Mannequins, Ostende, 2017

2 thoughts on “Mannequins, Ostende, 2017”

Oded Heilbronner says:

June 8, 2018 at 6:35 am

Mannequins Ostende 2017

What is the “secret of the Nazi appeal” that has also been working its magic on us since the end of Second World War? You can call it Fascinating Fascism (Susan Sontag) or Kitsch and death [Saul Friedländer). Apparently it is a unique combination of “white aesthetics,” irrational actions and occult philosophies (that were developed and invented by organizations of the radical European right years before the rise of Nazism, philosophies nurtured by Christianity and ancient paganism), and cold, technocratic and rational murderousness but also colorfulness, aestheticism and fashionableness accompanies by personality perversions and academic sophistication.
Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, popular culture gave it a place. Many of the examples that Dana Arieli describes – now more than ever assimilate mystical, satanic, spiritualist and dark content from the Third Reich. No wonder, then, that S.S. “memorial sites” like Wewelsburg Castle or the abbey of Henry the Fowler in Quedlinburg and many maga-sites and buildings which are places of pilgrimage – and not only for neo-Nazi groups.
It seems that the an inability to understand everything that happened in those difficult years still prevails among us. More and more researchers are acknowledging the fact that we do not have enough enlightened, rational and critical tools to understand the madness that overtook the Germans in the years between 1933 and 1945.
Several years ago historian Shulamit Volkov wrote that we must acknowledge that fact that there were irrational sides in German history and the Third Reich, and that we do not have enough tools to explain them. Her words echoed the pioneering work of historian George Mosse, who wrote in the 1960s that historians were not paying enough attention to the mystic sides of Nazism because they saw anti-intellectual and irrational elements in them. They tended to think, he argued, that a historian must focus on the more rational aspects of life, but such was not the case regarding the Third Reich. Fifty years ago this opinion was deemed strange and unacceptable. Today it is perceived differently.
To sum up, to this day aesthetic Nazi Satanism which is enchanting to many people, and its fingerprints are evident in nearly every branch of Western popular culture, amomg other in the attached Mannequins-Ostende photo. Many are attracted to the “Nazi animal” and its rituals for psychological reasons, but also because of its uniqueness in the Western cultural landscape in recent years.
There are those who are interested in uncovering additional sides in the research into Nazism, but instead of exploring other aspects of evil they are falling into the trap of Nazi “humanism” – and, in effect, are fulfilling Joseph Goebbels’ prophecy on the eve of his suicide that a thousand years hence National Socialism will be remembered as an Aesthetic Wall that protected Europe from Communist ugliness.
It would appear that behind the pictures described by Dana Arielli, are not only “the dark Nazi aesthetic” – and the understanding that we do not have the tools to fully understand everything that happened during those years. Possibly it is hard for us to understand that unlike fascism, which continues to exist in various and legitimate forms in some countries, Nazism and all its manifestations were wiped out completely in 1945. For various reasons we are still attracted to the aesthetic and satanic sides of Nazism.

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אסתר זנדברג says:

August 14, 2018 at 7:54 am

התצלומים בתערוכה הם פרי מסע בין הבונקרים־הפנטומים בקטע החוף שבין דרום בלגיה לצפון צרפת. שרידיהם אמנם ניכרים בשטח אך הם הולכים ונטמעים בנוף, מתכסים בצמחייה ונהפכים לרקע פסטורלי לשגרה אזרחית שלווה. האזור כיום הוא אחת האטרקציות התיירותיות הפופולריות בצרפת. יעד מבוקש במיוחד הוא בונקר הנושא את השם “סוללת טוט: מוזיאון החומה האטלנטית”, המהווה חלק מהחומה האטלנטית של היטלר. מדובר במערכת ביצורי בונקרים, שדות מוקשים ומכשולים נוספים שהיתה אמורה להגן על הגבול המערבי של הרייך השלישי ונבנתה באודינגן שבאזור פה־דה קאלה בצרפת. תצלומים במוזיאון באוסטנדה שבבלגיה מתעדים ביזאריה מצמררת של סצינות מבוימות ובהן מככבות בובות בדמות חיילים לבושי מדים וחמושים, משחקים דמקה או עורכים שולחן מלא כל טוב ברקע עותקים של “מיין קאמפף”.

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