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Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory Routledge
Research in Cultural and Media Studies Volume 29 1st
Edition Brett Ashley Kaplan Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Brett Ashley Kaplan
ISBN(s): 9780415874762, 0415874769
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 3.06 MB
Year: 2010
Language: english
 Landscapes of
Holocaust Postmemory
Routledge Research in
Cultural and Media Studies

1. Video, War and the Diasporic 10. Political Communication

Imagination in a New Era
Dona Kolar-Panov Edited by Gadi Wolfsfeld and
Philippe Maarek
2. Reporting the Israeli-Arab Conflict
How Hegemony Works 11. Writers’ Houses and the
Tamar Liebes Making of Memory
Edited by Harald Hendrix
3. Karaoke Around the World
Global Technology, Local Singing 12. Autism and Representation
Edited by Toru Mitsui and Edited by Mark Osteen
Shuhei Hosokawa
13. American Icons
4. News of the World The Genesis of a National
World Cultures Look at Television News Visual Language
Edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen Benedikt Feldges

5. From Satellite to Single Market 14. The Practice of Public Art

New Communication Technology and Edited by Cameron Cartiere and
European Public Service Television Shelly Willis
Richard Collins
15. Film and Television After DVD
6. The Nationwide Television Studies Edited by James Bennett and
David Morley and Charlotte Bronsdon Tom Brown

7. The New Communications 16. The Places and Spaces of

Landscape Fashion, 1800–2007
Demystifying Media Globalization Edited by John Potvin
Edited by Georgette Wang, Jan Servaes,
and Anura Goonasekera 17. Communicating in the
Third Space
8. Media and Migration Edited by Karin Ikas and
Constructions of Mobility and Difference Gerhard Wagner
Edited by Russel King and Nancy Wood
18. Deconstruction After 9/11
9. Media Reform Martin McQuillan
Democratizing the Media, Democratizing
the State 19. The Contemporary Comic
Edited by Monroe E. Price, Beata Book Superhero
Rozumilowicz, and Stefaan G. Verhulst Edited by Angela Ndalianis
20. Mobile Technologies 29. Landscapes of Holocaust
From Telecommunications to Media Postmemory
Edited by Gerard Goggin and Brett Ashley Kaplan
Larissa Hjorth

21. Dynamics and Performativity

of Imagination
The Image between the Visible
and the Invisible
Edited by Bernd Huppauf and
Christoph Wulf

22. Cities, Citizens, and

Technologies
Urban Life and Postmodernity
Paula Geyh

23. Trauma and Media

Theories, Histories, and Images
Allen Meek

24. Letters, Postcards, Email

Technologies of Presence
Esther Milne

25. International Journalism and

Democracy
Civic Engagement Models from
Around the World
Edited by Angela Romano

26. Aesthetic Practices and Politics

in Media, Music, and Art
Performing Migration
Edited by Rocío G. Davis, Dorothea
Fischer-Hornung, and Johanna C.
Kardux

27. Violence, Visual Culture, and the

Black Male Body
Cassandra Jackson

28. Cognitive Poetics and Cultural

Memory
Russian Literary Mnemonics
Mikhail Gronas
 Landscapes of
Holocaust Postmemory

Brett Ashley Kaplan

New York London

First published 2011
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Simultaneously published in the UK

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

© 2011 Taylor & Francis

The right of Brett Ashley Kaplan to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf-
ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
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Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade-

marks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kaplan, Brett Ashley.
Landscapes of Holocaust postmemory / by Brett Ashley Kaplan.
p. cm. — (Routledge research in cultural and media studies ; v. 29)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Influence. 2. Hitler, Adolf, 1889–1945—Homes
and haunts. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945), in literature. 4. Holocaust, Jewish
(1939–1945), in art. 5. Coetzee, J. M., 1940—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
D803.K37 2011
940.53'18—dc22
2010012661

ISBN 0-203-84227-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN13: 978-0-415-87476-2 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-84227-0 (ebk)
For Anya, Melia, and Sasha
Contents

List of Figures xi
Prologue and Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

