Arty Farty Friday ~ Oskar Kokoschka

Born this day, 1 March, in 1886 was expressionist artist, poet and playwright Oskar Kokoschka - trips off the tongue rather well! He was born in Pöchlarn on the Danube in Austria, another artist who fought in World War 1, and had to flee from Europe to Britain at the start of World War 2.

Kokoschka was seriously wounded in the First World War, and taken prisoner. He suffered a head injury and a bayonet wound to the lung, spent a period of convalescence in Vienna, but was then sent to the Isonzo Front, where his health, mental and physical, broke down. He went to Stockholm to consult a brain specialist and then to Dresden to try to recover his health.

Events before his military service probably fed into the deterioration from physical injuries. He had carried on a tempestuous love affair with Alma, widow of Gustav Mahler. The affair had ended, but his obsession led him to commission a life-sized doll to replace Alma - complete and life-like in all details, which he treated like a living companion - it has even been said that he escorted it to the opera.

After the end of the war the political situation in Dresden was unstable. Kokoschka formed part of a small, left-wing bohemian group. In the liberal climate of 1919 he was officially appointed Professor at the Dresden Academy.

After teaching at the art academy in Dresden (1919-24), Kokoschka travelled extensively in Europe and N Africa. In 1937 his works were removed from German galleries by the Nazis, who considered his work degenerate. He moved to London in 1938, but wasn't happy there. Subject matter of his paintings at this time became political and often critical of his host country, Britain. After World War II he moved to Switzerland, established an international summer school in Salzburg.
He died in 1980.





The Bride of the Wind or The Tempest (Windsbraut)1913-1914. Kokoschka's best known work, an allegorical picture featuring a self-portrait by the artist, lying alongside his lover Alma Mahler. Kokoschka met Mahler, then recently widowed from Gustav Mahler, in 1912. A passionate romance ensued, with the artist producing numerous drawings and paintings of Mahler. The painting depicts Mahler in a peaceful sleep beside Kokoschka, who is awake and stares into space. The couple's break-up in 1914 had a profound effect on Kokoschka, whose expressive brushwork grew more turbulent.
(See HERE)





Knight Errant In the Vienna of 1914, a woman having an abortion was cause for scandal, even within the confines of the relatively open-minded art world. When such a woman was the widow of a famous composer, unwed, and carrying on two love affairs simultaneously, her decision would alarm even the most sympathetic souls. Thus it is that the agonized knight errant of Oskar Kokoschka’s painting is to this day read as an expression of the artist’s pain over the death of an unborn child and the crumbling of his relationship with the fascinating, and quite unrepentant, Alma Mahler.

The central figure appears to be a self-portrait of Kokoschka, clad in the armor of a medieval knight. He lies errant, or lost, in a stormy landscape, his two attributes—a winged bird-man and a sphinxlike woman—in close proximity. The bird-man has been interpreted either as the figure of death or another self-portrait, while the sphinx-woman has been seen as a stand-in for Mahler. A funereal sky bears the letters “E S,” which probably refer to Christ’s lament, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani” (“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”) As if the self-equivalence with chivalry and the martyred Christ were not enough, the agitated brushwork and disturbing composition convince us of Kokoschka’s spiritual discomfort.
Cornelia Lauf (See HERE)


The Duomo, Florence.







The Loreley (1941/2) title refers to a mythical Rhine maiden, who lured sailors to their death. Kokoschka explained that his painting mocks British claims to maritime supremacy: "Britannia no longer rules the waves; inaction has lasted too long; an octopus swims away with a trident, the emblem of marine power. Queen Victoria, who built up the British fleet into a dominant position, rides a shark and stuffs white, brown and black sailors into its mouth. Only the frog on her hand refuses to accept the same fate: it represents Ireland, where there are no reptiles except frogs". (See HERE)





