Faith moves mountains
The faith that must be in all of us...
...to work and to struggle; for the nation, for the Reich
(Goebbels) 30th January 1943 (Clausewitz New Years Eve 1945)
l declare and affirm to the world and posterity...
...that l consider the false wisdom of avoiding danger...
...to be the most harmful cause of fear and alarm
The wildest despair would be wiser...
...if we were unable...
...to face danger with manly courage, with calm, suer determination...
...and a clear conscience
l must not forget the warning events of old and new times...
...the wise teachings of centuries...
...the noblest examples of famous peoples; l must not forget these...
...and surrender world history...
...for the page of a lying newspaper
l feel clean of all selfishness...
...for l can confess my every thought and feeling...
...openly to my fellow citizens
l would feel only too happy...
...in the glorious fight for liberty and dignity of the Fatherland...
...to find a glorious end
Should this belief of mine and like - minded men merit contempt and scorn...
...let posterity decide
Imagine a conversation in a German Iandscape in which...
...light, windows and firepIace, park, waIks, corridors, fires...
...dark faces, cogarette smoke, cIose-ups of faces...
...from face to face...
...or typicaI refugee conversations, continuaIly interrupted...
...or as in KarI Kraus's Last Days of Mankind...
...the Optimist and the Pessimist, arguments for and against
That could aII be acted in eight to ten scenes
Perhaps not
It's alI very difficuIt
I read from the research materiaI of the fiIm
Imagine this HitIer...
...that means one hundred and fifty searchIights at Nuremberg...
...shining verticaIIy into the sky...
...so they can be seen at night as far as Frankfurt...
...then concentrated on the stairs where HitIer made his entrance
How must a man feeI when, dazzIed like this...
...he appears before 400,000, cheering in the darkness...
...and is then approached by thousands of fIags, one from each Party branch?
I this the wiII of eIectorate, the totaI artistic production...
...of German poIitics in the twentieth century?
Official Opening of Great German Art Exhibition
When Henriette Hoffmann, later the wife of the Schirach who ruIed Austria...
...and who ruIed German youth, caIIed HitIer Youth...
...when sixteen, this daughter of HitIer's friend and photographer...
...barefoot and in her nightdress, opened their door to Hitler one night...
...he asked for his dog-whip and, sIapping his open hand with it...
...turned and said: '"Won't you kiss me''?
He had known the girI since she was eight...
...and now, fort he first time, he spoke to her as a grown-up
She repIied as girls of that age do, in fear or in honesty, who knows:
''No, realIy not, Herr Hitler"
How impracticaI, she wiIl say forty-five years Iater
A few years after that...
...the same Henriette, now a young woman, was the onIy one...
...who reproached HitIer for the murder of the Jews...
...in the middle of the war...
...at ObersaIzberg, in front of seventeen siIent uniformed men
Speer and Schirach were in the canteen; they preferred the staff
whereupon, HitIer came up to her, stood by her at the fireplace...
...seized her by the wrists and said, at first intentIy, then shouting:
''We're at war, our best men are dying and our German blood is drying up"
''That's why our enemies must be sacrified, too"
And she said: "I was taught to Iove, not to hate"
She rembered her earIy days with him when he said:
''The most beautifuI thing in life is to educate a human being"
But now she heard him shouting: ''Learn to hate, to hate as I do!"
Eaten up by Iove and hate
We must invent a new, differnt reaIity
Let us have the courage to change our lives
It's a question of the quaIity of the new reaIity...
...as they aIways say in such moments
The Utopians, the ideologists, ideaIists or artists
What did Thea von Harbou say in the book she dedicated:
''To Hitler and Germany"...
...the authorees of Fritz Lang's Nibelung fiIms of the 1920s?
''It meant the creation of a new world fort he new century...
'...in which the primeval beginning, the myth, the fairy-taIe...
'...memories of the beginning of mankind...
'...should match the recognizabIe majesty of the earIy cathedraIs'"
And he said: "We are ideaIists...
''...ideaIists of a steely romanticism...
''...artists of a new reaIity, of the twentieth century...
''...the past merging with the future"
But what did the widow of PIauen, the UFA technician, have to pay...
...when he was executed for cracking a joke about the new reaIities?
Four hundred Reichsmarks for the executioner...
...one hundred for his assistant and twenty-five pfennings for the sawdust
He saw himself as Moses with the tablets of the law
An Egyption or a Grecian prophet. HitIer the Great
The Shining ExampIe of ObersaIzberg, as Henriette knew him...
...a Nero who set Europe afIame for us...
...not insanely, but cooIly, consciousIy, IogicaIIy
The pIanned end of our tradtion and deveIopment
It is fear
Fear of the great tempters democracy
A fear persisting as Iong as there is sociaIism, the masses, technoIogy
Fear of the deviI of the democratic system
And Germany was ripe for it
The reddest state in Western Europe, Bavaria in communist hands
A state aIways top of the cIass in world history...
...with excelIence and ideaIism, with masses, technoIogy and energy...
...no cIass hatred, but cIass reconciIiation...
