My Response To Macho

I once wrote about someone I admire, Helmut James von Moltke.  As an aside, I'm rather proud that one of my blog posts on him is my most visited one--it's the one that recounts his chilling encounter with evil incarnate. link

Now it so happened that von Moltke was raised in the Christian Science Church (FTR, I'm not a Christian Scientist). Anyways, von Moltke's parents first translated Mary Baker Eddy's work into German. According to ueber macho blogger Crack Emcee, who garners the apparent respect of numerous high profile bloggers, anyone associated with what he brands cult characteristics is forever tainted with the "cult characteristics" and is to be mocked and parodied.

Just the other day on Althouse, Crack was running down Mitt Romney again--in his eyes guilty of holding fast to tenets of the Mormon faith. That's just absurd--akin to holding Helmut James von Moltke hostage to every last jot and tittle of Christian Scientism.

I asked Crack the other day on Althouse what he thought of Mary Baker Eddy--here's what he said:

A nut job, responsible for the deaths of a lot of kids. Come on, you could've guessed that one, couldn't you? Would you deny your kid a blood transfusion based on her bullshit? link

My reading of Crack is that he believes strongly in guilt by association. Crack is a bigot in that regard. Show me the evidence that Mitt Romney colors his political thinking and potential future actions by the details of his faith.

I'm going to requote something written by von Moltke's widow, Freya, which I put back here:

However, questions of faith were also, or became, personally vital for almost all the members of the group.  Even if they were not churchgoing Christians, it was their faith in divine work, and, in fact, the faith rooted in Christian heritage, that gave them their foundation and their courage.  Their faith also imposed upon them the duty to act against the destruction of fundamental humanity (evolved from Christianity) by National Socialism and to risk their lives for this. However, for them it was not only a matter of great heritage, out of which our western treasures had grown, in spite of all atrocities committed by the church and by Christians throughout the centuries; rather, they also believed in the future of Christianity.  Christianity has a way--just when it appears bankrupt--of becoming alive again in a new and different manner. They believed that. Faith is tested by one's actions. People attach themselves to many gods and are always in danger of being led astray by false gods--as was the case then with the false gods of National Socialism.

The Restless Conscience

I found this movie on Netflix and watched it last weekend.  I wanted to see and hear Freya von Moltke, whom I wrote about here. She appears briefly in the linked trailer at the 1 min 14 sec mark. She is interviewed throughout the movie which tells the story of her husband, Helmuth James von Moltke, whom I wrote about here. The movie isn't about him per se but does an excellent job of fitting him into the larger picture of German anti-War resistance at the time.

If you're into that sort of history, give the movie a watch.  The Restless Conscience (1992)

Letters To Freya: The Trial of Helmuth James von Moltke

Helmuth James von Moltke on trial for his life in 1944

The passage below is excerpted from Letters To Freya and requires some background. I wrote briefly about Freya von Moltke here.  Her husband, Count Helmuth James von Moltke, was a German lawyer secretly active in anti-Nazi resistance. He managed to stay undetected until near the end but after the last attempt on Hitler's life he was betrayed and arrested. In this passage, written shortly before his execution, von Moltke describes the trial, a psychological battle between himself and Roland Freisler, the Nazi judge who tried and condemned him. Freisler was the same judge who had tried and convicted Sophie Scholl and the other members of the White Rose resistance group. There is actual archive film of Freisler presiding over trials here. Von Moltke wrote:

In one of his tirades Freisler said to me: 

Only in one respect are we and Christianity alike: we demand the whole man!   

I don't know if the others sitting there took it all in, for it was sort of a dialogue--a spiritual one between Freisler and myself, for I could not utter many words--in which we two got to know each other through and through. Of the whole gang Freisler was the only one who recognized me, and of the whole gang he is the only one who knows why he has to kill me. There was nothing about a 'complicated man' or 'complicated thoughts' or 'ideology', but 'the fig leaf is off'. But only for Herr Freisler.  We talked, as it were in a vacuum. He made not a single joke at my expense, as he had done with Delp and Eugen. No, this was grim earnest: 

From whom do you take your orders? From the Beyond or from Adolf Hitler? Who commands your loyalty and your faith?   

