Calmeyer Lawyer 1s

Hans Calmeyer Righteous Gentile 1903-1972

“Dutch Schindler”

 Lawyer for Life

God-Pleaser

WHY  SAVE  LIVES ? 

godly

Calmeyer was quite explicit about wanting to please God, whatever his personal outlook on organized religion. See letter to Jacob Presser.

My eager desire and hope being that I may never feel ashamed, but that now as ever I may do honour to Christ in my own person by fearless courage. Phil. 1:20.

Calmeyer Son 6
Calmeyer Son 1

Written by Hans Calmeyer in the late 60’s:

  • Hans hiess ich in der Zeit. Ich war ein Hans im Glueck.
  • Dem Sternbild nach: ein Krebs. Eins vorwaerts - zwei zurueck.
  • Joerg rief die Mutter mich. Ich sollte tapfer sein.
  • Ritter, nich Heiliger. In etwa hielt ich’s ein.
  • Gewiss, ich trauemte viel, Trauemjoerge, der ich war.
  • Manchmal fand ich ein Wort, ein Wort das richtig war.
  • Nuetzlich war ich wohl nicht. Was mir gelang, blieb Spiel.
  • Was brachte ich nach Haus? Das war bei Gott nicht viel.
  • Ich war ein Liebender. Ich suchte nie Genuss.
  • Mit Lust trug ich das Los des Sysyphus.
  • Der zwecklos sich bemueht. Die Muehe ist sein Lohn.

 

Calmeyer Son 2
Calmeyer Son 5

Translation:

  • In my time Hans was my name. A Hans in Luck.
  • In Constellation: Scorpio: one step ahead – two back.
  • Nicknamed Joerg by my mother … courageous in that name.
  • To be a knight, not holy man. I so in part became.
  • Truly, I dreamed much, dream-Joerg that I played.
  • Sometimes I found a word, a “right” word that with me stayed.
  • Useful was I perhaps not. All I achieved remained a game.
  • What was brought home? For God, this was quite lame.
  • I was a lover. But never seeking pleasure.
  • I chose the lot of Sysiphus, not treasure,
  • Who toils sans end. His toil is his reward.

 

And he pitched his tent having Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he builded an altar.     Genesis 12:8  

Hans Calmeyer saw himself as a “Hans im Glück” which in English means a happy-go-lucky journeyman who takes life and opportunity as it is given to him, somewhat passively but always with great enthusiasm and cheer in making the best of a situation. When Abram in the above allusion to Godliness and Worldliness (Bethel and Ai) chose to pitch his tent between the two places and extremes, he respected both and had access to and roles in both, he neither avoided the world nor did he avoid God. Calmeyer lived in both extremes, an intense Nazi time and environment with lots of crucial decisions and dangers and wrong, and acted as if in a spiritual place set above, a more God-pleasing place of ethics and right, that righteousness that Yad Vashem awarded him.