Marianne-Maquis: 1942 was a year of deadlock during the Second World War. Whilst the Soviet Union was battling the Nazis in the East, there were repeated calls for British and American governments to launch a Second Front in Western Europe. In Marianne-Maquis, Kokoschka vents his criticism of the allies’ delay by showing British war leaders Winston Churchill and General Montgomery drinking tea in the Café de Paris in Soho. The central figure is Marianne, the traditional personification of France, now linked to the ‘Maquis’, the French Resistance. (See HERE)





Anschluss - Alice in Wonderland (1942) addresses the German annexation of Austria; the painting also contains symbolic elements suggested by the second part of the title. In the background, Kokoschka’s former city, Vienna, is engulfed in flames. Wien is inscribed on a building. People are running rampant through the city streets, suggesting that the cultural capital of the former Austrian Empire might soon be reduced to this sort of social destruction. In the right foreground of the painting, a youthful nude with plaited blond hair stands erect. She symbolizes Austria and serves as a visual contrapposto to Hitler’s Aryan ideal. This is not the healthy, robust model seen so often in Nazi propaganda—her figure is disproportionate and her pose is awkward. This is, perhaps, another attempt at satirizing a contemporary, political event. In an attempt at modesty, she reaches with her left arm to cover herself with a fig leaf, alluding to classical statuary and humanist traditions. Kokoschka has placed her inside a pen of barbed wire, separating her from the chaos on the streets. Her right arm is extended outward and she points with one finger directly at the viewer, a warning to Kokoschka’s British audience that this sort of thing could happen to them, as well, if not more careful about their policy-making. (Information from pdf HERE)





What We Are Fighting For : (1943) According to Kokoschka, of all the political allegories completed during his time in London this one was the one he “meant most seriously.” He discusses the iconography of the composition:    A bishop is blessing the troops, and with his free hand is dropping a penny into the Red Cross collecting-box; an endless procession of prisoners file along with hands raised; in a rickshaw pulled by Gandhi sit the Governor of the Bank of England, the President of the Reichsbank, and a Marshal of France; in the foreground lies a starving mother holding an emaciated child who is playing with a rat. The prospering American munitions industry appears as a globe-like monster with two levers for arms, one pulling out a blue rabbit, signifying peace, as an emblem of hope for the future, while the other crams human bones into the armaments machine which turns them into cartridges. In the right foreground stands a bust of Voltaire with the inscription CANDIDE, i.e., ‘the best of all possible worlds’....... we can assume that simply creating something interesting to look at was not Kokoschka’s intent. His goal was to teach.

More paintings HERE and via Google Image.


ASTROLOGY

(12 noon chart shown as no time of birth is available.)
I noticed, somewhere in my searches, a reference to the artist as a "Sensitive Titan", his Sun and Mercury in Pisces reflects sensitivity, but in general he seems to have experienced discomfort rather than joy from his sensitive nature.
I see this discomfort represented by the opposition of Mars to Sun/Mercury; Mars possibly representing "The Titan"? Venus in Aquarius, and Uranus conjunct Jupiter both link to Kokoschka's non-establishment politcally-aware side, and perhaps his rather unruly Aquarian Venus led him into the affair with Alma Mahler which eventually cost him much pain. Moon would have been in Capricorn, whatever his birth time, and it probably is in line to form a Grand Trine in Earth with Neptune and Mars - connecting to both his creativity and "The Titan" in him. It's rather strange he has no planet in a Fire sign.

Drones: "most brutal weapons of all"

It was announced on Friday that Germany is about to acquire armed drones.
From the full Associated Press report HERE

Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Friday that Germany would work with France to develop a new generation of unmanned aerial vehicles.

"We have a gap in our capabilities that we would like to close," he said.

Germany already has unarmed drones, including the Israeli-built Heron 1 model, which it uses for reconnaissance purposes in places such as Afghanistan. Officials said Germany might consider purchasing an armed version of the Heron 1 for use after 2014, to bridge the gap until 2020 when the system being developed with France becomes available.

