Although Mama had been looking forward to the long-planned Emmet family get-together in Ireland in June in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the failed uprising against the British in 1798, when the time came she was too weak to go. Olaf delivered the verdict, “For her the trip comes too late.”

I saw her for the last time in July 1998 on our return from Ireland and a brief follow-on trip to Germany. Sally, remained in Germany to teach a summer course at the Fachhochschule [University of Applied Science] in Lübeck, still one of Spokane’s sister cities at the time. Parting from his mother was quite traumatic for six-year-old Emmet who dissolved in tears as he waved good-bye to his mother on the station platform as our train pulled away. He was soon distracted, however, by the thrill of riding in the Inter-City Express. Later, back in Spokane, he bravely told Sally over the phone, “I’m getting over my fear of missing you.” I recorded some impressions from our visit to Mama in my journal in July 1998:

Insights from my visit to Vermont. Two paradigmatic clashes between Betsy and Mama in which, despite my overall condemnation of how Mama has treated Betsy over the years, I found myself far more in agreement with Mama: one was Betsy’s typically clumsy (and condescending) attempt to be “nice” to Mama by telling Emmet that the presents she had bought for him also came from Mama. “I can give my own gifts, thank you,” was Mama’s sharp and predictable response. The second clash came after Emmet described how Louise had yelled at her daughter Sherry and told her to “get out of here.” Mama rebuked Emmet for revealing this embarrassing family dispute. This provoked Betsy into rising to Emmet’s defense. “I think it’s perfectly all right for him to talk about it. Do you want him to lie?” It was only after I twice defended Mama’s censure as perfectly appropriate that Betsy gradually gave in.

I managed to deflect most direct clashes of my own with Mama, two of which stick out in my mind. One was over the remark I made when Emmet was chasing after Mama’s half-wild kittens who always fled at his approach. In a facetious tone I said, “He likes to feel the power,” and was unpleasantly surprised when Mama took my remark seriously. “Oh no,” she said, “that’s so wrong. That view is imposed on children by grown-ups. Children want to get close to animals.” Her contorted face showed how strongly she felt about this, as if she had struck at the very source of our civilizational malaise. I did not feel that it was worth it to try to explain that I had meant my remark facetiously. Advice to visitors to Mama: know when not to make small talk.

The other run-in came on the subject of Berlin. I knew that she had not liked Berlin when she lived there (her marriage was dissolving), so I did not want to give her occasion to contradict me by expressing a positive judgment. Deliberately non-committal, I said, “Berlin has really changed.” Predictably, however, that did not stop her at all. “I detest Berlin. It’s an awful, narrow-minded, self-important city.”

I did not think this was the last time I would see Mama, although she tried to persuade me to stay longer by saying that maybe next year at this time she might no longer be alive. I told her we had to get back to tend to our dogs, an argument she found difficult to counter, since all her life she had used the same excuse to justify not budging from her place.

Mama on the deck Olaf had built for her, July, 1998

Mama, July 1998

Mama indoors, July 1998

One of the last pictures of Mama before her death 1998

With Trina and Mama, July 1998

Marley and Cloudy, 1998

After returning from Vermont, I reflected on what turned out to be (although I did not yet know it) our final parting.

The peculiar implications of Mama’s mumbled “you’re a good boy” at our parting in Vermont. It was quite unexpected—and unpleasant—to me. For one thing, expressing a “judgment” like that suggested that she was not at all emotionally involved (at the brink of tears, for instance) by our going away. For another thing, it was said in a way that seemed to refute a previously held conviction (such as that I was not a good boy). Even the way it was said, hardly audible, seemed to suggest that she was talking to herself, revising an earlier opinion. Or if it was said to me, as it must have been given the pronoun “you,” it singularly lacked conviction. Aside from the fact that the whole phrase was rather patronizing to begin with, suggesting that its main aim was simply to once again establish the mother-son relationship (like straightening my tie years ago, or asking me to run a trivial errand, to which Aunt Temple had objected almost thirty years ago.)

Mama was not defeated by old age. She told Maureen Dyer, “I can’t see anything, I can’t hear anything, and I can’t remember anything, and I’ve never been so happy in my life.” Maureen told Mama about her mother’s Alzheimer’s. “She’s in a nursing home, but for all she knows about it, she could just as well be in Hoboken.” Mama: “How awful! I’d much rather be in Hoboken and think I was in a nursing home.” Mama gave us instructions for her funeral. “I want all four of you to get drunk. I want my body cremated and the ashes thrown out on the dump behind the house.” At the time of her death, three of her children were over sixty years of age and the fourth one turned sixty the following day.

12/22/1998 Mama’s death. Notified by Trina by phone at 5 a.m.(Ruth Lawrence had phoned her mother) shortly after I had woken from a remarkable dream of Mama, thin, even skeletal, but active and moving, on her farm, which was, however, more abundant and comfortable than in reality. What made the dream extraordinary was that residing as a rather unwanted guest on the outskirts of her property were Hitler and a number of his aides, all rather ridiculous as they had no power, which also made them seem uncharacteristically moderate, since their words were empty threats (a reflection, perhaps, of my dismissal in class of the Aryan Nation as too insignificant to be the quintessential form of American fascism—it was the Ku Klux Klan that I had hoped to elicit from my students). Hitler’s minions dutifully went to pick up their grub at the main house, so many tamed monsters.

The pain of Mama’s death lies in the sudden realization of all those missed years when I barely saw her or talked to her, as if they would never end. I truly took her for granted. The pain of knowing at the end of her life how lonely she was. Although I never saw her more than once a year for the past twenty years, her death pulls the ground from under me. Her death also takes much of the pleasure from writing my book [Hitler’s Germany]. I now realize how much I was writing it for her.

As Mama had predicted, her funeral provided the first occasion in years for her four children, now all over sixty years in age, to gather together in one place. It seemed to me that Olaf, who inherited the role of “top dog” in the family, unconsciously adopted many of Mama’s mannerisms. But he was critical of her ready acceptance of violence and predation in the natural world. Mama understood that her love of nature was a corollary of her dislike of human society. “I’m anti-social,” she once told me; “I love living at the end of the world.” As the second-oldest living Emmet (among the more than four-hundred living direct descendants of Thomas Addis Emmet—the founding father of the American branch of the Emmet family), Mama would have loved to have been able to attend the week-long family reunion in Ireland in June 1998. It was indeed a most enjoyable celebration, well-organized by our cousins, Susanna Doyle, Grenville (“Jeremy”) Emmet, and Katie Emmet.

Three brothers in Ireland, 1998

Stackelbergs, Abbey Tavern, 1998

Abbey Tavern, Howth, June 26th, 1998

In Ireland, June 1998

Robert Emmet's statue at St. Stephen's Green, Dublin

In front of the Royal College of Surgeons. 1998

At the Temple Bar Hotel, Dublin

Alexandra, Paul, and Katie Emmet, 1998

Emmet in Ireland

Olaf in Ireland

Trina in Ireland

Ginny in Ireland

Trina and Garth in Ireland

Trina, Nick, Xuiwei, and Olaf in Ireland

At Eva and Günther's, 1998

At the airport, 1998

Emmet finished Kindergarten and entered first grade shortly before his seventh birthday in September 1998.

Emmet's seventh birthday, 1998

His Kindergarten teacher Linda Lentz gave him a glowing report:

Emmet expresses himself well and can easily talk to both children and adults. He enjoys interacting with literature and is eager to answer questions and join in group discussions. Emmet is well-liked by all his classmates. He uses words to handle conflicts that arise. Even though he chooses to spend much of his time with Lucas [Brown], he is able to easily work and play with any of the other children.

Emmet enjoys success in using scissors, pencils, paint, glue, etc. He is printing his name nicely using lower-case letters. He works hard to do quality work. One of Emmet’s favorite free time activities is to build a stage using blocks and sing and “play” his block guitar. He also enjoys the computers. Emmet is a good listener during circle. We enjoy him immensely.

On a much higher level, Trina was also adding to her academic achievements.

Trina getting her MS degree at the Harvard School of Public Health, 1998

1998 was the year of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment (and eventual acquittal) for having lied when he denied having had sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, based on Clinton’s dubious claim that oral sex did not constitute sexual relations. My view was that while Clinton’s actions may have been morally reprehensible and politically misguided, they did not constitute sufficient grounds for impeachment. The exploitation of the case by Republicans for political advantage seemed to me to outweigh Clinton’s misdeeds. I noted a resemblance between the prosecution of Clinton and the prosecution of informers in the former East Germany.

[Joachim] Gauck, the man in charge of investigation of the [former] East German STASI (the state security service), reminds me of Kenneth Starr, special prosecutors. Both men have grown into their jobs to such an extent that they can’t seem to face any other employment. Both have developed elaborate, passionate rationales for the importance, indeed the necessity, of their jobs. In both men one gets the impression that their jobs have affected all their attitudes, indeed their personalities. Their self-serving motives are so obvious as to make it very difficult to take seriously their vilification of the objects of their investigations. If they weren’t right-wingers before, they would have to become right-wingers now. Thus does the material base determine tne superstructure of values and ideas with unusual directness. Rarely do we have such unmediated examples of economic determinism.

The other big event of 1998 was Ursula and Gordon’s wedding.

Ursula and Gordon getting married at Patsy Clark's, 1998

At Ursula and Gordon's wedding, 1998

The Women's Group at Ursula's wedding

The men of the Women's Group, 1998

Sally and Marion at Ursula's wedding

Can I put my finger on the problem of my relationship with Paul? I appreciated him more than anyone else, but that may have been the problem. Our relationship may have been structured in a way that forced him to play a role toward me—always interested, always in good humor, always ready to treat or to help me. I always had the vague feeling that I’m somehow corrupting him, reducing his ability to function in the conventional world, aesthetecizing him. I imagined that his family viewed my influence with skepticism, if not suspicion. One proof was his father’s admonition to Paul: “Why do you talk so fast?”

Even when Paul admitted a weakness, showed a weakness, displayed, ever so faintly, a need, or uttered, ever so softly, a call for help, it always seemed he did so to help me, to make me feel I was not alone or off base in my need for help.

I learned more from Paul than from all my professors put together.

I did not see Paul again before his death. I felt sure he did not want me to see him in his deteriorating condition, although maybe that was only a pretext for my staying away. In my get-well cards I kept up a false optimism, usually closing with pro-forma phrases like, “Hope to see you next summer.” Deborah asked me to give a eulogy at Paul’s memorial service in Harvard’s Memorial Church in April 1996. This is what I said:

I am a voice out of Paul’s youth. We first met as callow freshmen forty-four years ago in Weld Hall, right here across the Yard. We roomed together in Adams House and remained good friends after college, despite the fact that we usually lived thousands of miles apart. Friendship with Paul was my most memorable and lasting experience at Harvard. I’d like to share with you an entry in my journal on August 19, 1955, after a visit to the Russell farm in Turner, Maine:

“Paul’s sociability, consideration, and intelligent conversation make him very enjoyable company. His main asset is an unebbing interest and openness—he is the perfect listener—he is interested in almost everything that is said, and he doesn’t either overwhelm with talk or sit silently. He is the kind of person out of whom you get proportionately as much as you put in. That is, you can disregard him, and say only a few pleasantries, and you will get a few pleasantries in return. Or you can sit and chatter to him about yourself, and you will get a receptive audience. Or you can probe deeper, and inquiringly discuss, deal with a problem or topic with all the resolution you can muster, and you will be sure to get an equal effort, which usually produces a superior result, from Paul. That is why it is always satisfying and usually rewarding to talk to Paul.”

In my family we always agreed, Paul was a born psychiatrist. It was as if the training he received was superfluous, the substance was what counted and that was always there. He had the helping and comforting disposition. I was always the hypochondriac who went to him for sustenance and medical advice. He was an unfailing source of encouragement and strength. We complemented each other in more ways than one. He introduced me to philosophy, I introduced him to music. Both of us preferred our intellectual and aesthetic interests to our formal courses. Which sometimes meant we had to cram for exams. I’ll never forget Paul reading Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in one night. I found him in his armchair in the morning, transfigured. “John [the name by which I was known at Harvard],” he said, “last night I saw the truth.”

Paul always reminded me of that great Tolstoyan character, Pierre, in War and Peace, or perhaps it was Pierre that reminded me of Paul. They had a very similar, slightly eccentric, but ultimately unique mix of generosity, intellect, and humor. I thought Henry Fonda was totally miscast in the film, much too smooth and conventional. It really should have been Paul. Didn’t they understand Tolstoy? But maybe one couldn’t understand or appreciate the character that Tolstoy was trying to create … unless one knew Paul.

Paul’s memorial service was the first “funeral” my twenty-nine year-old daughter Trina, who accompanied me, had ever attended. In my eulogy, somewhat spatially confused, I had pointed in the opposite direction from Weld Hall, leading Trina to question me later in an admonitory tone, “Are you sure you really went to Harvard?”

On May 24th, 1996, it was the turn of my forty-three year-old colleague Tim Sarbaugh to die of cancer. Tim had been struggling with his health all winter and was even hospitalized briefly, but his cancer wasn’t diagnosed until a week or two before his death when he collapsed on his way to a medical examination. This perseverance and refusal to neglect his duties was typical of Tim, easily the most popular and conscientious teacher in the department and probably the university as a whole. Every day during the noon hour, when I was reclining in my easy chair to get some rest between classes, I heard students coming and going in his office next door. His door was always open! His students loved his attentiveness and eagerly sought his advice. His classes were always oversubscribed. His dynamism was contagious. To me it seemed he was a man in a hurry. His much-too-early death seemed to explain why he was so driven.

The most tragic death of all occurred on my sixty-second birthday, May 8th, 1997. Olaf’s son Peter died unexpectedly of a heart attack in his thirty-eighth year. He had been quite ill shortly before, but seemed to have recovered when tragedy struck. It has forever marred the celebration of my birthday, which henceforth seemed inextricably linked to my nephew’s death. When Olaf called me to tell me of Peter’s death, I thought he was calling to wish me a happy birthday.

Peter, his wife Nancy, and her two daughters, Megan and Kirsten, 1996

Peter at the grill, 1996

The most violent of the early deaths occurred in November 1997. My half brother, Curt, Jr., known in the family as “Bubi,” snapped in a moment of despair. Deeply in debt and facing criminal charges for financial wrongdoing in investments in the former East German Democratic Republic, he decided not only to commit suicide, but also, in what can only be explained as temporary insanity, to take his wife Allusch and his two young sons with him. He shot them and himself with his Bundeswehr (federal army) revolver, which he had kept after his obligatory one-year military service. He tried to cover up his deed by setting his house on fire. His sisters were sure that Bubi and his family had been victims of an outside attack, perhaps by others implicated in his financial dealings, but the police determined that there had been no forced entry into the house. Olaf was the only member of the American side of the family to attend the very sad funeral in Germany at the end of November.

With Bubi (b. 1956) in the Rosengärtle, 1960

In the summer of 1996 we again went to Germany for the triennial Stackelberg Familientag, spending several days in Berlin and also visiting the picturesque city of Lübeck, where Sally was slated to begin teaching Eastern Washington University’s summer abroad course the following year. As usual, both on the day of our arrival and on the day before our return flight, we stayed with my cousin Eva Ganzlin (Tante Lulli’s daughter) and her husband Günther, who lived close to Frankfurt.

At Eva and Günther's, with their daughter Elena and her daughter Noema, 1996

Emmet in Berlin, 1996

Professionally, the academic year 1996-1997 was surprisingly productive. Fr. Schlatter entered partial retirement in 1997, leaving the Robert K. and Ann J. Powers Chair in the Humanities vacant. Given my strained relations in the history department and the fact that the Chair was open to members of the English and philosophy departments as well, I viewed my chances of succeeding Fr. Schlatter as very slim indeed. Most unexpectedly, however, my application was approved by the committee convened by the dean, Fr. Michael McFarland, to select Fr. Schlatter’s successor. Undoubtedly a glowing letter of recommendation written by my increasingly well-known colleague at Pacific Lutheran University, the Holocaust scholar Chris Browning, played an important role in my selection. This meant a considerable boost in salary, and, more importantly, a handsome travel budget as well. I used those extra funds to attend the annual American Historical Association (AHA) conference at the end of the year, giving me the chance to personally contact various publishers and obtain the most favorable contract for my book, eventually titled, Hitler’s Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies. I chose Routledge, a respected world-wide publisher of scholarly books, which brought out the book in spring 1999.

On the subject of academic scholarship, I recorded the following thoughts in January 1997:

The kind of thing that “makes my day” these days: discovering in the writings of someone I respect some evidence—or even just a hint—that they have read something I have written, that they have taken to heart a point I have made. Example: Alan Steinweis writing that he is more concerned about mainstream diffusion of books like The Bell Curve than about marginal Holocaust denial on the Northwestern University website. It not only suggested to me that he had read my review of Kühnl’s book on the links between American eugenicists (geneticists) and Nazism; it also showed that he agreed with my positive evaluation of the book (as against the critical review in the AHR [American Historical Review] which linked Kühnl’s book to Nolte’s revisionism). It works negatively, too, of course: the depressing feeling on reading [David] Blackbourn’s dismissal of “vulgarized idealism” as a source of Nazism in the London Review of Books.

Meanwhile Emmet was continuing to grow up, as recorded in my journal:

4/8/96 Emmet saying he wants to go to Gonzaga when he grows up! Where did he get that? In stark contrast to Trina and Nick.

4/10/96 Emmet, overheard at pre-Kin, speaking to some classmates: “My dad is sixty million years old. That’s quite amazing. Imagine that!”

5/18/96 Emmet, upon hearing that Dole was running for president: “Is he going to wear shorts?”

5/27/96 Emmet, playing basketball with Louise, after Louise makes a shot: “Way to go, baby!”

2/12/97 Emmet, disappointed that Sally had to pour back some of the good-tasting medicine into the bottle, thus delaying his enjoyment: “Oh no, I was in the middle of my excitement.”

6/2/97 Neighbor Butch extolling Emmet: “He’s so smart, but he still has common sense.”

8/20/97 Emmet, to whom I pointed out a “school” of small fish down by the river: “It looks like they’re on a field trip.”

12/6/97 Emmet: “I’m just like you, Dad. I don’t like to speak on the telephone, either.”

