Passports… technologies of control. 
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Or the piece of paper that saves your life.
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It can be, but different passports have different privileges, yeah? I’m an American citizen, you’re an EU citizen, and that gives us different access to the world than say… someone from Nigeria or Belize. And we know from American history, that privilege can be revoked (during the Cold War, accused communists could have their passport revoked, such as DuBois and Paul Robeson). Traveling freely is no longer a given (although historically, obvious travel could be a privilege in other ways - serfdom tied people to particular parts of land, etc), as we’re seeing with our various refugee crises on our southern borders. If there are plenty of people here who have passports and will be able to get out, there are plenty in the global south who can’t get out of their situations, because if they even have a passport, it gives them far less options. Maybe they need additional paperwork to get somewhere safer for example.
And identity papers of all kinds are also technologies of categorization and control. It’s a way to fix people’s identity so that they can both access rights and social welfare programs that one’s citizenship should offer, it can also be used to control and subjugate. What happens to the fact that we all have to have documents to identify us when the state does a major heel turn? I’m very afraid that we’re about to find out.
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Thanks, a great read. I’m surprised that place isn’t more well known, and I hope the revitalization efforts work!
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The Brenner-Archive
https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/brenner-archiv///
at Innsbruck University has an exhibition of photographs by
Joël was a very fashionable and successful photographer in Berlin’s roaring twenties.
Sadly, not a single picture of herself survived.
Her work was popular and frequently reproduced in magazines or as postcards, especially the portraits of happy little kids. One particularly galling detail is that her pictures kept being reprinted, uncredited and unpaid, after she was forced to close her business in 1938 and even after she had been murdered in 1943. Others cashed in on her work. To this day there are probably lots of pictures by Joël in private collections of postcards etc. and the collectors have no idea who created them.
The pictures now shown are part of a collection of documents about Karl Krauss compiled by Friedrich Pfäfflin and donated to the Brenner-Archive in 2019.
I would hope that the Archive (or someone else) sees this as an opportunity to start a separate archive/research project on Charlotte Joël.
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Gotta maintain that “Great Man” theory. Can’t let people start thinking ordinary folks can change things!
(Emphasis on Man)
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Seems like they need people who can both read cursive and type quickly, and who have free time to volunteer. That does sound rare.
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Retired seniors who can afford to volunteer - that’s about it
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I qualify on all counts! Except that I live in Canada.
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Is that even a thing anymore? I’m 62 and pretty sure I won’t be able to retire.
(Where’s @mindysan33 laugh/cry gif?)
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That’s exactly the sort of thing that’s keeping my mother busy: she’s currently doing volunteer transcription work for the National War Memorial, transcribing Sir John Monash’s war diaries.
Her health is pretty poor, so it gives her something to do with her time that actually achieves something.
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Today is the 90th anniversary of the 1935 Saar status referendum when the League of Nations mandate of the Territory of the Saar Basin voted to join Nazi Germany. That’s where I live and we had a small demonstration today, commemorating a number of local resistance fighters and calling for a ban of the AfD.
“90 years of Saar referendum - 90 percent for Hitler’s Germany - 90 years of infamy”
Unfortunately the weather did not exactly help.
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coming up on 113 years since Henry Flagler stepped off his private railcar in Key West, opening the OverSeas Railway connecting the mainland to the southernmost point in continental US - 22 january, 1912.
the railway led to opening the keys by way of automobile some years later, and one of the first sections that needed completion in order to continue south, was the straightaway connecting the southern tip of mainland florida peninsula to the first key - Key Largo. this section crossed the swampy outcharge of the Everglades, channels, creeks, and a “surprise” lake. this came to be known as the “18 mile Stretch” and it is today, a long, straight bottleneck with one lane going north and one going south.
there are many stories detailing the building of the original rail bed, and how that became the Overseas Highway US1.
here, keys historian Brad Bertelli, tells of that road that connects us to the rest of the US mainland:
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