...and then came his slogan: ''Workers equaI artists"
An art fort he people which everyone can understand...
...a cuIturaI revoIution against the turn of the century's ivory tower...
...against those who once scorned popuIar magazines
He made trash respectabIe in the history of German taste
''Art fort he PeopIe"; a radicaI slogan
''Work Liberates", or "To each his own"...
...or "Abandon aII hope'", or Right or wrong, my HitIer!''
HitIer, on 30th January, 1933, in the CanceIIery, later his last refuge...
...said to the Iast departing guests of his entourage:
''Nobody'' wilI ever get me out of here aIive''
With that proved to be right, as he so often was
Let us remember how HitIer wept...
...when he said good-bye to his old friend, the photographer Hoffmann...
...before his cremation in a Russian bomb-crater
TwiIight of the Gods, 1945
In the petroI fire...
...lit by his driver and servant...
...you"Il have to visualize him...
...as a Iover of Germany, and he was Germany...
...as everybody knew; wasn't that what they wanted?
Heir to the Habsburg emperor and the HoIy Roman Empire
You'II have to sustain that idea for once, without any seIf-deception
Look at his face, the face of a typicaI Ioser...
...at the head of Germany, identifying himseIf with it
''I am Germany and Germany is me
''How fortunate that we found each other
''Perhaps it isn't worthy of me...
''...this Germany...
''...where democracy and repubIic were stilI just imports from abroad...
''...aimed against our best traist, against obedience and subordination...
''...against a freedem to serve and to command...
''...against the virtues of soIdiering, technoIogy, philosophy...
''...aimed against our enthusiasm, aimed against our joy in strength...
''...the strength of our beIief, of our beauty in the Triumph of the Will...
''...aimed against our electoral wiII
''Our right and our desire, our garment of honour is the uniform"
Put Germans in uniforms and you'II see them achieve miracles
They are unsuitable for eating, Iiving or having fun
In the war they were caIIed Fritzes
Better to die with honour than Iive in shame
To Iive for others, to die for others
That's not new, it's the basis of our cuIture, the proxy principIe
An oId European tradition, Western civiIization
''Who"Il ask in the future if FräuIein SchuIze was happy?'', HimmIer said
''War is the father of everything", said the Greeks
And today we say: "He who pays the piper caIIs the tune"
The freedom of the consumer... but there's more to it
We speak of war and the Germans, famous for their wars and cuIture
But we have realIy known how to Iive...
...and known how to die
We've Iived a theme that wiII serve for centuries, the theme of happy guilt
We've Iived it to death
GuiIt is the principle of tragedy
Germany is the tragic country of the century
Europe's downfaIl, yet uItimate victor of the Iast war...
...if we deem it an honour to be and to remain...
...the foremost consumer democracy in the worId
A war forced upon us, says HitIer, to avoid it alI Iater on
It's easier to wage war at fifty than at sixty. It had to come
Let us hear again the sacred war hymns as a refIection of Europe's gIory...
...the orgasm of universal Iife...
...which fertiIizes the chaos which is the preIude to alI creativity...
...and which, Iike Christ, the redeemer from death...
...triumphs over death itseIf
And HitIer was born of war, Iike ParsifaI
There the war-bIinded Hitler decided to be a poIitician
''There I resoIved to be a poIitician"
1918, when everything came to an end
Let's assume he remembered the scene...
...when he was decorated with the Iron Cross, First CIass...
...unusuaI for a Iance-corporal then
As he stood before his officer, a German
...who was secretly caIIed a Jew...
...HitIer was toId never to forget...
...the honour and duty to the Fatherland he accepted with the medaI
He, a Iittle man, regimentaI runner and petty bourgeois
That admonishment, coming from the Jew, Hugo Gutmann...
...the adjutant who considered him a crank and Iaughed about it...
...as Hitler was unfit for promotion, Iacking quaIities of leadership...
...reading only Homer and Parsifal, Schopenhauer and the GospeIs...
...away from the others, in the trenches...
...which HitIer calIed a substitute for university
The IoneIiness of the chosen one, his home and his reIigion
That is how AdoIf HitIer...
...son of an Austrian customs officiaI, became a poIitician...
...swearing he wouId never again be petty bourgeois
If politics is reaIly the art of the possibIe...
...the formuIators of programmes can onIy pIease the gods...
...if they demand the impossibIe
In the course of human history it can sometimes happen...
...that the poIitician and the pIanner become one
But he cIoser this fusion is, the greater is the resistance...
...to the poIitician's activities
He no Ionger works for requirements understandabIe to the average citizen...
...but for aims which onIy a smaII minority understands
That is why his Iife is torn by Iove and hatred...
...and why success becomes rarer, but if it blossoms just once in centuries...
...then perhaps in his later years...
...an aura of gIory can surround him
ObviousIy, such great men are onIy the marathon runners of history
The IaureI wreath of the present touches rather the brow of the dying hero
Remember how he resolved in Landsberg prison...
...by strict observance of the Iaws, by legality...
...and determination to reach power through proper democratic procedures...
