Catholics From Germany

"Sie muss also zu weit gehen, um herauszufinden, wie weit sie gehen darf."

"Eine Familie, die keine schwarzen Schafe hat, ist keine charakteristische Familie."

"Fraunhofer's publication of 1814 did not receive prompt recognition, nor did his papers of 1821 and 1823. Physicists were fighting over the emission and wave theories of light. The attention of chemists was concentrated upon Dalton's atomic theory and the Berthollet-Proust controversy over the law of definite proportions. The full explanation of the new fact brought forth by Fraunhofer was not given for nearly forty years. He himself had failed to find the key to the hieroglyphics of the solar lines, the "Fraunhofer lines," nor had he clearly defined the role which the spectral lines were destined to play in chemical analysis."

"Fraunhofer discovered that the apparent continuity of a rainbow is an illusion. There are tiny gaps, dim or black arcs of missing colors, too narrow for us to see in the glare of natural rainbows. To say it another way, there are specific colors (specific wavelengths of light) in which sunlight is deficient. Fraunhofer eventually catalogued 576 of these gaps, or "absorption lines": 576 specific wavelengths missing from sunlight. Fraunhofer's career of discovery was cut short by consumption."

"Before we can rightly understand the principles of spectroscopic astronomy, we must go back to the life and work of its founder—Joseph von Fraunhofer. ...Allowing light from the Sun to pass through a prism attached to the telescope, he was amazed to find several dark lines in the spectrum. ...Fraunhofer named the more prominent lines by the letters of the alphabet from A in the red to H in the violet. They are now known as the Fraunhofer lines. ...He expressed the belief that the pair of lines in the solar spectrum which he marked D, coincided with the pair of bright lines emitted by incandescent sodium. Although he doubtless suspected that the lines conveyed intelligence regarding the elements in the Sun, he never was able properly to decipher their meaning. Had he lived he would probably have made the great discovery."

"By his invention of new and improved methods, machinery, and measuring instruments for grinding and polishing lenses, by his having the superintendence, after 1811, also of the work in glass-melting, enabling him to produce flint and crown glass in larger pieces, free of veins, but especially by his discovery of a method of computing accurately the forms of lenses, he has led practical optics into entirely new paths, and has raised the achromatic telescope to, until then, undreamed of perfection."

"Fraunhofer's secrets of manufacture accompanied him to the grave. His artisanal knowledge was such that, after his death, even the apprentices who worked with him, in the same glass hut and with the same equipment, achieved only limited success in the manufacture of optical glass."

"Fraunhofer had busied himself with glass his entire life. Working with glass was his family tradition, and the manufacture of optical lenses and prisms was his life."

"Fraunhofer made a great many experiments connected with these mysterious lines, anxious to discover, if possible, their meaning, For although he now saw the lines, which had scarcely so much as been seen before, he could not understand them; he could not read what they said. They spoke to him, indeed, about the Sun, but they spoke in a foreign language, the key to which he did not possess."

"With patience he went into the question, using the telescope as well as a very narrow slit... Close examination was rewarded by the making out of lines upon lines; till in the year 1814, that which witnessed the downfall of Napoleon and his banishment to Elba, Fraunhofer had mapped three or four hundred."

"He must have been working quietly at the problem through years of European war and tumult. Crowned heads rose and fell; and nations changed hands; and tyrants were cast down; and brave men died by thousands for their countries; whilst Fraunhofer, in the midst of national seethings, calmly investigated the nature of black lines in sunlight."

"Whether Newton saw the lines or not, he seems to have paid no especial heed to them. In the year 1802, Dr. W. H. Wollaston using, a slit one-twentieth of an inch in width, noted at least four fine dark lines crossing the solar spectrum. Supposing them to be merely 'natural boundaries' of the different colour-bands, he too inquired no further; and there still for a while the matter rested. Nobody yet suspected, even vaguely, what great future results lay enfolded in the casual discovery of these few slight lines. Not many years later the matter was taken up by Fraunhofer, an able German optician."

"He was the first to observe spectra due to gratings, and with them he made the earliest determination of wave-lengths."

"I wished to find out whether a similar bright line could be seen in the spectrum of sunlight as in the spectrum of lamplight, and I found, with the telescope, instead of this, an almost countless number of strong and feeble vertical lines which, however, were darker than the other parts of the spectrum, some appearing to be almost perfectly black."

"It will reward enough for me if, by the publication of the present experiment, I have directed the attention of investigators to this subject, which still promises much for physicial optics and appears to open a new field."

"In order to receive in the eye all the light diffracted through a narrow opening, and to see the phenomena strongly magnified; still more in order to directly measure the inflection of the light, I placed in front of the objective of a theodolite-telescope a screen in which there was a narrow vertical opening which could be made wider or narrower by means of a screw. By means of a heliostat I threw sunlight into a darkened room through a narrow slit so that it fell upon this screen, through whose opening the light was therefore diffracted. I could then observe through the telescope the phenomena produced by the diffraction, magnified, and yet seen with sufficient brightness; and at the same time I could measure the angles of inflection of the light by means of the theodolite."

