Beauty Under the Sign of the SS Runes

Source: SS Leitheft No. 2a, 1941

 

Allach, tasks and purpose

 

No people lives longer than the documents of its culture!

 

The Führer’s words are a point of reference for all cultural matters concerning the German people and they govern the spirit of the Allach Porcelain Factory in Munich.

 

Many people will ask why the SS produces porcelain. The explanation is simple. The Reichsführer had already planned for a long time to intensify the SS spirit of cultural work, which was not really possible until after he took power. In 1935, he therefore founded the Allach Porcelain Factory in Munich, the main instrument of his will in this field.

 

For the Reichsführer, it was not a question of founding a new porcelain factory with the aim of producing economic value – i.e. to make money. From the outset, Allach’s primary task was to use the most attractive material available, porcelain, to create artistic works of art and objects for everyday use that would reflect the spirit of the times and bear witness to the artistic feeling and creative will of our time for generations to come.

 

Each era produces its own forms of expression and adapts them to its cultural style. The same applies to our own. With the Führer’s large-scale constructions, we are witnessing the birth of a new style – our style – whose decorative art also includes the development of new ceramic forms.

 

In this spirit, the Reichsführer SS charged Allach with setting an example in artistic creation, in the quality of the material, in execution and workmanship, and in pricing.

 

A retrospective can show what the spirit of porcelain production was: In the past, almost all porcelain factories were founded by princes (Berlin by Frederick the Great, Meißen by Augustus the Strong, Sevres by the Marquise de Pompadour, to name but a few). With a few exceptions, their mission was to produce noble porcelain of great artistic value for the glory of their founders, disregarding any economic benefits. Great artists were hired and were able to carry out their projects in peace and seclusion, free from all material worries. The result was wonderful porcelain that reflected the spirit of the age, the Rococo and the Empire – artistic works that have always retained their value and deserve the greatest admiration because they express the artistic feeling of their creators.

 

Single copies and mass-produced items

 

But times change. For almost all porcelain factories (note the significant name “manufacture” [manu= with the hand], whose work still today requires the artistic hand of man), financial and economic issues became increasingly important. Soon profit was the decisive factor. Patrons of the arts and princely commission agents gave way to merchants. All too often, art was considered to be of little value. In this period of artistic decline, a few renowned manufactures managed to remain true to their spirit.

 

 

Aryanity as a representative of a certain type of values becomes the absolute reference in art. Porcelain from the SS factory in Allach.

 

 

Different porcelains from Allach: At the top is a vase with protohistoric motifs. Below that is a candlestick that was given to every child born to SS families.

 

Amazon.

 

First, there is sculpture. It often gave rise to domestic horrors due to a lack of artistic spirit or sloppy workmanship. Allach therefore saw his first task as helping to bring the true national artistic sense to life. To be honest, this was not easy and not all projects could yet be realised. First of all, artists had to be found and hired who would create artistic works with their inspirational genius and creative talent.

 

But the Reichsführer said: Art must be present in every house, but above all in the house of my SSI Every table must be furnished with elegant dishes, not only in the living quarters but also – and primarily – in the canteens, so that the German worker and the combatant can draw new strength from the harmony of their surroundings in their hours of rest. There is no doubt that the simplest dish in a beautiful dish tastes better than the most expensive roast in a canteen! Allach wants to serve the Reichsführer’s plan as well as possible.

 

In the few years since the Allach factory was founded, it has acquired a privileged position in the field of porcelain production. Figures of heroic young men from the Wehrmacht or party associations, astonishingly authentic peasant folk figures and, above all, noble animal sculptures which show the animal in all its beauty, were produced with our present-day sensitivity. These are works that must be seen as evidence of a naturally strong artistic feeling and a creative will aware of its duty.

 

Ceramics, jugs, vases, candlesticks contain a beauty that benefits every German household. Thus, the Reichsführer SS’s aim that every utilitarian object – even the simplest water jug – should be of impeccable beauty was magnificently achieved. The great cultural treasures discovered in numerous excavations provided inspiration for design and decoration translated into the style of our time. A bridge was thus built, linking the natural creations of our ancestors with the artistic feeling of today.

 

Utilitarian objects were created – and will be created – which already sweep away all criticism by their beauty and utility. In the course of time, all the ugly and unsuitable forms will have to be eliminated and replaced by beautiful and utilitarian tableware.

 

Aware of the fact that the environment has an enormous influence on human well-being and attitude, the Reichsführer ordered his porcelain factory in Allach to act in this spirit. The home of every SS man, or simply of every German, should contain only artistic objects and tableware of the best taste. In this way, Allach offers the man working in his daily environment the beauty that regenerates him and makes him worthy of the great tasks given to him by our heroic age. 

W.