...radicaI, fanaticaI use of democratic principles and possibiIities
The IittIe man who swore never again to be commonplace
A commonpIace man with artistic ambitions...
...who swears a Philistine oath against a Philistines...
...and with a committed beIief in German greatness...
...born of ancient tradition and European bourgeois civiIization...
...fashions German dreams in his heart
The soIdier from the battIefields of the First WorId War...
...who had to prove his Ieadership and artistry, beIittled in Vienna
A terribIe, seIf-imposed code...
...which it was to prove impossibIe for him and his feIIow-fighters to keep
Which is why, through inferiority and guiIt, they were strict and crueI...
...merciIess insisting on everyone's observance of that code
About this time, HitIer saw the film of Hugo's Les Miserables...
...as Henriette recalIed in Iater years
He sat under chestnut trees and drank beer
The fiIm was projected onto a sheet, with piano accompaniment
It was a struggIe between the inhuman agent of the Iaw...
...and the human fate of Jean VaIjean and littIe Cosette
The fiIm said it was better to give than to take...
...a quaIity which was totaIIy aIien to HitIer
He was a fiIm-fan, a man of the masses who sensed the power of the cinema...
...and had decided to become a fiIm hero...
...if not IiteraIly, at least he had decided never again to be commonpIace...
...but would Iive by a justice which ignored petty suspectibiIities
So HitIer became Siegfried...
...and, like StaIin, a great fan of Westerns...
...whose code was: "One man against alI, against a worId of enemies''
The IittIe good man against the big baddie...
...with enjoyment of the strength we alI Iike to see
The quickest on the draw wins and is right, appIauded at the end
A Iittle pressure in the spectator's drab Iife
Don't we feeI once more at this moment the miracIe that brought us together?
Once you heard a man's voice...
...and it touched our hearts
It woke you up and you folIowed that voice
You foIIowed it for years without ever having seen its owner
You heard onIy a voice and you folIowed it
When we meet here, we're fiIIed by the wonder of that meeting
Not aII of you an see me and l can't see aII of you...
...but I feeI your presence and you feeI mine
It is the beIief in our nation which has made us IittIe peopIe great...
...which has made us poor peopIe rich...
...which has made us waiting, dejected, frightened people...
...brave and courageous...
...which has made the Iost see again and brought us together
That demanded sacrifices, true to the oId fairy-taIe
If you renounce Iove, you'II be rich
If you renounce friendship, individuaIity, you'Il be famous...
...rich and famous
But he happy end is caIIed the Twilight of the Gods
But if there are no more gods, above or below...
...where do we faII in a godless game for success?
Fatherland, community, sociaIism, nation
The secret ideal of aII managers, if they are honest
He stated everything in advance, to everybody...
...but nobody wanted to beIieve it
Somebody had to be found who's to bIame for aIl the sins of the worId...
...for the shaming rat-race for profit...
...for art which no one among the peopIe understood...
...for unempIoyment and everyday humiIiations and hardships
And somebody had to be found...
...who undertook the task of purification...
...sacrified conscience and swept everybody aIong in a Dionysian cuIt...
...like a nightmare with murder and bIood fort he new cause
They thought they were doing good...
...by kiIIing evil, as they caIIed it...
...ostensibIy in others, but subconsciousIy in themseIves
A battlefieId of the ego
In Thuringia, where BuchenwaId concentration camp was buiIt...
...they Ieft standing the oak where Goethe wrote poetry 150 years before
For exampIe, "The Wanderer's Night-Song"
Thou comest from skies, all our pain and torment stilling
Him who doubly troubled lies, doubly with Thy comfort filling
When will all this turmoil cease? What's the point of life's unrest?
Come, sweet peace, come, oh come into my breast
And four years later
Over all the treetops it's still
Over all the mountains tops you will hear each sound cease
The birds have grown quiet in the glen, wait a while
Then you'll also find peace
When the VersailIes Treaty forbade us...
...to use oId wooden munitions stores because of the expIosion risks...
...though they were isolated, fenced, with watch-towers and railway sidings...
...HitIer swore to use these vacant munition camps on state Iand...
...and Iock up in them, shouId he ever come to power...
...those very men who signed that Treaty of VersailIes
And he swore to caII them concentration camps...
...as the EngIish caIled their camps in the Boer War
Those EngIish, his great rivals...
...whom he imitated, radicaIIy, thoroughIy, without any sIoppiness
He feared sIoppiness; peopIe reproached him for that and his indecision
To the EngIish "right or wrong, my country", he repIied "I am Germany"
So he became the fuIfiIIer of civiIized German's principIes...
...of its performance, progress, energy...
...its power and inteIligence without moraIs, without God or emperor...
...only with a yearning mass which Iacked a raIIying point
What had Robert MusiI said, that Viennese Jew, HitIer's compatriot?
''If just once...
''...one of the ideas which move our Iives...
''...was appIied so thoroughIy that no opposing ideas remained...
''...our culture wouId no Ionger be our cuIture''
When Abraham received the order to kiII his son...
...to perform a service for God...
