German Joys

Pictures from Munich

I just returned from Munich, where I met a few friends for long sessions of drinking Helles served in frosty 1-liter mugs, along with a few visits to museums. Here are a couple of photos.

First, a lamp dripping spiders' webs:

Graffiti from a subway underpass in Munich:

Infotainment!

The Enemy of My Enemy is Now My Enemy

Recently, several Americans have been jumping off the 'anti-jihadist' bandwagon, as it veers into the reeking back-courtyards of the European nativist right. Here is Bruce Bawer, as quoted on Little Green Footballs:

Recently, Andrew Sullivan posted a link to an article about Charles Johnson, the celebrated blogger who has distanced himself from many other anti-jihadists and called them “a bunch of kooks.” Though it grieves me to say so, and though I’ve hoped that things would somehow turn around, Charles is, alas, not whistling Dixie: I can testify that in the last couple of years some significant, and lamentable, shifts have taken place on the anti-jihad front. Writers and bloggers whom, not very long ago, I would unhesitatingly have described as staunch defenders of liberal values against Islamofascist intolerance have more recently said and done things that have dismayed me, and that, in many cases, have compelled me to re-examine my view of them.

Once upon a time, these people made a point of distancing themselves from far-right European parties such as Belgium’s Vlaams Belang – whose most prominent Internet voice, Paul Belien, has declared himself to be fighting for “Judeo-Christian morality” not only against jihadist Islam but also against “secular humanism.” Belien has made no secret of his contempt for gay people and for the idea that they deserve human rights as much as anyone else. Now, however, many of the anti-jihadist writers who once firmly rejected Vlaams Belang have come to embrace it wholeheartedly. In fact, for reasons unknown to me, this regional party in one of Europe’s smallest countries appears to have become, for a number of anti-jihadist writers on both sides of the Atlantic, nothing short of a litmus test: in their eyes, it seems, if you’re not willing to genuflect to VB, you’re not a real anti-jihadist.

In a sense, this break-up was inevitable. European parties such as Vlaams Belang embody a style of politics that most Americans are likely to find foreign and distasteful.* Of course, European immigration policy leaves a lot to be desired. However, I personally would put it far from the top of the most pressing problems Europe faces. In my experience, Europeans who think poorly-integrated immigrant minorities are the most pressing issue facing Europe today and who put it at the center of their world-view (which would describe most Vlaams Belang members) often turn out to have unpleasant hidden agendas. Get a few beers into a Vlaams Belang supporter (and give them a little sympathetic feedback to convince them you're on their side), and you'll generally start hearing things that will have you saying 'check please'.

I'm not accusing everyone who's concerned about immigration of being racists or nativists -- only the people whose world-view is dominated by this one concern. But in many European countries, that's 20-30% of the population, and those people have their own political parties. When Americans begin engaging with the sort of people who run Vlaams Belang and its sister parties, conflicting world-views come into play quickly. Here are a few particular points of conflict I've noticed. Note that I'm not necessarily always saying that the American world-view is the right one, just that it's likely to be very different from the nativist European's take:

• We rock because we're Flemish. Vlaams Belang, like all European nativist parties, draws most of its support from the working and lower-middle classes. Lots of these people are unemployed, or they may have boring, stressful, low-status jobs. That is, they don't have many sources from which to draw self-worth, so they tend to resort to bare ethnicity or cultural affiliation. "I'm proud to be Flemish," they'll say, and then list Flemish artists, sports heroes, or generals. The proud Flemish (or Austrian or Hungarian) nationalist may sit in some reeking bar most of the day, but by God, at least they're doing it while being Flemish. Their ancestors, after all, built this damn country, and their taxes (if they were paying any) now go to support these shiftless, lazy...you get the picture. Americans are acculturated to pride themselves on their own individual achievements. A claim for respect and recognition based on bare cultural affiliation seems cheap and lazy, and forming a political party (more or less explicitly) based on ethnic origin seems primitive and tribal.
• Ancient Historical Grudges. Talk to a European long enough, and you'll start hearing about things that happened long ago. They've got thousands of years of history, after all. The nativists tend to focus on ancient historical grudges that explain their current prejudices: 'They tried to take us over once, during the days of the Ottoman empire, and they got to the very gates of Vienna! Now they're trying to do it again!' The first instinct of most Americans is to ask who 'they' is supposed to be. All the people involved in the Battle of Vienna have been dead for 275 years. What on earth does some ancient conflict have to do with modern-day problems?
• Why are you so worked up? For every legitimate concern of the anti-immigrant crowd, there are many others which will seem overblown to a typical American.  
  • Islamic women may wear headscarves. So what? If that's their choice, based on their interpretation of their religion, then so be it. Perhaps some of them wear headscarves because of strong social expectation or even threats, but there's not much we can do about that without invading the family's private sphere or monitoring religious beliefs, which are two things the state should refrain from.
  • They don't accept the values embodied in our Constitution or our 'social order.' First, who defines those values? There are ferocious debates on what defines 'Germany' or 'Europe' going on every single day among the majority population, and most European countries modify their Constitutions every few years. And even if you can actually agree on some consensus values, and prove that some immigrants don't share them, so what? It's not the State's business to police thoughts. As long as these misfits aren't committing any crimes, let them believe what they want. If they do commit crimes based on those beliefs, well, that's what we have a criminal justice system for. If  the criminal justice system doesn't work, that's another problem.
  • They commit crimes at disproportionate rates, and their children do worse in school. This is true and unfortunate, but visible minorities are outsiders in every society. And for that matter, discrimination against immigrants by the majority community is surely one cause of the social problems in immigrant communities -- but parties such as Vlaams Belang are not interested in doing anything about that. To put it very mildly. And in any case, the situation is not catastrophic. The statistics for Turks in Germany or Arabs in France or Africans in Belgium don't look very different from the statistics for blacks in America. Individualistic Americans, for better or worse, have learned to live with large disparities in health and social achievement in their own society, and don't tend to think they represent a crisis.
  • Honor killings! Yes, they're unsettling, and we should be trying to prevent them, where possible. And, in fact, there's alread a name for those who commit honor killings: murderers. It's not as if they're allowed to get away with it. Besides, it's likely that for every immigrant killed in an honor killing, there are probably ten German women killed by German husbands in a jealous rage. Europeans obsess over honor killings because they're driven by motives alien to mainstream European culture. But isn't drunken jealousy the more important problem, judging by sheer numbers? 

