Stuff About Germans

 April 20, 2015

Investigation of Teacher Suspended.  (We think. Maybe. Isn't it? What actually DO we think, anyway?)

This link may not last long. It is to an article (in German) in today's Berliner Zeitung daily paper, concerning a teacher in the Berlin suburbs who played an old shellac record of the Nazi party anthem The Horst Wessel Song ("The Banner High!") in front of her 6th grade class. WELL! Scandal! It provoked headlines throughout Germany for a whole week! Nazis! Eeeek!   

The public performance or recitation of that song was verboten by the occupying allies after the war, and then by both the West- and East German governments, along with all other "symbols of anti-constitutional organizations." Including, naturally and above all, the swastika. All those laws are still in force.

"Frühling für Hitler"

Surprise!-- who would have thought it? After about eight years of German hand-wringing (Would this be ok? Can we do this? Will people like it? or get it?), in 2009 the Mel Brooks musical farce "The Producers" (remember "Springtime for Hitler"? -- clip here) was brought to the German stage to STANDING OVATIONS. (Whew!) Interestingly, although it was fine to post swastikas all over the stage and the inside of the theater, out on the public streets it's still verboten. So this is is how they decorated the outside of the theater. Those are pretzels, in case you can't tell.

Enormously weird and creepy

This clip from a German TV variety program introduced the German public to the up-coming opening of "Frühling für Hitler" on the Berlin stage. Watch the musical song & dance number that starts at 2:45. THIS IS JUST SO FUCKING WEIRD! Are they mocking themselves? Do they think they're just mocking the BAD Germans? Or just their own grannies and grandpas? I can't understand what the Germans think of their complicated selves and their complicated past. It is eternally intriguing to me.

Another factoid: The TV sitcom 'Hogan's Heroes," about the wacky madcap hijinx of G.I.s in a Nazi POW camp run by dim-witted and clownish Germans, was dubbed into German and enjoyed on TV there. Go Figure.

Anyway, it turns out that there is an exception to the law about Nazi symbols when they are being used for educational purposes. So, after a number of committee meetings, legal interpretations, pointed assertions, and op-ed columns, the teacher in question is off the hook.

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Movie Stars - Where are they now?

Above is a scene from the 1930 musical movie "Einbrecher" ("Burglars"). It was made at the UFA Studios in Babelsberg outside Berlin, in their new Tonkreuz ("sound cross") - an X-shaped building designed for making the new talking pictures. The movie's plot is too stupid to explain because it's one of those over-the-top-complicated French bedroom farces. A clip of the complete scene is here. 

A. Margarethe Köppke (1902-1930) was a dramatic stage actress. This was her only movie, and shortly after making it, suffering from depression at age 28,  she committed suicide in Vienna by taking the gas pipe.

B. Kurt Gerron was a famous and beloved stage and movie actor, director, cabaret performer, and singer (he was the one who introduced the song "Mack the Knife"). He foolishly tarried for too long within the Nazis' tightening noose and was ultimately rounded up (he was Jewish) and sent to Theresienstadt, where he was made to put together a cabaret show for the inmates and guards. In October 1944 he was shipped off to the Auschwitz gas chambers. There is a really excellent and monumentally creepy BBC documentary about him here.

C. Lilian Harvey (1906-1968) was a popular singer, dancer, and actress. The German magazines called her "the sweetest girl in the world." Born in London, she made numerous silent and sound movies (including one in Hollywood), speaking her roles in English, German, and French, all fluently. Despite Nazi pressure, she  kept in contact with her Jewish film industry colleagues and helped some of them to emigrate. The Gestapo kept her under watch; she ultimately had to move to France and the Nazis confiscated all her money and property. Her duet with Willy Fritsch, "Ich wollt ich wär' ein Huhn" (I wish I was a chicken) can be heard playing on a gramophone during the basement pub scene in Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" (which was filmed at the same Babelsberg studio as "Einbrecher"!).

D, Willy Fritsch (1901-1973) was a singer and dapper leading man. He was often paired with Harvey in movies (they were "The Dream Couple"). He had a long career, through silents and talkies, continuing after the war, including TV appearances (together with his son Thomas, a pop singer). Here is Willy's hit recording of the swell, peppy song that he is singing in the above clip, "Ich lass mir meinen Körper schwarz bepinseln" ("I'm having my body painted black"). 

E. Heinz Rühmann (1902-1994) was another film legend - a comedic "average guy" and later, rehabilitated after the war, a beloved character actor. Star-struck Anne Frank had his picture pasted on the wall of her attic hideaway (it's still there). During the bad old days he tried to keep out of politics, but the Nazi leadership liked him so he curried favor with them. In 1938, he divorced his Jewish wife, and once in 1944 when the Nazi censors didn't like his latest movie, he hurried by train with a copy of the film to the Führer's East Prussia "Wolf's Lair" to get Göring's approval for its release. He lived to be 92, showing up in TV variety programs and in a 1993 Wim Wenders movie. There is an unflattering video biography of him (in German) beginning here.

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German Indians

A lot of Germans are crazy about American Indians. They have

organizations that hold "powwows" where they dress in authentic Indian clothes and feathers and moccasins and spend part of a weekend in the countryside of Bavaria, Saxony, Brandenburg, or the Rhineland, performing Native American dances and songs, and staying in teepees. There is an upcoming powwow scheduled for late May this year at the Grimma Bison Farm near Dresden.

They say that this Indian fascination is largely attributable to Karl May, a prolific writer from Saxony who a century ago wrote over a dozen novels about Indian adventures in the American Wild West, many of them featuring the noble red man Winnetou and his white blood-brother, the German wanderer Old Shatterhand. They were and still are pretty successful in Germany and elsewhere (although not so much in the U.S. or UK), and are still in print. May died in 1912, but there are PAGES of his books on Amazon, in several languages, along with over 16 movies that have been made from them.

Reportedly, young Adolph Hitler was smitten with May's novels to the point that his schoolwork suffered. Hmmmm. ooo-KAY!

I tried one of May's novels back in college without making much progress (they're kinda Zane-Grey-ish), but it's fun to read German Indian-talk. "Deine weiße Brüder sprechen mit gespaltener Zunge!" (Your white brothers speak with forked tongue!).

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Like most European countries, Germany has a strong niche interest in American sports. There are over one hundred local teams in Germany that play American football in several leagues and associations. They have fan clubs, cheerleaders, junior teams, on-line shops, and everything. Check out the Munich Cowboys, "The Grand Old Team of the South."                                                                             

There are also about 15 baseball teams (e.g., the Mannheim Tornados, the Paderborn Untouchables).