Report on DJ & HJ I (3/3)
Walter Felscher (walter.felscher@UNI-TUEBINGEN.DE)
Mon, 3 Nov 1997 18:44:23 +0100
Appeal
Children, in the months before they enter school at six,
often have an ambiguous attitude towards this future. On
the one hand, it will mean restrictions to their time,
discipline instead of play. On the other hand, everybody
who is older (and, therefore, appears to have superior
knowledge and experience) does go to school: it is a proof
of not being a plain infant anymore. After the first few
weeks, the charm of having achieved school age will
disappear, and only drudgery will remain ...
To boys approaching the age of ten, the prospect of joining
the HJ had a similar appeal. Everyone had watched the
uniformed columns marching through the streets. Rows of
three each, the largest in the first rows, and then twenty
or thirty rows behind them in the marching block - and
sometimes a second or even a third block following the first
one. Marching in uniform step: left/right, left/right,
left/right ... , the steps sounding off their rhythm. And
the side of the first row a proud fourth boy: the leader of
the unit, occasionally shouting a command, but mainly
parading himself and the insignia, plaited cords in various
colors, on his embellished uniform. Usually, a marching
song would be shouted, but sometimes the blocks were
preceded by musicians: a number of long, high drums, painted
with black or red flames on white ground, continuosly
beating the deep, dark marching rhythm: bomm, bomm,
bomm-bomm-bomm, bomm, bomm, bomm-bomm-bomm, ... . And
sometimes even a group of fanfares, long, trumpet-like
instruments, with identical flags hanging down their length,
producing a bright, smattering sound, organized into simple
tunes:
tah-ta-tah ta-ta-tah-tah ta-ta-tah-tah-tah-tateratata
bomm bomm bom-bom-bom bomm bomm bom-bom-bom
tateratatah tata-teteratatahta tata-tateratatahta tatateteratatah :||
bomm bomm bom-bom-bom bomm bomm bom-bom-bom :||
the fanfares would yell over the drum beat. And between the
band and the columns, The Flag was carried: a huge black
cloth, and on it a large, white, S-shaped germanic rune, the
rune of victory. And all the passersby on the sidewalk
would stop when the flag went past them, would stand at
attention and would stretch out their right arm and hand,
greeting the flag with the Heil-Hitler sign. [Yes, all of
them indeed. They had learned to do so in the first years
after 1933 when the SA paraded their flags in that way, and
when those who did not greet them that way would be beaten
up by patrols watching the sidewalks. And once ingrained,
the desired behaviour had not even to be enforced by patrols
anymore.]
Wasn't it fascinating to watch ? Would it not be an honour
to belong to such a marching block, would it not give you a
value, an esteem, which you could never achieve as an
isolated, single being ? To follow a flag, to become a
link of this immense, feet-stamping chain of transmission,
a single link, yes, but one which, being joined with
hundreds of others, transferred an immense, dynamical force ?
"Wer auf unsere Fahne schwoert / hat nichts was ihm selbst
gehoert." And moreover, you needn't to remain a simple link,
you could, after all, become a leader yourself, giving
commands yourself, marching along as a fourth man with
coloured cords ...
But then, of course, it wasn't quite clear what was going on
when the marching columns did not parade through the
streets. And for every leader there had to be sixty or
eighty others which were the ones being lead ...
[Aside 2 . The interplay of attraction to, and repulsion
from, a uniformed crowd offered itself already to five year
olds. I remember vacationing, before the war, at a seaside
resort, where the village's administration organized a
children's afternoon. One assembled in front of the large
column with the public clock, and handymen from the
administration distributed uniform pieces made from paper
crepe: white caps and a blue-white tunic to go over your
blouse. Then there was a funny, lame man in a funny dress
who shouted jokes about which he himself laughed the
loudest. Finally, the crowd began to move in a loose column,
passing through the few streets, of course not in a marching
rhythm, but the mommas walking at the side of the smaller
children. Attraction to be included at the feast. Repulsion
to be in a crowd which, even to a child, appeared partly
threatening and partly silly. ]
[Aside 3 . The first two thirds of Leni Riefenstahl's film
"Triumph des Willens" are the extreme artistic sublimation
of marching columns and of organized crowds standing at
attention - organized with the elegance of a ballet. While I
did not see the movie then, photographic stills of a large
number of similar scenes could be taken in from a picture
book, "Deutschland Erwache", distributed in huge numbers by
the Reemtsma cigarette company. The impression they left
was utterly remarkable. When I was 12 , my father had to use
the waters at Bad Salzuflen, and I accompanied him for a week.
The spa had a fairly large park, located in a slightly hilly
landscape, with many wide pathways that, when leading up a
hillside, did so with a number stone steps, of considerable
width, six to eight yards. From the top, there opened wide
views, and at the side of the steps the hillside was held
by stone walls, protruding outwards to isolated platforms
high above the ground below :
_ _ _
/ _ / /_________________________ / _ / /
_ / _ /_ |_________________________ / _ /_ /
/ _ _ /| / _ _ _ / _ _ /| /
/__________/ | /________________________/__________/ | /
| | | | | | |_________________________| | | | | | /
| | | | | / _ _ _ _ | | | | | /
| | | | | |/___________________________| | | | | | /
| | | | |____________________________| | | | |/
| | | | | / _ _ _ _ | | | | | /
| | | |/______________________________| | | | /
| | | | |_______________________________| | | | |/
I spent an entire, lonely morning walking along these
arrangements, imagining crowds of uniformed party men
standing at attention below, guards with flags on the side
platforms, and lecterns in the center of the topmost steps,
from which a leader would address the raptured audiences on
the grounds. In my imagination, I had become an architect
for future Nuernberg meeting grounds. ]
Clearly, the appeal described here required a town; it did
not work in a a small village which could bring up only one,
shaggy marching column, only one or two drums, an no fanfares.
And while in Protestant parts the flamboyant pageantry was a
unique experience, in Catholic areas it was much less so.
The annual Corpus Christi processions likewise offered
organized crowds, marching columns often in uniform dress -
trades such as carpenters, or uniformed miners - , leading
priests in black and white frocks, open air masses held
before altars surrounded by mountains of flowers, and at
their front side not a swastika, but a statue of the Virgin.
The spirit of veneration, the feeling of magical unity with
a force greater than the human individuum: it was the same,
directed not towards The Flag but towards the tabernacle.
Only that NS-dom had replaced the supernatural God with the
mythical, supernatural entity of the nation: das Volk.
[ End of Part I ]