Open Mind Festival 1986
18 years ago, in November 1986, took place the now legendary Open Mind Festival at Kerpen-Manheim near Cologne, Germany (lasting from November 18 to November 23 ~~ I and my tomcat Raffi stayed there even longer than those 6 days and nights!). I pity all those who did not experience this Forum for Social and Individual Evolution at all or even not all of it. First-class speakers, first-class audience, but really varied and international, the crème de la crème of the most radical you could find among the libertarian-minded. We managed to completely get along without any American speakers. This is just not done... ;-) It's at Kerpen that I first met John Zube, I knew his father slightly though from before. As this event is to be considered one of the main inspirations for my personal, largely anarchist, development as well as for my later web pages (though my anarchist development at that time already had a very long history, but it sort of got consecrated then and there), I will have to return to the subject very often and in much detail in the future, also to become intellectually somewhat less dependent on the USA, trying to widen the, as we have to admit, after all sometimes very narrow, above all American-nationalist, horizon of libertarianism.
The festival had been organized by the equally legendary FREENETWORK. Its founder, André Spies, when about to head for other activities, actually had asked me and given the permission to continue his work with this, but then circumstances had changed so quickly in such a way as to make an already difficult job even more difficult, so that I have not yet been able to deal with the huge task, but I will have to get back at this also in the coming months and years.
Now to the occasion and my reason for drawing your attention to the Open Mind Festival precisley today: On this very day, 18 years ago exactly, Stefan Blankertz had given a lecture at the festival, which, like so many others, had strongly impressed me and he had handed me the text of the lecture before running off to an urgent other appointment. I had kept this text over all those years in a simple suspended folder which would rather have deserved to be called a treasure chest. My life after that left me little time to rummage in treasure chests and make full use of the treasures, as it had much more profane things to boot on my neck. But all this time the desire and intention to publish precisely this text had never left me. At first the times were still pre-Internet, but now the Net makes it more easy of course. So I recently wrote to the author, who had given me such pleasure all those years with his publications, his particular style and way of thinking, to ask for permission to reprint. It turned out that Stefan Blankertz did not remember the circumstances (so much had happened since then), did not even have the text anymore, so that it would have had to be considered missing, had not some crazy collector and fan like me kept it carefully. Now then, the text is as good now as it was then, it did not age, and I consider it to be very very topical, on the one hand because that raping EU Constitution is about to be ratified in some countries (for instance Luxemburg) by referendum, on the other hand because here in Hamburg on Saturdays the pedestrian areas are swarming not only with scientologists (with an s like in snake oil), but also with green advocates propagandizing the introduction of referendums, with their red stripes or borders... Rape is nothing new: Starting with the QUOD LICET JOVI NON LICET BOVI and via the IUS PRIMAE NOCTIS a straight path is leading to our present situation, where everything is forbidden which is not explicitly allowed, except of course for the masters and big shots. Any crime is legitimate if perpetrated by the State and its servants and accomplices, murder, robbery, theft,... you name it.
The German essay bears the title "Noch ein Tschernobyl, wenn das Volk es Wyhl!", which means "Another/one more Chernobyl if people want it!". The pun cannot be translated; the German word for want here is will, but the author spells it Wyhl, which sounds almost the same, rhymes with Tschnernobyl if you put the accent on the last syllable (in German normally it would be on the second last), and is also the name of a town in the southwest of Germany, in a region which is the warmest in whole Germany, therefore well known for its wine, fruit and also tobacco. Wyhl used to be a centre of the tobacco industry. Some astute readers no doubt will establish a relationship between this changeable element and the author's Gestalt. :) Wyhl became famous though in the seventies of the last century when it had been chosen to be the location for one of the new nuclear plants to be built then, but numerous citizens' initiatives from the whole of Germany, but mainly from the south of Baden and nearby Alsace in France, had succeeded in preventing this, thus saving a unique landscape of Auenwälder (a type of wood growing alongside rivers on regularly flooded leas). The essay is here, more information about the author is here. But I would like to complete the latter with the following: Dr. Stefan Blankertz took a doctor's degree in sociology at the university of Münster (Prof. Christian Sigrist) with a thesis on Paul Goodman (Title: "Kritischer Pragmatismus. Zur Soziologie Paul Goodmans", Wetzlar 1983: Büchse der Pandora). His postdoctoral thesis for lecturing qualification bears the title "Legitimität und Praxis. Zur erziehungswissenschaftlichen Relevanz angelsächsischer Schulkritik". He has produced numerous publications and lectures on subjects dealing with criticism of the state, anarchism and classical liberalism, which, of course, I cannot mention all here. What do we have all those bookstores and libraries for? :) He was already then German representative of Libertarian International as well as one of the founding principals of the Institut für Handel und Wandel, Berlin, and also co-founder of the Herwig Blankertz Institut für pädagogische Forschung, Münster. Today he is the German representative of ISIL, the International Society for Individual Liberty.
Open your mind!
