LZ-129 Hindenburg.

Tal como aconteceu com o Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, Hugo Eckener teve de ter um certo tato em lidar com o regime nazista, exatamente o que acontecia na URSS, onde um desacordo ou atrito com Stalin podia custar a vida. Era a situação típica da época.

Eckener wrote these words in 1948. Igor Sikorsky wrote his reflections of those times in “The Invisible Encounter – A Plea for Spiritual Rather Than Material Power as the Great Need of Our Day” which he wrote in 1947. Today, in the liturgy, we read about the temptations of Christ in the wilderness – to turn stones into bread, to throw himself down from a pinnacle in a demonstration of divinity and to receive all the earthly kingdoms if he would worship the devil. In other words, the misuse of one’s power to obtain an apparent good. The first four chapters of Sikorsky’s book are in depth essays on these three temptations. Sikorsky points out that these temptations are the temptations to use power to accomplish a heaven here on earth. No doubt the Bolshevik Revolution which had set out to do just that and ended in the Stalinist horrors was very much on his mind in this writing. The attempts to set up Utopias throughout history have frequently ended in dystopian nightmares such as the earlier French Revolution. These first four chapters are very well worth our reading today. Sikorsky’s work does not come across as optimistic about the future as in this quote from Chapter 7 “Good and Evil” – “Nazism and Communism with their active ideological relations in other countries and their collective offspring – the Second World War – are only the first manifestations, the early gentle flowers of radical intellectual materialism at work. The real fruits are still to come.”

In the creation of any hoped for Utopia, there is always the breaking of eggs to make the omelette, hence the resort to naked power with all its horrors.

Thank you kindly for your reply. I ordered Dr. Eckener’s autobiography “Im Zeppelin über Länder und Meere. Erlebnisse und Erinnerungen.” for my mother for Christmas. Since my mother speaks German, having studied at the University of Würzburg, I’m sure she’ll enjoy it. Although it looks like it will arrive after Christmas.

Here are several other anti-Nazi contemporaries of Dr. Eckener and some of their writings:

Blessed Franz Jägerstätter’s “Letters and Writings from Prison”

Father Alfred Delp’s writings for Advent, some of which were written in prison. These are collected in “Advent of the Heart, Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings – 1941-1944.” published by Ignatius Press.

The White Rose anti-Nazi group whose members included Saint Alexander Schmorell (canonized by the Orthodox Church)

Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Munster

Orchestral Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler

Another contemporary of Hugo Eckener’s, Igor Sikorsky (yes the helicopter guy) did just such self-contemplation as Eckener described during World War II and shortly afterward in two of his theological books: “The Message of the Lord’s Prayer” and the “Invisible Encounter” That is correct, Igor Sikorsky wrote theological works.

You can download them at this link:

http://www.sikorskyarchives.com/His_Philosophy.php

In “The Message of the Lord’s Prayer”, Sikorsky writes that we have deep within us a divine spark. Let us take this Advent and this Christmas to fan that divine spark into a flame, and from there that flame into the fire of great charity which burns within the souls of saints. Have a blessed Advent and Christmas.

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wonderful story and deep emotional…

heckner is fantastic man, inspiring personality and must be remmembered always…..!!!!!