Deutschland von oben [antikvár]

Ludwig Harig On the Wings of Imagination Haunted over a lifetime by a fear of flying, there I sat in one of the most up-to-date aircraft there is, one lauded for its safety features, all the same, fearing for my life. I suffered all the torments of hell proceeding that flight to Australia. Wave upon wave of passengers streamed into Frankfurt's boarding area, occupying the available empty seats right down to the very last one. Several hundred people, their trunks and luggage already stowed in the baggage compartment, pressed forward, still burdened by ail manner of leather eases and plastic bags, moving into the posterior of the aircraft. A heavily laden migrant people in an overweight flying machine equipped with much too stubby wings and much too heavy hindquarters. During the first hours of flight I glanced full of trepidadon again and again back towards terra firma: the phantom silhouette of the Aral Sea fleeted past, the luminescent laurels of Samarkand dissolved, and the soft lamb's wool clouds over Hindukush blurred before my over-strained, peering eyes. Only upon passing the equator did my vision clear. Suddenly I was able to discern images, make out clearly defined pictures: the crazy quilt of algae carpets which is Bali, the elegant necklace of coral reefs just off Queensland, and the sandstone expanse of woody dunes which is Fraser island. Perhaps if someone were to take me by the hand and show me the images of our earth from above, I might be done with this fear of flying once and for all! Wouldn't it be grand, sitting alongside airman Giannozzo in a balloon? With him I'd fly to the ends of the earth, beholding mountains and valleys, forests and cities from above, just as the poet Jean Paul describes them. For only a true poet is capable of lending to real-life landscapes and localities -meanwhile household names themselves - a new and beguiling form. Jean Paul never resorts to prettifying what he sees, nor does he ornament with devices drawn firom the imaginarion: Rather he boldly transgresses the limits of perception, toys with sensory characteristics, playing one against the other. And the visual becomes acoustic as the opric image finds its voice, »at long last the sun has assumed its posidon as moming god of the muses, and taking the earth as its harp, begins to play upon all of its strings. I became another person,« Jean Paul relates, expressing his delight with a journey which allowed him to set his right leg on the arctic pole and his left on the southern andpode. The frequent change of venue which his air coachman Giannozzo executes is no random sailing fore and aft: Everywhere he loob he finds a particular spot which his words make us all the more impatient. What good fortune it is, being bom human beings! For in order to view the earth from above we need neither step aboard an airplane nor climb inside Giannozzo's basket; even less need we sprout wings like the birds. We require no flying machines to satisfy our curiosity, nor must we become birdmen in hopes of overcoming our fears. Imagination animates our consciousness and lends wings to the mind. A pleasant and convenient arrangement all in all. As we ascend over mountains and valleys, uplifted by the wings of imaginadon and open our beaks to give a squawk, the sound which emerges doesn't sound shrill or birdlike, but rather melodious. Daniel Philippe, a distant cousin of Jean Paul has also lifted off in our stead. However, Daniel Philippe doesn't tell his tale in words employed as images, but rather narrates by means of images, employing them as words. Daniel Philippe flies over Germany and collects images. Akin to a poet, he works with the tools of his trade; and just as a poet, he experiences the world as an airborne coachman. He observes with discrimination and views selectively; he deletes everything that mars his image, adding in tum whatever augments it to perfecdon. Thanks to his gifted sight for natural configura-don as well as man-made objects, he is sdll a poet, yet one who makes his observadons via die lens, and instead of blinking, he presses the shutter at precisely the right instant. The lens is his medium, not the pen. His trained photographer's eye catches the inky church roofs of Lübeck, summons up the ruddy comer pillars of Limberg's cathedral towers, yet is also capable of placing into novel perspective the stairs and terraces of Sans-Souci and then returns to order the tidy rows of homes in Lübeck anew, He apportions furrowed farmland, calibrates mountain chains and discovers diversity. "Airship journals must be kept in shipshape manner,-Jean Paul enters in Giannozzo's logbook Daniel Philippe, looking on carefully even while given over to artfiil invention, keeps the secret of his photographic art his own, »Strengstens verboten« (restricted - entry forbidden) is what he tells anyone who dares intrude into his craftsman's worbhop. And as for us? -On the wings of imagination we too lift off, freed from fear, to fly across all of Germany taking pleasure in the images he and his art have brought home