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great people unite to fight on a programmatic basis, which the people portrayed are smaller than their
which in this case happened to be the work of fates Art should only concern the great issues of
Schiller, it gives it a quality of its own. mankind, which lift people above their normal dayto-day
misery."
Campaigner: Why don't you give us a sense of the In the postwar period especially, you may be able
presentations. You opened the conference, didn't to call some things art, ultimately perhaps, but there
you
is nothing really great. What is worse, it's controlled
HZL: Yes. In fact, I polarized the whole thing at the by a literary mafia which decides what to make
start. I said that in our time, where we have a money out of. Naturally the press wasn't a bit pleased
worldwide collapse of culture, it is important to do
what was done on other such occassions and conwhen
I said this.
So that set the tone. Then came Benno von
sciously connect yourself to the highest points attained Wiese, and he said, if somebody confronts the quesby
culture in the past. It is undeniable that we have a tion that one's life lasts only so many years and that
worldwide increase in irrationalism--look at Kho- anything you contribute to mankind must come out
meini and you see what I mean, and there are various of that span, then to overcome death you must create
something immortal
while you are still alive.
Schiller did not leave his
struggle with physical illness
in the banal world of
personal life. He took the
emotional experience of
superseding the bounds of
his material, physical circumstances,
and used this
emotional quality to understand
what it meant,
for instance, for the Marquis
of Posa in the play
Don Carlos to regard the
republican cause as more
important than whatever
personal fortune he might
accomplish.
This is an essential
point. How do you reach
Symposium speakers breakfor dinner. From left, Zepp-LaRouche Will Quadflieg, and Benno reason How do you edvon
Wiese.
ucate people to be worldhistorical
individuals, to
other phenomena, the drug culture, rock culture, and contribute something to the cause of all mankind
so forth. If you look at the decay of civilization, it is And think, here was this great old man, Benno von
very important to understand that this is not the first Wiese, obviously using his own experience toward
time in human history that this has happenec_,
the end of his life; it was very moving.
Now the last German classical period was pretty Then Michael Leibig of the Humanist Academy
much around the time of the American Revolution spoke about Schiller as a historian, This has been
and later. Classical music, for example, from Bach, totally, unjustifiably neglected. Actually, if you take
Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and so on. But when I Lyndon LaRouche's "The Secrets Known Only to
said that nothing great had been produced after the the Inner Elites" as the standpoint of modern histofirst
half of the nineteenth century, it caused a storm riography, then the only thing before it which comes
of protest, close to the conception is Schiller. His speech on
Now, there weresome legitimate things produced world history given as a professor at the University of
in that period, things which still bear critical exam- Jena for instance. The question is, how do you educate
ination, but Schiller would have dismissed them. He people up to the level of reason, which is the core of
would have said, "Why put things on the stage in history.
CAMPAIGNER / February 1981 41