(Photograph from RP Defense blog)

I had been labouring under the mistaken idea that Germany would nevermore have the option to become fully militarised, after having been instrumental in lighting the blue touchpaper for two horrendously devastating world wars within a ridiculously short time span 1914-1918, 1939-1945. Some generations had the misfortune of living through both bloodbaths. I'm not sure where I got the idea in the first place - probably kidding myself. Wikipedia has a page outlining the real situation.

It doesn't take an over-active imagination to see where a potential drone-fest will end, as more and more countries acquire the technology. We used to think our greatest danger lay in nuclear weaponry. That supposition ought now to be updated to include armed drone use. Potential for human error has always been present, now an added possibility of techno-error - even without planned intention of attack. Can you imagine World War 3? Skies dark with competing drones over cities throughout the world....need I write more?

For any passing reader who still thinks drones are "a good thing", keeping the operator and "our heroic troops" safe and sound in underground bunkers far, far away - continents away - from the action, would do well to read an essay by a German guy, Dirk Kurbjuweit, translated into English by Christopher Sultan, and dated August 2012:
Fear the Reaper: 'Humane' Drones Are the Most Brutal Weapons of All

I'll copy some brief snips, but the full essay is essential reading:

....... According to the traditional concepts of combat, a war waged with drones is a cowardly war. The coward, in this equation, is the one who takes little or no risk to fight against those who take great risks........................

To date, the most humane of all weapons is the one that is potentially the most gruesome -- the intercontinental ballistic missile, equipped with multiple nuclear warheads, which is capable of wiping out a city of a million people. It has zero victims, because no one has dared to use it.........................

The "good" drones, on the other hand, have a much more tragic track record. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London found that the United States used drones in Pakistan 337 times between 2004 and 2012, killing between 2,524 and 3,247 people. The casualties included 482 to 852 civilians, of whom 175 were children. Of the many evils of war, civilian victims are the worst.

The high rate of civilian casualties stems from the fact that the Americans are not using their armed drones in the battlefield, but in the vicinity of people who are considered to be terrorists. Of course, this means that there will sometimes be civilians nearby who, despite the precision of drones, will lose their lives.................

The most precise weapon for hunting down terrorists is still an intelligence agent like James Bond, but he has to risk his life during his missions, which is why the drone is preferred in real life.

A humane approach to war is a complex issue. Drones seem relatively humane, but that perception only increases the temptation to use them. They spare one's own troops, which is good, but they pose a great threat to civilians, which is terrible. As a result, the humane approach gives rise to a special form of inhumanity....................

A weapon also has a psychology, meaning that it affects the disposition of its users in its own, unique way. The drone is especially tempting for politicians of a gentle, humanitarian nature. Former US President George W. Bush, who does not fall into this category, used armed drones in Pakistan 52 times in the last four years of his presidency. His apparently gentler and more humanitarian successor, Barack Obama, has already deployed drones 285 times. Just as the drone suits Germany, it also suits Obama. Because it doesn't seem as terrible as other weapons, the barriers to its use are relatively low.

Arty Farty Friday ~~ Oskar Schlemmer, Virgo-type?

Oskar Schlemmer, a 20th century artist who, being born either too soon or too late, fell foul of the Nazis in his native Germany. In 1933 he was dismissed from his teaching post and declared "a degenerate artist". From 1920 to 1929 he had been an influential teacher at the Bauhaus - a centre of art and design education, specialising in "machine age art". Schlemmer had taught in the metalwork and scupture class, mainly in the school of design.

During World War II Schlemmer worked at the Institut für Malstoffe in Wuppertal. The factory offered Schlemmer and a few of his peers the opportunity to paint without fear of persecution. Towards the end of his life, in a kind of "inner exile" he painted a series of eighteen small, mystical paintings: Fensterbilder (Window Pictures, 1942) while looking out from the window of his house, observing neighbors engaged in domestic tasks, two examples are among the images below. These were Schlemmer's final works before his death in 1943.