1/7/98 Emmet’s “Sally-expressions:” “Don’t you understand?” “Didn’t you know that?” “Seek and you shall find.”

Impressed by the belly-dancers he watched on our occasional visits to Azar’s, an excellent Mid-Eastern restaurant in Spokane, Emmet said that he hoped to become a belly-dancer when he grew up.

Emmet belly-dancing, 1997

My two sons, 1995

Volksfest in Berlin with Ingrid and Trina, 1996

With Sylvie, Wolfi, Halinka,and Patrik, 1996

In Berlin with Trina, 1996

In Kassel, 1996

Trina, Nick and Emmet at the Familientag, 1996

Heinrich and Trina tapping beer, 1996

Familientag 1996

My political entries continued to reflect my disenchantment with the nation’s growing rightward trend, only briefly slowed by Clinton’s reelection in 1996.

4/24/94 The dialectic: today it is politically correct to oppose “political correctness.” It is politically correct to see its dangers everywhere. It is politically correct to condemn pressures to be politically correct.

4/7 95 Variation on the proverb, “Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue:” The charge of political correctness is the homage that conservatives pay to progressivism.

7/26/95 American fascism: a fundamental stacking of the deck by the strong for the strong.

1/5/96 My book [the as yet unpublished Hitler’s Germany]: not just a history of specifically European fascism, but a case study of how fascistic ideas and practices come about. The hope is that, mutatis mutandis, it will help people understand American fascism, even though it may be quite different in appearance from its European precursor.

3/12/96 The only reason “left” and “right” today have “no meaning” is because the left is weak—there is no labor movement, no organized class struggle. The right triumphant has a vested interest in getting rid of the notion of “left,” traditionally associated with positive values—humanitarianism, progress, etc.—so that the right can lay claim to these values, while evading any challenge from the left. Getting rid of the left-right distinction allows the right to claim to be the mainstream—and insofar as that claim is or seems to be justified, the left-right distinction does seem increasingly irrelevant, even impertinent, as if there is or even can be an equal “political force” on the other (non-right) side. The only consolation is that the “right” has absorbed much of the program of the “left,” without acknowledgement, or even awareness. But that is ever how progress has been made.

5/9/96 Insofar as the environmental issue has become the central issue of our time, displacing the issue of economic distribution, there are some grounds for asserting that the left-right model is no longer relevant. On the other hand, there are still left- and right-wing approaches to solving this and other problems—based on how the proposed solution contributes to the commonweal. The issue of equality will still distinguish left- from right-wing policies.

6/9/96 Socialism and freedom: freedom only exists where there is a possibility of choices. Freedom may be restricted under socialism, but it is nonsense to say that it exists—or is available to most people—under capitalism.

9/1/96 Basic to any progressive worldview is the notion that humans make their own history and can control their own destiny.

6/29/97 The lie and the vice at the heart of anti-communism—that their opposition is opposition to dictatorship rather than to egalitarianism. For them the plight of the poor is simply not an issue worth rearranging society or even worth worrying about.

7/3/97 The wealthy and successful need to remember that they are the beneficiaries of a system that also seems to require poverty and failure.

7/11/97 Scandalous thoughts: if fascism comes to America , it will be in the Republican Party.

9/7/97 The assumption in all the literature is that cooperation with the STASI (Staatssicherheitsdienst [state security service]) is reprehensible in itself. Informing is always evil. It must have been motivated by pure self-interest, to obtain advantages for oneself by collaborating with authority. My interpretation is different: There must have been people like me who were committed to socialism but only too aware of the extraordinary and intense opposition it faced from “moneyed” interests. Collaborating in a socialist project meant defending it from its ubiquitous, determined enemies—determined to thwart it. If covert action is permissible for the defense of liberal democracy, why should it be impermissible for the defense of socialism? If even the strong feel entitled to resort to such devices in defense of their vision of a good society, why should they be illegitimate for the advocates of the weak? If covert action is defensible for majorities, why should it be indefensible for minorities—who have much better reason to resort to it, because they have far fewer “legitimate” means to insure the survival of their project and vision?

My niece Naomi Shulman married her fiancé Chris Templin in a beautiful wedding in Essex Junction, on the west side of the state of Vermont, in the summer of 1997.

Naomi and Chris Templin, June 1997

Alvin, Marty, and Carol Shulman, June 1997

Mama and Matt Shulman, June 1997

Mama and Sally, June 1997

Betsy and Naomi, June 1997

Trina and Olaf, June 1997

Matt and Naomi, June 1997

Trina and Garth, June 1997

Olaf and Johnny Edmonds at Naomi's wedding, June 1997

Paul, June 1997

With Olaf in Essex Junction, June 1997

At home with Sally, 1997

Mama at Tempy's, summer 1997

Emmet in front of the sunflowers he grew from seed, 1997

On September 7th, we celebrated Emmet’s sixth birthday.

Emmet's sixth birthday party, September 1997

Emmet, summer 1997

Emmet in front of our rosebush, 1997

With Johnnie Van Duyl and Norman Pate, summer 1997

Emmet in our new hot tub, 1997

Nick came for Thanksgiving with his girlfriend Xiuwei.

With Nick and Xiuwei, November 1997

For Christmas Emmet received a new puppet theatre.

New puppet theatre, 1997

Christmas 1997

Papa's grave in Bad Reichenhall, April 1994

At the Hofwirt in Reichenhall with Halinka and Betsy

On our way back from Reichenhall to Karlsruhe we made an Abstecher (side-trip) to some of our old haunts during the war, specifically to the Elmhof, Neubeuern, and Hinterhör. The latter had changed dramatically from the way we remembered it. Once the bustling country estate of my godmother, the Countess Degenfeld, “Sweetie” to us, it now seemed deserted and moribund. In contrast, the Elmhof was in ship-shape condition, unchanged from the way we remembered it, but with a new coat of paint.

Hinterhör, 1994

Elmhof, 1994

Elmhof in the nineteenth century

Bloomsday 1994 with Lucas and Emmet

In the summer of 1994, Emmet’s grandparents, Amy and Carl Winkle, came to Spokane for their annual visit. This time we decided to take a trip to Penticton, Canada, a very pleasant drive in Carl’s air-conditioned Cadillac. However, the destination was ill-chosen. Penticton, a beautiful town with two picturesque lakes, was enveloped in a haze of smoke generated by a fire raging in the forested hillside at the edge of town. We were lucky to find motel rooms, as a bit later in the day all rooms were taken by residents of the hillside homes consumed in or endangered by the fire. Two-year-old Emmet was fascinated by the fire-fighting planes that dipped low into the lake to scoop up water to pour on the flames. Emmet himself was allowed to go into the water only up to his waist, however. The day before, he had suffered some burns backing into our charcoal grill. We had to take him to the emergency room for treatment for his burns.

Summer, 1994

Louise and Jack Dolan, summer 1994

Grandma and Grandpa, July 1994

In September 1994 my “godson” Johnnie Van Duyl came to visit us over Labor Day. We attended the Spokane Symphony’s free concert in Comstock Park with my colleague Tim Sarbaugh and his family. Our animated conversation drew an admonition from a neighboring couple to please lower our voices.

Johnnie Van Duyl, Labor Day weekend, 1994

Sarah and Tim Sarbaugh with Mary Catherine and Chris, 1994

Nicholas Emmet Chandler, born September 1994

Emmet started preschool at the YMCA in September 1994.

Lucas, Katie, Emmet, November 1994

David and Lucas, November 1994

School picture, 1994

Emmet, August 1995

He would certainly have been ready for school much sooner than 1998, when he started first grade, but we held him back (in compliance with the Washington state law establishing six as the age of school entry). While he was intellectually ready for school a year earlier, we thought he would benefit socially by being one of the older students in his class. Having graduated from high school at barely seventeen, I learned from my own example, but also from my son Nick’s experience, who graduated at seventeen as well, not yet having achieved his full growth.

Emmet, spring, 1995

Spring 1995

In May 1995 I celebrated my sixtieth birthday. Sally and I went out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. Looking out the window, I was surprised to see Nick in the parking lot. What a surprise, I thought; he must have guessed we would be here. Of course it had all been prearranged by Sally, but the thought never occurred to me. I thought it was pure coincidence.

Nick home for Thanksgiving, 1994

Nick at Christmas in Vermont, 1994

Christmas in Spokane, 1994

Mama at Steffi's, Christmas 1994

In the summer of 1995 Sally attended a six-week seminar on film at the University of Rhode Island. Emmet and I joined her in Providence in July. We visited my cousin Johnny Edmonds, an Episcopalian priest in Newport, before heading up to Vermont to see Mama.

Newport, RI, summer 1995

Grandma and Grandpa, summer 1995

Mama, August 1995

In Vermont, August, 1995

Olaf, 1995

Tea for Trina and Garth at Steffi and Buzzy's, August 1995

For Emmet’s fourth birthday on September 7th we were back in Spokane.

Emmet at his fourth birthday

Golie Janssen at Emmet's fourth birthday party

Lucas, Emmet, Katie, 1995

Heidi, September 1995

Paul, September 1995

Nick graduated from the University of Washington in June with a degree in civil engineering and a specialization in waste-water management. He sought and got employment in Seattle, working for a number of environmental engineering firms over the years. Today he lives in Salt Lake City with his wife Kim Korinek, a professor of sociology at the University of Utah, and his one-year-old son Sebi.

Nick's Commencement, June 12th, 1993

Nick's Commencement, 1993

In August 1993 we went to Germany again, this time for the triennial Stackelberg family get-together at Schloss Höhnscheid. Trina and Nick attended as well and joined us in an excursion to the old university town of Marburg and several days in Berlin, the city where Trina was born.

Trina and Nick, 1993

Two of my nephews got married in 1993. Betsy’s son Chris Chandler married Mireya at his rented summer home on Lake Willoughby in Vermont on August 21st.

Chris and Mireya's wedding, with Cousin John Edmonds officiating

Mama, August 21st, 1993

Betsy and her two daughters, August 1993

Sally with Mama, August 1993

Olaf’s son John married Marianne at a beautiful winery in Kenwood, California, in November. This was also my first chance to meet Trina’s new boyfriend, Garth Jonson, a Canadian of Icelandic extraction a year behind Trina at Harvard. Garth had a quirky sense of humor that complemented Trina’s own weakness for sarcasm very well. A year-and-a-half later they married in a private ceremony to which none of their relatives were invited.

John and Marianne's wedding, November 1993

Three brothers, older generation, 1993

Three brothers, younger generation, 1993 (John, Peter, and Paul)

Earlier that year, in September, Sally’s parents, Amy and Carl Winkle, celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They had married at the height of the Second World War, while Carl was on temporary leave.

The three sisters, 1993 (Sally, Judy, and Sue)

Sally in Phoenix, 1993

With Nick, September 1993

To cap off the year, we traveled to Toronto, Canada, to attend the annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA). The temperature was well below zero, very different from the last time I had been in Toronto, in May 1970, at the time of the Kent State shootings. This time we spent more time in Toronto’s vast underground shopping complex with a hungry two-year-old in a futile search for an open restaurant. I was scheduled to give a paper on Ernst Nolte’s (mis)interpretation of Nietzsche. Nolte, anxious to provide Nazism with an intellectual pedigree to rival Marxism (and at the same time to exonerate Christian conservatives from complicity with Nazism), portrayed Nietzsche as the philosophical progenitor of fascism. In my paper I refuted his charges point by point. I pointed out that Nietzsche had thoroughly condemned nationalism, antisemitism, and the militarism and imperialism of the Wilhelmine Monarchy and the Second Reich. He had clearly identified such contemporary leaders of the völkisch movement as the Imperial Court Pastor Adolf Stöcker and the racist Eugen Dühring as the foremost contemporary proponents of the “slave morality” he so despised. His “slave morality” was best exemplified by precisely the kind of world-rejecting “idealism” preached by the kind of völkisch ideologues whose right-wing counterparts would later support the Nazis. Although I thoroughly disagreed with Nolte on his interpretation of Nietzsche and shared none of his cold-war values, I was somewhat ambivalent about his very controversial role in the Historikerstreit. He had precipitated this “historians’ dispute” by arguing that Nazism (and by extension the Holocaust) was just the mirror image of and an understandable reaction to the supposedly greater threat, violence, and criminality of “Asiatic” communism. This was an outrageous attempt to downplay Nazi atrocities, but I did appreciate Nolte’s forthrightness in putting anti-Marxism (and its close relative, antisemitism) at the center of Nazi ideology.

Nolte’s analysis is superior to the liberals’, whose values I nonetheless prefer: at least he views fascism as essentially different from communism, not as essentially the same. I despise Nolte’s right-wing politics but I agree with his historical analysis. The value of Nolte’s work lies in clearly showing the organic nature of Nazism: Nazism as an organic product of German society rather than an extraneous imposition. There’s something honest about Nolte that appeals to me, no matter how much I may despise his political values.

While Nolte saw anti-communism as an at least partially redeeming trait of Nazism, I saw it as all the more reason to condemn Nazism! This was where our values were diagonally opposed. In February 1993 I wrote in my journal:

The ultimate right-wing canard, which, if truly believed, attests almost to feeble-mindedness, is that egalitarians must believe that people have similar skills, talents, endowments, functions, etc. Egalitarians may be said to contribute to excellence by challenging the sense of entitlement of the “gifted,” as if their gifts justify seizing the pie from the hungry.

Already in 1990, with the end of the cold war, I had noted:

Why the Historikerstreit is überholt [no longer relevant]: the major force behind this right-wing revisionism was anti-communism. German history had to be revised to serve the anti-communist front (with U.S. blessing). For most of the historians in the dispute, exculpation of the Germans serves the anti-communist cause. Nolte is different, because for him the argument is reversed: anti-communism serves to revise (and upgrade) German history, not the other way around.

Ever since 1990 I had been following developments in Eastern Europe (the collapse of communism and the introduction, through “shock therapy,” of capitalism) with dismay, as recorded in my journal over the years:

8/16/1990 The events of 1989 don’t mean that Marxist analysis was wrong; they only mean that Marxist confidence was mistaken. Class analysis is not disproved by the fact that the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois spirit, has proven far stronger than Marx had expected.

8/18/1990 Communism serves a very useful function in Eastern Europe today, as the lightning rod that draws off social criticism and thus protects existing (or newly created) institutions and their privileged elites (mostly former communists). Perhaps that is the only way to introduce the free market: make communism take the blame for the hardships that will inevitably follow. That is the function of the Polish joke about communists having turned the aquarium into fish soup and free marketers facing the task of turning fish soup back into an aquarium.

The collapse of communism is revealing all sorts of truths: for one thing it reveals the time-honored Western assertion that the USSR is behind all world crises as the self-serving falsehood it always was.

The collapse of communism as the triumph of communist self-criticism. Is it too much to hope that it will lead to similar self-criticism in the West?

10/13/1990 The fascists’ number one enemy has self-destructed.

12/18/1990 “Stability:” code word for protecting the privileged.

1/19/1991 The “Gulf War:” will it come to be seen as the first great North-South conflagration when the first world let the third world have it with all its technological superiority? The message to the impoverished masses of the world is, “Keep in your place.” The hollowness of cold war rhetoric about Soviet expansionism now stands revealed. An imperialist power cannot help but behave like an imperialist power.

From the American Historical Review (Dec 1990), p. 1524: “The origins of the Dutch War provide another depressing illustration of the manner in which men of power are able to appropriate the consciences of men of talent.”

4/13/1991 Is the lesson of the failure of communism that people are inevitably power-hungry, hence communism must degenerate into authoritarianism, or is it that human nature is indeed more resistant to change than optimists assumed, hence people cannot be won for a social order based on unselfishness?

4/27/1991 The easy transition of Stalinists to capitalists should throw into relief what is common to both: opposition to revolutionary democracy (Trotskyism).

5/27/1991 Memorial Day: the legalized murderers are celebrating their crimes.

6/20/1991 Project, not for me but for someone: show how the corruption of communism in the USSR is the result of timid, bureaucratic, Menshevik, bourgeois tradition, not of Leninist voluntarism. Perhaps it can’t be done. Trotsky vs. Stalin.

6/29/1991 Two ways of looking at the collapse of communism: 1. Communism doesn’t work; 2. Its enemies were too strong (the effort to sustain it was not great enough).

8/22/1991 The great political question of our time is, what is to prevent the property-owning majority from using its powers to protect its privileges? But even here there is historical progress. A hundred years ago the question would have read (world-wide at least) “the property-owning minority.” Multiculturalism as the political weapon of un-propertied minorities. Perhaps the failure of communism or Marxism is merely due to the shrinking of the underclass, i.e., to its success?? One more example of the dialectic.

Project: Socialism in the twentieth century: from the rise of the masses to the rise of elites. (Reflections on failed Soviet coup.) Coup leaders all referred to as right-wing conspirators. Good in showing that “left” still enjoys a more favorable aura. Even appropriate insofar as coup leaders were merely seeking to retain their power and privilege. Yet jarring to the extent that leaders acted on “true” socialist motives: the defense of equality and equity. And where the excluded are a minority, socialism will not be “popular.”

8/26/1991 Reflections on coup in USSR last week [in which coup leaders unsuccessfully tried to halt Gorbachev’s reforms]: revolt of the new bourgeoisie in the USSR attests, in a sense, to the success of communism in creating a new bourgeoisie, who now feel thwarted by the system from achieving their full ambitions, including the ownership of private property. An ideology that originally gained appeal by promising freedom to the underclass, is now perceived as restricting the freedom of the dominant class. The contraction of the underclass and the growth of the dominant class, paradoxically made possible by communism, now account for its unpopularity.

1/10/92 Two aspects of the Cold War: on the one hand it was a campaign against communism as an authoritarian system; on the other hand it was a campaign in defense of the privilege of wealth against the militant advocates of the poor. As the century recedes, as communism collapses, the continuity of the North-South conflict becomes clearer.

The irony is that now [head of the German Democratic Republic Erich] Honecker is again to be punished for his communism: this time not by the Nazis, but by their heirs.

1/18/1992 Marxism is not dead; it is changing, developing, and growing. What has died are certain dogmas; what remains is the enterprise itself.