...to compIy with reIigion and God's law...
...it was the arm of that God which stopped him at the Iast moment
HitIer had to do without that mercy...
...in the godIess period of the coIIapse of Western civiIization
And history progressed through him
He accompIished it. East and West face each other on te EIbe...
...and IsraeI has become Greater lsrael
Europe is, as he said, at its end
Not economicaIly, but he never spoke of economics; that's how we prefer it
We don't discuss money, of course
In ten years, car fumes destroyed as much cuIture as four previous centuries
That the post-war years destroyed more in our cities through rebuilding...
...than the Iast war's bombs, is a weII known joke of our reaIity
Final victory, final soIution
This is how Goebbels and his men saw themseIves in the war's Iast battIe...
...when he spoke of the fiIm Kolberg:
''GentIemen
''In one hundred years they'Il show another coIour fiIm...
''...describing the dreadful days we are about to undergo
''Don't you want to play a part in the fiIm that wiII resurrect you?
''Every man now has the chance to pick the part...
''...that he'lI pIay in that fiIm in one hundred years
''I can assure you it wiII be a great, beautifuI, inspiring film...
''...and fort he sake of that fiIm, it's worth standing fast. Hold out!"
And the story, a very short story
An everyday story of a man with a pIacard marked '"Jew"...
...who was driven through the streets of GreifswaId in Pomerania...
...the town of the painter Caspar David Friedrich...
...driven by the HitIer Youth of GreifswaId...
...who kicked his arse and spat at him
But that German waIked proud and upright through his town
A young officer, in tears at this Iegitimized injustice...
...had to be restrained...
...lest the suffer the same fate
And in May, 1945, when the war was over...
...some GIs caught the son of von Schirach...
...the three year oId son of the former HitIer Youth Ieader
The chiId thought he would get some chewing-gum...
...but they demanded he say Sieg HeiI! or HeiI HitIer!
At a Ioss, the weeping chiId imitated the Gl's actions...
...and one stubbed a Iighted cigarette on his arm
What did Hitler say before the end of the war?
''Even if we Iose it, the sacrifices wiII not have been in vain"
The seed wiIl sprout, some time, somewhere
I am immortaI as Iong as this world exists...
...as Iong as sociaIism, capitaIism and human masses exist
At the end of the fiIm Jew Süss...
...GoebbeIs banned the Jew's curse on his town...
...when he was imprisoned in a cage and hanged
This was the curse:
''You bIood-thirsty tyrants, sIaves of BaaI, judges of Sodom!
''Your Iimbs shaII wither, your living bodies shalI decay
''Your chiIdren and chiIdren's chiIdren shaII fester
''Each day shaII bring you misfortune...
''...and pain shaIl drive the sIeep from your eyes
''EviI neighbours shalI disturb your peace
''Your first-born shaII bring you shame
''Your memory wiII be cursed...
''...and your town wiII be destroyed by fire from heaven
''No bread shalI stilI your hunger, nothing quench your thirst
''Your rights shaIl find no hearing...
''...and your own tongues shalI revile your God"
And on the road, the old man...
...dragging a cart with his cases and remainung possessions...
...moves fearfuIIy on...
...forever trekking on, a refugee...
...goaded on, staring ahead, without rest...
...ignorant that he is forever without a homeIand, that he wiII never arrive
HitIer is to bIame for everything
Only Hitler?
The questions of a literate worker
But how are we to represent aII that...
...without narrow-mindedness, injustice? Where does one begin?
The ideas and their consequences, big and smalI...
...the grief and the merriment which was aIways present
What could Henriette von Schirach telI us today?
It was the gIorious time of our youth, great decisions
He took my hand and forbade me to cry when mother died
''One mustn't aIIow people to Iook into one's heart'"
And that same man, now grown oId at the end of his war, weeping...
...who stood turned aside at the firepIace...
...hearing the death-roII of his bIond soIdiers, handkerchiefs to his Iips...
...like Frederick Il after the battIes in the Seven Years War...
...when his great men felI, as MenzeI painted him
In between, there were the gIorious, goIden days
Picnics with him in Munich in 1923, when we sang in the open Mercedes
Dreamed with him of rockets to the moon...
...the House of Art, the Iabyrinths of the Minotaur...
...with cars for aII on the motorways
ButterfIies on the naked bodies of our youth...
...when Geli was stiII alive...
...and Ernst Röhm stiII laughed...
...and Brückner aIways had his eIbow out of the car window...
...untiI it was shattered in the accident...
...with the big Mercedes stiII driven by Maurice...
...the founder of the S.A. , Iater condemned as a Jew...
...HitIer's oIdest friend, who saved his Iife, a Jew from Germany
With Putzi who whistled Wagner and read from newspapers...
...foreign reports of the Iatest speeches at the Zirkus Krone...
...where HitIer said: ''The Jew is aIways in us...
''...and if he didn't exist we'd have to invent him"
Pure medievaI times, witches and beIief in devils, Western civilization
It was at that time that he suddenIy ordered the car to stop...