PART I
Burning Landscapes: The Transformation of Hitler’s Holiday
Retreat

1 The Obersalzberg 11

2 Eva’s Cousin 34

3 Past Present 47

PART II
Burning Images: Three Photographers Explore Traumatic
Landscapes

4 Lee Miller: No Stasis 71

5 Susan Silas’s Helmbrechts Walk 99

6 Collier Schorr: Reenacting Nazis 122

PART III
Burning Silence: The Uncanny Presence of the Holocaust in
the Work of J.M. Coetzee

7 Life & Times 141

x Contents

8 Foe 161

9 Elizabeth Costello and Disgrace 184

Concluding Remarks 198

Notes 201
Bibliography 219
Index 243
Figures

1.1 Bunker Graffiti. Luke Batten. Image courtesy of Luke

Batten. 12

1.2 Hitler’s House. Image courtesy of The Rare Book &

Manuscript Library, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. 17

1.3 The Funeral Pyre of the Third Reich, Hitler’s House in

Flames (1945). Photograph by Lee Miller. Image courtesy of
Lee Miller Archives, England 2009. 29

1.4 Jewish DP College Students from Munich on an Excursion

to Berchtesgaden. United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. Image courtesy of Alicia Fajnsztejn Weinsberg. 32

3.1 Berghof Conference Hall. Image courtesy of The Rare

Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign. 49

3.2 Berghof Conference Hall. Image courtesy of The Rare

Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign. 49

3.3 Eagle’s Nest High Up in the Sky. Image courtesy of Charles

Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections,
Northwestern University Library. 51

3.4 Hitler’s House Seen from Bormann’s House. Image

courtesy of Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special
Collections, Northwestern University Library. 52

3.5 A. Hitler and D. Eckart: Obersalzberg to Hoher Goll No.

3. Luke Batten and Jonathan Sadler. Image courtesy of New
Catalogue. 58

3.6 Hotel InterContinental, Berchtesgaden. Luke Batten and

Jonathan Sadler. Image courtesy of New Catalogue. 59
xii Figures

3.7 InterContinental Pool. Luke Batten and Jonathan Sadler.

Image courtesy of New Catalogue. 60

4.1 Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bath (1945). Photograph by David E.

