Nowherelands: Lost Countries of the 19th and 20th Century
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- THE CHANNEL ISLANDS
- Sabotage with Stamps
- Simon Hamon (2015)
- SOUTH SHETLAND ISLANDS
- Penguins in the Furnace
- Peter J. Beck Clive H. Schofield (1994)
- TRIESTE
- A Crossroads in History
Franz Werfel (1934): Forty Days on Musa Dagh Jonas Lie (1940): I ‘fred’ og ufred The landscape lies exhausted in the oppressive heat, the sun burns from a sky that has not seen a cloud for months, it scorches, white-hot and annihilating, over every living thing JONAS LIE
Sabotage with Stamps For the German parachutists slowly descending through the good-weather clouds in summer 1940, the Channel Islands must have looked like a collection of intensely green grassy hillocks scattered at random across the blue sea. A hint of brown at the very edge of the shoreline testified to a considerable tidal range. And the further they descended, the clearer it became that the main industry here must be agriculture, and that it was an easy business. It was all gentle slopes with no sign of mountains or forest areas. And at the end of the shallow coves lay small, whitewashed villages and the occasional larger harbour town with quays and breakwater. Julia Tremayne lives on the island of Sark, in the middle of the group of islands, and just a few nautical miles off the coast of France. On 3 July 1940, she summarizes the events of recent days in her diary. Everybody says they seem very nice and if we keep to all the rules laid down, things will go on much as usual. No-one must be out after 11pm, no spirits sold in hotels, only beer, all guns to be given up, the national anthem is not to be sung.… Worst of all the swastika is flying over Bel Air. Who would have thought we would have lived to see that in this beautiful little Island that I have loved for nearly forty years.215 After several hundred years of being plundered by Vikings and Norman dukes the Channel Islands came under British rule in the 1200s. Even so, they retained a degree of autonomy, with two official districts, or bailiwicks, each ruled by a bailiff selected by the British. In the south was Jersey, named after the largest island in the group, and in the north was Guernsey, named for the second largest. At the outbreak of the Second World War, 92,000 people were living on the Channel Islands. After withdrawing from the European continent, the British declared that the group of islands played no strategic role one way or another. In June 1940, a mass evacuation took place, in which around twenty-five per cent of the population was transported by ship to England. These were almost all children, as well as young boys and men of conscription age. The Germans didn’t view the Channel Islands as a strategic coup either. For Hitler, it was primarily about the propaganda gain of occupying his first few square metres of British soil. So everything proceeded peacefully: not a shot was fired. And the Germans only made changes that were absolutely necessary. In addition to limiting sales of spirits, they changed the time zone from Greenwich Mean Time to Central European Time, and switched driving from the left- to the right-hand side of the road. They also set to work building bunkers and tunnels that were supposed to form part of the so-called Atlantic Wall, a fortification of several hundred coastal forts that was to stretch from the Spanish border in the south to Finnmark in the north. The work was done by prisoners-of-war from Eastern Europe and North Africa, who were imprisoned in several large camps.
On Guernsey, Edward William Vaudin was given the job. He was probably a patriot, because we can see that he exploited the situation to start his own small and very private resistance effort. If we magnify the stamps, we can just about see a microscopic V in each of the corners. Still, they were so small that the Germans either didn’t see them or chose to overlook them. And it’s uncertain whether other people noticed the sabotage, since the design, paper quality and perforations were so shoddy. The greatest provocation, though, was the central motif of three lions. The Germans assumed this was a reference to the local bailiff’s family coat of arms and let it pass. In fact, it was a direct copy of the coat of arms of the British king, George VI, which had been handed down since the times of Richard the Lionheart. On Jersey, the designer Edmund Blampiet was even more cryptic when he set to work after Field Commander Knackfuss gave him the job of producing a series of stamps with local landscapes. One motif of seaweed gatherers on the threepenny stamp incorporated an inverted V over the value, as well as a pair of flourishes that could be read as the initials GR for George Rex, in other words probably a tribute to King George. At home on Sark, Julia Tremayne continues to jot down her impressions from the island, where the large German contingent have now taken lodgings in many of the private homes. ‘I expect the German troops are revelling in the luxury – plenty of good Sark butter, home-killed meat, home-made bread, gallons of milk and the shops well-stocked.’217 The island’s aristocratic leader, The Dame of Sark, had run it like her own little feudal society