“As Germans push austerity, Greeks press Nazi-era claims.”>article (c) NYT, 2013
Archive for Germany
1913 – The Year Before the Storm
Posted in Uncategorized with tags 1913, Austria, Europe, Florien Illies, Germany, history, Literature, World War I on 17 September 2013 by delclem
“Can you write a history of the year 1913 and ignore the disaster waiting around the corner? With the centenary of the First World War approaching that may sound perverse, yet it is precisely what Die Zeit journalist Florian Illies tries to do in his new book, which was a bestseller in Germany when it was published there last year.” >review (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2013
‘Banality of Evil’ Revisited
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Adolf Eichmann, Banality of Evil, Germany, Hannah Arendt, Holocaust, National Socialism, philosophy, USA on 20 August 2013 by delclem
“Hannah Arendt employed this memorable phrase in both the subtitle and closing words of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, her book on the trial of Nazi lieutenant-colonel Adolf Eichmann. To Arendt’s mind, Eichmann willingly did his part to organize the Holocaust — and an instrumental part it was — out of neither anti-semitism nor pure malice, but out of a non-ideological, entirely more prosaic combination of careerism and obedience. Readers have argued ever since its publication about this characterization, and those with a special interest in how Arendt arrived there can find in the New Yorker‘s online archives the original series of “Eichmann in Jerusalem” articles out of which the book grew.”>full text
(c) OPEN CULTURE, 2013
‘The Fragmentary, Mystical Thought of W.B.’
Posted in Uncategorized with tags film, flaneur, France, Germany, Holocaust, literary theory, Spain, Walter Benjamin on 1 August 2013 by delclem“The 1993 experimental film above—One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin—is part documentary, part low-budget cable-access editing exercise. The film provides an introduction to Benjamin’s life and thought through interviews with scholars, re-enactments of his last days, and montages centered around his many aphoristic expressions.” >full text (c) open culture 2013
>another film: Flâneur III: Benjamin’s Shadow (1998)
State Security Art
Posted in Uncategorized with tags art, edward Snowden, Germany, Oliver Bienkowski, spying, Stasi, state security, USA on 13 July 2013 by delclem
“A German artist who beamed these words onto the wall of the U.S. embassy in Berlin says Washington’s spy methods make the former East German secret police (the Stasi) look like boy scouts. A video of OLIVER BIENKOWSKI’s artwork, a project that came about in collaboration with internet activist Kim Dotcom, is fast becoming a hit on the Internet in Germany, tapping into widespread outrage over U.S. surveillance programs revealed by fugitive ex-National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.” (reblogged from Revolution News)
65 years since the “Luftbrücke”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags 1948, air lift, Berlin, Berlin Blockade, Cold War, Germany, Luftbrücke on 27 June 2013 by delclem
Amazing photos from the Berlin Blockade 1948-49 (c) THE INDEPENDENT, 2013
How Ordinary Germans Did “It”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags compliance, complicity, Germany, Harald Welzer, Holocaust, National Socialism, ordinary people, soldiers, Third Reich on 20 June 2013 by delclem
“Growing consciousness of the Holocaust in both academic scholarship and society in general became evident in the late 1970s and intensified in the 1980s. Initially, important research focused on the different roles of Hitler, Nazi ideology, and the structure of the dictatorship in shaping the decision-making process that led to the Holocaust. Research also concentrated on the complicity of various professions and institutions in the Third Reich, and particularly on the SS. Still lacking was careful empirical study of how Nazi racial policy was also carried out by “ordinary” Germans.” >text (c) NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, 2013
Minnesota man accused of Nazi war crimes
Posted in Uncategorized with tags collaboration, Germany, Holocaust, Michael Karkoc, Second World War, Ukraine, war crimes on 14 June 2013 by delclem
Michael Kardoc, commander of a SS-led unit “accused of burning villages filled with women and children, lied to American immigration officials to get into the United States and has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War II, according to evidence uncovered by The Associated Press.” Behind this archetypical story the ugly face of Ukrainian nationalist Nazi collaboration in the Holocaust appears once again. >full text & video (c) HUFFINGTON POST, 2013
>Additional information (c) CANADA.COM 2013
Time Travel
Posted in Uncategorized with tags 1929, Berlin, fil, Germany, urban life on 3 June 2013 by delclemSweet oblivion?
Posted in Uncategorized with tags 1946, Europe, Germany, Great Britan, speech, Winston Churchill, Zürich on 2 June 2013 by delclem
“There must be what Mr Gladstone many years ago called a ‘blessed act of oblivion’. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past and look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years to come hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past. If Europe is to be saved from infinite misery, and indeed from final doom, there must be this act of faith in the European family, this act of oblivion against all crimes and follies of the past.” Winston Churchill (Zürich speech, 1946) However, Europe today seems to be rather built on the cultivation of trauma memory.
delirium clemens 