"If all monuments to controversial figures disappear from public space, we will be a country without history and identity. Attempts to clean up the cultural legacy of the past have rarely ended well."
-- Ronald G. Ash, Welt Essay, 2 Feb 2022
Ash wrote a pretty interesting piece on Welt about the cancel-culture. In the end, if you wanted to sum it up....once you start erasing bits and pieces of history, then what remains....doesn't really fit well for the telling of your culture or society's story.
That's one of the interesting things about traveling around Germany since 1978, and seeing tens of thousands of historical 'pieces' of the German story. Most all urbanized areas in Germany today....has a statue or memorial to tell the WW I or WW II story.
I've probably been to well over forty German museums that dealt with technology, engineering, scientific developments, agricultural advancements, and the science of travel. They all tell a story. If you choose to erase the whole 1932 to 1945 part of the story....in just a generation, people would be standing there and asking how did 'A' or 'B' ever occur.....with a mystery hole in society.
If this were just an effort to cut down forty-odd Nazi statues which still stood.....no one would say a word, and it'd all be done in just a week. But as you gaze around.....there are no statues of Hitler, Goring, Keitel, or von Eichhorn. Kaiser statues? There's probably over 300 around Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm I or Kaiser Wilhelm II. Looking for a statue of the 99-day Kaiser (Frederick III)? I doubt if you find more than one or two in the country, and virtually no can readily identify the guy today.
I tend to find this whole erasure game....something that you'd connect to a fifth-grade kid who picks and chooses his past and prefers to just forget as much as possible (like he was trying to save 'space' in his brain).
Maybe if we had 20,000 years of history....it'd make sense to lessen the burden for some folks. But oddly enough, we are left with things like the Egyptian Pyramids.....which convey a big chunk of something happening.....but no written history to stack up against it.
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