Once again, the difference here is a matter of degree. It's not that the American doesn't think that these problems are problems -- they clearly are. But the American is likely to see them as manageable. Americans come from a country that has integrated millions of immigrants without too much difficulty, so they tend to think any cultural misunderstandings will likely fade with time. The American is likely to find the obsessive focus on a minority of "poorly integrated" immigrants as overblown and perhaps suspicious. Once again, I'm not saying the American view is the right one. A European, for example, might claim with some justification that (1) Europe's immigrant problem is much tougher to solve than America's, and therefore worthy of all the attention it gets; and (2) Americans, ever the optimists, tend to avert their attention from the serious social problems in their own society.

* The conservative-on-conservative misunderstanding goes both ways, of course -- a moderate American Republican politician would be seen as freakishly anti-government and slavishly pro-business by Tories, European Christian Democrats, and even European far-right parties, who appeal to their working-class clientele by stressing their 'social' credentials.

[Photo of Hungarian Guard members marching in Budapest in March 2009, from here (g)]

Hitler's Erudition, Beethoven's Arrogance

Two fine English-language articles about famous Germans have crossed my path recently. First up, Anthony Grafton has an excellent review essay in the New Republic about a controversial Austrian statesman's reading habits:

Hitler's own words make clear--clearer, in fact, than the surviving volumes [of his library]--just how much some writers meant to him. His lifelong favorites--leatherbound copies of which he kept in the study of his alpine villa--ranged from the Western adventure novels of Karl May to the plays of Shakespeare. May's novels, from The Ride Across the Desert on, "overwhelmed" Hitler as a boy, claiming his attention so powerfully that his grades suffered "a noticeable decline." During the war, Hitler told his generals to study May's books, and even had a special edition issued for soldiers at the front. He considered Winnetou, the Indian chief of May's tales, a master of "tactical finesse and circumspection," and a model for his own love of cunning tactics and surprises. Reading at night, he told Albert Speer, "when faced by seemingly hopeless situations, he would still reach for these stories," because "they gave him courage like works of philosophy for others or the Bible for elderly people."

Shakespeare seemed to him much greater than the classic German writers of the eighteenth century. After all, Shakespeare had brought the imperishable character of Shylock to the stage, whereas Lessing had created Nathan the Wise, the Jew who taught Christians, Muslims, and Jews a lesson of tolerance. Hitler quoted Shakespeare as more highly educated Germans quoted Goethe, threatening opponents: "We will meet again at Philippi."

 The Fuehrer read by night...

Late at night on the Obersalzberg, Hitler read for hours a time, sometimes until dawn. He worked in his study, outside of which hung a sign that demanded ABSOLUTE SILENCE, reading with intense concentration--so intense that he became furious one night when Eva Braun interrupted him, and sent her packing, red-faced, with a "tirade. " At breakfast, as Traudl Junge, his last surviving secretary, recalled to Ryback, he "would reprise his previous night's reading in extensive, often tedious detail." Even at the end, as a photograph of the Berlin bunker shows, unidentified thick books took up some of the scarce space in his tiny bedroom.