...on the way to Berchtesgaden, before the house was rebuiIt...
...when he saw a boy reading under a tree...
...just Iike the trite pictures of yesterday... and today
''Just as it was in my youth", he cried...
..."when I sat in the shade and read to my friends about the Boer War...
''...how they were fighting the EngIish; Ohm Krüger versus Lord KiIchener...
''...with concentration camps and great harshness
''And behind me was my stern father's beehive...
''...shaped Iike the victorious NapoIeon, the master of frozen Moscow
''NapoIeon, through whose stomach the bees fIew in and out...
''...a busy community, cIean and tidy, which Ioved its state...
''...capabIe of organizing honeycombs, tending its queen...
''...Iooking after its future...
''...always battIing with the hostile wasp...
''...which is stupid, but wiIy, incapabIe of building a dwelIing...
''...parasites which have to be exterminated, as my father said
''That was my task from early chiIdhood. Duty against the vermin
''Father was stern, with his pipe and whip and aII the bees around him
''We can aIways Iearn from nature; aIways, everything"
And there was young Hess who took pity on a wasp...
...and rescued it from a wasp trap on the verandah of HitIer's house
It bit him on the tongue so badIy...
...he needed doctors and a hospitaI and a tracheotomy in Berchtesgaden
That's when Hitler said:
''You see, my chiId, he's too kind and that's the resuIt''
I remember him listening to Bruckner, his compatriot from Upper Austria...
...his Romantic Symphony
Bruckner, not Wagner, to get into the right mood for his speeches
We shall go into this battle as into a church service
( GoebbeIs, 11th March, 1945, GörIitz )
And when they shoulder their rifles...
...and start their tanks...
...then they will see their murdered children and their raped wives...
...and a cry for vengeance will arise from their throats...
...which will make the enemey blanch
...which suddenIy grew so huge in its smaII surroundings...
...like a cancer in the history of our traditions
HitIer as the Iast maker of European history...
...who failed in tradition, ideas, art, power poIitics...
...energies and achievement
Why faiIed?
Why not a meIting-pot, a mindIess victim, medium of a world spirit?
You think you're pushing, but you're being pushed
The mirror of our avid desire and dreams for the power to the community
There was no other choice; the deveIopment of history...
...and the many attempts at democratic eIections in germany prove it
AII Iead again to him; he was the onIy soIution
No chance, no mistake, but IogicaIIy, to the Iast he and we were together
The goddess of history and of destiny had spoken
He was right, in a terrible way right
He was germany, Germany was him, in twentieth century Europe
AII in the traditions of Frederick the Second...
...Napoleon and Lenin and StaIin and WaIIenstein...
...the knightIy dynasties, King Arthur and Charlemagne...
...the Romantics and the cIassics of Kant...
...nineteenth century Vienna, Greeks, Romans, the entire MiddIe Ages
The executor from the grandiose era of Vienna...
...who came from the province of Upper Austria...
...the CathoIic acoIyte Adolf, with Mozart's Masses in his ear...
...grown up to bet he petty bourgeois executor of Prussians virtues...
...in the Iast St. Vitus's dance of the twentieth century
The European atom bomb had expIoded
It ignited in the fieId of cuIture...
...that mixture of the enIightened beIievers in progress...
...with the conservative taste and intent of Western reaction...
...and the desire for recognition in sacrifice of the proIetarian masses
AII that in the heart of Europe
Austria and Prussia again united in a German Reich...
...for the Iast time with the global ambition of a petty bourgeois genius
Or he Iast desperate attempt of the intelIectuaIIy deprived...
...hungry upstarts of the cuIturaI proIetariat...
...to find their own styIe, to gain equaIity, together with the urge...
...to be admitted into pIaces incomprehensibIe to them...
...the offensive venues of the cuItured, capitaIists, fashionable...
...those despised sets which were so chummy with one another...
...who Iived it up and laughed at the have-nots of the slums...
...and the vuIgar masses...
...untiI they were sIain, insisting on their last right to fulfiIment...
...in the seIf-imposed Paradise in HelI
What does it say in MuspilIi, the ninth century manuscript...
...about the finaI battle between the heavenIy host and Satan's folIowers?
Imagine Elijah and Satan...
...Satan's blood dripping onto the Earth, kindIing the worId's confIagration
The earth, mountains burning...
...trees disappear from the earth...
...rivers dry up, the moon falls down...
...and finally the whole world is burning
Attention! Here is an air-raid report
Enemy bomber and fighter squadrons are heading east from Norderney
A small group is reported over the Rhineland...
(President RooseveIt, 20th January, 1943 )
We shall go into this battle as into a church service
We speak to you as Germans with heartfelt love for their people
Soldiers, our people has no need of your senseless death
lt needs your life for work in a Germany of the future
(WaIter UIbricht, 11th ApriI, 1945, Moscow Radio )
This is Radio Wehrwolf in enemy-occupied territory
We are the voice of the German freedom fighters
Every evening at seven we bring you news of the German fight für freedom
On 1,3000 metres, 32 4 kilohertz
Further news of our Wehrwolves' fight will be given later. Meanwhile, music
(5th ApriI, 1945 )
Attention! Here is an air-raid report warning
Enemy bombers are approaching Bremen
( 12th ApriI, 1945 )
(Winston ChurchilI. 25th ApriI, 1945 )
(BBC report from Auschwitz, 15th April, 1945)
Today we are happy that everything is behind us
We don't know how we can ever thank the liberators
We only know that when we get out...
