Mohn Lied

or

Deutsches Requiem für Brüder

Professor Ludwig Von Drake gazed out of his laboratory's window, smiling. The untamed blue expanse of the sky crashed against the idyllic white shores of exploding clouds, aery spirits beholden first to the golden breath of the sun—an opera testifying in gales and whispers to the wonder of nature's interplay; and it all occurred in front of him daily, requesting only that he cast his gaze upward toward heaven (something the Professor did every day of his life).

Through this violent threnody of the sky's intercourse, the Professor was somehow able to find peace amidst the chaotic scene in his lab. His benefactor, Scrooge McDuck, was having a shouting match with his intemperately tempered nephew Donald, and the four children they'd brought to tour the operations at the facility were only adding to the noise. One of the boys—the red one—was arguing with the girl, Webbigail (with whom Von Drake had a passing acquaintance), and the other two boys were providing running commentary to either argument, to their own amusement and theirs only.

"Professor Von Drake! You are… a man of science!" Huey wrung his red cap in his hands, addressing the amused old Austrian before him as though some great oration were to follow. As Webby crossed her arms, frustrated with her friend's obstinate skepticism, Huey continued, "Please explain to Webbigail," he pointed at her, "the physical infeasibility of a thousand-pound dragon's wings beating fast enough to displace the air required for it to achieve lift-off."

"Well," the Professor began, rubbing his beak with one hand and land looking up, "I suppose I could spend a few minutes modelling the endothermic metabolic rates of a megalithic pterosaur, which would of course be predicated on it's greater anatomical structure and substructure," he looked down at Huey, "and theorize on the practical ability of this creature to flap its wings until it flies away, hopefully without its blood boiling until the head explodes." Ludwig glanced over at Webby, smirking, and said, "Or… I could examine the subtext of this question, and realize it's not an inquiry into the physical processes of zoological phenomenon, but the latest product in a series of squabbles between friends over cynicism in the guise of rationality."

"You're right, Professor Von Drake," Webby began, smiling as she sensed vindication of the horizon. "It is!" she continued, before being interrupted by Huey's hand getting pressed into her face.

"But surely, Professor, it's better to be open-minded but skeptical, than to believe everything you hear just because you heard it," Huey pleaded.

The Professor set his arms akimbo and bent over slightly, looking at the duckling, "I think that, if you were truly scientific and open-minded, you wouldn't practice this ad hoc, selective skepticism." Ludwig stood up straight, adjusting his spectacles and again looked up, saying, "The originators of philosophical academic skepticism—that is, the philosophers of the middle academy, who studied the magician Pyrrho's ideas on the subject of ideas, believed that the only knowledge that could be known was the knowledge that no knowledge could be known!" exclaimed Von Drake, waddling over to face his white board and flipping it over. "That is, of course, disregarding the Platonic ideas on the nature of opinion and it's ability to come nearer to truth or falsehood, but that doesn't detract from my argument in this instance," prattled the Professor, scribbling some shapes and greek letters on the board as Huey and Webby looked confusedly at one another.

"Ask Feyerabend, he'll tell you!" continued Von Drake, "If he weren't dead, I mean, that there is no universal methodological rule that might lead to an objective understanding of the universe, and that science is just a puerile attempt to reach an answer without all the relevant information—and is really no better at grasping any hypothetical physical truth than myth or magic." The Professor stopped writing and turned back toward the ducklings to show what he'd drawn on the board: a series of Euclidean geometrical objects and abstract algebraic formulae meant to illustrate their individual topological structures. "Even mathematics, regarded by Aristotle to be the first science, and by modern scholarship to be all that has any business being real, is only a quantical approximation of a vague, subjective reality—if it can even be called a reality!"

Around the time Professor Von Drake finished his epistemological spiel, Webby had an amazed and intrigued expression plastered on her face, and Huey looked terrified.

"B-but, Professor!" Huey put his cap back on and held it down, "That's not a very scientific thing to say!"

"Oh, you little rutabaga, it's one of the most scientific things I've ever said! It's superscientific!" exacted the Professor, intentionally getting a little carried away, before Scrooge (seemingly finished arguing with his nephew) called the children to come finish the tour of the facility. Huey and Webby thanked Von Drake and stepped out of the laboratory with Donald as Mr. McDuck strutted up to the Professor.

