Artists under Hitler

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

In/Gravity's Rainbow/ we meet Carl Orff and his /Carmina Burana/ (1937).

"Just offshore, underwater, run miles of secret piping, oil ready at a 
valve-twist to be released and roast German invaders who belong back in 
dreams already old ... fuel waiting hypergolic ignition that will not 
come unless now as some as some junior-bureaucratic rag or May uprising 
of the spirit, to Bavarian tunesmith Carl Orff's lively

O, O, O,
To-tus flore-o!
Iam amore virginali
Totus ardeo ...

all this fortress coast alight, Portsmouth to Dungeness, blazing for the 
love of spring." (p. 237)

There is an interesting continuity in Orff's career. He composed music 
for the Olympic Games in Germany twice! 1936 ("Einzug und Reigen der 
Kinder") and 1972 ("Gruß der Jugend").

The question why and how artists did live and work in the Third Reich is 
very relevant. When I read the review of the book in question, I have 
doubts whether answers can really be found there, though.

And the philosophers? As Jacob Taubes said: "Irgendetwas verstehe ich 
von dem Nationalsozialismus nicht, wenn ich nicht verstehen kann, wieso 
Schmitt und Heidegger überhaupt von ihm angezogen werden." (Ad Carl 
Schmitt. Gegenstrebige Fügung. Berlin 1987, p. 48). About: 'There's 
something I do not get about National Socialism when I cannot understand 
why Schmitt and Heidegger are attracted by it at all.' Mostly this 
question is answered by merely ideology-critical means. As if modernity 
was a one size fits all T-shirt or something ... It's understandable 
that people shy away from the antisemitism that can be found in 
Schmitt's and Heidegger's writings from the 1930s and early 1940s. But 
without going into these writings you will never understand what the 
German experience of modernity is (or at least: was) about. After 1945 
(West)Germany got americanized like no other European country. Which has 
advantages and disadvantages. Among the latter ones is the severe break 
of cultural continuity. And if you were socialized into the US colony 
called (West)Germany, like I was, it takes you years even to realize 
that very fact ...


On 08.02.2015 15:09, Dave Monroe wrote:
> http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300197471
>
> http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/strange-bedfellows-modernists-nazis/
> -
> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>

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