...but not like an 'intellectual':

In a famous passage in Mein Kampf, Hitler made clear that he rejected the scholar's deferential approach to texts. Intellectuals read supinely, allowing books to lead them: "Naturally, I understand by 'reading' something other than that which the average member of the so-called 'intelligentsia' understands," he wrote. "I know people who 'read' an endless amount, who go from book to book, from letter to letter, yet I would not want to call them 'well-read.' They possess an abundance of 'knowledge,' only their brain does not understand how to process and organize the material it has taken on board." Such readers "lack the art of being able to divide the valuable from the valueless in a book." In the end, Hitler explained, "reading is not something we carry out for its own sake, but an instrument used for a purpose," a "tool and a building material that one needs for one's calling in life."

And in Slate, music writer Jan Swafford has a short piece on the influence of the Illuminati on the young Beethoven:

By the time [Illuminatus] Christian Neefe arrived in Bonn and started teaching Beethoven organ and composition, the 10-year-old was as good a keyboard player as anybody in town. Soon Neefe got into print some variations Ludwig had written, one of his first pieces—slight and conventional, still not Mozart but impressive for his age. In a newspaper article, Neefe cited the variations and said the magic words: With proper nurturing, this boy will "surely become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart."

By his midteens, Beethoven was a court musician in various capacities and making huge strides as a composer. His father had pulled him out of school after a few years so he could concentrate on music. (Beethoven learned to add and subtract but never learned to multiply. If he had to multiply 65 by 59, he wrote 65 in a column 59 times and added it up.) Meanwhile his father was promoting him relentlessly, mounting concerts in the house and taking him on tours around the Rhineland. By that point, there was little question in Ludwig's or anybody else's mind that he was headed for big things. One day when his landlord's daughter accosted him with, "How dirty you're looking again! You ought to keep yourself properly clean," he told her, "What's the difference? When I become a gentleman, nobody will care."

How Would Adolf Vote?

 

If you're an American who's still undecided about who to vote for today, consider the words of David Sedaris. He compares undecided voters to airline passengers who, presented with a meal choice of chicken or a "platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it," pause for a moment and "ask how the chicken is cooked." If you're one of these folks, this post will provide you with the insights of some hardened racialist crusaders, who just may convince you that Obama's the man.

Since we're on the subject of platters of shit, reflect on the words [h/t Ed Philp] of Erich Gliebe*, Chairman of the National Alliance party of the United States:

"I give Obama credit, he seems to have stuck to his guns as far as pulling the troops out of Iraq. He’s a very intelligent man, an excellent speaker and has charisma. John McCain offers none of that."

Hey, those are some of the reasons I voted for Obama! And Gliebe and I are not alone! According to the Esquire article, 3 of the 4 other white-separatist party leaders also prefer Obama to McCain, owing mainly to Obama's evident racial pride. One of the Obamanazis, if I may call them that, even has a quote from one of Obama's books at the ready. To these cunning racialist operatives, all of Obama's inclusive twaddle is nothing more than sleek packaging. See, it's all about being proud of your skin color and racial heritage, whatever they happen to be, and simply wanting to live among others who share them. Only among those people, that is. The lone black radical Esquire interviews supports McCain, naturally.

I couldn't find a picture of Gliebe, although I must admit I didn't try very hard: why would you picture some pasty-faced nobody when you could adorn this post with the taut visage and white knuckles and corncob pipe of the founder of Gliebe's party? That is, the indomitable George Lincoln Rockwell? Yes, it was this decorated Navy veteran with the blue-chip name who founded the 'World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists' (WUFENS) in 1959. Shortly thereafter, Rockwell decided to go in for some straight talk (so to speak) and changed the party's name to 'American Nazi Party.' But then, Rockwell sensed that such a bald reference to the controversial Austrian statesman might limit his party's appeal to non-Nazis, who make up an important American voting bloc. So Rockwell changed the name yet again to the 'National Socialist White People's Party,' (NSWPP) and replaced "Sieg Heil" as the slogan with the heartland-friendlier "White Power."

Rockwell's promising career in the fever swamps was cut short by an assassin's bullet as he left "the Econowash laundromat at the Dominion Hills Shopping Center in the 6000 block of Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia," according to Rockwell's eerily detailed Wikipedia entry. Later party leaders, finding that 'socialist' was hardly better than 'Nazi' for attracting American swing voters, later settled on the name 'National Alliance.' Hey, it was good enough for Alessandra Mussolini (until 2003).

Rockwell's last words, which puzzled historians for decades -- but no longer! -- were "vote Obama."

Anti-Nazi Propaganda in Berlin

The New York Times reviews an exhibition of Arthur Szyk's obsessively detailed anti-Nazi caricatures in the German Historical Museum in Berlin, including "Wagner," pictured above. As the Times points out, Szyk had no sense of humor. But the Dadaist master of photo collages, John Heartfield sure did. Here's his "Hurra -- die Butter ist alle"*:

The title means "Hooray, we're out of butter**!" It's a satirical response to Goering's speech (quoted) which downplays food shortages: "Ore has always made a nation rich / Butter and lard can only make them fat."