Oskar Schlemmer was painter, sculptor, stage designer and choreographer, strongly drawn to the theatre, and dance. He saw ballet and pantomime as free from the historical baggage of theatre and opera, offering him an opportunity to present ideas of choreographed geometry, man as dancer, transformed by costume. In painting, sculpture and design he reduced the human figure to a mechanistic geometric manikin. He was working during the time several of his contemporaries in the art world were experimenting with cubism. He was inspired by this new, geometric, vision of art.

Schlemmer's best-known work is probably the "Triadic Ballet" in which actors are transformed from the normal to geometric shapes. The ballet became the most widely performed avant-garde dance show of the time.




QUOTES of Oskar Schlemmer

"If today's arts love the machine, technology and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times."

"Life has become so mechanized, thanks to machines and a technology which our senses cannot possibly ignore, that we are intensely aware of man as a machine and the body as a mechanism. In art, especially in painting we are witnessing a search for the roots and sources of all creativity; this grows out of the bankruptcy brought on by excessive refinement."

I was quite surprised to find that Astrodatabank has full birth data for this relatively unknown or forgotten artist :
Born 4 September 1888 at 6:00 PM in Stuttgart, Germany



Was he a Virgo-type? I've found little or no information about his private life, so all there is to go on is his work and style. Sun Mercury and Venus in Virgo , three of the most personal planets of all in the sign of a perfectionist - Schlemmer's pull towards perfection manifested in his attraction to geometric imagery - geometry is surely an artistic perfection-seeker's natural tool ? His Sun at 12 Virgo links, by semisextiles in both directions, to Uranus at 15 Libra and Saturn at 14 Leo. Semisextiles, I find, are good for blending disparate attributes. Here perfectionist Virgo traits are blended with the avant garde of Uranus and the mathematical bent of structured Saturn.

That works !

Moon in Leo links to Schlemmer's draw to theatrical art. Aquarius rising reflects his pull to be different, novel, seeking to present the unexpected.

He was born into the generation with Neptune and Pluto conjoined in Gemini - so many brilliant and iconic communicators, on various fronts, came from this generation. In Schlemmer's case the Pluto/Neptune conjunction is in opposition to Jupiter/Mars, though "out of sign" in the last degrees of Scorpio. I'm not certain whether this opposition could be said to represent the difficulties Schlemmer faced due to the rise of the 3rd Reich and World War 2 (represented here by Mars/Jupiter) - but along with the challenging square aspect from Moon in Leo to Jupiter/Mars in Scorpio, that interpretation does fit rather well.



Bauhaus Stairway (his best-known painting), followed by other examples of his work.









Before the Mirror



Die Bei­den Pathetiker (The Two Solemn Trage­di­ans) - an appar­ently unre­al­ized theatrical project. Two mon­u­men­tal fig­ures, per­son­i­fi­ca­tions of lofty con­cepts such as Power and Courage, Truth and Beauty, Law and Free­dom. Their dia­log: voices ampli­fied by mega­phones pro­por­tion­ate to the size of the fig­ures; fluc­tu­at­ing in vol­ume, at cer­tain times with orches­tral accompaniment.














Two from the set of 18 Fensterbilder - his Window Paintings

"History is a vast early warning system"

I try hard not to fall for conspiracy theories. Series of events which lend themselves to be woven into such theories are fairly common. Like an optical illusion picture which looks like one thing viewed one way, a squinting of the eye brings something else entirely into view. Sometimes though, a series of events, conversations or coincidental reading of something quite unrelated to the original topic, link up and one thinks...."HUH?....Hmmm!" Synchronicity - or something.

This happened to me a few days ago. Following the debt ceiling debacle in Washington DC, reading some comments on an article at at Common Dreams, I came across this from commenter "Diana" (I've added dates):

The SuperCongress is the most frightening act of governance I've heard about in my lifetime, the final phase of the coup (coup d'etat.)
Phase I could be any number of timepoints, but starting with contemporary politics, I'd say it is:

Phase I = the Supremes giving the presidency to Bush (2000)

Phase II = 9/11 (2001)

Phase III = Neoliberals/corportists install the perfect trojan horse obama into office (2008)

Phase IV = Citizens' United (2010)

Phase Out = SuperCongress (2011)

I responded:
"Diana ~ The Super Congress is the thing that started loud alarm bells ringing for me too. I hadn't yet linked it to the progression you suggest, but it all fits; and one doesn't need to be a conspiracy theorist to see it."
(This "super congress" was mentioned in Wednesday 3 August's post.)

