Sick, Writing and Just Too Damn Busy to Blog


If, billion-eyed audience, you have come to the Blue Raccoon during the past few days in search of more scintillating commentary and trenchant observation, then why did you come here?

But seriously, for part of the previous week I was afflicted by what I think was a combination of allergies and an attempt for a cold that I've avoided all season to fell me, which, it in part, succeeded. I also got a whole bunch of writing and research done for the upcoming book, stayed way too long in front of this box and when I felt a bit better there was a downpour.

I wrote and banked a post, but you'll have to scroll down to March 26 to read what will be a two parter about my distant cousinage in Berlin and other parts of the old country, that is, Poland. For further explanation, scroll down and see for yourself.

The image at top I actually took myself, and this is Kollatz Strasse in Berlin. The reproduction here doesn't render the sign very sharp, but the name is there, and that's a little Smart car. They were just starting to be seen in Berlin's streets when I visited there in 2004.

Greetings! From Kollatz...


The ancestral manse is at lower right. Well, not quite. This image, and almost all the others exhibited here, were borrowed from a website I stumbled onto years ago, way pre-Blue Raccoon, and I still can't believe that such an artifact as reproduced here exists: a post card from Kollatz. Probably in a shoebox on the upper shelf of somebody's closet.

The site is an ancestry research guide for those of us whose country hasn't received an entry in the gazetteer for more than a century. Our land of origin is found on old maps purchased at random from a New Orleans antiques shop. The Kollatz family came from a small village in Pommern, or Pomerania. This state linked Prussia to Germany until after the discussion of 1939-1945. At that time, Poland reclaimed the lands that had been, as we might say hereabouts, "stolen from the Poles fair and square" and switched Germanic names back to Polish. Kollatz is Kolacz these days, and located in the southeastern quadrant of a county called Swidwin.

The closest town of consequence to Kolacz is Polczyn-Zdrój, the former Bad Polzin--I believe in Wilhelmine days, a resort village--and today a place of 11,573 persons.


There is, say the Interwebs, a resort there even today, replete with therapeutic muds and salts. These images come from the resort's site. My goodness, I could use an extended stay there now. Looks luxe and lush. I think I could get some serious writing done there and visit the ancestral lands. Whether the "Switzerland of Poland" appellation seems to extend to wee Kolacz. And it is there in color on a map. If you follow the main red highway east of Polczyn-Zdrój you can spot Kolacz sitting by itself near the lake that has its name. There's a "Kolaczek" that is Neu Kollatz, or, New Kollatz, just east.
There are the biking, hiking and horse trails all around, and you can see them, here.

I'm doubtful that any of my long distant cousins remain in Kolacz. As the Third Reich collapsed and the victors took their vengeance on the vanquished, about 17 million ethnic East European Germans were rousted from their homes of generations and some 2 million were killed. This was a nasty endnote to the catastrophe of Word War II, and not much talked about, except in A Terrible Revenge by Dr. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas.

Instant karma was visited upon Kollatz when the Russian army and the liberated Poles came roaring through. The ethnic residents of the town that hadn't run off were abused or killed. Even the old cemetery was plowed up.

The early 20th century card at the top of this post shows, clockwise, the school, lake, baronial palace, and the church. My guess is, there wasn't much else in Kollatz picturesque enough to warrant a place on a post card.

The squire's house seems rather austere compared to some I've seen though I suppose for minor Teutonic royalty--and in comparison to how the peasants were living--it must've seemed rather palatial--the biggest house in town. The lords of this manor were called Manteuffel, though the workers and farmers who lived under their rule didn't think much of them at the time and used--out of earshot--a German pun to insult the Manteuffels, saying they were more like the devil (Teufel) than men.

I was disappointed to read this. The single von Manteuffel I knew of was a bantam German tank commander of the Second World War, Hasso von Manteuffel. I first encountered his name as a kid reading about the Battle of the Bulge and with those repeated consonants between the Junker "von" it just looked interesting in type and cool to say. He also had the thankless task of trying to defend Berlin against most of the Red Army, and I encountered him again in Cornelius Ryan's book, The Last Battle, where he came across as a sympathetic character. And he wore his military hat at the customary rakish angle. He was also an Olympic Modern Pentathlon champion, like Patton. But unlike Patton, Manteuffel lived on, and he built a productive life in West Germany.

The second image below gives the spelling that in my life I've had to spend correcting -- "K, not C, o-l-l-a-t-z." But there that variant is in black-and-white. From clockwise, the "herrschaftliches wohinhaus," or literally, "the manorial dwelling," the church and school. The lake didn't make it to this one.


Remaining today--at least as of 1999 when these images were taken, according to the Pomerania site I, um, cited above, this is the church, left and the school, right.















In 2004 I had the great good fortune to, with Amie, visit Berlin due to my involvement in the experimental international theater event called The Mutation Project. Prior to our arrival there I communicated via e-mail with Heidemarie Kollatz whom I located during a search for those with my name. She and her husband, a computer software designer, lived in the Wedding neighborhood in a courtyard community with a beautiful garden that the neighbors maintained in a cooperative manner.

