I wrote a paper for my MA on antifascist resistance to Nazi rule by German youth looking specifically at a group of young people called The White Rose. I came across this while reading Nazi resistor Hans Scholl journal, found in the collection of journal and letters from Hans and Sophie Scholl titled At the Heart of the White Rose, on page 252. I could not find a copy online, so I transcribed this entry from his journal here.

On Melancholy –

It isn’t melancholy that drives a man to suicide. By the time he’s ready to surrender by engaging in a last, monstrous act of self-destruction, melancholy has entirely deserted him, because melancholy was insufficient to restrain him. The melancholy man ceases to act altogether. He’s chained to the immense and unfathomable depth of his own soul by a hundred anchors, so to speak, and every tempest rages over him unnoticed. Melancholy is both things at once, the spiritual abyss and the anchors that keep him there – indeed, it could be said that the man himself is both, one being inseparable from the other. The more unfathomable the abyss, the more his melancholy weighs. And here we meet a paradox that instills fear and brings the average person out in a sweat: The man whose soul grows steadily calmer as the storm rises, until it finally attains an outward state of deathly repose, it is truly melancholy, truly great and On Melancholy continued: profound. His average, superficial counterpart merely drifts, tosses hither and thither, and his soul bobs on the surface like a rowboat on the waves.

But not every great man is capable of waiting so steadfastly, trusting in the immense force that holds him in place. Unwilling to return to the shallows, he aspires to penetrate his own depths and go farther. Violently, with an effort that passes all understanding, he smashes his soul and acts once more. When that happens, destruction and deliverance are near neighbors.

Russia alters its appearance just when you least expect it. It’s as peevish as a child and as capricious as an old maid.

In quest of a comparison, you find, after three grey, rainy, miserable days in the dim half-light of the dugout, that Russia most resembles an old man forever gazing wearily at the same corner of his death, waiting calmly and patiently for the end that must surely come. And then, contrary to all expectations, the wall of clouds, overhead parts and the dawn light peeps forth, fresh as a baby, and within a few hours the sky is blue all over. A gentle breeze stirs the birch trees. Like pearls, a thousand droplets glisten on the leaves once more and are promptly, heedlessly flung to the ground.

I love looking at maps. I find myself entranced by them, human infrastructure, art, patterns, visual history, what’s not to love?

I was looking at one of Augustodunum and it made me think that the city its self must have been a significant investment in land, labor, capital, technology, ect.to make that town happen in roman times. A little Rome in a foreign land for a foreign people and a hand full of Roman entrepreneurs and authoritarians. The changes the city was part of and home to had and impact that lasted untold generations on that area and history.

I found myself staring at the walls that surrounded the town and wondered how dangerous it must have been to identify as or with the Romans in the area around the city, especially outside the walls or in the surrounding boonies. Kind of like the Baghdad Green Zone or our little fire bases that dot Afghanistan. It must be dangerous to work with what’s perceived as the empire out in the sticks where the empire only rules when it is physically present.

I wonder who will occupy the walls and the mounds of mud when we have left in all the places we occupy. I wonder what they will think of us, I wonder what history will say. Will we be spoken of like Rome in myth and power, rises and falls, wars and control or will those who come after have other things to whisper and different things to say about us? How will we be remembered, what will out legacy be?