Abstract
Where am I from? I begin by looking back at the medieval world of my childhood in Germany’s Eifel region, the “Siberia of Prussia.” My ancestors’ fates are closely interwoven with the drama of Europe, especially the upheavals in Germany, France, and Poland. My parents fell in love in Warsaw during World War II, far from my mother’s homeland. After Germany’s total collapse, they started a new life in the Eifel, where I was born. I am still deeply rooted in my “first world” today. I will never lose the Mosel-Franconian dialect, my mother tongue. One special moment: fifty years after the end of World War II, I return to the place where the war began for my mother.
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Notes
- 1.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 7, 2017, p. 4.
- 2.
The exact coordinates are 50 degrees, 3 minutes, and 10.03 seconds north and 6 degrees, 54 minutes, and 37.01 seconds east.
- 3.
Between February 10, 1947 and the day I first wrote these lines (March 15, 2017) a total of 25,601 days have elapsed.
- 4.
Seneca, Aus den moralischen Briefen an Lucilius (English: Letters on Ethics: to Lucilius) Position 6406 in the Kindle Version.
- 5.
In the year 2016, 537 people in Germany died from accidental drowning. But that number seems high to me, relative to the number of people killed in traffic accidents (3214 people), an historic low. See also “Wieder mehr Badetote,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 17, 2017, p. 6.
- 6.
See Chap. 13 of this book.
- 7.
After World War I, Lorraine once again became part of France.
- 8.
- 9.
https://www.philosophie-raum.de/index.php/Thread/24555-Gehirn-Bewusstsein-Nichtlokalit%C3%A4t/?postID=544600; the original quote is in German “Zeit ist, was die Uhr zeigt.”
- 10.
The original quote is German “die Elementarbegriffe von Zeit und Raum sind schwankend geworden. Durch die Eisenbahnen wird der Raum getödtet, und es bleibt uns nur noch die Zeit übrig.”
- 11.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance (Illustrated) Kindle Edition, p. 14.
- 12.
See also Die 72. Infanterie-Division 1939-1945, Eggolsheim: Nebel-Verlag/Dörfler Utting 1982.
- 13.
“Im Gespräch: Der polnische Schriftsteller Andrzej Stasiuk,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 9, 2017, p. 40.
- 14.
The Wall Street Journal, June 17, 016.
- 15.
Lorraine belonged to Germany at that time, but is currently part of France.
- 16.
Between 1920 and 1935, the Saar Region was under the League of Nations (Geneva) and governed by an international commission.
- 17.
Most of Bessarabia now lies in the Eastern European country Moldova. The name has nothing to do with Arabia. It is derived from the name of the House of Basarab, a royal family from Walachia (Romania) that ruled the region in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
- 18.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Auto-biography of Goethe: Truth and Poetry: from My Own Life. H.G. Bohn. Kindle Edition.
- 19.
See also: “In den Rollen seines Lebens,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 22, 2017, p. 12.
- 20.
This series continues from time to time in the newspaper Eifelzeitung. Through 2018, around 140 profiles had been published. A second series, “Children of the Eifel—from other times” included some 400 profiles through 2018 and was also published in book form. Gregor Brand (Autor), Hermann Simon (Editor), Kinder der Eifel—aus anderer Zeit, Daun: Verlag der Eifelzeitung 2013; Gregor Brand (Autor), Hermann Simon (Editor), Kinder der Eifel—aus anderer Zeit, Band 2, Books on Demand 2018.
References
Wlodzimierz Borodzie, Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944 (Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus), Frankfurt: Fischer 2004.
Ursula Kals, “Wehe, wenn das Heimweh kommt,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 15, 2017, p. C3.
Sebastian Kleinschmidt, “Zeuge der Dunkelheit, Bote des Lichts, Rezension eines Gedichtes von Ulrich Schacht,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 11, 2017, p. 18.
Bernd Kortlaender (ed.), was die Zeit fühlt und denkt und bedarf, Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag 2014, p. 36.
Bruno Latour, “Das grüne Leuchten,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 7, 2017, Frankreich Spezial, p. L7.
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Hermann Simon, Kinder der Eifel – erfolgreich in der Welt, Daun: Verlag der Eifelzeitung 2008.
Robert Thurman, The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between, New York: Bantam Books 1993.
Michael Wolffsohn, Deutschjüdische Glückskinder—Eine Weltgeschichte meiner Familie, Munich: dtv 2017.
Palle Yourgau, A World without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, New York: Basic Books 2005, p. 115.
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Simon, H. (2021). Roots. In: Many Worlds, One Life. Copernicus, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60758-6_1
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