The Song of Henry: Grüssau Abbey

The correspondence between Adalbert Kehr and Konrad Joseph quickly revealed
Kehr to be the lonelier of the pair. More than a hundred years later, when
Roger McAllister read their letters, he could feel the emptiness of Grüssau
Abbey in every page, every long dense page that Kehr wrote.

The old Benedictine abbey had been secularized decades earlier, during the
Napoleonic wars, and had become, by the time Adalbert Kehr arrived, an outpost
of the Prussian bureaucracy. The church itself, under a dour pastor, served
the spiritual needs, such as they were, of the local farmers, while the other
buildings remained largely unoccupied, except for one office, where Kehr was
expected to monitor both the agricultural and the mineralogical production
of the region. The local lead mines having closed down some years before, Kehr’s
duties included the preparation of weekly reports filled with row after row
of zeroes, a task in which his predecessor had taken much pride, working late
into the evening nearly every night of the week. The study of philology has
many benefits, however, including a dramatic improvement in the speed of one’s
hand, and Kehr, armed with a new "reservoir pen" imported from England,
found that he was able to acquit himself of his official charge in an hour
or two each day, except for harvest season, when there was some actual work
to be done. Which left Adalbert Kehr, most days, with fourteen waking hours
of idleness, and no one to talk to, except the narrow-minded pastor, and the
parishioners, who regarded him as something between a cop and a spy.

Luckily, there was an abbey to explore. Kehr found room after room of old
books, boxes, papers, records of who knows what. Most were from the last thirty
years or so–in one room, Kehr found the carefully bound reports of his predecessor,
looking as if they had never been read, which was sad, in a way, but only to
be expected. In another room he found diplomatic dispatches, sent from various
embassies to Berlin apparently, all dated in the months leading up to the recent
war with the French–had they been moved here during the war for safekeeping?
And then forgotten?

And occasionally–always, it seemed,
behind a stack of the most dreary governmental reports imaginable–Kehr would
find something that seemed to be older, a book in Latin, or a vellum scroll,
or a sheet of music, that gave him hope that he might have found a fragment,
a trace, some palimpsest of the old library of the Benedictines.

Strangely energized upon his return from Gotha, Kehr set himself an ambitious
task: to sort and organize the contents of Grüssau Abbey. His first letters
to Konrad Joseph were filled with an almost heroic sense of mission–even to
the point of comparing his work, with only a hint of ironic self-deprecation,
to the fifth Labor of Hercules. Soon, unlike Hercules (who cleansed the Augean
stables in a single day) but much like his clerical predecessor, Kehr found
himself working late each night, moving, stacking, sorting, reading, and indexing
room after room of documents. In one overflowing room he put all the agricultural
and mineralogical production reports; another he filled with railroad switching
schedules, and a third with proposals for sewage systems. Soon there were rooms
devoted to forestry maps, overdue bridge maintenance notices, textile production
quotas, and complaints about the telegraph service. In a very large room, chosen
precisely for its leaky roof and moldy floor, Kehr put the innumerable files
of the all the young men who had emigrated to America to escape the Prussian
draft. He found a good dry room for the diplomatic dispatches (how he hoped
they would embarrass someone someday!), a better room for the sheets of handwritten
music that seemed to be scattered promiscuously among nearly every other kind
of document, and he saved the best location of all, a dry cool cellar under
what seemed like the old priory, for anything that seemed older than the First
Silesian War.

Even Roger McAllister, reading of these exertions more than a century later,
was touched by tenderness with which Adalbert Kehr described his reconstruction,
in that secret cellar, of the Benedictine library: in a typical letter, Kehr
would acknowledge, quickly, the reports of Konrad Joseph’s busy life as a radical
entrepreneur in Munich; decline, politely, the invitation to critique his friend’s
latest attempt to reconcile Marx and Proudhon; and then fill page after page
with reverential inventories of Latin bibles, illuminated manuscripts, annales,
and most exciting of all, the occasional fragment of Middle High German verse.

And then, in one letter, there was no small talk at all, no acknowledgment
of Konrad Joseph’s world, let alone his previous letter: Kehr simply announced
his discovery of the the Heinrichlied, a manuscript in exquisitely
balanced nibelungenstrophes, an epic poem that embodied a rare conjunction
of artist and subject–an anonymous poet of genius and a hero of equal rank:
Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor.

The Song of Henry: the Chest of "Nazi" Papers

Although the ongoing legal dispute prevented Roger McAllister from discussing
his unfortunate relationship with "the American Josephsons," McAllister
would tell his audience, whether that audience was in a college auditorium,
or on folding chairs arrayed around an impromptu podium at an independent bookstore,
or a single interviewer in a tiny TV studio in a windswept Canadian town, that
he could say, and he must say, and he would say, because the world needed to
know, that he had been given, by three of Jakob Josephson’s four daughters,
the chest of Konrad Joseph’s "Nazi" papers.