A little later, while looking for something quite unrelated, among entries on a page of quotes, I saw this:

"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . (it) gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated . . . by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. ...Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . .Each act. . . (was) worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.” -- Excerpted From Milton Mayer’s book, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)

I felt a cold shiver. I haven't read that book, a study of the lives of a group of ordinary Germans under the Third Reich, but intend to seek it out.

Deciding to investigate any astrological similarities between Germany in the years around 1933 and USA in the 21st century, Google led me to an archived post (Feb. 2011) of fellow astrology blogger Jude Cowell at Stars Over Washington Jude has set out the situation better than I ever could:
I'll copy a few lines here, but a reading of the post in full is necessary to get the whole astro picture:

The spiritual emphasis of the events and social conditions of 1933 resonate with those of 2011 through the sharing of a generational Uranus/Pluto square (to be discussed more fully below) and which undergirds the upheavals and protests now occurring throughout the world, and made easier to organize with the tech aid of Twitter and FaceBook.............................................................

As a message to us in 2011, 1933's Uranus to Neptune (in Aries, sign of uprisings, riots, strikes, protests, and pioneers - tr Uranus approaches the Aries Point as I type) transit typifies an era when a spiritually-inspired aspiration to fulfill high ideals is needed by the people, yet the freedom to express social, political, religious, artistic, musical, divine, and/or other ideals is suppressed, potentially disappearing altogether.

Neptunian circumstances of loss and grief were a long time coming (then as now) as traditions and bonds of family, church, communal sense/commonwealth, marriage, partnership, etc, were slowly eroded making them easier to topple (then as now; Hitler's desire to establish a worldwide 'new world order' shows him as the military arm of a long-standing movement toward global fascism and one-world-government - as you have noticed, they're baa-a-a-ack... - never having really gone away.)

I'm not sure how to wrap this up, except to finish, as I started, with the heading:

History is a vast early warning system.
~Norman Cousins

Arty Farty Friday ~ Hannah Höch

A female artist from an "interesting" period of history in Germany, that between the two world wars: the Weimar Republic.

Hannah Höch was born on 1 November 1889, died in 1978. She was a pioneer of photomontage. Her talents propelled her into the male Dadaist enclave - the only female in that group. She was bi-sexual in a country and age when that could have had dire consequences indeed.

This piece from Art and Culture offers a brief rundown of her career. I've added a couple of images to illustrate the works mentioned.

On June 9, 1978, an obituary appeared with the headline "On the death of Hannah Hoch, the bob-haired muse of the Men's Club." For much of her life, Hoch had been characterized as the "It Girl" of the macho Berlin art circle dominated by George Grosz, John Heartfield, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Raoul Hausmann (Hoch's onetime lover). These boys formed the Club Dada in 1918 and launched an all-out attack on German bourgeois culture. But Hoch was much more than their moll or muse. Hoch's impact on Berlin Dada was profound. She was a master practitioner of photomontage -- a technique that all the dadaists adopted. With its roots in the kitsch tradition of splicing heads from family photos onto magazine pictures of ideal soldiers or angelic women, photomontage took images and type from the popular press and combined them in ways to reveal the fissures that ran through middle-class ideology. Hoch's most famous work, "Cut with the Kitchen Knife: Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-belly Cultural Epoch of Germany" (1919), is a 3' x 4' collage bursting with images of German industry, military figures, and recreational gaieties. Amid these pictures, the word "dada" cuts like a knife, exposing the ludicrous contradictions that were Weimar.



Other works such as "Hochfinanz" (High Finance) directly critique the connection between bankers, industrialists, and the military.




