From Volume 2, Issue Number 3 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Jan. 20, 2003

The Exemplary Life of Marianna Wertz

On Jan. 15, 2003, the birthday of her beloved Martin Luther King, Jr., long-time LaRouche associate Marianna Wertz departed this mortal life at the age of 54. There will be much to say about Marianna in the weeks and months to come, commemorating her life and work, from the many with whom she worked. But this initial reflection is necessary, both for those of us who feel the immediate pain of her passing, and as a very personal challenge to the broader circle of Americans who read this newspaper.

What can be said of Marianna, like the sublime Jeanne d'Arc whom Lyndon LaRouche has been holding up as a model of effective dedication to God's work on Earth, is that she lost the physical battle she waged for 27 years, against cancer, and then the effects of the treatment which eradicated it. But, in the course of her fight, she won, by contributing substantially to winning the war for humanity's survival, and showing others how the war for humanity can be won.

Marianna, whom you see in the picture to the right, speaking in celebration of her beloved friend and civil rights heroine Amelia Boynton Robinson, was a small woman, whose size contrasted dramatically with her spirit of fight against injustice. Shortly after she joined the LaRouche movement in the early 1970s, however, she was forced to mobilize for a different kind of fight, a fight against the form of cancer called Hodgkins disease. The treatment was effective, but the effects of the radiation greatly weakened both her heart and her bones, making it necessary for her to have a heart bypass operation a few years later, and hip replacement operations, up to the recent one that led to the complications that in turn led to her death.

As a result of her physical limitations, Marianna had to exercise what many would consider stringent self-control in order to do her political work. She had to pay meticulous attention to diet, exercise, and fatigue. She did it without complaining, because she was committed, above all, to being a productive human being.

It is impossible to recall all her valuable projects in this short space. Her prime dedication, one could rightly say, was as an officer and leader of the international Schiller Institute, founded by Helga Zepp LaRouche in 1984. Marianna was a "prime mover" in all the Institute's work, from building support for LaRouche's economic development programs, to producing volumes of translations of the work of the Institute's namesake, poet Friedrich Schiller. No Schiller Institute publication was produced without her thoughtful input, both as a skilled editor, and writer.

In the meantime, her physical weaknesses continued to create problems for her. There was never a time when she didn't have to take them into account—and figure out how to make her maximum contribution in spite of them. Indeed, to those who knew her up close, those physical problems were getting worse, further limiting her stamina and activity.

There are many who, under those circumstances, would have come up with excuses to "bow out," to take a long, extended vacation, or reduce the pressure. Not Marianna. Instead, she worked with her husband, LaRouche movement leader Will Wertz, to figure out what kind of contribution she could best make, given the physical limitations she had, to contribute to the fight of the LaRouche movement.

One of the areas where she worked intensively—and to palpable effect—was on the matter of the death penalty, which she took as an evil which had to be overcome here in the United States. Her interviews and articles were circulated broadly internationally, and it was surely poetic justice that, during the last few days before her death, Illinois Governor George Ryan took his courageous action to commute the sentences of more than 140 inmates on Death Row.

But, what is exemplary about Marianna Wertz's life, is something beyond "the issues." It is set in the work of Friedrich Schiller, and Lyndon LaRouche, on the question of the "sublime."

The "sublime" is a quality by which the individual overcomes physical limitations, even death, in order to make an immortal contribution to future generations of mankind. That idea of immortality is not an ego-driven one, as it was not in Marianna's case: the "look at me and how great I am" quality that many confuse with heroism. Rather, the sublime is the quality by which one says, "I have only one life; how shall I spend that which is limited, for the benefit of generations to come?" As such, it represents the determination to overcome physical limitations—in the case of Christ, the ultimate sublime personality, even death—in order to make that contribution.

Of course, to do so requires not only courage, but the wisdom of the soul, to decide where to make the fight.

Marianna Wertz relied on the wisdom of Lyndon LaRouche, while working on developing it in herself, and exercising the courage to continue fighting, against the physical pains and odds. She lived to work for humanity. If many more people followed her example, we would make more rapid progress in preventing a New Dark Age.

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