“America today is a filthy lie, the most vile and
despicable fiction ever foisted upon decent people.”
Categories
Author: C .T.
Night of 28th February-1st March 1942
The Bayreuth Festival 1925—Bayreuth and National Socialism—Rôle of Frau Wagner—Siegfried Wagner.
In 1925, the Bechsteins had invited me to stay with them in Bayreuth. They lived in a villa in the Liszt Strasse (I think this was the name of the street), within a few yards of Wahnfried. I had hesitated to go there, for I was afraid of thus increasing the difficulties of Siegfried Wagner, who was somewhat in the hands of the Jews.
I arrived in Bayreuth towards eleven o’clock in the evening. Lotte Bechstein was still up, but her relatives were in bed. Next morning, Frau Wagner came and brought me some flowers.
What a bustle there was in Bayreuth for the Festival! There exist a few photographs of that period, in which I figure, taken by Lotte Bechstein. I used to spend the day in leather shorts. In the evening, I would put on a dinner-jacket or tails to go to the opera. We made excursions by car into the Fichtelgebirge and into Franconian mountains.
Dietrich Eckart, who had been a critic in Bayreuth, had always told me of the extraordinary atmosphere prevailing there. At the first performance of Parsifal that I attended at Bayreuth, Cleving was still singing. What a stature, and what a magnificent voice! I’d already been present at performances of Parsifal in Munich. That same year, I was also present at the Ring and the Meistersinger. The fact that the Jew Schorr was allowed to sing the rôle of Wotan had the effect of a profanation on me. Why couldn’t they have got Rode from Munich? But there was Braun, an artiste of exceptional quality.
For years I was unable to attend the Festival, and I’d been very distressed about it. Frau Wagner also lamented my absence. She often urged me to come, by letter or by telephone. But I never passed through Bayreuth without paying her a visit.
It’s Frau Wagner’s merit to have created the link between Bayreuth and National Socialism. Siegfried was a personal friend of mine, but he was a political neutral. He couldn’t have been anything else, or the Jews would have ruined him.
Categories
Slogan
“Equality is a slogan based on envy.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Categories
Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 99
1st March 1942, evening
Jealousy of women.
In the eyes of a woman, the finest of dresses at once loses its charm—if she sees another woman wearing one like it. I’ve seen a woman suddenly leave the opera at the sight of a rival who had entered a box wearing the same dress as herself. “What cheek!” she said. “I’m going!”
In the pleasure a woman takes in rigging herself out, there is always an admixture of some trouble-making element, something treacherous—to awaken another woman’s jealousy by displaying something that the latter doesn’t possess. Women have the talent, which is unknown to us males, for giving a kiss to a woman-friend and at the same time piercing her heart with a well-sharpened stiletto. To wish to change women in this respect would be ingenuous: women are what they are. Let’s come to terms with their little weaknesses. And if women really only need satisfactions of that sort to keep them happy, let them not deprive themselves, by any means!
For my part, I prefer to see them thus occupied than devoting themselves to metaphysics. There’s no worse disaster than to see them grappling with ideas. In that respect, the point of disaster is reached by women painters, who attach no importance to beauty—when it’s a question of themselves! Other women are extremely careful of their appearance, but not beyond the moment when they’ve found a husband.
Social prejudices are in the process of disappearing. More and more, nature is reclaiming her rights. We’re moving in the proper direction. I’ve much more respect for the woman who has an illegitimate child than for an old maid. I’ve often been told of unmarried women who had children and brought these children up in a truly touching manner. It often happens amongst women servants, notably. The women who have no children finally go off their heads.
I often think of those women who people the convents—because they haven’t met the man with whom they would have wished to share their lives. With the exception of those who were promised to God by their parents, most of them, in fact, are women cheated by life. Human beings are made to suffer passively. Rare are the beings capable of coming to grips with existence.
Categories
Spite
“Spite is the foundation of all morality.”
3rd March 1942, midday
Ideas on a curriculum for schools.
I don’t believe there’s any sense in teaching men anything, in a general way, beyond what they need to know. One overloads them without interesting either them or anybody else. It’s better to awaken men’s instinct for beauty. That was what the Greeks considered the essential thing. To-day people persist in cramming children with a host of unrelated ideas.
