A not so commonly-known book of the Book of Books, the Bible, is the Book of Kohelet. Its first verses read as follows:

1. The words of Kohelet son of David, who was king in Jerusalem.
2. “Emptiness upon emptiness”, thus spoke Kohelet. “Vapor of vapors––all is in vain.”
3. What profit is there to a person in all his labors wherein he labors beneath the sun?
4. A generation goes and a generation comes. But the earth forever abideth.
5. The sun rises and the sun sets. Then to its place it rushes back. And it comes forth again.
6. The wind goes toward the south and turns around toward the north. Round and round goes the wind, and in its circling there turns back the wind.

This Book is authored by a man who calls himself Kohelet and who introduces himself as someone who once was King in Jerusalem. He recounts his achievements and the wisdom he acquired. But in the end he concludes that all of this was “vanity” “in vain”, “Windhauch” as the German translation goes.

By the end of this year the Lexxion Publishing House, that created this Quarterly, turns twenty-five years, a quarter of a century, a full human generation. Lexxion, respectively Wolfgang Andreae, its founder, has created not only this Quarterly, but a series of other journals, books, and events.

Now, I wonder whether Wolfgang would say that all the wisdom he has created, respectively those created that have been writing, analysing, speaking, and arguing in these journals, books and conferences that all this has just been “vanity” “Windhauch”.

I do not think so.

First, Kohelet states as follows: “So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me.” It cannot imagine that Wolfgang would ever describe himself like this.

Second, Kohelet seemed to have gathered his wisdom just for himself. Wolfgang however implemented Lexxion to share it with other people, aiming to render them wiser, not himself.

And third, I remember an ancient Japanese saying that features in the foreword of the famous novel of James Mason entitled“The Wind Cannot Read” and that goes as follows:

Though on a sign it is written: „Don’t pluck these blossoms“ – it is useless against the wind, because the wind cannot read.

It has not been the wind that has turned the pages of the journals and the books that Lexxion has been publishing over the last quarter of a century. Because the wind cannot read. Human beings have done this. And this why what Lexxion has been doing is not “vanity”, not “Windhauch”.