284 – United Germanic States

To the right of this postcard, a romantic Germanic warrior (if that isn’t an oxymoron) anachronistically admires a postcard-romantic German village from what looks to be around the 18th or 19th century.

The countries floating in the sky like so many proverbial castles together configure die Vereinigte Germanische Staaten (the United Germanic States) – a pipe-dream aspired to by at least some German nationalists around the beginning of the 20th century, to which this map can be traced.

This 1906 map shows a Mitteleuropa at its most Germanic, with Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Dutch-speaking parts of the Low Countries, England, Ireland, the Baltic states and Scandinavia (also including a lighter-shaded Finland) and North America (i.e. Canada and the USA) as parts of the UGS.

This Germanic superstate would not be a Germany modelled on the US, quite the contrary: not a union based on the rule of law, the love of freedom and the pursuit of happiness, but a coalition of states whose Boden was dominated by Germanic Blut, even if that dominance would have been difficult to enforce democratically. This would have been the rule of tradition, the love of authoritarianism and the pursuit of racial purity. And in fact, something like that happened in Europe not too many decades later…

This map was taken at this page of Deutsche Schutzgebiete, a website dedicated to the former German colonies.

 

283 – Heaven Is An Amusement Park That Never Closes

“Heaven is a place,” sang the Talking Heads, “where nothing ever happens.” Not so in this version of the Afterlife. This is what Heaven might have looked like in the Divina Commedia had Dante not been a medieval Italian intellectual, but a contemporary Californian comic artist, like Malachi Ward, who drew this map. In Ward’s vision, Heaven is a place very similar to your local amusement park. Only better: it never closes, you don’t ever have to leave!

Beyond the Pearly Gates (emblazoned with the slogan You Did It!) is a Nu-Body Machine (1), instantly providing everybody with the body they’ve been trying to shape into while still alive. Catholics are welcome to Heaven, but are confined to a small section next to the entrance (2) where they can indulge their semi-idolatrous tendencies at the Throne of Mary (3). Others can try their hand (and their wings) at Angel Boot Camp (4), which is “great for Pentecostals and Charismatics.”

Those less inclined towards spiritual war could go for the snack bar (5), the marital coitus castle (6), the go carts (7), the dinosaur petting zoo (8) or Joab’s candy shop (9). Joab, a nephew of King David and eventually killed at his behest, was mainly known for his martial exploits, not for his sweet tooth.

Evil is not completely out of view in this Heaven: in fact, the Damned Viewer (10) allows you to visually check up on “Adolf Hitler, your philandering boss, the smug atheist next door and all the vile people you hate” get their comeuppance in the ‘other’, decidedly less amusing place. Maybe in Hell there’s a similar viewer, showing the Throne of God and Jesus (11) and the place where people can line up to sit, as if he were a giant Santa, on God’s lap.

And there’s more. Go to Family Land to chew the fat with pre-deceased loved ones (but wouldn’t you eventually bump into them anyway elsewhere in the park?). Visit the Arena of Answers, where the Illuminatron will tell you who really shot JFK, RFK and MLK. Go to Memory Land to relive your own finest moments or, if your existence was less than extraordinary, to Fantasy Land to relive somebody else’s. In the Hall of Heroes, visit with Abraham Lincoln, Moses and Princess Diana (among others). Visit America Land, where it’s always Memorial or Veterans’ Day.

Many thanks to Paul Hoppe for sending in this map, which can be found here on a blog called Hunting and Gathering with Malachi Ward. Click on the map to enlarge.