May 3, 2008
closely intertwined on today’s trip with my parents to the Saale river.
Beautiful landscape with little villages, vineyards, and woods. The Naumburg Cathedral containing beautiful examples from late late Romanesque over Early to Late Gothic style (but now Protestant). A Cistersion monastery which established the first vineyards in the area (but dissolved after the Reformation and transformed into a rather famous school whose attendants included, alas, Nietsche and Fichte). The castles Rudelsburg and Saaleck (see below) built in the 11th and 12th century and later one of the focal points of the Romantic movement in Germany.
One of the focal points, too for the German “Studentenverbindungen” from 1848 and through the late 19th and early 20th century. In the late 19th century, these student corps started erecting a number of monuments close to the two castles. Not in a line with the reigning ideology, they were partly neglected and partly actively destroyed during GDR time. Consequently, when we walked there today, we fell from one shock into another greater one. Starting with a giant stone lion commemorating the fallen heros of World War I, we came to the following interesting obelisk:
Praising evil Prussian “Emperor” Wilhelm II. But the summit of tastelessness and dubiousity came afterwards:
Bismarck as a young corps student in a pensive (or haughty?) attitude after victory in one of the 25 “Mensuren” (semi-ritual corps student sword fights) he fought. Erected by the young corps student in honour to the then famous German chancellor for his 80th birthday. The “emperor” himself contributed 1000 of the 65000 Reichsmark it cost. The inscription is a “tasteful” poem (that seems to rhyme only because it is afraid of the huge dog in front of it):
Das deutsche Volk in Einigkeit.
Ein neues Reich in neuer Zeit.
Millionen haben darüber gedacht.
Aber nur einer hat’s fertig gebracht.
Einer der Unsern in Lieb und Zorn.
Ein Bursch von echtem Schrot und Korn.
Ein alter deutscher Corpsstudent.
Den alle Welt Fürst Bismarck nennt.
Dies Bild stellt ihn als Jungbursch dar.
Dank Gott, daß er der Unsre war.
The whole poetic beauty and intellecual profundity of this would be lost in any translation, so only those able speaking my much-reviled language will have the enjoyment of contemplating them in the original. Apparently, there was a large row when the statue was originally built on account of this depiction of Bismarck being irreverent.
Now I am all in favour of Germans developing some healthy sense of national pride again as well as a sense of tradition [Of the golden thread of German history, I must add. So leave out most of the last twohundred years.] But how some people could raise a rather immense sum of money to rebuild these monuments that are a) ugly (especially the last one) and b) commemorate exactly that part of German history that developed in a frighteningly straight way into National Socialism (most of the monuments were built during the Weimar Republic) - I fail to grasp that. There is a plaque at every memorial on which all the motivations behind building and restoring it are described in an extremely serious way… It is somewhat frightening. For these are not frustrated teenage/twen out-of-work youth in some desolate villages in Eastern Germany shaving their heads and blaming foreigners for the lack of jobs. These are studied people with, if I am allowed this judgement, appear to have rather questionable political opinions.
May 3, 2008 at 11:50 pm
One does wish that education would solve all the problems. Sigh… Personally, I find the educated and the well-studied more dangerous than the simple ignorant man.
But, I don’t think that this problem is unique to Germany. Many peoples are going through similar kind of identity crises which they are trying to solve by clinging on to distorted views of self and history. I agree, it is frightening…
May 5, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Is not recent German history (most the last two-hundred years, as you say) littered with “studied people who appear to have rather questionable political opinions”?
While I would not go as far as the DDR in actively destroying them, it seems poorly-judged to restore them. Let the web and flow of time and nature take their course. I think that (rather like Washington, D.C.) these would provide more enjoyment as ruins than in their current state.
May 5, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Yes. Indeed. But this particular kind of rather questionable political opinion is at the moment simply not the done thing at all among the educated. A politician got into heave trouble some while ago for having said something about being proud to be German in an entirely innocent context, as far as I remember. If you are a right-wing nationalist intellectual, you tend to vent these opinions in your own selected circles and not to parade them in front of the general public in several tons of bronze.
May 5, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I thought these circles were today mostly composed of well-to-do German businessmen with duelling scars from university days, more unthinking and nostalgic, rather than say, politicians or intellectuals.
There are no doubt many thinking people who (unfortunately) don’t see a particular line drawn from Bismarck to Wilhelm to Hitler… just as many (perhaps less thinking) who believe neo-paganism is just a lovely harmless kind-of cool thing.
With regards to Derya’s thoughts above, there are many here in the States who are ardent supporters of the “education-as-cure-of-all-ills”, to which the most frequent response is that Weimar Germany was the most educated country in Europe at the time and that, shall we say, did not end up well.
May 5, 2008 at 7:37 pm
2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom