Posted on 10/18/2018 9:00:18 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
The Nazi years lie like a bolt over the memory of a good Germany, of the composers, poets and philosophers who gave the world so much beauty and enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries: Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Wagner and the Romantics. Nevertheless...in only a few years, a nation of culture was turned into one of modern barbarians.
Could the philosophical abstraction, artistic elation and yearning for collective salvation that drove the country also have contributed to its ultimate derailing into the kind of mania that defined the years of National Socialism? After all, it wasn't just the dull masses that followed the Führer. Members of the cultural elite were also on their knees.
Music and the Holocaust come together in that shadow: one of the most beautiful things created by man, and one of the worst things human beings have ever done. Wagner, the mad genius, was more than a composer. He also influenced Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, even though he was already dead when the 12-year-old Hitler heard his music live for the first time, when he attended a production of "Lohengrin" in the Austrian city of Linz in 1901. Describing the experience, during which he stood in a standing-room only section of the theater, Hitler wrote: "I was captivated immediately."
Many others feel the same way. They listen to Wagner and are captivated, overwhelmed, smitten and delighted. Nike Wagner, the composer's great-granddaughter, puts the question that this raises in these terms: "Should we allow ourselves to listen to his works with pleasure, even though we know that he was an anti-Semite?" There's a bigger issue behind this question: Can Germans enjoy any part of their history in a carefree way?
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
I think this is where the expression "when the fat lady sings" originates from.
Only later in life did I come to appreciate Wagner's music. It does require a lot of patience and a willingness to LISTEN and let yourself be absorbed into it. But once it gets its hooks into you, you will love it.
Bump to a riveting Zeppelin nod. Almost 12 million views and 13000 comments. Is that whatcha call viral?
If anything Tolken took Wagner’s Idea.
........
Yes that’s what I meant. But he did it in such a way as not to be a terrible curse on the audience.
Poor germans didn’t know they were damned to hell every time they sat before wagner’s monsters.
“We must separate the artist from the art.”
I first heard that said about Frank Sinatra when the public learned that he was a world class jerk who bullied those around him.
He became “Not-so-hotra” to many former fans.
That was my point. Saying that von Braun is "associated with Hitler" is almost as specious as saying Richard Wagner is.
” ‘All artists belong in a mental hospital, but opera composers should be kept in the ward for incurables.’ “ - Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, quoted by Danish musician/humorist Victor Borge, on the very first page of his book _My Favorite Intermissions_. The author goes on to point out that Liszt left all three of his operas unfinished, and lived to a sane old age.
Reading the book is a true laugh-out-loud experience, but it is more.
It reminds us that the “creative community” is a bit daft, unstable, and prone to falling for goofball ideas - compared to average citizens.
And it instills historical perspective: composers and musicians have for centuries lived wild & crazy lives, often clinging to oddball notions - well past the point of lunacy. The rock stars, actors, filmmakers, writers, public intellectuals, and other celebrities of our time are neither bold nor unique, in behaving badly.
Borge was a Jew who fled Denmark when Nazi Germany attacked in 1940. He included an entire chapter on Wagner in _My Favorite Intermissions_, sparing nothing in describing the composer’s jarring nuttiness, but refraining from any mention of anti-Semitism or Wagner’s darker side. I like to think that tells us more about Borge the man, than it does about Wagner.
(Please do not take my quotations as perfectly accurate word for word … working from memory here.)
The originals were Cold War Democrats who couldn't abide the weak America foreign policy of McGovern and Carter and decided to back Reagan in 1980.
They rebranded themselves as neoconservatives, a name which some of the hyena pack that used to run here insisted was an antiSemitic slur; a good trick since neoconservatives adopted that name for themselves.
The problem for the rest of us is that they didn't leave the rest of their liberal agenda behind. So with Bush Republicans you got globalism, a push for another amnesty, nation building in the Middle East, and the rest of what neoconservatives had been wanting for years. Including the war against confederate history that we are now watching play out.
