German novelist
(Bruno Traven in some accounts, born 23 February 1882 in Schwiebus, died 26 March 1969 in Mexico City) was the pen name of a presumably German novelist, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. One of the few certainties about Traven's life is that he lived for years in Mexico, where the majority of his fiction is also set—including (1927). The film adaptation of the same name won three Academy Awards in 1948.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Pen Names:
Robert Bek-gran
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Hal Croves
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Ret Marut
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Richard Maurhut
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Traven Torsvan
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Fred Gaudet
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Fred Mareth
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Bruno Marhut
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Red Marut
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Rex Marut
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Robert Marut
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Fred Maruth
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Goetz Öhly
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Anton Raderscheidt
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Wilhelm Scheider
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Jacob Torice
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B. T. Torsvan
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Berick Traven Torsvan
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Traves Torsvan
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Heinrich Otto Becker
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Adolf Rudolf Feige
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Herman Albert Otto Max Feige
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Otto Feige
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T. Torsvan
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Otto Wienecke
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Bruno Traven
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Albert Otto Max Wienecke
Alternative Names:
Torsvan
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Berick Torsvan
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Bernhard Traven Torsvan
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Torsvan Croves
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Traven
From Wikidata (CC0)
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The class I belong to always has to wait and wait, stand long nights and days in long files to get a cup of coffee and a slice of bread. Everybody in the world, official or boss, takes it for granted that our sort of people have ages, of time to waste. It is different with those who have money. They can arrange everything with money. Therefore they never have to wait. We who cannot pay with cold cash have to pay with our time instead. Suppose you get sore at the official who lets you wait and wait, and you say something about the citizen’s right it won’t help you a bit. He then lets you wait ten times longer, and you never do it again. He is the king. Do not forget that. Don’t ever believe that kings were done with when the fathers of the country made a revolution.
There is no getting used to pain and suffering. You become only hard-boiled, and you lose a certain capacity to be impressed by feelings. Yet no human being will ever become used to sufferings to such an extent that his heart will cease to cry out that eternal prayer of all human beings: "I hope that my liberator comes!" He is the master of the world, he who can make his coins out of the hope of slaves.
Why passports? Why immigration restriction? Why not let human beings go where they wish to go, North Pole or South Pole, Russia or Turkey, the States or Bolivia? Human beings must be kept under control. They cannot fly like insects about the world into which they were born without being asked. Human beings must be brought under control, under passports, under finger-print registrations. For what reason? Only to show the omnipotence of the state, and of the holy servant of the state, the bureaucrat. Bureaucracy has come to stay. It has become the great and almighty ruler of the world. It has come to stay to whip human beings into discipline and make them numbers within the state. With foot-printings of babies it has begun; the next stage will be the branding of registration numbers upon the back, properly filed, so that no mistake can be made as to the true nationality of the insect. A wall has made China what she is today. The walls all nations have built up since the war for democracy will have the same effect. Expanding markets and making large profits are a religion. It is the oldest religion perhaps, for it has the best-trained priests, and it has the most beautiful churches; yes, sir.
The worker who has a job feels superior to a worker who is without one. Workers are not at all as chummy toward each other as some people think when they see them marching with red flags to Union Square and getting noisy about a paradise in Russia. Workers might have a big word in all affairs were it not for the middle-class ideas they can't shake off. The one who makes the delicate parts of an engine feels superior to the man who stands before a lathe making bolts by the ten thousand. And the man at the lathe feels superior to the poor Czech who gathers up the scraps from the floor and carries them in a wheelbarrow to the back-yard.
[After the war] The governments thought it wiser, finally, to make up again. Time had come when all governments were convinced it would be cheaper and more profitable to talk peace and wait for a better chance. The burglars and gangsters sat down to an elegant peace-banquet. The workers, and the little plain people of all countries, had to pay the damages that is, the hospital bills, the funeral expenses, the tombs for unknown soldiers, and the bills for all the banquets and conferences which left everybody in the world, save the hotel-owners, exactly where they had been before. And all those little people, who had, not profits, but all the losses and all the deaths, were now allowed to wave flags and handkerchiefs at the victorious armies coming back covered with glory and everlasting fame.
One becomes a philosopher [...] by living among people who are not of his own race and who speak a different language [...] A trip to a Central American jungle to watch how Indians behave near a bridge won't make you see either the jungle or the bridge or the Indians if you believe that the civilization you were born into is the only one that counts. Go and look around with the idea that everything you learned in school and college is wrong.
I am not waiting for unity; because I am unity. / I'm not waiting for the crowd; because I am the crowd. / I'm not waiting for the revolution; because I am the revolution. / Before the revolution is, the revolutionary must be! / Before the mass is, the individual must be! / Before there is unity, the one must be the same! / The word must be before the shouting and the slogan can be.