OpEdNews - Diary: Germany's favorite 105-year-old singer sues over SS claims

October 21, 2008 at 12:01:29 Permalink
Germany's favorite 105-year-old singer sues over SS claims

Diary Entry by Tony Forest (about the author)

Johannes Heesters - 104 Germany's favorite oldest living cabaret entertainer Johannes Heesters is suing an author who alleges he sang for the SS at Dachau concentration camp. from "The Local"

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Listen to this and listen good, Americans. There's a lesson to be learned here. Europeans are still chewing on Nazi Germany. How long will the world chew on Fascist USA once it's brought to its knees?

The Dutch actor and singer, who will turn 105 in December, says the allegations made by writer Volker Kühn that he was invited to the death camp by the SS and sang for them there, are wrong and scurrilous.

Heesters has never denied having visited the camp in 1941 as a member of the Munich Gärtnerplatz Theatre Ensemble, but says they were effectively ordered to go – and says he never sang.

Berlin’s District Court will hear oral presentations from both sides on November 25, confirmed Gunter Fette, Heesters’ lawyer.

He said Heesters would contest the idea that the ensemble had been ‘invited’ to the concentration camp. “That is malicious,” he said. “That was obviously not the kind of invitation where you could decide to go or not.”

Heesters had never denied the visit, and Fette said it had been documented in the 2006 Berliner Akademie der Künste exhibition.

The SS had forced the group to go to the camp, but there had been no special performance.

“I am ashamed, and I have not stopped until today to be ashamed, that the Nazis were able to lure us there,” Heesters has often said.

“Had I not done it I would probably have run into great difficulties. And I can only repeat myself – I did not sing in Dachau.”

Kühn has based his publication on eye witness statements of a Heesters performance for the SS, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Heesters will be calling on the court to make Kühn withdraw his allegations and promise not to make them again.
DPA/The Local (news@thelocal.de)

One hundred years? Or more?

Heesters and all the other actors, singers, artists didn't have it easy. One wrong word, one ill placed facial expression and you could be gone, forever banned from doing what you do best. From what I've been told, it wasn't easy living, not even as a favored actor. See Heinz Rühmann for a perfect example of how one was able to survive by playing along while not singing to the tune of the party.

Star system
There always had been film stars in Germany, but a star system comparable to the star system in Hollywood did not yet exist. In order to improve the image of Nazi Germany, Goebbels made great efforts to form a star system. After Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo had gone to Hollywood and could not be persuaded to serve the National Socialist film industry as figureheads, new film stars were promoted.

The best-known example is the Swedish actress Zarah Leander who was hired in 1937 by the Ufa and became the most prominent and highest-paid German film star in only a few years. The publicity campaign for Leander was run by the press office of the Ufa, which concealed her past as a film actress already well-known in Sweden and put their money right away on her charisma as a singer with an exceptionally deep voice. The Ufa press office provided the newspapers with detailed instructions on how the new star would have to be presented, and even the actress herself had to follow detailed instructions whenever she appeared in public. This kind of star publicity had not existed in Germany before.

High politicians such as Hitler, Goebbels, and Hermann Göring appeared in public flanked by popular German film actors. The female stars in particular were supposed to lend some glamour to the dry and male-dominated NSDAP events. Hitler's preferred dinner partners were the actresses Olga Tschechowa and Lil Dagover, and from 1935, Hermann Göring was married to the popular actress Emmy Sonnemann. The relationships of Goebbels to several female film stars are also notorious.

Personal proximity to the political leaders became a determining factor for the career success of film actors (The early death of Renate Müller apparently resulted from her lack of co-operation with the requirements of the régime). An informal system of listings decided how frequently an actor would be cast. The five categories extended from "to cast at all costs even without a vacancy" (for instance Zarah Leander, Lil Dagover, Heinz Rühmann) to "casting under no circumstances welcome".

How crucial the film stars were for the image of the National Socialist government is also evident from the tax benefits that Hitler decreed in 1938 for prominent film actors and directors. From that time on, they could deduct 40% of their income as professional expenses.

But World War II finally humiliated the German film stars. They appeared on small front stages as troop entertainers or collected money for the German Winter Relief Organization (Winterhilfswerk). Although most of the male stars were exempted from military service, some – such as the popular Heinz Rühmann – participated in the war as soldiers, often accompanied by newsreel film crews.
wikipedia

I hope Heesters can get through this without suffering serious damage. He'll be 105 in December. As the years go by, each year we sit there and wonder how he made it, and if we'll see another year of Heesters....and we all love him to pieces.

The author lives in a small village in central Europe and has been active in the local workers movement for nearly 3 decades.

Globalism knows no borders, why should we ?

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