Scherman. Image courtesy of Lee Miller Archives, England
2009. 72

4.2 The Bürgermeister’s Daughter (April 1945). Lee Miller.

Image courtesy of Lee Miller Archives, England 2009. 89

4.3 SS Guard in Canal (1945). Lee Miller. Image courtesy of

Lee Miller Archives, England 2009. 92

4.4 Fire Masks (1941). Lee Miller. Image courtesy of Lee Miller
Archives, England 2009. 93

4.5 David E. Scherman, Equipped for War (1943). Lee Miller.

Image courtesy of Lee Miller Archives, England 2009. All
rights reserved. 94

5.1 Mina Rypsztajn. United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum. Image courtesy of Morris Rosen. 107

5.2 Helmbrechts Walk, 1998–2003, Day 11. Susan Silas. Image

courtesy of Susan Silas. 113

5.3 Helmbrechts Walk, 1998–2003, Day 16. Susan Silas. Image

courtesy of Susan Silas. 117

5.4 Helmbrechts Walk, 1998–2003, Day 6. Susan Silas. Image

courtesy of Susan Silas. 118

5.5 Helmbrechts Walk, 1998–2003, Day 12. Susan Silas. Image

courtesy of Susan Silas. 120

5.6 Helmbrechts Walk, 1998–2003. Epilogue. Susan Silas.

Image courtesy of Susan Silas. 121

6.1 Untitled. Collier Schorr. Image courtesy of 303 Gallery. 129

6.2 Helmet Kindling and Deer Feed (Winter) Durlangen, 2000.

Collier Schorr. Image courtesy of 303 Gallery. 130

8.1 “Abyssinians Reposing,” A Voyage to Abyssinia. Henry

Salt. Image courtesy of Newberry Library. 179
Prologue and Acknowledgments

This book began in 2005 with an invitation to Germany proffered through

my friend and colleague, Matti Bunzl, an anthropologist of contemporary
art, Austria, and Jewishness. The photographers who invited me, Luke Bat-
ten and Jonathan Sadler, of the New Catalogue collective, were document-
ing the rise of the Hotel InterContinental, in the Bavarian Alps on the site
of Hitler’s Berghof. Having already been to the Obersalzberg several times,
and having produced a series of stunning photographs (some of which are
printed in Chapter 3), Luke and Jon asked me to write a theoretical/historical
essay to accompany their photographs, and off to Berchtesgaden we flew. I
approached this study of the transformation of the Nazi complex into a lavish
hotel via historical interest mixed with fascination and horror. As a literary
scholar with a focus on Holocaust studies and aesthetics, I had always peered
through the victims’ lenses; learning the intricate details of Hitler’s life, walk-
ing where he walked, scrambling through bushes to find the remains of the
house where he lived—none of these are things I had ever imagined myself
doing. On the Jewish side of my family, one never uttered the word “Hitler.”
If there was no way around it, if one absolutely had to speak it aloud, well
then one had to spit afterwards. I worried that I was somehow supporting
Hitler kitsch by literally walking where he had walked, imbibing beer and
sausages at his Eagle’s Nest—the whole project made me uncomfortable. But
what struck me when we arrived on the Obersalzberg was that we have not
really made sense of the distance between past and present, space and mem-
ory. Luke, Jon, and I were walking not where genocide occurred but rather
where the Nazi elite, those who materially and lucratively benefited from
genocide, frolicked, consumed, gloated, planned, and displayed the glories of
the German war effort. And yet it was very hard to make sense of the abyss
between the landscape of the 1940s and the landscape of the early 2000s.
As I learned more and more about the Obersalzberg, for example, that Freud
enjoyed mushrooming there before the war, the complexity of the distance
between time yet not space deepened.
It was through studying the Obersalzberg that I discovered Lee Miller,
an American photographer documenting the fall of the Third Reich for
Vogue. Miller’s compelling images resonate powerfully with explorations
xiv Prologue and Acknowledgments
of trauma and space. I became a little bit obsessed with her—with her rich
and fascinating life, with what she represented as a free spirit. I began to
see that what she was doing with photography, space, and memory, was
closely linked to a project I had been working on for some time, Susan
Silas’s Helmbrechts Walk. I had discovered Silas while writing my fi rst
book, Unwanted Beauty, in which I discuss some of her responses to the
German painter Anselm Kiefer’s work—Susan has been a wonderful art-
ist to analyze because she cares deeply about the Holocaust, and because
she engages with ideas about photography and Holocaust representation.
In discussions of recent photographic treatments of Holocaust memory it
was Matti (again) who introduced me to Collier Schorr’s work. I found her
staged representations of young German men posing in Nazi uniform fas-
cinating, disturbing, and problematic in productive ways. From Miller to
Schorr is a long road: Miller photographed actual, often dead, Nazis, and
Schorr, some sixty years later, photographed contemporary Germans pos-
ing in Nazi uniform. It is an arc that speaks volumes about the transforma-
tions in Holocaust representation from the immediate postwar period until
the early 2000s. I began to see that the Holocaust was appearing the world
over as the emblem par excellence of evil. This transformed my vision so
that I could see things, read things, in the work of the South African writer
J.M. Coetzee that had previously been largely invisible.
Indeed, we all wear our externally molded yet curious glasses. The world
is colored for each of us by our Joyce, James, Shakespeare, postcolonial,
gender, queer, race, and/or modernist frames. But if one were to see the
world through my eyes one would be fully capable of mistaking the word
“drama” for “trauma”; “dancing” for “Drancy”; and “ask” for “ash.”
After two decades of reading, thinking, and researching the subject, the
Holocaust has been so indelibly seared into my consciousness that I fi nd it
everywhere. Over the years, to escape it, I have indulged in other reading—
often of Coetzee. Because I was supposed to be avoiding the Nazi genocide,
I was deeply suspicious of my own interpretation when I read Coetzee’s
Disgrace shortly after its publication in 1999 and discovered it to be full
of Holocaust references. The inevitable return of the repressed: just as I
tried to escape the Holocaust, I found myself absorbed in a text resonat-
ing with profound if disturbing traces of the Shoah. And then Coetzee’s
Elizabeth Costello appeared in 2003 and related the story of a difficult and
ageing woman who cannot believe that the world does not recognize the
murder and consumption of millions upon millions of innocent animals as
a crime on the scale of the Nazi genocide. Costello endeavors to enlighten
her unseeing fellow humans and utilizes comparisons to the Holocaust as
an emotional battering ram to break through to an indifferent universe.
Looking at the Holocaust in Coetzee’s writing reveals how the event casts
its shadow across global landscapes and how the traumas of apartheid and
post-apartheid South Africa are influenced by their implicit comparison
with the trauma of the Holocaust. Our relationship to global complicity,
 Prologue and Acknowledgments xv
evil, shame, and reconciliation are brought into focus by reading Coetzee’s
work through its always already there Holocaust inflection.

