1984? 2025? 1933? 1962?

Over the weekend, I finished reading the novel “1984” by George Orwell. I read it the first time probably a few years before 1984, because I had to for a class and I was young and thought it was crazy to read a book with that title when I was staring down that particular year.

I don’t remember much from that first reading, except how terrifying it was. And yet thinking that none of that could ever happen. That was way before the Hunger Games series and other recent dystopian books and movies. We were still living in the Cold War, and maybe we had been desensitized by it after the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’ve lived through a lot, but that doesn’t mean I knew what was going on. I was a dumb kid, not a jaded near-senior citizen with an over-active imagination and internet access.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve heard of the book I’m talking about, but if you still don’t know anything about it, check it out on Google. I wish I could recommend you read it for yourself, but I don’t want that liability.

Whether you know the premise of the book or nor, here are some quotes. They may chill you to the bone.

     “I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.”

     “Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

     “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

     “It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”

     “You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia 

The Early Years

Ninety-eight years ago on the 20^th of this month, my dad was born near Cologne, Germany. Thinking back on what his life must have been like, I deeply regret not gleaning more information from him. As it is, over the years, I have pieced together a few stories from that past.

He was the second youngest of six children born to Paul and Emma Loehmer. Hannah was the oldest and I have found absolutely no information on her. When the rest of the family moved to America in 1923 and 1924, she stayed behind. I know, I need to set up that Ancestry.com account and find her, huh?

The next oldest was Frederick, known as Fritz, born in 1908. The remaining siblings were Emmy, born in 1912; Klara, born in 1914; my dad and finally Franz, born in 1918.  

The only memory my dad shared with me about life in Germany was that he learned to swim when his father threw him into the river.  It was either sink or swim, so he picked up a noble dogpaddle and was able to get himself to the shore. 

I think he spoke very little about life in Germany because it had been so very hard. It’s one of those things they don’t talk about much in the history books. When Germany lost World War I, the victors imposed such stiff retributions on the country, that it seemed the country would never bounce back. Do you remember how well that worked? The poor and destitute population of Germany turned to an up and coming individual who promised to return the country to its former glory. It was so easy to be drawn into his promises, easy to be mesmerized by his oratory style. And just as this man - it doesn’t even seem right to call him a “man” he was so evil – began his rise to power, my dad and his family were packing up to come to America. How different my life would have been had they not left Germany when they did, or more likely I wouldn’t have been born.

(I just couldn't come up with a picture for tonight. There are very few pictures of my dad from back in these days, but this blog post willl shed more light on his early life.)