The Charlie Chaplin moustache sported by Vevoda (along with his Van Dyke beard) can be classified as one of those nagging things that bug me until I can't stand it anymore and ask the google.
The moustache sported by Chaplin is also known as a toothbrush moustache, and apparently was sported by several individuals in the early 20th century as a alternative to the more complicated and traditional moustache styles that required way more upkeep, included waxing and perfuming. It should be noted that Adolph Hitler had a toothbrush, although because his was much shorter horizontally, Hitler's moustache could be better classified as a variation of the tootbrush, known as a snot brake, from the German rotzbremse. (I will never look at a moustache without thinking of that term again!) Hitler incidentally was a fan of Chaplin's movies, but by all accounts, Hitler's 'stache was not inspired by Chaplin.
Yeah, yeah... I know. What does this have at all to do with Corbeau/Durand and Ash Wednesday?
To paraphrase a well known author, blogs are a lazy machine in which the reader must do some of the work. You'll get there.
Oh yes, the toothbrush moustache, I came across a German who was pretty much a cipher during the Nazi Party years, but he was known to have sported the infamous configuration of facial hair below the nose called the toothbrush. Soldier and activist, Waldemar Pabst was a supporter of far-right causes and was a staunch enemy of all things communist. He is very well known for his counter-revolutionary activities in the years following World War 1 and for his directorship of Rheinmetall AG (auto parts and military tech) before World War 2. Despite his warm support of Hitler early on, he did not became a Nazi Party apparatchik.
In 1919, Pabst was busy dishing out reprisals for the Spartacist uprising that had occurred early-to-mid January that same year. (Hitler also adopted his trademark moustache late in 1919.) These reprisals took the form of executions ordered by Pabst. One of those executions was that of the Marxist, Rosa Luxemburg who was shot and whose body was thrown into Berlin's Landwehr Canal. Her birthday, March 5, was the date assigned to Ash Wedneday in 1919.
Her friend and companion in 1919, Paul Levi, survived the reprisals, became critical of the Bolsheviks and in the 1920's attacked several prominent Nazis in left-wing publications. In 1930, he died from his injuries when he fell out of his fifth-floor window delirious from pneumonia. (Ash Wednesday again fell on March 5 in 1930).
The year 1919, the execution, emmersion, the defenestration, Ash Wednesday, the pneumonia, the relationship between Levi and Luxemburg all echo in S. to some degree. I've stated before my belief that Durand, Ekstrom, et al. are composites, but perhaps I'm flogging the horse at this point. Oh, stew.
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