As part of a European-wide Heritage Days, this weekend in Germany marks der Tag des offenen Denkmals (Day of Open Monuments), when historic attractions which are not normally open for public inspection (due to lack of funds, etc.) are made accessible and often special exhibitions and excursions are included. Sometimes parts of museums and great houses usually off limits are open as well and is also a vehicle to highlight and promote little known histories. If you are out and about this weekend, be sure to pay special heed to local lore to support this movement and the conservation of heritage.
Sunday 11 September 2016
colossus and curio
The four and a half kilometer long compound hugging the beach was to be a monumental retreat for Nazi party members and service-members on shore-leave, a resort with accommodations for twenty thousand and available to all at nominal prices—but was never completed and abandoned.
The East Germany army had used a small portion of the building up until Reunification, when it was wholly deserted. When we visited, one could wander the neglected and graffiti-spattered but sturdy corridors freely, and there was only one central column that was put to any use at all, hosting a youth hostel and a museum, curated by a local family.
Being that Seebad Prora has been refurbished and sold off as luxury condominiums, I doubt the museum with its random exhibits of taxidermy, mock-ups of East German Command and Control and the typical resort room plus the typical East German living-room, geology, motorcycles, grade-three’s artwork, some exhibits defying explanation, a lot of Ostalgie and a Viennese cafรฉ are there any longer.
It does make me sad to think that there was no room for someone as passionate about history (and wanted to make sure that that place and those times did not fall into total obscurity) as the individual who commissioned the House on the Rock above—and despite the chaos, I do remember that every item was well researched and documented—but maybe all these artefacts got to stay together, somewhere. That rugged and quiet beach is probably again off-limits to the all-comers as well.
Here are all the images of Prora that I could find from our visit and exploration back in the summer of 2010. One ought to really visit such places when one has the chance, since one can never say if it will always be accessible to the curious public.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, antiques, architecture, libraries and museums, travel
Saturday 10 September 2016
kitsch and clowder
Thanks to Poseidon’s Underworld, a blog dedicated to unearthing forgotten cinematic kitsch, we learn about an obscure but star-studded production of a movie called “The Phynx” by Warner Brothers and the Seven Arts, released to only a few venues in 1970.
It sounds wonderfully dreadful and has an equally byzantine storyline (that’s sort of derivative, hoping to maybe capture some the success that operatic productions like the Beatles’ “Help” found with audiences a few years earlier) that seems to be a light-hearted indictment against Communist Albania, who seems to be systematically kidnapping America’s national treasures in order to lower morale in the West and claim them as part of their own culture. Colonel Sanders is abducted and forced to cook for the Albanian First Lady—Marla Gibbs, Butterfly McQueen and countless other personalities are being disappeared as well and pressed into service as celebrities behind the Iron Curtain.
America’s intelligence agencies meet but are unable to agree jurisdictionally how to proceed, previous efforts to infiltrate the country having failed, and so turn to a “super-computer” called MOTHA (Mechanical Oracle That Helps Americans) for advice. MOTHA suggests quite sensibly that they form a boy-band—the eponymous Phynx—whose members are also trained in the arts of espionage, to take Albania and the whole of the Communist Bloc by storm and liberate their captured compatriots. This looks wacky and deranged but I think just for the sheer number of cameo appearances (the actors and/or their roles of the Lone Ranger, Tarzan, singer James Brown, Charo!, choreographer Busby Berkley and Charlie McCarthy—not the leader of the Communist witch-hunt but rather the ventriloquist dummy), the animated interstitials and musical interludes, it might be worthwhile viewing.
catagories: ๐ฆ๐ฑ, ๐ฌ, ๐ถ, ๐บ, foreign policy, networking and blogging
love counts for zero on the court
Via the always marvelous Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a fantastic tournament of tennis matches, as imagined by Medicine Hat sportscaster Felix Harr, godson of author Paul Auster. There are a lot of clever ones, and I especially liked Felix Frankfurter versus Warren Burger, being as they were both US supreme court justices.
catagories: ๐จ๐ฆ, ๐ฌ, ๐, networking and blogging
catchascatchcan
We had heard beforehand of the unique Russian republic between the Black and Caspian seas called Kalmykia—the only place in Europe where a plurality of the population is practising Buddhists, which is pretty remarkable to learn in itself, but we had never known about the first and still (nominally so, at least) Jewish state (autonomous oblast) called Birobidzhan until listening a really engrossing discussion about it on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Established in 1931 in the Soviet far east, on the border with China, almost two decades before the founding of Israel, the territory partially planned and to a large part championed by Swiss-German Bauhaus architect Hannes Meyer. After the Bolshevik Revolution which suppressed religious practises and outlawed private property and put enterprise under the mantle of the USSR, Jewish people, who already faced discrimination and were excluded from many public pursuits and now lost their livelihoods as owners of small businesses. Birobidzhan was advertised as a homeland where they could express their Yiddish heritage (and speak the language, whereas Hebrew predominated in Israel) without fear of reprisal—but as the discussion reveals, it was far from ideal—with cultural labels imposed and thrust upon individuals rather than allowing people to self-identify (which is usually the case in such situations) and the migration seemed more of an expulsion to a harsh and remote land, hardly arable and with no infrastructure. After initially being encouraged to build a community, those members of the “elite” who promoted it and tried to make a success out of the experiment were themselves victims of subsequent Stalinist purges. Be sure to check out the whole fascinating and tragic interview in the link up top.
catagories: ๐ท๐บ, ๐ฌ, religion, revolution
Friday 9 September 2016
6x6
ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp: the three decade mystery of the Toynbee tiles that urge mankind to aim for the impossible in order to survive
tobacconistas: interesting back to back postings on cigarettes with the taste and aroma of marijuana (but not the high) and lettuce smokes for those wanting to quit
defying the laws of gravity: for what would have been his seventieth birthday, Freddie Mercury has an asteroid named after him
if IKEA made SUVs: a flat-pack all-terrain vehicle
slate and shingle: omnibus of clever chalk board art that drew in more and more patrons
Thursday 8 September 2016
even old new york was once new amsterdam
Our faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari informs among many other things that occurred on this day, the Dutch surrendered the settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam (formerly Nouvelle-Angoulรชme, claimed for the French crown by a Florentine explorer) to the British in 1664 after the Duke of York (the future James II) invaded by sending a fleet of warships to the harbor, under the auspices of his brother, Charles II.
Somewhat ironically residents were unhappy with the puritanical strictures of their current governor Peter Stuyvesant and welcomed English rule and the territory was handed-over without a fight. A decade later, however, New York was re-christened New Orange for a brief period of time when it was re-taken by the Netherlands during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.