Over time (and she was an active artist into the 1970s), Hoch 's work evolved from the propagandistic banner into a reflection on the politics of the self. Her views concerning women and the idea of beauty were seeds for many pieces that used mass media images to fracture canonical concepts of womanhood. Her "Ethnography Museum" series combined photos of African and Asian sculpture with photos of Western body parts in order to probe stereotypes of the "primitive" and "exotic" as opposed to the "civilized."

Hoch was a social archaeologist working in reverse. Her montages break down what we see and know, and put the fragments back together in a way that makes us question the concepts of identity, culture, and subjectivity. Hoch found the self in the Other in order to deconstruct racism, sexism, and politics. She didn't limit herself to angry anti-bourgeois messages or the macho posturing of some of the male dadaists, but expanded the scope of her work to mine the intersection between public images and private selves. And on top of all that, she did have an excellent bob.

Other good blog articles on this artist at Venetian Red Art Blog .

Hannah Höch was born on 1 November 1889 in Gotha, Germany.



Scorpio Sun probably describes her less clearly than the cluster of three planets in Libra, nextdoor. Uranus, planet of the rebel and the avant garde is conjunct Mercury and Venus in Libra, a sign ruled by Venus, planet of the arts. Uranus, so closely connected to Mercury (communication) and Venus (art), well describes Hannah's chosen art style - and lifestyle.

Without a time of birth the Moon's position can't be properly established, but unless she was born around 11 PM or later Moon would have been in Aquarius - ruled by Uranus - underlining what is indicated above: the rebellious influence and avant garde style as part of her her nature. Scorpio Sun would add a certain passion and stubborn determination.

Saturn and Mars were both in meticulous Virgo. Saturn sextile (helpful) to her natal Sun; and Mars semi-sextile (mildly helpful)to the three Libra planets. Here is the discipline and drive needed to harness rebellious tendencies sufficiently for Hannah to follow a successful career in an often unfriendly environment.


THE FLIRT



IMAGINARY BRIDGE



DADA DANDY



PLATONIC LOVE



LOVE IN THE BUSH



DADA DANCE




DOMPTEUSE (translated: Animal Trainer)

LANGUAGE, PERCEPTION and MERCURY (& Ms Merkel's declaration).

“Language is the dress of thought” wrote Samuel Johnson back in 18th century England. Languages, national, international, ancient, modern, written, spoken, technical, speciality, and even slang, how they evolved, how they are written, how so much diversity exists - all of this is a constant source of wonder. Accents, side-kicks of language, add an extra layer of fascination.

All these, in astrology, are ruled by planet Mercury. Astrology is a language in itself of course, with its own vocabulary capable of confusing "outsiders", as well as the occasional "insider". The computer and the internet have their own technical language, better known as "jargon", which confused me no end when I began writing this blog, even though I'd been using a computer for years.


More important than language itself, or accents, is nuance of understanding or misunderstanding arising between people, even when using the same language in the same accent.

Perception.

Here's where astrology, as well as life-experience, plays its part, with particular emphasis on Mercury's natal position. As Anais Nin wrote:We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. I'd paraphrase that and say that we don't always perceive words, phrases and concepts as they are commonly defined, but as we are, via our uncommon natal charts.

Sanderson Beck has this to say on his website Astrology Time Patterns: Mercury:

Mercury and the mind are like a great lens or focus device; it is an instrument we use to focus our awareness. The soul is the true experiencer of the consciousness, but our direction and consequent awareness depends on how and where we focus the mind. The mind is tremendously powerful; how we use it is up to us.

There's a list of interpretations for Mercury in the 12 zodiac signs, and Mercury the 12 houses at the above link.

Just this week the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel had something to say about language, and the learning of it by immigrants to her country. For anyone intending to spend their lives in a country where the language spoken isn't that they learned as a child, it would seem to be a "given" that they'd do everything possible to learn the native language fairly soon - for ease of everyday requirements: shopping, education, news etc. Some language transitions, though, will be easier to manage than others. I suspect that Turkish to German (the one Ms Merkel referred to) might pose more difficulties than some others. Turkish President Abdullah Gul, went too far in my opinion - in a weekend interview, when urging the Turkish community in Germany to master the language he stated: "That is why I tell them at every opportunity that they should learn German, and speak it fluently and without an accent." Without an accent!? That is a tall order, almost impossible for a person not born in Germany to comply with!

