by Hans
Klöcker
Source:
SS Leitheft, Year 9, Issue 1
Each SS Leitheft
has a specific theme. We thus follow a clear intent.
It
is not our desire to simply make each issue interesting. Whoever seeks
distraction and diversion, will seek in vain in these SS Leithefts. The path of least resistance, namely to demand
applause with pleasing, easily digested articles, would be much easier and more
comfortable for us. But for that there are other books and magazines.
In
the SS Leithefts we do not want to
distract and divert the reader, rather gather his best energies and direct him
toward himself, that means toward his genuine core. Only so can we help the
comrades to fulfil themselves and hence their task in the clan community of the
SS and in the folk. When then in letters the sentence, in similar form, is
repeated again and again: “For me the SS-Leithefts are a strengthening before
each new action”, or if a young artist writes us: “...Through this article I
felt for the first time what I must still find within myself in order to become
an artist”, then such examples indicate where we want to go.
The
present issue has the theme “hardness”. The soldier knows that hardness is
necessary for holding out in combat and for the endurance of discomforts. He
also realizes that, for every work, hardness leads to the goal.
But
that, for the understanding of art, one must also pass through the gate of
hardness, this will not so readily dawn on him.
Some
people consider everything that appeals to them at first sight to be art. They
believe they have thus so effortlessly penetrated into the sacred shrine, and
they often refer to the words of the great master: “Serious is life and happy
is art”. They do not know how often precisely happy art is achieved with
difficulty such as, for example, Mozart gives us.
Others
say: “I understand nothing about it”, when the talk is about art. Before they
learn what art could mean in their life, too, they lock off its energies from
themselves. Instead, they quickly make themselves satisfied with substitutes,
with the easily digestible fare, with sickly and superficial monstrosities. For
them, an “oh so charming’’ photograph is preferable as a picture than a work of
art whose depth does not reveal itself to them at a fleeting glance. They
consume dozens of three cent cigars while they supposedly have no time to get
acquainted with a good book. But that cannot be our standpoint.
Whoever
has experienced the difficult war in the east, knows as well, that there are
times of reflection, when one looks precisely to art for clarity and for the
energies that one - even if still hidden - suspects in it.
And
then many say: “How can our position toward struggle and our position toward
art be brought into connection with each other? Struggle is work, effort, pain
and sacrifice. But from art we expect relaxation and entertainment.”
You
say “relaxation and entertainment”? Why are you, who could demand the highest,
so modest? Why do you demand so little from art? Why do you not demand creative
strength, eternal life and divine joy? Do you not know that art can give all
that? But perhaps you do not know what art really means. Yes, for all too long
you have lost your place in life. Art, like religion, was considered a nice
ingredient in life, for evenings and Sunday. It was a colourful bird - a luxury
that one could do without in an emergency.
But
what is genuine art in reality? It is the purest embodiment of the meaning of
the world. Through the gift of art, God has bestowed upon man the power to
portray his law purely.
An
example: Through observance of the laws of race we can, through correct mate
selection, more and more bestow upon our race the image that corresponds to the
will of God. Through sports we can bring the individual body closer to the form
and task predetermined for it. In art, however, genius can shape the human body
most purely as it should grow according to valid law.
Another
example: The landscapes of the earth show in their primeval condition only the
rough image in which the creator wants to become visible. Landscapes formed by
pure races come closer to this image. To shape the image of a landscape,
however, in all its splendour, this gift is bestowed by God upon the artist,
that means only that artist - another does not deserve this name anyway - who
himself forces the creator to reveal himself to him.
That
is what is decisive: Only through this iron hardness is the artist able to
force God into his breast, so that he sees his image in the human bodies to be
portrayed or in the landscape to be portrayed. And the artist needs hardness
again in order to then capture this image in stone or on canvass.
The
measure of hardness that the creative person summons up in order to accomplish
his high task cannot be measured in every day magnitudes. Just read once the
life descriptions of a Rembrandt, an Andreas Schlütter, a Tilman
Riemenschneider, a Schiller, Mozart, Beethoven. How much hardness against
themselves did they have to summon up, so that everything fell away that stood
in the way hampering the work - external and internal obstacles -, so that only
the creative core remained, which was now open to receive and carry out the
divine task. There is only one comparison: that is the hardness of the soldier,
who knowingly risks his life.
As
in the magnitude of the hardness, so too in the success of the most passionate
effort, are soldier and artist related.
Have
not many of you during the greatest danger, after all weaknesses had been
overcome, become acquainted with that moment in which all the energies are
released that had been previously unknown to you?
It
is as if a shell, in which one had been previously enclosed, had split. One
jumps out and feels like a god or a child. There is no longer any hesitation
and reflection, no doubt and considerations. One acts free and correct, and one
can do everything that must be possible at the moment. That is the feeling that
Schiller means when he wrote: “Who can look death in the face, the soldier
alone is the free man.”
A
young poet of our time must have especially clearly felt this relatedness of
the creative moment in the soldier and artist. He recently wrote us from the
middle of the most intense fighting on the eastern front: “1 cannot express
what jubilation and pride is within me. I could tell a saga from which an
entire folk for generations could inspire itself. I trust that I can one day
pull out what I have buried in my heart during this hour of war. A gold miner
do I want to become in my own heart and pass along everything and enrich all.”
Certainly,
with hardness alone neither the soldier nor the artist can force such knowledge.
Other virtues and gifts are also required. Hardness alone, however, must not be
lacking.
And
that is what I mean in this essay. Precisely from this knowledge of the common
element in artist and soldier must you, comrades, be able to achieve a new,
fortunate relationship to genuine art, to a relationship that alone is worthy
of you. The path to there is not easy. But who else should manage this path if
not first you, you who have dealt with the greatest superiority of the
Bolsheviks and the toughest bunkers! This path toward art is certainly a
different one than the one many of you even today consider possible. It does
not, however, stand in opposition to your experience that you had as soldiers
and fighters, on the contrary, it is most closely tied to it.
Despite
everything, you have it easier than the artists them-selves. They pave the path
for you, they seek the steep trail and orient you. But you must walk it
yourselves. That costs sweat and endurance.
On
the highest peak of this path waves to you divine reward. It is certain for
you, for it lies within you yourselves. One or the other has already gotten
there “by coincidence”. When there was nothing else left, then he read the
“heavy material” out of sheer desperation, first reluctantly, until he finally
realized that - although one cannot devour classical poems or a novel by
Kolbenheyer pages at a time - a single genuine poem can convey more energy and
life joy than a whole stack of recreational literature. Whoever has realized
that in a clear moment, should also consciously summon up enough hardness to
make the highest values accessible to himself.
Then
he will, like in the most dangerous moments of combat, in the most difficult
hours of his struggle for the understanding of higher art as well, one day
suddenly experience the moment, in which this effort becomes fertile and in
which he succeeds in lifting treasures which he had not known until then and
which he had unsuspectingly passed by.
Professor Wilhelm Petersen at the Front as Picture
Reporter and Artist
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