for many years. She didn’t like drunkenness and had prohibited it long before. At the same time, she was working to transform the island into an exclusive tourist destination, and had also placed a prohibition on all use of noisy vehicles. All travel should be by foot or if necessary by horse and cart. The Germans largely accepted her decrees. They even agreed to bow, kiss her hand and then bow again when they visited her. And the Dame of Sark was pleased, especially because several of the German officers were of noble extraction. The level of refinement on the island had never been higher. [1941: Local issue from Guernsey with the coat of arms of the British king, George VI 1943: Local issue from Jersey with seaweed collectors] On D-Day, 6 June 1944, the Allied Forces sailed past the Channel Islands on their way to the European mainland. And once they advanced further into France, the island group was pretty much isolated. The supply lines for food and other goods from the continent were broken. Despite strict rationing, both the islands’ inhabitants and the German soldiers endured several months of hunger and want. The Channel Islands were liberated before the Second World War ended in Europe – Sark as late as 10 May 1945. As those who had been evacuated returned over the late summer and autumn, it became clear that much had changed. Property ownership was in a mess and the children had lost their local dialects. Bit by bit, things sorted themselves out. Between the ruins of the German fortifications, the tourist industry reached new heights while the archipelago established itself as a tax haven along the lines of Bermuda. And on Sark, a handful of tractors got special dispensation to waive the prohibition on motor traffic. Simon Hamon (2015): Channel Islands Invaded: The German Attack on the British Islands in 1940 Told Through Eye-Witness Accounts, Newspaper Reports, Parliamentary Debates, Memoirs and Diaries Worst of all the swastika is flying over Bel Air. Who would have thought we would have lived to see that in this beautiful little Island that I have loved for nearly forty years JULIA TREMAYNE
Penguins in the Furnace At first it reminds me of a classic Disney cartoon where the toys in a Christmas present factory are queuing up to be painted by eager elves. In South Shetland, though, these aren’t toys but real penguins – dressed as always in their suits, chattering and erect, inquisitive. And they’re not waiting in line to be painted, but to serve as fuel in the enormous cod-liver oil refinery on Deception Island. They are hoisted up by their wings and heaved in one after the other. The fatty bundles make the bonfires flare. If we include animal blood, none of the areas in this book have seen more blood than the South Shetland Islands. In addition to the penguins, enormous numbers of seals and whales were caught and slaughtered up until the 1960s, to be used as raw material for cod-liver oil, margarine and feed concentrate. A single blue whale contains ten thousand litres of blood. Without wishing to draw comparisons, by the way, this corresponds to two thousand human beings; or to put it another way, the combined blood loss of the Norwegian military forces throughout the whole of the Second World War. Even by the 1914-1915 season, as many as 1,800 blue whales were dragged ashore on the South Shetland Islands.218 Towards 1930, the number had doubled, supplemented by the capture of other whales, such as finbacks, humpback whales and sperm whales. The South Shetland Islands lie close to the Antarctic continent and are a continuation of the Andes in the north. The archipelago consists of a dozen larger and a number of smaller islands, whose combined area is a little larger than Funen in Denmark. Although most of the land is covered with permanent glaciers and the surrounding seas are frozen throughout the winter half of the year, there is plenty of life here, on both land and sea. Through the summer, hundreds of types of lichen colour the mountainsides orange, yellow and rust red, and the many bird mountains teem with gulls, petrels and storm petrels. It was the large population of fur seals that drew the British trappers to the islands in the 1820s. Later came the whalers. And it was whaling interests that prompted the Norwegian government to seek a clarification of the legal situation in the area just after the dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905. Until then, the Antarctic had been treated as ownerless territory, a terra nullius. First of all Norway went to its big brother, England, which – after pausing briefly for thought and perhaps from force of habit – declared that the South Shetland Islands should be considered British. But until further notice, the English were not especially particular about international recognition for their claim. And the Norwegian whalers were allowed to continue as before. Axel F. Mathiesen writes about a morning in the field. He is standing on the bridge and watching schools of whales blowing: ‘Frozen breath! How wonderfully it harmonizes with the white nature out here.’219 Once the day’s catch of whale carcasses has been made fast alongside the boat, the ship sails to Deception Island in the south of the archipelago. This isn’t one of