Being a comparative newcomer to the USA (6 years this month) I still sound like a foreigner here. My accent hasn't changed, as far as I'm aware, nor will it, and to my mind nor should it. Good thing I didn't marry a German then!

"VALKYRIE" & Claus von Stauffenberg

I can't say I enjoyed the movie "Valkyrie", and Himself, whose idea it was to go see it wasn't impressed either. Perhaps the subject matter doesn't lend itself to enjoyment, but is meant to inform rather than entertain.

The movie tells the true story of a plot by German officers to assassinate Hitler during the last year of World War 2. I was left with questions. Why did it take so long for Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and his supporters to do something, if they felt so incensed by the direction in which Hitler had led their country? Stauffenberg had to sustain horrific injury himself, losing an eye, one hand and several fingers of the other hand before he galvanised into action against the Fuehrer. Having read a little background since seeing the movie, it does appear that Stauffenberg had been trying to persuade others to join him in his efforts for at least a year before the movie action begins. This might have been hinted in the dialogue, but if so, I failed to catch it.



It appears that the explosive devices used in the assassination attempt were far too weak to do the necessary damage. I'd have thought that high ranking officers would have had more know-how and better materials at their disposal. The plot to assassinate Hitler seemed terribly amateurish. Too late, too little. The Germans were already losing the war by 1944. Were these high ranking officers seeking to save face, rather than save humanity?

Perhaps I'm being too cynical, but these were my impressions. The temperature in the almost empty cinema was frigid, which added to my jaundiced view of the movie!

The acting was adequate, Tom Cruise in the lead, along with many familiar British faces in unfamiliar guises did as well as could be expected with the material. The movie could have benefited from a slight change of pace now and again. It was unrelenting in its gloom. The end titles told us that Stauffenberg's wife and children survived the war, she died only in 2006, presumably well into her 90s. A rather more uplifting ending would be to have been to include a scene showing his family at some later date, in peacetime. Walking out of the cinema with the executions and hangings still stinging our eyes wasn't pleasant.

Astrology: Claus von Stauffenberg's chart - born 15 November 1907 in Jettingen, Germany at 1.00 am according to Astrotheme.



Sun and Mercury in intense Scorpio, in challenging square to Mars in Aquarius. Moon conjunct Saturn in compassionate Pisces, with Virgo rising.


There's a Grand Trine in Water signs linking Sun/Mercury, Moon/Saturn and Neptune/North Node. This isn't the chart of a warrior, I'd expect it to belong to someone with artistic or spiritual leanings, but Stauffenberg was born into an aristocratic Roman Catholic family with very strong military ties. Astrology doesn't let us down though:

"After contemplating careers in music and architecture, von Stauffenberg finally opts for military service, entering the army as a cadet officer in his family's traditional regiment, the 17th Cavalry Regiment of Bamberg.
1930 - Graduating first in his class and receiving a special ceremonial sabre for "outstanding achievements", von Stauffenberg is commissioned as a lieutenant. His military superiors variously describe him as "highly intelligent and of above average ability, both tactically and technically", and "an expert at settling differences, acting as go-between and smoothing out quarrels."
One of his peers says, "I would say that he had an extraordinary gift for making others feel naturally and completely at ease. This was all the more remarkable seeing that he was generally recognised as being well above average intellectually." Another peer describes von Stauffenberg as "a man of extraordinary personal charm." " (Link)

Who can tell how individuals will react in extraordinary circumstances, when bound by family ties and tradition. Stauffenberg, like many men and women on both sides of all wars, should never have been in the military. Since circumstances sent him in that direction, he did act, as far as he was able, in all the circumstances, in accord with his astrological blueprint.