Behind the Scenes Minis: Robeson and Schrepfer

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We talked about Paul Robeson and the Peak Skill riots this week. It was back before the pandemic when I was on another separate podcast called This Day in History Class. That's been hanging out on my list for a long time before being propelled up to the top by it coming up in the Eugene Jacques Bullard episode. I read that whole a c LU report and the paragraph that we read in the show just turned my stomach because I was like, this is a paragraph that could be in news reporting today about January six. It sounded so similar two things people have also said about that, And like I had just read that part and it was farmers Market day where we live, and I was like walking to the Farmer's Market with Patrick being very quiet, and he was like, what are you thinking about? And I It's like, it's very nauseating thing that I read in an a c L report that just reminded me of other things still happening. That's like the depressing thing about studying history. We just see the same stuff go on over and over and over. Yeah. Yeah, I feel so conflicted about Paul Robeson. Um, he was robbed of his career, uh in a way that was grossly unfair and racist and sort of selectively targeted him among all the performers that were there. Um. So much of the criticisms that he made of the United States and of US foreign pole see and of racism in the United States was all totally valid, and in some cases saying it a lot more loudly and a lot more publicly than other people were doing at the time. Um. But then we get into his effusive praise of Joseph Stalin, and I'm like, what was going on here? Like, right, it undermines his entire message, Like, and there's so many different and it's all very speculative because like we just don't have his personal thoughts on it, noted anywhere, and I can just imagine so many different scenarios, but they're all my imagination. Right. Some of the stuff that he was saying in that House an American Activities Committee questioning, he was just clearly not participating, which honestly I applaud him for, right. Uh. But then like I'm like, were you just not going to participate when it came to things outside of that context when they're like there was no criticism of various atrocities that had happened in the Soviet Union, And I just I don't really know. And a lot of times that that, you know, like Rutgers has wanted to like more recognize his presence at the university and like how great of an athlete and a student and all of that he was, And sometimes they will be criticized of like you kind of skipped over the part about like the unwavering support of authoritarian dictators, which doesn't line up with a lot of the other stuff you're saying. And I just I have trouble puzzling it all out. Um. Yeah, I mean we can certainly theorize, which is easy to do. I mean, he, you know, in saying that he felt like he had been treated more equally when he was there, being really the like root of all of that kind of speaks volumes right, Like Yeah, in that regard, I could see where someone who was so dismayed at at what was going on back home either kind of having blinders about a thing or being so bought in that like your brain switches off the opportunity to really criticize it. Yeah, and he was for sure not the only person to visit the Soviet Union in the thirties and sort of see what the goal was, like what the like this idea that things were going to be more equitable, um and and really coming away with the what the ideal was. And then later on, as like the execution of that idea became in some ways horrifying, had to kind of go back and be like, oh, I I supported this earlier and now I have to really like revise my opinions. Um. And so yeah, there's there are some like very lengthy biographies of him that I did not get the opportunity to read for this because there's a finite amount of time. Uh, And people have sort of come to different conclusions about what what they think what they think his thought process or motivations were, and they don't always agree with each other. Um and will never know because we can't ask him. Yeah. Yeah, and just did not leave a lot of introspective writing on that subject. I mean a lot of publicly facing writing of things that he published, but not so much as his reflective inward thoughts on things. Yeah. Yeah, on the upside, it's fun to get to kind of call out Pete Seeger's progressive activism because I think people can forget sometimes, you know, as he's become like, you know, that oldies musician, he was really like, you're hitting a lot of stuff. Yeah. Um, I occasionally will think about doing an episode on pizzagre Um because like, there was a lot of stuff that he did that I think was really cool, and then there was also stuff that he did that I think was really problematic. And yeah, that's one of the reasons that like that's never like he's never really been formally on my short list of topics to cover, because, um, I just know going in that there's going to be so much that's gonna I'm gonna have similarly conflicted feelings on it. Well, that's kind of the danger of like viewing anyone as a hero or any organization as a hit. Right, There's nothing is as pure and clean and one sided and simple as we think. There's always messiness because we're humans. Yeah, Pizza Here did not live far from peak skill. It was only like fifteen or twenty miles away. One of the things we talked about was leaving the concert, like he needed to turn in direction to go to his house and the police would not let him go that way because they were funneling everybody during this It's kind of gauntlet of rock throwing men. That's scary. Yeah, yeah, no way to get out of it. Humans and their ability to hate others is never I should be jaded to it, and I never am. Yeah, I was like, how how did you go home at the end of that night and go like, m I'm gonna sleep great knowing I threw rocks at people who could not defend themselves. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, on that happy note, Fortunately, I'm n sure that this is gonna be a Monday episode. Um, and we put our behind the scenes in the same order of the episodes came out, So hopefully we're gonna have a little musical transition and an ad break and then maybe something happier or something HALLOWEENI I act really think might be. What's what's gonna be discussed next Bump Bump Bump, The Magic of Halloween Time Tracy. We talked about Johann George Schreff for this week. Yep, we're kicking off our Halloween Fund, which I always love. He's an interesting on ramp because I think most people recognize at this point that he was making it up, um, But it is a fascinating to me. It's a fascinating look at um global mentality at the time. Right. The one thing we didn't talk about. There are a few things we didn't talk about. One, he was only thirty six when he died. Um. I mean this really was a very fast right. Like he moved to Leipzig in sixty one, he would have been still quite young at that point. He got married, right, and and then you know he did this like I'm gonna run my little wine bar and my coffee house, and then suddenly