The prizewinning film Fatherland is running in Dublin at present.
It's about the return to Germany in 1949 of Thomas Mann with his daughter Erika. He delivers a lecture on Goethe in Frankfurt-am-Main and in Weimar, two cities inextricably linked with Goethe.
The new Communist state of the GDR tries to use Mann and indeed Goethe as two people who favour the world of communism. Weimar is situated in the former GDR.
Today across Germany students, young people and the not-so-young are demonstrating in protest against living conditions in their country.
Yesterday it was Italy, the previous weekend Paris.
Many shops throughout Germany have been boarded up in preparedness against any violence that might ensue.
And all these demonstrations seem to be falling into the laps of the far right in all three countries; indeed, the irony of it, the demonstrations are left wing in orientation but it will be the right wing who will benefit.
Germans, in the name of all those who were murdered in the Hitler years, must at all cost stop the AfD gaining power.
Thomas Mann, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann would never have approved of the AfD, or indeed, Goethe.
No comments:
Post a Comment