In Popular Culture
Von Lettow-Vorbeck appears in a 1993 episode of the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. The episode, which was titled "The Phantom Train of Doom", begins with Indiana Jones as an officer in the Belgian Army during World War I. Determined to destroy a Schutztruppe armored train, Indiana takes General von Lettow-Vorbeck (Tom Bell) hostage and attempts to return with him to Allied lines. When the Schutztruppe tracks them down, Indy draws his revolver in order to shoot the general, but ultimately decides to let him go. The general magnanimously gives him a compass and the two part as friends.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck is the protagonist of The Ghosts of Africa, a 1980 historical novel by Anglo-Canadian novelist William Stevenson about the East African Campaign which highlighted the long-distance resupply mission of the giant German rigid airship L.59.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck appears as a character in Peter Høeg's short story, "Journey into a Dark Heart", which is the opening story in his 1990 collection, Tales of the Night. In this story Høeg imagines von Lettow-Vorbeck travelling through Africa by train at night accompanied by Joseph Conrad.
Much of the history of von Lettow-Vorbeck's war campaign in Africa is detailed in the 2011 book Speak Swahili, Dammit! by James Penhaligon, as well as in the 2011 book The Bridge Builders(Brobyggarna in Swedish) by Jan Guillou.
A German film, Lettow-Vorbeck: Der deutsch-ostafrikanische Imperativ, was produced in 1984.
Read more about this topic: Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The man of large and conspicuous public service in civil life must be content without the Presidency. Still more, the availability of a popular man in a doubtful State will secure him the prize in a close contest against the first statesman of the country whose State is safe.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)