Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning

A popular and oft-parodied line from the play Schlageter by Hanns Johst, where the soon-to-be-martyred and immortalized Albert Leo Schlageter is exhorted by his comrade Friedrich Thiemann to fight:

I know all about that garbage from 1918 ... brotherhood, equality, and freedom ... Beauty and worthiness! Then, right in the middle of it, they say Hands Up! You're disarmed ... you're the voting swine of the Republic! -- No to hell with this whole ideological smorgasboard ... I shoot with live ammo! When I hear the word culture ... I release the safety on my Browning!

The last line is a good one, and Herr Schlageter did derail some trains and was executed by the French Occupation Forces between the wars and was taken up as a hero by the Nazis, who built many memorials all over Germany including the one pictured, shown as part of a Hitler Youth field trip. Some were destroyed and some erased as part of the Allied Denazification of Germany after the war.

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