Artist and Soldier

Source: SS Leitheft No. 1, 1943

 

by Hans Klöcker

 

Each SS booklet is governed by a specific guiding idea. In this we have a clear intention.

 

Our aim is not only to make the notebooks interesting. Those who seek only entertainment will not find it in the SS Journals. The easy way out, i.e. to win the approval of everyone by writing articles that are easy to digest, would also be much easier and more enjoyable. But there are other books and notebooks for this purpose.

 

In the SS Notebooks we do not want to disperse and distract the reader, but rather to concentrate his best forces and make him reflect on himself, i.e. on his true substance. Only in this way can we help the comrades to realise themselves and to fulfil their mission within the clan community of the SS and the people. When we see the same sentence appearing again and again in letters in similar formulas: “For me the SS notebooks are a comfort before every new battle”, or when a young artist writes to us: “... This article made me feel for the first time what I still have to find within myself to become an artist”, such examples clearly indicate the path we are following.

 

This booklet is governed by the guiding principle of ‘Toughness’. The soldier knows how much toughness is needed to hold on in battle and to endure setbacks. And he also feels that it is toughness that makes any job possible.

 

But it does not occur to him that in order to understand art, one must also cross the threshold of harshness.

 

Some take as art everything that pleases them at first sight. They think that they have already entered the sanctuary and often refer to the words of the great master: “Serious is life and joyful is art”. They do not know that joyful art was often the result of a difficult struggle, such as that which Mozart gave us.

 

Others say, “I don’t understand it,” when it comes to art. Before they can learn the enrichment that art could bring to their lives, they close the door to its strengths. Instead, they settle for ersatz, more easily digestible food, insipid and superficial works of no value. They prefer a photograph to a work of art whose depth is not apparent at first glance. They swallow three-penny books by the dozen, while they supposedly have no time to read a valuable book. This cannot be our position.

 

He who took part in the harsh war in the East also knows that there are times of recollection when, precisely, one seeks simplicity in art and draws hidden forces from it.

 

Yet many say: “How can we compare our sense of combat and our artistic sense! Combat is work, fatigue, pain and sacrifice. But from art, we expect relaxation and distraction.

 

You say “relaxation and distraction”? Why are you so modest, you who can demand the greatest from it? Why do you ask so little of art? Why do you not demand from it creative force, eternal life and divine joy? Don’t you know that art can give all this? But perhaps you do not know the true meaning of art. For too long it has lost its rightful place in life. It was, like religion, only a nice accessory for a party night and Sunday. It was a colourful bird, a luxury that could be dispensed with in times of need.

 

But what is true art? It is the purest embodiment of the apprehension of the world. By the gift of art, God has granted men the ability to represent His law.

 

An example: Through the observance of the racial laws we can, by the right choice of marriage, bring our race closer to the image that corresponds to the divine will. In sport we can work the body into the proper form for its predestined purpose. In art, however, genius can fashion an ideal human body in accordance with the natural law.

 

Another example: Originally, landscapes only roughly reflect the imprint of the Creator. Those modelled by pure breeds come close. However, to reflect the image of this landscape in all its splendour, it is to the artist that God has granted this gift, that is to say, to this artist (another does not deserve the name) who, himself, obliges the Creator to manifest himself to him.

 

The decisive fact is that the artist only manages to feel God by extreme work on himself. He restores His image in the human body or in the landscape he represents. Capturing this image in stone or on canvas is still a difficult task.

 

It is not possible to judge in the usual way how difficult it is for a creator to accomplish his great mission. Let us read the biographies of a Rembrandt, an Andreas Schlüter, a Tilman Riemenschneider, a Schiller, Mozart, Beethoven. They had to fight against themselves in order to get rid of all obstacles, all external or internal hindrances, in order to free the work, so that only the creative soul remained free to perceive and carry out the divine mission. There is only one comparison that can be made, and that is the toughness of the soldier who consciously risks his life.

 

In this field, soldier and artist are related in the success achieved through hard work.

 

In extreme danger, when all weaknesses are overcome, haven’t many of you felt that moment when, suddenly, previously unknown forces are released? It is as if an envelope in which you have always been enclosed is bursting open. You burst out of it and feel like a god or a child. There is no longer any hesitation, reflection, doubt or consideration. One acts freely and justly, and can do whatever, in the moment, must be done. This is the feeling that Schiller spoke of when he wrote: “He who can look death in the face, the soldier alone is the free man”.

 

A young poet of our time must have felt particularly clearly this creative kinship between the soldier and the artist. He wrote to us recently, in the midst of the fiercest fighting on the Eastern Front: "I cannot say what joy and pride I feel. I would like to tell a legend where a whole people would be born, would live for generations. I know that one day I will be able to express what my heart holds in this warlike hour. I want to become a gold digger in my own heart, to pass on all that I live and enrich all men.

