A significant portion of Germany’s ball bearings were imported from Sweden in World War Two, and when the Allies had failed to make the neutral Swedes limit the export of the ball-bearings, they decided to attack bearing factories within Germany. Other than ball bearing factories, there was nothing of military significance in Schweinfurt. Unfortunately, Schweinfurt’s factories were very close to these residential areas because of the ancient lay of the town. Schweinfurt was attacked first on August 17, 1943. The Allies sent 230 bombers to attack the town, and they lost 36 planes and 341 men. They had just lost 24 bombers and 200 men from an attack on Regensburg the same day.

Reconnaissance photographs showed that only 3 of the 12 attack groups had bombed anywhere near the factories, and Schweinfurt’s production of ball-bearings was unaffected. The Allies attacked again on October 14, 1943, and lost 60 bombers and 639 men. While destructive, it was still not fatal to the ball bearing industry. For almost 1,000 Allied and hundreds of civilian lives lost so far in this one town, the Allies simply put a temporary slow down in Germany’s supply of ball bearings. The Allied High Command termed the losses as “acceptable,” glowingly reporting that the second mission, also resulting in tremendous loss of life, was a “huge success and utterly devastated the ball bearing manufacturing.” In reality, there was again not much of an impact at all upon ball bearing production.

By February 24-25, 1944, after the Allies had long-range escort fighters and German defenses were at minimum, 3,500 high explosive bombs and 33,000 incendiary bombs were dumped on the small city. In total, it was bombed 22 times by 2,285 British and American bombers during the war, with a final devastating attack on April 10, 1945, the day before the U.S. Army would take the city anyway.

7,933 tons of bombs were dropped on Schweinfurt in 592,598 individual bombs, or 65% of the total bombs dropped by the Allies on all bearing industry plants, and by the time this occurred, the ball bearing industry had been scattered anyway. By April 1945, after more than 20 bombing attacks in 18 months, Schweinfurt was left in ruins with half of the houses destroyed, the other half unlivable, four-fifths of the industrial buildings destroyed, and 1,079 civilians dead. The city’s population dropped by 50 percent due to deaths and departing refugees.

In 1815, he published ‘Napoleon, eine politische Komödie in drei Stücken’ (‘Napolean, a Political Comedy in Three Parts’) and in 1817, ‘Der Kranz der Zeit’ (‘The Wreath of the Times’). For a time, he worked for a newspaper in Stuttgart and travelled to Rome in 1818. Upon his return, he lived Coburg for several years. In 1822, he published a collection of poems, Östliche Rosen (‘Eastern Roses’), and in 1834-38, the six volume Gesammelte Gedichte (‘Collected Poems’). He was inspired by August Wilhelm von Schlegel. By 1826, Ruckert was a master of thirty languages and was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Erlangen, and then in Berlin in 1841. In 1849, he resigned in Berlin, and retired to his estate near Coburg. He died January 31, 1866.

Once famous world-wide, few people outside of Germany would recognize the name today. He was a prolific author and scholar, but also widely acclaimed as a translator of Oriental poetry and for his own poetry, some of which was created in the spirit of Oriental masters and included love songs and dramas. His impressive works Die Weisheit des Brahmanen (‘The Wisdom of the Brahmens’) was published in six volumes in 1836, but he is probably most famous for his 1844 cycle of love songs, Liebesfrühling (‘spring of Love’). Several collections of his numerous poetical translations and original poems were found after his death and published.

Among his Indian translations are complex works such as Nalopakhyana, the Amarusataka, the Raghuvamsa, and the Gita Govinda. Ruckert’s translations of the Gitagovinda and Brahmanische Erzaehlungen are prized as works of art. Friedrich Rückert was also known for his contribution to the art of Lieder, and he influenced most of the musicians of his day, including the Schumanns, Brahms and Schubert, all of whom composed the melodies to his poems. But Rückert was in terrible anguish when he wrote the 425 ‘Kindertotenlieder.’ Rückert had married Luise Fischer in 1820, and they had altogether ten children, of whom only seven outlived their parents. In December of 1833, his only daughter died of scarlet fever at the age of three, followed sixteen days later by his second youngest child, a son. Rückert wrote Kindertotenlieder in the six months after their deaths.

In Ruckert’s poem “Chidher,” above, an eternally youthful wanderer returns every half millennium to the same place, each time encountering a completely transformed landscape. A town turns into to a pasture and then to a lake, the lake to a forest and then to a city. Yet, whenever Chidher asks one of the local inhabitants what has happened to the past environment, he always receives the same answer: “What’s here has always been here and will always remain.” It would be proved wrong.