***

Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory has been generously supported and

I am exceedingly grateful to all the institutions and individuals who believed
in this project. The early stages of this book were encouraged by a wonderful
fellowship at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, where I
was a fellow under the rubric of “beauty”; I want to thank the then-director,
Matti Bunzl, and my fellow fellows, especially Deke Weaver, for stimulating
discussions throughout the year. This book was also supported by a fellow-
ship from the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, and I
am very grateful to the center for their excellent program. I completed this
project in the 2009–2010 academic year during my tenure as the Judith B. and
Burton P. Resnick fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. My time at
the USHMM has been nothing short of wonderful. The director of the center,
Paul Shapiro, has been most encouraging; among the center’s amazing, tal-
ented, and welcoming staff, Suzanne Brown-Flemming, Steve Feldman, Eric
Steinhart, Jürgen Matthaeus, Robert Ehrenreich, Dieter Kuntz, and Traci
Rucker have been exceptional. The librarians, Ron Coleman and Vincent
Slatt, are impressively knowledgeable and up to the minute; they have both
provided invaluable research help in the final stages of this book. The photo
archivist, Judy Cohen, barely needs a computer to find exactly the images one
searches for and she generously put me in touch with Morris Rosen, whose
moving testimony contributed greatly to Chapter 5. The reference archivist,
Michlean Amir, provided much help locating archival materials. It has been
an absolute pleasure to share this fellowship with a group of brilliant Holo-
caust scholars with whom I have been fortunate enough to exchange ideas.
Among these, Susan Suleiman, Sara Horowitz, Anna Holian, Lisa Peschel,
Mia Spiro, and Cliff Spargo have been particularly lively interlocutors and I
have felt honored to be in their company. Indeed, four of these fellows gener-
ously read sections of this book and provided extremely helpful and well-
considered feedback. Susan performed a detailed reading of Chapter 4 that
steered me away from one line of thought into a more subtle argument and
Sara contributed many brilliant insights about the same chapter into how
one might connect the disturbing desire for Hitler with the larger project of
annihilation. Mia and Cliff both read drafts of the Introduction and offered
detailed commentary that has improved it no end.
Other scholars have been extremely generous in offering much-needed,
thought-provoking readings of sections of this book. Anna Stenport
engaged with the Introduction in great detail. Chapter 3 was enormously
helped by an early perusal by Brad Prager. Anna Stenport and Annalisa-
Zox Weaver provided invaluable feedback on Chapter 4; I am extremely
xvi Prologue and Acknowledgments
grateful to them for their engagements with this stubborn chapter. Chapter
5 was fi rst presented at the Art History Colloquium at the University of
Illinois and I am indebted to Rachael DeLue, Jordana Mendelson, Jonathan
Fineberg, and David O’Brien for their helpful input; Jonathan Bordo and
Margaret Olin provided very useful feedback on drafts of Chapters 5 and
6. I am extremely grateful to Anke Pinkert for her responses, both formal
and informal, to Chapter 9 and also to the audience members at the Unit
for Criticism, and to its then-director, Michael Rothberg, for inviting me to
present what later became that chapter at the Unit; Russ Castronovo gener-
ously read an earlier version of Chapter 9 and offered smart and detailed
advice. Sasha Mobley is due immeasurable thanks for editing the entire
book; I honestly don’t know what I would have done without our many
late- night wordsmithing sessions. Thank you.
The grants and fellowships that supported this book were made possi-
ble by the generous and exceedingly welcome support of Marianne Hirsch,
James Young, Brad Prager, Michael Rothberg, and Ulrich Baer. Much of
the book was written during my “post-tenure sabbatical” and I am grateful
to the wonderful chair of Comparative Literature, Jean-Philippe Mathy, for
encouraging my work by enabling my sabbatical and my fellowship at the
USHMM. Indeed, my colleagues in both Comparative Literature and Jewish
Studies could not be better. A large portion of Landscapes was written on my
much beloved laptop, which allowed me the flexibility to work in many of the
lively cafés—especially Intelligentsia—in Lakeview, Chicago, where I took
my sabbatical; I would not have the laptop were it not for a generous grant
from the University of Illinois’ Research Board, which also offered a grant
for the trip to Berchtesgaden that launched this book and covered the images
in Chapter 4; I am deeply thankful to them for their crucial support.
Erica Wetter and Liz Levine of Routledge have been enthusiastic, flexible,
and marvelous to work with. I am extremely grateful to the detailed and
invaluable comments supplied by the four anonymous reviewers to whom
Routledge sent several chapters of my book; I trust that these readers will
find their advice followed throughout the final product. The ideas in Land-
scapes were greatly influenced by a number of scholars to whose work I
consistently return: Marianne Hirsch (who not only forged the concept of
“postmemory” but whom I thank heartily for several years of enthusiastic