2/15/1992 Parallels in the “overthrow” of Christianity and communism: a rebellion against the imposition of virtue. People don’t want to have to be charitable and love their neighbors. People don’t want to be constrained in the pursuit of their own happiness. People want their own freedom, not others’. Rousseau (and Marx) were upset by this, which is why people are upset at them.

Maybe the advantage of Christianity over communism is that it can be practiced even if the whole world rejects it; not so communism, which can only be practiced under conditions that insure that everyone practices it.

2/22/1992 Why it is so necessary for the new Germany to punish Honecker: to create the illusion that the mass of common citizens were mere victims. Honecker’s punishment makes possible the integration of East Germans in a united Germany.

2/23/1992 The Gulf War as defense of universal values of human rights—for Americans and Europeans: only through monopolization of fossil fuels at cheap prices can the material basis for the enjoyment of these rights be created. If Americans and Europeans were really interested in universalizing human rights, they would have to work for the redistribution of economic benefits that alone make the creation of the material basis for the enjoyment of human rights possible.

3/11/1992 Gena DeAragon’s talk on feminist history entitled, “Add women and stir?” a formula she then criticized as insufficient. But in her response to questions she shows that she has herself not moved beyond this stage. When asked how she would write the history of the Gulf War from a feminist perspective, she said it should include the role of women in combat. Rather than critiquing the war itself as contrary to the interests of women, or of other groups excluded from power, she offered a “feminist” interpretation that not only leaves the patriarchal structure untouched but actually strengthens it.

3/15/1992 The great political question is, how do you develop true solidarity, true community? It is a question that challenges every community, from the family to the village to the nation to the human race. Socialism is a response to that challenge. Free market ideology is an avoidance mechanism. Fascism is deliberate deception.

9/5/1992 The vilification of Stalin as more criminal than Hitler is a function of our wealth and the need to defend it from the threatening poverty of the southern hemisphere. Hence the effort to impose equality must be seen as leading to greater crimes than the effort to maintain inequality… The effort to strengthen the underclass must be seen as more dangerous than the effort to strengthen the dominant class.

10/4/1992 The irony that now populations of former communist nations (e.g., East Germans) are considered to have a different mentality than people in the West—even though one argument against communism used to be that it presupposes the possibility (and desirability) of creating a “new person.”

2/5/1994 Headline in the New York Times on the Chiapas rebellion: “Mexican Peasants Fighting the Future”.

Emmet exhibited an early precociousness, as recorded in my journal:

2/22/1992 The study of little children as the study of human nature: Emmet starting to cry (out of impatience) just when Sally takes him on her lap and fiddles with her bra to expose her nipple to feed him—even though he may have shown no signs of hunger before. The prospect of immanent satisfaction making clear to him his state of dissatisfaction, which until then he had not noticed.

Sally with Emmet and Lucas Brown, 1993

3/8/1992 Sally: “Roots and wings—I like that metaphor. That’s what parents should give their children.”

5/19/1992 Emmet, sitting behind me on the floor, laughing as I hit the computer keys, as if it were being done for his entertainment.

2/13/1993 End of the twentieth century: the first real word the baby says is “plane.”

5/16/1993 Emmet’s generic name for dogs, at least our two dogs, is “Marley.” Having learned three names for two dogs, “Marley,” “Cloudy,” and “doggies,” he is understandably confused as to which term refers to one of them or both.

5/28/1993 Emmet’s first two phrases: “See you soon,” and “I love you.” Because he doesn’t quite understand the second one, he gets them mixed up and usually says, “I love you soon.” He can count to ten, but has no patience with seven or eight. On a good day he will get to six before jumping to nine and ten. On a bad day he jumps immediately from two to nine and ten!

2/5/1994 Emmet at 11 o’clock at night when I go in to put his blanket back on: “Hello, Daddy. I am sleeping. I don’t want to wake up.”

2/26/1994 Emmet: “Don’t worry, Daddy. We all make mistakes.” Or: “Just relax.”

6/11/1994 Louise, after Emmet has successfully gone on the pot: “I’m so proud of you, Emmet.” Emmet: “I’m proud of you, Louise.”—Louise: “Why’s that?”—Emmet: “Because you go on the potty.”

7/7/1994 Emmet arriving at [Sally’s colleague] Anna Monardo’s party: “Hello. I’m Emmet. I’m two.”

5/20/1995 Emmet saying not “When I grow up I’ll be a daddy,” but “When I grow up I’ll be Daddy.”

6/21/1995 Emmet: “When I grow up I’ll be a belly dancer.”

In 1992 our good friend and fellow Central America activist, Lisa Brown, decided to challenge the establishment head-on by running for the Washington state legislature. On October 18th, a couple of weeks before her victorious election, I recorded the following disagreement among her supporters:

The Lisa Brown campaign and the issue of Gail Ament’s letter to the editor refuting an earlier letter-writer accusing Lisa of Marxism and sympathy for the Sandanistas [she had been in Nicaragua during the elections in 1990, in which the Sandanistas were defeated after blatant American intervention]: Gail’s compelling defense of Lisa, including both an analysis of Nicaraguan society and a denunciation of efforts to distract attention from concrete Washington State issues, was criticized by Lisa and others for reviving an issue that should have been left dormant (on the assumption that people would forget about the earlier letter) and for giving “a rational response to an irrational attack.” But that is just what the campaign should be doing! Their purely tactical concern with “winning” illustrates the process by which politics corrupts reasonable people.

To our great delight Lisa won that election.

Lisa and Lucas here for a visit, 1993

She was also one of the few Democrats to be reelected in 1994, the year of the terrible Republican onslaught that led to the defeat of the incumbent Speaker of the national House of Representatives, Tom Foley. Lisa went on to a brilliant career as Majority Leader of the Washington State Senate.

I got some taste of local politics myself in the summer of 1993 when I was asked to represent land-owners on the Spokane River on a “Citizens’ Advisory Commission” to the County Planning Department, which led to the following journal entry in August 1993:

The complexity of politics. As a member of the Citizens’ Advisory Committee to the County Planning Department I oppose on principle any measure that will lead to further development and higher residential density in rural areas. One way to prevent development is to oppose the extension of the sewer system, an absolute prerequisite for any major residential construction. But I favor sewer construction because it protects the drinking water. Yet extension of the sewer almost requires development—because of the huge financial cost. What position to take?

A couple of months later I recorded the following entry:

Wayne Andresen, manager of the Inland Empire Paper Company, at the Citizens’ Advisory Commission meeting yesterday, while speaking in opposition to the County Planning Department’s policy of filing a formal title notice with the County Auditor on property that may be taken by the county to widen roadways or build new roads (the title notice serves as a way of officially informing property owners of the county’s intention to take the property at its present value): “This is a question of what kind of society we want to live in, a society in which people are free to dispose of their property or a society in which property is controlled by the government.”

On April 21st, 1994, Papa died, a month short of his 84th birthday. It was the first of a series of deaths to come in the years that followed, involving not only our parents’ generation, but our own and our children’s generations as well. Papa’s death did not receive much notice in the German press, overshadowed as it was by the death, on the same day, of former U.S. President Richard Nixon.

]]> http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/03/07/memoir-24-another-year-1993-1994/feed/ 0 http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/02/24/memoir-23-the-new-arrival-1991-1992/ http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/02/24/memoir-23-the-new-arrival-1991-1992/#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:46:28 +0000 rodstackelberg http://roderickstackelberg.com/?p=1027 We devoted the spring and summer of 1991 to what Olivia would call “nesting”—preparing the nest for our new arrival. We had already enclosed our yard with a chain-link fence when we got the dogs the year before. Now we enclosed the entire pasture as well. We put in an automatic sprinkler system in April, and then, to top it off, we installed a deck overlooking the river with a cascade of steps leading down to the river’s edge. Sally had wisely planned a sabbatical leave in the spring quarter.

Sally at our garden, summer 1991

On our new deck, 1991

On our new deck, autumn 1991

Watersport, 1991

Trina came in July

July, 1991

Emmet Winkle von Stackelberg was born on Saturday, September 7th, 1991, at 1:40 p.m. after five hours of hard labor. He weighed 6 pounds, 7 ounces, and was 20 inches long.

Emmet shortly after his birth

We named him after his great-great-great-great-granduncle Robert Temple Emmet, the Irish patriot and revolutionary who was executed at the age of twenty-five by the British in Dublin in 1803.

Monument to Robert Emmet in Dublin

Emmet is also a direct descendant of another Irish immigrant, William James of Albany (1771-1832), his great-great-great-great grandfather who was also the grandfather of our famous cousins, the philosopher William James (1842-1910) and the novelist Henry James (1843-1916).

Emmet’s birth was induced because Sally’s doctors feared, groundlessly as it turned out, that he might not be getting enough nourishment in the womb. It left us feeling rather helpless in the face of high technology, which seemed to turn up more problems than it solved. Sally bore her labor with exemplary fortitude, refusing all anesthesia and rejecting her doctor’s offer to do a Caesarian section to spare her further pain. Baby Emmet did fine throughout the pregnancy and birth, as attested by the high-tech devices that monitored his vital signs.

The birth was originally scheduled to be induced on September 6th. We got up at 5 a.m. to prepare to go to the hospital at 6 as instructed. However, due to several emergencies, the birthing center at Sacred Heart Medical Center could not receive Sally until late in the morning. Since she had requested a minimum of medical intervention, the doctors decided to induce labor by breaking her membranes. This proved impractical, however, due to the fact that her cervix was not yet sufficiently dilated. Because Emmet’s heartbeat rose as a result of the medical intrusion, the doctors decided against using prostaglandin to dilate the cervix and opted for a slow dose of pitocin, which was administered intravenously all night from the 6th to the 7th.

At 8:30 Saturday morning Sally’s membranes were broken, and she immediately went into hard labor. Within an hour her cervix had dilated to the maximum extent, and Emmet’s birth seemed imminent. The nurses rushed the necessary utensils and receptacles for birth into the room. At the same time the head nurse decided to cut off the pitocin to slow down the contractions. This proved to be an unfortunate decision, as the contractions, while still painful, failed to move the baby down. For three hours there was very little movement, and the doctors and nurses were beginning to mention the dreaded word, C-section. Then, despite her exhaustion, Sally offered to change into a squatting position to facilitate the baby’s movement. After one more hour of intense pushing, the delivery was accomplished, and Emmet gave his first cry to the relief and elation of his parents and birth helpers. An intensive care nurse stood by just in case the baby needed special attention. This proved to be unnecessary, however, as Emmet scored a nine for fitness on a scale of ten, missing a perfect score only because of some blue in hands and feet, which occurs quite normally in 90 per cent of all births. Emmet was born to the music of Chopin, which we had taped specially for the occasion. Throughout the day doctors and nurses making their rounds paused in the doorway to listen to the music. The attending physician, Dr. Budenholzer, paid us a big compliment: “What a lucky baby to have such parents!”

Exhausted but happy

Emmet and his mother came home the following day, less than twenty-four hours after his birth. During the first two weeks he was a reasonably placid infant, though he suffered occasional bouts of colic. Sally nursed him every three or four hours. By the second week he was sleeping six hours a night. His grandparents, Amy and Carl Winkle, visited from September 15th through the 20th. His nineteen-year-old brother Nick, my son by my marriage to Steffi, was in Spokane from September 16th to 20th, before returning to the University of Washington in Seattle for his junior year in civil engineering. Emmet’s twenty-five-year-old sister Trina lived in Cambridge and worked as an environmental risk assessment consultant.

Grandpa and Grandma Winkle, 1991

The new addition

Nick in his twentieth year

With Birgit Krause and Alan

Winter clothing, knit by Mama, 1992

Emmet and his parents received numerous cards and presents from family and friends. Several friends had already visited Sally and Emmet in the hospital, including Lisa Brown, whose son Lucas would be born on February 28th the following year. Lisa spent the night before Emmet’s birth at the hospital to keep Sally company, while I went home to tend the dogs and get some sleep. Other visitors were Olivia Caulliez, Ursula Hege, Gordon Gagliano, Nancy Nelson, Marion Dumoulin, and Tom and Esther Karier with their six-month-old son Marco. For many years Emmet would be part of a triumvirate of friends, separated by six months each from the older Marco and the younger Lucas. Mike and Gail Gurian and their baby daughter Gabrielle came after church on Sunday only to discover that we had already gone home!

The expanded family

Nursing the new arrival

Proud Daddy

On the deck, 1992

Christmas 1991 with Teddy

In the summer of 1992 we took our first trip abroad with the new infant. Before his twentieth birthday in September 2011, Emmet had been to Germany a full dozen times! In July 1992 we traveled to Baden-Baden, where Sally attended the annual conference of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG).

Baden-Baden

With Ilona Jappinen in Baden-Baden, 1992

Sally with Emmet, 1991

Emmet, winter 1991-1992

Emmet, February 1992

Outfit from Ingrid, 1992

Emmet was a great hit in Karlsruhe.

Emmet in Karlsruhe, July 1992

Emmet, August 1992

Papa, 1992

Im Rosengaertle, 1992

With Elena and Noema, 1992

On our return we visited Vermont in time to celebrate Olaf’s 60th birthday, which also provided an occasion to celebrate Mama’s 80th. We usually celebrated her January 20th birthday in the summer when the weather was more hospitable to family gatherings.

Mama at her 80th birthday party, August 1992

Olaf and Liz Biddle Barrett, August 1992

Trina and Granny

At Mama's 80th birthday party, August 1992

Naomi and Matthew Shulman, August 1992

Cousins Ginny and Kltty Biddle (More), August 1992

Nick Biddle, Joan, and daughters Barbara and Ginny, August 1992

Nick with Matthew and Naomi, August 1992

With Olaf, August 1992

Emmet's first birthday, Sep 7, 1992

Never too young to read!

Not too young to read, 1992

Proud father, 1992

That fall we invited our new friends, Heidi Gann and my colleague Paul DePalma, for Thanksgiving.

Paul and Heidi, 1992

]]> http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/02/24/memoir-23-the-new-arrival-1991-1992/feed/ 0 http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/02/16/memoir-22-years-of-momentous-change-1990-1991/ http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/02/16/memoir-22-years-of-momentous-change-1990-1991/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:26:39 +0000 rodstackelberg http://roderickstackelberg.com/?p=958 In April 1990 a distant Stackelberg cousin from Holland, Innet Ehrnrooth, whom I had gotten to know on our trip to Estonia the previous year, came to visit us in Spokane.

Innet Ehrnrooth in Spokane, April 1990

At Patsy Clark's, April 1990

In the pasture, April 1990

Papa’s 80th birthday in May 1990 was a multi-day celebration. Betsy was the only one of his eight children who was missing (she had visited him the previous summer), and fifteen of his grandchildren (eight of them American) were present as well. Spirits were high, augmented by numerous bottles of vodka and wine. In a humorous welcoming speech, delivered partly in English and partly in German, Papa expressed his astonishment at the number and variety of his offspring, reminding us of the old Baltic saying that the Stackelbergs were more than a family: they were a tribe. At midnight on May 24th the birthday cake was brought in, and Papa managed to extinguish all 81 candles with one blow! The official reception was held in the Great Hall of the Karlsburg, the former palace of the ruling margrave of the state of Baden. More than 200 guests came to celebrate and offer their congratulations. The occasion also commemorated the fifty-fifth anniversary of Papa’s admission to the legal profession in 1935 and the fortieth anniversary of his admission to the chamber of attorneys at the Bundesgerichtshof, the Federal Supreme Court, in 1950.

Papa with Trina, May 24th, 1990

At dinner, May 1990

A few days later, at Herr Roemer’s invitation, I gave a talk, “Ein Blick zurück auf den Historikerstreit (A Look Back at the Historians’ Dispute),” later published as a pamphlet in a series of public lectures sponsored by the Karlsruhe Public Library. It was followed by another reception in honor of Papa’s achievements.

Papa at reception, May 1990

Reception, May 1990

1990 was a momentous year in world politics. Elections in the now easily accessible German Democratic Republic in March resulted in a decisive victory for pro-Western parties. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl seized the chance to take control and make sure that there would be no independence for the East. On July 1st the West German currency, the Deutsche Mark, became the official nationwide currency. The East German Volkskammer voted to join the Federal Republic under the West German constitution, ignoring East German dissidents who favored a constitutional convention to reconcile the two very different social and economic systems in East and West. The four victor powers of the Second World War, including, to many people’s surprise, the soon to be defunct Soviet Union, gave up their sovereignty over Berlin. German reunification officially went into effect on October 3rd, 1990.

Sally and I made an extensive tour of East Germany in June, shortly before the currency union went into effect. People were already hoarding D. Marks in anticipation of the coming currency change, and although some hotels and restaurants had already begun to raise their prices to the Western levels, rooms in private houses were amazingly inexpensive. In Dresden we called a family that had advertised in a local paper and got a room for DM 20 per night, the equivalent of less than $10 at the going exchange rate. Our hosts had to go to work the following morning, so they gave us free run of their home, asking us only to shut the door when we left. We could sense that personal relations were quite different here from those in the West. Sharing and trustfulness seemed to be much more ingrained in social practices in the East. Of course, their hospitality also struck us as hopelessly naïve, aware as we were of how easily they could be taken advantage of. East Germans also had an exaggerated idea of American wealth and power. In Weimar a group gathered around our car to admire the VW bug we had rented in Frankfurt and asked us whether we had brought it with us across the sea from America.

On the same trip we visited Jena and toured the famous university as well as the handsome villa of the Darwinian naturalist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), on whom I was preparing an encyclopedia article at the time. Haeckel taught at Jena for almost half a century. As one of the centers of German Romanticism, Jena offered Sally a number of research opportunities as well. We also visited Erfurt, where Sally had attended an East German-sponsored seminar in the 1970s—which brought us an unexpected and somewhat intimidating late-night visit by two FBI agents to our home on Maringo Drive several months later. The FBI had been alerted to Sally’s seminar attendance by the Staatssicherheitdienst (STASI) records that fell into their hands after German reunification. We spent several days in Dresden, which I found very changed from my first visit with Renate in 1964. At that time the scars of war were still evident everywhere. Black was the dominant color of the Dresden skyline from the soot that covered most of the surviving buildings. By 1990 most of the soot had been removed and many of the buildings restored, though not yet quite to the elegance and architectural splendor that the city once again enjoys today. Graffiti on the walls seemed to indicate that not everyone was happy about the collapse of the GDR and looming reunification.

