The Independent has Jeremy Adler’s obituary of Claus Bock, a former professor of German at London University, who survived the war in hiding in Amsterdam. I missed his autobiography (1985).

Bock’s record of the war years was published in 1985 as Untergetaucht unter Freunden: ein Bericht. Amsterdam 1942-1945 (“Underground Among Friends: a report. Amsterdam 1942-1945”). The memoir tells how he disappeared from the official records by feigning suicide, which left him free to go underground, chiefly with the help of the German writer Wolfgang Frommel, a charismatic figure in the resistance group associated with the George circle. Frommel both arranged the practicalities of survival, and inspired the extraordinary literary activity by which those in hiding filled their days.

Frommel hid Claus and others in the house of his friend, the Dutch painter Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht, on the Herengracht in the very centre of Amsterdam. In a chilling episode Bock recounted, the place was searched. A German officer detected a clear sign of the stowaways, but then, after exchanging glances with Frommel, promptly ordered his men to leave. The situation was depicted by another friend who took refuge in Holland, the German Expressionist painter Max Beckmann. In Beckmann’s war-time triptych Actors (1941-42), the left-hand panel recalls the scene: Frommel confronts a helmeted soldier; Giséle hovers in the background; and beneath the floorboards or stage, the feet of some hidden boys appear, including those of the young Claus Bock.

I think I heard that Bock was hiding in a piano when a German officer looked him in the eye, but maybe my memory is playing me tricks. I most certainly didn’t know this was referred to in a Beckmann painting.

Josip M. Korbar of LTT Technical Translations has prepared a PDF file with lots of clear photos on how to set up several monitors on a laptop, especially with the Matrox DualHead2Go.

Not much room for a cat there, of course.

Download the file Multi-Monitor-Arrangement_How_To.pdf (I hope).

Chester 50% Fett i.Tr. Unter Schutzatmosphäre verpackt. … Abgepackt in Deutschland
Queijo Cheddar tipico Irlandés, 50% M.G./E.S. … Embalado no Alemanha.

Hergestellt in Deutschland/Origem: Alemanha

Gizmodo UK surprises with the headline Keep your pussy off the keyboard.

Needless to say, the US original sticks to ‘cat’ (not even ‘kitty’).

The Kit-In Box is by The Refined Feline, who also do the Refined Litter Box, with mahogany, cherry or birch stain.

Now back to the exercises.

Norman Birkett on the interpreters – of course referred to by him as translators – at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, as quoted by Mrs Boyo in The Daily Scorch:

…translators are a race apart – touchy vain, unaccountable full of vagaries, puffed up with self-importance of the most explosive kind, inexpressibly egotistical, and, as a rule, violent opponents of soap and sunlight…

She continues:

To this one might add “incompetent lechers, virtuosi of halitosis and inept propagandists of shopworn views”. The wretched hygiene, real and political, of the translator is a function of his irrelevance. Like religion, democracy and chocolate wrappers, he serves only to hinder progress towards one’s chosen goal.

and concludes that we should all speak the local languages, for example:

English, French and German would apply in our European case. One, for example, could speak in English while your interlocutor replied in French – each at his ease.

Those unable to learn these languages would hardly have opinions worth conveying to others, and the sums saved on the cabals of interpreters could be usefully spent on improving vocational education.

She quotes Tyutchev’s (Tiutchev’s) Silentium – here translated as ‘The word, pronounced, is a lie’, but Tyutchev was not above translation himself (I know nothing of his relation to soap and water). And I had no idea Minima Moralia was available in an English translation on the Web.

Thanks to kalebeul

I see from a comment on my blog a very new blog aiming to present a gallery of photos of Fürth: Faszination Fürth, by Johannes Heuckeroth of Veitsbronn.

He links to a Fürth group at flickr
.

I was particularly taken with the planet panorama taken in the Adenaueranlage, called Tube Freiheit, by gnu1742, whose work should be followed.