Do you see the necessity for teaching geometry, physics and chemistry to a young man who means to devote himself to music? Unless he has a special gift for these branches of study, what will he have left over of them later? I find it absolutely ridiculous, this mania for making young people swallow so many fragmentary notions that they can’t assimilate.
If a pupil is particularly brilliant in his speciality, why embarrass him in his studies by obliging him to assimilate notions that are beyond his powers of assimilation? Wouldn’t it be better to help him further in the direction that comes naturally to him?
Forty years ago, the teaching of history was restricted to a dry listing of dates. There was a total absence of principles. What happened when the teacher, into the bargain, lacked the necessary gift forgiving these dead things a soul? Such teaching was a real torture.
Some children have so much vitality that they can’t sit still, and won’t and can’t concentrate their attention. It seems to me useless to try to force them. I understand, of course, that such an attitude annoys the teachers. But is it just to deprive a child of the possibilities that life offers him, simply because he’s unruly?
I remember that on the average I spent a tenth of the time my comrades spent in doing my prep. My selected branch was history. I felt sorry for those of my comrades who never had a minute for play.
“We need a regime that (1) bans pornography and (2) erects statues of gorgeous naked nymphs and athletes in every public square and crossroads.”
Categories
Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 101
Night of 10th-11th March 1942
Feminine jealousy is a defensive reaction
—Some stories about women.
In woman, jealousy is a defensive reaction. It surely has an ancestral origin, and must go back to the time when woman simply couldn’t do without the protection of a man. First of all, it’s the reaction of a pregnant woman, who as such has all the more need of protection. She feels so weak in those circumstances, so timid—for herself and for the child she’s carrying. And this child itself, how many years will it take to gain its independence! Without the protection of a man, woman would feel exposed to all perils. So it’s natural that she should be quite particularly attached to the hero, to the man who gives her the most security. Once this security is obtained, it’s comprehensible that she should bitterly defend her property—hence the origin of jealousy.
I knew a woman whose voice became raucous with emotion when I spoke in her presence to another woman. Man’s universe is vast compared with that of woman. Man is taken up with his ideas, his preoccupations. It’s only incidental if he devotes all his thoughts to a woman. Woman’s universe, on the other hand, is man. She sees nothing else, so to speak, and that’s why she’s capable of loving so deeply.
Intelligence, in a woman, is not an essential thing. My mother, for example, would have cut a poor figure in the society of our cultivated women. She lived strictly for her husband and children. They were her entire universe. But she gave a son to Germany.
Categories
Unforgivable sin
“The behaviour of the British and Americans in their wars to destroy Germany and all that was best in Europe has put them beyond the pale forever.”
Categories
Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 102
Night of 11th-12th March 1942
The evils of smoking—Three farthings a day.
I made the acquaintance in Bayreuth of a business man, a certain Möckel, who invited me to visit him in Nuremberg. There was a notice above his door: “Smokers not admitted.” For my part, I have no notice above my door, but smokers aren’t admitted.
Some time ago I asked Goring if he really thought it a good idea to be photographed with a pipe in his mouth. And I added, “What would you think of a sculptor who immortalised you with a cigar between your teeth?”
It’s entirely false to suppose that the soldier wouldn’t endure life at the front if he were deprived of tobacco. It’s a mistake to be written on the debit side of the High Command, that from the beginning of the war it allotted the soldier a daily ration of cigarettes. Of course, there’s no question now of going into re- verse.
But as soon as peace has returned, I shall abolish the ration. We can make better use of our foreign currency than squandering it on imports of poison. I shall start the necessary re-education with the young. I’ll tell them: “Don’t follow the example of your elders.”
I experienced such poverty in Vienna. I spent long months without ever having the smallest hot meal. I lived on milk and dry bread. But I spent thirty kreuzers a day on my cigarettes. I smoked between twenty-five and forty of them a day. Well, at that time a kreuzer meant more to me than ten thousand marks do to-day. One day I reflected that with five kreuzers I could buy some butter to put on my bread. I threw my cigarettes into the Danube, and since that day I’ve never smoked again.
I’m convinced that, if I had continued to be a smoker, I’d not have held out against the life of incessant worry that has for so long been mine. Perhaps it’s to this insignificant detail that the German people owes my having been spared to them.
So many men whom I’ve known have died of excessive use of tobacco. My father, first of all. Then Dietrich Eckart, Troost. Soon it’ll be your turn, Hoffmann.