The Past in Memory

I have now found the Easyjet in-flight magazine which features the Holocaust Memorial 'photo shoot'. Although Easyjet have removed the online version, Google provides the cache. This is at
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:9SPcrxB5dKQJ:www.easyjetinflight.com/features/2009/11/berlin-fashion+holocaust+mahnmal+easyjet&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

If you go to this page, you will also notice photos of models posing outside Berlin's Jewish Museum. It's not just the Holocaust Memorial that has been used as backdrop. Additional backgrounds are provided by the Bauhaus Archiv-Museum and the Neue Nationalgalerie. One assumes those making the photographs were just looking for some 'cool' new architecture with metallic sheen and striking geometry. 'Hey, this is great!'

Still, one wonders why no member of the photo shoot ventured so much as a 'Hm, but wait, isn't this some kind of memorial?'

Perhaps someone did.

And the answer? A hand raised and dropped casually, as much as to say: who cares...

I watched the second part of Matt Frei's series on Berlin, this evening - and was impressed. For anyone who has been following the ups and downs, as it were, of the history of Berlin's Castle, it was pleasing to see this theme form the core of the programme (I have posted a number of blogs recently on the planned reconstruction of this Castle). If you want to see film footage of the original building and of its destruction, as well as of the Palace of the Republic which replaced it, do watch 'Ruined Visions' at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p4fl4

The programme ends with Frei interviewing two Berlin citizens, one of whom laments the Castle's destruction, while the other, by contrast, feels aggrieved at the demise of the GDR's Palace of the Republic. Frei points out that destroying the Castle and destroying the Palace were both acts which served to cover over history. Both his interviewees, then, are right to feel as they do. The programme ends open-endedly with a view of the blank area in the middle of Berlin where the Berlin Castle will - or will not? - be reconstructed. This is what was so good about the programme as a whole. It conveyed very well the process of fluidity and change, of history coming and going - and coming back - of Berlin as a restless city whose restlessness was its soul, not its curse.

Yet when you walk or travel through Berlin, despite all the masses of cranes stalking through the city, despite the constant rebuilding, you don't feel that restlessness. Berlin embraces change with strength, assurance, calm - and even with a touch of the laid-back...

I have just been informed that the photos showing models posing at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin are visible at

http://www.lizaswelt.net/2009/11/shoa-chic.html

Newspapers are reporting today on the fact that the November issue of Easyjet’s November in-flight magazine featured two pictures of fashion models posing at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial (‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’). Easyjet, alerted to the fact, has apologised and withdrawn the magazine. Easyjet claims it was unaware of the images until they appeared in print (the in-flight magazine is produced by an external publishing house). The airline also claims that it is not particularly obvious where the photos were shot – which is why it took 20 days for anyone to take notice.

That Easyjet does not check what is in its airline magazine before distributing to millions of customers is alarming – nor do I find passing the entire buck to the external publishing house a particularly responsible reaction. The comment that ‘it is not particularly obvious where the photos were shot’ is rather contradicted by the fact that the magazine provides unambiguous captions beneath the photos in question. Surely “Location: This Page: Holocaust Memorial” makes it VERY obvious? I would put the photos up here on the blog, but am not sure of the rights situation. You can find them on the internet if you google...

Disturbing, too, is the fact that it took so long for someone to complain. Is this the effect of ex-Chancellor Schröder’s by now notorious comment (often slightly misquoted) that a Holocaust Memorial should be a place people “like to go”? Why not clothes designer advertising teams, then? Or has it do with the fact the Holocaust Memorial, from the very beginning, was rather ‘zweckentfremdet’, as the Germans say – used, in other words, in a way that does not correspond to its function as a memorial? People sit down for a rest on the lower slabs, have their lunch there, jump from slab to slab (although this is forbidden), use the higher slabs for hide and seek, and so on. Appropriating the memorial for such activities is a step on the road to appropriating it for the purposes of advertising designer clothes. If something goes, anything goes.

The dangers of trivialising the Holocaust are well known. European politicians talk about this a lot. Here we have a case of a construction which is supposed to act against forgetting and trivialisation – a Holocaust memorial – actually serving to encourage exactly the opposite. This is trivialisation not at the fringe of society, but in the heart of memory itself. Of course noone really wanted this. The openness of the memorial was to encourage engagement, to invite memory, rather than to impose and demand. I am sure it has achieved this to an extent. But increasingly I am concerned that this openness is not so much creating space for individual and collective engagement as evacuating the memorial’s essential meaning. It is rapidly becoming detached from its roots in Holocaust memory, turning into a free-floating framework to which people – and fashion companies – attach their own meanings.

