12 september 2019

John Bjarne Grover

On 10 or 9 september 2001 I went down Mariahilferstrasse, down Raimundhof where I just peeped into the cafe before I continued down the stairs, took up left the street and stopped at the antiquariat there and looked in the exhibition window - where I saw an old and yellowed newspaper for sale. It was allegedly from 17 march 1917, just before the Fatima revelations and russian revolution - and with the success from my acquisition of Hitler's postcard in mind, I went in and bought it for 8 euros. It was called 'Kleine österreichische Volks-Zeitung'. But not much reading was needed before one discovered the possibility that it could be swindle of modern kind. I found what looked like evidence in a notice on the bottom of page 5, mid column:

If this were a real newspaper and not swindle, it should be in the historic archives - since the torpedoing of norwegian ships is not normal. I looked up internet and found the story of 'Ilana' from 5 march 1917 - just 12 days earlier - about the norwegian ship with 2021 tons of corn (german 'Mais' - not 'Maizena' - hungarian 'kukorica') bound for Vaksdal in Norway. That is a very small place (I think the Eidsvigs had something to do there) which could not consume such amounts, and the roads from Vaksdal in to Aalesund would be narrow and miserable at that time of the year. The ship was built in iron in 1882 and had been sold to a new owner in Larvik in november 1916, just a few weeks earlier, and when it sank at about 25.16N 50.12W, just outside the Caribbean, around the Bermuda triangle or the Sargasso Sea, it was well insured. A british ship Albanian from Liverpool (not Leverböf?) had helped them sink it with a cannonball since it would otherwise drift around in the mighty storm and would sink anyhow. If the norwegian story is true, the newspaper story from 1917 could be swindle built on this. I notice that 50.12N 25.16E is a place in Ukraine called 'Sestryatin' - not 'Stabburet'.

The reason why I was alerted as to possible 'fabrication' was from the column of apparent police reports, the mid column on page 8:

The story about the 'Trafikantin' who had been attacked by two 'Burschen' looked like my own story of the two 'avatars' - and if the story of the ship was swindle, this 'Trafikantin' story could have been built on my own story on internet, I reasoned.

The last page contains 'Kleiner Anzeiger' - a puzzling overweight of ads for shops who buy silk. The 'Stoffdieb' could have sold his booty there. I notice the relevance of Seidengasse with Literaturhaus at the intersection to 'Bandgasse' cp. 'Banda Aceh', at the playground where 'Barn' = 'children' are playing. Sendai could be the theme? Or simply my website generally?

The front page of the Zeitung tells that the russian 'Zar-en' had abdicated:

Here are some mentions of 'Haparanda' - on page 3 and page 8.

I have not made this newspaper. That I publish fragments of it here does not mean that it is permitted to publish fragments of the stolen notebooks with my poetic drafts. I made an 'Anzeige' on the theft of these notebooks at the police on 16 august 2019.



Some days ago I went to a shop ('zur Geschäft'? - not 'Sörkedalen') for buying food, including some 'Edamer' cheese. On the way I observed a woman sitting on a window sill talking in a mobile phone, and two blocks of houses further up exactly the same occurred again. This necessarily came to my mind when I approached the shop and a man with 'han-e-kam' passed right in front of me. In the following days there was some ado in other shops around so that it seemed that this was the only real choice. Could have been something else, though, than this 'Seidenkauf' in the newspaper.





© John Bjarne Grover
On the web 12 september 2019
Last updated 13 september 2019