THE HUNDERTWASSER FRAUD

The Whangarei Council, in its infinite ignorance, is planning to build a fake Hundertwasser building. In spite of protest letters in the local papers they have already spent a vast amount of money, without honest consultations, on so-called planning.
This is my initial submission:

THE HUNDERTWASSER FRAUD


If I were stupid enough to do an oil painting, inspired by a Goldie, and sell it as an authentic Goldie, I'd likely end up in jail for fraud. Yet that is exactly what our Council is proposing. The idea came from a scrappy sketch on the back of an envelop, that was all. The actual building will be designed by a European architect, NOT by Hundertwasser. Yet the Council is trying to sell it as an authentic Hundertwasser. FRAUD by any definition.

Hundertwasser's popularity in New Zealand has been diminishing for years. At his first Auckland exhibition in 1973, the gallery was packed, and the papers wrote rave reviews. At a later exhibition in Auckland I was the only visitor!

He spent 2 months in the Kawakawa hospital, close to his summer home near Opua. He liked Kawakawa, was very active in trying to preserve the fine historical post office. Yet the Kawakawa people who knew him personally, discarded his views, and demolished the building. Hundertwasser ended up with a public toilet instead.

In 1958, in Seckau, Hundertwasser wrote an essay about the relationship between the designer of a building, the people who would build it, and the inhabitants. In this case the designer will obviously be some architect in Vienna, not Hundertwasser himself, and the way he described it in many of his speeches, the inhabitants were clearly ordinary people, not influential people like the members of the Chamber of Commerce.


In his own words, and quoted from his manifesto:


Only when the Trinity consisting of ARCHITECT-BRICKLAYER and INHABITANT is one Person or one Unity, the house they build is a living architecture.


This Trinity ARCHITECT-BRICKLAYER-INHABITANT is equal to the Trinity God Father-God Sun-Holy Spirit.


If they get separated their architecture becomes crime.


Two of the three requirements are broken, so Hundertwasser would consider the proposal AN ARCHITECTURAL CRIME. His words.

Who am I, that I dare make such strong statements? I am a graduate of the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam; I served at the Canterbury Museum and Auckland War Memorial Museum in senior positions for 22 years; I was a Founder Trustee of the Whangarei Art Museum; served on the committees of the Reyburn House Art Gallery, the Quarry Art Centre, the Arts Council, etc. etc.

And I am ashamed the Council is proposing such an architectural crime and blatant fraud.

Leo Cappel

Typos

Why, oh why don't my fingers do what I want them to do? And why does F7 not spellcheck on this blog? It does on Word!
So forgive me for all hte typos, specially short words like 'hte' or ot instead of to. When I'm writing books my computer automatically corrects as I'm typing. So maybe I'm getting lazy?
>:{  or 'GGGRRRR!'

A LITTLE BRAGGING (bibiliography)

I have been told that to sell your books, you have to tell people how good you are. I hate that! But I also hate not selling my books after all hte effort that has gone into writing them. So instaed of telling you: 'I'm Good' I'll print here list of most of my writings, and let you make up your own mind.

Abridged bibliography, Leo Cappèl


Full length:

A Guide to Model Making and Taxidermy AW and AH Reed, NZ
Sail Theatre, Sail! novel Horizon Press, NZ
P.I.V. e-novel NoSpine, UK
Clone novel Tightwriters, NZ
Like a Guardian, memoirs Schoolhouse Press
languageland, poetry Schoolhouse Press
1819 AD, recipes and remedies from the past Schoolhouse Press

Contributed to:

Kinderen uiten zich III J Muusses, Netherlands
Kinderen uiten zich IV J Muusses, Netherlands
Getting Published Global Dialogues Press

In anthologies:

A Bedtime Poem Forward Press, UK
In Your Mind’s Eye Forward Press, UK
As The Story Goes . . . Forward Press, UK
Nul Paradox Press, Belgium

Many articles and short stories in:

Education,NZ;
Holland SF;
Der Präparator;
Museum;
Woodworker;
National Radio;
Commonwealth Broadcasting Association;
BA;
Zuidelijke Wandelweg;
Common Ties;
Flute Focus

Produced plays and musicals:

Window (musical);
The Star Seeker (play)
Papagenina’s Flute (musical)
'Nina and the Upside-down Tree (musical)
Dine and Die (whodunit play)

Award winning plays:

The Letter, sketch
Bread, sketch

Music for plays by other playwrights

The Caucasian Chalk Circle Brecht, music only
Moonshine, June Allen, lyrics and music

 Literary Awards and Prizes

1819 AD

My grandfather gave my a very old Dutch booklet for my 13th birthday. I don't know how long he had had it himself. 'Always' he said.
It has given me so much enjoyment, and also some insight how people lived and thought 200 years ago, that I translated it into English, and here it is.
The original author had this to say about it:

Foreword


After many years of collecting, I find myself in possession of a large number of inexpensive instructions and remedies, suitable for all kinds of circumstances and situations, which I have tested from time to time, and which have given me the pleasure at numerous occasions of furthering the benefits, profits and pleasures of my fellow-men.

