0:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever gotten so fed up with society that you wanted to put all of your stuff in a sailboat and leave the world behind? 0:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever become so frustrated with the policies of your government that you wanted to declare yourself a sovereign nation of one? 0:23 [SPEAKER_00]: You could name your country anything you'd like, you could make up your own flag, and your own passport, and you could travel as a diplomat on behalf of yourself with no 0:36 [SPEAKER_00]: You could walk away from the paperwork, the endless paperwork of modern life, and use all of your energies on living your life and doing the things that matter the most. 0:48 [SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever felt any of this, you have a kindred spirit and George Diverne, who actually did it, all of it. 0:56 [SPEAKER_00]: He created a passport, you need to himself, which was accepted and stamped in San Francisco. 1:03 [SPEAKER_00]: He had a flag and his own personal diplomatic policies, and, of course, he had a cell boat. 1:10 [SPEAKER_00]: He named it, Tayra Ponga, 1:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Taylor Ponger remains a cultural artifact of some significance and is currently being restored to its original condition by craftsmen in Tasmania, Australia. 1:27 [SPEAKER_00]: To learn more about George, I connect it with private scholar Erica Grundman, who has literally written the book on the staring and singular figure. 1:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It's called Dark Sun and the first 400 pages, at least, are terrific. 1:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll finish it soon, and I highly recommend it. 1:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Erica's connection with Deborah is grounded in his ideals and moral convictions. 1:56 [SPEAKER_00]: But years before she encountered him, it was a family tragedy that had prepared her to appreciate someone like George. 2:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Somewhere along the nine, there was a family tragedy our daughter died, so my husband and I began to think of 2:16 [SPEAKER_01]: who needed a nine to five jobs. 2:18 [SPEAKER_01]: It was more to life than that. 2:20 [SPEAKER_01]: So we ended up buying our property on Cortez Island and decided to retire earlier rather than later. 2:30 [SPEAKER_01]: So we both quit our jobs and came up to Cortez Island in 1994. 2:34 [SPEAKER_01]: We did it to be here permanently. 2:38 [SPEAKER_01]: But before then, we were coming up weekend and we were having dinner with friends. 2:44 [SPEAKER_01]: The person was Danish. 2:46 [SPEAKER_01]: She just taken a writing workshop and the question arose when you start writing and you'd be productive in a language that isn't your mother tongue. 2:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And there was discussion. 2:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you write well in a language that's not your mother tongue? 3:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And they came up with a book, and they said we spoke a book written by a German in English. 3:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a fabulous book. 3:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And this was George Giverns book. 3:12 [SPEAKER_01]: They said, we will not let it out of our house because we had such a hard time finding a copy. 3:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I thought, oh no problem. 3:20 [SPEAKER_01]: I would find when in Victoria, not to use bookstores. 3:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And I looked at them up and couldn't find a copy of Quest until one day an article bookstore that I heard of towards men too, I've always meant to use book. 3:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I think Sherry Ferrell had something to do with the writing of it. 3:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, who is Sherry Ferrell? 3:41 [SPEAKER_01]: sailors, boat builders, on the coast of E.C., and she said she had something to do with the writing of the book, George's book. 3:50 [SPEAKER_01]: So I randomly wrote, she said she had helped get it, and no she didn't know where I could get a copy, but anytime you know, come and visit. 4:01 [SPEAKER_01]: So we did that, and turned out she had a copy of a essay, 4:11 [SPEAKER_01]: I've written a glowing article about Georgia's book quest. 4:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder, what does the illustrious Ememeller have to do with this guy from the book I can't find? 4:23 [SPEAKER_01]: So I started looking for the repositories of Ememeller's papers and found in UCLA, 79 pieces of correspondents from Georgia to Henry Miller. 4:41 [SPEAKER_01]: and one thing led to an answer in the person who was putting together his biggest benefit, his legacy, of Miller's work. 4:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Actually, sent me 250 pages worth of photocopies, Georgia had written to Henry, and on reading those letters, I thought I've got to dig something with this. 5:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And that started 10 years of research into George different slides. 5:11 [SPEAKER_01]: 544 pages in the biography, he was way ahead of his time, not one of the reasons he connected so well with Henry Miller. 5:23 [SPEAKER_01]: He was a principal, action's work, and his personal conscience, where our hearts are judged of the actions and any court of law. 5:34 [SPEAKER_01]: So he went on a voyage of self-discovery and ended up 5:38 [SPEAKER_01]: realizing that he had outgrown nationality and as a result, he created his own passport, declaring himself a citizen of the world. 5:50 [SPEAKER_00]: You can find an image of the passport Erica's referring to on our website. 5:55 [SPEAKER_00]: It reads, I, George Diburn, through long years in different countries and sincere friendship with many people in many lands feel my place to be outside of nationality, a citizen of the world and a friend of all peoples. 6:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I recognize the divine origin of all nations, and therefore their value in being as they are, respect their laws, and feel my existence solely as a bridge of good fellowship between them. 6:24 [SPEAKER_00]: This is why, on my own ship, I fly my own flag, why I have my own passport, and so place myself without other protection under the good will of the world. 6:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Deborah's flag also appears in this passport and has an encircled red cross in the center, with a blue star in the top left corner. 6:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Like everything George did, the flag was highly symbolic. 6:50 [SPEAKER_00]: He explained it like this. 6:52 [SPEAKER_00]: My flag has a white ground with a red cross of St. George cutting a dark blue circle, and in the upper left hand corner is a blue star. 7:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The white stands for equal rights, not equality, but equal rights for men to evolve, each according to his individuality. 7:10 [SPEAKER_00]: on this right, the human world stands or falls. 7:15 [SPEAKER_00]: The dark blue circle stands for the brotherhood of man. 7:18 [SPEAKER_00]: For though we fight like brothers we must grow a loyalty to our one family if we are to survive. 7:25 [SPEAKER_00]: On top of the circle of brotherhood lies the red cross of freedom and of pain. 7:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It is through freedom to experience and the pain experience brings that we learn. 7:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The blue circle also represents a planet, like the earth, which receives its light from the sun, as we have received our light from God. 7:47 [SPEAKER_00]: But I believe that God is within each of us, and that our aim should be to be conscious of Him, to become a self-shining light as star. 7:58 [SPEAKER_00]: So, the star in the corner represents my aim. 8:02 [SPEAKER_00]: It is a blue star, because I try to become a brother 8:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Now when I tell you where and when George lived, when he rejected his own nation and committed his life, to preaching the brotherhood of all men, this will all start to make more sense. 8:19 [SPEAKER_00]: May a lot more sense. 8:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It was 1940, and it was Nazi Germany. 8:31 [SPEAKER_00]: The powerful German army had just annexed Austria, and steamrolled Poland in a matter of weeks. 8:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It looked unstoppable. 8:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Prussian leadership had spent the 1930s secretly rearming Germany for vengeance. 8:48 [SPEAKER_00]: After this surrender of the first World War, the treaty of Versailles had banned the country from rearmament. 8:55 [SPEAKER_00]: but they did it anyway, and by the time of their mid-century revenge tour, no nation in the world was more prepared for the bloodiest war in human history. 9:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Roughly 75 million people would die, and George wanted no part of it. 9:12 [SPEAKER_00]: He viewed the racist violent government of his nation as a crime against humanity. 9:18 [SPEAKER_00]: A number of German heroes, Dietrich Bonhofer, and Frans Jager Stater, defied the Nazis in other ways, through objection. 9:28 [SPEAKER_00]: in assassination attempts, Deborah took a different approach. 9:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He disowned his nation and left it behind in every way that he knew. 9:39 [SPEAKER_01]: He had the courage to create his own flag, representing his principles and views. 9:46 [SPEAKER_01]: At a time when any German vessel was in fact decreed in 1933, 9:56 [SPEAKER_01]: national flag. 9:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he had to courage to take a stand and his family suffered because of that. 10:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell me how they suffered? 10:07 [SPEAKER_01]: He failed away leaving a wife and three young daughters for one day. 10:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And he felt that they would be better looked after by friends and the state and he decided 10:23 [SPEAKER_01]: to take a soul which in Mari means art son, the third step in the creation myth, and he would try and become a bridge of friendships. 10:35 [SPEAKER_01]: He would take people sailing because he felt that they met on one-to-one basis. 10:42 [SPEAKER_01]: They would build an understanding of each other 10:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So he did this and created his flag and the Nazi party in Auckland reported this to the headquarters in Berlin. 10:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So when he got to Vancouver, there was a movement on the part of the Nazi party here in connection with the headquarters in Berlin to divest him of the citizenship and thereby forcing him to return to Germany. 11:18 [SPEAKER_01]: and threatened, she, in fact, wrote to George Ryak, the French and Susan Brands, to say, do not come back to Germany, or else they will put you into concentration camps. 11:32 [SPEAKER_01]: He was twice interned in New Zealand, first world war, when he was a young man. 11:38 [SPEAKER_01]: But then again, in 1941, when he returned to New Zealand, 11:47 [SPEAKER_01]: and they described him as a spy, not a spy, sales lively, in support they said in English on a 32 foot cell phone, no motor, no radio, no communication, equipment, nothing, but they were so intimidated by the fact that that German had arrived with his own flag and his asphalt. 12:12 [SPEAKER_01]: With a lot of propaganda, I mean, in New Zealand, 12:17 [SPEAKER_01]: even naturalized citizens were put into internment camp, naturalized German, a pretty safe German people, naturalized in Israel were put into internment camp. 12:30 [SPEAKER_00]: George wrote a book called Quest, which is an interesting readle in its own right. 12:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The author and remellar, whose work introduced me to Debra in years ago, was his 12:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was basically the description of the four and years that he spent aboard his 32 foot wooden sailboat with an eclectic crew. 12:59 [SPEAKER_01]: He had his nephew with him because he owned the nephew money and he promised him he'd take him wherever he wanted to go. 13:06 [SPEAKER_01]: They sailed across the Atlantic through the Panama Canal and his devastating straight down to Missouri. 13:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go up to Los Angeles through the Olympic Games. 13:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And that was the period that he wished to describe all his adventures is using self-goat. 13:26 [SPEAKER_01]: He was enjoying himself. 13:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And yet, he knew that he could never go back to Germany. 13:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And but also tempered with his bit of guilt without having left his family behind. 13:45 [SPEAKER_00]: the books so poorly. 13:47 [SPEAKER_00]: in George, living as he did, struggled to collect any royalties. 13:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Erica has written the introduction to the new edition, which was released in 2008, and you can buy it on her website, GeorgeDiburn.com. 14:03 [SPEAKER_00]: This edition, like earlier editions, includes a forward by Henry Miller, and it was the connection with Miller that drew Erica into Diburn's life, as it did myself and so many others. 14:17 [SPEAKER_00]: While you were researching and finding all this information about George, was there anything that you learned that was surprising to you? 14:25 [SPEAKER_01]: The most surprising thing was, of course, the connection with and remorse, because not actually ended up visiting George's wife in Germany. 14:37 [SPEAKER_01]: She wrote letters to him after the war in 1946 with the years after the war of 14:47 [SPEAKER_01]: phone packages, he sent, he needed a typewriter and he arranged for that right down to undergarments, underwear. 14:59 [SPEAKER_01]: If you can imagine how difficult that would be as a proud person to humble oneself that stuff to ask for things like that. 15:08 [SPEAKER_01]: So the Henry Miller's connections are which is what got me started in the first place. 15:13 [SPEAKER_01]: But to see the depth in the intensity 15:17 [SPEAKER_01]: and how he wrote his form of thought, Henry Miller wrote to him as a brother, those were Miller's words, so they connected immediately. 15:29 [SPEAKER_00]: However, you feel about Miller, and he's certainly polarizing, his friendship with Diveron was a lovely chapter of his life. 15:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Their relationship almost sounds like that of a missionary being supported in the global mission field. 15:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And indeed, this is sort of what was happening. 15:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Deborah and Miller shared a world view, a common free spirit, and Deborah and carried it for Miller around the globe. 15:55 [SPEAKER_00]: But all Miller really asked and returned, was that Deborah live freely, authentically, and continued his defiant protest of bad governments and conventional society. 16:07 [SPEAKER_01]: He was basically a couple of years younger than George. 16:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, he was notorious in the States' works where considered obscene, but if I bit, of course, this time passed, the censorship law changed. 16:21 [SPEAKER_01]: And Miller has written a lot of really interesting essays. 16:26 [SPEAKER_01]: He's better known for his property of cancer, properties of Capricorn, the books 16:35 [SPEAKER_01]: not allowed to appear in the state. 16:37 [SPEAKER_01]: She also wrote things like the pilot, the port of the letter, and then later years before he died, he was well recognized. 16:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And people are still reading his essay. 16:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Young people, whenever they order a copy of my book, I had to say 75% of the time it's because they read and remember his essay about so much difference. 17:01 [SPEAKER_00]: If you remember our episode on Emperor Norton, you'll note that Diburn died in an uncannoy, similar manner. 17:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Quietly on the city's cyborg. 17:11 [SPEAKER_01]: K. died in the streets of Auckland of a heart attack. 17:15 [SPEAKER_01]: A new e-head art problem study refused to get involved with medication or anything. 17:18 [SPEAKER_01]: And felt well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well 17:30 [SPEAKER_01]: walking around the state to go and post a letter to his wife, which was stated, the day after he died, which was rather intriguing. 17:41 [SPEAKER_01]: He died in the street of the heart attack, and it was in Auckland. 17:45 [SPEAKER_01]: He was in the process of preparing the boat, and people were kind of wondering whether the boat was in 17:54 [SPEAKER_01]: whether his health was good enough for him to go, so some people considered enablessing that he went quickly about heart attack, but he would not have been able to live again in Germany or live with his wife or anything like that, he had changed too much and changed as well. 18:13 [SPEAKER_01]: But it was a simple mess. 18:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to do an episode of George because I find him inspiring, and his idealism, and also in his simplicity. 18:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't an intellectual, so much as he was a simple man with clear thoughts and a strong conscience. 18:31 [SPEAKER_00]: He was a philosopher in the sense that all of us are. 18:36 [SPEAKER_00]: We wish the world was a better place than it is, and we want to improve it in some small way. 18:42 [SPEAKER_00]: He had his limitations and his faults, but he did something extraordinary. 18:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I certainly don't love the fact that he left his family, but I don't know the details of that relationship, and I'm in no position to judge him. 18:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I love that he spoke out against injustice, and launched what was perhaps the strangest protest of his Nazi government during its brief reign of terror. 19:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And Miller, a misfit in his own right, was a friend who relentlessly championed his brother. 19:15 [SPEAKER_00]: There's something redeeming about that too. 19:19 [SPEAKER_00]: All of us should have some place in our lives where we put our money, where our mouth is, and invest time and money in people we love and believe it, without any personal reward. 19:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And we should also accept the generosity of the people that love us freely, as dividend. 19:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Both the American writer and the German sailor have something to teach us in this regard.
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