the largest islands, but has the best harbour in the area. It is volcanic in origin: a crater that was flooded and is linked to the sea via a little channel wide enough for even the larger ships to pass through. Inside lies the bay, an area of more than 30 km2, sheltered and with first-class harbour conditions. The ash-black mountainsides rise nearly 500m into the air. There’s smoke and steam here and there, and the air carries a faint whiff of sulphur. By the time the first Norwegian factory station, Hektor, was set up on Deception Island in 1913, the beaches were already strewn with white whale skeletons – crania, vertebrae and ribs. They shone in the sun, polished by the ocean and seabirds. The buildings were constructed on a sandy plain in the south of the bay, not far away from a large penguin colony, and consisted of a barracks for the crew, a mess, a pigsty, workshops and factory buildings. And on a hilltop above it all stood a little red house with Britain’s union flag. Here, a British inspector dutifully spent the whaling season from November to the end of February. There were generally over two thousand men at work. The whale carcasses were cut up roughly on the flensing deck down by the shore. After that the meat was scraped off and the blubber cooked down to whale oil. The workers waded through bloody water and slipped in fat. The stench was intense and sour. At home in Norway, the ship owners sat counting their money. And there was more and more of it – right up until the Depression years around 1930 when the price of whale oil gradually began to sink. And suddenly, the whole thing came to a halt. In 1931, the Hektor Whaling Station was closed and abandoned. A couple of years later, the Norwegian aviator Bernt Balchen stopped off here to take part in one of Australian Richard E. Byrd’s many flying expeditions in the Antarctic. The island was deserted, but most of the buildings were intact, and the sick bay could have reopened at the drop of a hat, since all the equipment had been liberally coated in fat. On the other hand, Balchen found that almost all the operating tables and sickbeds were smeared with excrement.220 He reckoned that somebody had wanted to protest against Norwegian whaling, and thought it must be the English, Chileans or Argentinians, because they were visiting the islands ever more frequently. The ownership dispute over the archipelago had become more intense after research expeditions had indicated that there might be oil, coal and copper deposits. Chile makes the first move in the battle for sovereignty in 1940, followed by Argentina in 1942. It all starts out in quite civilized fashion. The Chileans issue proclamations, while the Argentineans go to Deception Island and place a metal cylinder there containing a formal claim on all the South Shetland Islands. This is requisitioned by the British and sent back. The Argentineans respond by planting the Argentinian flag on the island. Meanwhile, the Second World War is in full swing and the British are afraid that the German-friendly Argentinians might enable the Germans to establish a naval base in the area.221 Its strategic location close to Cape Horn would make it possible to strike swiftly both in the southern Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific. Therefore, the British themselves station military forces on several of the islands in what is known as Operation Tabarin, in 1944. And then they issue stamps to emphasize the message. They use an overprint of stamps from the Falkland Islands, with a portrait of King George VI and a selection of artistic motifs. My specimen shows the research ship, the William Scoresby, which also played an active role in Operation Tabarin. [1944: Copy with overprint on a 1938 stamp from the Falkland Islands, which shows the research ship, the William Scoresby.] After the war, the British continued to patrol the islands and systematically cleared away any huts and equipment that the Argentinians or Chileans might have left behind. They also argued their claim on the basis of historical right, pointing to the seal-hunters of the 1820s. Things took a new turn when Chilean researchers found a couple of arrowheads that appeared to evidence earlier visits from indigenous people on the South American mainland, although the find proved to have been planted.222 The Antarctic Treaty was signed on 1 December 1959 by all twelve states active in the Antarctic. It stipulated that the South Shetland Islands and the rest of the Antarctic could be used by anybody at all in perpetuity, but only for peaceful purposes. Argentina, Chile and Great Britain all signed, but nonetheless maintained their territorial claims over the South Shetland Islands. Eventually, the islands start to be used as research stations by a number of countries. These stations are most often set up on King George Island, although Deception Island was also used until a fairly large volcanic eruption in 1969. Now that island is deserted, although it is still one of the regular stops for the ever-increasing numbers of tourist ships passing through the area. Most of the houses were burnt down or covered in lava. But the huge cod liver oil tanks tower like rusted knights’ helmets above the sloping shore in the south.