support and a very thought-provoking response to an MLA panel on the
Holocaust in the Era of Decolonization), James Young, Judith Butler, Susan
Suleiman, Ulrich Baer, Saidiya Hartman, David Attwell, Brad Prager, Laura
Levitt, Michael Rothberg (whom I credit with opening up the field of Holo-
caust studies to other places in the globe including South Africa where this
book ends), David Shneer, Leo Spitzer, Ernst van Alphen, Andreas Huyssen,
Derek Attridge, Debarti Sanyal (whom I thank for the best Toronto day ever),
Sara Horowitz, Lawrence Langer, and Geoffrey Hartman; needless to say,
this in an incomplete list. Among the courses I have taught while thinking
through this book, four were particularly enlivening: two graduate seminars,
 Prologue and Acknowledgments xvii
one on Landscape and Memory and the other on Photography and Memory,
and two undergraduate seminars on J.M. Coetzee; I thank the students in
these classes for their stimulating questions and interesting ideas. Parts of this
project were presented at the Association for Jewish Studies, the American
Comparative Literature Association, the Modernist Studies Association, the
Modern Language Association, and, at the University of Illinois, the Jewish
Studies Workshop, the Art History Colloquium, and the Unit for Criticism.
I am grateful to the audiences and co-panelists at these conferences, lectures,
and colloquia for their invaluable input.
Research for this book was conducted at the following places: United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library, Archive, and Photo Archive;
University of Illinois Library and Rare Book & Manuscript Library; New-
berry Library; National Gallery of Art Library; Library of Congress; Charles
Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern Uni-
versity; Yad Vashem (via mail); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Library; and the National Portrait Gallery Library. I am most thankful to
all the wonderfully helpful librarians at these institutions for their generous
research aid. I am very grateful to Bruce Siemon of the USAREUR Military
History Office for his correspondence and for the sending of a very long
fax regarding the Armed Forces Recreation Center I discuss in Chapter 1;
for help with materials pertaining to Berchtesgaden and also to Knauss’s
novel I am grateful to Sonja Shoene and Jennifer Bliss; Chapter 3 was aided
by the advice and consultation of several librarians and scholars, including
Marianne Kalinke, Tom Kilton, and Valerie Hotchkiss, who generously
discussed the curious albums treated in this chapter; I thank Scott Kraft,
the librarian at Northwestern Special Collections for all of his welcome
help and for supplying digital images from the album stored there. Many
thanks to Anke Zeugner, at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, for faxing me
the correspondence between Dr. Shimon Samuels and David Webster.
Some of the material in Landscapes appeared in earlier forms elsewhere.
I am grateful to George Rowe and Margaret Olin for allowing me to
reprint in revised form “Masking Nazi Violence in the Beautiful Landscape
of the Obersalzberg,” Comparative Literature (Summer 2007): 241–268;
and “Exposing Violence, Amnesia, and the Fascist Forest through Susan
Silas and Collier Schorr’s Holocaust Art,” Images: A Journal of Jewish
Art and Visual Culture, 2 (2008): 110–128. I am grateful to Luke Batten,
Jonathan Sadler, Susan Silas, and Collier Schorr for permission to print
their amazing images here. I also thank the Lee Miller Archives for the
right to showcase some of Miller’s images and the University of Illinois
Research Board for supporting the reproduction of the photographs from
this archive. Citations from Life & Times of Michael K, copyright (c) 1983
and Foe, copyright (c) 1986 by J.M. Coetzee used by permission of Viking
Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The writing of Landscapes was delayed by a “series of unfortunate
events” (to borrow a phrase from one of Anya’s books); thankfully, my
xviii Prologue and Acknowledgments
wonderful family and friends were entirely and beautifully care giving. I am
endlessly grateful to my mother for her generosity, support, and righteous
indignation on my behalf. The other members of my family, including my
father, Ralph, step-father Marty, aunt Jen Jen, cousin Becca, and aunts
Jean and Lyn were wonderful; Jen Jen, Becca, Steve, Joe, and Walt came
all the way from England to Champaign when I needed to be with them
and for this I will always be deeply grateful. My friends, including Lara
and Donna, Amy and Gayle, Audrey and Maurice, Rob and Lilya, Jed and
Andrea, Matti and Billy, Polly and Jen, Michael and Yasemin, Laurie and
Carl, Melissa and Elena, Dara, Yaz, Jim and Renée, Janice, Anke, Kim
and John, Catharine, Carol, Katharine and Bill, Jordana, Laura, Ania and
Suvir, Adam and Nadia, Deke and Jen, Bill and Julia, Manuel e Nora,
Harriet and Bruce, and many other generous souls provided compassion,
empathy, love, and understanding way beyond any reasonable expectation;
my gratitude is infi nitely greater than can be adequately expressed. To my
handsome, endlessly generous Sasha, out of backshadowed superstition I
say: tawn.lhfrmswitf.ily. I marvel every minute at the grace of Anya Helene
and Melia Reyes; I am utterly incapable of writing the immeasurable love
that I carry for, with, and through them.
Introduction