The three daughters had insisted on two conditions: first, that he destroy
the contents, and second–

McAllister had stopped the daughters right there: "You do not hire an
appraiser to be a garbageman," he had said. "You know that I will
read and study everything in that chest. I will take detailed notes."

The daughters had nodded their heads. "You may keep your notes," they
said. "But eventually," they insisted, "you must destroy everything
that is in this chest."

McAllister had reluctantly agreed, and asked about the second condition.

"That if you discover anything that shows our grandfather to be a Nazi
collaborator, you will never mention it to a living soul."

Then McAllister would proudly tell his audience that he had kept both promises.
On the day before the first review copies of "The Song of Henry" were
sent, by overnight courier, to the critics, he had shredded, and then burned,
in an industrial furnace, every last paper from the chest. And as for the second
condition, that was easy: there were no secrets to keep, for the papers had
showed that Joseph Konrad Josephson had hated the Nazis as much as he loved
Germany.

At this point an astute reporter, or a dyspeptic member of the audience, might
ask McAllister how the public could know if he were not keeping his second
promise right now: by lying to protect the name of Konrad Joseph, or Joseph
Konrad Josephson, or whatever his name was.

McAllister would respond with broad smile: "Well it seems that one way
or another, I must be honest man!"

The Song of Henry: the Josephson Family

With quiet sincerity McAllister would explain to his book tour audiences the kinship he felt with the many descendants of Jakob Josephson. The Josephsons, McAllister would say, “had books in their blood.”

The family had once owned a bookstore in Munich–a used bookstore, perhaps, but the word “antiquarian” would not be excessive–exactly the sort of shop McAllister wished to own someday himself. McAllister describe that bookstore lovingly, and then would tell the sad story of how the Josephson family had chosen, heart-wrenchingly but wisely, to close the bookstore and leave Munich in 1924, shortly after the Beer Hall Putsch–which McAllister would sketch with just enough detail to ignite a spark of alarm in his audience. He would tell how the move to Canada had broken the heart of Jakob’s father, Joseph Konrad Josephson, an atheist, anarchist, and ardent German nationalist–a fully assimilated and secular Jew who had always dismissed the anti-semitism of his comrades and neighbors with a shrug; how this Joseph Konrad Josephson (in the Munich book business, not surprisingly, he taken to calling himself Konrad Joseph) had died on May 12, 1925, one week after his first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, on the same day that Paul von Hindenburg became President of Germany; and how the family had kept a box of Konrad Joseph’s papers hidden in an attic, where they developed a whispered reputation, among the younger generations, as “Grandpa Joseph’s Nazi papers.”

Here McAllister would forcefully interject that Joseph Konrad Josephson was never and could never have been a Nazi–and not simply because he was a Jew, McAllister would say, his voice rising, but because he was an idealist, like Wagner, and idealism, however deluded, should never be a source of shame. Often at this point his interviewer would lean back thoughtfully, allowing the moment of passion to dissipate.

Then McAllister would tell how how the Josephsons had made a new life in Canada. Joseph’s son Jakob, who led the family to the new world (and not incidentally, back into observant Judaism), decided to get out of bookselling and established the family instead in the seemingly less controversial trade of commercial printing. With a sigh McAllister would explain how the sale of the printing business in 1984 to a Swedish conglomerate (by then JKJ Graphics specialized in the high-speed production of four-color mail-order catalogues) had brought some wealth and much dissension to the extended Josephson family; and finally McAllister would introduce his own role in the story: ignorant at the time of the complex family history, he had been called in after the death of Jakob, at age 91, to appraise the dusty attic where were stored the remnants of Konrad Joseph’s Munich bookstore.

McAllister had found those old books fascinating, absolutely fascinating, but unfortunately, in his professional opinion, they possessed more historical interest than market value, so he had arranged a donation to the German Studies department of a Lutheran college in Nebraska, which proved to be a wise tax strategy for those members of Jakob’s family who had settled in the United States–at this point McAllister would offer his apologies for “mentioning the U.S. tax code in polite conversation.”

As the laughter subsided McAllister would sadly tell his audience that it was these same cousins, the “American Josephsons,” who had later brought a lawsuit against him, a matter he could not discuss, on the advice of his attorney.

Henry Grows to Manhood

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In Rhineland grew to manhood | a noble Emperor’s son
Named Henry son of Henry | the proud Salians were his clan.
From Franconia did these warlike dukes | most justly seize the throne
Truly elected Roman Emperors¹ | the German princes all did vote.