 

Although initially I did not have the slightest intention of making these instructions public, the realization of the scarcity, possibly of the absence of such worthwhile, and truly upon experience based observations, supported by the good results which I have noted several times, has finally made me decide to make this collection, such as it is, commonly available in print.

 

I dare flatter myself that they, who follow the here presented instructions carefully, will benefit greatly, and therefore they, as they will not forget the collector out of pleasure with the good results, will bless me for the publication of these, apparently minor, yet indeed for those, who find what they are in need of, weighty details.

THE AUTHOR, GRONINGEN, NETHERLANDS, 1819

To give some idea of what the booklet is about, here are a dozen of the more than 100 recipes and remedies.

Elixir against fever and infection
To create man-made ice, even in a warm room
Luminescent pomade
Good brazing solder for copper
Liqueur Eau de Barbados
To bring out the natural grain of wood
To make ivory or bone white
Recipe to make hair grow
To silver-plate copper by boiling it
To have pleasant dreams
Remedy for head lice
Raspberry vinegar, healthy and enjoyable

1819 AD is available for NZ $20.--
from leo.cappel@xtra.co.nz

 

MEMOIRS OF A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, Like a Guardian

No, I never wanted to write this book, got talked into it by friends and family. But in retrospect, I'm glad I did. It seems several of our friends found it 'inspirational'. At least that is what they keep telling me. Don't ask me why though, ask them.        

About the title: I survived the Holocaust by going into hiding. I was just seven when the war started, nine when I ended up in my first hiding place in Edam, with a couple I had never met. I had to stay in the tiny back room all the time I lived there, because passers-by could look into the front room. I shared the room with a smaller girl with brown eys and black hair. Clearly Jewish, but she never talked. Not a word all those long months I stayed there, before going into another hiding place, that time in Friesland.

I survived.

Shortly after the war the Red Cross sent me to foster parents in Switzerland, to a tiny village near the foot of a mountain, Säntis. I could see the mountain from my bedroom, and to me it looked liked a beautiful guardian, protecting me. Hence the title of the book.

Don't let all this scare you off, the book was written knowing that our young grandchildren might read it without getting nightmares. I wrote it as a kind of dialogue with my granddaughter, Tracy Cappèl. She would ask a leading question which then brought back memories. So, like the way memories come to mind, the book is not strictly chronological, just in broad outlines.

The 'story' starts more or less with my birth, and covers my life till about two years ago. I left out some of the worst experiences, but what I did put in is accurate and truthful.

The main 'theme' is that whenever something we had planned became impossible - like sailing around the world after we built our yacht - we changed tack and started something completely new. And enjoyed it!

A few snippets from the book:

1945

Frau Willy-Kern takes my suitcase, gestures to follow her. We go back to the railway station. She has brought little bread rolls with ham and a lot of cheese. And she gives me real chocolate with nuts. I can't understand a word of what she is saying, but somehow that doesn't matter.

Her house is really large, white, with dark brown woodwork all over.

Frau Willy-Kern shows me a booklet like a small dictionary in three columns. Her own language; Dutch and how to pronounce the Dutch words.

'Are you hungry?' she tries to say.

'No, you don't pronounce it like that.'

She clearly does not understand me.

'Do you have to go to the bathroom?' she reads off, again in Dutch.

'Yes, that's how you say it,' I tell her. 'We'll be able to talk together yet.'

She shows me where the bathroom is. And my bedroom.

The house is a little way up a slope next to the village. And beyond the village stands a mountain. A beautiful mountain, glowing red in the light of the setting sun. So beautiful. I don't know how far away the mountain is, but it feels like I can almost touch it.

Frau Willy-Kern says that mountain is called Säntis.

Säntis.

From my bed I can see the mountain. Protecting me. Guarding me.

Säntis, standing there like a sentinel.

===========

1959

We made many good friends that first year, and often they went out of their way to make us feel at home.

I remember one occasion when we were asked for dinner and the lady of the house had promised us a very special, typically Dutch desert. After the main course she very proudly brought in what looked like soup plates full of yellow custard topped with whipped cream.

'The man in the shop said the traditional way is to serve it with plenty of whipped cream, and it is called Advokaat. We bought the biggest bottle in the shop.'

Karen and I looked at each other. 'Did the man also tell you what Advokaat is? What it is made of?'

'Isn't it some special custard?'

