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Month: March 2015

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Art Music Richard Wagner Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 189

the-real-hitler

 

1st March 1944, midday

A nursery for film actors—Futility of the art critics—Weber’s Freischütz and Bizet’s Carmen.
 

It is often said that among our film actors we have none capable of playing certain parts—that, for instance, of the hero. This type of artiste, they say, is non-existent. I have never heard such nonsense. But to find them, you must, of course, look for them. Producers make the mistake of seeking always in the same old circle—the stage and the theatrical agencies. If they would look elsewhere, they would soon find what they want. One has only to think of the splendid types of manhood to be found even now, after five years of war, in our regiments.

Some years ago, before the war, I passed a camp of the Labour Service at Bergdorf. Immediately my car was surrounded by a crowd of bronzed and laughing young men. I remember remarking to one of my companions: “Why don’t our film producers come to places like this in search of talent? In a year or two it would be possible to transform one of these lads into an accomplished actor, even if it were just for one particular part for which they are seeking a star.” In this respect Leni Riefenstahl has the right idea: she scours the villages in search of the peasant types she requires.

In the nature of things, the opinion of an art critic must not be accepted as an irrevocable and unassailable truth. His criticism is, after all, only the expression of his own personal opinion.

When in ten different newspapers ten different critics give their opinion on one and the same work, ten separate personal opinions emerge—unless, of course, they have previously received instructions from interested parties. Has such an opinion any value? I doubt it. We are too prone to forget that the ancients disregarded the art critic. They judged a work on its merits, as they saw them, which, after all, is the natural method of selection. Art criticism, as it has developed since the beginning of the nineteenth century, means either the death of a work of art, since the critics never cease to tear it to pieces; or the death of the press, since the public could have no faith in a press in which the critic of each individual newspaper gives a completely different story on exactly the same work.

If we were to be deprived of art critics, we should not lose very much! One single critique signed with a well-known name may destroy the aspirations of an artist for as long as twenty years.

Examples are not lacking. How many of the artists whom we admire greatly today were previously castigated by the oracles of the times! What is true of painters is true of artists in other fields.

Hoffmann was sufficient gravely to prejudice the chances of success of Der Freischütz. And yet this work, with its deep harmonies, had all the ingredients which should have appealed to the romanticism in Hoffmann. Think of Wagner and how he was torn to bits for ten years by the critics! Had there been no one who appreciated him, it is questionable whether he would have continued with his work. The same thing happened with Carmen. And now the critics who tore these masterpieces to shreds are completely and utterly forgotten, and the works live on.

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Consider obtaining a copy of the complete notes
published by Ostara Publications.

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Arcadia Beauty Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 190

the-real-hitler
 
23rd March 1944, midday

Charm of the Rhineland—And of other parts of Germany—The marvellous countryside of Bohemia and Moravia.
 

I saw the Rhine for the first time in 1914, when I was on my way to the Western Front. The feelings which the sight of this historic stream inspired in me remain forever graven on my heart. The kindness and spontaneity of the Rhinelanders also made a profound impression on me; everywhere they received us and feted us in a most touching manner. The evening we reached Aachen, I remember thinking that I should never forget that day for the rest of my life; and indeed the memory of it remains today as vivid as ever, and every time I find myself on the banks of the Rhine I re-live again the wondrous experience of my first sight of it. This is no doubt one of the main reasons—quite apart from the unrivalled beauty of the countryside—that impels me each year to revisit the Rhineland.

There are other parts of Germany, apart from the Rhineland, which give me intense pleasure to visit—the Kyffhaeuser, the forests of Thuringia, the Harz and the Black Forest. It is most exhilarating to drive for miles through the woods and forests, far away from the throng.

One of my greatest delights has always been to picnic quietly somewhere on the roadside; it was not always easy, for our column of cars would often be pursued by a crowd of motorists, eager to see their Fuehrer off duty, and we had to employ all sorts of ruses to shake off these friendly and well-meaning pursuers; sometimes, for instance, I would drive up a side-turning, leaving the column to continue along the main road. Our pursuers would then overtake the cars of the column one by one, and, failing to find me, would go ever faster in the hope of overtaking me farther on. In this way we managed occasionally to snatch a few hours of peace and tranquillity.