...we must tell the world everything we have been through here
Otherwise, we would not be able to live
Listeners will probably think that we are no longer quite normal...
...but when you start to tell the story, it's so gruesome...
...you don't know where to start, there are such terrible things
You can't find words to describe the things we have experienced...
...and anyone who wasn't here will never understand...
...how dreadfully that red flame stays in our memory
When we see the sun setting today, we think of the Auschwitz chimney...
...which devoured thousands, and we had to look on
Fists clenched in our pockets, we could do nothing, we were slaves...
...tortured only because we had come to Auschwitz as Jews...
...because we had the terrible misfortune to be born Jews
We had committed no crime, except...
...we had come into the world as Jews; as Jews we had to end up that chimney
( 1st May, 1945 )
lt is reported from the Führer's headquarters...
...that our Führer, Adolf Hitler...
...fell this afternoon in his command post in the Chancellery...
...fighting to the end against Bolshevism
He died for Germany
(BBC, 2nd May, 1945 )
ObersaIzberg today. Memories of Hitler
The whip
The suit torn in the attempted assassination. A Winter Charity badge
Eva Braun's leather shorts. HitIer's dogs, stuffed
Secretaries, servants, drivers, military men
Then the Iast things from HitIer's room in his bunker
Frederick the Great, painted by Anton Graff
His mother's portrait. The pistoI for his final soIution
And MuspiIIi, which he read...
...as he wrote Mein Kampf on his spot
Ladies and GentIemen, the opening of ''The Life of HitIer'' in Bavaria
A report on the exhibition, before it is expanded.
Three thousand visitors per day, as in Ludwig the Second's castIes
That's our Iimit. Five buses up, five buses down, in convoy...
...on the singIe track road to the Teahouse Iift
Many Americans, French, Scandinavians...
...and from Eastern Europe and the German Democratic RepubIic...
...if they can get out secretIy; and our people
WhoIe bus-Ioads of factory workers...
...work's outings and ceIebrities, too
Romy Schneider recentIy...
...and bIacks from deveIoping countries, with white girIs...
...and AIsatian dogs, on an eIegant short chain
Therefore as a tourist attraction...
...a pubIic demand can be statisticalIy measured
Capacity is stiII capable of expansion
A diagram shows how they moved between the destroyed pIaces of history...
...between their homes, overgrown with vegetation...
...Bormann, Göring and HitIer...
...like ants whose nest has been destroyed and their queen removed
And, strangeIy, where their houses stood...
...the new green grows more Iushly
It's comforting to reaIize how our traces and those of historic deeds...
...imprint their spirit in their Iandscape...
...how our traces cannot perish for eternities...
...or cannot be obIiterated by a government decree to bIow them up
The spirit Iives on
Many peopIe cannot forget that
Many want to see it again, even the eviI
At Ieast that might be a last consolation
(7th May, 1945 )
Welcome, everybody!
Don't be aIarmed, we're not deaIing with politics
We don't want any probIems
We're deaIing with Ieisure industries
Entertainment, show business, films and tourism
Of course, within the framework of Iaw, not of moraIs
Do some Business, have some fun
The best one is the one who seIIs weIl
Business is the freedom of the democrat
Democracy is onIy possibIe with economic growth
Seen like that, Hitler is cIearly the internationaI best-seIIer...
...with reaI box-office potential
Of course we've made a few concessions to public feeIing...
but the pubIic is aIways right
At the box-office, quality is decided democraticaIIy
Porno, hetero, homo, bIood, horror
ReaIIy human situations amid catastrophe...
...a cast-iron story with convincing actors
Big business, worId-wide, sociaIIy conscious, socio-poIiticaI
Nothing esoteric; cuIture is excIuded
The common people's taste ruIes, O.K.?
Softly the telephone's ringing...
...and we know what it's bringing...
...it can only be you, just you
This is bandleader Wolf
Haven't you, haven't you, got a wife for me, too?
Sure, sure, we've got one you'll adore
One l'd like from head to toe, with a great big stack of dough
Sure, sure, we've got one you'll adore
She must be charming, yes, yes, yes. Not alarming, no, no, no.
Have no vices, no, no, no, Pay my prices, yes, yes, yes
Of course, we must not gIorify HitIer...
...but using him for business is permitted
That creates jobs and a leisure activity
Important milestones of the democratic spirit...
...that we have Iearned so weIl, don't you think?
If you pIease, Herr Director
Here is the pistoI with which HitIer shot himseIf...
...in front of Frederick the Great's portrait
Don't be afraid
(Winston ChurchilI, 8th May, 1945 )
Of course, we must aIso remember the victims
A mini-show as reparation...
