Carl Hirschmann Child Sex Prison Sentence Confirmed

Is the Carl Hirschmann saga finally coming to an end? It might, though it is down to him to draw the line here. Since 2009, I've been posting regular updates on him and his many and varied court cases. Now the Swiss High Court has spoken. It confirmed a prison sentence from 2011 as correct. Finally, Carl Hirschmann is going to prison for paedophile sex. Or is he?

Carl Hirschmann

Carl Hirschmann moved from Switzerland to London after the series of court cases that had him in newspapers almost daily for two years. Now that the prison sentence has been finalized, it comes into force by law and has to be served by him. The judges of the Swiss High Court in Lausanne had refused to budge despite Carl Hirschmann's lawyers pointing out that he had apologized to the girl and her parents as well as paying reparations. They were of the opinion that both had been part of the deal with the court in Zurich and had been reflected in the lenient prison sentence handed to him. They also wanted to make it quite clear that rich criminals can't buy out of prison cards in Switzerland.

The deal sees Carl Hirschmann go to prison for 12 months, while 20 months are converted into a suspended sentence. The 12 months prison have to be served in Switzerland, though, implying that the millionaire has to return there to sit it out. He may choose to return of his own free will. If he does that, then he can work things to his advantage. If he shows an employment of any kind, he can spend the day outside of prison and is only asked to return in the evening. If he doesn't show an employment, he could still be put into an 'open' prison (i.e. no high walls, usually somewhere in Switzerland's beautiful countryside).

He could, on the other side, think he is being clever by sitting tight in London. Swiss authorities have already made it clear that they would apply to the United Kingdom for extradition should that be the case. They also made it clear that they expect the extradition to be followed as British judges wouldn't want to send the wrong kind of signals to paedophiles in their own country. It is also a question if such extradition proceedings would bring Carl Hirschmann into the sex offenders register (which he has so far escaped as he got sentenced in Switzerland).

With some luck, this might be one of the last aarticles on the young man from a rich family without morals. Or it might just be the start of a new series of court cases, this time handled in the limelight of London. It is up to Carl Hirschmann what it will be.

Further reading
The Carl Hirschmann Trial: It Was All About Sex
Carl Hirschmann Appeals Against Prison Sentence
Another Public Humiliation For Carl Hirschmann

A Man of His Word: Roger Federer

Under the leadership of Switzerland's tennis player number one Stanislas Wawrinka (that takes time to sink in) and with Roger Federer, the Swiss Davis Cup Team won against Serbia to qualify for the quarter finals against Kazakhstan. This will be played in Switzerland and Roger Federer will be part of the team. It shows a marked change to his earlier absences from the team.

Stanislas Wawrinka and Roger Federer

Many will have noticed that the Swiss Davis Cup Team hasn't done anything remarkable for the last ten years or so. Roger Federer mostly declined to play as the scheduling of the Davis Cup ties interfered with his season planning. He declined again during the Australian Open 2014, only to make a spot decision days before the tie to come after all. What had brought on that sudden change of heart?

In an interview in 2006 with Swiss Television, he had said one sentence of importance to this issue. When asked about playing Davis Cup, he said 'when Stan is ready' he will try to help win the trophy. Stanislas Wawrinka stagnated and Roger Federer did his own thing. With Stanislas Wawrinka becoming Australian Open champion, Roger Federer made good on his promise made in 2006 and probably forgotten by most.

Despite the fact that playing Davis Cup is playing havoc with his season, he will help Stan the Man win for Switzerland. It is a trophy they both would like to have in their players' palmares. In an interview prior to the matches against Serbia, he said that 'this is not about me, this week belongs to Stan.' How good are their chances of winning the Davis Cup? How many teams from other countries can field two top ten tennis players?

And with Kazakhstan ousting Belgium from the draw, the Swiss team will be playing at home. This is further reason for both players to look forward to the matches to be held in April. Roger Federer definitely is looking forward to it if you want to go by his latest tweet. (And a question on the side: Who took up Patrick von Stutenzee's prognosis of a Stanislas Wawrinka win in Melbourne? He made the prediction on grounds that Roger Federer won his first Australian title after becoming Swiss Personality of the Year. Article link is below.)

Further reading
Swiss Personality of the Year Stanislas Wawrinka
Bernard Tomic in Roger Federer Jubilee Match
Tennis With Gay Appeal in London

Rudolf Steiner’s Approach to Financial Politics

Rudolf Steiner was the founder of the Anthroposophical Society. He died in 1925. He left us, incongruously for a ‘religious leader’ of a sect or cult, an interesting treatise on monetary politics. Written years before the Great Depression, it shows an eerie actuality in view of the present crisis.

