Springtime of Nations II: A European Republic Quest

[TheMaskedReader]

It is a time of confusion, fear, and economic uncertainty in London. Many, perhaps rightly, blame Germany for this turn of events, especially in the upper and middle classes. And so, even as the lower classes look to the German Revolution with studious eyes, the upper classes draft a work intended to glorify the other side of the struggle…

The White Edelweiss (Selected Excerpts)​

Henry von Hayek, the White Edelweiss, plucks something from the grass of Erfurt, luxuriating in his return to his country of birth following his flight to the home of his father, fair England. The equally fair Emma Bauer, a childhood friend he had reconnected with after his return to the country, stands beside him, gazing longingly at his back.

EMMA: What is that you have picked up, Herr von Hayek?

HENRY: It is the White Edelweiss, my dear - A flower that symbolizes nobility and peace, in the same breath. For, truly, they are one and the same. Even the Republican despoilment of this city cannot prevent it from growing, as persistent as the rain and the sky.

He proffers it to her, as she blushes.

HENRY: Keep it, my dear - It will serve as a reminder of my promise to you. No matter what, I shall return to your side…

[...]

The White Edelweiss sneaks into the prison holding the captured nobles and business owners, soon to be dragged off to the guillotine!

HENRY: With the exterior guards distracted by the diversionary assault, it should be a simple matter to rescue the poor captives held here.

A man strides onto the scene, holding a saber and pistol.

CHRISTOF: Not so fast, Edelweiss. You thought your rescues had gone unnoticed? I am Comrade Christof, commissar of the Red Army, and your prevention of the Terror has gone on for long enough!

The White Edelweiss whirls to face him, prepared for an honorable duel, but Christof merely laughs, as savage forms emerge around him. It is the brainwashed warrior women of the Valkyries, turned from gentle wives to rabid beserkers by Socialist indoctrination!

CHRISTOF: You'll soon find yourself to be in far more pleasant company, Edelweiss! The company of Fraulein Guillotine!

[...]

Comrade Christof stands in front of a church, rumored to hide the White Edelweiss. The priest stands before him, unbowed and unafraid.

CHRISTOF: Surrender him, Preacher. Do so, and we will not burn this temple to the false gods of reaction and capital to the ground when we depart.

PREACHER: The right of sanctuary is inviolable - And the laws of God must take precedent over the laws of Man.

Comrade Christof spits on the ground in disgust at being denied so fervently, then whirls to his men, their uniforms ragged and stained, their posture shiftless.

CHRISTOF: Burn this filthy parish to the ground, and the town with it! There shall be no sympathy for reactionaries!

Screams fill the air as the soldiers rush forward, torches held high, and in the distance, the White Edelweiss looks back, seeing plumes of smoke darken the sky…

[...]

Comrade Christof stands atop the wall, holding fair Emma Bauer at gunpoint as the White Edelweiss is slowly surrounded from below by Republican soldiers, their uniforms ripped and soiled from their looting of Erfurt.

CHRISTOF: Edelweiss - Your lady love shall follow you to the guillotine soon enough, if you do not surrender the key to the arsenal of Erfurt!

Comrade Christof sneers, pressing the barrel of the pistol to Bauer's head as she weeps in distress.

CHRISTOF: We will crack it, one way or another - The only difference is whether or not she will be alive to see it!

HENRY: Emma! No!

EMMA: Don't do it, Hen-Edelweiss! They cannot be allowed to get their hands on the guns of Erfurt!

Henry pauses, then glares up at Christof.

HENRY: Promise you will let her go! Do it, and I shall give you the key!

Christof laughs, then shoves Bauer aside, stepping forward. Bauer flees stage right, throwing a frightened, but loving, glance at Henry. Henry tosses the key towards Christof, then flees, artfully dodging and playing the bumbling Republican soldiers off each other as Christof is distracted with the hunt for the key on the ground. He finds it and sprints towards the large, locked doors of the arsenal, laughing madly.

CHRISTOF: Even with the damned advance of the National scum, with this arsenal taken with us on the retreat, the Red Army shall be unstoppable!

He throws open the doors, only for his face to whiten. He turns to run, but 'flames' consume the stage as the rigged arsenal explodes.

[...]

Emma and Henry ride south, towards Austria, even as Erfurt burns behind them.