All rhetorical questions, of course.--Anyhow, Freisler is the first National Socialist who has grasped who I am, and the good Mueller* is a simpleton.

_____________________
*Heinrich Müller, Gestapo chief, last seen in the bunker the day after Hitler committed suicide. Müller eluded capture and his whereabouts after the war were never positively determined.

I selected this particular passage because it reminds me of the psychological dynamics of The Grand Inquisitor within Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov with Freisler playing the role of the Grand Inquisitor and von Moltke the Christ-like figure. The difference of course is that Dostoevsky was writing 19th century fiction while von Moltke's trial really occurred 75 years ago.

Freya von Moltke Never Went Back To Poland

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Freya von Moltke (1911-2010)

Freya von Moltke passed away almost unnoticed early this year.  I was twittering around late one night last spring and came across her book, Memories of Kreisau and the German Resistance. I was interested in her husband, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, after having watched Sophie Scholl: Die Letzten Tage. 

Memories of Kreisau & The German Resistance is a slim volume which I read through in a weekend. I marked a couple passages with yellow stickies that I thought might be worth remembering.  Here she writes about what motivated her husband and his friends:

However, questions of faith were also, or became, personally vital for almost all the members of the group.  Even if they were not churchgoing Christians, it was their faith in divine work, and, in fact, the faith rooted in Christian heritage, that gave them their foundation and their courage.  Their faith also imposed upon them the duty to act against the destruction of fundamental humanity (evolved from Christianity) by National Socialism and to risk their lives for this. However, for them it was not only a matter of great heritage, out of which our western treasures had grown, in spite of all atrocities committed by the church and by Christians throughout the centuries; rather, they also believed in the future of Christianity.  Christianity has a way--just when it appears bankrupt--of becoming alive again in a new and different manner. They believed that. Faith is tested by one's actions. People attach themselves to many gods and are always in danger of being led astray by false gods--as was the case then with the false gods of National Socialism.

Her husband, Helmuth James von Moltke, was one of Germany's best legal minds of his generation.  He was arrested, charged with conspiracy, and executed just months before the end of the war.  Freya said of her husband:

Whoever wants to become acquainted with Helmuth, must read his letters. He is not easy to describe, especially not for me. 

Helmuth James von Moltke's  Letters To Freya (1939-45) is over 400 pages long and set in extremely small type font. He details in an unbroken series of letters to his wife the minutia of his thoughts on all matters as seen from someone inside the Third Reich on the other side.  The diarist narrative gets a bit bogged down in places and I admit that I skipped around, unlike Memories of Kreisau.

Imprisoned for a year, then tried and summarily executed, von Moltke wrote to his sons from prison (then aged just 3 and 6) calling their mother by her name and choosing words which they could not possibly have understood then:

...Ever since National Socialism came to power, I have done my best to mitigate the consequences for its victims and to prepare for a change. I was driven to it by my conscience, and, after all, it is a task for a man. From 1933 on, I have therefore had to make material sacrifices and to run personal risks. In all these years Freya, who was the one who suffered most from these sacrifices and who always had to be concerned that I would be arrested, imprisoned, or killed, never hindered me in what I considered necessary, or made it harder in any way. She was always ready to accept everything; she was always ready to make sacrifices if it was necessary. And I tell you: that is much more than I did. For running risks oneself, which one knows, is nothing compared with the readiness to let the person with whom one's life is joined run risks one cannot gauge. And it is much more, too, than the wife of a warrior accepts, for she has no choice; one word from Freya might have held me back from many an undertaking.

The very last two letters in Letters To Freya (written after he had been condemned and just days before his execution) are particularly moving and read in part like lyrics--as if written by a man graced with resolve and contentment.   Freya wrote in her book:

I carried Helmuth's commitment with him from the beginning, and therefore, I wanted him to continue....I never advised him to stop, but rather encouraged him, because I was convinced that that was the right way for him to fulfill his life.

It sounds to me like they had a perfect marriage.