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner is best known for his founding of the Anthroposophical Society, a religion to all intent and purpose. His major achievements can be found in his writings, but also in his architecture and execution of the Goetheanum in Dornach near Basel, Switzerland. It houses the world centre for Anthroposophism. His interests stretched to the problem of money amassing individuals.

In one of his public speeches, he explained: “Other goods, for which capital should be but a representation, have the characteristic trait of either degrading with use or losing their usefulness if not used in time. Capital, insofar as it is liquid capital, should be made to share the doom of all other goods. ... It should be possible to safeguard the interests of savings at the same time.”
 
His view was therefore that savings should be allowed as the money saved into bank accounts is returned to the economy in the form of loans (this view is at this time questionable looking at what the banks are doing, or rather not doing). His aim was targeting cash hoardings and short term investments, which could translate to gold stashes, options, futures, and hedge funds in modern language in addition to the eponymous banknotes under the mattress.

As options, futures, and hedge funds were unknown at the time, his solution presented in one of his treatises was focused on cash stashes. He proposed the regular reprinting of money to get the money back into circulation. His approach resembles the historic facts in the German Empire between 1100 and 1495. Regular reissuing of moneys with a 10 percent levy on the exchange (resembling a negative interest) made people spend or give away their money and in consequence made Germany the richer. The building of large cathedrals during this period would not have been possible without it.

In 1495, Emperor Maximilian introduced Roman law into the Empire and with it a stable and permanent monetary system. This opened the door for the great money princes, the Fugger family, the Wels family, and later the Rothschild family. They earned enormous interests of up to 270 percent by lending their money to the sovereigns in Europe and even overseas.

To understand the problem fully, an imaginary picture might help you. Imagine a dam and behind the dam in the valley a body of water, a reservoir of money. If this reservoir has no exit, the river below the dam runs dry, the economy dies. Only if there is a regular and substantial flow of water or money from the reservoir the economy will flourish. Money in the closed reservoir would be dead capital, not doing anything for anyone.
 
Governments have tried to alleviate the problem of stagnant capital by imposing inheritance taxes. The problem there was (and is) that the tax hurts working capital much more than stagnant capital. To keep in the picture, taking away half of the dead money from the stagnant reservoir does not move the other half; while taking away half of the working capital that keeps the river flowing actually hurts the economy.

The solution to the old conundrum as well as today’s problems therefore must lie in a proper definition of working and dead capital and in finding a way to hurt dead capital while at the same time rewarding working capital. On the way there, studies of Rudolf Steiner’s ideas won’t hurt at all.

Further reading
How Money Came to Dominate Our Lives
Prophet of the Banking Crisis
Museum City: Basel

Stanislas Wawrinka Starts 2014 With Chennai Win

Stanislas Wawrinka started 2014 as if it was still 2013. His win in Chennai was master class tennis over the whole tournament and should give him a lot of confidence going into the Australian Open in Melbourne. And last year's marathon match against Novak Djokovic was one of the highlights in the tennis season 2013 when considering all matches. And he is only the Swiss number two.

Stanislas Wawrinka has had an incredible year in 2013. It wasn't enough to get the "Sports Personality of the Year" award in Switzerland, but that hardly mattered. It seems that the tennis player from the French speaking part of Switzerland called the Romandie is preferring a life out of the spotlight any VIP status might give him. And now, again away from the spotlights concentrating on Doha, Brisbane, and Perth, he won the ATP tournament in India's Chennai in style. It looks like he intends to continue playing his best in the tennis season 2014.

Stanislas Wawrinka doesn't convey Roger Federer's glamour or have his international appeal. Images of him in a tuxedo are rarer than ones he smiles on. If he is made to wear formal gear, he appears like a fish out of water; not for him the fashion magazines of the world, but give him a tennis court anytime and he is happy. More than one great tennis nation would be glad to call him their number one tennis player, but Switzerland always has Roger Federer to pip him to the post.

Nonetheless, the 28-year-old world number eight has gained many fans in the past season. He earned the nickname "Marathon Man" during epic duels against top players like Novak Djokovic or Andy Murray. He stepped out of the overlong shadow of Roger Federer's when he beat 17-time Grand Slam winner in 2013 in the public poll as Sports Personality of the Year in Switzerland.

