Frederick Pollack wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Hamilton" 
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2005 10:32 PM
> Subject: Re: help! tidal piano
>
>
>>> "Whenever I hear the word Culture I reach for my
>>
>>
>> I think in the original (and was this was uttered by either Goebels 
>> or the
>> leader of the then Hitler Youth Movement) the term in was "luger".
>>
>> But it may have lost something in translation.
>>
>
> No.  The remark

["Wenn ich Kultur höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning"] - mjw

>  is erroneously attributed to Goering; sometimes to Goebbels. But its 
> real source was a play, Schlageter, by the Nazi playwright Hans 
> Johst.  It was performed in late 1933 or early '34, and was based on 
> the life of Albert Leo Schlageter, a Stalhelm or early Nazi fighter 
> shot by French soldiers in the occupied Rhineland after WWI.  The 
> character based on him speaks the line in the play.  Johst (and his 
> audiences) approved.

Yes, thank you for pointing this out; I did not know the source. This is 
what I have found out: he dedicated the play to Hitler and it was 
premiered on the latter's birthday in 1933. He became the President of 
the Reichsschrifttumkammer in 1935 and was able to help his friend 
Gottfried Benn while denouncing others. After the war he was 
"entnazifiziert", slowly at first - he had after all accompanied his 
good friend "Heini" Himmler on a visit to the occupied zones of Central 
Eastern Europe and had, as SS Gruppenführer, taken part in the Führer 
conference in Posen at which Himmler informed the faithful about the 
extermination of the Jews - but then Benn (now highly respected), among 
others, spoke up for him. He himself claimed to be a "humanist" and 
"pacifist"; friends' testimonials intended to absolve him of involvement 
in the regime compared him with Büchner & Ernst Toller (!!!). So much 
for the poisonous climate of self-serving lies that infected West 
Germany in the post-war period, while the general idea of the American 
occupiers was to go along with any institutionally sanctioned cover-up 
that helped to create "order" and suppress signs of radical or "Red" 
unrest among the populace or in the (strictly censored) press and 
broadcasting corporations. Of course, the GDR ("Ostzone") was much 
worse, no doubt of it.
mj

-- 
M.J.Walker - no blog - no webpage - no idea

Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. - Montaigne