Landscape with urn beings.

Conversations
from smokemouth to smokemouth.
—Paul Celan

What does it mean that President Obama was inaugurated in virtually

the same space where slaves were sold? How do the spaces of the past
stay with us through representations—whether literary or photographic?
How has the Holocaust registered in our increasingly globally connected
consciousness? What does it mean that this European event is often used
as an interpretive or representational touchstone for genocides and trau-
mas internationally? Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory is about the
geographical and psychological landscapes of the aftereffects of the Nazi
genocide; it grapples with how space and memory connect and how the
Holocaust travels through contemporary geographies. This book looks at
historically and culturally diverse spaces, photographs, and texts that are
all concerned with the physical and mental landscape of the Holocaust
and its transformations from the postwar period to the early twenty-fi rst
century. On the one hand, natural spaces have a tendency to reclaim land-
scapes; on the other hand, we have a tendency to build vast monumental
structures in order to remember traumatic events. A stark contrast always
exists between reclamation—spaces moving on, landscapes encroaching—
and memorialization—either in the more traditional monumental strain or
the more experimental countermonumental strain. Yet sometimes monu-
mental structures erase rather than commemorate. The tension between
memory and forgetting is always brightly evident. As the generation of sur-
vivors shrinks, the cultural weight of maintaining memory shifts not only
to subsequent generations but also in some sense to the landscape itself. As
this project moves through physical spaces crucial to the Third Reich to
photographs that grapple with representing trauma to literature that dem-
onstrates the geographical reach of the Holocaust, the diversity of means
of commemoration (and sometimes means of forgetting) comes into focus.
Landscapes are aesthetic, representational, material; by employing the term
in the context of discourses on the aftereffects of the Nazi genocide this
book offers a new interpretation of how space, memory, and the multina-
tional reach of the Holocaust intersect.
The Holocaust and fascism embed in the physical and mental land-
scapes of our era and are used for a surprisingly contradictory series of
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Twentieth
Century Epic
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Title: The Twentieth Century Epic

Author: Reuben Brodie Garnett

Release date: October 24, 2020 [eBook #63542]

Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWENTIETH

CENTURY EPIC ***
R. B. Garnett.
 The TWENTIETH
CENTURY
EPIC

By R. B. Garnett

THE ROXBURGH PUBLISHING CO., INC.