On one occasion, I remember, a family out gathering mushrooms came suddenly on our picnic party. In a few moments these kindly folk had alerted the neighbouring village and the whole population was surging towards us, filling the air with their shouts of “Heil.”

It is a great pity that Germans know so little of their own country. Since 1938 the number of beauty spots within the boundaries of the Reich has increased considerably. In addition to Austria, we have the wonderful countryside of Bohemia and Moravia, which is a closed book to all but a few Germans.

Some of them may have heard of the virgin forests of Bohemia, but how many have ever seen them? I have a collection of photographs taken in Bohemia, and they remind one of the vast forests of the tropics. To visit all the beauties of his country, a German today would require taking a holiday in a different district each year for the rest of his life.

Categories
Arthur Schopenhauer Friedrich Nietzsche Pedagogy Philosophy Science Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 191

the-real-hitler

16th May 1944, evening

Research and instruction—State encouragement for free research—The two tasks of research worker and teacher—Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.

 

The theory that independent research and instruction are two fields of activity which must be indissolubly related is false. Each has an entirely different function, each calls for men of a different type, and each must be approached by the State from a different angle.

Research must remain free and unfettered by any State restriction. The facts which it establishes represent Truth, and Truth is never evil. It is the duty of the State to support and further the efforts of research in every way, even when its activities hold no promise of immediate, or even early, advantage from the material or economic point of view. It may well be that its results will be of value, or indeed will represent tremendous progress, only to the generation of the future.

Instruction, on the other hand, should not, in my opinion, enjoy a like liberty of action. Its liberty is limited by the interests of the State, and can therefore never be totally unrestricted; it has not the right to claim that same degree of independence which I most willingly concede to research.

The attributes demanded of a successful teacher and a research worker are fundamentally different, and are seldom to be found together in the single individual. The man of research is by nature extremely cautious; he never ceases to work, to ponder, to weigh and to doubt, and his suspicious nature breeds in him an inclination towards solitude and most rigorous self-criticism.

Of quite a different type is the ideal teacher. He has little or no concern with the endless riddles of the infinite—with something, that is, which is so infinitely greater than himself. He is a man whose task it is to impart knowledge and understanding to men who do not possess them and who, therefore, are generally his intellectual inferiors; and in consequence he is a man who is often inclined to be pedantically dogmatic.

There are many men endowed with a genius for research who are useless as teachers, just as there are brilliant teachers who have no gift whatever for research and creative work; yet all of them, in their respective spheres, make contributions of outstanding value to the sum of human knowledge.

I do not agree with the idea that liberty of research should be restricted solely to the fields of natural science. It should embrace also the domain of thought and philosophy, which, in essence, are themselves but the logical prolongation of scientific research. By taking the data furnished by science and placing them under the microscope of reason, philosophy gives us a logical conception of the universe as it is. The boundary between research and philosophy is nebulous and constantly moving.

In the Great Hall of the Linz Library are the busts of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the greatest of our thinkers, in comparison with whom the British, the French and the Americans have nothing to offer. His complete refutation of the teachings which were a heritage from the Middle Ages, and of the dogmatic philosophy of the Church, is the greatest of the services which Kant has rendered to us. It is on the foundation of Kant’s theory of knowledge that Schopenhauer built the edifice of his philosophy, and it is Schopenhauer who annihilated the pragmatism of Hegel. I carried Schopenhauer’s works with me throughout the whole of the First World War. From him I learned a great deal.

Schopenhauer’s pessimism, which springs partly, I think, from his own line of philosophical thought and partly from subjective feeling and the experiences of his own personal life, has been far surpassed by Nietzsche.

_____________________________

Consider obtaining a copy of the complete notes
published by Ostara Publications.

Categories
Ancient Rome Christendom Communism / Bolshevism Jesus Martin Bormann St Paul Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 192

the-real-hitler
Night of 29th-30th November 1944

Jesus and Saint Paul—Christianity, a Jewish manoeuvre—Christianity and Communism—National Socialism, the implacable enemy of everything Jewish.
 

