Hymn for Walpurgisnacht | Hacker News Reader

Hymn for Walpurgisnacht

themillions.com

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Witches used to be a deadly serious and terrifying superstition that got thousands of people killed.

And today we have Bibi Blocksberg teaching kids the joy of seasons and festivities through Walpurgisnacht.

Feels like some kind of cultural accomplishment.

Worldwide, belief in witches is increasing.

Belief in witchcraft correlated with industrialization. As the world develops, more people a persecuted as witches.

The UN has even gotten involved in this: https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/ie-albinism/witc...

That doesn't sound right...

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

The most industrialised countries in the dataset correlate with the lowest belief.

But the population in those areas is not increasing much, unlike the others.

Unfortunately, neither China nor India are in the dataset.

The plebs have no idea how bloody a day it is.

Interesting topic, but I find the writing to be pretentious and obnoxious. I'm from the lower saxony part of that region and Walpurgis is just a big drinking festival nowadays. The harz mountain has a lot of germanic/paganic traditions that still have some cultural imprint to this day (e.g. Krodo). But I mean, saxons were never that big of a fan of christianity anyway.

Is there any german festival that isn't a big drinking one?

Better saufen than some of the history:

https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/kriegsende/20-Apri...

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendeanlagen_auf_dem_Brocken#A...

Probably not haha.

You're right, the Harz has a lot of interesting and more recent history. There's a graveyard: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrenfriedhof_Oderbr%C3%BCck

I'm hiking the broken for "sunrise" every 26th of Decembre and I know how cruel the weather is up there. It has fog 2/3 of the time and has single digits (celsius) most of the time. Pretty interesting place. Also one of the lowest natural tree limits in the world with a meager 1142m.

That's also in Linebarger's Psychological Warfare book: they had a great deal of trouble in the mopping up because although Hitler had already realised in Feb 1943 how bad his situation was and the officer corps was certainly aware by Apr 1945 what was going down, the rank and file still held to their cause senselessly.

My father told me about celebrating 8 May 1945, and the russians (due to time zone?) still celebrate on 9 May, but killing prisoners and even getting yourself killed in Apr 1945 sounds like die NS-Jungs hatten eine sehr lange Leitung.

You may be interested in the history section of this Wikipedia article

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Day_(9_May)

The place where the (second) surrender document was signed:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Berlin-Karlshorst

Unicode printers would've helped; it looks like the russian (gültig) version needed to have been hand lettered?

Stumpff's signature looks to still be in Sütterlin (with added "L" to make an official Luftwaffe, not personal, signature?); I can't even tell what script Zhukov signed in.

Sorry, just was reminding of this convo by some poetry and wanted to circle back. Was winter hiking inspired by Goete, or just your own shall we say "habitude", for that peak would seem easier with feathers for warmth, and wings for ascent? (if Lämmergeier can carry away whole lambs, do Roßtrappe make off with whole horses?)

Haha, nice connection. Nope, I'm just from the region and love the mystery. I visit around christmas and take the chance to get a bit of me-time.

Just for those who do not know, despite the meaning of its German name, a Lämmergeier cannot carry away whole lambs.

Unlike an eagle, it has weak feet. While it never carries away animals, when hungry it can make chamois or even sheep fall to their death, if it surprises them near the edge of a mountain cliff, by beating them with its powerful wings.

While its German name is very misleading and in the past it has actually been a reason for unjust persecution, its ancient Latin name was perfectly suitable for it: "ossifraga", which means "break-bones". The Lämmergeier feeds almost only on the bones that remain after other scavengers eat the meat, by letting them fall from great heights on stones, to be broken.

I sent the essay to several people, and a few wrote back to say they thought the writing excellent. This is not to undermine your point of view. You’re perfectly entitled to it. Rather to wonder what it is that causes different tastes and preferences to form so deeply.

It was sloppy, in the sense of not making sense in a few places. At first something was "the naval" of something, when it should obviously have been the navEl, and then towards the end there were suddenly sixty years in stead of twenty-four between parts I and II of Goethe's Faust: Something about how the painting _Faust on the Mountain_ was painted ~"two decades after part I and four before part II". Yeah, four years before; not decades. And there was at least one more equally daft thing, that I can't recall now, in between.

Such sloppiness (or just plain lacking grasp of language) doesn't mesh well with the high-falutin' style attempted; it adds up.

___

ETA: Oh yes, now I remember: "Blah blah Mephistopheles and Faust, blah blah, the former having sold his soul to the latter." Or if it was "Blah blah Faust and Mephistopheles, blah blah, the latter having sold his soul to the former." Any which way they wrote it, I'm pretty sure it was the other way around.

Just to reassert: Makes it damn hard to take the whole thing seriously, and certainly makes the style more grating.

OT but according to Algolia this posting is 5 days old: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I think we should rebrand Walpurgisnacht as, “Boba Nacht”. Or maybe “Bubble Tea Nacht”? I don’t know what the equivalent German would be lol

According to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_Tea (easily accessible via dropdown from the english-language wikipedia), it's sadly Denglish: „der Bubble Tea“

(but by the time it gets its own DIN maybe it'll become „der Kaugummiähnlichtapiokaperlenkondensmilchhonigeinwegeistee“?)

Maybe there could be a Madoka pop-up.

Knew I couldn't be the only one.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/us-revokes-intel-qualcomm-licens... Being Huawei is suffering.

Madoka is heavily inspired by Goethe's Faust [0]! Walpurgisnacht is a (rather irrelevant) scene in the latter, iirc one episode had random quotes on the wall, and the thematic similarities are very hard to not notice.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe%27s_Faust

Sometimes you don't even get to make the deal with the devil, you make the deal to get rid of the devil: https://americanliterature.com/author/o-henry/short-story/th...

I like the idea of mashing up Nietzsche's Abyss with Moore's Rorschach: "None of you abysses understand. I'm not stuck here gazing into you. You're stuck here gazing into me."

Lagniappe:

Radio Yerevan was asked: "Is it true that the Capitalists are standing on the edge of an abyss?"

Radio Yerevan answers: "Yes, true. And our goal: to catch up and go beyond them!"

PS. If there were a bounty, my entry would be not DE:Boba Nacht, but rather FR:Boba Fête...

Given how the scene played out, there could be a giant Walpurgisnacht witch float and there could be a procession of the familiars after her. Or that who freaking circus that we see for like two seconds.

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