Well, the Germans are finally waking up - at least in certain cultural corners! For instance, I have been following a huge controversy about retaining rules of German grammar, which the culture distorters want to destroy. And when I read articles like the one I am excerpting below, I wonder if the Holocaust Promotion Lobby has lost all common sense and political perspective. Let them keep doing this, and see what will result.
In a Sunday, August 8, 1999 Electronic Telegraph article titled Germans outraged at death camp art show" by Julian Simmonds, we are informed as follows:
Electronic Telegraph:
A GOETHE exhibition held in a former Nazi concentration camp has provoked fury in Weimar, the town where Germany's most famous writer and artist spent much of his life.
The show, which featured a collection of Goethe's drawings and sketches, took place on the site of the Buchenwald camp, just outside the town. It formed part of a programme of events organised to celebrate Weimar's status as the European "Capital of Culture" for 1999, but the project only succeeded in antagonising much of the town's population.
"We were trying to show that the history of Weimar and Buchenwald are intertwined," said one of its organisers, Volkhard Knigge, who runs the Buchenwald memorial. "That was inevitably painful."
Zundelsite:
Now let me take a guess. Everything has to have a "Holocaust" or "Jewish" angle these days, or no grants so necessary for these parasites to live on are forthcoming. Might that be a tiny clue?
Electronic Telegraph:
The event has caused lasting anger among Goethe lovers, who are outraged that one of Germany's most cherished sons has been associated with the most shameful period in the country's history. More than 50,000 Jews, gypsies and political dissidents died in Buchenwald between 1937 and 1945. To make matters worse, the end of August will mark the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth.
"That was a fine birthday present, putting him in a concentration camp," said one visitor to Goethe's preserved townhouse last week. The scandal is the latest flashpoint in a series of related rows between the citizens of Weimar and Bernd Kauffmann, the culture festival's radical director.
Zundelsite:
Once again, Mr. Kauffmann and his ilk do not know when enough is enough. Even Germans can be dumped on only up to a point - and the breaking point has apparently been reached, at least in this case.
Electronic Telegraph:
The "Weimar 99" team, led by Mr Kauffmann, has devoted its energies to linking Germany's foremost city of artists - the home to Friedrich Schiller, Bach and Nietzsche in addition to Goethe - with the horrors of Buchenwald.
A path has even been created to link one of Goethe's favourite countryside castles directly to the camp. Mr Kauffmann said: "Our idea was to link the good and the bad together. To show how Weimar and Buchenwald represent the good and the bad side of our psyche. It's not been popular with everyone."
Zundelsite:
One has to ask if there is a path from the Wailing Wall to Deir Yassin, the village where Israeli forces massacred hundreds of Palestinians, or to Sabra and Shatilla, or to Baruch Goldman's scene of the crime. Are there paths leading from American historic places to Japanese internment camps, or to Andersonville, or to some Indian reservations?
Electronic Telegraph:
Ludolf von Mackensen, a prominent member of the Goethe Society in Germany, which has its headquarters in Weimar, waged an unsuccessful campaign to prevent the Buchenwald exhibition of drawings taking place.
Among the clientele of the Goethe cafe in Goetheplatz, there was widespread sympathy for Dr von Mackensen's views. One middle-aged woman asked: "What has Goethe got to do with the terrible things that happened in that place? A celebration of Weimar should be about its own culture and past, not about a concentration camp."
Other Kauffmann projects have aroused bemusement and sometimes outright hostility among more conservative residents. Last week rumours of a neo-Nazi backlash were rife after eight sculptures portraying Buchenwald inmates were vandalised while on display in a Weimar church garden and anti-Jewish graffiti was daubed on a bench. Other incidents include two arson attacks on a bizarre "exact copy" of Goethe's house, completed this summer and placed in a park 150 yards from the original.
Michael Baar, who runs the local newspaper, the Weimarer Allgemeine, said: "A lot of people in Weimar are sick of being lectured and preached at. Before the Berlin Wall came down, the Communists ordered us to see Buchenwald as a reason to be anti-fascist and pro-Communist. Now Kauffmann is telling us to see Buchenwald as part of our own history again."
Zundelsite:
One wonders where Mr. Kauffmann gets his hatred for things German? How did he come by his warped views? It might be worth an inquiry.
Electronic Telegraph:
Mr Kauffmann is unrepentant. "OK," he says. "some people in Weimar are angry. But they are mostly the people over 40. I do not aim what I do at the older generation. They will never change."
He is equally dismissive of the Goethe Society's protests. "You have to remember that in 1937 the Goethe Society wrote to Berlin saying that they were appalled that there was going to be a concentration camp next door to Weimar. The reason was not humanitarian. It was just that they thought it would lower the tone."
By the end of Weimar's Year of Culture, Mr Kauffmann may well have received his own letter from the Goethe Society. But he is unlikely to care.
Zundelsite:
We have heard of no letters of protest in Israel about camps for the Palestinians, or by Americans about their detention camps for the Japanese or Germans. Neither did the English protest their camps for political dissidents, or the Czechs the Sudeten camps. Nor did the Poles or the Serbs protest the death camps they erected for the Germans after World War II.
As to Mr. Kauffmann receiving a letter of "dismissal" - fat chance! The Allies and the Holocaust cultists are building Holocaust memorials at a frantic pace the world over! The Holocaust is big business - a growth industry - until the artificial bubble bursts, pierced by historical truth!
In my opinion, it is a singularly foolish thing to continue doing projects that hurt people with this incessant Holocaust-thing where they really, truly live in the deep recesses of their souls. Every action in nature will cause an equal and opposite reaction. In 1999, there is no leeway left for promo overkill.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
Definition of Art: "A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."