Harry´s Blog

 Herbert Kuhner

Hitler was aware of the legacy he was helping to undermine: he devoted part of a Nuremberg rally in 1937 to criticism of an overzealous party official who had declared the Masonic theme of Die Zauberflöte ideologically unacceptable. “Only a person lacking respect for his own nationality would condemn Mozart’s Zauberflöte because its text may be ideologically opposed to his own outlook,” he reprimanded Hitler also condemned as “grotesque” the “Aryanization” of operatic texts such as Carmen and Tosca. Tellingly, he declined to visit the Degenerate Music Exhibition organized by Hans Severus Ziegler in Düsseldorf in 1938 to expose the “triumph of arrogant Jewish impudence”.
- Peter Aspen: Orchestrating the Holocaust, Financial Times, Jan. 15/16, 2005, p. W7

Here was the Führer contradicting himself. After laying down the law, he may have had some slight compunctions and made some slight exceptions. His number one toady and henchman was a stickler who had no compunctions and made no exceptions. When Adolf vacillated, he was there to set things straight. When asked by his son and namesake Martin Jr. what National Socialism was all about, he replied, “Implementing the will of Adolf Hitler.” This also may have meant implementing it on Hitler, if necessary.

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A Reading of

LAMENTATIONS

Four One-Act Plays
by
ALTER BRODY

took place
on
June 13th, 2009
at
The Jewish Theater: The Window
Kandlgasse 6/1
1070 Vienna

The American Jewish poet Alter Brody published A Family Album, a volume of poetry,  in the last year of World War I. He continued to publish in journals during the Twenties. In 1928, Brody published Lamentations, Four One Act Plays. After that, he fell into obscurity.
The English poet and publisher, Anthony Rudolf published poems by Brody in his Voices in the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets and tracked him down just before his death in 1981. Brody’s place in American poetry and world literature is waiting to be occupied by him.

Alter Brody’s Four-One Act Plays, which were published in New York in 1928, have not yet been produced. They were read in Ilse Zelenka’s German translation by young actors, who were confronted with them for the first time. The dialogue came alive as the actors became the characters

It was the first time that I had heard the plays read aloud, and I was struck by the effectiveness the language. It is ingenuous and yet poetic.

Lamentations gives us insight into the lives of Jews of the Old World who lead lives in the New World.

In Lowing in the Night a married couple that owns a candy store in the Bronx serves children every day but can have none of their own. They give vent to their frustration but are bound to each other by love and affection.

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Herbert Kuhner

David Letterman Evokes Guffaws

I do not ascribe to many of Governor Sarah Palin’s political views, just as I do not ascribe to the views of, Bill O’Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, to name a few.

No woman, that I agree with or do not agree with, nor any daughter, should be the butt of a crude sexist joke. I believe in staying above-board.

Dave, you have hit rock-bottom!

The Joke

This is about a joke. I heard it my first year in college. I spent my freshman year in a small Methodist college, which was dry. It may have been officially dry, but the fraternities were very wet. There was drinking galore. And lots smoking - something I always hated.

I pledged at a fraternity, and after hazing and much nonsense, I became a brother.

Now, being a brother was the most important thing in the world, and the most important person in the world was a fellow brother. A brother was more important than a girlfriend or a fiancée.

Well, a fraternity brother is fine, and so is friendship, but why try to gradate? You can love a blood brother, and you can love a friend and you should love a female mate. I just don’t know why you should prefer guy who is in your fraternity to that mate.

I’ve never much liked being at a table with a bunch of guys babbling about cars, sports and women.

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Hans Dichand:

“I’d rather pet my dog than exercise power”.

Ich streichle lieber meinen Hund als Macht auszuüben.
- Hans Dichand: Im Vorhof der Macht: Erinnerungen eines Journalisten,
Ibera Verlag, 1996

Herbert Kuhner

(click here  and scroll down for English translation)

Charlie kam zuerst, und dann kam Buster. Charlie rutschte aus und hat Ausrutscher verursacht, und er hat sich mit den Schurken herumgeschlagen. Charlie war manchmal bösartig, aber Buster war immer sanft. Die Looney Tunes-Trickfilm-Charaktere haben dann die Grobheit fortgesetzt. Buster war der Ernste und Aufrichtige; er hat sich immer bemüht und war weit weg vom Erfolg, bis zum Schluß. Es gab schöne Frauen, die erkannten, daß ein reines Herz in seiner Brust schlug, obwohl er scheu und ungeschickt war, und so ist am Ende Buster belohnt worden. Ja, Busters Herz war rein, er hatte einen unschuldigen Charme, und seine Bewegungen waren graziös und knabenhaft. Buster versuchte und versuchte es immer wieder. Es gab bei ihm keine Unehrlichkeit oder Betrügerei.