"Thank you for your time, Ludwig, I know it's valuable." Scrooge said, shaking the Professor's hand before leaving to join his family. Von Drake hobbled over to his desk to resume his paperwork, throwing himself in a heap on the finely upholstered chair. He found it difficult, however, after the excitement, and couldn't help but to stare at the black math on the whiteboard. Resting his enormous, dolichocephalic head on one hand, he pondered those halcyon days when he first began to meditate on the mystery of epistemics. A few minutes passed, and with his eyes still fixed on the glyphs he'd scrawled, he began to mumble,

"It is not the percept… which is described by these models, vectors and variables, but the perception. Do you understand, Ludwig?" asked Wilhelm. "They only symbolize an approximate, subjective reality via the illusion of phenomenal quantity and proportion," Wilhelm pointed at the white chalk drawings he'd made on Ludwig's blackboard.

"That isn't a terribly scientific way to look at things, Wilhelm," Ludwig teased. Wilhelm had become a very good friend to him, and a mentor, since their days working together began. Around this time every morning, before research would seriously begin, the two of them would sit in Ludwig's laboratory and discuss matters of the universe. They came from very disparate backgrounds, socially and intellectually, but became good friends once they'd discovered one-another's gifts.

"Unbelievable!" screamed Wilhelm, oblivious to his friend's sarcasm, "In the year nineteen-hundred and thirty-nine, that this man to whom I've been giving all my secrets cannot look passed these, these vulturous prejudices!" Wilhelm was easily riled, and given to sudden (if predictable) emotional outbursts when it came to his ideas.

"Calm Down! You loon! I'm only teasing you," Ludwig interrupted Wilhelm's tirade, as he often had to, and it calmed him down almost immediately. Doctor Wilhelm Vanderquack was a strange duck, unable to interact with most people at any social capacity, and Ludwig often wondered how he got along before he met him. Ostensibly, Wilhelm was a fellow physicist—but from what Ludwig had been able to gather, Wilhelm previously worked as a stage illusionist, scraping by performing feats of prestidigitation at children's parties, but in secret was a different kind of magician; a great student of ancient philosophy and mathematics, and also a dabbler among the so-called occult sciences. "And don't start throwing around insults like 'vulturous', some people take that kind of thing seriously," finished Von Drake.

"Well, I'm sorry, Ludwig, but it is vulturous," Wilhelm crossed his arms, pouting, "It is vulturous to try and sow the seeds of discord against two arts which should work harmoniously—for the glory of Deutschland, you know." Around the early thirties, the secret police picked up Wilhelm in Berlin on suspicion of masonic involvement. But, upon learning of his aspergic genius and occultic proclivities, the Reich set Wilhelm to work as a mystic—but what that entailed, Ludwig could never ascertain.

Ludwig chuckled, "Oh please, Wilhelm, don't start about Deutschland. You're a Nederlander-"

Wilhelm pointed at his compatriot, "I'm a Norman! Frisian on my mother's side, which is where-"

" Vanderquack! " Ludwig retorted, amid Wilhelm's protests that it's not Dutch, but a nobleman's name, "And I'm an Austrian, so keep the Deutschland talk for the soldaten." Ludwig always saw himself as being above the Reich's 'warrior caste', although technically an SS man himself, but never doubted that they all worked singularly toward the same ultimate goal—the strange and glorious new aeon he often romanticized more than any military man (in private, of course).

"Well, we are both brothers in the Anatid race, Ludwig, under the new order—the Deutsch Reich. And we work for the common weal—nay, the edification of all mankind! Under this sign, 'in hoc signo vinces,' the crooked cross ! O, Constantine !" proclaimed Wilhelm, before going off

on a tangent of ideological rhetoric punctuated with ancient greek and ecclesiastical latin phrases, which Ludwig largely ignored.

Wilhelm, despite his general adherence only to the great philosophers of yore, was a great admirer of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Spengler—and as such was a great believer in nazist soteriology, and consequently a proponent of phenomenal amoralism to accomplish a greater good. He was always the first, between the two, to reiterate to everyone the necessity of the empire's acts against the unrighteous.

