euram, tlozo, why don’t we agree to disagree and wait until, say next June, and then discuss whether Col. Douglas Magcregor’s prognosis and predictions were accurate. That is, if we all haven’t been obliterated in a full-scale atomic war by then.
Wow, how did you learn of Hiddigeigei? I first knew of him from Säckingen. When I was a young girl, my family lived in Switzerland for awhile, and we sometimes took day trips to Säckingen and Waldshut on weekends. We had a black tomcat at the time (whom I loved very much) and so of course I loved the sculpture of Kater Hiddigeigei.
I bought a charming little book of von Scheffel’s Der Trompeter von Säckingen in a second-hand bookshop; it had white cover embossed in silver and black. It seemed antique to me at the time, but could not have been all that old. I was still learning German, and the little book helped me in that as well as being entertaining. It’s hard to believe von Scheffel was only in his late twenties when he wrote it, isn’t it?
Anyway, nice to meet a fellow fan of Hiddigeigei!