he was like and mystical arts. Um. And that period of his life is really just a couple of years long, um. And it you know, he burns out rather spectacularly. I want to come back to that and why he might have burned out so spectacularly and so quickly. But the thing that we did not talk about we mentioned you know, this follows on the Seven Years War and all of that conflict. But was fascinating to me is that all of this is also going on at the same time that the colonies in North America are about to really really you know, that are digging in on their fight with England. Um. It just it's a bigger indicator. And that's of course related to the seven years ward, which we talked about, like both England and France trying to claim that they owned places that frankly already had people on them. Um, and that whole problem. But this is a time when the entire world, as people in Europe knew, it was just there was nothing they could predict. I think they probably felt like right, so it is sort of natural. Those are the moments when mysticism becomes very appealing to learn troups of people. Um, of course we don't know anything, but if I can learn mystical things, I'll know something. Um. There's like a weird comfort in it, and I think that's one of the things that that really does make things like this happened kind of in those little clumps. Going back to him blazing out rather quickly, we talked a little bit about him using intoxicants on his followers and one of the theories that some people have put forth and again, at this point, it's all theory. It's not like we can dig him up and do a talk screening. I never saw anything listing even where he would be laid to rest, like, I don't know if people know, um they might. But in any case, one of the things that came up that someone put forward that I thought was really interesting was the idea that if he was also potentially using intoxicants in the midst that he was projecting on, or just if there was anything in the burning of those you know, lamps, his magic lantern candles or whatever, he may have been slowly poisoning himself and causing his own mental deterioration, um, and how that might account for some of his like very quickly shifting but progressively weirder behavior um right there at the end. It's just an interesting way to consider it. Um. I The idea of having a coup over a Freemason lodge at gunpoint and people being like, yep, you're the new leader now is very weird to me. Yeah. That reminded me a little bit of our Alistair Crowley, Yes, and the Battle of Life road as that was what it was called. It reminded me a bit at that from I think last Halloween is when that was that seems correct. On a much later note, when I got to the section where it was talking about him calling forth Struancy and Brandt, I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite shows of all times, Home Movies, which I don't know if I've talked about on the show Befour have I probably because I love it so much. It's by uh Lauren Bouchard, who also did does Bob's Burgers Now, which is wildly popular, well deservedly um, and he did Dr Katz before that. But on Home Movies there's one episode where Coach McGurk, who is this kind of train wreck of a man who is a kid's soccer coach but also just a mess in a lot of delightful ways, and is voiced by John Benjamin, who now does the voice of Bob and Archer. If you watch that show, Um, he goes temporarily blind, he believes, because if I'm remembering correctly, he gets um lazic surgery by a not great lazy surgeon and it's only temporary, but he goes blind, and he believes that his senses have heightened in other ways and ends up faking that he is psychic and can conjure celebrities, and so it's like the very modern version of this where he like starts doing bad impersonations of John Wayne and um, you know other celebrities. And I just pictured then as I was thinking about that and reading about SHREP for SHREMP for doing really bad impersonations of struancy, and I was like, that would be very funny. Yeah, it would make a very good show that I would laugh and laugh at. Um. This is the only tangentially related. But when I was looking for artwork to go on our social media, I found one picture that when I found it was labeled as being this guy right doing one of his things. Um, but it was there. There are stock photo places that sometimes we'll have all of these what should clearly be public domain photos or public domain images that they're like trying to license for many um, and that was that one of those places that that I had found this photo labeled this way, and so I had been tracking it drowned trying to be like, okay, what is the original source on this, And it was actually an illustration of Kelliostro, who we've also done an episode, and I was like, wow, okay, interesting little circle there they are sometimes invoked together. And I wonder if you saw the same one I saw, which the caption made it seem like a strange chain of events. The caption read something in the one that I saw that was like Shrepford calling forth spirits before he runs into the woods to shoot himself, And like what was quite how that played out? But I mean, I guess, but the way it was written, it made it seem like he maybe got scared in the thing and ran into it. But there's a much longer chain of events, even on that that night that he did die. Um, so that was a weird one. And I as you said, it's very tricky to find pictures of him. You can find some of the links, but usually it's the older one. Um. Yeah, he's the He's interesting. I you know, I love a good Charlatan story. It's interesting to me. Here's where I find a kernel of redemption for shrip for versus some other Charlatan's. It seems like because he had called out the Minerva Lodge as taking money from members, that he was not doing that. But he was taking money from very rich people who bought into his scheme. Right, And so I'm a little less eager to judge him for being a charlatan because he wasn't exploiting people who were poor and desperate. Generally, to the best of my knowledge, that is a fine line to walk and certainly granular distinction of morality, but it makes his his weirdness a little easier to stomach. Um. We have so much more fun Halloween coming now, that's the best time of year. Yeah. The very next thing we're going to record has some common themes with this one, and then I have another one that's also a modern ish spiritualism story that will probably dovetail on both of these, among others. It's gonna be a fun month. If this is your weekend coming up, we hope that it is smooth as silk and that it is filled with whatever level of Halloween themed revelry want. I'm gonna eat candy corn. I know not everybody wants to, uh So I'll take years. If you don't want it, that's just fine by me. If you have responsibilities that are keeping you from fully engaging in revelry, I hope that that also goes very smoothly and that it's not too rough and that everything works as it should. Uh. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic and then more Halloween fun on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. 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