Borges and Weidenau

March 21, 2019 by joachim

I was for the first time in Buenos Aires, home of Borges and his world of infinite mirrors. Reading a book on Borges on the plane, I discovered that among all his invented characters he may have picked from the world map, there is a Julia von Weidenau. Weidenau/Sieg (later gobbled up and denigrated to a mere suburb by the larger town of Siegen) is my home town. Weidenau has never been the seat of a feudal lord, so the construct of a Julia von Weidenau is quite fantastic, and in keeping with Borges’ habitual transcendance of reality. Quite the contrary, Weidenau was the proud home of Friedrich Flender, a blacksmith who defied the feudal lords of Nassau/Orania in refusing to pay newly imposed taxes. He was imprisoned, and finally executed. From then on, his name lived on as one of the local freedom fighters. The elementary school I attended was named after him just a few years after I left it for high school.

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