The footprint of a chicken
Dear Peace Sign,
I first saw you in 1966? as a badge on the army jacket of an American hippie who had gone to Hamburg. What's that? I asked. He made the "Peace" sign with his hand and said it was now wearing as a Vietnam War opponent in the United States. I wanted one too!
After all, you were already eight years old and on your way to conquering the world. Now you are 50. Happy Birthday, you great hippie! Rarely has a symbol managed to have half a century under its belt and still be up-to-the-minute. Yet your creation was neither accidental nor dramatic, but British calculus. In 1958, textile designer Gerald Holtom was to invent a memorable logo for the London Easter March of the anti-nuclear movement, which drove more and more people to the streets. In your year of birth, it was already bubbling under the surface. The people were war-damaged and wanted peace. Forever.
The peace sign as a hipper code for rebellion
"No one will remember that," said the traditionalists. But they knew you badly. You were one of the first symbols that soon needed no explanation, marched at a run from the British kingdom to America? in the arms of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement? and then to the rest of the world. We had all been waiting for you.
You became a pop icon.
The '60s was the era of opinion buttons that pitted you when you were for the sexual revolution or against Nixon. As you know, we were very idealistic, with a huge sense of mission. You were a fanatic and a new hipper code for the rebellion against the establishment. You became a pop icon, John Lennon painted you on his? Bed-in? in Amsterdam on a sheet and sang, of course? Give Peace a Chance ?. Everyone was reaching for you and wanted a piece of the chic revolution. Protesters, activists and politicians used you as well as international rock bands and feminists. You were painted on bellies, posters, steel helmets, house walls, T-shirts, flags and faces, printed millions of times on leaflets and recognized and loved wherever dictatorship, war and injustice oppressed people. So all over the world.
A Peace-like Sign of Reign means "Dead Man"
Nevertheless, at the beginning a lot was messed around with you. Some saw in you signs of a Satanic cult, others the footprint of a chicken. Oh well. But Mr. Holtom copied you from the Winker Alphabet of the Navy? the letters N and D (for "Nuclear Disarmament?) superimposed on each other give the peace sign. For the N, two flags are held down, like an inverted V. In D, one flag points vertically down, the other up.
Today you are classic like a Chanel costume.
However, what your inventor did not know at the time was that you were very much like an old Germanic rune sign, the "dead man"? means. But that also fits as anti-war symbol. , ,
Peace remains "our" sign of peace and love
Today you are almost a little adapted? like we used to be button wearers of yore ?, a fashionable trademark, a legendary logo, totally integrated, whether in brilliants at Tiffany's or at Gucci or Greenpeace, and I actually feel a bit of betrayal. But at least, you have kept yourself well, are still there and not at all embarrassingly old-fashioned, but classically like a Chanel costume? Black on white, fresh, clear, a convincing design. You are ours? Characters like Woodstock, headbands, and hashish remained a wild, wonderful world when we were young and impetuous, bawled for change, and made peace and love a real alternative.
Say, did you know that? In the typical spirit of the global idea of freedom, the kind Mr. Holtom renounced all his life (he died in 1985) on the patenting of you. "A symbol of freedom must be free. It just belongs to everyone? He said. A good guy. Just like you. Stay as you are. Peace!
Your Sabine Reichel
