Posts Tagged ‘Funeral’
The Wages Of Destruction
As I’ve been actually serving, I haven’t read any more of the book. AT will not be pleased.
It is a book full of surprises.
For instance, most of my knowledge of Germany in the 1920s and 30s has come from reading two books. A biography of Einstein and one of Lise Meitner by Ruth Lewin Sime. I was prompted to read both of these a few years ago, by my late husband. These books didn’t really catch the hardships of the average German, but they did chart pretty well how the persecution of the Jews started.
Incidentally, Meitner wasn’t actually Jewish, as she’d converted to being a Christian, I think in her twenties. Religions seemed to be a lot more interchangeable in those days.
So I was a bit surprised to hear about the hardships of those at the bottom in the Weinmar Republic. I’d seen pictures of the shopping during the hyper-inflation, but I’d thought that it had passed.
In the Einstein book, I was also very much touched by the show of strength when the Foreign Minister, Rathenau, was assassinated by an anti-Semite extremist. His funeral was attended by about a million people. This was something we thought had gone until Princess Diana. But remember though in the early sixties, there were hundreds of thousands on the streets of Tottenham, for the funeral of the footballer, John White.
Now as Rathenau was Jewish, where did Germany all go wrong?
I’m learning more from the Wages of Destruction.
