Olomouc, 4.7.03: Im Schatten, Poppy Fields, Holy Murals

Holiday at home. I had—how many? I’ve found almost 20, I think—ancestors who were Revolutionary soldiers or abetted the Revolution, including Sgt. Robert Leonard and Samuel Kerr, both killed in action. And I had at least one Loyalist ancestor, David Dinsmore, who was at some of the same battles as the Revolutionary ones, including King’s Mountain, fighting against them.

History. It’s so easy to choose the wrong side, as the Sudetendeutsch did, paving the way for their expulsion. The Czechs were justified in what they did, a fortiori after years of German Übermensch behavior towards them. And yet, they’ve lost much in the process, culturally and historically, as the U.S. perhaps did in its own “expulsions” of Loyalists.

How to live in history? Im Schatten, I’m convinced. More and more, I want to disappear, not to be here, to observe silently events that I do not try to control.