Remembering Kristallnacht

The night of 9th/10th November 1938 was Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany. The Kristall/crystal part of the name refers to the broken glass from the smashed windows of Jewish shops, businesses and synagogues. Jewish homes, schools and hospitals were ransacked, damaged and destroyed. Over 250 synagogues and 7,000 businesses were attacked. 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

The event was widely reported, pretty much as it was happening, largely by foreign journalists working in Germany. With what impact is a moot point.

Kristallnacht was made possible by the support, funding and protection afforded the National Socialists by corporate Germany. Five years earlier (on 20th February 1933 at the palace of the President of the Assembly on the banks of the Spree in Berlin) 24 leading industrialists had attended a meeting with Hitler and Göring. In the wake of it they coughed up money and other support. In doing so they cleared the way for the rise of the Nazis and ultimately Kristallnacht and the Holocaust. This key event is brilliantly spotlighted in Eric Vuillard’s Prix Goncourt-winning novella (récit) The Order of the Day/L’Ordre du Jour.

The brands at that meeting included:

• Allianz – the insurance and financial services multinational which sponsors the stadium of our local rugby team, Saracens
• Opel – their cars are now sold in the UK under the Vauxhall brand – they’re even sold in Israel, under their own name
• Bayer – the multinational pharma company with the motto “We exist to help people thrive” – wrong people in 1933
• BASF – whose tapes I used to use to make mixtapes as a teenager
• Agfa – whose film I used to use as a budding teen photographer
• Siemens – the multinational manufacturer with the motto “Ingenuity for life”
• IG Farben – broken up after the war on account of having supplied the gas for the gas chambers among other evils – the main successor companies are Agfa, BASF, Bayer and Sanofi (motto: “Empowering Life”)
• Telefunken – a tellies and hifis name from my youth

So the brands (and their logos) long outlived the Jewish businesses with the broken shop-windows, the people who ran them and the congregations that filled those synagogues.

A great irony is that another sledgehammer wall smashing event took place in Germany on 9th November – the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

The evolution of an eagle-based logo

The Eagle has Landed

Nazis loved eagles too – this eagle is looking the other way

Blitzkrieg means lightning war

Nazis loved lightning too

A cross-based logo (1904)

The cross has persisted

A cross-based logo – Hackenkreuz (= hook cross)

IG Farben (which created bad chemistry) morphed into BASF among others

IG Farben dissolved after the war

An IG Farben Luftschutz helmet – oddly familiar

Another recipient of IG Farben

Life?

Life? Another recipient of IG Farben

Lightning strikes thrice

 

Typographical London

On my flannage around London yesterday I decided to play a little photographic game – inspired by the Z (as in Ritz). These were gathered between Moorgate and Piccadilly, via St Paul’s and Temple. Can you recognise where any of these come from?

Chairwoman update

Just back from the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York where I had my first official Sell Out as far as I can recall.

I was doing a Masterclass on factual/unscripted short form video. In the Green Room after I met Dr Melanie Williams of UEA where she is Head of Film, Television and Media Studies. She specialises in post-war cinema and has written a monograph on David Lean (very appropriate in that I’m writing this in BAFTA which Lean founded and which Aesthetica feeds into via the Short Film category in the Film Awards). As we chatted the subject of Christine Keeler’s 60s movie came up – see Chairman of the Board below. Well it turns out one of her colleagues at the University of East Anglia has a particular interest in ‘The Keeler Affair’ movie (1963) and in fact (contrary to what I had read) it was made but was never granted a BBFC certificate in the UK, so it only played abroad. Lewis Morley, the photographer who photographed Keeler in That Chair, refers slightly erroneously to: “an intended film which never saw the light of day”.

It also seems to have another title, ‘The Christine Keeler Story‘, and it turns out that Keeler doesn’t exclusively play herself despite posing for the publicity photos – Yvonne Buckingham plays her although Keeler is also listed as “Herself”. Same for Mandy-Rice Davies who both plays herself and is played by Alicia Brandet.  I’ve yet to find out how Buckingham & Keeler and Brandet & Rice Davies squared that circle though there are some clues in the clip I found below.

Call Girl – untitled photograph by Tom Blau (1963)

In the synopsis Keeler is referred to as a “teenage prostitute” which seems both harsh and not entirely accurate. I like the term “good-time girl” which is often used to hedge bets in this type of context.

And here’s the bit I found. Quite intriguing. A disco ball in the courtroom… like it.

***

I went from BAFTA in Piccadilly round the corner to the May Fair Hotel for a BAFTA Film Awards screening of ‘American Pastoral’ with leading man and director Ewan McGregor in attendance. It is a striking and original film, directed with amazing aplomb for a first movie (this is McGregor’s directorial debut). It is a thoughtful interpretation of Philip Roth’s novel, not spoonfeeding the audience and concluding with an uncompromisingly enigmatic end. McGregor spoke with great articulacy and clarity about his method as an actor-director. What came across strongly is that this is an actors’ film – the rehearsal and shooting process, as well as the framing and camera movement, were all focused on enabling the actors to do their thing in an imaginative and fresh way.

So far the best of the BAFTA fare. Also very striking is the disturbing poster – the best I’ve seen in a long while – which takes the all-American idealism of Wyeth and Hopper (the first half of the film derives its colour palette from Hopper), takes the all-American idealism of Wyeth and Hopper – and shakes it the fuck up, torching the Dream.

Andrew Wyeth – Christina’s World (1948)

Edward Hopper – House with Dead Trees (1932)

Grant Wood – American Gothic (1930)

Spin off (Day 47)

Something of a tangential day. Was researching an alternative case study for the Music chapter when I came across a music spin-off which gave me the idea for a simple business proposition/side-line. I discussed it with the friend and former colleague who was having the 70s music discussion with me and then brought a second former colleague from the same era into the Circle of Trust and we gathered on the morning of Day 47 to decide whether we all thought there was something in it and what creative approach to take. Our kick-off venue was the British Library, which is a building I’ve really come to respect for the way it respects the ornateness of the surrounding buildings, especially St Pancras, and for giving a home to a lively studious community.

I was reminded as they set up an exhibition about Georgian Britain (opening today) about coming here last year to see Jack Kerouac’s scroll manuscript of On The Road, a landmark on the way down the track to this book.

I had a pleasant couple of afternoon hours carrying on with the Hettie Jones research outdoors in the large courtyard of the Library site. It’s resonant for me because I came across the play Dutchman, by her husband LeRoi Jones, during a teen-age burst of play-reading and the whole milieu on the memoir reminds me of those enthusiasms of that time in my life. As the milky sunlight turned greyer and the temperature dropped, headed inside beside the wonderful tower of books, a great glass cabinet cutting through all the floors of the building, filled with rare volumes. Found a seat among the stooodents next to a girl with a fro worthy of the East Village and a winning smile. Read some more in the bookish shadow of the tower.

I love the way a no-nonsense commercial idea has spun out of this project with bookish roots, focused on the pre-digital age. The idea is very digital in that common paradoxical way of being centred on a beautifully designed and made concrete object in the physical world. One of the highlights of the day was seeing our designer’s mind take off the minute he started generating ideas, questioning shape, texture, nothing assumed, everything possible…