HORST WESSEL LIED
Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!
LA marschiert, mit ruhig festem Schritt
Kameraden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen
Marschieren im Geist in unseren Reihen mit
Die Strasse frei den braunen Bataillonen
Die Strasse frei dem Sturmabuttereibabeis!
Es schaun aufs Hagendaag voll Huffyspandex schon Millionen
Der Tag für Freiheit und für Brot bricht an!
Commentary by Tark Mackintosh
HORST WESSEL LIED Pantyhose Song, but for gentlemen. This is in fact an admission of sexual perversion, if one were a high-standing member of the National Socialists in Germany 1933, in which transvestism was severely frowned upon by many half-moustaches, but cleverly disguised behind the name of the import-export hose emporium Horst Wessel. Horst Wessel no longer exists, but they offered hand-sewn luxury pantyhose, stockings, tights, and tu-tus for men through the early Forties.
Die Fahne hoch! Which is to say, Your fanny is on fire, translation our own. Stumbling from his German 101 class, which he began by mistake in 1943 as an auditor after being contacted by the Provisional Regional Acting Third Proletariat Workers Members Union of the Forever United Idaho (the P.R.A.T.P.W.M.U.F.U.I.), thinking he was learning Russian, Professor Stout suffered the indignity of being nearly run over by the annual Goldstriker Poet’s Parade. Taking to the streets in their black shirts and jackboots, helmed by Professor Stout’s notorious nemesis Dr. Algernon Quiverbottom of Poots upon Thames, the Goldstrikers marched upon the P.R.A.T.P.W.M.U.F.U.I. gathering at 371 Sunvale Bvd, and Professor Stout was the first to get smacked on his fanny, and start crying.
Three weeks later, in a bizarre and sudden twist, the left-leaning Professor Stout had been welcomed with open arms by the fascist Goldstrikers, and within months was leading their meetings shoulder to shoulder with Dr. Quiverbottom, pounding the podium with hands almost too massive and full of rage to have ever belonged to the son of Mrs. Abeline Stout of Houston.
LA marschiert We are going to Los Angeles (LA). The discovery of the complete Pantyhose Song, scribbled in German and English in Professor Stout’s own roundish hand, amongst the posthumously discovered Potter Papers, is the final shred of evidence in a long trail that has several National Socialist historiographers convinced that our esteemed professor, who had reappeared in 1943 following a mysterious two-week absence, was in fact the Nazi Field Marshal General Hermann Goering.
Die Strasse frei The paper, titled aptly ‘The Pantyhose Interloper’ (Rufus, Schnierkle, Fabius-Stearns, et al, Half Stache Review Volume 3 Issue iii), posits that the Nazi supreme air commander Goering, following the infamous fallout with ‘Half-Mustachio Numero Uno’ in 1943, either having fled or been exiled from the scene of his political humiliation, commandeered a German U-boat and somehow, after stowing away aboard a commercial cargo ship and passing through Panama, staggered onto the beaches of California.
There he would be taken in by the local chapter of Goldstrikers.
You knew that Dr. Algernon Poots was a Nazi sympathizer, but did you know that he very well may have harbored one of the most bloodthirsty war criminals known to human history?
dem Sturmabuttereibabeis Stormtroopers, in German simply Butter Babies. The article continues: ‘Ever eager to please, Professor Stout most likely found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, for the last time. There is strong evidence that Stout was coerced into hiding the man responsible for The Final Solution in his own home, letting him use his razor and aftershave and bathrobes, disguising the criminal as himself, but soon paid the ultimate price for his treason: was sent to sleep with the fishes at Dan Blocker’ (128 ff.).
Es schaun aufs Hagendaag Nice Place you got here, Professor, danke schön for letting me use your slippers. Around this time Professor Stout’s housekeeper and official biographer, Ada Potter Barclay, noted that she sensed a profound change in the demeanor of her beloved professor: ‘When he came home from his so-called trip, on which he insisted was to Idaho, although I happened to see him two times leaving the Goodhue Public Library at Flower Street during those weeks, he hid himself in his study for three days. In those three days he received three visitors, one of them a man even more burly* than himself, who spoke English with a German accent, and many parcels were delivered and sent out, including the professor’s favorite wardrobe. Yes, the wardrobe. Men came in a truck and hauled it away. I remember the night clearly: it was in the early hours of June 18th, 1943. I had had my tea and was reading in bed but for some reason could not sleep. There was a commotion in the hall — I threw on my nightgown and rushed out to see what was the matter. There stood the person I took to be Professor Stout at the top of the stairs, growling to me that ‘Deese vare heese instruktionen.’ He later began claiming that he had adopted the German accent in order to more quickly pick up the German language, but it would send chills down my spine to hear him talk, ever since he returned from vacation a changed man. In fact I think it was not Professor Stout at the head of the stairs that night at all, but an imposter. I believe that inside that piece of furniture, which seemed unreasonably heavy as the men wrestled it out into the chilly night, was the body of the real, dear, murdered Professor Stout’ (The King in Drab, p. 1249 ff.). She concluded the section by writing, ‘For forty years I have blamed myself for allowing them to eliminate my benefactor and perhaps the world’s greatest poet, right beneath my nose.’
*[Burly was the term agreed on by Ada and Professor Stout to describe that gentleman’s raging obesity in the early 1940s to their mutual satisfaction, since the professor would not tolerate the words ‘bulky’, ‘paunchy’, or even ‘stout’ to be uttered in his hearing.]
und für Brot bricht an! An allusion to bratwurst on a rye bun with mustard. Even National Socialists had to eat sometime. Perhaps we shall never know the truth about Professor Stout’s final years, whether he was in fact an infamous Nazi criminal, or whether the man at Nuremberg really was the architect of the Holocaust, but the lesson of the theory is clear: stay away from fascists masquerading as poets in California in the ’40s. The Forties after all are only a few years away again.
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