"The number of different optical phenomena has become in our time so great that caution must be taken so as to avoid being deceived, and also to refer the phenomena to the simple laws."

"Up to the present time, in experiments on diffraction there has been no instrument, except a magnifying-glass, which could be used with profit; and this may perhaps be one of the reasons why in this field of physical optics we are so backward, and why we know so little of the laws of this modification of light."

"In all my experiments I could, owing to lack of time, pay attention to only those matters which appeared to have a bearing upon practical optics. I could either not touch other questions, or at most not follow them very far. Since the path thus traced in optical experiments seems to promise to lead to interesting results, it is greatly to be desired that skilled investigators should devote attention to it."

"Since the violet rays through the objective of the theodolite telescope have a shorter focal length than the red rays, it is evident why the eye-piece must be displaced in order to see plainly the lines in the different colors."

"The events of the past one and one-half years have gripped the whole German people and affected them deeply. It seems almost like a dream that out of the valley of misery, hopelessness, hate, and fragmentation we have found our way back to a German national community. The horrendous tensions in which we have lived since the August days of 1914 have dissolved, and out of this discord, the German soul has emerged once again, before which the glorious and yet so painful history of our people pass in review, from the sagas of the German heroes to the trenches of Verdun, and even to the street fights of our time."

"Franz von Papen – from a Westphalian aristocratic family, married to the daughter of a Saarland industrialist, well connected to industrial leaders, landowners, and Reichswehr officers – a somewhat lightweight, dilettante politician, but one who epitomized the ingrained conservatism, reactionary tendencies, and desire for a return to ‘traditional’ authoritarianism of the German upper class."

"Von Papen, pious agent of an infidel regime, held the stirrup while Hitler vaulted into the saddle, lubricated the Austrian annexation and devoted his diplomatic cunning to the service of Nazi objectives abroad."

"He has the distinction of not being taken at all seriously either by his friends or his enemies. His face bears the mark of an ineradicable frivolity of which he has never been able to rid himself. As for the rest, he is not a personality of the first rank. ... He is regarded as superficial, mischief-making, deceitful, ambitious, vain, crafty, given to intrigue. One quality he clearly possesses: cheek, audacity, an amiable audacity of which he seems unaware. He is one of those persons who shouldn't be dared to undertake a dangerous enterprise because they accept all dares, take all bets. If he succeeds, he bursts with pleasure; if he fails, he exits with a pirouette."

"Heinrich Bruning of the Catholic Centre Party offered government by presidential decree and dreamt vaguely of restoring the monarchy. But his deflationary policies only served to deepen the slump. Franz von Papen, another Catholic, betrayed his party for the sake of becoming Chancellor, in the vain belief that he could do better than Bruning. But neither he nor his successor General Kurt von Schleicher - whom Papen had picked as his own Defence Minister - had anything resembling popular support and, while the Reichstag had been temporarily sidelined by Bruning, it proved impossible to rule indefinitely without some kind of parliamentary majority. Elections in July 1932 saw the Nazi vote soar above 37 per cent. True, it fell back to 33 per cent when new elections were held in November, not least because signs of economic recovery were at last manifesting themselves, but the party's entitlement to form a government was by now hard to dispute since it was still easily the biggest grouping in the Reichstag. Ever the schemer, Papen now persuaded Hindenburg to dump Schleicher and, against the President's better judgement, to appoint Hitler to lead a coalition with the conservative German Nationalist Party - the only party except for the Communists to gain significant numbers of new votes in the November election. Hitler duly became Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Thus did German democracy wreak its own destruction. Given the paralysing enmity between the Social Democrats and the Communists, the only way to avoid the Third Reich would have been if Hindenburg himself had shut down the Reichstag and banned the Nazis, an option he does not seem to have contemplated."

"It is to be hoped that the leaders of this movement will place the nation above the party."

"We must no longer have a pacific conception of peace. In the Middle Ages it was otherwise. The existence of the individual had no exaggerated importance. Pacifist literature depicts death on the field of battle as an unnatural death because it does not understand the ancient Germanic horror of death on a bed, and arteriosclerosis appears to it more virile than a bullet. Pacifists dwell on the horrors of the war dead as if a peace corpse were more aesthetic. The representatives of the national revolution are men and soldiers who are physically and morally warriors."

"Names and individuals are unimportant when Germany's final fate is at stake."

"The hope in the hearts of millions of national socialists can be fulfilled only by an authoritarian government."

"You are mistaken. We've hired him."

"In the interest of the entire nation we decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves, as a party or a movement, over and above the whole nation."

"Himmler hated the church. He and Bormann were the two people who influenced Hitler most. When I spoke to Hitler in the beginning he agreed with me and said that no state could be governed without religion. In Mein Kampf he said that a man was a fool if he destroyed the religion of the people. Hitler also made the statement that the political reform should not be a religious reform."

