Blog – Aontau

Birds from the Nazi past

Vogelschiss. Birdshit. Recently, a prominent German politician used this word to describe Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists. He was looking for a new perspective on the 12-year dictatorship of the Nazis, one which would reduce it to proportion in a thousand years of mostly successful German history. Elections were in the offing, and he may have felt that he needed attention. Because I am reluctant to give him any, he will be referred to here as Mr. Bird, leaving out the second syllable.

Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah’ and Josef Oberhauser

Claude Lanzmann’s film ‘Shoah’ is memorable. Not because of what it says. But because of its refusal to say anything at all. The theme of ‘Shoah’ is the Holocaust, in which over six million Jews were murdered by National Socialist Germany. But to state the theme in this way is to already go beyond the film. ‘Shoah’ can be classed as a documentary, in that it features interviews with real people about events to which they were eyewitnesses. But it does not document anything, or try to explain anything. If there is a message, it must be worked out by the viewer, in subjective imagination. Which puts the question to me.

Thoughts on Gomorrah

Gomorrah is the title Roberto Saviano chose for his well-known book on the Camorra, the network of criminal organisations that have dominated Naples and Italy’s Campania region for generations. A revelatory choice. Gomorrah and Camorra sound alike. And are alike. The land of the Camorra is a lost place, ruined by greed, hubris, and the vilest excesses. A Biblical place. A place of the damned.

Easter 2018. Berzosa’s ‘Christ Resurrected.’

It must be quite a challenge to represent the message of Easter in a painting. Spanish artist Raúl Berzosa, whose ‘Christ Resurrected’ is featured on the new Vatican City 95c postage stamp, tries it with physical beauty. The result, though interesting, fails to convince.

Blessed Anton Bruckner

If there are saints of music, Anton Bruckner is surely one of them. Like Beethoven, whom he greatly admired, Bruckner was a strong-willed, undaunted composer. Dreadful abysses lurk in Bruckner’s music, but he does not get stuck in them. That Promethean defiance, that raised fist, which is Beethoven’s, is nowhere to be heard. Perhaps for this reason, Bruckner’s seemingly meandering arguments lead to a deeply satisfying destination, while Beethoven’s powerful affirmations, those clearings in the woods he beats a way to, amount to so much less than the effort made.

General Wolf fabricates the truth

Markus Wolf was the legendary head of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA) the East German foreign intelligence service. The HVA was much better than its West German counterpart, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). BND operations in East Germany yielded little that could not be read in the newspapers. Small wonder. Markus Wolf had agents so well-placed in the BND that much of its activity was steered from the HVA.

Why did German reunification take so long?

For over forty years, from 1949 to 1990, Germany was divided into West and East, each side calling itself a Republic. From the beginning, there were serious attempts at reunification. Why did it take so long? Here are a few reasons.

Nailing the Ninety-Five Theses

It is 500 years to the day since Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, and unleashed the Reformation. While Germany celebrates one of its most famous sons – some Germans, that is, for fast swathes of the population spend their time playing computer games or foaming at the mouth over football, and couldn’t care less – it is worth asking whether there is any truth to the legendary deed of Wednesday, October 31, 1517.

Bad Buddhists

What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West? Thus begins one of the teaching dilemmas, or koans, through which practitioners of Zen Buddhism strive for Enlightenment. If a student imagines he has the answer to the question, the master may well rise up and clout him with a stick. If the answer is a good one, he might clout the student even harder.

Is God male or female?

The prayer that Jesus taught us booms around the church with hearty maleness, or used to, when people still went to churches, bringing the liturgy down an octave or two. The congregation may or may not believe in God, but the men among them, it seems, believe strongly, and viscerally, that God, if He exists, is male.