-
Sign up or login, and you'll have full access to opportunities of forum.
Nolde on Cross
- Thread starter Fox-on-Cross
- Start date
poem21045
Tribunus Plebis
A "national-socialist." Nazi?
Naraku
Draconarius
Nolde was an anti-Semite and an early supporter of the Nazis. He considered Expressionism to be a "Germanic" artistic style. Hitler, however disagreed. Nolde's works were pulled from German museums and he was banned from painting in 1941. After the war, his woks were re-exhibited along with those he had secretly made during the war. However, I can find no reference that he ever repudiated or regretted his antisemitism or support for the Nazis.
Fox-on-Cross
Great-Cruxinquisitor
It was more a mode (or fashion) after the occupation from the Allies in Germany that specially high in the hierarchy standing persons made a (sad) confession for all what they had done or not done. Also to get a new position in the after war democratic state. There also are persons who did not as Richard Strauß, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Martin Heidegger. But is this necessary? Some did it only to get a new respect and therefore made a sort of tragedy.
Nowadays some politicians make apologizes for their colonial past, and that 50/60 years after... They give stolen art back. I think their tears are drama play too.
The best attitude after the Nazism/colonialism is to keep silent, let the new time come and play a new role.
Nowadays some politicians make apologizes for their colonial past, and that 50/60 years after... They give stolen art back. I think their tears are drama play too.
The best attitude after the Nazism/colonialism is to keep silent, let the new time come and play a new role.
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
Apparently Wagner cannot be played in Israel. In the United States, there is a lot of opposition to flying Confederate flags or placing statues of Confederate leaders in parks. I agree that condemning someone's actions after the fact when you don't know what you would have done is problematic, especially if the situation that person faced was complex. But one can understand as well that the descendants of victims don't want those actions glorified and validated by public honors. Staying silent on that front seems to me to be wise as well.
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
Gunter Grass, in the SS at, what, 19? He kept quiet about it, and his writings constituted a kind of apology. He probably should have said something sooner, but I don't think he's in any way like, say, Albert Speer or Erwin Rommel or Werner Heisenberg--people who weren't fanatics but certainly contributed mightily to what they knew was an evil cause mixed up with patriotism. I certainly agree Speer was a war criminal (and a prominent Nazi from the beginning), who directly employed slave labor. The two others are a little muddier, but not much. Heisenberg really never owned up to his moral failure, and his actual failure is the only thing that saved him from being a war criminal. Rommel was a victim of the very system he served. I will not comment on Werner van Braun or the American government which hired him. I am not sure what I would have done if I had been in the American government and had to handle the van Braun case, and if I were Heisenberg I guess I might have tried to stall, but I also may have felt that as the war dragged on Germany's existence was at stake and it needed a bargaining chip. One can compare Heisenberg to Max Planck (see the book "Max Planck--the Dilemmas of an Upright Man") whose own son was killed by the Nazis. The comparison is not flattering to Heisenberg.
In many ways, Einstein was the father of the Manhattan Project to build the allied bomb. It's clear how he felt later. What would you have done?
What's that Chinese curse? "May you live in interesting times." Most of us nowadays don't, or at least don't have the capacity to shape the times.
Last edited:
Fox-on-Cross
Great-Cruxinquisitor
Wise words,
when someone lives in the time of a process he must walk with for his existence.
Thereafter he cannot say not to have walked with or others always will attack him.
That is a sort of crucifixion for all who had lived in a lost political system.
Keep silence is not more a beautiful life...
The art-historcan André Jolles was sad the the Reich had gone and committed suicide.
when someone lives in the time of a process he must walk with for his existence.
Thereafter he cannot say not to have walked with or others always will attack him.
That is a sort of crucifixion for all who had lived in a lost political system.
Keep silence is not more a beautiful life...
The art-historcan André Jolles was sad the the Reich had gone and committed suicide.