Es war Buster, der mich faszinierte. Ich hatte nie das Vergnügen Buster kennenzulernen,  dafür durfte ich Padhi kennenlernen. Buster, der in seinen Filmen noch lebt, gibt es lange nicht mehr, doch Padhi ist hier, und für mich ist er Buster.

Padhi ist Künstler wie Buster, aber er ist weder Schauspieler noch Komödiant. Er ist Objektkünstler, Photograph, Collagist, Maler und Musiker, der mit seiner Kunst in Harmonie lebt. Er ist unschuldig wie Buster, und er macht keine Kompromisse. Er geht seinen Weg, auch wenn es hart und schmerzhaft ist.

(siehe auch  www.telepadhi.com)

Sicher möchte Padhi auch finanzielle Früchte ernten, aber er hat sich nie gebückt, um sie aufzuheben, wenn er sich dafür hätte beugen müssen. Kunst zu schaffen ist für ihn wichtiger als Geld zu sammeln. Und er produziert, so gut er kann, ohne die Vorteile und Ausstattung, die mit dem Geld kommen. Wenn Padhi arbeitet, hat er Kunst im Sinne, nicht den Markt und das, was der Markt bringt. Für Padhi hat Kunst Vorrang vor dem Markt, weil Kunst als Kunst geschaffen ist und nicht einfach als Produkt für den Markt.

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Saturday June 13th, 01 p.m.

The Jewish Theater
Kandlgasse 6/1
1070 Vienna
Tel. 319 96 19

LAMENTATIONS

Four Folk-Plays of the American Jew

by
ALTER BRODY
Author of “A Family Album”

Alter Brody, American Poet and Playwright

The American Jewish poet Alter Brody published A Family Album,
a volume of poetry,  in the last year of World War I.
He continued to publish in journals during the Twenties.
In 1928, Brody published Lamentations, Four One Act Plays.
After that, he fell into obscurity.
The English poet and publisher, Anthony Rudolf published poems by Brody
in his Voices in the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets
and tracked him down just before his death in 1981.
Brody’s place in the American poetry and world literature
is waiting to be occupied by him

Lewis Mumford

LAMENTATIONS: Four Folk Plays of the American Jew by Alter Brody

In the notable succession of novels of Jewish life, in which the intellectual spokesmen of a generation of assimilated American Jews are vainly trying to recapture something which they call their Judaism, this book is an arresting phenomenon.

Here, for the first time is the Jew himself - not a sentimentalized interpretation of him, seen through nostalgic minds clouded by conflicts alien to the real Jew; not novelized essays on Assimilation; Zionism, Judaism, The Mission of Israel. etc. - but plain everyday Jews, far too profoundly Jewish to be conscious of it; Jewish peasants of the Greater East Side, living and dying loving and hating in a circumscribed universe of their own, whose inhabitants are as little aware of the “Jewish Problem” as the peasants of Synge’s folk plays are of the “Irish Problem.” Here are Jews speaking for themselves without prompting - sometimes brutally, sometimes beautifully, in a series of folk plays, in which poet has magically transmuted the bold unabashed rhetoric and rhythmic garrulity of Yiddish in English, to enrich our multi colored new literature.

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Franz Voves, Landeshauptmann, Steiermark

Die Presse. Klaus Höfler, 5.6.09

Voves: Was die „Kronen Zeitung” macht, ist ein Wahnsinn und gefährdet die Demokratie, weil Menschen manipuliert werden … Es muss endlich einen Politiker geben, der sagt: Das halt’ ich nicht mehr aus!

Klaus Höfler: Ihr Parteikollege Bundeskanzler Werner Faymann hält es offenbar sehr gut aus.

Voves: Solche, die sich anbiedern - das ist das Traurigste überhaupt. Ich bin aber sicher nicht von einer Zeitung abhängig. Auch wenn ich deshalb politisch scheitere, kann ich zumindest in den Spiegel schauen und sagen: Super, dass du zur Demokratie und deiner Linie gestanden bist.

Klaus Höfler: Das passt nicht ganz zur Faymann-Linie.

Voves: Das ist mir wurscht.

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