Jesus was most certainly not a Jew. The Jews would never have handed one of their own people to the Roman courts; they would have condemned him themselves. It is quite probable that a large number of the descendants of the Roman legionaries, mostly Gauls, were living in Galilee, and Jesus was probably one of them. His mother may well have been a Jewess.

Jesus fought against the materialism of his age, and, therefore, against the Jews.

Paul of Tarsus, who was originally one of the most stubborn enemies of the Christians, suddenly realised the immense possibilities of using, intelligently and for other ends, an idea which was exercising such great powers of fascination. He realised that the judicious exploitation of this idea among non-Jews would give him far greater power in the world than would the promise of material profit to the Jews themselves. It was then that the future St. Paul distorted with diabolical cunning the Christian idea. Out of this idea, which was a declaration of war on the golden calf, on the egotism and the materialism of the Jews, he created a rallying point for slaves of all kinds against the elite, the masters and those in dominant authority.

The religion fabricated by Paul of Tarsus, which was later called Christianity, is nothing but the Communism of today.

Bormann intervened. Jewish methods, he said, have never varied in their essentials. Everywhere they have stirred up the plebs against the ruling classes. Everywhere they have fostered discontent against the established power. For these are the seeds which produce the crop they hope later to gather.

Everywhere they fan the flames of hatred between peoples of the same blood. It is they who invented class-warfare, and the repudiation of this theory must therefore always be an anti-Jewish measure. In the same way, any doctrine which is anti-Communist, any doctrine which is anti-Christian must, ipso facto, be anti-Jewish as well.

The National Socialist doctrine is therefore anti-Jewish in excelsis, for it is both anti-Communist and anti-Christian. National Socialism is solid to the core, and the whole of its strength is concentrated against the Jews, even in matters which appear to have a purely social aspect and are designed for the furtherance of the social amenities of our own people.

The Fuehrer concluded: Burgdorff has just given me a paper which deals with the relationship between Communism and Christianity. It is comforting to see how, even in these days, the fatal relationship between the two is daily becoming clearer to the human intelligence.

_____________________________

Consider obtaining a copy of the complete notes
published by Ostara Publications.

Categories
Heinrich Himmler St Francis

The stone

Recently Tom Goodrich, the author of the most relevant book in English so far this century, introduced me online to one of his friends as a “WN in Mexico City who is desperate to create a very low-budget, but effective YouTube film on the crimes against Germany.” But I am not a White Nationalist. This is what I wrote in the final essay of The Fair Race’s Darkest Hour:

White nationalism is only a stone in the middle of the rapid-flowing waters of a dangerous river; an over-the-water large stone that can help us in our endeavor to jump to the other side. I myself used that stone in my crossing from Christianity and Liberalism to National Socialism. In fact, I could even write down such a spiritual odyssey in a text that might be titled “From St Francis to Himmler.”

Well, I’ve started writing the odyssey, which will take me years to complete. For the moment I cannot imagine a better way to introduce the subject of what National Socialism really is than quoting extensively from what the Führer himself said. See the entries from most of the 1941-1944 table discussions at Hitler’s headquarters (Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier) that, one per day, will be accumulating: here.

Categories
Deranged altruism Vincent van Gogh

Brother Vincent

To those who are still skeptical that today’s suicidal ethos throughout the West is related to the deranged altruism in the gospels let me remind them that, between 1879 and 1880, in the miserable industrial district of Borinage in Belgium, Vincent van Gogh, apparently imitating Jesus and St Francis, lived a kind of primitive and communal Christian life; gave his clothes to the poor sharing with them the food and even made their beds: all of which undermined his health to such an extent that he never again recovered completely.

comedores-de-papas

Staggering and with mental health issues, in 1883 he returned to test this doctrine of charity. In The Hague, where he engaged at the time the study of art, brother Vincent took a sick prostitute to live with him with one of her five children; then the woman became pregnant again by one of her clients. Brother Vincent took care of her, paid the medical expenses, shared his food and hunger, and wanted to make the prostitute his wife…

Why should we wonder when this “imitation of Christ” reaches levels of insanity such as bringing masses of non-white immigrants into our homelands (see e.g., my Christmas post)?