning and sly. His system cannot be broken with economics — he fights economically under totally different moral laws than we do — but only with politics.

A Jew cannot even insult a German. Jewish defamation are only names of honor for a German opponent of the Jews. The value of a German or a German movement increases with the opposition of the Jews. If someone is battled by the Jews, then this is an absolute positive sign for the German. The Jew deals with German questions always from the vantage point of the Jew. Those who go easy on the Jews, sin against their own people.

One can be only either a slave of the Jew or enemy of the Jew. The stance against the Jews is a situation of personal cleanliness. With these ground rules, the anti-Jewish movement has outlook for success. And such a move therefore will be taken seriously by the Jews, and they will be fearful of it. That he makes a lot of noise and revolts, is only prove that we are right.

We are looking forward, therefore, to the prompt retort to this in the Jewish tablets. It is social hygiene.

We take these individuals out of circulation like a doctor takes out bacteria. Der Jude in book. Gegen alle Injurien ist der Jude immunisiert: Der eine ist Katholik, der andere Protestant, der eine Arbeitnehmer, der andere Arbeitgeber, der Kapitalist, der Sozialist, der Demokrat, der Aristokrat. Sie ist tabu in der Republik.

Es ist zwecklos sich gegen den Juden zu verteidigen. Er wird blitzschnell aus seiner Sicherheit zum Angriff vorgehen und mit seiner Rabulistik alle Mittel der Verteidigung beim Gegner zerbrechen. Der Jude hat in deutschen Fragen nicht mitzureden. Deshalb hat sie auch kein Anrecht auf Schutz und Schirm der Staatsgewalt. Ein Jude kann einen Deutschen gar nicht beleidigen. Der Wert eines deutschen Menschen oder einer deutschen Bewegung steigt mit der Gegnerschaft des Juden.

Deshalb ist das Gegenteil von dem was er sagt richtig. Man kann nur Judenknecht oder Judengegner sein. Man mag dort Terror schreien. Wir antworten darauf mit dem bekannten Wort Mussolinis: We had to line up at attention just like recruits in basic training. We even had to do our necessities in the standing position. Since we received no water or foodstuffs, our thirst and hunger became acute and urgent….

I was born August 31, , in Berlin. When the National Socialists came to power, I was eight years old. From until I attended school in Berlin. I did not join the Hitler Youth, but suffered no disadvantages because of that. At age twelve I became an altar boy at a Catholic church in Berlin. In fall , I was drafted, like virtually all German men born in , into the German Wehrmacht. After 10 weeks of training I was transferred to Infanterie-Lehr-Brigade , which had just been assigned to Russia. In May we moved to France, near Chartres, awaiting the Allied invasion.

We were in action from the beginning of the invasion of June 6, first against the British, from July against the Americans. I myself always fought in the front-line. With great luck I suffered only two injuries, to the knee and to the head, but approximately eighty percent of my comrades were killed or wounded. The remnants of the Panzer-Lehr-Division fell back fighting to Lorraine, where we rested, then fought again, in the Battle of the Bulge. We passed Bastogne and reached St Hubert, but then we ran out of gasoline and ammunition.

Again we had to retreat, after suffering very heavy losses. The Allies pushed us back just across the Rhine River. Unfortunately, the Americans were able to seize the bridge at Remagen and form a bridghead on the other side of the Rhine. Our 40 men were completely cut off from company, battalion, and regimental headquarters. Our next action was against the Remagen bridgehead. Since we were all experienced soldiers, we worked according to the following plan: We still possessed a 7. Then the Americans would stop, and we would retreat. The Americans would call in artillery and aircraft to bombard the point from which we had fired on the lead tank, but we would no longer be there.

We played this game for a while. But the Ruhr Pocket became smaller and smaller; our regimental staff retreated from the north and we from the south. Smoke and fire were in the air everywhere. We soon knew that our time had come! The roads were packed, and the Allied fighter planes were strafing everybody non-stop! They made no distinction between soldiers and civilians. Anything that moved was fair game. On April 12, , our unit decided to give up, not to die in the last minute. There were about 30 or 35 of us. On that day, in late afternoon, we arrived at a house, standing isolated near a creek.

We parked our five vehicles, and then went down into the cellar of that home. I myself did not go down to the cellar; I stayed outside to have a look around. I wanted to be alone. My entire time in military service passed before me; the final step remained to be taken. I remembered all the things that had happened, the good and the bad, on and off duty.