The last Emperor from the Saxons² | to a childless grave had gone
The Saxon queen, her womb was dry | the Saxon bed was still
A holy purity did the Saxon seek | his Saxon member limp
His Saxon body bent from prayer | like a monk without a sword.

But the Salians, they were warlike | virile violent men were they
And fought and built the empire | cathedrals brick by brick
To Rome they marched in battle | false popes they did depose³
Their queens they proudly serviced | true sons of Charlemagne.

But Henry son of Henry | though his clan was strong and fierce
Was not raised to be a warrior | his father Henry, he had died
When Henry son of Henry | at the nurse’s tit still sucked
Warriors did not train the boy | monks and bishops held him close.⁴

Women and monks and bishops | did teach him flattery and lies
Cowardly diplomacy | the arts of compromise.
To a girl child they betrothed him | from Savoy did she come
A little sister she did seem | this pest was named Bertha.

The women and monks and bishops | the boy king they did flatter
With trinkets and toys and jewels | on his head they put the crown.
But their games and lies and idleness | in the soil of Henry’s heart
Put down no roots and did not grow | warlike always was his hand.

One day he killed a rabbit | but the rabbit would not die.
He told the monks and bishops | how the magic rabbit lived.⁵
The bishop told his mother⁶ | “Tell your son the little king
He must not lie to bishops | if the throne he wants to keep.”

Then Henry son of Henry | the age of fifteen did attain.
Manhood was his own now | all his kingdoms his to rule
Germany and Italy | and Burgundy as well.
No more diplomacy for Henry | right soon he went to war.

The bold young warlike Henry | his men to battle led.
The princes were rebellious | Henry’s member they did mock.
On the field his wrath they faced | their castles soon they lost
Henry and his Rabbit Warriors | did speed them to their shame.

In battle did the princes | learn the strength of Henry’s sword.
Soon all the rebels were subdued | they cowered at his rage.
Then did all the fair-eyed maidens | from all his realm they came
For Henry, he was handsome | tall and strong was he.

Their kotzes⁷ did they offer | these maidens of the realm
Without any thought of recompense |or even child support
Just the pleasure of his member | and the honor it was great
The bastard sons of Henry | to carry in their wombs.

In all of Henry’s kingdom | one maiden pleased him not
His betrothed princess from Savoy | to Henry she did seem
Like a sister most annoying | but the bishops and the monks
Still had plans for Henry | the marriage they would force.

Then Henry with a fever | in a castle he did lie
Near death he was from poison | a bishop’s work no doubt.⁸
The women and monks and bishops | this chance they quickly seized
And so Henry in his fever | Bertha he did wed.

Now Henry he was married | little mattered it to him.
His hours he did spend | chasing his deathless rabbit
Or drinking with his warriors | or between the legs
Of special maids most willing | kebsweiber they were called.⁹

But while Henry won fame and honor | on the battlefield
Against him there conspired | an enemy most vile.
In Rome a false and sniveling monk | St. Peter’s throne had taken
Hildebrand was his true name | Pope Gregory himself he called.

The false monk Hildebrand | hardly a man was he
On a woman he relied | to lead his troops in war
Matilda was this woman’s name | in her veins there flowed
The blood of Salian warriors | Henry’s cousin true was she.

Word then came to Henry | of the false pope’s plans.¹⁰
The just rule of the virile | Hildebrand would replace
With the writs of effete clerics | Henry knew such bishops well
Never could Henry permit | his empire so to fall.

And the parish priests of Germany | this Hildebrand would compel
Their wives to banish from their beds | all the priests to live alone
Spending their seed like monks | in furtive hollow dreams
Such waste of German manhood | Henry never would allow.

Source: Heinrichlied (Song of Henry), 11th century, author unknown. English translation by Roger McAllister, from the 19th century German translation of Adalbert Kehr.

---

1Henry’s grandfather, Conrad II, was elected King of Germany in 1024 and Holy Roman Emperor in 1027, becoming the first Emperor of the Salian dynasty.

2Henry II, 973-1024, the fifth and last Emperor of the Ottonian, or Saxon, dynasty. Also known as Henry the Holy, or Henry the Saint, he remains to this day the only German monarch to be canonized by the Catholic Church.

3In 1046, three men claimed the title of Pope. Henry III went to Rome and deposed them all.

4In 1062, at the age of twelve, Henry IV was kidnapped by Archbishop Anno of Cologne, who proceeded to manage the young king’s education. It is interesting that the author of the Heinrichlied does not mention this event in particular, instead conflating it with the general maleficence of “women and monks and bishops.”

5There is no record of this magic rabbit in any other account of Henry’s life.

