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WANDERVOGEL

                                             August 30, 2019

In the Saint story "The Golden Journey", while
they're out on trail they encounter a group
of happy-go-lucky vagabonds that call themselves            GOLDEN_JOURNEY
the "wandervogel" ("wandering birds"):

    "As they reached the road a band of twenty young people were
    coming towards them, singing as they cam.  The men wore
    leather shorts and white linen shirts, some of the girls
    wore the same, others wore brief leather skirts.  All of
    them carried packs, and many of the packs were heavy.
    Belinda saw one man laden with an enormous iron pot and a
    collection of smoke-blackened pans: he looked like a huge
    metalized snail."

    "'We are *Wandervogel*.  We are tired of the cities, and we
    make ourselves gypsies.  We sing for money, and work in the
    fields when we can, and make things to sell. Your sandals--
    they are a pattern made by the *Wandervogel*.  ... ' "

    " '... We do not want to be rich.  We have all the world to
    live in, and we are free like the birds.' "

    ...

    " 'They belong to a new generation,' said the Saint quietly.
    'There are many people like them here, under different
    names.  It's an attempt to find a way out of the mess this
    world is in.  The cities have failed them, and they're
    looking back to the ancient wisdom of contentment with simple
    things.  At least it's better than idle hopelessness.  And
    who's to say, maybe they've got something.' "


The way I understood the history: these
wandervogel were a real phenomena, but
they mutated rather quickly into the       That they were endorsed by the
Hitler youth movement.                     Charteris Saint seemed appropriate--
                                           underlying the early Saint stories
Looking around on the net, I gather        is a passion for living dangerously,
that there's a competing view that the     a rejection of civilized life.
wandervogel had been around for some
time, and the Nazis just stole some of
their schtick trying to co-opt them.

   The year after "The Golden Journey"
   was first published, the wandervogel      Perhaps notably, the Golden
   groups were banned by the Nazis.          Journey begins in Germany
                                             but say nothing about the
                                             Nazi regime.
    1896 First wandervogels
    1901 First official group                   (The route goes south
                                                through Austria-- and
    1920 Nazi party forms                       may continue south into
    1929 Great depression                       Italy, going through the
    1930 Nazi's 18% of vote                     Brenner Pass).
    1933 Hitler takes power
                                                      A weak plan I would say,
    1934 "The Golden Journey" published.              a Brenner Pass has
    1935 Wandervogels groups banned.                  never gotten me anywhere.

                                                         GOLDEN_ROAD

Charteris describes a group of men and women,
but there are many references to the
vandervogel as a male-only movement-- evidently
a homosexual scene, at least to some extent.

The wandervogel were a direct influence on some      Some influence is
Japanese groups, and seem remarkably similar to      sometimes claimed,
the American hippies in many respects.               though I would think it
                                                     might be convergent
                                                     evolution-- perhaps
                                                     with some shared,
                                                     common source of ideas.





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