[lit-ideas] Re: Europe's future, catastrophic or apocalyptic

  • From: Chris Bruce <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 08:51:49 +0200


On 10. Mai 2006, at 17:13, Lawrence Helm wrote:

Claire Berlinski’s Menace in Europe, why the Continent’s Crisis is America’s too.  This book described the growing presence of Islam and Islamists in Europe but she also hinted at the possibility of a future violent reaction against European Muslims.  In regard to Germany, for example, she described their admiration for the rock group Rammstein which dresses up in surrealistic versions of what could be described as Nazi Uniforms and sings of hate, murder, rape etc.

Lawrence, you do your argument no good by looking for support to someone who clearly does not know what she is talking about!

(To start with, it is not necessary to know a single thing about the band Rammstein to recognize the internal contradiction of the example given 'in regard to Germany': "the rock group Rammstein which dresses up in surrealistic versions of what could be described as Nazi Uniforms". Given the [well-known] attitude of the nazis towards surrealism, and supposing the statement to be accurate, just what sort of statement would one be making in 'dressing up in surrealistic versions of nazi uniforms'? George Grosz' and John Heartfield's works are full of 'surrealistic versions of nazi uniforms' - I don't think *anyone* mistakes their intentions.)

List members can decide for themselves about the group Rammstein by searching the Internet using the keywords 'Rammstein' and 'neonazi OR neo-nazi'. Here's an excerpt from a BBC page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A680861

"The media were very quick to pass that judgement on Rammstein. During the early 1990s, news of an upsurge of neo-Nazi activities in the Eastern part of Germany had shocked the world. Consequently, some people tended to be very careful about anything that came from East Germany, especially when it was anything unusual. In the wake of these developments, Rammstein was a likely candidate to be considered one of those neo-Nazi type of bands.

"This verdict was passed unjustly. The musical history of Rammstein's members includes bands like Feeling B and The Inchtabokatables, which constituted part of the core of East German punk music before the unification of Germany. In unified Germany, these bands were known for their decidedly left-wing attitude. …

"To clear the confusion up, once and for all, Rammstein produced for their third album the song 'Links, 2, 3, 4'. The catch phrase of that song, which was released as a single, translates as:

     They want my heart to be right
     But when I look down
     I see it beating on the left side.

"In true Rammstein style, however, they chose to cause confusion, again. The words of the refrain, 'Links, 2, 3, 4', are often used by people marching (Links means 'left') and are thus, by reminding the listener of uniformity rather than individuality, often associated with right-wing or totalitarian organizations. Typically, the audience is not given a clear look the band; they are forced to take a very close look in order to understand them."

Chris Bruce
Kiel, Germany

P.S.: About that 'anything unusual' in the first paragraph of the quotation from the BBC: apparently one of the antics Rammstein's lead singer got up to was lighting himself on fire and performing while completely engulfed in flames. The popular music industry is a crazy world ….

P.P.S. A little about George Grosz and John Heartfield (from _Encyclopaedia Britannica 2005_):

"In drawing collections such as The Face of the Ruling Class (1921) and Ecce Homo (1922), Grosz depicts fat Junkers, greedy capitalists, smug bourgeoisie, drinkers, and lechers—as well as hollow-faced factory labourers, the poor, and the unemployed.

"At this time Grosz belonged to the Berlin Dada art movement, having befriended the German Dadaist brothers Wieland Herzfelde and John Heartfield in 1915. Gradually, Grosz became associated with the Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”) movement, which embraced realism as a tool of satirical social criticism.

"After immigrating to the United States in 1933 to teach at the Art Students League in New York City, Grosz's work became less misanthropic, as he drew magazine cartoons, nudes, and landscapes. He became a U.S. citizen in 1938. During World War II he showed his old pessimism in sharply coloured, teeming canvases such as The Survivor (1944). So famous and threatening were Grosz's depictions of war and corruption that the Nazis designated him “Cultural Bolshevist Number One.” A French critic called his work “the most definitive catalog of man's depravity in all history.”

" John Heartfield (formerly Helmut Herzfelde, but Anglicized as aprotest against German patriotism). One of the chief means of expression used by these artists was the photomontage, which consists of fragments of pasted photographs combined with printed messages; the technique was most effectively employed by Heartfield, particularly in his later, anti-Nazi works (e.g., Kaiser Adolph, 1939). Like the groups in New York and Zürich, the Berlin artists staged public meetings, shocking and enraging the audience with their antics."

-cb
 --

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