The recognition by people was something that had changed in 2013, said Stanislas Wawrinka in an interview with Swiss Television. Now, I get tremendous support throughout Switzerland, not only in the Romandie." The fact that the spotlight will probably always be directed onto Roger Federer doesn't bother him: "It was never a problem for me to be second to him. It was never a goal of mine to overtake him." A rivalry doesn't exist. "He is always the first to congratulate me when I played well and lost or when I won."

Playing well and losing is something Stanislas Wawrinka was getting used to in the past season. At the U.S. Open he reached the semi-finals and failed to get past Novak Djokovic in five sets. In Melbourne he wrung the last drop from his opponent in one of the most exhilarating matches of the year, but lost to Novak Djokovic. "It was my best, an incredible year," says the father of a three-year-old daughter. "But I hope that I have the potential to continue to improve."

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Stanislas Wawrinka had the words of Irish author Samuel Beckett inked onto his skin in 2013. They have become the motto of the world number 8.

Something he has achieved without trying is being shortlisted for the Personality of the Year award (just called Swiss Award) in Switzerland. The award is handed out in various categories: Culture, Economics, Politics, Show, Society, and Sports. Being nominated at all is an award as each shortlist has only three names on it. 

Further reading
Giving up: The Key to Success
Jerzy Janowicz and Andy Murray
Tennis: Mr Darcis Says Nada

Wilhelm Lamszus: Oracle of Doom

In 1912, Wilhelm Lamszus published his anti-war novel The Human Slaughterhouse. It was a vision of the Armageddon of World War I still to come. The book was written for a young audience, but received general interest and much acclaim. It became an unlikely bestseller and a thorn in the side of the Kaiser.

Wilhelm Lamszus

The success of the book confirmed Wilhelm Laszus in his hope to warn humanity of impending disaster. “The Human Slaughterhouse” was published by Alfred Janssen Verlag in Berlin and Hamburg. It had an enormous echo. In a few months, the 110-page novel had been reprinted 70 times. After three months, 100,000 books had been sold. In 1913, a reduced-price "popular edition" of 20,000 copies was instantly sold out. In the same year, the book became available in an English translation with a starting edition of 10,000 copies. It was quickly published in French, Danish, Czech, Finnish and Japanese, too. The importance of the novel was recognized by publishers in all languages: The French translation was done by the eminent novelist Henri Barbusse; the Danish translation contained a foreword from Martin Andersen; and a later German edition was prefaced by an introduction by Carl von Ossietzky.

Among German Social Democrats, the popularity of the publication was extremely high. Shortly after its first release, excerpts from the book appeared in print in the party newspaper Hamburger Echo. They were also published in Stuttgart’s socialist weekly newspaper Die Neue Zeit. Editors praised the author emphatically.

As a matter of course, book and author were celebrated at the 5th German Peace Congress in Berlin as well as on the 19th International Peace Conference in Geneva. Publisher Bruno Wille said of the novel that it was a book sized pamphlet which should be distributed all over the country. The 1911 Nobel Peace Prize winner Alfred Hermann Fried was the founder of the German Peace Society. He wrote: This book should come into millions of hands. It will become one of the sacred books of mankind.

But the triumph with the intelligentsia was followed by repression by militaristic bullies. His Imperial and Royal Highness Crown Prince Wilhelm of the German Empire intervened directly with the Senate in Hamburg. He demanded that Wilhelm Lamszus be dismissed from his teaching post immediately. Hamburg only caved in partly to imperial pressure and banned the sale of the book for a short period. But to be sure, the senate set its secret police to spy on the author. The reports are still available in Hamburg archives. Secret policemen came dressed as mourners to the funeral of Wilhelm Lamszus' father in June 1914. The spooks filed all reviews and newspaper reports about The Human Slaughterhouse meticulously. With so much work, they still failed to incriminate him. With no proof of him being a public enemy, his expulsion from school and teaching post was impossible.

The reactionary press opened full fire on him Daily Mail style, lots of bombast and little truth. They denounced Wilhelm Lamszus as unpatriotic, a weakling, a nerveless coward, an anarchist, a syndicalist and a revolutionary. The escalation in the press finally kicked the Hamburg Senate into action. They feared riots and protests in the street and promoted the teacher out of the centre of the storm: Wilhelm Lamszus was commissioned to travel to North Africa. His task was completely spurious. He was to study the situation of Germans in the French Foreign Legion. The senate effectively exiled him on a state pension.

Further reading
Robert Koch: With System Against Disease
Lohengrin: Sweet History of Product Placement
Borussia: Not (Quite) Soccer History

Nicolaus Copernicus: A National Treasure

German and Polish historians have been wasting their time over an issue of nationality. Is the eminent astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus German of Polish? Whole tomes have been filled with learned dissertations proving the one or the other to the author's liking. I do have an answer to that question, and nobody will like it. 

Nicolaus Copernicus was born in 1473 in the city of Thorn or Toruń as the son of Nicolaus Koppernigk and Barbara Watzenrode; the city is situated in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship in modern Poland. In 1473, the city was called Thorn (in German); it was a member of the Hanseatic League. Until 1466, it had been part of the independent state of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia and the Chełmno Land (Kulmerland in German).

In the 9th century, Chełmno Land was inhabited by a mixture of Baltic and Slav people that had displaced the Old Prussian inhabitants starting in the 8th century. In the 10th century, the Dukes of Masovia had started to conquer the area. By 1065, it was considered part of the Duchy of Masovia but its inhabitants remained mainly Baltic and Slav until the 13th century.

The Dukes of Masovia were among the leading aristocrats in the Lithuanian-Polish Empire and Commonwealth, They were involved in the regular wars of succession as contenders for the Polish throne. At the beginning of the 13th century, the Masovian treasury was empty and their armies were needed in Poland for another war of succession. The pagan Old Prussians exploited this situation. They entered Chełmno Land to plunder it and take its inhabitants into slavery. They conquered it, tore down the castles, burnt cities and villages (and particularly all churches), and slaughtered or abducted the inhabitants.

In 1228, Duke Conrad I of Masovia called in the Teutonic Knights and granted them Chełmno Land as a dependent Duchy within Masovia (according to Polish history books); or he called them in to conquer and to hold as an independent state (according to German history books); the original treaty is conveniently missing. For good measure, Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire and Pope Gregory IX granted them Prussia including the Chełmno Land, too, under condition that they convert the pagan Old Prussians by the sword if necessary. Frederick II declared them independent of the Holy Roman Empire, and Gregory IX gave them church autonomy as further inducements.
 
The Teutonic Knights conquered Prussia and Chełmno Land. The Old Prussians chose the sword over conversion to Christianity and were slaughtered to the last man, woman, and child; today we would call it genocide. The Teutonic Knights recruited German settlers (remember the Pied Piper of Hamelin?) and repopulated the whole province with settler hungry for land. The first two cities they founded were Chełmno (Kulm) and Toruń (Thorn) in 1233.
 
At the end of the 14th century, the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Knights had opposing interests where commerce was concerned. The Prussian member cities of the Hanseatic League entered an alliance with the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth to further their interests. A first war was ended in the peace treaty of Thorn in 1411. A second war ended in 1466 in the second treaty of Thorn. In the latter treaty, the Teutonic Knights lost large tracts of land including Thorn to the Polish king. A new country was created and called Royal Prussia. It was not part of the Lithuanian-Polish Empire but of the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth. It was held and ruled in personal union by the King of Poland.
 
Nicolaus’ father was also called Nicolaus. The family name was spelled as Koppernigk; it is considered possible that the family name meant that they had come at some time from the Silesian village of Koperniki in the Oppole Voivodeship in modern Poland. Father Nicolaus Koppernigk had moved from Cracow to Thorn between 1454 and 1458. But citizens going by the same family name had been on record in Thorn before that. He married a patrician’s daughter, Barbara Watzenrode, and they had four children. Silesia had a history as tortuous as Toruń minus the Baltic influence and changed hands several times over between interested monarchs.

While all these places are situated in modern Poland, that doesn't make its inhabitants Polish by some retroactive act of annexation, as much as Polish historians work on that premise in their history writing. That Thorn was part of Royal Prussia and governed by the Polish crown doesn't mean anything either. That the city was a German settlement in Prussia and that Prussia later became the bully boy of Germany doesn't make him German. The question is simply completely irrelevant and doesn't interest in the least. Every penny spent on research has been a total waste.

The concept of nationality started in the 19th century after the Reorganisation of Europe following the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna. Nationality made it important for some newly emerging states like the German kingdoms that they have figures to identify with. Before that time, nationality would not have been understood by anyone. Nicolaus Copernicus was therefore neither German nor Polish, but simply a person born in Thorn.

Further reading
Bulla Aurea: The Golden Bull
Borussia: Not (Quite) Soccer History
Frederick II: A Model Ruler?