"But Hitler didn't strive for the annihilation of the Jews - he stressed that fact in public life and in the newspapers. Hitler merely said at the beginning that Jewish influence was too great, that of all the lawyers in Berlin, eighty percent were Jewish. Hitler thought that a small percentage of the people, the Jews, should not be allowed to control the theater, cinema, radio, et cetera."

"Allow me to say how manly and humanly great of you I think this is. Your courageous and firm intervention have met with nothing but recognition throughout the entire world. I congratulate you for all you have given anew to the German nation by crushing the intended second revolution."

"Natural science does not consist in ratifying what others have said, but in seeking the causes of phenomena."

"In speaking of Thomas Aquinas, who, it is true, had not attained at the time when Roger Bacon wrote to the commanding position of authority which was afterwards accorded to him in the schools, he couples him with Albertus Magnus, and says that they both became teachers before they had been adequately taught, and lectured on a philosophy and a theology which they had imperfectly learned."

"Of Albertus Magnus, the Doctor Universalis of the Dominicans, Roger Bacon writes that what is useful in his works might be summed up in a treatise twenty times as short as they are."

"Do there exist many worlds, or is there but a single world? This is one of the most noble and exalted questions in the study of Nature."

"This dumb ox will fill the world with his bellowing."

"The metals are all essentially identical; they differ only in form. Now, the form brings out accidental causes, which the experimenter must try to discover and remove, as far as possible. Accidental causes impede the regular union of sulphur and mercury; for every metal is a combination of sulphur and mercury. A diseased womb may give birth to a weakly, leprous child, although the seed was good; the same is true of the metals which are generated in the bowels of the earth, which is a womb for them; any cause whatever, or local trouble, may produce an imperfect metal. When pure sulphur comes in contact with pure mercury, after more or less time, and by the permanent action of nature, gold is produced."

"If the excrement of an elephant should be smeared on skin in which lice appear and left until it dries upon the skin, the lice will not remain on it but will depart immediately. If the fat of an elephant is smeared with it, it is said to cure the pain of one who suffers a headache; it is even said that if an ounce of elephant bone is drunk with ten ounces of wild mountain mint from something which a leper first touched, it does the most for a headache."

"I am often asked why I nearly always select old material, fairy tales and legends for my stage works. I do not look upon them as old, but rather as valid material. The time element disappears, and only the spiritual power remains. My entire interest is in the expression of spiritual realities. I write for the theater in order to convey a spiritual attitude."

"He did have much more than a straightforward musical experience in mind. He subtitled his exuberant hour-long oratorio "Cantiones profanae, cantoribus et choris cantandae, comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis," or "Secular songs for singers and choruses accompanied by instruments and magical images" — hardly typical concert fare. From a conductor's point of view, Carmina is an absolute blast — so many people, so many textures, so much variety. And, contrary to what conductors might tell you, when 300-plus performers are involved, size does matter."

"The subject matter covered in Carmina stays pretty basic: love, lust, the pleasures of drinking and the heightened moods evoked by springtime. These primitive and persistently relevant themes are nicely camouflaged by the Latin and old German texts, so the listener can actually feign ignorance while listening to virtually X-rated lyrics. (Veni Veni Venias! Come, come come now!) The music itself toggles between huge forces and a single voice, juxtaposing majesty and intimacy with ease..."

"Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand."

"Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play."

"Experience first, then intellectualize."

"Elemental Music is never just music. It's bound up with movement, dance and speech, and so it is a form of music in which one must participate, in which one is involved not as a listener but as a co-performer. It is pre-rational, has no over-all form, no architectonics, involves no set sequences, ostinati or minor rondo-forms. Elemental Music is earthy, natural, physical, capable of being learnt and experienced by anybody, child's play. ... Elemental Music, word and movement, play, every-thing that awakens and develops the powers of the soul builds up the humus of the soul, the humus without which we face spiritual soil-erosion. ... we face spiritual soil-erosion when man estranges himself from the elemental and loses his balance."

"The devout Christian of the future will either be a 'mystic', one who has 'experienced' something, or he will cease to be anything at all."

"Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God, though God does not owe it to any creature to give it this special orientation. Grace does not happen in isolated instances here and there in an otherwise profane and graceless world. It is legitimate, of course, to speak of grace-events which occur at discrete points in space and time. But then what we are really talking about is the existential and historical acceptance of this grace by human freedom. … Grace itself … is everywhere and always, even though a human being's freedom can sinfully say no to it, just as a human being's freedoms can protest against humankind itself. This immanence of grace in the conscious world always and everywhere does not take away the gratuity of grace, because God's immediacy out of self-giving love is not something anyone can claim as his or her due. The immanence of grace always and everywhere does not make salvation history cease to be history, because history is the acceptance of grace by the historical freedom of human beings and the history of spirit coming ever more to itself in grace."