Boston
 Copyrighted 1914

By REUBEN BRODIE GARNETT

All Rights Reserved

 Dedication
To the human race this little book is
dedicated, with the hope that it may bring
some cheer, and also teach you a few things
that may lessen your burdens. The subjects
that I have put into rhyme are presented as
they come to me from my life of experience.
My criticisms may appear too severe, but
remember that only your truest friends are
allowed to tell you of your faults.
REUBEN BRODIE GARNETT.

The TWENTIETH
CENTURY EPIC
 Preface
By the Author.
This poem that I have dignified with the term epic, was written by
inspiration, and is dedicated to the human race. I have used the
term epic with no intention of assuming a dignity not due my
production; but, in the sense that the precepts and warnings
contained therein, have a lofty purpose; and are graphically set forth
in the plainest words in the English language.
I have not indulged in similes or hyperboles; nor does my epic
abound with those picturesque figures of comparison found in
Homer or Virgil, nor those cadences and swells found in The
Paradise Lost, describing the headlong falls and gigantic flights of
those god-like personages peopling the heavens and earth in the
poetic mind; nor does my inspiration come from muse or divine
breath; nor did it descend upon me from above; on the contrary, it
sprang up out of the deep feeling I have for my kind, especially
those in the strained walks of life.
Our twentieth century shows society in the process of centralizing
itself; and, gradually forcing us into legal socialism. This is plainly
shown in the poem. The process of centralization, for years, worked
slowly in this country. As long as the influence of the founders of our
Republic was potent, liberty was dominant.
The first step in this process was the inauguration of a general
system of free public schools. The direct result of this free education
was to overcrowd the book and head portion of our population at
the expense of the producing classes, making it harder for the clerk
to make a bare living. The idea of every parent now seems to be
that his or her offspring is especially adapted to the learned
professions and to society.
This was also the first step towards the diversion of public funds to
private enterprise. The appropriation of public moneys to the
extensive and widening fields of private affairs has progressed
rapidly in the last decade. This, with its evils, is vividly set forth in
my poem. Unless this is checked by united, immediate action,
socialism will increase more rapidly in the future than in the past, is
my prophecy. This results from the fact that the tax-eaters are the
ones who manipulate our bond elections.
The result is plain, and can be predicted with certainty; the end of
socialism will be the extreme opposite and, that you all know is
anarchy. When everything is so striking that nothing strikes, or in
other words, when there are more laws than we can possibly
tolerate, we’ll naturally rebel and kick them all over; all, as shown in
this epic. The last transition will likely be accomplished by bloodshed
and strife.
The laws for the management of society in a state of complete legal
socialism will be so numerous and complicated; and the bureaus so
haughty and domineering that freemen will not try to learn them,
much less obey them. In fact, no one can now keep pace with the
rapid production of laws under our incipient socialism. The fight I
make is to break off now and go back to fundamentals, as shown in
my poem.
As against socialism or anarchy I deliberately prefer the latter; but,
as against both of them I prefer a government of limited powers,
based exclusively on natural laws that I have so forcibly defined in
this work; with a complete abandonment of the barbarous idea of
punishment for crimes by criminal courts; the man who commits a
crime is to be pitied and helped to a more sane mode of existence,
and not be driven into perpetual criminality. As to how he shall be
handled can be better settled when we clear ourselves of our false
notions on the subject.
Our legal servants, we call officers, are now deteriorating with great
rapidity, as set forth in this poem under “Names.” My remedy for that
is to cut down the salaries of all officers from President down, so low
that no one will seek office for money. Then have the laws such that
men will be selected and compelled to serve, by public sentiment,
for short terms and take out part of their pay in patriotism and good
will.
My observation, over a number of years, shows that the higher the
salary, the more inefficient the officer. High salaries also give birth to
gangs of politicians who fatten off the public funds and salaries of
their appointees, making graft semi-respectable.
Honesty in public and private life seems to me to be very desirable;
and, it could be so easily attained, as set forth in my epic. Of course,
under our prevailing system, honesty is out of the question; and if
any of you think that I have not convicted you of dishonesty, as