Johann Sebastian Bach: Christmas Oratorio

For over 100 years, Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio lay in archives. The sheets were rediscovered around 1850. Music historians were amazed and excited, then bemused and dismayed: Johann Sebastian Bach had composed important parts of the work before. At places he plagiarized earlier compositions into the oratorio. The originals, however, had had very different texts, and they hadn't been intended for Christmas recitals.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was not only one of the greatest composers of all times, he was also one of the most industrious. As prolific as he was, the quality of his pieces always betrays the Master. But is a master composer like him allowed to copy and plagiarize his own work or that of someone else? May music composed for a sumptuous feast at the Royal court be recycled as a Christmas composition to be played in church? These were questions Bach researchers of the 19th century asked. The answers not to their liking.
 
The questions, however, didn’t come up until long after his death. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio had been composed as a series of six cantatas to be played on the holidays from Christmas to Epiphany in 1734/35. In that sense, the work was not intended to be performed contiguously or as a single concert. The cantatas were played at mass of the respective holy days during worship in one of the two main churches in Leipzig, St Thomas or St Nicholas.

Around 1850 and after Felix Mendelssohn and his contemporaries had brought back Johann Sebastian Bach's great Passions from oblivion, the Berlin Sing-Akademie performed the Christmas Oratorio for the first time. The work had come by way Johann Sebastian's son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to their music library. Soon after the discovery, a Bach scholar noticed that the musical score for the triumphant opening chorus "Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf preiset die Tage" is identical to a piece set to music with a completely different text: "Tönet, ihr Pauken, erschallet, Trompeten". This text was crossed out in the original manuscript and overwritten with the new.

Johann Sebastian Bach had plagiarized his own composition which wasn’t a sacred work intended for church service. It was festive music written for Maria Josepha, Princess of Saxony and Queen of Poland. On 8 December 1733, she held a birthday celebration for which she commissioned a piece from Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach biographer Philipp Spitta found the common practice of plagiarizing during the Baroque an unpleasant surprise when writing around 1880. He took refuge in a lie and claimed that Johann Sebastian Bach could compose only spiritual works no matter what he composed. Philipp Spitta wrote: "His occasional worldly works were rather unworldly, and (...) the composer gave them back to their original home when he converted them to church music."
 
What happens during the first bars of the opening chorus of the Christmas Oratorio? True to the original text, the drums open the song and as requested, the trumpets respond. Then the violins join in and the high winds form a veritable confetti parade bringing in the whole orchestra to play; it is still the festive music intended for the Royal birthday.

Johann Sebastian Bach didn’t hold with the idea of letting his music gather dust in a collector's cabinet or to let it end on the trash heap of a noble court. Any instrumental concerto could be used all over again. A narrowly defined musical composition like a birthday cantata would be irretrievably lost. The Royal court in Dresden would not have approved of the recycling of the musical score and text. Johann Sebastian Bach therefore asked his librettist Picander to write a new text for the Nativity of Christ. He then added the new text in his own hand to the original score while crossing out the old words.

That his courtly triumphal music would become a "Concert of Angels" for posterity would not have bothered him in the least; after all, Johann Sebastian Bach had much to do. Very much indeed, considering the amount of compositions he had to churn out for the city notables of Leipzig while running the famous boys’ choir at St Thomas at the same time. And he was nothing if not practical. Add economy at work to a king's God-given right to rule, and you might see that Philipp Spitta was on to something, if for all the wrong reasons. The staging for sacred and for profane power were intimately related to legitimacy and, consequently, very similar forms were in use in all their emanations.

Prince Elector Frederick August I of Saxony (and as King of Poland and Duke of Lithuania August II) died in 1733. Among the Baroque princes in Europe in the age of absolutism, he was one of the most ostentatious. That Johann Sebastian Bach would compose for his court (and his successor’s, too), made financial sense. The concrete practical reasons behind his cantatas to pay homage to the Royal family were a necessity to insure his future. Some relatives and colleagues of Johann Sebastian Bach’s were employed at the important and art-loving court of the Saxon electors and kings of Poland in Dresden. Johann Sebastian Bach himself hoped and worked to attain the title of court composer. Should he run into problems in Leipzig, and he had quite a few run-ins with civic and church authorities there, he could then defend his position with greater authority than as the mere choir master of St Thomas Church. At a later date, he received the title of court composer to the Electoral and Royal Court at Dresden.

Further reading
Christmas The Royal Way
Christmas Trees Through History
Wine For Christmas: The Gum Arabic Vintages