Funeral Pile
£8.50
In stock (can be backordered)
Description
Translated from the Third original Der Scheiterhaufen – Worte großer Ketzer published by Kurt Eggers. Most of these quite anti-Christian quotations date from the 14h to 19th century, although some go all the way back to the 4th century Roman Emperor Julian. The men quoted include, but are not limited to, the following: Hoffmann von Fallersleben (composer of the German national anthem), Georg Herwegh, Walther v. d. Vogelreide, Frederick the Great (including his delightful “Ode to the Prussians”), Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Grillparzer, Lagarde, Bismarck. Gneisenau, H. St. Chamberlain, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Heder, Ulrich von Hutten, Christian Wagner, Christian Wernicke, Adolf Stöber, Friedrich Hebbel and Carl Julius Weber. All in all, quite a collection. And definitely iconoclastic!
EXCERPT
Do you really believe, sir, hand on heart, that heaven concerns itself with the quarrels, exchanges of words and bloody actions, which we street urchins engage in among ourselves? Do you believe that I, if I take a stroll in my garden at Sans-souci and trample an anthill, have even the slightest thought that my path takes me right over tiny creatures, which bustle about and endeavor? Would it not be ridiculous of these animals – provided, they could think – to presume that I knew they were there and now had to take consideration for their existence. No, my friend, free yourself of this self-love, which only deceives you, if according to it heaven is supposed to have nothing further to do than constantly concern itself with your personal well-being. Instead press upon yourself the conviction that nature does not worry about the individual being: but indeed about the whole species: it, the species, may not perish. And our closing words to all this? That a king never has to take note of it, if on a stroll he tramples an anthill, which by coincidence finds itself on his path, that he, looking at the big thing, which puts claim to his full attention and which he frequently cannot even completely keep in sight, does not think of ants nor looks around, whether they crawl around in his gardens and park facilities.
84 pages