A Christmas Story – No Chance for Friedrich of Hamburg

17.12.2003

Autor: D. Harald Alke

A standpoint, not a lexicon entry. A satirical social critique by D. Harald Alke (written in 1978, with an afterword from 2003). Expressly satire and personal opinion – a positioning against persecution, oppression and corruption, and an appeal to maturity. Background: the lexicon entry Collectivism and individualism.

What would happen if Jesus came today – as the child of an undocumented, refugee mother? This parable tells the birth and passion story in the present. It is deliberately exaggerated and takes a clear stand: against persecution, against the arbitrariness of the authorities, against the indifference of a sated system – and for the dignity of the individual human being.

The story

When Jesus appeared this time, the authorities suspected nothing. There was no Herod with his soothsayers, but only a certain Schröder, who did not much listen to his wife Buchela.

But of course there was the star, yet even that did not get through. The astronomical experts, who had replaced the astrological ones, thought nothing of it when a new nova was discovered in the constellation of Aquarius. The discoverer, a certain professor, added one more unearned fame to the next, for in fact his doctoral student had discovered the nova during her night shift (what business have women in astronomy anyway!).

The dpa passed on a five-line note, which the provincial papers kept for filling pages in lean times. No one was inspired. And so no wise men came from the East either. Of sect gurus one had had enough anyway. Perhaps there were no wise men left, or they could not pay the fares from the East all the way to Hamburg. And with camels no one got through here any more. They would have been put in quarantine at the border for months, and by then everything would have been over anyway. Arabs were suspect in any case, and the holy men would sooner have ended up with the secret service or in the animal cages at Guantánamo.

Mary this time was called Minna and Joseph was called Ernie. So they did not stand out. Since they knew that the homeless and asylum seekers have no great chance here anyway, they went straight to the women’s shelter. Ernie they sent away again. They had neither room nor a good opinion of men, which Ernie did not hold against them. In any case he was not entirely easy about where the child was supposed to have come from, for allegedly his Traute was still a virgin.

Since Minna still had a robust nature and needed no hospital with equipment worth millions, the old free midwife sufficed. She was the last one still to be found in Hamburg, and afterwards she retired, because in fact she was not needed at all. To give birth to a Christ child was an easy matter, for it took care to cause its mother no pain.

It only became unpleasant the next day, when the police came. Minna had no passport and had also named no father (… child of God … one knew already what to make of that). And where was she from? Well, in fact she was probably German, but a Jew, and had then emigrated to Israel. But there too she had not become at home, too much terror, and had returned on a freighter, without papers! Most of all they would have liked to “secure” her at once – hand her over to the immigration police! But that might have been noticed by the tabloid: “German police arrest Jewish woman fresh from childbed!” No, they would rather wait a few days more and then come back. Minna took fright and sent for Ernie, who was loafing about outside. They vanished the next night, before the patrol came back. Their further fate we do not know.

The Church first noticed him unpleasantly when he turned up at the Protestant Church Congress. There he began to draw the learned men into conversations. One was enlightened, of course, and at first thought of a dwarf – but his face was too childlike. He knew his way about the Bible as if he had been there. To the thesis that all theology students had to study the succession of the biblical fathers, he answered that the professors would do better to concern themselves with the dubious way of life of some of the patriarchs – and said that, through the centuries, the priests had blessed the bombs in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq; that was teaching material enough for the present. His mother was embarrassed when she found him again; she was advised to remove him from the Church Congress, so that he should no longer disturb the holy contemplations.

When he was old enough and felt that his time had come, he moved away from the old farm near Gorleben, on which the family had found shelter without papers – they served the farmer with the labour of their hands without a penny of money. He moved back to Hamburg, where it had all begun. In the underground they soon had him: no papers, no ticket. A patrol with a dog was waiting; the growling dog began joyfully to whine as it felt the soothing rays that emanated from the young stranger. But the ossified inspectors noticed nothing of his love – they saw only his outward appearance. So he decided to dazzle their eyes for a moment, and escaped.

On the Rathausmarkt he stopped and began to preach. At first no one paid him any heed, then individual people stopped, and some, despite their senses dulled by everyday stress and smog, recognised the halo around his head. They listened and received a message that from then on changed their lives. It disturbed the stall-owners and traders – and so it took barely an hour before the police drove the crowd apart. “Now show us your permit for this unregistered demonstration! Until 24 December all demonstrations in the city centre are forbidden!” – “I am Friedrich of Hamburg. I have no papers. I proclaim the word of the Lord!” – “Well now, who the Lord is here, we’ll soon show you!” And then they dragged him off. He offered no resistance. That was not his way.

When he sat in the cell, with fingers smeared black and photographed, they noticed his oriental features. And when he also truthfully told his story, the immigration police were quickly on the scene (child of God – obviously a confused foreigner or even a henchman of Osama bin Laden!). Then came those from the political branch. There were, after all, plenty of “terrorists and asylum seekers” roaming about the country – the ones tolerated, the others hunted on behalf of friendly governments (that was called mutual assistance). They did not even wait for a request for extradition; they deported him together with the enquiry.

His attempt to convert humanity to the better this time lasted not three years, but barely three hours. The German authorities are simply more thorough than the Romans and Jews back then. He could not even find disciples in the first place – they would have been interned at once as a “criminal association”. At least he was still lucky not to sit for the rest of his life in the animal cages at Guantánamo.

So it was a dull morning when he arrived in the country to which he had been deported. He had bad luck: after attacks the people were incensed and demanded revenge. When it leaked out that a “system pest” already once sentenced to death was on his way from the airfield to the prison, a mob stormed onto the street, stopped the car and pulled him out. The patrol officers threw away their caps and slipped away into the crowd. At the next crossroads they beat him to death with their batons. There was simply not enough wood there for a cross.

The meteorologists apologised for the unforeseen storms that laid waste to wide parts of the world. Unexplained remained the severe earthquakes and the darkness that lasted for days.

In Hamburg, however, some hitherto unknown young people came together who had come to a new faith. They put their affairs in order, packed their things and prepared to leave the country – this country that had brought them forth. This country that for them was Babylon. To them joined a runaway guard dog that no longer wanted to bite people, since it had seen the love of the Lord shine forth. They set out to seek the three holy men in the East.

The appeal – why this story matters today

D. Harald Alke wrote this parable in 1978, before he left Germany for eight years. His afterword from 2003 sums up the attitude that concerns him:

The world has not really changed – “only the names of the puppets in the governments have been exchanged”. His conclusion from this: it does little good to let oneself be caught up by the “political show” and carried away into resentment. Observe attentively, do not believe every empty speech, form your own critical opinion – and put your energy rather into your own development than into outrage at the system. State bureaucracy and tax and social systems too the Kyborg Institute regards, from its subjective point of view, as overpriced and in need of reform.

The decisive way leads not outward, but inward: “There can be only one way: the one into one’s own self.” Not the drilled ego is meant, but the true, own self – a source of self-knowledge, of strength and of the certainty that we are here only for a guest performance. Whoever recognises and strengthens it takes responsibility for their life and thereby receives the key into their hand to shape their own circumstances of life. And: “Whoever buries their head in the sand today grinds their teeth tomorrow.”

“For the ignorant this world is the purest hell, for the knowing it is the purest joy!” (Yoga Vasishtha)

Note: This article is a satirical narrative and renders a personal, worldview-based and socially critical opinion – not an assertion of fact and not medical, legal or political advice.