Frowns of the Fathers

... if you ever wonder where my militant pacifism comes from

 

We are all so much more than the some of our own experience in life, aren´t we? The sum of many generations of lives, of family, nations histories ... of hopes, fears, destinies ... Here are some of the numbers that make up the sum of me .... Some.

There is a 16th century painting hanging in my living room
...Not by famous artist by far. Not really valuable. Not in artistic or investment terms.
But to me it is. Because in an odd way, this is my history. Not mine exactly. But the history of my family. At least that part of the history that can be and is documented.

It´s the painting of a stern-faced, rather arrogant cavalier - long nose (the first in a line of long noses), slim moustache, dark eyes. His name was, is Alexander Cornelius von Scharlau. And he has frowned on me and my life for as long as I can remember - first in my great-great-grandmothers´s hall, then in my mother´s hall and now, for over twenty years, in my own living room.

He was the first in a never-ending military daisy-chain of soldiers who fought for king and country in my family. For some king and some country. The flags changed over the centuries, the kings and countries changed, swords were replaced by muskets and cannons, then by tanks, fighter planes and U-boats ... But the killing and the dying never changed. Nor did the worrying and grieving and picking up the pieces of ruined lives, of lost (or won) wars for the women and survivors who were left behind.
Until I came along. My generation of Scharlaus was the first since Alexander´s days that - so far - had to send nobody to fight for any king or any country.

I look at cool-as-a-cucumber (did they have cucumbers in those days?), sangfroid Alexander, commander of the Münster regiment of  Kaiser Maximilian´s cavalry, and wonder what he´d make of me .... his militantly pacifist, tree-hugging, make-love-not-war offspring from the oh, so distant future ... But then again, maybe his thin aristocratic lips might just curl in a superior smile, because he´d see me writing letters to a soldier just like his wife had done and the long line of daughters that followed. And he might just tell me, "There you are! Pacifist or not - you can´t run from it either ...
Or he might frown and think, "Haven´t I seen enough stubborn women in this family by now?"




Because I swear, there were. No matter how many highly decorated dashing cavaliers, fighter pilots and U-boat commandants you might  find in my MALE family tree, the women were every bit as "dashing", if not more. Right from Alexander´s wife Clementine, who - brandishing a sword herself  - defended his manor (while he was on campaign) against Protestant troops of Swedish King Gustav Adolf, to my great-grandmother who got arrested while fighting for the Suffrage in London,  right up to my great-aunt Beate who became one of the first female pilots in the 30s, ferried fighter jets to the front in WWII and herself escaped out of besieged Berlin with one of the last serviceable planes, her infant son on the co-pilot´s seat next to her, and then proceeded to found one of the first corporate empires for sex toys and erotica!!!!!

I  wonder what stern-faced, elegant Alexander would have made of all that!
And I wonder how much of what, who I am today comes from what, who they were in the past ....
Are there patterns that weave themselves from generation to generation, from life to life?
What lessons, if any, am I charged to learn in this life? And will I pass the test to move on to the next class?

What can I add as legacy, when one fine day, in the year 2100, 2200 or so - we´re heading straight into Star Trek - The next Generation territory here! - some Scharlau-ite finds a few faded photos of me somewhere and asks himself who THAT crazy woman was? "Boy, it looks like she had some life!"