6Agnes of Poitou, Henry’s mother and the empress regent until the kidnapping by Anno in 1062. After the kidnapping, she gave up the duties of empress and joined a convent in Rome. She was a devout follower of St. Peter Damian and his ally Hildebrand, later to become Pope Gregory VII.

7The translator would have preferred the modern English version of this word, but the Canadian publisher, when faced with the prospect of being banned from school libraries in the U.S., suggested the Chaucerian “queyntes.” The translator countered with this spelling from Middle High German, which is a good as guess as any as to form used in the missing 11th century manuscript.

8Henry did marry Bertha, on July 13, 1066, after recovering from a bout of fever at Fritzlar. No other account of Henry’s life makes the shocking allegation that his fever was the result of poisoning.

9The translator debated hard and long with himself, and with his editor, whether to use the English word “concubines” or the German word “kebsweiber.” In the end, “concubines” was deemed too redolent of the Orient. The editor did not agree; hence this footnote. See kotzes, above..

10In general, these “plans” are what is now known as the Gregorian Reforms–the elimination of simony, or the practice of selling ecclesiastical offices, and the general imposition of priestly celibacy throughout the Western church.

The Song of Henry: the Gotha Conference

The beginning of the friendship between Adalbert Kehr and Joseph Konrad Josephson
is easy to understand: they were both young men full of fiery dreams, immersed
in dusty old books. Kehr, fresh from his studies in philology at the University
of Marburg, found himself in a lonely government post at an old abbey in Silesia,
a tedious clerkship which he enlivened by exploring the abbey’s old library;
Josephson, who was already beginning to introduce himself as Konrad Joseph,
had just taken over his father’s used book stall in Munich (he quickly moved
the Judaica to a back room), and had hopes of making his shop the center of
Munich’s revolutionary community.

They met in Gotha in 1875, at the conference where the ADAV of Ferdinand Lasalle
merged with the SDAP of Bebel and Liebknecht to become the the SAPD, Sozialistische
Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany,
the soon-to-be outlawed ancestor of today’s German Socialists.

The two young men had little to do with the actual business of the conference–Kehr
had simply traveled on his own to Gotha, and Konrad Joseph’s role was only
slightly more official–he was the self-appointed representative of the tiny
SDAP cell in Munich. Thrilled simply to be there, they watched the conference
from the margins, where their friendship blossomed. They listened respectfully
to the grizzled veterans of 1848, they argued about Stirner and Feuerbach,
and they recapitulated, over many beers, the debates between the Eisenachers
and the Lassaleans. One night, as the conference was drawing to a close, they
staged a impromptu skit they called "The Love Life and Death of Ferdinand
Lassale." Kehr, putting on a monocle and a debonair attitude, played
Lassale, while Konrad Joseph, wrapping himself in a series of scarves, played
several countesses and daughters of conservative diplomats, not to mention
their husbands and fathers. The skit, performed in a beer-hall basement, was
well-received by its audience, primarily a contingent of Marxist miners from
Cologne. Their fiction ended, unlike history, with Lassale winning all his
duels and deposing the aristocracy–only to die by the knife of a jealous mistress,
in bed–a climactic moment in several ways.

After the skit, Kehr heard one of the miners remark to another that there
was nothing he liked better than watching little Jews make fun of big Jews.
Kehr had no idea what the fellow was talking about.

The next morning they both left Gotha, laughing about their hangovers, and
promising to correspond.

The Song of Henry: the Book Tour

Roger McAllister always wore the same clothes on Canadian TV as he did when exploring back rooms, attics, basements and barns: a Savile Row suit, a yellow paisley bow tie, round horn-rimmed eyeglasses, and colorfully mismatched socks. In 1992, McAllister, an appraiser of rare books based in Victoria, British Columbia, discovered that the image of a slightly distracted dandy, cultivated so carefully in his daily business, worked just as well on an author’s tour. In that year, McAllister published The Song of Henry: A Modern English Translation of the Heinrichlied, Germany’s Forgotten National Epic. The book jacket described the The Song of Henry as “a vigorous and sometimes bawdy account of the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, who beat back the pernicious influence of the Catholic Church and forged the kingdom that became modern Germany.” In numerous interviews and live appearances McAllister told reporters and book buyers the same intriguing story: how his translation was based, in turn, on an unpublished 19th century German translation of the now-lost 11th century verse; how he had discovered the German manuscript among the possessions of Jakob Josephson, a leader of Victoria’s Jewish community; and how McAllister still felt a bond with the Josephson family, a deep bond, a bond of affection, fellowship and respect.

With a sigh, McAllister would tell his audience how much he hoped, and yes, prayed, that the bond between himself and the Josephson family would somehow survive the recent legal problems.