Steve, My heritage is apparently very similar to yours, and I experienced the same feelings while stationed in Germany (USAF, retired as of Nov 1997). I couldn't have expressed my feelings better. Cliff Pankonien System Administrator Delaware.Net, Inc. cliff@delaware.net icq#5486073 On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
I want to take a moment to thank the SuSE folks. This New Years Day was very special to me. I watched the celebrations in Germany, France, England, The Czech Republic, and etc. When I was in Germany twenty years ago, as a young American soldier, I lived in a country that was cut down the middle. A black cloud of recent history hung over this once magnificent nations like smoke from a forest fire.
Just last month I was shown a graveyard in Northern Kentucky where my ancestors were buried. All the grave stones are inscribed with German words. Kenneweg was my grandmother's maiden name. Both my great grand father and great uncle died as prisoners of the Japanese in WW II. Grandma taught me to be proud to be (part) German. She also taught me that all people are basically good. It was not until I after I had done my tour in Germany that she told me that she did not like Oriental people. She let me grow up without out the taint of historical hatreds.
I can trace many of my American roots back to Germany. Many came before the American Revolution. Something inside of me has made me very passionate about my German ancestry. I have studied German history from Tacitus' _The Germania_ to Willie Brandt's _People and Politics_. One of my great childhood heroes was Albert Einstein, a German born Jew who worshiped and contributed to the divine spirit of German intellectual cultural traditions. When I look to Germany I see the land of Kant, Leibnitz, Riemann, Beethoven, Bach, Friedrich The Great, Heissenberg, Goethe, and etc. I see that one dark decade, which so many dwell upon as the whole of German identity, as an unfortunate yet brief period of national madness born of the horrors of war and economic upheaval. It was a period where the darker passions of Man overwhelmed the Light of Truth and Reason.
SuSE Linux is a wonderful expression of the good things that I worship about my German heritage. When I slept in a potato field in Southern Bavaria with only an M-16 to hold in the bitter German winter, I was making a stand for the freedom that allows things like Linux to flourish. I am happy and proud to be associated with SuSE Linux because it represents what is good about Germans, and about humanity as a whole.
Thanks again,
Steve
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