We had met nice people, and above all, nice girls. Of course, my belt and my pistol had to stay in the sacristy during the Mass. In those days, the Mass was said in Latin. The native priests were always delighted. I was interrupted in my reveries by shooting and explosions near the house and the creek, in which I took shelter under a small bridge. After that I heard tracked vehicles rolling over the bridge. My only weapon was my pistol, but we had decided to surrender.

When it was completely dark I approached the house, where the others had been in the cellar. But I must admit that I had not much hope of finding them still there. The vehicles did not allow me a clear view. I heard a voice, but I could not recognize the language. It was unlikely that these soldiers were my comrades. I climbed up through the garden and approached the voice. I approached the soldier from the back and got around him. Seeing my pistol on the belt, he said to me: He told me then to wait in the garden, while he went into the house to inform his company commander.

After a short while he came back and ordered me to enter the house, then follow him. We went upstairs into a room where what looked to be a company staff was assembled. All the men had short haircuts -much shorter than in the German Army — and looked like farm boys. They asked me only whether I belonged to the same unit they had found in the house.

Another soldier led me into a little closet in which I had to pass the night. I could not sleep at first because of the new situation and my feelings; later I fell asleep anyway. The next morning the same fellow woke me up and directed me downstairs to wait in front of the house for a truck. The American guards who arrived with the truck were nasty and cruel from the start. I was forced in with kicks and punches to my back. Other German soldiers were already on board. After a drive of an hour or two we arrived at an open field on which many German servicemen were already assembled, in rank and file.

As we got off the truck, a large group of Americans awaited us. They received us with shouts and yells, such as: Each of these bandits already possessed ten or twenty watches, rings and other things. The beating continued until I reached the line where my comrades stood. Most of our water-bottles canteens , rucksacks etc. More and more prisoners arrived, including even boys and old men. After a few hours, big trailer-trucks — usually used for transporting cattle — lined up for loading with human cattle.

We had to run the gauntlet to get into the trucks; we were beaten and kicked. The soldiers drove the vehicles at high speed over the roads and through villages and towns; behind each trailer-truck always followed a jeep with a mounted machine gun. In late afternoon we stopped in an open field again, and were unloaded in the same manner, with beating and kicking. Quickly, the Americans fenced us in with rolls of barbed wire, so there was no space to sit or to lie down that night.

Since we received no water or foodstuffs, our thirst and hunger became acute and urgent. Some men still had tea in their canteens, but there was hardly enough for everyone. Next day the procedure began as on the day before; running the gauntlet into the cattle-trailers, then transport to the next open field. No drinking and no eating, but always fenced in — there is an American song: After the first night, when we were loaded again, some of us stayed on that field, either dead or so weak and sick that they could not move any more. We had been approaching the Rhine River, as we noticed but we had still one night to pass in the manner related.

All this could not have been a coincidence. It must have been a plan, because, as we later learned, there was nearly the same treatment in all camps run by American units. The next afternoon we crossed a bridge and were unloaded at an almost completed camp near Andernach a small town on the Rhine River. There were already barbed wire fences around the enclosure. Within it were cages for several thousand people. We were driven into the cages and left alone. Water-pipes were installed in each cage to pump water from the Rhine into the camp. We had to wait many hours before we could drink it The problem now was the lack of cups or containers among all but a few.

We almost fought for the first drink, which really stank from the chlorine which had been added. After the first drink our hunger became enormous. The little grass in the cages was eaten immediately away by the human cattle. I was with two comrades of my former company; we decided to stay together. Our possessions were one overcoat and one tent-cloth. In order to prepare for that first night, we had to scrape out a hole in the ground, in the earth, to get some cover against the wind. Against the rain we had none. There at Andernach we had more space than on the three previous nights, but only enough to lie down on.

We did not sleep much that night, but discussed our future and the chances of survival under those circumstances. Nobody can imagine how human beings can live in open air, on a field with little space, bad water and hunger rations for days, weeks and months. Concentration camps had, at least, barracks with heating, with beds, with blankets, with washrooms, with toilets, with warm meals, with bread, etc ….

The men in the cages were divided into thousands, then into hundreds, and finally into tens for better distribution of rations. In one corner of each cage the inmates had to shovel a ditch as a toilet for all the men in the cage; of course, in standing or crouching position in open air. A layer of disinfectants had to be added every day. Facilities for washing were non-existent. Passing the nights was a great problem for each of us. None could sleep all night through — the longest one could do so uninterrupted was three or four hours.

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