Re: Germany Confronts Holocaust Legacy Anew
I'd like if I may quote two posts I made in 2006-Dec-4 in this thread:
End of the war on the Eastern Front?
Quote:
On the other hand I have no quarrel with a Germany of before. I have no quarrel with the Germany of Herman Hesse, Erich Maria Remarque, of Goethe, Schiller, Brecht, Musil, Thomas Mann, Karl May and his Western stories I loved in my youth, the Grimm brothers, Erich Kästner which I also read when young, musicians like Bach, either Johann Sebastian, Karl Phillip Emmanuel, Friedemann, and Frau Bach, Magdalena who also composed, Händel, Beethoven, Brahms, Gluck, Otto Klemperer who had to flee, Emil Quantz who taught music to Friedrich the Great, Richard Wagner who had no fault others saw crazy things in his music, Telemann, Mozart who as an Austrian but we will throw him in too, Mendelssohn, Pachelbel, Schumann though I don't like him very much, Carl Maria von Weber, painters like Dürer, Holbein, Chodowiecki, Adolf von Menzel (the second 'von' on this list!, Lucas Cranach, both Elder and Younger, Burgkmair, Klee, Carl Spitzweg who painted the good life!
No, Germany has not lost its great culture, on the contrary it was able to let this brief Dark Age pass and let Germany be Germany: a great beacon of Civilization.
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and also:
Quote:
And if I may quote a Spaniard, I will quote Miguel de Unamuno, rector of the university of Salamanca.
"...But now I have heard this insensible and necrophilous oath, "¡Viva la Muerte!", and I, having spent my life writing paradoxes that have provoked the ire of those who do not understand what I have written, and being an expert in this matter, find this ridiculous paradox repellent. General Millán-Astray is an invalid. There is no need for us to say this with whispered tones. He is an invalid of war. So was Cervantes. But unfortunately, Spain today has too many invalids. And, if God does not help us, soon it will have very many more. It torments me to think that General Millán-Astray could dictate the norms of the psychology of the masses. An invalid, who lacks the spiritual greatness of Cervantes, hopes to find relief by adding to the number of invalids around him."
"This is the temple of intelligence, and I am its high priest. You are profaning its sacred domain. You will succeed, because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. In order to convince it is necessary to persuade, and to persuade you will need something that you lack: reason and right in the struggle. I see it is useless to ask you to think of Spain. I have spoken."
"Vencereis, pero no convencereis"? No, they did not win.
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Rewrite this: 
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