'Actually, it is straight brandy thickened with beaten egg yolks. Nothing else. But he did have the whipped cream part right. In Holland we often had a small wineglass of Advokaat with Christmas and New Year.'

'What do we do now?'

'Why? Eat it of course. We're not going to waste it. No way.'

And eat it we did.

==============

1960

It was indirectly through our friend Herman, that I got my first museum job.

One evening he brought a young woman along. A school teacher, who had recently arrived from England. Herman had told her I was working for the NZ Railways just then, but had been an art teacher in Holland. We talked art teaching the rest of the evening.

The very next morning - coincidence? - a school inspector came to her school, to see how she was doing. Olive was nervous, and didn't know what to talk about. So, she told the inspector about the kind of work I had done before coming to New Zealand.

'I want to meet that chap,' he apparently had said. 'Can you arrange for him to come and see me? I'll be at the Canterbury Museum next week.'

'No, I'm not looking for an art teacher,' he explained when I met him. 'We used to provide a service for country schools, we made portable museum displays for them. You know, like miniature dioramas? Would you be able to make those? The job has been vacant for nine years now and we stopped advertising a long time ago. You'd be on the Christchurch Training College staff, but you'd be working here in the Museum, as part of the Education Section. You may have to do two or three hours a week of teaching as well. Of course you'll be working the same hours as teachers and you'll get the same holidays. I take it you can work without supervision? Would you like the job?'

'Would I? When can I start?'

'Actually, as this is a government job we have to follow the rules. As far as I'm concerned the job is yours, but we have to get confirmation of your qualifications from Amsterdam.'

'Fine with me.'

Only it wasn't fine. Every once in a while I rang him to find out if he had heard from Amsterdam.

'No, sorry, not yet.'

One day, many months later, Herman asked what was happening: 'Did you finally get the Museum job?'

'I stopped ringing them.'

'Try once more.'

I did, and the answer was: 'Don't you know? You're supposed to start this Monday.'

It seemed they had written to Amsterdam by sea mail, and that letter must have got there just at the beginning of the long summer holidays. The confirmation was sent back after the holidays, also by sea mail!

When I resigned from my Training College job after four years to accept a better position in Auckland, I received a very flattering thank-you letter, regretfully accepting my resignation. But I never got my letter of appointment. I loved the work though. Doing work that other people would do as a hobby and getting paid for it? And even going on the occasional field trip? It was great.

The book is published under the imprint Schoolhouse Press and costs NZ 45.--

Elisabeth Augustin, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR

languageland

A compilation of 80 poems and some prose by Elisabeth Augustin, Holocaust survivor and writer-in-exile.

The poems are in chronological order, starting with her first published poem, written while she was still a romantic teenager. The selection follows her life through the happy pre-war years, exile, the war, learning to cope with the war trauma, and finally her more introspective old age.

Most of her poems - the emotional, instinctive side of her work - were written in German, while all her later prose - the more intellectually planned work - was in Dutch.

The original German and Dutch poems are shown facing the English translations.

Biography

Elisabeth Augustin was born in 1903 in Berlin. It was a typically German middle class family: a strict but loving father, a somewhat naïve, romantic mother, and Elisabeth the only child.

Elisabeth enjoyed a short spell as an actress until her father put a stop to it. Acting had been her childhood dream, but in her father's view it was not a decent profession for a young lady.

Elisabeth’s youth had been fairly conventional. Primary school, high school and six months at a boarding school: a 'finishing school for ladies'. There she learned little social gems, like: 'When a lady goes visiting, she never takes off her gloves straight away, lest she creates the impression that she wants to show off her rings.'

Early 1926 she got engaged to Felix Augustin, whom she married the same year

She wrote her first novel when she was only 16, followed by hundreds of poems, short stories and - in rapid succession - non-fiction articles for local papers and women's magazines. Her non-fiction work found a steady market, as did those of her poems which were written with the female readership in mind.

Elisabeth had enough confidence in her next novel to submit it, and it was promptly accepted by the German publisher Kiepenheuer. That novel was due for release in 1933. It didn’t happen, just then Hitler and his stooges banned Jewish authors from having their work appear in print.

Initially Elisabeth’s Jewish ancestry had hardly been relevant. But when, in 1933, her Jewish neighbour cut his wrists and bled to death while he was being picked up by the nazis, Elisabeth and Felix realised it was time to escape. Felix travelled ahead to Amsterdam to find a place to live, Elisabeth with her two small children, Niels and Karen, followed.

Elisabeth never looked back. Felix spoke fluent Dutch and helped her translate her banned novel. The Dutch version was published two years later under the title De Uitgestootene.

Elisabeth had become a writer-in-exile.

Three more novels appeared before the war: All four novels were powerful rejections of poor social conditions and racism. Her style was way ahead of her time.