Another point: people have always taken photographs of themselves standing next to memorials, but there was a certain reluctance to do this in the case of Holocaust memorials or memorial sites. You wouldn’t hand round images of Dachau and Auschwitz to your friends and say, ‘Hey, this is me at the crematorium’. But I have seen, by now, quite a lot of photographs of people standing smiling with the Berlin Holocaust Memorial in the background. One person said to me, “it’s a cool memorial”. Is this memorial just too good to look at?

As I came up the stairs to the exit of Euston Square tube station today, I found myself getting closer and closer to a familiar sound. Soon, I could hear it quite clearly. It came through some invisible loudspeakers (invisible at least to me), it came slightly distorted, it came without quite the tragic intensity it has when you hear it live, but with pretty fierce melancholy all the same.

IT was Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony. The last movement. Possibly the most tragic piece of music ever written, which ends on a dying heartbeat.

Were the Royal Phil busking behind the walls somewhere? What on earth induced those responsible for the London underground to have their customers make their way from physical to spiritual depths? That very analogy? Well, it was raining, but you can't just play the 6th every time it rains.

A few hours later, when I reentered the subway, Tchaikovsky had been replaced by Beethoven. Beethoven's 5th. From tragedy to celebration!

The story, perhaps, of every Friday for those going to work and coming back from it?

This is a photograph of Vasco da Gama’s tomb, which can be found in Jeronimos Monastery in Belem, Portugal. For some reason I lingered long at the tomb, struck by the contrast between the vigorous-looking, very worldly ship on the side, and the reposeful figure on top, hands folded and pointing towards the eternity of heaven. Many memorials have been dedicated to Vasco da Gama around the world in honour of his achievements. There’s a fine, feisty memorial to him in the town of Sines, where was born ; at the Cape of Good Hope you will find a monument to him, surmounted with a cross; a pillar in his name was erected at Malindi; and at Port Owen there is also a Vasco da Gama monument. These are only some. So here is a man honoured in many corners of the globe he helped to discover, the world really was his oyster ; yet standing by that tomb, it was as if he was honouring God for all those discoveries, as if they were somehow passing through him, through his hands, delivered up to God waiting above. His tomb, so I felt inclined to believe as I stood there, was a self-deprecating memorial to the divine inspiration behind them.

Erika Steinbach, head of the German League of Expellees (representing those expelled from eastern Europe at the end of WW2), is threatening to become the first real test for the new Christian Democratic-Free Democrat coalition government in Germany. I have reported in earlier posts about the argument surrounding the seat that the League of Expellees is to have on the advisory council overseeing the establishment by Germany’s government of some sort of ‘visible sign’ to the fate of the expellees. The League, unsurprisingly, would like to nominate its president – Steinbach. But the FDP, above all foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, has made it clear they will reject Steinbach’s candidature should she be nominated. The Free Democrats are supported in their rejection of Steinbach – who is regarded in Poland, and indeed by many Germans as an obstacle to German-Polish conciliation – by the Social Democrats. The Christian Social Party (CSU), the sister-party of the Christian Democrats (to which party Steinbach belongs, indeed prominently so), would support Steinbach’s nomination. Where the Christian Democrats, including Merkel herself, stand on all this is not entirely clear yet. Steinbach has come out all guns blazing, declaring the issue to be a ‘test of democracy’. Indeed, if the League is not allowed to be represented on this committee by the person they would like to be represented by, then there is an issue of democracy. On the other hand, if Steinbach really does represent a threat to German-Polish relations, then there are matters of diplomacy to be considered. What is more important – allowing an association the exercise of its democratic right at the possible cost of international conciliation, or denying the exercise of such a right at the cost of the even-handed application of democratic rights? A conundrum. There is little Steinbach can now do to change the image the Poles and sections of the German press have of her. That image has in a sense detached itself from her, and is informed more by projections and prejudices than by knowledge of Steinbach’s true wishes. She is photographed in such a way that she appears grim, fearsome, even ferocious. No doubt we all have moments when we look like this, but generally most of us get a chance to be evaluated on the basis of our other moments, as well. I am not saying I am a fan of Steinbach. But I do think she is being daemonised, because it seems the Poles and Germans need to agree on a demon whose joint banishment will act as a kind of symbolic purification of German-Polish relations. United in opposition to Steinbach, then – is this the first step towards Polish-German understanding on the issue of expulsions? If it is, it is a dubious one. Poland and Germany will soon find out Steinbach is not the personification of all that is wrong in German-Polish relations. The problem is one of memory, memory politics and national self-images; it is far bigger than Steinbach.