defined under that topic, please send me your photograph to be
used herein.
In writing this poem I have no malice in my heart for a single human
being on earth; and, if in any way I have touched upon any of your
pet notions or sacred ideas, and thereby wounded your feelings, I
sincerely ask your forgiveness; with me all truth is sacred. I have no
ill-will against preachers, lawyers, or doctors; I wrote you up to
make you think, and also to let you know you were not fooling me.
In conclusion, I say to you one and all, as brothers and fellow
citizens, let’s work together to save the greatest country and the
greatest civilization on earth.
Let truth together bind us,
And supporting it find us.
REUBEN BRODIE GARNETT.
June 29, 1913.
Proem
I never shall appeal to any muse of old
To give inspiration to my story when it’s told,
But, in words all my own, shall my theme unfold;
And, for my love of man, I’ll tell you what I can;
Tell you what I know that you may truly scan
What to do and what to know for the good of man;
Tell you where to go, the places you should shun
On every working day, when your labor’s done.
In telling where to go I will not name the place
Where you should show your face, but let each run his race
And, for himself decide the spot to cast his lot.
I’ll point out mistakes to help put on brakes
Against the evils of our day one often makes.
From the Charlatan and all designing wise
Strip his robe of guise and expose him to your eyes.
The fawning sycophant and all his crafty kind
Will be painted so they’ll not be hard to find.
I’ll speak of laws and customs old with hoary age
Taught by rulers, priests, and many an ancient sage
That now are practically extinct with non-usage;
And regulations new that men had little to do
With bribes sometimes when they put them through
Legislative halls and Congress we’d now eschew.
I’ll speak to you about your manners
When you sometimes march with banners;
And even with hosannas sitting meekly in your pew
Revolving schemes against others you intend to do.
The roving politicians all seeking fat positions
To feed their hungry maws and all their kin-in-laws
Come in for their share when we divide the flaws.
Even the society genteel in their swift automobile
Had better beware their piccadillos to conceal.
Religions of every shade by ancients and moderns made
To subdue the gentle folk with all that they have said
This subject will meet its due before I’m through,
As I started out for things about that need review.
Theatres too, with music, painting and art,
Might all feel slighted not to have their part
In the criticism we bring as they my song may sing;
And the pictures my word recalls may be carved on walls
In the coming days as was done with other poet’s lays.
Developments in science where we place reliance
To alleviate the misdirection of our state
Should all be alluded to in the story we relate.
Wars, with all their frightful havoc spread
Where victorious and routed passed over dying and dead,
And peace too that came at last
That o’er the earth its healing blessings amassed
Should have a place when in plates my work is cast;
Also ethics, that practical theme so misunderstood,
Should here be elucidated for the general good;
And a few short digressions would not be out of place
In an Epic dedicated to and written for The Human Race.
But what is said under each head you may read,
So to my task the work shall proceed.
Admonition
Take from your statute laws and books
All legal protection for thieves and crooks;
Your complicated bills of mechanics’ liens
That offer to rogues the ample means
The owners of houses with their demesnes
To make go down humbly into their jeans
For the jingly coin doubly to pay
The working man, and padded expenses defray.
Your unjust schemes of municipal taxation
That cause home owners such great vexation.
Your tax upon mortgages, bills and notes
Upon which the poor man’s title barely floats,
Causing him to pay levies upon his lands
As if they were clear like the rich man’s;
By increasing for him his interest and dues
Which the money sharks collect as they choose.
Your laws against usury one may take
Tend solely the poor man’s back to break.
You drive away the cheap money he might get,
And leave him at the mercy of that lawless set
Who fatten upon unfortunates suddenly thrown in debt.
Nearly all your laws for the collection of dues
Into our commercial life dishonesty infuse.
Your regulations of homestead, exemption and stay
Simply postpone our troubles to another day.
By intricate trials with their writs and pleas;
And copious objections about titles and fees,
Remainders absolute, contingent and entailed,
Upon technicalities numberless justice is impaled;
Your instructions, your errors and appeals,
Until the waiting, anxious litigant feels
That the door of the temple of justice is locked;
And his chance of right is securely blocked.
Your free legal aid and your festive welfare board,
Their matrons and clerks, a mighty hungry hoard,
Impose upon the payers of taxes a weighty load;
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