In 1938 Elisabeth’s parents escaped to Amsterdam as well. In vain. Her father, deeply depressed, died of a heart attack in 1942, and her mother was killed in the extermination camp Sobibor the following year. Even her very elderly grandfather had been killed in a concentration camp, in Auschwitz.

From an idyllic youth Elisabeth had been dumped into a nightmare existence. Her final novel, Labyrint was an effort to come to terms with it. Labyrint - and thirty years later her German translation Auswege - is an almost surrealistic and extremely powerful work that is still as relevant today as it was then.

Life became a hectic pattern of writing short stories, poems, stage plays and radio plays. She did however translate much of her prose into German, and eventually most was published in Germany.

Elisabeth’s daughter Karen and her son-in-law Leo Cappèl had emigrated to New Zealand in 1959. Elisabeth visited Karen and Leo for an eight months period. She was fascinated by the New Zealand culture, literature and history, so she returned for a second stay a few years later. The English version of her epic poem The unfinished life of Malcolm X was published in New Zealand.

After she returned to Amsterdam Elisabeth’s productive literary life continued uninterrupted until about two years before her death in 2001.

From the translator.

Two years before her death Elisabeth had an idea for yet another play, but didn’t feel she had the strength to finish it. Instead she told me about it, told me the theme and a possible plot.

‘Could you write it on my behalf?’ she asked me. ‘I don’t feel up to it any more.’

To be honest, I didn’t feel I could do justice to her idea, not then, and not yet. Maybe one day. Meanwhile we have a large number of her still unpublished poems. Should we let them get lost and forgotten? Or should I translate some of them so people not familiar with Elisabeth’s work can read them too?

One of her poems starts with

why then
nightingale
did you receive a voice
if you don’t sing?

I like and admire Elisabeth’s work, and - to my surprise - she liked and admired mine. She trusted me enough to ask me to write her last play. I have a voice, let me sing her songs.

Making a selection from the many hundreds of Elisabeth’s poems and translating them into English has been a major undertaking. Often emotional, always rewarding. Although I have tried to remain true to Elisabeth's original work, this is not a literal translation.

I trust my choice of Elisabeth's poems shows her journey through life, both in subject matter and in style.

Leo Cappèl
Whangarei

Today my little daughter
pulled a feather from her pillow
tickled my ear
my mouth my neck.
In the silence of our home
only the cheerful chuckles and squeals
of my little daughter
filled the room with joyful sounds

1931

I now wear your dress
the silk that enclosed you
sometimes strokes my hand
then       in my loneliness
I feel the bond
that held us enclosed

25 July 1945

I have been looking for my soul
find her I could not
maybe she has gone a-roaming
maybe she is in my poem

25 April 1996

languageland   NZ $45.--
Schoolhouse Press,
98 B Paramount Pde, Tikipunga,
Whangarei 0112
NEW ZEALAND

ISBN 978-0-9864610-6-4

LITTLE BOXES ON THE HILL SIDE

My problem with wearing tree hats is that my days are not three times longer.


Hat one: music. We are rehearsing an hour of music for a monthly meeting at the local hospice, a meeting for people who have recently lost someone. Music is something we are used to. We have been involved with music most of our lives, no problem there. Worthwhile, just time consuming.

Hat two: sculpting. Making work for our upcoming 'Pregnantism' exhibition of sculptures of pregnant mothers. Challenging, but it feels worth the effort, and is well on its way. No problem there either, but also time consuming. So both hats take time, but in a positive manner.

Hat three: writing. And that reminds me of a sculpture I did some years ago. Little boxes on the hill side. Lots of little boxes, but no easy roads connecting them. In the first group of boxes live the writers, each in his own isolated box with keyboard and thesaurus. In box two lives the private editor, someone the more experienced author can't do without. The next traditional boxes house the publishers, with their own editors. Or writers go to a printer to bypass the publisher. The printer of course lives in a different box yet. Not an easy road so far, but it gets more difficult yet: the marketing box. A writer may try his own marketing, but writing and marketing take totally different personalities, can they live in the same box? So there's the next box: the distributor. And all that before the book even gets to a book shop or library shelf. Little boxes on a steeep, steeeep hillside!

I am close to the last of the trail of boxes. My first three full-length books were done by regular publishers. The first two are sold out. The publisher of number three, "CLONE" does not exist any more, so I bought the last few dozen off them and sell them privately myself ($30.)

The next three are 'on the market' to give me a feeling of how well they sell before I take them to the distributor box. They are "languageland" "LIKE A GUARDIAN" and "1819 AD"

"languageland" and "LIKE A GUARDIAN" are Holocaust survivor books. But I better talk about those in a few days in a separate post