Anti-Nazi graffiti in Dresden, 1990

At Ingrid's in Berlin, summer 1990

On the same trip we also visited my friend and fellow-Nietzsche scholar Uschi Nussbaumer-Benz and her husband Roland at their rustic home near Zurich in Switzerland. I had gotten to know Uschi at my talk in Sils-Maria the previous autumn. She was working on her doctorate in philosophy, eventually completed at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and was of great help to me as well in polishing my German in my talk on the Historikerstreit. Her husband claimed to be an aficionado of Nietzsche’s as well, although his admiration seemed to be expressed above all in a taste for luxury goods. That is apparently how he understood Nietzsche’s injunction to always strive for the best! He was very proud of his souped-up, super-charged Jaguar, which he seemed to think Nietzsche would have admired and enjoyed.

Roland and Uschi Nussbaumer, June 1990

I had to return to the US on July 1st as I was slated to teach in the summer session of Gonzaga’s new doctoral program. In my efforts to establish rigorous academic standards for the new program, I alienated those students who did not want to devote much time to intensive study. Many, if not most of my students had full-time occupations and were working on their degrees on the side. One of them, in particular, was commuting to the weekly class from Canada and resented the fact that I insisted on keeping the class for the entire allotted time from 6 to 10 p.m. (with hourly ten-minute breaks). He is probably the one who in his course evaluation labeled me “a Stalinist” (the seminar was on the Soviet Union). The dean of the School of Education, to whom, no doubt, some of the students had complained, admonished me that it was common practice in the program to give credit for work experience in addition to academic performance. My evaluations were very mixed, with the number of students giving me the highest rating (usually the best students who appreciated my academic rigor) about equal to the number who gave me the lowest. To my surprise, I was asked to give the course again the following summer despite my mixed evaluations, but I declined. That was a mistake, because I was not asked again. Instead, they hired a historian from Whitworth College who became a fixture in the summer program for many years. My efforts to alert the administration to the academic weaknesses of the program went unheeded and unappreciated. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences left no doubt that he felt it was inappropriate for a Gonzaga faculty member to criticize a money-making program. Years later, however, I was asked to sit on the dissertation committee of one of the doctoral students in the program. Her dissertation on the civil war in Southern Sudan, in which she defended the rebel side, was well done and sunsequently published as a book in Uganda.

Sally had remained in Germany in July 1990, conducting research in Heidelberg. She also made a trip to France, visiting Olivia Caulliez in Paris and her colleague Alice Seiffert in Nice.

Sally, 1990

Sally with Olivia in Paris, 1990

We also made our annual trip to the East coast, visiting Mama and Betsy in Vermont and my Harvard roommate Paul Russell and his young wife Deborah in Boston.

Mama, August 1990

August 1990

Betsy with Naomi and Matthew, 1990

Deborah and Paul, 1990

Maureen Dyer and her partner Marion, 1990

When Sally and I returned to Spokane, we cooperated on a presentation discussing our findings in the newly liberated German Democratic Republic during our summer travels and gave our analysis of the consequences of German reunification and the future prospects for the new Germany. We gave numerous joint presentations, including quite memorable ones at the Unitarian Church in late summer and, at the invitation of Sally’s former colleague at EWU, Jill Gibion, at Eastern Oregon University in early fall. For that purpose we spent a weekend in LaGrande, Oregon, where we also had the chance to visit the near-by hot springs in the company of Jill and her partner Larry Smith. Sally and I agreed that a more critical perspective on German reunification was needed to balance the cold war triumphalism that characterized most Western accounts of this momentous event. We realized that we might have gone a bit overboard in describing the unacknowledged merits of East German society when one member of our audience asked with genuine curiosity whether we thought that East Germans might opt to revert to a communist regime! In an article published in In These Times in January 1991, “Unification from above leaves German left below.” I summarized some of our criticism of the top-down process by which German unification had been achieved.

Nick and Lisa, Thanksgiving 1990

The momentous events on the world stage were paralleled by an equally momentous event in our personal life. 1990 would turn out to be our one and only year of an “empty nest.” In December, 1990, at the ages of thirty-nine and fifty-five, respectively, “we” (in today’s parlance) became pregnant! We had relaxed our precautions some time earlier on the assumption that, if we were ever to have a child together, now was the time. Let’s dispense with the cumbersome contraceptives and let fate decide! I have to admit to some embarrassment on fathering another child at an age when most people were looking forward to becoming grandparents. However, the enthusiastic reaction of friends and colleagues assuaged my doubts about the propriety of becoming a father again in middle age. Sally attributed her fertility to the awakening of her maternal instincts by our acquisition, a short time before, in September 1990, of two very cute Labrador-mix puppies, Cloudy and Marley

Cloudy and Marley

Marley and Cloudy, 1990

Our new puppies

The date of our wedding was March 30, 1991, which turned out to be a precociously warm and sunny spring day, a perfect day for a wedding.

Wedding Day

Wedding party with Sally's sister Sue

Wedding party

The ceremony was to be conducted at our home by the Unitarian minister Linda Wittenberg who assured us that our lack of faith in God was no obstacle at all! This reminded me of John Weaver’s observation, delivered in a conspiratorial tone, that a more appropriate name for his church might be “zerotarian”! We wrote the ceremony ourselves, avoiding outlandish vows we were unlikely to keep. Besides Sally’s parents, her twin sister Sue, and Trina and Nick (our official witnesses who signed the marriage certificate), we invited about a dozen of our closest personal friends.

Sally's Women's Group, 1989

Bob Gillis and Deb Harper

Ray and Olivia

Mike and Gail Gurian

Jill Gibion and Morton Alexander

Wedding day, March 30th, 1991

David and Lisa

Gordon and Ursula (Thanksgiving 1990)

Marion and Frank

Sally's father on our wedding day

Rusty and Nancy Nelson

Paige Kenney

In January 1991, while Trina was here, we visited Nick at the University of Washington. We had some bad weather on our return trip, and had to use chains over Snowqualmie Pass. At one point our rear windshield cracked and fell out, leading to extraordinary temperature differentials in front and back. But with Trina driving we made it safely back home.

Trina. 1991

University Inn, January 1991

]]> http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/02/16/memoir-22-years-of-momentous-change-1990-1991/feed/ 0 http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/02/05/memoir-21-making-it-1988-1990/ http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/02/05/memoir-21-making-it-1988-1990/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:14:48 +0000 rodstackelberg http://roderickstackelberg.com/?p=906 I probably owed my invitation to give a guest lecture on Nietzsche and the Nazis at the annual conference in Sils-Maria in October 1988 to Papa. He had introduced me to Dr. Roemer, the chief librarian at the public library in Karlsruhe, who maintained a summer home in the Engadine Valley in Switzerland and was a member of the foundation funding the maintenance of the “Nietzsche-Haus” in Sils-Maria as well as the annual conference. It was Roemer who suggested me as a speaker to the organizing committee of the annual conference. The fact that Papa was a major contributor to Dr. Roemer’s favorite causes could not have been entirely irrelevant. On August 11th, 1988, I wrote in my journal:

The “pilgrimage” to Sils-Maria: at least two ways of looking at it. On the one hand, it seems to perfectly illustrate Nietzsche’s insight that the (his) greatest achievements were unplanned. It beautifully caps my long preoccupation with Nietzsche, making all that effort worthwhile. Here is the kind of help from Papa that I do not need to reject, because it doesn’t jeopardize my autonomy or integrity. Or does it? That is the other view. Have I come all this way finally to reveal myself as an impostor benefiting from his father’s connections? Have I at a crucial moment failed to remain true to myself, to my resolve to make it (or not to make it) on my own, on my merits? It depends on my level of confidence. When it is high, the contingent quality of how I got to Sils-Maria seems like the smile of fortune, a fated event, the confirmation that I have led my life right, the reward for my long years of integrity. When it is low it feels like I have slipped into opportunism, as if I were conning my way to Sils-Maria in a way that deserves to be punished by my unmasking as a fraud.

Another way of putting it: If my previous refusals to accept Papa’s help stem from fear of failure, of disappointing his expectations, does my willingness to accept this help signify a new confidence, a recognition that now I am ready, that now I won’t fail, or is it the aberration, the lapse from integrity, that will prove that my fears have been all-too-well grounded?

I was quite nervous while preparing for this high-profile assignment, as recorded in my journal in August:

Life is a series of challenges, each of which successively feels like the greatest one has ever faced and each of which later come to be seen as minor hurdles.

So it was in this case. My presentation was a great success, as immediately reported by phone to Papa by Dr. Roemer. I shared the stage with Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, perhaps the foremost Nietzsche scholar in Germany at the time, and later a fellow-contributor to the collection, Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? (Princeton University Press, 2002). Müller-Lauter, one of the editors of Nietzsche-Studien, the leading journal in the field, asked me to submit my manuscript to that prestigious journal, but one of his co-editors felt the time was not yet ripe in Germany for such a sweeping denazification of a philosopher still reviled for his attack on Christianity (and in the case of East Germany, his attack on socialism). To me it seemed clear that for his West German critics, at least, Nietzsche served as a convenient scapegoat to cover up the embarrassing fact that so many German Christians had not only supported Nazism, but had played a leading role in Hitler’s rise to power.

In Sils-Maria, October 1988

Sils-Maria

Returning to Karlsruhe from my Swiss excursion, I arrived just in time for my sister Stella’s 45th birthday celebration. It was, as usual in Karlsruhe, an occasion for a culinary feast with plentiful libations of excellent Russian vodka and fine German wines. The news of my well-received presentation in Sils-Maria had preceded me, and Papa made indirect reference to my talk in his customary Tischrede (dinner speech), in which he addressed his sons and daughters: “Wenn ihr Erfolg habt, das gibt mir auch Kraft (when you have success it gives me strength, too).”

With Stella and Sylvia

My three sisters, half playfully, wanted to hear the Nietzschean perspective on the Stackelberg family and our extravagant revelries. Perhaps they expected a Nietzschean stamp of approval for such splendid Dionysian excess. I didn’t rise to the occasion at the time, but later gave it some thought. In my journal, I recorded die nicht gehaltene Rede (the speech not given). Loosely paraphrased, I would have liked to have said something like this: Papa has emphasized the harmony in our family. I would like to emphasize its variety. All of us have something to offer, but it’s not the same thing. Therefore let us show forbearance toward each other. This gave me the chance to cite one of my favorite Nietzsche quotes: “Denn eines schickt sich durchaus nicht für zweie (for one thing absolutely will not do for two [persons]).“ What could I say on the subject of Nietzsche and the Stackelbergs? That only striving for material goods could not be the purpose of life—this belief I shared with Nietzsche, but a birthday celebration did not seem the appropriate venue for such a confession. “Money and property are means and not ends” was a silly platitude.

With Papa and Susanne, October 1988

Of course I was glad that I had not given this rather sanctimonious response to Papa’s wonderfully amicable Tischrede, even if it did reflect my personal views. At the UCLA seminar with Robert Wohl the previous summer, “consumerism” had been a hot topic of discussion. The term had never meant much to me beyond designating an activity—buying what we need or want—in which we all necessarily engage. After the seminar I began to understand how it could constitute an ideology and a way of life: consumption as fulfillment and as a diversion from engagement in politics, the realm in which all the important decisions affecting our lives are made. Later, in my journal, I tried to analyze the socializing function of consumerism:

When I go into the Home Club [a now defunct “ big-box” store] and look at the bathroom “vanities” (marvelous use of the word!), the thought of having written a letter to the editor protesting the American invasion of Panama [under President George H. W. Bush in December 1989] strikes me as absurd and embarrassing. How could I get so upset when life is so bountiful and pleasant? And furthermore, wasn’t I trying to have my cake and eat it, too, by indulging in moral posturing while enjoying the benefits of the policies I was protesting? And I end by feeling that by buying a new bathroom vanity I compromise my integrity—which is probably a good sign, because I could just stop writing letters to the editor.

Consumerism, or its absence, was probably the greatest difference between Papa’s and Mama’s lifestyles. 1989 was to be the year that Sally would first meet both of them. “I’ll be nervous when I meet your father,” Sally said presciently; “you’ll be nervous when I meet your mother.” We left Spokane by car in the second week of June, driving to Minneapolis, where we stayed with Sally’s friend from Madison days, Beverly and her husband Michael. From Minneapolis I flew to Germany for a two-week Stackelberg family excursion to Estonia on the 125th anniversary of the founding of the family association in 1864.

View of Tallinn from our hotel, June 1989

Papa in Tallinn, June 1989

Accompanying us to Tallinn, which the Germans used to call Reval, was Countess Nina Stauffenberg, the widow of the hero of the July 20th 1944 military revolt. Her mother had been a Stackelberg.

Papa with Nina Stauffenberg in Tallinn, 1989

Of course we took the opportunity to visit our old family estates. Hallinap had become a kolchos (collective farm) and was in good condition.

Hallinap, 1989

Garden at Hallinap from the attic window

Seal of the Hallinap branch of the Stackelberg family tree

Röal, where my father had been born, was in very poor condition. The basement had been used as a pigsty during the Soviet period.

Röal, 1989

The Stackelberg family townhouse in Tallinn was in good condition and now served as the home of the Economics Ministry of Estonia.

Stackelberg House in Tallinn, 1989

The Ritterschaftshaus (House of the Nobility) on the Domberg (Cathedral Mount) in Tallinn was well preserved as well. This is where the governing council of Estonia under the Russian Empire convened. Now it was used mainly for social occasions.

Ritterschaftshaus on the Domberg

Sally drove my car on to Boston, leaving it with Trina before joining me in Germany at the end of June 1989. Among other destinations, we traveled to Bavaria, visiting my wartime homes in Ried and at the Elmhof, before visiting relatives in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Old Frau Neuner, with whom we had shared a house during the war, was still alive and remembered us Stackelbergs well. It was my first trip back to Ried since the early 1960s, when Sweety Degenfeld had taken me through Ried on our way to Hinterhör after Tempy’s wedding in Bad Nauheim.

I had hoped to scale the Benediktenwand in the summer of 1989, the mountain we had so often ascended in our childhood, but the weather didn’t cooperate. Instead we spent several days holed up in what had been Lautenbacher’s restaurant during the war, but now was a comfortable motel, with easy access to the Franz Mark museum in nearby Kochel. Frau Neuner laughed. “Damals hat man in Sindelfingen über die blauen Pferse nur gelacht (at the time people only laughed at the Blue Horses). Today they are considered great art. At the time he wasn’t popular at all. Today streets are named after him.”

Franz Mark's Blaues Pferd

Rote Pferde

On our return we visited Mama in Vermont, with side trips to Burke Mountain and the Shelburne Museum in Burlington.

Mama, 1989

On the drive back to Spokane we stopped to see Olaf and Cora in Kent, Ohio, before heading back across the Great Plains as I had done so often in the past. This time, however we also stopped off at Glacier National Park in Montana.

In the late 1980s Allan Bloom’s (1930-1992) The Closing of the American Mind (1987) was all the rage among conservatives. At Gonzaga one of its predictable champions was my colleague, the political scientist Mike Leiserson, whose ingrained conservatism I had underestimated for years, to the extent of referring my friends from CASA (the Central American Solidarity Committee) to Leiserson, who taught a course on constitutional law, for help and advice when they faced legal troubles for civil disobedience.

I am liberated by knowing where Mike Leiserson stands. Only now I can appreciate how “befangen” (inhibited?) I was by the assumption that Mike was on our side.

CASA, 1990

Less predictably, the AVP, Fr. Peter Ely, was also a fan of Bloom’s book, although that should not have surprised me, as he, too, had made a shift to the political right in the Reagan years. I remember the interview he gave in the Spokesman-Review in the early 1980s, when he in effect welcomed the recession for bringing people back to “the Lord”! I needed to read the book, if only to see what all the fuss was about. Bloom predictably attacked leftist professors, but his attack was somewhat tempered by a countervailing urge to dismiss Marxism as an outdated and irrelevant doctrine. Instead, his book was more specifically aimed at post-modernism, increasingly fashionable in academia in those years and hence the bigger threat to traditional thinking. Nietzsche and Heidegger were his chief targets. Apparently he considered them agents of the left, which was indeed where many self-styled post-structuralists and deconstructionists located themselves on the political spectrum, notwithstanding their conspicuous rejection of the ”logocentric” Enlightenment tradition of rationality or any kind of political activism, for that matter. Bloom was a disciple of the philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973), who believed that Plato and the other Greek seers had written their works in a code only decipherable by and comprehensible to an educated ruling elite. Bloom, who like Strauss taught at the University of Chicago, did not go quite so far in his opposition to democracy, but he did believe that the new cult of post-modernism was closing the American mind to absolute truths.

The paradoxically exhilarating effect of reading Bloom’s monstrous attacks on Nietzsche and Marx: He is so obviously wrong that the effect of his attacks is to confirm how right [Nietzsche and Marx] are!

Bloom unwittingly attesting to the validity and pervasiveness of relativism in the use of his title: The Closing of the American Mind. The need to provide alternatives—the alternative supposedly lacking is the “aristocratic” one—is itself an argument of “relativism.” According to Bloom the American mind is closing to the eternal verities, the truths contained in the great books. What he really wants to do is close American minds to other alternatives, except the authoritarian one, but given the validity and attractiveness of a relativism and democracy that even he can’t deny, he couches his argument in relativist language [the language of competing alternatives].

1989 was, of course, the year that the Berlin Wall came down, East European regimes were toppled in a series of popular revolts, and Mikhail Gorbachev plowed ahead in his futile efforts to reform and stabilise the Soviet system in Russia. In November 1988 I had gotten some hint of the turmoil ahead when I was asked to participate in a panel discussion at Gonzaga with Pavel Kuznetsov, head of Radio Moscow broadcasts to the US (and Chris Peck, one of the editors of the Spokesman-Review):

Soviet official sounding very much like a defector in his criticisms and denunciations of the Soviet system. A strategy to ingratiate himself with the American public, or “genuine” cynicism? In either case, most unattractive. It helped me to understand what dissidents mean when they say that the Soviet bureaucracy is not truly socialist.