EMMA: Oh, Herr von Hayek - What will we do now? Though you denied the arsenal to the Republicans, the war still rages on…will we find shelter elsewhere? Or will we flee to Austria, as you did so long ago?

HENRY: Do not worry, my love - For so long as the White Edelweiss blooms on the soil of Germany, the noble peace of our dreams will still stand, forevermore…and that is something that the Red Republicans can never kill with their guillotines or guns…

---

Widely praised by the theater-going class of London, reactions from Germany were far more negative.

"...the most reactionary, nobility-glorifying, piece of treasonous filth I've ever seen put to paper. The only reason this reviewer cannot recommend burning any copy of it that makes its way to Germany, is that the poisonous fumes of the libel written on it may cause the inhaler to experience delusions on par with that of the author when writing it…" - The Orange Gazette, a Marcobin periodical.

"...Characterization of the Valkyries is especially egregious, painting them both as wild women driven out of control by socialist rhetoric, and the tools of the actual characters, largely men who control them or who fight them 'mercifully', both of which are…" - The Voting Voice, a feminist publication.

"...Not only historically inaccurate in the extreme due to the use of wildly differing command structures, ignorance of the timeline of the war, and the invention of Red-Gold Alliance atrocities wholesale, but outright muddled in its own message of slander, with the painting of the Erfurt explosion as being the fault of the monarchists - A claim which the monarchists attempted to refute at the time, due to the scale of the damage and the manner in which it turned their victory pyrrhic. Furthermore, the usage of 'white' before Edelweiss, which already means white, suggests either purposefully ignorant usage of the word, or an utter mangling of the German language…" - The Frankfurt Weekly, an academic newspaper.

 

[Weygand]

'Wilde At War'
Extracts from article by Thomas Carlisle PhD, University of Cambridge
​

'Wilde's 'German Period' - one of his most literarily robust and productive - was interrupted in October of 1897 by the German Second Republic's declaration of war upon Austrian Empire. At this time, owing to the unique structures which governed German citizenship, Wilde was serving in the Republican navy (the 'Marinewehr'), and this necessitated both a halt to his output as a writer and a period of a few years which contemporary scholarship has neglected: Oscar Wilde went to war.

Though many consider the German navy to have been a secondary consideration to its robust soldier-citizenry, modern scholarship tends to stress that this is only in comparison to powers whose forces were always primarily maritime, such as the Royal Navy. Germany confronted, in 1897, a number of opponents of comparable force disposition in a heated contest for control of the Baltic. Service records from this period place Wilde on the armoured cruiser RNS Elbe, which participated respectively in the German campaign to cross the Sound, the series of pitched battles fought with the Russian Baltic Fleet for control of the east Baltic in 1898, and a number of supply missions to deny Russian blockade runners.

These facts correlate with what is widely known about Wilde's time in German service, but what is not often discussed is his own accounting of these years: Wilde kept a small, white-bound book he bought from a general supply store in Hamburg before beginning his service, which had until the declaration of war been serving as a short-hand notebook of general reminders which the notoriously scatter-brained Wilde required to cope with military routine. By 1898, his 'war journal' had, in his own words, 'supplanted the contents entirely'.

"I am at time of writing only half a German," Wilde's war diary begins, "so you must pardon any errors in my interpretation or accountings of these events which I am relating. My condition, I am reliably informed, can only be alleviated when I demonstrate monarchy makes me sufficiently bloodthirsty." Wilde's general tone throughout the war is that of a man made impatient, affecting his typical witticisms toward implicit criticisms of republican militarism. Indeed, the role of the navy in 1897 was comparatively docile, so the contents of his diary tend toward more broad discussions of the "prevailing condition of general enthusiasm for bloodshed of the most biblical proportions," among the officer corps, though Wilde writes more favourably of his fellow servicemen: "Ruprecht is from a small town on the outskirts of the Engels canal, the pronunciation or spelling of which I will not dishonour with English tongue. He and I had been part of the same draft: we played cards most every evening. I have taken to telling him he ought to stand for election as a first mate, but he only ever laughs at me. Mood is generally disposed toward tension: the waiting is gutting."

During combat service in the Sound, Wilde was twice caught out of position by his officers and reprimanded: however, he was also awarded commendation for evacuating ammunition from a nearby fire, suffering severe burns on his arms which would stay with him the rest of his life. Wilde wrote more forthrightly in wake of the German capture of Copenhagen: "The trouble with modern warfare is that everything has been made mechanical and dreadfully complicated. So much so that the very machine I am stood in the bowels of could just as easily and readily kill me as any will of the enemy outside of it."