Ludwig was himself also an admirer of all the great German existentialists but, having been raised a catholic, was not prepared to renounce every idea he'd come to possess on the nature of good and evil as they existed on earth—but was more than prepared to concede that extreme sacrifices must be made to come closer to the absolute good, as it must exist in heaven, even if it meant the commission of earthly evils.

"That is true, Wilhelm!" said Ludwig Von Drake a little loudly, interrupting Wilhelm's prognostications. "It is true, that we are brothers," Ludwig grinned at his friend and grabbed one of Wilhelm's hands, which hung gesticulating in the air during his disjointed, but majestic sermon. Ludwig pulled the other duck into a hug and kissed either cheek in the Austrian fashion, before pushing him away and saying, "Now! We must attend the morning's roundtable and set to work soon; are you prepared?"

Doctor Ludwig Von Drake was the head of a secret research and development team stationed in the 'ruins' of castle Gossweinstein in the foreboding hills of Bavaria, southeast of Bamberg. There, he'd direct the talents of several chemists, physicists and every variety of engineer toward whatever goal the Reich mandated. Such operations were not necessarily common, but highly organized and numerous. Each of these missions were tempered by the esoteric knowledge of each operation's resident occultist, hand-picked by the powers that be to both aid the research and also balance the power of each team's director. In Ludwig's case, fortunately, this wizard came in the form of Wilhelm Vanderquack, (who was fond of calling himself a superscientist rather than an occultist), and like all mystics in his position was outfitted with a putative doctorate in physics from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (the same school Ludwig actually attended , possessing a diploma signed by Professor Einstein himself).

Most of the relationships between directors and occultists devolved into petty squabbles and power plays which ultimately hindered any given operation, and resultantly harmed the Reich; but Ludwig and Wilhelm had something special, seeing each other as brothers and understanding one another enough that they could translate their ideas from science to mysticism and vice-versa using the underlying philosophical principles. Over the years, Ludwig came to comprehend physics through a more epistemic and ontological lense, thanks to Wilhelm's mentorship; and Wilhelm learned to render his ideas on reality through the symbolism of modern mathematics, and really came to resemble something of a physicist under Ludwig's tutelage.

"I am prepared, Brother Ludwig!" affirmed Wilhelm, recovering from his friend's theatrical act of affection and giving him the roman salute. This was a bizarre little game they'd sometimes play, that kind of charade endemic to close friendship, where Ludwig and Wilhelm would pretend to be worked up into frenzies, exaggerating their own mannerisms so as to seem ridiculous. This was especially easy to do under the pretext of being overly patriotic Germans (while never betraying or undermining the essential ideals, of course.) "Gott mit uns! Herr Ludwig!"

Ludwig threw off his spectacles, continuing the little show. "Ha! Wunderbare!" He slammed his fist against the window jamb, and turned to peer out of his laboratory to the castle courtyard below, where the schutzstaffel men assigned to the operation were gathering. "Wunderbare, Brother Wilhelm!" he continued, a little less forcefully, and looked up to see his own reflection in the window pane, with Wilhelm behind him, goose-stepping and screaming the libretto to Deutschland uber alles for comedic effect. Ludwig laughed, and then he smiled, but his eyes were drawn back to his reflection, almost hypnotically.

Ludwig stared at his reflection for awhile, mesmerized, and then the youthful grin, the surety of purpose, the hope for a new dawn, it all began to fade away and scatter—like daylight through some terrible prism, it all scattered and gave way to it's barest elements, before decaying. His skin wrinkled, his hair greyed, his gaze dimmed and his smile faded until, finally, he beheld his aged physiognomy through milky-white cataracted eyes.

Worst of all, the scene of two young men, two true friends, became a tragic portrait of one old man, alone.

Professor Von Drake looked up at the sky, the brilliant cacophony of nature's minglings now reduced to a homogenous sheet of grey, overcast clouds. He turned to look behind him, but could not even see Wilhelm's ghost. Ludwig hung his head, and tried to remember if his brother ever spoke of heaven.