Just as you can’t have a successful republic without republicans or a functioning democracy without democrats (people who believe in democracy), you can’t have socialism without socialists! But I hadn’t given up hope. On Veterans’ Day 1989 I wrote:

The breakdown of communism as the perfect opportunity for a democratic socialism. Judging by “really existing socialism,” what people resent is not socialism as such, but the obligation, the pressure, to accept officially propagated doctrines. The resistance is similar to the hostility that any kind of effort at intellectual domination—thought control—elicits, for instance the imposition of religious dogmas or mandatory patriotism.

It seems that at least now we have to grant that the communists did have good reason to be afraid of the “idea” of freedom!

Of course, I couldn’t close my eyes to the corruption of communism in practice:

What communism has accomplished: a greater concern for the interests of the disadvantaged, excluded, and oppressed. By the nature of things, regimes dedicated to representing the weaker elements in society against the naturally stronger will be dictatorial. This circumstance provides great opportunity for the abuse of power by people for whom the exercise of power becomes an end in itself.

Sally and I followed the upheavals in Eastern Europe with very mixed emotions. On the one hand we hoped the collapse of the East European regimes would lead to a socialist form of democracy; on the other hand, they resembled counterrevolutions by the opponents of any form of socialism more than successful revolutions. They were certainly celebrated as cold war victories in the West. I tried to remain optimistic, but it was hard, as attested by this journal entry in January 1990:

What’s going on in Eastern Europe, especially the Soviet Union, may be viewed as an effort to develop a socialist system whose mechanisms of socialization are “natural,” not manifestly coercive. A system in which people will voluntarily adopt socialist values; a society in which the institutions will automatically or unconsciously reward socialist behavior and exclude anti-socialist ideas as out-of-bounds, “extremist,” “unrepresentative,” “radical.” It takes tremendous confidence to undertake such an experiment. The “people” are finally to be involved in the establishment of socialism. The risk is, of course, that the people will establish something quite different.

The crucial question, it seemed to me, was whether “Gorbachev’s reforms [are] a loss of confidence in socialism or a sign of confidence.”

How Gorbachev represents confidence in socialism: he has deliberately relinquished control and granted autonomy to individual agents—while not relinquishing the goals of socialism, a decent life for all, the kind of society that capitalism has never yet produced. He is taking great risks. Those who suspect Gorbachev of cunning and chicanery are really afraid of the new power the ideal of socialism may develop in a context of political freedom.

This led me to ponder

why it is so difficult to predict the future on the basis of history (aside from its dialectical quality—i.e., we know contradictions, even unexpected ones, will develop): history is concerned with motives that explain retrospectively and do not provide a basis for future behavior. Conscious recognition of unconscious motives transforms (or may transform) what was habitual into controllable behavior. Thus previous unconscious behavior cannot be used as a basis for prediction.

In my mind I was hatching a project that I never completed, or even properly pursued:

Book on the 20th century: rise of the masses, yes, but events can’t be simplistically blamed on the masses. Rather it is elite attempts to channel and use mass energies that are to blame. The right-left conflict does provide the overall framework for understanding the century. Gorbachev as figure on the left and symbol of transition on left—from class-based politics to humanist-ecological perspective. Revolt of minorities not as revolt of the underclass but seizing of opportunities by would-be dominant elites.

While the prospects of socialism were steadily declining across the world in 1989-1990, in our professional lives Sally and I were enjoying increasing success. Sally, who had published her dissertation as a book, was tenured and promoted at Eastern Washington University, while I was finally promoted to professorial rank, which now also included a sizable boost in pay. For the first time in my life I no longer had any financial worries. I was also elected president of the Faculty Assembly and in May 1990 received the Burlington Northern Scholar-of-the-Year award. At age fifty-five it seemed as if I had reached the pinnacle of my career. I was somewhat nonplussed by my change in outlook:

For many years I could not conceive of success as a serious option: it seemed an exception, a rarity, not the norm. Now it is difficult for me to take failure seriously.

Chridtmas 1988

John Weaver, brunch 1989

Sally with David Brookbank and John Weaver, spring 1989

Ken Lloyd's horse in our pasture

Meanwhile, Nick had graduated from West Valley High School in June 1989 and after a summer in Irasburg was off to college at the University of Washington in the fall. Having failed to pre-register, he was forced to scramble for the few open classes that remained. I returned from Seattle with a new appreciation for my position at GU.

Reflections on Nick finding all the classes he needs closed at the University of Washington. How heartless and callous this intellectually vibrant, overcrowded, ruthlessly competitive campus can be. Returning to Gonzaga and appreciating the peacefulness, slow pace, and underpopulation of the campus. This is an elite education we are offering: not necessarily intellectually more stimulating or challenging, but an education in isolation from the masses. It is to the University of Washington as the country club is to the airport or factory. It is the right to learn without being pushed and shoved and beaten out. The right or privilege not to stand in line. The College Handbook certainly has it right: “less competitive.” Almost idyllic, in fact.

Nike Gurian and John Shideler, brunch 1989

Nick's seventeenth birthday, Nov. 1988

December, 1989

Trina with Paddy, 1989

In November 1989 the full consequences of US support for right-wing state terror in Central America became apparent. A death squad of the Salvadoran military invaded the campus of the Jesuit university in San Salvador and murdered six priests, their cook, and her sixteen-year-old daughter in cold-blooded execution style. As president of the Faculty Assembly I gave the main address at the packed memorial service in the Gonzaga Student Chapel. But for those of us who had hoped that this monstrous atrocity would finally bring about a change in American policy, the months that followed would prove disappointing. The election of Reagan’s vice president, George W. H. Bush, in 1988 had left Reagan’s imperialistic policies essentially unchanged, although no one at the time could have foreseen that they would not only continue, but would even intensify in the twenty-first century.

Marching against racism in Coeur d'Alene: front page of Gonzaga Bulletin

]]> http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/02/05/memoir-21-making-it-1988-1990/feed/ 0 http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/01/18/memoir-20-a-productine-period-of-scholarship-1986-1988/ http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/01/18/memoir-20-a-productine-period-of-scholarship-1986-1988/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:58:02 +0000 rodstackelberg http://roderickstackelberg.com/?p=848 In spring semester 1986 I took my first sabbatical leave. I traveled to Frankfurt for four or five weeks in February and March on a German Academic Exchange (DAAD) stipend, leaving Nick, now a freshman at West Valley High School, under Sally’s care in Spokane. My research project was on the Frankfurt School of Social Research led by Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) and Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), eventually culminating in an article published in Dialectical Anthropology in 1988. By that time I had had more than enough of reading the works of the many minor exponents of völkisch ideology in the nineteenth century and their crazy ideas! The writings of Adorno, Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), and many others more loosely affiliated with the “Frankfurt School” were like a breath of fresh air. My trip to Germany from early February to late March was bracketed by two tragic events, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28th and the melt-down at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union on April 26th. Gorbachow had come to power the previous year, but it was Chernobyl that convinced him to introduce glasnost (free speech) and perestroika (economic restructuring). There were also unexpected personal losses. Steffi’s sister Ulrike died of cancer at age forty-two after refusing all treatment. Her death seemed to give her negative judgment of me that much more force. Steffi’s father had already died in 1981. Uncle Nick died on January 20th, Mama’s birthday, at age seventy-eight. In his last letter to me (prompted by his reading of Idealism Debased) he had spoken of suffering from “terminal fatigue.” On my return trip from Germany I visited Trina at Harvard, and together with Olaf, who flew in from Cleveland, we drove up in a rental car to visit Mama in Vermont. What sticks in my mind from that visit was Mama’s response when asked how she was feeling: “a bit bilious,” she answered, with unconcealed pleasure at being able to describe her condition so precisely through the use of an archaic term.

Mama, 1988

In Frankfurt I was lucky to find a cheap room to rent, thus abrogating my earlier fears that I might be forced to live at Papa’s, as articulated in my journal:

The sinking feeling on learning that no rooms are available in Frankfurt and that I may have to stay in Karlsruhe. Not that I may be bored or may get in the way, but rather that I will not be able to carry out my critical project in that relentlessly positivist and consumerist atmosphere.

I spent most of my time in the Frankfurt University library, where my cousin Eva Ganzlin, Papa’s sister Tante Lulli’s daughter, tracked me down one day to tell me that Tempy was in town and trying to get in touch with me. He had flown in from London, where he worked for the Kidder, Peabody brokerage firm, to consult with some of his German clients. As usual, we argued about Thatcher’s politics over an excellent meal at one of Frankfurt’s finer restaurants. On the weekends I traveled to Karlsruhe to spend time with Papa and his second family.

With Halinka, 1986

Awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (federal service cross) for his litigation of cases before the high court of the Federal Republic, Papa had reached the zenith of his career. At age seventy-five he had become a grand seigneur who loved to entertain his guests with excellent vodka with sakuskas and fine food and wine, just as in his younger years. He had aged very gracefully, as Stella confirmed for me when she said, “er geniesst es, alt zu sein (he enjoys being old).”

What accounts for Papa’s attractiveness? It’s not just the money that permits a sumptuous lifestyle; it’s not just a generosity made possible by wealth, it’s certainly not his skill or success as a lawyer. There is an element of self-sacrifice, as if Papa had given up the right to lead a normal life in order to act out an existence that gives pleasure to others, even if it is only the pleasure of beholding grandeur, the pleasure of vicariously participating in the last grand gestures.

On my 1986 sabbatical I also began work on my book on Nazi Germany, little anticipating that it would be more than twelve years before it finally appeared under the Routledge imprint in spring 1999 as Hitler’s Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies. On January 8th, 1986, I wrote in my journal:

My book on the Nazis must surmount the East-West split: it must be written not from one side or the other, but from the higher vantage point that incorporates the best of both points of view.
Nazism is a political topic, not a question of occultism, psychology, ambition, power hunger, historical accident, etc., etc.

With my Emmet cousin Leslie Lang in Karlsruhe. 1986

Despite (or maybe because of) the accession of Gorbachev to the highest office of the Soviet Union, I was still obsessed with reconciling socialism and liberal democracy. In those days I was often invited by the local media (TV or radio) to comment on international news. Since I taught Russian history at Gonzaga, I was asked to comment on Gorbachev’s emergence as Soviet leader. The precise pronunciation of Gorbachev’s name had not yet been agreed upon, so I called on Ed Yarwood, who taught Russian at Eastern Washington University, for assistance. He said that there was no particular rule that applied in this instance, so I wrongly put the accent on the second syllable, Gorbáchev, to my later embarrassment. Nonetheless, my periodic TV appearances were successful enough to persuade the local ABC station to invite me to serve as their “expert” commentator for the 1988 presidential election. This was an invitation I felt obligated to decline, not only because of my lack of “expertise” on American electoral politics (which I gave as my excuse), but also because I knew I would never be able to disguise my partisanship for the Democratic Party. I had earlier seriously embarrassed my son Nick, who was watching the news with his friends, by my critical comments on Reagan’s cold war policies. “Can’t you ever say anything nice” he admonished me, “about our president?” When I tried to explain the reasons for my vehement objections to Reaganism, Nick’s response was, “Life is more than just a lecture, Dad.”

Nick, 1985

Nick, 1986

Nick playing ping-pong in the basement, 1987

A sampling of journal entries gives some idea of my evolving political views, ultimately disappointed by the failure of Gorbachow’s reforms to bring about a democratic socialism:

16 Jan 1986 Liberalism descends into fascism when it is conceived only as freedom for power.

27 Jan The point is this: a “free” society creates the conditions in which strength can exert itself at the expense of the “weak.” However, to ensure a system in which the “weak” will not be short-changed or exploited, but in which people will continue to remain “free,” people’s voluntary assent to the norms of non-exploitation must be gained. In the absence of such voluntary assent, some form of coercion is necessary, leading to the paradox (and confirming the validity of a dialectical interpretation of history) that strong leaders must exert powers that will seem arbitrary and illegitimate to those who do not accept the norms of a socialist society.

4 Feb The mechanism of coercion is more impersonal and better concealed in the West in that no individual or group—no KGB—can be held responsible. That is not the least “genius” of the market from the conservative point of view. Victims of market forces blame natural causes, or bad luck, not the representatives or institutions of the social order, for their misfortune.

9 Apr The American dialectic: the power that this country wields is at least in part a consequence of its attractiveness—the appeal of its civil liberties—to so many people in the world. But the United States is hampered—thank God—in the full exercise of its power by those very same liberal institutions, which can’t be done away with—much as the propertied would like to—without destroying the source of American attractiveness and hence some of its power. The conflict has to and will be fought out in America itself. Because as long as America retains its liberal institutions it remains strong—and thus at least potentially capable of much mischief in the world. To wish a reduction of American power is in a sense to wish a diminution of what makes the United States appealing—its liberalism. So the responsibility of taming its power lies with us—its citizens. But in the very act of exercising its liberal democratic institutions, we are strengthening the U. S. and contributing to the power we seek to rein in. Is this what Hegel meant by the cunning of reason, the dialectic of history, and the passage of the “world spirit” from one country to another?

11 Apr Problems of socialism: what do you do when there always seems to be a majority in favor of a system that excludes, or exploits, or handicaps, or penalizes certain minorities (for instance, the poor)?

1 May Every system contains the potential for abuse. Liberals claim that their system is best because it recognizes and acknowledges the fallibility of humans. But they thereby enshrine that fallibility!

9 May The positive aspect of Reaganism is that we now know what to fight. Welfare statism puts the left in such a difficult position: on the one hand, it is not nearly equitable enough; on the other hand, we cannot deny our support to ameliorative measures—even if they strengthen a system that is basically inequitable. Reagan eases this uncomfortable choice.

15 May Anti-Marxists want to have it both ways. They argue that “individual initiative“ (i.e., the acquisitive drive) is essential to productivity and progress, but they deny that economic motives and relations are fundamental to human activities. But economic activity always has social consequences because of its effect on property values, the value of money, hence prices and wages, etc. That is why there must be some sort of social control. Farmers (like Mama), for instance, are victims of economic pressures not of their own making.

21 Nov 1987 The challenge confronting America: is it possible to create a truly inclusive middle-class society (the American dream)? Then there would in fact be no need, no use for Marxism.

4 July 1988 Democratic socialism can only succeed within a consensus on the desirability and legitimacy of a socialist economy. The current turmoil in the USSR attests to how far they have finally come: at last the party feels secure enough about the popularity and viability of socialism to permit open debate. No wonder our conservatives view what is going on with such misgivings!

Little did I anticipate that it was the Soviet bureaucracy itself, filled with ambitious people with no real commitment to Marxism, who would take the lead in the transformation of the Soviet Union into a brutally corrupt capitalist system a year or two later!

Mama's sweater, 1986

The other great interest of my sabbatical semester in spring 1986 was my continuing (but ultimately unavailing) project of reconciling Nietzsche with Marx.

If we perceive the great crimes of our age as the product of a perverted morality, then Nietzsche has something to say to us.

Nietzsche’s point?? Christianity is one thing in the minds of the truly humble—Jesus; another thing in the hands of the arrogant and intolerant—Paul. One cannot say Christianity is right or wrong. One can say it is admirable when practiced, an abomination when preached.

[Richard] Rorty’s article in the London Review of Books invoking Nietzsche in behalf of the adage, “truth is made, not found.” Truth is a function of choice of vocabulary, not of more perfect representation of outer reality or more perfect expression of inner reality. The dialectic is evident in that this kind of relativism can serve the communist cause by debunking the absolute claim to truth of religion, etc.; but it is now generally used to invalidate the communist claim of representing the true course and purpose of history. All is contingency. No system is more right than any other—except, of course, the system that acknowledges that truth (namely, liberalism)! To make this angle of attack possible, communism must be portrayed as a secular religion making claims to absolute truth. What gets lost is any appreciation of communism as simply partisanship for the weak and oppressed and the poor, which is exactly what liberals want to lose!

Marxism (or true democracy), by balancing the scale in favor of the under-classes and outcast, by questioning the privileges of the wealthy and powerful, by refusing to accept their superiority as givens, provides the necessary challenge that fosters greatness (which can’t be defined a priori, which develops dialectically). Nietzsche understood this.

Nietzsche’s problem is the German problem: no political awareness. Hence he generalizes his indictment of a specifically German world view into an attack on a human, or at least “Western” world view: Christianity, morality, etc. It is important, especially for Marxists, to situate Nietzsche’s philosophy in the context of his German experience. Nietzsche doesn’t help us to understand the world, as Marx does, but he does help us to understand Germans!

New York Review article on “Volksgeist” vs. “European culture:” what it fails to take into consideration is the crucial difference between Volksgeist as national liberation and as national domination and oppression. What it fails to take into consideration, in other words, is the economic base. It is the economic base that determines victimization or oppression. This neglect is what Marxists rightly impugn. The differing manifestations of Volksgeist provide a good illustration of the dialectic: Volksgeist, a liberating nationalism, carries within it the seeds of oppression. Nothing is either good or evil, except under certain conditions. Nietzsche’s failure to analyze these conditions in political terms is his true weakness.

One thing is undeniably true: Nietzsche has poisoned many minds. Mediocre minds under Nietzsche’s influence make mediocrity stronger. Nietzsche doesn’t change the quality of minds, he enhances self-confidence. Fascism: the petty bourgeois mind under Nietzsche’s influence.

Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man—“a person will desire what is injurious to himself simply to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid”—and Nietzsche’s nihilist, who would rather will nothingness than not willing at all.

Nietzsche so “aktuell” (relevant) because his rejection of majoritarianism can be used for a critique of both socialism and bourgeois democracy. Moreover, his criticism of the old order, of Bismarck and Wilhelm II, but also of idealism and religion, absolves him of being reactionary. He is ultra- (hence post-) modern, futuristic, open-ended—hence his appeal today. What those who want to activate him against socialism alone fail to acknowledge is that he can equally well be activated against liberal democracy. But he can’t be dismissed as simply a mouthpiece of the old order, as some Marxists do.

The current Nietzsche renaissance as a desperate search for a philosophically sophisticated alternative to Marxism. But not all negative: it is also a symptom of the kind of urges and motives that inspired Marx, but that cannot express itself as a commitment to Marxism in a system dominated by capital. Nietzsche at least gives one the courage to turn one’s back on traditional authority.