** Note that the word "butter" is the same in German as it is in English. It's also one of the exceptions among German nouns because it takes the feminine article (die) but does not end in -e.  Just thought I'd pass that along. Germans are always surprised when I point this out, because they rarely think about their own language. Same thing happens when Germans fume about the fact that rough, cough, and bough are all pronounced differently.

Inglorious Bastards Set to Rape Nazi History

Quentin Tarantino will soon begin filming Inglorious Bastards, a star-studded, blood-spattered epic about a band of renegade Jewish GI deserters scalping high-ranking Nazis behind enemy lines (or something like that). Germany is, as usual, not amused: 

Some German critics, though, are none too impressed with the film's tenuous grasp of basic history. "This is pop culture encountering Nazi Germany and the Holocaust with unprecedented force," said Tobias Kniebe, film critic for Süddeutsche Zeitung. "The effects of this collision are utterly unpredictable. All the German historians and critics who were left gasping for breath by Tom Cruise and his worthy attempts to produce a correct image of Stauffenberg [in Valkyrie] will be so shocked by Inglorious Bastards that they will savage it on the spot."

When I Hear the Word "Revolver"...

I came across this interview with Slavoj Zizek last week on Obscene Desserts:

Zizek makes interesting points about the displacement of political conflict over economic interests into anodyne debates about multiculturalism and "tolerance" (Walter Benn Michaels argues along similar lines here). Otherwise, Slavoj is in full-on vieillard terrible mode: advocating the death penalty for rapists, promising to send Peter Sloterdijk to the "gulag," even accusing cuddly, adorable Michael Palin of racism. At one point, Zizek proudly announces that he has "Joseph Goebbels' reaction" when he hears multicultural platitudes: "I draw my guns." 

Zizek gets it wrong, but we won't hold him to that, because it's a live interview. The interesting thing is that everyone else gets it wrong, too. The famous quotation that everyone attributes to Goebbels or Goering is "When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my revolver." It's even been used as the refrain of a pop song by Mission of Burma, later covered by Moby.

But there's no record of those two officials ever saying anything about revolvers. The quote everyone is actually thinking of comes from the first scene of a 1933 play, Schlageter, by the Nazi playwright Hanns Johst. Schlageter tells the story of one of the first National Socialist "martyrs," Albert Leo Schlageter (g), a NSDAP member who was executed by a French military tribunal for acts of sabotage against the occupation of the Ruhr Valley in the early 1920s. Schlageter later became the focus of a Nazi martyr cult. Streets all over Germany were named after him during the Third Reich, and his biography (see photo above) was mandatory reading for students.

In Johst's play, Schlageter talkes with a fellow student, Thiemann, about politics. Thiemann utters a long rant which ends with the phrase: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning," which translates as: "Whenever I hear [the word] 'culture'... I release the safety on my Browning!" In the original, Schlageter reacts with shock to his friend's militance. But not the National Socialists: Baldur von Schirach apparently used the quotation in a speech.

But "release the safety on my Browning" isn't half so catchy as "reach for my revolver," which is how the phrase has been received into English. There are two problems here for the translator.  First, German actually has one catchy word for release the safety (entsichere="de-safety-ize"), but English doesn't. Second, Browning used to be a generic word for all sorts of pistols, but that's no longer the case.* Whoever first translated the phrase as "reach for my revolver" did a brilliant job, I would say. The translation preserves the original meaning, and makes the references more resistant to the passage of time. And it struck a chord, appearling both to American post-punk bands and Slovenian philosophers.

* These days, people are more likely to associated the word Browning with the English poet, which perhaps led to the ludicrous suggestion on the Wikiquote page that the reference to "my Browning" might actually be a literary pun. I like the idea of "releasing the safety" on a book of poetry, but that level of playful irony seems almost Wildean, and if there was one thing Nazi playwrights weren't, it was Wildean.

  

Hillary im Bunker

The controversial Austrian statesman's last tirade, brought deathlessly to life by Bruno Ganz, seems to have become one of Web 2.0's most-redubbed scenes.  The latest has a transatlantic flavor, and made me chuckle [h/t Ed Philp]:

Where Not to Go on Holiday

This week, Die Zeit has an interesting map (g) of the ultra-right presence in Germany, sorted by individual German federal states. 

The numbers in the black circles indicate the number of people killed by right-wing groups since 1990; the chairs show the number of elected representatives from far-right parties.  (The bigger the chair, the more important the legislative body.)  The smaller political units (kind of like counties) are shaded according to the percentage of votes far-right parties get there.

Keeping things in perspective, it should be noted that even in the brownest regions, far-right parties are still in the minority.