Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/04/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Is it possible that they were buying things that they thought to be of high quality rather than just buying them because they were made by Germans? When people buy things, they are typically doing what is best for themselves, not buying in order to pay hommage to a country or culture. Jeffery On Apr 2, 2010, at 7:42 PM, Vince Passaro wrote: > Chris, To put the matter as gently as possible given the subject at hand: > you don't have a clue what you're talking about. I'd sit this one out. > > Here's an interesting wrinkle on the German thing that I noticed growing > up. > I was raised in a town on Long Island (geologically speaking a land mass > comprising what had once been all of New England's topsoil, residing a few > miles off the coast of Connecticut, Westchester, and the Bronx). That town > was Great Neck. it's practically world famous as a Jewish-American > stronghold -- in those days, Asheknazi (European) jews; these days, a > majority Persian. > > I was part of a largely Irish-Catholic enclave in the Old Village that had > grown up from the servant and blue collar types who'd served as > housekeepers, cooks, plumbers, butchers, etc for the movie moguls who'd > built up the town in the 'teens and 'twenties, before that crowd famously > moved out West. (Great Neck is the home of Jay Gatsby -- nee' Gatz -- > America's emblematic arriviste). We working class kids loved our WWII > movies -- everything from Audie Murphy to Kelly's Heroes and the Dirty > Dozen > -- and since our fathers had all served, we were quite passionately > anti-German and anit-Japanese. > > As I came into my teen years I noticed that the Jews in town LOVED German > things: Mercedes, Braun, Krups, Henckels and Wusthof -- couldn't get enough > of the stuff. No Joe D's Mr. Coffee for them (Mr. Coffee was a luxury item > for us of course.) . I came to understand it later -- Hannah Arendt, one of > the great German-Jewish intellectuals of the 20th century, went back to > germany every two years or so -- after being driven out as a Jew -- to see > her old mentor and lover Martin Heidegger, the great German philosopher > who'd (at Hitler's behest) taken over the University of Berlin and purged > it > of all the Jews. Part of the grief of the Jewish intellectual community in > particular, and of many other Jews, was not just the Holocaust per se, ie > the loss of people, of loved ones, etc: there was also the loss of Germany > as a cultural idea that included them and that they could identify with. > The > music, the literature, the language, the cosmopolitanism, etc. (The > engineering, the optics, the cutlery, the cars...) They missed it and many > in that generation wanted it back in one form or another. > > My full understanding came when I remembered the old gourmet food shop in > town: Kuck's. Old man Kuck was a tall, fat, pink pig-faced German with > tiny > furious red-rimmed eyes right out of central casting. Here he was in Great > Neck and he hated Jews and screamed at his customers at the top of his > lungs > every possible bit of invective imaginable in two languages. Nevertheless > you couldn't even get in the place on a Sunday morning it was so popular. > The Jews of Great Neck came in droves, and he screamed at them, and they > screamed back at him, and everyone, it seemed, was fulfilled, playing out > this historical farce that perhaps took some of the teeth out of the real > nightmare of the recent past. > > Vince > > On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Chris Crawford <chris at > chriscrawfordphoto.com >> wrote: > >> >> Same with the Germans and Hitler. Enough people voted for him to put him >> in >> power, but that doesn't mean anyone in the universities voted for him. >> >> >> -- >> Chris Crawford >> Fine Art Photography >> Fort Wayne, Indiana >> 260-424-0897 >> >> http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com My portfolio >> >> http://blog.chriscrawfordphoto.com My latest work! >> >> >> >> On 4/2/10 1:04 PM, "Steve Barbour" <steve.barbour at gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> On Apr 2, 2010, at 9:58 AM, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote: >>> >>>> I will be 80 this summer. In my 50s I taught graduate courses in a >> German >>>> University. But I never found anyone my own age or older who was a >> member of >>>> the Nazi party or was sympathetic to Hitler's aims. Most of my students, >> in >>>> their 20s, were totally unaware of the inhuman behavior of the Nazis >> toward >>>> Jews and other minorities. Of those older people who served in the >> military, >>>> many said that they did so under protest and claim never to have fired a >>>> shot in anger. As for the concentration camps, most denied knowing of >> their >>>> existence. This was denial at an almost psychopathic level. Hitler must >> have >>>> governed a country full of phantoms. Obviously there were no people in >>>> Germany. >>> >>> >>> funny how that works... >>> >>> in the sixties I worked at University California Berkeley...never met >> anyone >>> who voted for Reagan to be Governor of California.. >>> >>> in spite of that he won convincingly, >>> >>> >>> >>> Steve >>> >>> >>>> Larry Z >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Leica Users Group. >>>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Leica Users Group. >>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >> > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information