Staring at me from the table top, these apples look so sweet
Their divine flavor is not for me.
Alas, they will go forth, to a family I rarely see.
My dead boys, who sacrificed everything.
My dear wife and other children, dying of starvation
The only respite, stolen apples from the table of the Kaiser.
Their only relief, sweetness unavailable to the rest of the nation.
Sitting atop the staff, all of whom I appoint.
This war is lost by those who I chose to lead it.
My choices are not mine.
They cannot be.
Just as the apples showed up on the table today,
The hand of god is in everything, even the most unbearable.
If not, then you are lost.
General Moriz von Lyncker was the Chief of the Military Cabinet for Kaiser Wilhelm II throughout World War I. His job was to appoint all who led the German military. As part of the Military Cabinet, General Lyncker was by the Kaiser’s side, sitting at his table during dinners. After one such dinner, upon the departure of the Kaiser, the General noticed apples remaining on the table. Knowing full well they would be taken by another, he seized them for his own family, sending them back home to his wife. He did this because his own family, along with the entire population of war blockaded Germany, was starving. As the scion of a military family himself, General von Lyncker’s sons all went into military service. He lost two of them by the summer of 1917. When his brother-in-law wrote him to say the war was lost, and it was all for nothing, General von Lyncker replied back “If you do not want to see God’s hand in everything, even in the most unbearable, you are lost.”
Sometimes we cannot see our own actions for what brings us suffering. When that happens, we often attribute the suffering to God’s hand. There may be an invisible hand in all things, but it’s our rational choices which bring forth our own realities. General von Lyncker was an advocate of War with Russia and France until 1915, at which point he realized he may have been mistaken. Was his hand forced by God, or simply the norms of the world in which he was raised and lived? Either way, choices matter, and his choices bore consequences, just as all our choices do, every day.
If you do not want to see God’s hand in everything, even in the most unbearable, you are lost.” Experiencing the First World War Alongside Kaiser Wilhelm II. Episode: http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/chri/ww1/2014-02-25-chri-ww1-5.mp3. Media: http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/chri/ww1/2014-02-25-chri-ww1-5.mp3. Sent from Podcast Republic.