There's even a Kollatz Street in Berlin, named for a long ago clergyman. Amie and I took the subway and walked there one sunny afternoon. The curved thoroughfare isn't probably a mile long and lined by large not unattractive apartment buildings.


It began by a parklike cemetery and ended alongside a commuter rail line and expressway. During this trip I saw the first SmartCars, which at the time were designed by the makers of Swatch.



I met Frau Kollatz on a damp Berlin day but enjoyed a wonderful conversation with her, part geneaological, part historical, a little political in terms of then-current events. She is an educational policy consultant. I didn't meet her husband on this trip, as he at the time was riding across Sierra Leone and Mauretania on a bicycle. For fun.

At left is the spiral stair that led up from the gardens to the balconies of these apartments, and I was reminded how the shape also corresponds to that of DNA.

I had brought some pictures of my family and she was kind to bring out albums from her own, and we could see in these faces, from across the years and continents that we bore some relation--though how exactly was not readily determined. Long story short, Frau Kollatz wasn't sure of all her grandfather's siblings--and perhaps one or more of them chose to light out for the U.S. Below is my clumsy attempt with a 35mm SLR to record a page from Frau Kollatz's family album.



My story was the first time that Heidemarie had heard of any Kollatz migration to the United States. She didn't know, either, about the town of Kollatz or Kolacz. Her father's family originated in East Prussia and following the First World War moved to Pommern, to Stargard (Szczecinski), a town next to Szcezecin along the Oder River.

The story I'd heard from my now long deceased Grandfather Kollatz was that our people were...draft dodgers. That is, they were avoiding Prussian compulsory military service. Lacking any kind of letters or photographs from that long ago, I cannot say. But, thankfully, for me, my people were prescient enough to avoid both world wars by coming to this nation and proceeding to fight among themselves.

But I'm getting ahead in the telling.

Mutation: Berlin
My prolonged absence was caused, first, by the general demands of life and work, then, the humble Blue Raccoon got flagged for some preposterous reason as a "spam" blog by Blogger, and there is no freaking way, no telephone 1-800 number to tell them I am not a spammer. I'm a muser. Big difference. I resent, as a personal affront, that there is not an actual person to whom I can register a complaint. Anyway, as the billion-eyed audience can see, now we're in the air.

So beyond my Interwebs annoyance, I was consumed by wistfulness for an international theater experience that originated out of Berlin, Germany, which sought during 2003- 2004 to bring together the numerous talents of theater throughout the world. This globe-girdling experiment was called Mutation.

The Mutation Project created performance events in Berlin, Buenos Aires, Lagos, Shanghai, and Richmond, Virginia.

Directed by Dirk Cieslak, Mutation's process relied upon Internet communications and based scenarios transferred to performance upon a category scheme built into a blog maintained by the project. I fell in love with Berlin, a beautiful wounded city like my own Richmond.

The collage above was in the Sophiensaele studio theater of the Lubricat company, and you can see the Firehouse Theatre in the second row, in the last image.



Images, taken by Amie and me. No Berlin is not sinking by the stern -- I don't know why this wouldn't load right. That's me with Bridget, flying the Firehouse flag; then Amie with Swiss performer Miriam Fiordeponti, whose stage presence ignited each of her scenes; and there she is--in motion--with Dirk, the guy who came up with this crazy Mutation idea.

Mutation came to Richmond due to the connection of architect and film location director Isaac Regelson to Richomnd-born performer Ami Garmon, who knew Dirk and Dirk wanted to represent a part of the United States that not everybody knew. Isaac acted in Mutation--his first ever time on a stage, and he acquitted himself quite well. Ami's taken her art throughout the United States and Europe.


This delightful young woman exhibiting her right to bare arms is Luz, an Argentinian, who was a production assistant for the massed Berlin mini-festival of all the productions from the individual Mutation sites, and the the final Mutation -- what we'd call call now -- "mash up."








This is Flaming June, actually, she's a very tired production assistant named Ulla. She's leaning on the shoulder of actress Bridget Gethins.






















Save Our Planet. The sentiment is emblazoned on a preserved section of the Berlin Wall lining the Topography of Terror, which was the location of the SS headquarters and torture chambers.

During the Nazi era, the Prinz Albrechtstrasse offices weren't a secret, undisclosed location. The Gestapo's presence was listed in the tourist guidebooks of the period.

The view below shows some of the interpretive plaques that discuss in detail the cold machinery employed to murder, torture and otherwise exterminate millions of people, another surviving portion of the Berlin Mauer, and visible at top, one of the few surviving Nazi era buildings, which housed the offices of -- wait for it -- the Luftwaffe. Now its the administrative center for a bank. How weird must that be for the vice-presidents and secretaries. But in the tradition of European adaptive reuse, even this stoic remnant of the Hitler time can be made to work in peaceful life.