Artist and Soldier

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