How wonderfully it harmonizes with the white nature out here AXEL F. MATHIESEN 1945 to 1975 TRIESTE BIAFRA
SOUTH KASAI UPPER YAFA RYUKYU THE SOUTH MOLUCCAS
A Crossroads in History Nicole, the protagonist of the 1982 erotic film The Girl from Trieste223, suffers from schizophrenia, making her seem like the incarnation of the city where she lives. Because Trieste, in the far north of the Adriatic, is a place of many faces with profound internal contradictions, and it has always been this way. The area is a crossroads – no more nor less – where generals and fugitives have flowed back and forth throughout history, just like Danzig in the Baltic Sea and Hatay in the heart of the Mediterranean. This almost suggests empirical grounds for drawing the following conclusion: if you want a quiet life, find a peninsula or a place well inland, but whatever you do, don’t live on a bay! Trieste was founded by the Romans in the second century, ransacked by Huns after the Roman Empire fell, and later ruled in turn by the Byzantines, Carolingians and Venetians, then by Austria and Hungary. Napoleon Bonaparte also dropped in and in the end Italy took control after the First World War. These frequent shifts led to a sprawl of cultures and an unusually diverse population. True enough, most were Italians, but there was also a substantial share of Croats, Slovenes and a steadily growing group with no clear ethnicity – as well as a tremendous number of mixed-breed cats. But on the whole, this was all to the good, according to English travel writer Jan Morris. She lived in Trieste in the 1990s, and tells of a people who are quick to laughter and grateful, without a hint of malice. They have great integrity and are never ruled by changing fashions, public opinion or any form of political correctness.224 The author Claudio Magris, who was born and bred in Trieste, describes an absurd atmosphere that is at once proud, splendid and cosmopolitan, blended with melancholy and a slightly resigned atmosphere of the end of days. In his book Microcosms, he tells his story from the San Marco café in the centre of town, right beside the park, with ‘horse chestnuts, planes and firs – dark waters on which branches and leaves float and into which the birds disappear and sink like stones’.225 He cites a regular visitor, Austrian author Herman Bahr, who said he thrived in Trieste because the city gave him the feeling of ‘being nowhere’. According to Magris, the Irish writer James Joyce also feels at home in Trieste, perhaps for the same reason. He lives here for several periods up to 1920 and survives by teaching English to the children of the bourgeoisie. And it is in Trieste that he starts work on his modernistic masterpiece, Ulysses, whose action unfolds over the course of a single day and night. The setting is Dublin, but some of the cast of characters are almost certainly drawn from Trieste. The city also left a more personal mark on Joyce, whom Magris quotes as saying: ‘And Trieste. Ah, Trieste ate my liver.’226
A couple of years after the Second World War, it was Trieste’s turn, this time on the north side of Istria. And by then, conditions had changed dramatically, both in the area and in the broader political arena. The then Prime Minister of Britain, Winston Churchill, had already made his famous Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College in Missouri in 1946: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.’227 In January 1947, the UN Security Council announces the creation of the Free Territory of Trieste through Resolution 16, Article 24. The finally decision comes in September of the same year, encompassing an area of 738 km2 with a total of 330,000 inhabitants. The area is divided into two zones, following the so-called Morgan Line – a line of demarcation drawn after Italy’s capitulation, which stretched almost to the Austrian border. Zone A included the city of Trieste itself, and a narrow strip of coast to the north, while Zone B, more sparsely populated but almost double the area, extends some way out to the northern side of the Istrian Peninsula. Zone A is administered by British and American forces, ten thousand men in all, while Zone B is run by the Yugoslavian army. This implies that it is not, in practice, an autonomous country with its own state apparatus. But it does get its own stamps, albeit still split into zones. Zone B was first up with specially designed May Day stamps that show a robust, jubilant female figure beside the official state symbol, the halberd, against a background of an anchor with a chain. This is issued in three versions, with the text, War Government of the Free Territory of Trieste, beneath the image in either Italian, Slovenian or Croatian. Mine is the Slovenian issue, and is postmarked Koper, a town just south of the border between the zones, whose population of almost a hundred thousand is mostly Italian. Zone A adopts Italian stamps, overprinted with AMG–FTT, which stands for Allied Military Government–Free Territory of Trieste. Mine is an originally Italian stamp from 1945. It depicts Turrita, the personification of Italy, growing from the trunk of an oak tree – an undeniably relevant signal so soon after the collapse of fascism. The attempt to uphold the free state of Trieste is soon abandoned. The territory is divided up according to an internal agreement between Yugoslavia and Italy in 1954, although this is only formalized long afterwards, through the Osimo Treaty of 1975. Naturally enough, Italy takes over Zone A, which is still called Trieste today, while Zone B goes to Yugoslavia. After Yugoslavia collapses in the 1990s, it is divided between Slovenia’s Littoral region and Croatia’s Istria County. On the Italian side, Trieste has gained the status of a free port within the EU system, with lower customs tariffs among others. The city, still very multicultural, also continues to function smoothly according to Jan Morris. I have tried to get the hang of many cities, during a lifetime writing about them, and I have reached the conclusion that a particular history and a precarious geographical situation have made Trieste as near to a decent city as you can find, at the start of the twenty-first century. Honesty is still the norm here, manners are generally courteous, bigotries are usually held in check, people are generally good to each other, at least on the surface.228 [1948: Zone A issue, overprint on an Italian stamp from 1945, which marks the post-war reconstruction 1948: Zone B issue celebrating May Day] Yüklə 463,42 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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