Saturday, August 18, 2012

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.























                                     This photo was taken in Hamburg in 1936, during the celebrations for the launch of a ship.  In the crowd, one person refuses to raise his arm to give the Nazi salute.  The man was August Landmesser.  He had already been in trouble with the authorities, having been sentenced to two years hard labour for marrying a jewish women.  We know little else about August Landmesser, except that he had two childrens.  By pure chance, one of his children recognized her father in this photo when it was published in German newspaper in 1991.  How proud she must have been in that moment.


Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.
Where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments.
By narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth.
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way.
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by thee.
Into ever-widening thought and action.
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. - Rabindranath Tagore

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