This is a good article by Boyd Cathey on one aspect of what occurred:
How Neoconservatives Destroyed Southern Conservatism
Ironically, although they may appear at times in major disagreement, both the hardcore multicultural Left and the Neocon “Right” share a commitment to the globalist belief in American “exceptionalism.” In explaining this exceptionalism, they use the same language—about “equality” and “democracy” and “human rights” and “freedom,” its uniqueness to the United States, and the desirability to export its benefits. But, then, the proponents of the dominant Left and of the establishment Neocon Right will appear variously on Fox or on MSNBC, or in the pages of National Review or of The Weekly Standard, to furiously deny the meaning given by their opponents…but all the while using the same linguistic template and positing goals—in civil rights, foreign policy, etc.—which seem remarkably similar, but over which they argue incessantly about the “means.”
Pretty much Germany has done some cool things. Beer, bratwurst, charming architecture, some very cool cars in the 1970s. What boring human male wouldn’t love a BMW 2000 or a 2002? They gave us cuckoo clocks and some very wonderful cuisine. They give us the Nurburgring. They gave us Zeppelins. They have contributed to science. They gave us aspirin. They give us Oktoberfest.
But in government and philosophy... they have been an -unmitigated- disaster. They gave us communism, nazisim, and the control freak Prussian crap that infects many areas of America to this day. (of particular note, the federal bureaucrat and the educational system)
When a German speaks of government or philosophy, they should be laughed out of the room.
“That was my point.”
I assumed that much. I’ve spoken with you before and recall you being intelligent.
Saw this in a University bathroom in the Music building.
"Don't use this toilet. It is baroque."
Also saw, "Why did Bach have so many children? Because he was always using his organ."
For me, Wagner is basically the John Tesh of the 1800s.
More truth in that then I think you realize. This article explains quite a lot on that particular subject.
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2016/08/31/why-did-tolkien-care-about-the-jews/
Zeppelin far exceeded Wagner.
If it is who I think it is, (Valentina Lisitsa) you should see her play Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2.
Almost right. Very close.
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2016/08/31/why-did-tolkien-care-about-the-jews/
No flames from this direction, although I am more of a Brahms guy myself.
Overall, I’d say half my music collection is what I would call “Austro-German Mainstream” beginning with Bach and ending with Mahler and Richard Strauss.
“Wagner really should have hired a competent librettist.” [BenLurkin, post 55]
Doing so would have been unthinkable, to Richard Wagner.
He is the poster child for outsize ego among artists: megalomania might be too poor a word. Drawing much of his plot material from Teutonic myth, German legend, and other North Euro sources, he would never have given the first thought to the possibility that any wordsmith could express ideas better than he.
Wagner did not like calling his creations “operas.” He convinced himself that he was in the vanguard of an entirely new art form: “music drama,” which (he claimed) would combine plot, music, performer talent, and showmanship in ways never before imagined, bringing audiences a “next level” experience.
After telling a joke that bad you should go into Haydn.
“That was my point. Saying that von Braun is “associated with Hitler” is almost as specious as saying Richard Wagner is. “
Not really. Von Braun was an SS Lieutenant, Wagner wasn’t. We all hear the excuses, “Von Braun didn’t know about the death camp assembly lines”, “He really wasn’t a nazi and just joined to ensure his true dream of space flight could happen”.. etc.
The we are told his MAIN skill at NASA wasn’t the engineering, it was his organizational skill in that field. So we are left to believe that Von Braun, the man who knew every detail of his organization and effort, had no idea what was happening to the Jews at the production facility. He just thought these rockets showed up from some a facility and didn’t really care much about the factory itself.
Laughable disconnect. He did good work at NASA, but it’s silly to pretend his hands were clean. Also, NASA engineers of that era resent the idea that they were moronic boobs who could do nothing without him. He happened to be there, but added nothing that many other Americans were not just as capable of.
This was proven in several wartime projects and postwar projects.
“Don’t say that he’s hypocritical,
“Say rather that he’s apolitical.
“Vunce rockets are up, who cares vhere zey come down.”
“Zat’s not my department!” says Werner von Braun.
- Tom Lehrer
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