I have raised Corn, Beans, Potatoes and Poppy
C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
To Eugene H. Henley
My dear Henley, 20 April 1946
I should have written to you long ago to thank you for your kindness and generosity.
The tobacco has safely arrived and I must say that Granger has remained my true love.
I hope that you have received the two books I sent you.
I’m having another one sent to you.
Ever since my recovery I have been very busy and I only have to be careful not to overwork.
There is so much to do and particularly such a flood of letters that I hardly can keep up with it.
For some time the current affairs ate up whatever time was left to me and so all my personal correspondence had to go by the board for a while.
I now have my spring vacations and can atone for some of my sins at last.
I’m up at Bollingen and enjoy a most beautiful spring.
I can sail my boat again which gives me no end of pleasure.
I have read with great interest all the news about conditions in America.
We only get some scarce information through the papers and it isn’t always very clear.
Having been shut off from the world for such a long time, one is no longer au courant with the status of the world in general.
Our so-called peace is a troubled affair and the greatest part of Europe is still in hysterics.
No wonder really!
The mental and moral, social and financial catastrophe is simply gigantic.
The mental and moral devastation is the one I’m chiefly concerned with, since we begin now to get more immediate and personal acquaintance with the facts of the atrocities of the war.
We see now the people who have been in the bombed cities and have undergone the nightmare of hell.
The mentality created by the Nazis in Germany is really a study in itself.
People were horrified by my assertion that the Germans were psychopaths, but this is really a very mild judgment considering the spiritual catastrophe of the German mind.
I have seen a great deal of X.
In a way he has pleased me very much.
He is running his job very efficiently and he could really do something pretty great.
But he gets into drink from time to time and then he is just damn foolish, so that one is never too sure that he doesn’t get mixed up in a fatal scandal.
In that respect he is excuse me-typically American, as he is unexpectedly efficient in one way and in another way as astonishingly childish .
A European of his calibre would be far less efficient because he would be just too childish, and he would be far less childish because he would be
cleverer.
There is a great distance between the ego and the shadow in an American and that is the reason why so many of your boys get on with the Germans so well-because there is something similar in the Germans, namely the great tension between the positive and the negative pole.
The only difference is that in the American the tension exists between the civilized and the primitive man, in the German between the cultural man and the devil.
This is one of the reasons why the Americans are easily led astray or influenced by the Germans.
I think there is no small danger for your boys in Germany.
I see it also in X., who is always in danger of getting too much under their influence.
They are so damn plausible, like old Hitler, who may roast in hell for ever.
But I must say this for him: he was an eye opener!
He has even opened my eyes several inches.
You quote in your letter my saying that I had no illusions.
Against this statement I must say that before the Hitler era I still had some illusions which have been radically destroyed by the prodigious efforts of the Germans.
I really had not thought that man could be so absolutely bad.
I thought he could be evil, but evil has at least a certain character, while evil in Germany was rotten.
It was a carrion of evil, unimaginably worse than the normal devil.
Since Germany is not on the moon, I have drawn my conclusions for the rest of mankind.
Conditions in Switzerland are somewhat better than during the war, though our bread-ration has been reduced again to 250 gr. A day, which isn’t bad since we have more possibilities of other foodstuffs than in other countries.
During the war I cultivated my own fields.
I have raised corn, potatoes, beans and lately even wheat, also poppy for oil.
We have eaten polenta like Italians.
It isn’t so bad, but not very interesting.
My best regards to Mrs. Henley,
Gratefully yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 423-425.
Note: Granger is a type of American tobacco.