...a mini-Dachau, with the Boger swing
No power without resistance; no castIe without a torture chamber
Witness the Tower of London
Here we deaI with the terrible power and torture of the twentieth century
Very modern and progressive...
...technicaIIy perfect, approved by the State BuiIding Authority
We are open for aII questions, strictly impartial
With Arab money and IsraeIi management, equalIy baIanced
Land speculation with money from reparations
On our AIpine territory in Germany, absoIuteIy democratic
The secret pIaces where Bormann's bioIogicaIIy dynamic food grew
Vegetarian food nowadays
Where Hermann Göring, the fat one...
...practised archery and Iaughed
And Eva wept in the evening when she had to stay aIone...
...not even a grass widow, fanaticaIIy taking snaps for her album
A German war savings bond...
...for the German DisneyIand on the HoIy Mountain near Berchtesgaden
An amusement park with speciaI film shows
HitIer in UFA-Iand, servant girIs' fiction
AII sorts of shows, from fairy-taIe to the Iand of the future...
...and a merry-go-round of progress to Fantasy-Land and Frontier-Land...
...where there's aIways chaIlenge: don't say "We didn't have our history''
Business deals
The time is ripe, it's expected of us now, the interest is there
We'Il continue with figures and dates exactIy according to history
The wedding in the Teahouse of Eva's sister with SS-man Fegelein
...the traitor and SS butcher in Poland
On 20th April, a memorial ceremony for the victims...
...and on the anniversary of his death a wonderful woIf's ceIebration...
...for the Ione woIf in the 1945 bunker jungIe
And always in the off-season in November...
...a meditation, like 1923, with star-gazing...
...and an introduction to "The World Ice Theory" in the PoIytechnic
(8th May, 1945)
(HitIer)
So I was a member of the German army, a rifleman among millions of others...
...and that gave me my belief...
...and my struggle in the movement for the soul of the Germann masses...
...of the millions of workers and peasants
That struggle taught me to know the most precious thing there is:
the constant strength of the mass of the people...
...from whom the concept of a National Socialist state was born...
...from whom our people's community was created...
...our National Socialist Party...
...our German Reich!
Star of the sea, I greet you
O Virgin Mary, help
Mother of God so sweet
O Virgin Mary, help us all...
...from our deep distress
You comrades, march in spirit in our ranks!
You comrades, shot by Reds and reactionaries!
Twenty hours and three minutes
Radio Flensburg and all other stations
We bring you the last armed services communique of this war...
...from the H. Q. of Admiral Dönitz
9th May, 1945
The High Command of the armed forces announces:
ln East Prussia, German divisions...
...yesterday bravely defended the Vistula estuary and the Memel sector...
...to the last
The Seventh lnfantry Division fought with particular distinction
Commander-in-Chief Tank General von Salten...
...in recognition of the exemplary conduct of his soldiers...
...was awarded the oak leaves with swords, in diamonds...
...of the Knight's Cross
As the advanced bastion in Courland...
...in our armies commanded by General Grüter...
...tied down superior forces of Soviet infantry and tanks for months...
...and won immortal fame in six great battles
They refused any premature surrender
Far from the homeland, the defenders of the Atlantic Wall...
...our troops in Norway and the forces in the Aegean lslands
...have preserved the honour of the German soldier, with discipline
Since midnight...
...there has been a ceasefire on all fronts
By order of Admiral...
...our armed forces have ocased the hopeless fight
The heroic struggle of almost six years is at an end
lt brought us great victories, but also heavy defeats
The German armed forces...
...have finally been overcome honourably by vastly superior strength
That was the text of the last armed services communique of this war
There will be radio silence for three minutes
(Joseph Stalin, Moscow, 9th May, 1945 )
The great day of victory over Germany has come
Beaten to it's knees by the Red Army and the troops of our Allies...
...Fascist Germany has admitted defeat and has surrendered unconditionally
(President Truman, San Francisco, 26th June, 1945 )
(B.B.C. , 6th August, 1945 )
After so much praise of the worId's progress...
...in imitation of his legacy...
...let me speak of the Iost Iife
You are guilty...
...of Moscow's successfuI imperiaIism...
...stretching to the EIbe, with waIls and concentration camps Iike yours...
...patroIled by AIsatian dogs
And who said...
...that the eternaI Jew, wandering for centuries through the worId...
...obliged by vioIent unrest to seek refuge in cuIture...
...spurred on by endIess provocation...
...wanted to become a commonpIace PhiIistine Iike aIl the others?
In israeI there lives no KarI Kraus...
...no Musil, Kafka, SchnitzIer, AItenberg, FriedeII, PoIgar
There they need the Moshe Dayans, I can welI understand
You kilIed the eternaI Jew
You destroyed BerIin and Vienna
Yet your ridiculous panoramic windows on the ObersaIzberg...
...triumphantly progress through the hoIiday homes of Austria and Germany
And the others are Iearning from us stiII
You're responsible for the houses without a souI, with burnt out eyes...
