{"id":6659,"date":"2020-09-11T07:38:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T11:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/?page_id=6659"},"modified":"2020-09-11T07:53:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T11:53:26","slug":"vii-laudatio-hommage-in-memoriam-the-improbably-possible-life-of-anita-lasker-wallfisch","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/archive\/glossen-45-2020\/vii-laudatio-hommage-in-memoriam-the-improbably-possible-life-of-anita-lasker-wallfisch\/","title":{"rendered":"VII. Laudatio, Hommage, In Memoriam: The Improbably Possible Life of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Improbably Possible Life of <\/strong><\/h1>\n

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<\/h1>\n

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch<\/strong><\/h1>\n

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<\/h2>\n

Michael Eskin, New York, New York<\/h2>\n

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On July 17, 2020 Anita Lasker-Wallfisch celebrated her ninety-fifth birthday. Ninety-five years and counting \u2013 a long life \u2013 for anyone, to be sure \u2013 but especially for someone who survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Until very recently, I didn\u2019t know this name \u2013 all the more reason to be grateful for knowing it now! \u2013 this, quintessentially Jewish, name \u2013 a poetic name \u2013 poetic in and of itself insofar as it is intrinsically metaphorical \u2013 what\u2019s a \u2018wall fish\u2019, after all? \u2013 and also insofar as, being metaphorical and, thus, intrinsically poetic, it embodies the very journey that brought Lasker-Wallfisch from Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen to England, where she would live for the rest of her life. Poetic also in that its bearer survived the camps thanks to the poetry of music, thanks to the fact that she played the cello and was selected to join the Women\u2019s Orchestra of Auschwitz\u2026 The rest, as they say, is history: professional success after the war, marriage, family, children, grandchildren, international honors, high-profile interviews and public appearances\u2026 But what are the odds? How unlikely to survive all that thanks to the miracle of four fingers being able to flit up and down four long strands catgut strung taut over a piece of ebony\u2026 And how poetic\u2026<\/p>\n

Lasker-Wallfisch\u2019s is one of those stories you sometimes come across in newspapers or history books \u2013 about people who survived multiple plane crashes, or tsunamis, or earthquakes, or terminal illnesses, and lived to a ripe old age: An highly improbable story, in other words, yet an unequivocally possible one.<\/p>\n

Aristotle once suggested that a poet should always strive and opt for the probable, if impossible, story line as opposed to the possible but improbable one. Probable impossibility is what makes for the consummately poetic, whereas improbable possibility leads to the \u201cprose of the world,\u201d as Hegel put it. Now, the consummate poetry of Lasker-Wallfisch\u2019s life \u2013 oh so improbably possible \u2013 proves Aristotle wrong many times over\u2026<\/p>\n

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Please find a recent interview with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and her daughter on German TV here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Improbably Possible Life of   Anita Lasker-Wallfisch   Michael Eskin, New York, New York   On July 17, 2020 Anita Lasker-Wallfisch celebrated her ninety-fifth birthday. Ninety-five years and counting \u2013 a long life \u2013 for anyone, to be sure \u2013 but especially for someone who survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Until very recently, I didn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4340,"featured_media":0,"parent":6396,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6659","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6659\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}