Posted on 03/06/2007 7:01:14 AM PST by Sam Cree
Dec. 18, 2006 issue - In the first world war, germany suffered 5 million casualties. When the war was over, the country was left with 2 million orphans, a million widows and a million invalids. In the waning days of 1918, it underwent a revolution in which the kaiser abdicated and fled to the Netherlands. Soon thereafter, the victorious Allies imposed a staggering reparations burden on Germany. Unemployment skyrocketed, and inflation reached such insane proportions that paper currency made better firewood than money. German cities became, simultaneously, pits of poverty, starvation and disease, and dens of drug-fueled high life. The painter Max Beckmann, who'd been flung out of the Army and the war in 1915 due to a nervous breakdown at the front, said, "We must take part in the whole misery that is to come." He meant that he and his fellow artists mustn't avoid the grotesque subject matter that history had placed in front of them. They must paint it with all the realism—emotional and psychological, as well as physical—at their command.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
As for Darwin, N. made the case for Darwin inadvertantly thru applying much of Darwin's theory to social rather than biological behavior.
See http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=4801
That's why I say he made the case inadvertantly.
He derided Darwin, yet his own theories such as that of "The Superman" led toward a type of social Darwinism.
***I suspect that Beckman and Co. would find their worthy subjects for decadence, not among us "conservatives (if that is what we are)," but among the Hollywood glitterati and other super wealthy members of the Left.***
And we must not forget Gore's daughter in the gown so sheer it was see through.
Everybody in our family has what my daddy calls "fieldworkers' hands" with broad palms, short stubby fingers and big joints. My hands look exactly like my daddy's. Thank heavens my daughter got her father's hands, he has beautiful hands.
She looks a little like Janet Reno.
- Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is Dead."
- God
I can definitely see the correlation between these so-called intellectuals & Hitler's rise to power.
I don't condone the German people for voting him in office(I'm Jewish, BTW). Nevertheless, I can see how they got so sickened by liberalism that anyone who promoted patriotism & conservative values, albeit perverted, would look good in comparison.
People fear a reenactment of Nazism here. Ironically, I'm more concerned about its coming from the left-, not the right-wingers. They're the ones in back of the Islamists & other kooks.
Agreed that the greater danger of anti Semitism comes from the Left, primarily because leftist doctrine puts the state (the people) in charge of society. So leftist anti Semitism would almost by definition be state sanctioned, as it was in Nazi Germany and the USSR.
Of course, modern American conservatives are now also leaning toward the idea that the state is more or less the shaper and arranger of society, so the dangers of right wing anti Semitism may be increasing as well.
'Social Darwinism' is a 20th century term that had nothing to do with Nietzsche. And even a phrase like 'Survival of the fittest' was coined by British Sociologist Herbert Spencer. Nietzsche didn't agree with Darin or Spencer and felt that weakness (societal or biological) was a needed step of moving forward. his concept of the Uber mensch was in terms of achievement, not brute strength as the Nazis fraudulently put forth based mostly on his sister's forgery. Nietzsche would have despised the likes of Hitler.
I took German for ten years, lived in Bavaria, and read extensively in the literature between-the-wars. You can see the same soul-sickness in the writings of the period.
Don't care for Schoenberg. Like some Mahler, especially the Lieder -- "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" is outstanding, I have the old RCA recording with FiDi and Schwartzkopf.
Weill is another interesting case (I've sung Dreigroschen both in English and in German - it's better in German naturally - and done bits of Mahagonny in concert). Fortunately he was too good a musician to be TOO deliberately ugly, and wrote excellent music in spite of his and Brecht's intentions. Music is a purer art than painting, and it's far more difficult for a real musician to be bad on purpose. Bad musicians, that's another story . . . (don't get me started on Haugen or Haas or the St. Louee Jebbies).
Aren't money and paper currency the same thing? (Goldbugs stay out of this...I am well aware that you consider anything but gold as fraud)
Artists have been "exorcising their own demons" a lot longer than the German Expressionists (Dante, Swift, Baudelare...).
Sometimes the result is good . . . but in the case of Grosz and Dix, not so good. They lost sight of the other side, so to speak. Dante never did. I'm with Dr. Sam Johnson on Swift, his output was very uneven. Baudelaire I haven't read enough of to comment on, never learned French despite a dear friend who took a degree from the Sorbonne and was always trying to get me to learn. . . . hey, she could translate anything I needed! < g >
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