Article about: Moreover, since young people are as obsessed with Totenkoepfe as were older generations, the symbols of the cult of death in central European society and art have a place here, too. The pres
Moreover, since young people are as obsessed with Totenkoepfe as were older generations, the symbols of the cult of death in central European society and art have a place here, too. The present vogue for pirates, death's heads et cetera is part of a large cultural phenomenon which especially in central Europe is firmly placed in culture and art.
For instance, the work of Rethel in the middle 19th century was entirely to custom in the depiction of the embodiment of death as a political force, in this case, the revolution of 1848. The Totentanz was a central motif of European art, and here the revolution takes the form of death and lures those against the Hohenzollern and Habsburg crowns to their doom with the false doctrines of constitutions, liberty, and workers' and bourgeois rights in the face of the crown.
The death's head as a military symbol has a long tradition, too, in various central European histories.
Lumsden collects all kinds of Germany military death's head symbols, and has shown them on other websites, actually.
He recently announced that he won't answer emails on the other sites, but you might write to him all the same.
The eugenics and social control aspect of the thing is also prominent, granted that Himmler had a background in eugenics via an aborted university education. The ideology was entirely modern in its desire to improve human kind with applied "science" such as it was, in which the role of the improvement of "race" through conflict and social biology was central. Eugenics was surely not limited to Germany, but had devoted adherents through the North Atlantic world in the era of social Darwinism, imperialism and total warfare.
The above were made more so by their contrast to the "Other," in this case Jews, who were a threat because of their modernizing influence, their appearance, and the manner in which old hatreds could be effectively brought up to date with a new set of late 19th century and 20th century arguments in which "science" and "history" played a prominent role.
The "other" is short, fat, ugly, hairy, mean, nasty et cetera, whereas the SS man is tall, thin, nice, brave, et cetera.
Much of this thinking happily endures today without SS runes on it, of course. That is, a lot of fascist ideas are mainstream in our consumer culture.
But Nazis and the SS invented none of this, rather, the SS merely perfected it and weaponized it in an especially aggressive manner.
This volume is the 1st Nazi description of their uniforms, and it remains an excellent work. It is reprinted in Germany today and is not especially expensive.
There is also a new book out on the use of photography and the face as a means of racial "science." It is very good, and there is also a book Hitler's face, too, which you can use, also.
The post modernists are big into "embodiment studies," i.e. the politics of human bodies, which, in the case of uniforms is an important facet of your topic.
I am not a post modernist, to be sure, but there is still some very interesting scholarship that applies to uniforms and such.
And the emphasis on appearance and violence is a pretty significant one, since, in real life, all of this had a pretty horrific effect on real human beings, despite how appealing the propaganda pictures might seem today as they did more so then.
Another aspect of the uniforms was the anal retentive and overly bureaucratic system of procurement, which also had the aim of ejecting Jews from the textile and garment trade. The latter had been a traditional role in the world of the estates. The effort expended in marking and controlling items of regalia boggles the imagination, but such was there also for quality control, price control, but finally also for racial economic policy.
This system has given some of us, with nothing better to do, decades of un equaled enjoyment with details no one can possibly care about in real life.
For whatever reason, and partially because of the peculiar personality of Heini H. and his desire for an elite, the markings on SS regalia are especially intense. This factor also derived from the funding basis of same, too, which is another arcane and complicated aspect of the SS.,
The Hugo Boss firm was caught in the blow back of being part of this system, but they are or were hardly alone, since many firms profited from Nazi economic policy and war, for instance Daimler Benz, and Volskwagen, to say nothing of banks, construction firms and enterprises too numerous to list. The SS had is own capitalist system, of which the uniform and other regalia became a central part.
The RZM handbook here is the property of Robert H. I wish I owned one, too. Envy is a terrible thing, but we are glad that he has one.
I have now to go back to the project I am supposed to deliver next week beyond the looking glass, which requires flying over Iceland and much jet lag. I shall wave as I pass by. Send me your paper when you finish it. Feel free to use the illustrations we attach here, though I guess you have to cite them properly, for which rules exist, I guess.
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