Upon the Elbe's entry to Copenhagen's harbour, Wilde enjoyed his first real period of shore leave: "I found the city surprisingly rejoicing, with flags bearing what I was made to understand was the old Danish cross replacing the Scandinavian colours. The Danes are an amiable people, if very cloistered and restrained. At one time when I was in a public house, a fellow approached me and shyly asked if I was the 'sodomite playwright from England', with no implication of any insult. When I began to laugh, he did, too. We barely understood one another in halting German, but I informed him that I was, and we shook hands."

Wilde's service continued into 1899, which saw [...]'

 

[TheMaskedReader]

As the war rages on, and the brave forces of Germany, Italy, and Spain face off against the absolutist regimes of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Romania, on the home front, life continues on, and morale must be kept up! As such, the Hamburg Actors Cooperative Troupe is proud to present, a German Comic Opera in all its glory…

The Five Weeks War​

(Inspired heavily by Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, as well as the stage adaptation of Les Misérables)

In the city of Hamburg, revolution has broken out in the streets! The stage opens on a grand setpiece of a barricade, upon which the entirety of the opera will take place. The main cast all take their places atop it, a motley collection of revolutionaries, liberals, and citizens of Hamburg ("Red, Gold, And Black!"), including the Revolutionary Noble, the Radical Socialite, and the Liberal Soldier, who each take it upon themselves to be the 'leaders' of the militia. The Representative of the Confederation in Hamburg, a clear parody of the Hapsburgs, with prosthetic chin and a referenced related fiancee, appears at the bottom to try and convince them to stand down ("A Return To Noble Peace"), which only enrages the masses as he seeks to appease them through promising less representation and more power for the nobility, viewing their grievances as a result of 'over-democratization'. He is chased off-stage by the unnamed members of the revolutionary militia ("We'll Show You Democracy").

With the Confederation chased out of the city, this leaves the three leaders to argue amongst themselves. The Revolutionary Noble makes his case first ("The Guiding Of The Masses"), with backing by the socialists in the militia, arguing that his education and background give him the best claim to leading the cause to victory, the very picture of puffed-up self-seriousness. The Radical Socialite makes her case second ("To Love Lady Liberty"), with backing from the Social Radicals and Jacobins in the crowd, in a somewhat bawdy ballad allegorically comparing her style of leadership to wooing a fine woman. Finally, the Liberal Soldier steps up, making his case ("To March To The Tune Of The Market"), which, of course, finds backing from the liberals, talking about how the Liberal Party is the most militant and revolutionary of the lot of them, and thus is the natural leader of the Revolution. Just as it seems the three are about to come to blows, a diplomat from the Republic arrives ("A Friend From The West"), standing atop the barricade. She throws down arms to the militia, and urges them to stand steadfast ("Hold, Hamburg, Hold!"), as Prussian soldiers approach the city.

The Prussian soldiers appear at the bottom of the barricade, calling for Hamburg to surrender, led by the Representative from the Confederation ("Surrender And Die"). With the approach of the soldiers of Prussia, the militia flies into a panic, with the Revolutionary Noble and Liberal Soldier both falling into a deep depression at the sight of such disunity ("We're Doomed!"). However, the Radical Socialite rallies them, and the Militia, to the defense of Hamburg, at the thought of, for the Noble, his estate being despoiled by Prussian invaders before it can be expropriated to the people, and for the Soldier, the thought of Prussian invaders quartering in innocent private businesses ("The Sheer Indignity!"). In a grand all-cast display of technical work, with a real antique cannon used, the Hamburg defenders resoundingly defeat the Prussian regulars ("The United Front"), throwing them out of the city and capturing the Confederation Representative.

The Republic Representative arrives to congratulate them on their victory, as Republican Soldiers march into Hamburg, with a special thanks to the Radical Socialite ("To Love Lady Liberty (Reprise)", then spiriting her off-stage. The Revolutionary Noble and Liberal Soldier find consolation in their defeat at leading the city together, choosing to exit together and enlist in the Republic's army as comrades ("Find New Life In The Landwehr"). The show concludes with the cast returning to the stage as the Republic's flag is raised over Hamburg ("Red, Gold, and Black! (Reprise)").​