But then there are the “tough” Nietzscheans who appreciate his salutary critique of liberal democracy, the ruthless unmasking of liberal ideology, not out of any sympathy for fascism, but because the tough Nietzschean attack provides a safeguard against fascism. This is quite different from the ”gentle Nietzscheans” who portray him as some sort of proto-liberal.

It all depends on why Nietzsche is valued today: is it because his skepticism serves as a useful counterweight against Marxism, or is it because he has diagnosed the nihilism that has led us to the brink of nuclear self-destruction?

Given my scholarly interests, the most important historical controversy of 1986-1987 for me was the dispute known in Germany as the Historikerstreit. Precipitated by an article by the historian Ernst Nolte (b. 1923) in the leading conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) entitled , “Vergangenheit die nicht vergehen will” (the past that will not go away), the dispute pitted defenders of the “new conservatism” of the Reagan era against liberal critics of the “new cold war.” Nolte called for the same dispassionate analysis of Nazism as all other past events eventually received. Reagan’s visit on the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the Bitburg military cemetery that also contained the graves of numerous SS soldiers had already set the tone for the new cold war hawks who wanted to play down the Nazi past to strengthen West German commitment to the fight against Soviet communism. My comment in my journal was: “Bitburg is the revival of appeasement: even the SS have their uses in the struggle against the Reds.” Nolte argued in favor of a more positive reappraisal of Nazism, without denying Nazi extremism or the Holocaust. He interpreted Nazism as an understandable, if excessive (überschiessende) reaction of a fearful bourgeoisie to the greater horror and threat of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. In that way he could even give the Holocaust a rational justification, while incriminating communism for having precipitated the violent fascist reaction. Some of Nolte’s defenders, such as Joachim Fest (1926-2006), a biographer of Hitler and editor of the FAZ, went so far as to describe the Holocaust as just another of the tragic catastrophies that have always marked the course of human history. For liberal American historians Nolte’s interpretation of fascism as a reaction to and mirror image of the prior and allegedly more lethal communist movement provided an unpleasant provocation, as I tried to sort out in several entries in my journal in January 1987:

The German Historikerstreit: Nolte’s analysis of fascism as basically anti-Marxism is correct; his effort to derive a certain justification of fascism from this is not. Nolte is performing a useful service in “historicizing” fascism, i. e., embedding it in its historical context and thus facilitating understanding. But his analysis does not so much “relativize” fascism (as just a militant and not totally unwarranted response to communism) as it discredits militant right-wing anti-communism (though of course that is not how Nolte, or his liberal critics, see it). Liberal American critics, such as [Stanford Professor Gordon] Craig [who wrote about the dispute in the New York Review of Books] have such problems with Nolte, et al., because they cannot criticize his anti-communism because they share it. So they have to claim (citing [historian Eberhard] Jäckel) that Hitler did not eliminate the Jews out of fear of Bolshevism. They sidestep the real issue—the analysis of fascism—to focus on a much narrower topic—the uniqueness of the Holocaust. The typically liberal cop-out of taking a relentlessly positivistic and empirical approach. What other state, after all, had used gas in so systematic a fashion on men, women, and children? And they reject (or attack) what is strongest about Nolte—his “philosophizing,” his dialectic, or, more accurately, phenomenology—rather than his basic values. Nolte provides a real challenge: he is forcing Americans to confront the implications of their anti-communism. They don’t like it.

The real issue in the controversy was not the historical interpretation of Nazism but the politics of the new Cold War at the height of the Reagan era:

Nolte’s project: in the outrage over fascism and its atrocities, don’t lose sight of the prior and perhaps greater atrocities of communism. Precisely because he is aware of the importance of the anti-communist impulse in fascism, he is concerned (as are Fest and the FAZ) that outrage about fascism (and the charge that Nazi crimes are uniquely horrible, execrable) may dim people’s anti-communist ardor, may turn the youth of the Federal Republic into guilt-ridden pacifists. None of them are apologists for fascism. All of them are Cold Warriors. This is really a debate about motives, not substance. Critics of [Jürgen] Habermas have tried to turn it into a debate about substance—or rather, they have tried to discredit Habermas because he called into question the motives of Nolte and his defenders rather than offering a substantive rebuttal of Nolte’s interpretation. The hidden (and not so hidden) agenda of all the participants is present policies and the present political ethos, not history at all. An extremely instructive example of how the interpretation of history is relevant to contemporary politics! American liberal historians have such problems with this controversy because they don’t even accept Nolte’s analysis of fascism (at least not whole-heartedly). What is at issue is not the interpretation of fascism or the uniqueness of the Holocaust, but the Cold War, the Wende (conservative turn). Nolte is well aware that his quite accurate analysis of fascism can work both ways—to indict anti-communism or to ”relativize” or “historicize” Nazism. Since he doesn’t want the former, he is left with no choice but to pursue the latter. Americans take a cop-out: fascism is not anti-communism (in essence) but unique (demonic) evil.

Ultimately what was at stake for Nolte and his defenders in the Historikerstreit was not just German support for the new Cold War, but rejection of the values of the generational revolt of the 1960s in favor of the new conservatism of the 1980s. Hence the title of the article on the Historikerstreit I published in Radical History Review in 1988: “1986 vs. 1968: The turn to the Right in German Historiography.”

Several years earlier Sally and I had become quite active in protesting the Reagan Administration’s support for the right wing government of El Salvador, whose paramilitary death squads had assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero and murdered three American nuns in 1980. Reagan also financed counter-revolutionary terrorists known as “Contras” in their efforts to overthrow the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. Sally had become a member of the steering committee of the Central America Solidarity Association (CASA) cofounded by her young colleagues from the economics department at Eastern Washington University, future Democratic majority leader of the Washington state senate, Lisa Brown, and the later Washington delegate to the Northwest Power Council, Tom Karier.

Scott Nicholson, Kevin Baxter. Susan Reicheldorfer, Lisa Brown. Sally, Julie Barnard, Mort Alexander, Tom Karier

In 1986 the so-called Iran-Contra scandal burst on to the scene with the disclosure that money from arms sales to Iran had been diverted by the White House to finance Contra attacks against Nicaragua in violation of a law barring U.S. aid to the Contras—a law passed by the Democratic Congress in a futile effort to halt the aggressive policies of the Reagan Administration in Central America.

Protest at the Federal Building, 1986

But those of us hoping that the judicial system would now function as impartially as it had in the Watergate scandal were to be disappointed. None of the persons responsible for the illegal diversion of funds or efforts to cover up the affair ever went to jail. In fact, one of them, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, an aide to National Security Adviser John Poindexter, became something of a national hero to conservatives, despite admitting his role in revising, shredding, and removing key documents in the affair. I was able to use the resulting “Olliemania” as a teaching tool in my course on Hitler’s Germany.

On January 1st, 1987, at Tom Karier’s suggestion, we held the first of our annual New Year’s Day “Open House” brunches.

With Tom Karier and Jill Gibion, 1985

We made a mistake, not to be repeated in future years, of not specifying any hours for our “open house.”. While most of our guests arrived in the late morning, some, including my Whitworth College colleague Bob Lacerte and his wife, did not arrive until late afternoon.

Lisa Brown with Sally, New Year's Day brunch, 1987

Sally spent the summer of 1987 in Seattle at an NEH faculty seminar given by University of Washington Professor Ernst Behler.

Sally in mid-1980s

Sally, 1986

This gave us an opportunity for a number of weekend outings in Seattle and its scenic environs. We spent a particularly memorable weekend on Orkas Island with its well-known hot springs resort, where bathing suits were optional, but not required. I spent most of that summer working on a review of Abraham’s book on The Collapse of the Weimar Republic for the German Studies Review. It was to be counterbalanced by a review by Bob Grathwohl, who took an opposing view on the controversy over the book, but unfortunately he never lived up to his part of the bargain. Pleading lack of time, he failed to submit his review, whereupon the editors forced me to cut down the length of my review by severely curtailing the space they had originally promised.

Christmas, 1987

In June 1988 I traveled east to attend Trina’s graduation from Harvard. Sally was not able to attend this festive event as her semester did not end until the middle of June. Trina and her boyfriend at the time, her classmate Paddy Spence, had visited us in Spokane over Christmas both in 1986 and 1987.

Trina and Paddy

They shared a common interest in tie-dyeing, which they hoped to expand into a business.

Trina's Commencement June 1988

Trina on the veranda of her apartment in Cambridge, 1988

Under the influence of her jewelry-crafting mother, Trina had earlier shifted her major field of concentration from history and lit (my field of concentration at Harvard) to the very different field of environmental design. In her working career, however, which already began with a part-time job while she was still at Harvard, she pursued a different line altogether. She became quite skilled in creating computer models of the cancer risks generated by certain kinds of industrial hazardous wastes. This was the burgeoning field of risk management in which she eventually became very successful.

Trina getting her degree 1988

I tried to give Trina some advice based on my own experience of having delayed my graduate education too long. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do with your life,“ I told her, “but if you’re planning to get a PhD, don’t make the same mistake that I did by waiting so long.” It was advice that went unheeded. Ironically it would be exactly eighteen years, the very same number of years between my AB and PhD, before Trina earned her doctorate in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2006!

Tie-dye Christmas, 1987

In the summer of 1988 I attended another NEH faculty seminar under the direction of Robert Wohl at UCLA. The long drive to Los Angeles was my pretext to finally trade in my aging VW van and buy a new car, a Ford Escort, though that decision was not reached without the usual brooding over the implications of such a move. In the end I convinced myself with the help of a little casuistry:

Trying to decide whether to buy a new car: is it more materialistic to be attached to the old car than to covet a new one? If a car is just a use object, not a fetish, shouldn’t one buy a new one as the most efficient, time-effective means of transportation (the old car, because it needs constant tending, is more time-consuming)? At the very least, one should not worry about the money that a new car costs, for isn’t it materialistic not to want to trade in money for time and freedom from distraction?!?

My main concern that summer was to prepare for my forthcoming trip to Switzerland, where I was scheduled to give a presentation on Nietzsche and the Nazis at the annual conference in Sils-Maria in October 1988, the picturesque alpine village where Nietzsche had worked most summers in the 1880s. Sally joined me in Los Angeles at the end of July, and together we visited her parents in Phoenix before returning to Spokane via scenic route 1 along the Pacific coast with a stop-over in San Francisco and numerous stops along the Oregon coast.

Oregon coast, 1989

]]> http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2012/01/18/memoir-20-a-productine-period-of-scholarship-1986-1988/feed/ 0 http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2011/12/04/memoir-19-a-new-beginning-with-sally-1983-1985/ http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2011/12/04/memoir-19-a-new-beginning-with-sally-1983-1985/#comments Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:16:54 +0000 rodstackelberg http://roderickstackelberg.com/?p=772 In late October, 1983, I first met Sally Winkle at the home of Olivia Caulliez, still married to my former Gonzaga colleague John Shideler at the time. Sally had just begun teaching German language and literature at Eastern Washington University. We had both attended the annual German Studies Association conference held that year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where Sally was completing her PhD in German Language and Literature. We had not met at the conference, but it gave us plenty to talk about. My visit to Madison had indeed been a memorable occasion for me, my only visit to one of the major sites of the student rebellion and anti-war movement of the 1960s, with which I had sympathized so greatly. The balmy weather drew hundreds of students into the streets to enjoy the “Indian summer.” The student union, the Rathskeller, still served beer at the time, and the atmosphere of the city and especially the campus struck me as marvelously liberal and inviting. For Sally, who had already lived in Madison for six years, the weekend was probably nothing special, but we found in our conversation at Olivia’s that we were on the same wavelength in our political views and intellectual interests—so much so that for all practical purposes we were “computer-matched.” Sally had been an active member of the graduate teaching assistants’ union at the University of Wisconsin and had participated in a strike for higher wages and better working conditions a year or two before. Within a week we became an inseparable couple. Our sixteen-year age difference was no problem, at least not at the time. “It turns me on,” Sally told me, “that you think I am young.” And I was turned on by her slim figure and excellent mind.

With Sally in 1983

I had been searching for a mate for more than a year, ever since my final separation from Steffi at the end of 1982. I was particularly attracted to two of my young female colleagues at Gonzaga, but they were each other’s best friends, and in my clumsy efforts at courtship I only managed to antagonize both of them! When one of them threw a tenure party for the other one in April 1983 and I was one of the few faculty members who were not invited, I knew I had ruined whatever chances I might have had with either of them. In my journal I recorded my reaction to this rebuff:

The war between the sexes: the effort to grow beyond the natural attraction to the opposite sex. Hence one competes for the superior psychological vantage point that confers autonomy. Make the other side want you more than you want them.—Insight derived from not being invited to [the] tenure party. Nice to have the insight, but wouldn’t it have been more fun to have been invited?

I took a mordant view of my motives:

Irony: in students as potential lovers I look for the parent-less, because they are more likely to defy convention (Kaye!). In older women as potential mates I look for those with close ties to their parents because they are more likely to have internalized the conventional goals of marriage and children (besides carrying the genes of longevity). They are less likely to give in to Lesbian temptations.

Obviously, my own inhibitions played a part in my problematic post-divorce relations with women:

It is easy to say, why not call her; the worst that can happen is that she’ll say no. For one thing, it isn’t the worst. She may say yes and not mean it. But what is even worse is that she says yes and you do not mean it. You mean it only if she reacts in a certain way. One inhibition, then, is fear of becoming a fraud, of being revealed as a fraud, because your phone call may promise something you can’t deliver.

Another inhibiting factor was the note of desperation that I seemed to convey. Martha Chrisman, an attractive young pianist in the music department who in June, 1986, moved to a better position at Purdue University, gave me some good advice: “You go too fast. You seem desperate. It takes all the romance out of it. A romance needs a little mystery, a little teasing.” Martha told her mother that I seemed very lonely. I asked her what her mother’s response had been. “She said she thought you’d better get your act together before you go out.” But Martha and I were too different ever to have made a harmonious and integrated couple. She was a bit of a born-again Christian who dragged me to Sunday services at a number of churches.

At the Plymouth Congregational Church with Martha. The minister with the ingratiating gestures and self-admiring public speaking style of Bob Carriker. Martha applying the lessons of the sermon to her problems with Fr. Leedale [chair of the music department], who gave her a bad evaluation after a sneak visit to her class: “I’ll get him through love,” and “I’m going to think of my problems as challenges from now on.” About the minister: “He doesn’t play it safe like other ministers. He disturbs people. He has the courage to speak of faith and love instead of how to save the world.”

Martha was quite aware of our basic incompatibility. Of a romantic rival, a young executive at a local credit union with whom she was going out, she said: “I don’t want him, but I want to want him; I want you, but I don’t want to want you.” To my plaint that she got sexually aroused with me but then transferred it to him, she responded, “Maybe it’s the other way round.”

Martha in our back yard at Maringo Drive

When I met Sally, Nick was quite relieved. He had become quite worried that if my relationship with Martha developed any further, he would have to go to church every Sunday!

Twelve-year-old Nick was a bit wary of Sally, too, at first, for fear that our relationship was getting too close, as Sally frequently came over for supper. “When I see three pork chops on the counter,“ he admonished me, “I get really mad.” “I should sue you for waste of gas,“ he said at another time. “Have you and Sally ever thought about how much gas you are wasting when she cones over here?”

Nick

But when Sally finally moved in with us two years later in September 1985, they got along very well. Sally was very much affected by the second wave of the feminist movement, sometimes referred to as the Women’s Liberation Movement, reaching its crest in those years. I sympathized with the movement as well for its emphasis on equality, even if it seemed to make courtship more complicated than it had been when I grew up in the 1950s (not that the more rigid gender roles of an earlier era made it any easier for me). Several months before, on May 6, 1983, I had written in my journal:

Feminism only elevates courtship to a higher level; it does not change its dynamics. If anything, it reinforces the age-old dynamic: men must really be men: must act independently and courageously: must be prepared to court even the formidable new woman: must not sit on their asses: must not be afraid to act just because women, too, are autonomous, career-oriented, and equal. Another way of putting it is that the war between the sexes did not start with feminism: it only took a more honest, less devious form.

The best case for feminism: those who are aware of their own rights are also more aware of the rights of others.

Sally herself was somewhat torn by conflicting emotions, as recorded in my journal on November 23, 1983:

Sally telling me how Miles, her bisexual friend, had analyzed her two personalities and called them “Anna Mae” and “Beatrix” respectively. “Anna Mae” wants to be taken care of by a man, “Beatrix” is the liberated independent woman. The United Nations Association meeting in Cheney the day before yesterday had distressed “Beatrix,” because Sally had behaved so much like “Anna Mae”. Instead of sitting in a comfortable unclaimed armchair (on which we had placed her coat), from where she could have conversed comfortably with other visitors, she sat down in a corner of the sofa next to me. From there she was virtually excluded from the conversation both because I blocked her line of discourse, and she didn’t know any of the people there, except [her colleague in government] Ernie Gohlert, who was giving a talk on his trip to Malaysia. Ernie’s presence only made her feel more inadequate, since she had, in effect, chosen to retreat behind me.—The question in my mind was, do I force her, by my behavior, into the role of “Anna Mae”? I had thought that her self-doubts had a different source: that “Anna Mae” felt neglected by my lack of a firmer commitment than our present practice of sleeping together on weekends. The fact that it is “Beatrix” who is aggrieved does not entirely reassure me. For “Beatrix” is angry at “Anna Mae” for wanting what “Anna Mae” wants.

