Culture in the Third Reich

[kernelbogey]

Culture in the Third Reich by Moritz Föllmer. Interesting review by Anne McElvoy of this new book in the Guardian today.

"Moritz Föllmer is a heterodox scholar, who applies a sharp cultural lens to metropolitan life, politics and individual strivings and pastimes as the backdrop to disaster falling on Germany. The cultural offerings of national socialism, he believes, held such mesmerising appeal for so many Germans precisely because it commanded a range of tastes from middle-class conservatism to emerging mass culture – a combination that “mobilised vast energies” across the population by appealing to fustian sorts and neophytes alike."

[gurnemanz]

Read review in Observer yesterday - definitely in my neck of the woods. My mother-in-law, a gentle cultured woman, good amateur violinist, was in her early twenties during the first years of the Third Reich and told us quite a lot about it. Like most people, I think she just went with the flow, much to the anguish of her father, an artist, who had seen through it all. He died before my wife was born, having fought in the war and spent time as a POW, luckily for him with the British and he eventually got home. We have a few of his paintings on permanent display next to the staircase, so he is ever present.

[Barbirollians]

Read review in Observer yesterday - definitely in my neck of the woods. My mother-in-law, a gentle cultured woman, good amateur violinist, was in her early twenties during the first years of the Third Reich and told us quite a lot about it. Like most people, I think she just went with the flow, much to the anguish of her father, an artist, who had seen through it all. He died before my wife was born, having fought in the war and spent time as a POW, luckily for him with the British and he eventually got home. We have a few of his paintings on permanent display next to the staircase, so he is ever present.

My grandmother was at Royal Holloway College studying German from 1930-1933. She visited Bavaria and the same family twice in that time . In 1930 Hitler was seen as a bit of a joke - in 1932 she said it was horrifying as if they had all been brainwashed . She never went back to Germany again for the rest of her life.

[gradus]

A definite must-read having seen it reviewed in The Observer.

[kernelbogey]

A definite must-read having seen it reviewed in The Observer.

Oddly I can't raise this review. Could you provide a link please?

[Pulcinella]

Oddly I can't raise this review. Could you provide a link please?

Here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/13/culture-in-the-third-reich-by-moritz-follmer-review-when-fascism-stole-the-show

[Serial_Apologist]

Here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...stole-the-show

An object lesson in when you get people with too much power, money and influence in charge of the mass media, protecting their own interests.

Of course, it could never happen today...

[gradus]

Apologies, 'twas The Grauniad as Pulci clarified.

[kernelbogey]

Apologies, 'twas The Grauniad as Pulci clarified.

Aha! Alles klar!

[kernelbogey]

It is a continuing puzzle how a nation in which people admired Wagner and Beethoven (though not Mahler, nor maybe Mendelsohn) could take the direction that it did, 1933-45. This book seems to offer some additional explanations.

(In 1966, an American student told me they had seen a portrait of Hitler hanging in a house in or near Salzburg and which was spoken of warmly.)

[Richard Barrett]

This book looks interesting. I think I may have previously mentioned one on a related subject that I find very valuable - Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics by Frederic Spotts.

Regarding "a nation in which people admired Wagner and Beethoven", of course such people were (and are) always in a minority, even in Germany. And some of them indeed were members of the SS, which just goes to show that there's no necessary connection at all between a finely tuned aesthetic sense and humanitarian ethics.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Regarding "a nation in which people admired Wagner and Beethoven", of course such people were (and are) always in a minority, even in Germany. And some of them indeed were members of the SS, which just goes to show that there's no necessary connection at all between a finely tuned aesthetic sense and humanitarian ethics.

I've been struggling for 40 years to understand how a profoundly civilised country could do what it did, and trying to get behind the well-known electoral and constitutional mechanisms ably used by Hitler. The nearest I've got so far to revelation has been this book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leonard-Pei...%2C135&sr=1-11 which argues that the root was in the strong German philosophical tradition going back to Kant u.a. which imposed pretty much as the citizen's duty the total subservience of individual views and blind obedience to the leader (the Fuhrer of course).

[Joseph K]

I've been struggling for 40 years to understand how a profoundly civilised country could do what it did...

Not that Germany is alone in Europe for being responsible for genocide...

[Ein Heldenleben]

I've been struggling for 40 years to understand how a profoundly civilised country could do what it did, and trying to get behind the well-known electoral and constitutional mechanisms ably used by Hitler. The nearest I've got so far to revelation has been this book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leonard-Pei...%2C135&sr=1-11 which argues that the root was in the strong German philosophical tradition going back to Kant u.a. which imposed pretty much as the citizen's duty the total subservience of individual views and blind obedience to the leader (the Fuhrer of course).

One theory advanced is that English belief in the rule of law never really took hold in Germany. It is a mistake to confuse artistic and cultural excellence with being "profoundly civilised".

[Frances_iom]

One theory advanced is that English belief in the rule of law never really took hold in Germany. It is a mistake to confuse artistic and cultural excellence with being "profoundly civilised".

James Hawes "The shortest history of Germany" suggests that Prussia (or as he refers to it as East Elbia) was the cause of all of the problems - its customs + governance were very different from the area to the west,formerly part of the Roman empire - the area had become German following an eastern colonial advance into near empty land that had become more favourable for agriculture during the Mediaeval Warm Period, its previous inhabitants being Slavic who resisted which led to the continual fear of what became Poland.