...without tears, towns which cannot weep
Motor-Iandscapes without stiIlness, fulI of noise
You've taken away the sunsets
Sunsets by Caspar David Friedrich
You're to bIame...
...that we can't see a cornfield without thinking of you
You've made kitsch of the oId Germany...
...with your simpified crafts and peasant pictures
And you're to blame...
...that we've lost our proud inns...
...turned into quick service restaurants...
...as peopIe fear to vaIue this work more than money...
...the harmlessly harmful, the onIy thing you've left them...
...because you've occupied everything eIse and poisoned it with your touch
Everything
Honour, loyaIty...
...country Iife, rest for work, films...
...dignity, fatherland...
...pride, beIief
You are the executioner of Western civiIization...
...democraticaIIy seIf-eIected, voIuntariIy with the victory of money...
...of materiaIism over us
The pIague of the century
The pitifuI artist who became executioner and poIitician voIuntariIy
Cheered as no man ever was before
How am I to explain it to you and myseIf...
...and to aII the children and grandchildren who knew nothing...
...of the previous life that everyone has forgotten today...
...poisoned by the new Iegacy of your time?
The new version of the oId average, Philistine citizen
''The commonpIace was aIways there"...
...said WaIlenstein, "It aIways was and aIways returns...
''...and wilI be there tomorrow because it has prevailed today
''Man is made of commonpIace things and he caIIs habit his nurse'"
AII this has been made impossibIe
The words ''magic'" and "myth"...
...and "serve'" and "ruIe''...
...'"Ieader", "authority'", are finished and done...
...banned for ever
And we...
...are extinguished
Nothing wiII grow after us
A whole peopIe has ceased to exist in the shere of the spirit and the eIite
The new men were designed, deveIoped
The new man is here
The plague of materiaIism has conguered East and West
My congratuIations!
After the journey into this worId...
...who is nearer to God than the guiIty?
But what about the time without God...
...since we ourseIves have dethroned him?
So spoke the deviI. UItimateIy, cynicaIIy and moraIIy
Or, rather, in a somewhat human tone...
...in one of his roIes about TwiIight of the Gods without gods
The finaI end of progress
The end through death of environment of the species known as "man''...
...among the Iower vermin of the insects...
...or the death of souIs of an ice age society
The Last Judgement without Iawyers and therefore finaIly just
IncredibIy terrifying
Making room for the next race...
...on the next pIanet, after this one finalIy became seIf-destroying...
...through the species known as "man"
Now they'II say we're crazy...
...and so are those who invented and made us
But there'II be no posterity to describe and praise our worId
Or did we insult anybody, offend anyone?
We onIy praised. As in Iife
What eIse is one to say with such a theme?
And it is this bIack mother of our fantasy...
...of the Iast star-stories of ceIluloid ...
...the BIack Mary...
...as she was caIIed by Edison, who made his first fiIm in her
The hoIy apparatus, as Mary Pickford caIIed the camera
The camera obscura, the bIack chamber...
...which telIs us oId stories anew...
...stories, projections of our inner thoughts...
...like "once upon a time'"...
...or "ln the beginning there was..."
Stories of home-sickness and longing...
...and madness within us...
...after everything has slowIy been buiIt up externalIy
Let's remember school
BIack stone
Iapis Iapidi, stone of light
Iux ex coeIis, faIlen from Lucifer's crown
The GraiI, the kaaba...
...the GoIden FIeece from the Tree of Life...
...faIIen from the stars
Stars waxing and waning
Part of the treasure from Delphi...
...from the legacy of ApoIIo, the Sun God...
...brought to the Gardens of the Resperides...
...and granting eternal Iife to the gods...
...and those who want to be...
...like the men in the land of the hyperboreas in Montsegur
Do you remember? The Holy ChaIice of the GraiI...
...in which the bIood flowed that night, the true, pure blood
Orient, Mohamed, the MiddIe Ages...
...and Christianity together
King Arthur's Court and Richard Wagner, once again
A black stone falIen to earth from heaven, eternaIIy Ionging to return...
...to the Iost paradise
The angeI who tears the bIame fort he worId's sin...
...when Adam and Eve became guiIty
BIack sun of the Iight at the beginning...
...and from the end of alI ends...
...the black hoIe, appIe-size, in the whirIpooI of dark nothingness...
...containing everything, our earth...
...the sun, the planetary system...
...the MiIky Way, one among fifty milIions, miIIiards...
...coIlapsed...
...into the smaII bIack hoIe of the future
That's what we are...
...and aII our projections, memories...
...dreams from the era of the Iight
Come down to us, night of love, give forgetfulness, to make us live
Take me up into your arms and release me from the world
Praise to Joy, from God descended
Daughter of Elysium, ray of mirth and rapture blended
Goddess, to thy shrine we come
By thy magic is united what harsh custom parted wide
All mankind are brothers plighted Where thy gentle wings abide
Thinking of Germany in the night, all my dreams have taken flight
l can no longer sleep and with hot tears l weep
...though I have faith so l could move mountains and have not charity...
...I am nothing
A projection into the black hole of the future