Sally herself was not happy with this artificial distinction between the traditionalist “Anna Mae” and the feminist “Beatrix”, and by the time I met her she had fully embraced a feminism that explained gender not as biologically given but as a social and cultural construct. This did lead to some animated discussions in which Sally criticized my more traditional views, as recorded on January 22, 1984:

Argument yesterday with Sally: she took issue with my explanation of promiscuity among young male homosexuals, which was that young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five have a powerful sex drive for which there is no socially acceptable outlet. Sally objected to this notion, because the powerful male sex drive is sometimes cited as an excuse to meliorate the blame attached to rapists. When I said it was not my intention to provide such an excuse, she nonetheless objected to the notion that men had a more powerful sex drive than women, because that argument could be used to rationalize rape. This frustrated me.: “You deny reality and truth because it is not convenient to the feminist cause.”—“What you call reality and truth may not be truth from a different perspective,” she responded. “The whole notion of ‘objective reality’ has been used to perpetuate an androcentric point of view.” I tried another tack: “All I’m doing is providing an explanation for male homosexual promiscuity, an explanation designed to counter the biased view that homosexuals are by nature promiscuous. What you are saying about the application of this explanation to rape is irrelevant.”—“You are trivializing my argument by calling it irrelevant. It is typical of the male inability or refusal to see any other point of view.”—“I, too, object to using the notion of male hyper-sexuality to justify rape,” I retorted. “But that doesn’t allow me to close my eyes to the truth.”—“What may be true for you may not be true for me.”—“But your truth has no bearing on the statement I am making. It is an entirely separate issue.”—“From my perspective it isn’t. Your failure to see and make the connection is precisely the limited vision I challenge.”—“If our perception of truth is so different, we will never be able to close the chasm between us.”—“All I want you to do is make the effort to see my side and not to trivialize my side by calling it ’irrelevant,’ or ‘irrational,’ or ‘subjective,’ or ‘illogical,’ while validating your own side as ‘objective.’”

The argument made me acutely aware of how real the conflict between the sexes is, how unbridgeable the chasm may well be. For it seems that what I am being asked to do is no less than to give up my objective view of reality—a view that has served male interests and does not take “subjective” feminine perspectives sufficiently into account. The argument helped me to understand the genealogy of [my ex-wife] Steffi’s dictum, “Sex ist alles (sex is everything).” For if the interests and perspectives of the sexes are so different, the sexual attraction is ultimately the only sure bond. It also seemed to clarify the origins of the old saw, to wit that women do not think as logically as men. Thus a feminist attack on sexism reinforces a sexist prejudice.

Sally at home

On December 6, 1983, we attended a firebrand talk by the ex-Mormon feminist Sonia Johnson on the theme epitomized by her militant dictum, “To be born female is to be born behind enemy lines.” Her most damning indictment of men was her assertion, “They say, ‘if you do not meet our demands, we will not love you.’” More valid, in my judgment, was her starkly expressed insight, “Human beings love human beings. They don’t love doormats.” After the talk I confessed to Sally that I felt thoroughly chastened, to which Sally replied, “good!” But Sally credited me with a “maternal streak:” “I like it when you warm up my feet, but I don’t like it when you tell me how to teach. I don’t like it when you seem to do everything that I do better. It does not help my low self-esteem.” John Wagner of the philosophy department went so far as to say (as reported to me by Martha): “The only reason women like Rod so much is because he’s a feminist.”

Martha Chrisman's recital in spring 1986, with John Wagner and Sally

My seventeen-year-old daughter Trina came home to Spokane at Christmas, 1983, with some very exciting news: she had just been admitted to Harvard on early decision, an admissions practice that Harvard ended a few years later to enlarge its pool of candidates and to equalize the opportunities for low-income and minority groups. At the annual Spokane Harvard Club luncheon between Christmas and New Year’s in 1983, Trina announced: “My greatest fear about going to Harvard is that I think of it as so perfect, such a pillar, that I’m afraid this image will crumble when I go there.” She needn’t have feared disillusionment, however. Indeed she ended up marrying a fellow Harvard graduate, Garth Jonson, in 1995 and remained a resident of Cambridge or Boston from 1984 on. She completed a doctorate at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2006 and continues to conduct research there on epidemiological risk assessment to the present day.

Trina 1984

In the spring of her senior year at Kent School, however, her rebellious streak surfaced with a few unhappy ramifications. Trina had taken her mother’s VW bug (Steffi did not drive) with her to Kent, where she parked it at the home of Olaf’s mother-in-law Mrs. Sleighter, as Kent School did not permit its students to have automobiles on campus. However, Trina made the mistake of lending her car to some fellow students who were involved in a minor accident, thus bringing this violation of Kent School’s rules against students’ use of automobiles to light. Although Trina was allowed to graduate in June, 1984, she had to forfeit all of the many honors and awards she had earned for her scholarly achievements. Fortunately, these disciplinary actions did not affect her admission to Harvard

Trina receiving her international baccalaureate diploma from Kent School

Signs of teen-age rebellion continued at least for a while at Harvard. At Christmas time 1984, Trina came home to Spokane with a blue streak in her hair. This even merited a mention in the “Undergraduate” column of Harvard Magazine which noted the presence in the Yard of a freshman girl known simply as “Blue.”

Trinaat Harvard

Although as a child Trina had been highly critical of her mother’s smoking habit, provocatively posting “No Smoking” signs all over the house, now she came home with a carton of cigarettes, which she proceeded to smoke in her upstairs bedroom over the course of her two-week stay.

Aunt Temple died of cancer in Florida on February 24, 1984, the first of her generation of our immediate family (our cousin, Olaf’s benefactor Pauline Emmet, had died the year before). Despite her illness Aunt Temple had stopped off to see me in Spokane on her way to her daughter Liz and son-in-law Roby Rosenthal’s home in Seattle in July, 1983. Perhaps she anticipated the approaching end of her life, because she brought Christmas presents for my family, as if she sensed that she might not be around to send them at the end of the year.

She is exemplary in her grittiness, in her strength in the face of old age and ill health, her total lack of self-pity. But it is precisely this hardness, manifested in rather gruff attitudes, opinions, and even language, this determination not to let the world get to her, this invulnerability, that makes conversation with her, not a bore, but a chore. I was hoping to get some information and insight into Mama’s life in the 1930s. But Aunt Temple could no longer remember when Mama had come to America [on vacations] or for how long. She could not even remember the last year she, Aunt Temple, had been in Germany herself. None of that particularly interested her. To the explanation of Mama’s psyche she did contribute the hypothesis that Mama had had things too easy! She should not have been supported as much as she had been by Granny. There is an unconscious economy in Aunt Temple’s outlook; all her sensibilities have become mobilized in the fight to assert herself against disease, weakness, self-doubt, loss of will. A courageous old lady, but tedious. It is the same quality that years ago I called “impersonal,” though Mama objected and insisted she was “too personal.”

Aunt Temple in the 1930s

The co-residence of Aunt Temple and Mama in the house that Aunt Temple had built for Mama in Vermont had not worked out as planned. Each of their increasingly infrequent attempts to live together in harmony had ended acrimoniously. Just who was most to blame for the friction between the two sisters is difficult to determine. Suffice it to say that they got on each others’ nerves. Aunt Temple had the means to live elsewhere, and that was the course that she chose, eventually settling in Florida, where Uncle Nick and Aunt Virginia had already made their home several years before. Mama claimed that Aunt Temple had resented her since childhood for usurping her place as the pampered youngest sibling, but I did not trust her self-serving explanation. It seemed to me too obviously a rationalization of Mama’s own life-long resentment of her dominant and successful older sister.

In the summer of 1984 I attended a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) faculty seminar conducted by the prolific Germanist Sander Gilman at Cornell University on the German fin de siècle (1890-1900). I was chosen as a seminar participant for my “expertise” on Houston Stewart Chamberlain, on whom I gave a formal presentation, but the research project I worked on at Cornell was quite different. It was an analysis of the Marxist appraisal and almost unanimous rejection of Nietzsche’s philosophy, most famously in Györgi Lukásc’s The Destruction of Reason (1954). My motivation was to see if Nietzsche’s thought, so easily and often misappropriated by right-wing ideologues, could not be made useful for the left. On the basis of my study of völkisch ideology and Nietzsche’s apostasy after his rejection of Wagnerian nationalism and religiosity in the mid-1870s, I suspected that the affinities between Nietzsche and Marx were greater than conventionally assumed. Certainly Nietzsche’s “denazification” was no longer controversial, at least not in the West, especially after the publication of Walter Kaufman’s pioneering demolition of the popular caricature of Nietzsche as proto-Nazi. Also contributing to Nietzsche’s “denazification” was his wholesale appropriation by post-modernists as the preceptor of their key insight that, in the words of Richard Rorty, “truth is made and not found.” While Kaufman had shown the incompatibility of Nietzsche’s ideas with völkisch ideology, I focused more on “The Völkisch Reaction to Nietzschean Thought,” the subtitle of an article I published in March 1983 in a journal edited by my counterpart at Washington State University, Bob Grathwohl. Bob had persuaded me to publish my article in his low-circulation journal, entitled Research Studies. Somewhat against my better judgment I accepted his invitation, not only as a favor to Bob, but also because I was impatient to see my article in print. My doubts proved all too sound when the journal folded only a few issues later. Bob Grathwohl, who lost his wife to cancer at a much too early age, subsequently moved to Washington, DC, where he took a position with the National Endowment for the Humanities

Bob Grathwohl

One of my conclusions in the paper I turned in to Sander Gilman in July 1984 was that Nietzsche’s main target was not the socialism of the left or the ideas of Karl Marx, whose works he only knew through the distorted lens of the renegade Social Democrat Eugene Dühring, whom Nietzsche roundly condemned for his antisemitic views. Instead, Nietzsche’s primary target was the very moralism that was routinely mobilized by the religious right (or the “moral majority”) to oppose and discredit socialism. But I could not simply close my eyes to the fact that Nietzsche’s ideas had indeed proved very useful to the Nazis, whether in distorted form or not. In an oral presentation on “Nietzsche and the Nazis” I tried to account for Nietzsche’s link to Nazism, notwithstanding his unqualified condemnation of German nationalism, his contempt for the Wilhelmine Reich, and his rejection of Christian as well as racial antisemitism:

Although Nietzsche was a profound critic of the German idealist tradition that culminated (in corrupted form) in Germanic and völkisch ideology, Nietzsche (perhaps inevitably) incorporated precisely those elements of that tradition that made it easily possible to misuse his philosophy and misunderstand his aims. His tendency to view politics as a degrading activity was very characteristic of the German intellectual tradition, mirroring the lack of democratic participation in German monarchical society. His philosophy could be easily misused for political purposes because it lacked any grounding in social reality. From the Marxist point of view he did not raise the right questions, since he attached absolutely no importance to the class struggle or economic reform. Living very frugally, he didn’t need to worry about questions of subsistence, because he enjoyed a small but regular retirement pension after he resigned his university position at Basel —a very small-scale example of the Marxian principle that the ideological superstructure is ultimately determined by the economic base. But one can also put it differently: a man of Nietzsche’s integrity could not, in the last analysis, bite the hand that fed him. Nietzsche’s failure to provide any social analysis left concepts like “herd animals,” “blond beasts,” “superman,” or “the will to power” to be misused and exploited for the very cause he most detested. His link with the Nazis lies in the anti-materialist and anti-socialist bias that he shared with the conservative “idealists” that he criticized. He dismissed the “social question,” i.e., matters of social equality, social justice, and social reform, as trivial—a distraction from really important questions. A cruel dialectic was operative in the fate of Nietzsche’s ideas. In the sense that he was himself very much a representative and victim of Germany’s undemocratic tradition, he was indeed, I think, an unwitting contributor to the eventual triumph of Nazism in his country.

So great was my obsession to reconcile Nietzsche with Marx that I finally reached the paradoxical conclusion that while Marxists were right to reject Nietzsche’s aristocratic and anti-political radicalism, one had to share some of Nietzsche’s iconoclasm, integrity, and independence to fully embrace Marx’s ideal of equality—at least in the West. In other words, one had to be an adherent of Nietzsche’s values in order to become a good Marxist. Sander Gilman suggested that I send my paper to Ernst Behler at the University of Washington, one of the editors of Nietzsche-Studien, the journal in which I had published my article, “The Role of Heinrich von Stein in Nietzsche’s Emergence as Critic of Wagnerian Idealism and Cultural Nationalism,” in 1976. But the editors of Nietzsche-Studien objected to such a sweeping “denazification” of a thinker still widely reviled in guilt-ridden post-war Germany for his putative influence on the Nazis. I had to wait until 1989 for my article’s publication in a German translation under the title, “Nietzsche und der Nationalsozialismus,” in the newly-founded philosophical journal prima philosophia. Much later I also incorporated many of these ideas in the concluding chapter of a book edited by Jacob Golomb and Robert S. Wistrich, entitled Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2002).
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While I was at the NEH seminar in Ithaca in the summer of 1984, Sally was working hard on completing her dissertation, later published as Woman as Feminine Bourgeois Ideal. Occasionally she would call to express her frustration at the slow pace of her progress and to complain that she was stuck and couldn’t seem to find a way to go on. I tried to allay her self-doubts, but I was also acutely aware that if I dismissed them as unwarranted, I might well be accused of not taking them (or her) seriously enough. This put me into a bit of a “catch-22” quandary, damned if I didn’t take her low estimation of her work or prospects of success s at face value, but even more damned if I did. “You don’t realize,” she chided me, “that I have always had low self-esteem, which makes me view things more negatively than they really are.” My quandary was predictably resolved when Sally finished her dissertation and defended it in Madison with flying colors in October 1984. Her department at Eastern Washington University celebrated her achievement with a festive dinner in November of that year.

At Sally's PhD departmental dinner

In the 1984-1985 academic year I went up for promotion to full professor at the earliest opportunity after the mandatory three years in rank. I knew my chances were not good as my book, Idealism Debased, had already been used to justify my promotion to Associate Professor in 1981, and I had only produced one article and several papers since then. But I thought that my service as director of the International Studies Program might tip the balance in my favor. Promotion was important to me for financial reasons. Although at the time there was still no systematic correlation between rank and salary at Gonzaga (that would not come until the administration’s belated acceptance of the annual salary survey of the College and University Professional Association [CUPA] as the standard for determining faculty salaries in 1988 after prolonged negotiations with the salary committee of the Faculty Assembly), the Gonzaga Summer School did peg its compensation to faculty rank. Promotion would mean several hundred dollars more for each Summer School class I taught, and I was forced to teach as many as I could to cover not only our household expenses but also Trina’s tuition at Kent School and Harvard, where, despite the generous financial aid she was awarded on the basis of need, she still had to take out a fairly sizable student loan. Again I knew my promotion would be opposed by my colleague Bob Carriker, but I hoped I could prevail, as I had in my struggle for tenure in 1982. That struggle had continued within the department in 1982-1983 and may have prejudiced our young colleague John Shideler‘s chances for reappointment in spring 1982. Shideler, a Berkeley PhD, had been hired to replace Father Via as the departmental medievalist after Via’s transfer to the directorship of the Gonzaga-in-Florence program in 1981. Shideler, whose academic standards may have been excessively rigorous for the kind of students we served, received poor student evaluations in his first semester, but what may have been even more decisive in the department’s refusal to reappoint him was the fact that he tended to side with me in departmental disputes. He may have been right on the merits of the specific cases in dispute, but he undoubtedly overestimated the power or influence I wielded in the department—or in the university, for that matter.

John Shideler

At any rate my application for promotion was turned down in spring 1985. My reaction was foolish and impulsive. I resigned my position as director of the International Studies Program, thus further marginalizing my status and giving my departmental rivals exactly what they wanted!

In resigning as director of the International Studies Program, had I cut off my nose to spite my face? It reminded me of a nightmare I had recorded in my journal on September 21, 1983, a month before meeting Sally.

Extraordinary and therapeutic nightmare of giving up my job at Gonzaga. Extraordinary in capturing the psychological nuances: saying goodbye to faculty services [the secretarial pool]—they are incredulous and slightly resentful of my departure, as if it reflected on them. In the outer office (administration?) they are so busy, they hardly take notice of me. Sitting in the waiting room is Ernie Gohlert [director of International Studies at Eastern Washington University], sympathetic, silently solicitous, reflecting in his attitude his conviction that I am behaving like a fool or a madman. I go outside and am overwhelmed by what I have done—and can’t even remember the reason why I did it. It must be because I wanted to write?? The only consoling thought is the one I frequently have in less critical situations: good if things go bad, because it forces me to write, since there is nothing else I can do, no other fulfillment. I turn to a nondescript female friend, round-faced, almost like Sandy Raynor [our friend from Vermont], except it’s someone closer to me. She does not want me to talk to her, because she is afraid of the emotional burden it will place on her. I compel her, “Look at me,” but saying it in a way to reassure her that I wasn’t going to ask any favors or cry on her shoulder. “Why did I do such a foolish thing?” I ask, half-knowing that her response will be one of relief that she is not being called upon for any greater donation than perfunctory encouragement.

Origins: seeing Mike Matthis [my colleague in philosophy who had been denied reappointment by his department], laughing to himself on the couch in the faculty lounge at lunch time, making me aware of how much I have neglected him, making me think he must feel like an invisible man.

Mike Matthis, who shared my interest in Nietzsche (though less so in Marx), was my best friend at Gonzaga until his forced departure in August 1984. We played tennis together, enjoyed each other’s company, and engaged in long and sometimes disputatious conversations about philosophy and politics. We also shared a lingering disaffection from Gonzaga as a result of the hostility we faced in our respective departments. Mike and his wife Rose “house-sat” for me at my place on Maringo Drive in the summer of 1984, shortly before they left Spokane for the east coast. Mike later returned to his home state of Texas, where today he is a tenured professor of philosophy at Lamar University in Beaumont.

The election of 1984 was another huge disappointment. In retrospect, it seems strange that we could ever have had any expectation of a Mondale victory. Reagan and Bush carried every state in the Union except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. But Reagan’s tax cuts for corporations and huge increases in defense spending had led to the largest budget deficit in American history in 1982 and a temporary economic recession. This, coupled with his recklessly militant rhetoric against the “Evil Empire” and his plans for a “Star Wars” missile shield undercutting the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union, gave us some hope that his presidency would receive the popular rebuff it so richly deserved, unlikely as that prospect may seem in retrospect. There was an air of gloom as our small circle of friends gathered to watch the election results at the home of Ursula Hegi, newly arrived in Spokane to teach in the creative writing department at EWU. Ursula was not only a writer, but also a chess player. She had contacted me before her arrival to inquire about opportunities for joining a chess club in Spokane. I was happy to be able to tell her about our active local club, called the Inland Empire Chess Club at the time, which I had helped to revive from its moribund state several years before.

