2 MS IL ERLEBNISSE UND REALITAETEN: VIRTUAL REALITIES!
Part 18: Elisabet! Written By: Kenn Knopp
Turmoil of Soul...Struggle for a Woman’s Independence & Equal Opportunity Germany’s Foremost Sculptor...A Lady!
Friedrich Schnerr of Friedricksburg, Texas, Commissions Her final Sculpture
Preface...
This story
describesthe
mounting
restlessness
and insult of
conscience
of the many
thousands
of Germans
and other
Europeans:
the average
person and
worker, the
intelligentsia, well-heeled plutocrats, and the highly
educated in the mid-1800’s. Their innate sense of
social justice and desire to be freed of the mold of
the Prussian-Austro-European “Gott Mit Uns”—literally, “God Is With Us” (Divine Right) feudalism
was festering in their souls and nagging them on to
revolution. Action was mounting to overthrow the
royal dictatorships: of city-states and independent
kingdoms. They were searching for personal independence and the democratic process was to be
their panacea. Or, in the game of being boss and
being bossed perhaps they resented the fact that
“inherited” position and title eluded or discluded
them, even from the game, much less the chance to
become boss. So, destroy the boss: if that was not
possible, leave.
Their neighbors had accomplished it, or at least
were in the process of freedom’s birth pangs and
Sturm and Drang: Garibaldi in Italy; and just across
their border the on-again off-again French Peoples’
Revolution. Elizabet Ney exemplifies why so many
of the best and the brightest of Germany finally
had their fill of hollow and false promises, or, being
flatly rejected; and then would come a precipitating
event—a last straw, so to speak—that brought on
the decision to leave for Gelegenheit, opportunity
else where, particularly, the New World or America
once and for all.
The process of the “butterfly” being freed from
the cocoon is the strange, almost providential (or
diabolical) primal urge. Such was the dilemma of
Elisabet Ney to find personal fulfillment, despite the
angst of a certain form of government, the noose
of bureaucracy, the subjugation of a certain reli-
10
gion, profession, family, marriage, or the structures of
a particular culture. Once unschackled, however, one’s
point of view, or Weltanschauung, can ultimately discover “true birth” outside of the constricting cocoon.
That is why Benjamin Franklin is to have said that a
German talent blossoms to its very best...in America!
The notion that most of the pioneer immigrants
to the Texas Hill Country were poor farmers, laborers
and uncultured is patently false. Just as numerous as
the agrarian and the skilled but jobless workers were
the technically trained and the highly educated, such
as the Latinists, many teachers, physicians and professors of science and those ingenious in the arts. It was
the raw Texas wilderness that reduced each and every
immigrant to one stark fact of life—or death: survival.
In the uncultivated wilds of Texas, everyone, even the
well educated, had to swallow intellectual pride and
join in with the experienced farmers in clearing the
rocky flats of the Hill Country in the arduous task of
transforming them into productive fields and pastures
on which their cattle could graze and thrive. The ticking of each day’s clock, schizophrenic weather changes,
poor marketing conditions—as well as health conditions made each and every person roll up their sleeves
and be an important spoke in the wheel of survival and
ultimate success. All, surveying their accomplishments
after the pain of unaccustomed toil, they breathed in
and felt, through and through, the sheer joy of work
and pride in bringing in the harvest and going to the
markets together. After the
markets came the celebration!
To this day, this is the secret
of Fredericksburg’s awesome
success.
Together, scientists, teachers, and farmers planted
crops, especially vital life-giving corn (Mais). They had
ample meat: but to survive
theyneededgrains,vegetables
and fruit. Necessity gave them
the best lesson in democracy:
to pull tog WF