On Monday we showed 'The Pianist' to the students as part of the university's Events Weeks. Afterwards, in discussion, one of the students said that the film showed how music could triumph over ideology - this in reference to the scene where the Jewish pianist Szpilman plays a Chopin ballade while a German soldier, Wilm Hosenfeld, sits and listens. Hosenfeld appears moved by the music, and subsequently allows Szpilman to hide, bringing him food. The film does not state that Hosenfeld would not have helped without this musical performance, but it could be seen to imply it. Someone else found this scene, by contrast, almost calumnious - in suggesting that Hosenfeld needed to be swayed by music to do a good deed, the film denied him his autonomous humanity. After all, Hosenfeld saved the lives of quite a number of Jews, acting on his own moral initiative - not after listening to Chopin. This leads me to wonder how many of the films which have recently included a portrayal of German resistance, or focus entirely on it, show the resisters as needing to undergo a moment of conversion, enlightenment, even epiphany before they become resisters - rather than being opponents of Hitler, more or less, from the start. I think quite a few of them do. Of course, this may reflect the facts. Equally, though, it may be a cinematic convention - or a reflection of our understanding of anti-Nazi resistance as emerging from a comprehensively tainted community. Yet there was much principled resistance from the very beginning. Perhaps this is there is some films, though - 'Georg Elser', for instance.

In response to the comment that I did not say why I was so damning of the film ‘Valkyrie’, I offer the following.

But as I am not by any stretch of the imagination an expert on Stauffenberg or anti-Nazi resistance generally, let me quote (in my own rather wooden translation) the reaction of two German historians who certainly are experts - Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel. For them, Bryan Singer's 'Valkyrie', seen from a historical perspective, provides a ‘superficial and false image’ of events. Steinbach and Tuchel quote the historical adviser to the filmmakers (presumably Hoffmann) as saying that the film is ‘true’ and ‘accurate’. They cannot understand how, given the historical mistakes in the film, he has come to this opinion. “Was Olbricht really an irresponsible, stiff, paralysed military bureaucrat, did Stauffenberg really throw his glass eye into a glass, did decisive discussions about cutting off communication networks to the Fuehrer’s HQ really take place in a men’s toilet? […] We learn nothing in the film about Stauffenberg’s development from someone who supported National Socialist politics into a critic and, finally, a radical opponent of Hitler. A scene at the beginning, obviously added later, bundles together Stauffenberg’s motives into a fictional diary entry – that’s all we get. […] Among the military conspirators, in the film it is Henning von Tresckow and Mertz von Quirnheim who are prominent. Friedrich Olbricht, really the creator of the Valkyrie plan, is represented as a hesitator. General Erich Fellgiebel almost has to be forced by Stauffenberg into taking part in the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler. One person does the driving, many others are driven – this has nothing to do with the reality of the attempt to overthrow Hitler in summer 1944. The officers who had decided to act did this on their own initiative because they – just like Stauffenberg – no longer wanted to follow the criminal regime. […] When Stauffenberg meets the leaders of the civilian groups involved in the conspiracy and asks them what their objectives are, he doesn’t get any answer in the film. But in reality issues concerning what would happen afterwards had been under discussion since 1938/1939 and largely resolved. It is dishonorable to portray Goerdeler as if he was one of yesterday’s men. These bickering old men, a gentleman’s club, are supposed to have embodied the other Germany?”

Steinbach and Tuchel have more to say, and I agree with every word of it. The film may be accurate in some of its historical detail, and there may be changes which are insignificant or understandable, given the fact that we are dealing with a feature film and not a documentary. But the spirit of the collective nature of the conspiracy simply is not there. And this is why it is a deeply Hollywoodish film. Stauffenberg arrives amongst the dithering other resisters with the individualistic moral bravado of a western hero coming from outside to clean up the town (hence my comparison). It is not that I do not admire Stauffenberg, I do; the courage of the man was remarkable. It is not that there were not resisters who could have done more; there were. But it is the case that I find the film’s focus too obsessively selective. There are several German films – 2 from the 50s, one more recent one – and some German documentaries (one by Joachim Fest) which, while as much a product of their times as ‘Valkyrie’ is of its, portray Stauffenberg in a more complex way, and include the other resisters as equals in the discussions and planning.

I apologise for not backing up my rather throwaway comment about the film’s disastrous inaccuracy. I hope this explains why I think this way. To individualise the history of July 44 to this extent is surely a significant misrepresentation – if not a disastrous inaccuracy.

Tonight, though, I will watch the film again. Perhaps I missed something? And Steinbach and Tuchel too? Their article by the way is

“Kino-Attentat auf Stauffenberg: Widerstand zwecklos“
Von Peter Steinbach und Johannes Tuchel
Der Tagesspiegel vom 20.01.2009
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/kino/Operation-Walkuere;art137,2710077

More about Hosenfeld at

http://www.hosenfeld.dk/customize.htm