As champion of the Spokane Chess Club

In August 1985, after Sally spent a summer in Germany at a Fulbright seminar similar to the one I attended in 1982, she and I visited her twin sister Sue and her family in Evanston, Wyoming. That gave me a chance to see Sally’s parents again. I had already met them in June, when they came to Spokane to attend an Elder-Hostel course at Whitworth College. On our trip to Evanston and especially on the way back we did some sightseeing and visited Yellowstone National Park.

Grand Tetons 1985

After our return from Wyoming, Sally moved in with us at 9708 E. Maringo Drive. It extended her commute to Cheney to 26 miles each way, often delayed by trains at the railroad crossing on Argonne Avenue until the construction of an overpass a few years later. But living together greatly reinforced the stability of our relationship and worked out well to everyone’s satisfaction.

Sally at Christmas 1985

We briefly explored the possibility of moving into a different jointly-owned home, but were somewhat limited in our choices by Nick’s desire not to leave West Valley High School, where he had just started his freshman year. The houses for sale in that district were certainly no improvement over our humble and inexpensive abode on the Spokane River at Maringo Drive. There we would remain for another sixteen years.

Sally's parents, sister, and niece in Evanston, WY, August 1985

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]]> http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2011/12/04/memoir-19-a-new-beginning-with-sally-1983-1985/feed/ 0 http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2011/08/19/memoir-18-the-struggle-for-tenure-1980-1982/ http://roderickstackelberg.com/blog/2011/08/19/memoir-18-the-struggle-for-tenure-1980-1982/#comments Sat, 20 Aug 2011 01:41:15 +0000 rodstackelberg http://roderickstackelberg.com/?p=717 Gonzaga Universitygranted me two years’ credit for my experience as Assistant Visiting Professor at Oregon and South Dakota, so I went up early for tenure in academic year 1981-1982. Having been promoted to Associate Professor after the publication of my book, Idealism Debased: From Völkisch Ideology to National Socialism by Kent State University Press the previous year, my prospects looked very good indeed. As John Sisk of the English Department told me—probably the best-known Gonzaga faculty member and the one most respected for his scholarship: “They can’t very well promote you one year and then refuse you tenure the next.” I should perhaps have been forewarned, though, by my colleague Bob Carriker’s unexpectedly hostile reaction when I told him I was applying for promotion in fall 1980: “Isn’t that a bit arrogant of you?” Carriker had also written personally to the president of the university complaining that I had gotten a bigger raise than he after the publication of my book. But Carriker had a college-wide reputation for easily feeling threatened by his colleagues and preferring a steady turn-over of junior faculty, so I wasn’t particularly worried, especially since I had been reappointed every year, including in spring 1981, with glowing recommendations and without any departmental reservations. Every year the dean had personally come to my office to tell me that the administration was very pleased with my teaching evaluations and professional publications and expressed the hope that I would continue my good work at Gonzaga. Moreover, the Academic Vice President, Fr. Peter Ely, had asked me to participate in the founding of a new International Studies Program at Gonzaga that went into operation in the fall of 1981, and he had appointed me its director. I had already represented the university at a number of meetings of the newly-founded Pacific Northwest Consortium for International Education based in Seattle. I had even represented the University President, Fr. Barney Coughlin, at a meeting of the presidents of Jesuit Universities on the subject of international studies.

There was a little hiccup in the faculty’s acceptance of the U.S. Department of Education grant for the establishment of an international studies program. The Academic Council at first voted to reject the grant, but this was based less on opposition to the new International Studies Program than on friction between faculty and administration on decision-making and governance and especially on some faculty members’ fears that international studies was being funded at the expense of faculty salaries (not entirely unfounded, since the grant did call for matching university funding). As I had helped to write the grant proposal, Fr. Ely had asked me to make the case for the grant to the Academic Council, so I could not help but take their initial rejection a bit personally. However, numerous members of the Council came up to me later and apologized for their vote and explained that it had nothing to do with me. On a second vote the following day, the Academic Council reversed itself and the grant was accepted by an overwhelming margin. I knew Carriker (who was not on the partly elected and partly appointed Academic Council) didn’t like my prominent role in the International Studies Program, which gave me a semi-independent base outside the department. But he claimed that his opposition to the International Studies Program was only because he wanted me for the History Department one-hundred percent.

My scholarly credentials could hardly be impugned. My book, Idealism Debased: From Völkisch Ideology to National Socialism, based on my dissertation, was published by the Kent State University Press in 1981. In October 1979 I began presenting papers at the annual meetings of the newly-founded German Studies Association (GSA—then still known as the Western Association for German Studies). I had learned about this organization from the Germanist Karen Achberger while I was still at Oregon. The conference that year was held on the campus of Stanford University, allowing me to visit my Harvard roommate Paul Russell’s sister Arlie Hochschild, whom I had not seen for more than twenty years. Arlie was now a successful sociologist at Berkeley and soon to achieve considerable acclaim for a number of widely-publicized studies on women and work. She and her husband Adam owned a lovely home in the Castro district of San Francisco. I soon found myself in a lively dialogue with Adam in which I defended, to my later embarrassment, the Soviet experiment in socialism despite all its obvious faults. Adam Hochschild, who had recently returned from a visit to the USSR, set me straight on the reality of the repression in that country, but I wasn’t yet prepared to give up on the 1960s dream of a democratic socialism and thought at the time that the best way of supporting this goal was to keep the Soviet experiment going. It seemed to me that Adam Hochschild’s criticism of the Soviet Union presaged the very deliberate revival of the Cold War by President Ronald Reagan the following year (of which Hochschild, the founding editor of the investigative journal Mother Jones, was to be duly critical). My journal entries reflected my point of view:

9 Jan 1980 It is incredible that people don’t recognize that something must be wrong when the killers of SALT II, the apostles of nuclear armament, gloat at the [Soviet] “rape of Afghanistan.” Finally a reason for their intransigence! Things are going their way!

27 Jan 1980 The difference between our and the Russian “fathers of the H-bomb”: Again the Russians have us beat. [Edward] Teller is paving the ground for its use, [Andrei] Sakharov tries to prevent it.

17 April 1980 Fears of a Soviet nuclear strike, insofar as they are genuine, and all evidence point to the fact that they are not, but that they are professed for ideological reasons—so obviously a projection of our own aggressive impulses as to be almost obscene. Based on a total Verkennung (misreading) of Soviet socialism. Their confidence is so strong that they would never jeopardize their budding system by waging an aggressive war; for the only thing that can destroy socialism now is a war that destroys everything. We, unfortunately, have none of that confidence—only a propped-up righteousness based on self-interest, the interest of maintaining economic dominance. Hence our obsession with the threat of socialism, which translates into a readiness to destroy it at the first opportunity. Only we have good reason to use force, because we feel in our bones that time is not on our side.

16 Jun 1980 Olaf’s attitude, such a barometer of American values, on our policy toward the Soviet Union proving that he—and indeed America—have learned nothing from Vietnam. “Where would you draw the line on Soviet aggression,” he asked.

18 Jun 1980 To those who propagate the 1914 thesis drawing parallels between the U.S.S.R. and Imperial Germany (encirclement theory, preventive war, etc.), I want to say: Grown men and women, behaving like children in your righteousness and self-delusion! The parallel is there—but it is you who are behaving like the Imperial German leadership. It is you who can’t be trusted. It is you who fear for your wealth and privileges and see enemies all around you.

19 Jun 1980 We should ask ourselves: why do we want the experiment in communism to fail? Even if our criticisms are well-taken, why should we not hope that this experiment in communal living will eventually succeed? The charge that communism leads to the formation of a power elite is true enough. But we certainly can’t argue, given our values, that providing incentives or rewards to those who “make it” by contributing to its success is wrong. If we accepted as our basic premise that a well-functioning communal society is desirable, we would see nothing wrong with an arrangement that rewards efforts to work toward its achievement.

27 Jun 1980 Why isn’t it obvious to all that the re-intensification, the real cause of the revival, of the Cold War is America’s frustrated response to its disastrous failure in Iran?

28 Jun 1980 I have this feeling about America: what if the brakes give out? At the moment they still seem to be adequate. There are enough persons of integrity and sense scattered around to dampen the fervor of chauvinism.

20 Dec 1980 There is a dialectic at work that makes socialists the most individualistic of people and “individualists” the most conformist and colorless.

28 July 1980 The irony is that socialism will gain appeal in the U.S. precisely for its repressive qualities.

6 Sep 1980 It is not, as [Daniel] Moynihan maintained, that we must be afraid of the younger generation of Russians, who no longer remember World War II and pursue the hope of Russian supremacy, but that we must be afraid of the older generation of Americans, who cannot forget World War II and the era of American supremacy.

31 Aug 1981 The Soviet threat to the U.S. is one of ideas and values; the American threat to Russia is one of arms and power.

3 Dec 1981 If religion is the grounds for attacking communism, then communism has grounds for suppressing religion.

4 Jan 1982 We don’t have any agreed-upon standard of measurement of human misery. But who is to say that it is less in this country than in the U.S.S.R.?

16 Jan 1982 Life under communism: when you have set yourself the goal of taking care of everyone, you cannot allow the same leeway for prima donnas as in a liberal society in which everyone is free to go to the dogs.

24 Jan 1982 What we accuse the communists of—superficial, distorted, “censored” reporting—we are guilty of. [The Coeur d’Alene-based silver mining company] Bunker Hill as a case in point: although it is an obvious case of callous exploitation—the workers are simply cast off, having completed their usefulness—the union is made the scapegoat. Every gain the unions have been able to obtain for workers is portrayed as an obstacle to full employment. Workers are encouraged to express their outrage at the union. In a communist country Bunker Hill would have been kept in operation even at very marginal profitability. That is why their economy “stagnates,” but the needs of their citizenry are met. If communism disappeared from the earth, millions would be left to face poverty without anyone to take their side. To understand communist repression one must realize that to them bourgeois traits—acquisitiveness, aggressiveness, self-seeking—are criminal traits, and bourgeois freedoms merely the climate that tolerates criminality. We consider it a world turned upside down; they consider it a world turned right side up.

To me it seemed clear. The New Cold War launched by Ronald Reagan represented the Vietnam hawks getting their belated revenge. Indeed, one of Reagan’s major goals was to overcome the “Vietnam syndrome,” defined as the reluctance to use American military power to defend the world-wide interests of America’s dominant elites.

In the summer of 1981 I participated in an National Endowment for the Humanities faculty seminar offered by the noted scholar Henry A. Turner at Yale. Turner had dedicated his scholarly career to defending the liberal capitalist system from its Marxist critics. At the time of the seminar he was hard at work on his opus magnum, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler. According to Turner, if the Marxists were right and capitalists were responsible for the rise of fascism, then capitalism stood condemned by history. This was not a conclusion Turner was prepared to accept. He preferred to emphasize the anti-modern and anti-capitalist features of fascism. He did, however, appreciate my book Idealism Debased, perhaps because I stressed ideology rather than economics. We did a lot of good natured sparring in the seminar, where I gained the reputation of resident leftist. I did score one point when I forced Turner and his assistant William Patch, a specialist on the administration of Heinrich Brüning, to concede that the Nazis were anti-union. A surprising number of seminar participants seemed unaware or unwilling to acknowledge that the Nazis were strongly anti-labor.

A seminar outing at Yale, summer, 1981

The publication of Turner’s book was delayed by the appearance of David Abraham’s Marxist analysis of The Collapse of Weimar Republic in 1983. Turner assailed Abraham’s book as well as its author, whom he accused of deliberately falsifying the facts. And indeed, the book was replete with errors of translation and transcription, the result of carelessness and sloppiness rather than any intention to deceive. But Abraham’s inaccuracies gave Turner the chance to evade all discussion of interpretation and methodology, the areas in which the real differences between the two scholars lay. Turner was rigorously positivist in his approach, suspicious of explanatory conceptualizations, especially ones that were critical of existing economic relations. He found in his research that business people had indeed contributed substantial sums to the Nazis, but he attributed their largesse not to sympathy for Nazi goals, but to their understandable wish to be prepared for the contingency of the Nazis’ coming to power. His campaign against Abraham was successful, who lost his teaching position at Princeton and was effectively blacklisted within the historical profession for a time, despite the publication of a corrected version of his book a few years later.

Of course, the political shift to the right in the 1980s could not help but have an effect on my tenure decision as well. It strengthened the conservative political forces in the university, as it strengthened the religious right in the nation as a whole. They could not get me on professional criteria, but they could attack me on ideological grounds. Was I really in tune with Gonzaga’s uniquely Catholic mission? As long as social justice was the Jesuits’ primary goal, as indeed it was during the 1970s, no one could accuse me of failing to represent that mission. But once priority shifted to reaffirming Catholic orthodoxy through the primacy of faith and the institutional authority of the Church—as it did at least to some degree with the more general shift to the right in the 1980s—I became vulnerable to charges of misunderstanding the “unique mission of Gonzaga University.” Two of the three senior (i.e., tenured) members of the department were political and religious conservatives. They identified me, not inaccurately, as a “secular humanist,” who eventually might try through curricular and personnel decisions to recreate the department in my image. Their objective was to counter that danger by denying me tenure. And they almost succeeded.

However, I did have on my side the third tenured member and only woman in the department, Betsy Downey, who had replaced Fr. Via as chair and fiercely and effectively campaigned on my behalf. Fr. Via had been reassigned to direct the Gonzaga-in-Florence program and did not take part in the tenure decision, which probably worked to my disadvantage, as Fr. Via was quite aware of Carriker’s bullying tendencies and helped to keep them in check (as did Carriker’s wife Eleanor). Ultimately the crucial factor in the decision in favor of tenure was that the administration, including the president and academic vice president, had a vested interest in my success and continued service at Gonzaga. And there were many others rooting for me as well. Tony Wadden, my colleague in the English Department, called the opposition to my tenure “embarrassing.” My student Thad Lightfoot was the first person to inform me that the Rank and Tenure Committee had failed to recommend me for tenure. He had heard of this decision through a back-channel source at Jesuit House. All the bad news reached me while I was visiting Olaf on my return flight from an international studies conference in Cincinnati in February or March 1982. Olaf had left Duke in 1976 to become head of the mathematics department at Kent State University for the next twenty years.

The vote on my application for tenure had been tied three to three in the Rank and Tenure Committee, leaving the final decision to the ex-officio chair of the committee, the Academic Vice President. On my return to Spokane Fr. Ely called me into his office and began by explaining to me that the university was legally entitled to make personnel decisions purely on religious grounds. He said that there was some concern that I was not only non-religious, but perhaps even anti-religious. He said he didn’t think this was the case, but he needed some corroboration from me. I told him I considered myself religious in the sense of being extremely interested in and concerned about the “Big Questions”–questions about the meaning of life and the nature of the universe. He graciously accepted my rather forced explanation. My tenure application was approved.

What I really thought about religion I confided only to my journal:

Feb 27 1979 The Church in an atmosphere of tolerance is so much more attractive than in a climate of orthodoxy, because in the former instance you know people become priests and nuns because they really believe, rather than for career or power.

Nov 28 1982 Perhaps in religion the question really is, do we take time out to ingratiate ourselves with God or do we go about His work quietly, steadily, using all our faculties, guided by the inborn compass that presumably He has given us. In that sense dogma is an obstacle to true religion. True religion defined: awareness of the mystery of the universe without brown-nosing. Can we live more religiously than we do when we constantly overcome self—and that includes overcoming the selfishness of…religion.

That spring of 1982 was one of the happiest and most exhilarating periods of my life. I finally had a secure position doing what I did best and enjoyed most, namely, writing and teaching. Trina spent her spring vacation from Kent School in Spokane, keeping Nick company and seeing all her old friends while I traveled to Vancouver to give guest lectures on Nietzsche and Nazism at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University at the invitation of Ted Hill and Martin Kitchen, respectively.

Trina in Spokane for spring vacation, 1982

Trina had enjoyed a marvelous send-off from Spokane after her graduation from Argonne Junior High School jn June 1981. About a dozen of her classmates had come to our house before 7 in the morning to bid her goodbye. It was a dramatic demonstration of how well she was liked by her classmates.

In August 1981 I set out with Nick and our dog Bursche on our return trip to Spokane via the Black Hills of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore.

Nick and Bursche at Mt. Rushmore, August 1981

Nick had wanted to continue his schooling in Spokane, and I welcomed the challenge of sjngle-parenting, a challenge faced much more often by women than by men.

However, despite my best efforts to arrange a convenient schedule, Nick was a latchkey kid, arriving home from school about an hour before me. He had difficulty controlling Bursche, who loved to bark and chase our neighbor’s horses. Eventually I was forced to have Bursche put down, to the consternation of my colleague in philosophy Mike Matthis, and especially his wife Rose, who found my action unbelievably callous. But I really had no choice under the circumstances.

Mike Matthis and Franz Schneider

With Rose Matthis, 1982

To top off the splendid academic year 1981-1982, I received a Fulbright grant to attend a five-week seminar for faculty in Germany in summer 1982, while Nick spent the summer with his mother in Irasburg. The first three weeks of the seminar were spent in Bonn, at that time still the capital of West Germany, and the last two weeks in the still divided city of Berlin. We were the first American group, we were later told, who spoke only German with each other, never lapsing into English. Later seminar groups followed our example. My colleague from the University of Arkansas, Todd Hanlin, and I set the tone to such a degree that some people referred to our seminar as the “Rod and Todd show.”

Fulbright Seminar, summer 1982

With Todd Hanlin, 1982

Our colleague Peter Nutting, at that time still at Cornell, was a peace activist who got us to participate in several anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Later that summer, in August 1982, we celebrated Mama’s seventieth and Olaf’s fiftieth birthdays. Mama demonstrated her youthfulness by standing on her head!

Mama standing on her head at her seventieth birthday party

Seffi and I made one last, half-hearted effort at reconciliation in the summer of 1982, but it was no good. Tenure and the prospect of an extended stay in Spokane made me want to start a new life without the burden of an unhappy wife. Final separation and divorce (finalized in April 1983) was very painful for both of us. In fact, Steffi threatened to fight the divorce all the way, but fortunately for me, she fell in love with a fellow patient in an alcohol-addiction treatment program in which she enrolled in late 1982. I missed her very much for quite a while, but derived strength from Oscar Wilde’s paradoxical aesthetic dictum, “One must always seek the most tragic.”

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