 

Of course, toughness alone cannot bring knowledge to either the soldier or the artist. Other virtues and gifts are needed. Toughness is, however, a significant factor.

 

And this is the subject of my article. It is precisely this knowledge of the common character existing between artists and soldiers that must enable you, comrades, to enter into a new relationship with true art, which alone is worthy of you. The path is not easy. But who could achieve it if not you who have overcome the hardest fighting and the superiority of the Bolshevists? Understanding art is of course not what many of you still imagine. But it is not in conflict with the experience you had as soldiers and fighters. On the contrary, it is closely related.

 

In spite of everything, you got there more easily than the artists themselves. They precede you on the path; they look for the steep slope and point it out to you. But they themselves must follow it. It costs sweat and perseverance.

 

In return, the divine reward beckons you from the highest peak.

 

You will certainly find it because it is within you. Some people have already succeeded “by chance”. Having exhausted everything, they have had to resort to reading ‘serious stuff out of desperation, first reluctantly, then enthusiastically. In the end, they realised that you can’t swallow classical poetry like a Kolbenheyer novel, but that a real work of poetry can give you more strength and joie de vivre than a bunch of superficial literature. He who has been aware of this in a moment of clarity must also find the strength to emphasise the higher principles.

 

He will one day reap the fruitful fruits after having lived through the difficult moments when he was trying to understand great art, which are comparable to the most dangerous moments of combat. He will find treasures which he did not suspect until then and in front of which he passed blindly.

85 Years Since the German and European Crusade Against the Bolshevism!

The Awakening of Our Race

 

 

Source: SS Leitheft, No. 9, 1944

 

written by a Dutchman

 

The mission entrusted by history to the Germanic peoples is now inflexible. The Western world of ideas, in which we have lived for so long, has collapsed. New forces are at work. Europe is now being challenged by powers that want to reduce it to a colony. This Europe can only assert its autonomy, its space and its high culture if it fights together. It was from this continental thinking, from this awareness of the common character of the Germanic communities, that the first political alliances were born. The political consequences followed the awakening of the race. All the Germanic countries brought together a selection of their youth in the SS Order.

 

That Germany is ahead of us in fulfilling her mission of restoring political vigour to the Nordic race and spirit is due to the fact that we Germanic peoples have too long slumbered in the shadow of England.

 

Norway has its fleet, the Netherlands has its colonies, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, liberated with the help of Germany and England, are swinging between the two. Now, for all of us, the matter is serious. It is often said too easily that we are living through one of the greatest revolutions in the history of the world, a time at the end of many centuries. Generally speaking, people are not at all aware of the dimension of this era, which is not simply a change of governmental regime. The upheaval spans a century and what we are experiencing today is the succession of the French Revolution by the National Socialist Revolution. It is the beginning of an era in which the ideals of a so-called democracy dominated by international big business no longer prevail, but a turning point in history in which the renewal of our blood, the revolt of our race, influences our lives. Only in this way can we understand the superhuman performance of the German blood soldiers over the last four or five years. The men and women would not have endured the frightful bombardment of the cities with such greatness of spirit if they did not know that their very existence was at stake. All these millions of human beings act, fight, and die in a new religious upsurge. From their blood is born a new faith that enriches the natural and healthy forces of life. This law of blood is at the same time the law of the same race. He who betrays his blood betrays himself. All mixing leads to destruction. If a race is to survive, men must fight for the preservation of the species and women must be prepared to ensure the survival of the species for generations through their children. We fight as National Socialists and SS men for a life in keeping with our species, against all foreign psychic intrusion and against race mixing. We seek to return to the sources of our life and our species. The law that the bloods of related peoples attract each other demands a fight against all the powers that want to bastardize and fragment us. These are the same powers for whom, in their plan for world domination, peoples and races are merely targets to be exploited. They are also the ones who want to prevent people of the same blood from coming together. It is the Bolshevik-Plutocratic power with its new agents throughout the world, international big capital, the power of Judaism, international Freemasonry and as a third power, the politicised Christian Church with its thirst for political power. At the other end of the spectrum is the slogan for the reunification of the Germanic world: the fight for the Great German Empire.

 

We are fighting today, often misunderstood by our own people and branded as traitors to our homeland. It seems as if these people have taken over the role of the Jews and the Freemasons in the 1930s and are acting in their place. Peoples and races do not die out in wars if they remain true to their blood, but through internal decomposition, in the course of a long peace.

 

Wars are always nothing more than trials that history imposes on people. In Adolf Hitler we honour the leader of all Germans, and when we Germanic volunteers speak of Germania, it is because we believe that in the future our own survival is guaranteed only in the interests of the Germanic world as a whole.

 

The small Germanic countries on the periphery of the Great German Empire wanted to work towards a general European goal. Blood calls for blood. We must contribute our strength and will to a great German Empire because, more than Germany, we have fallen into disunity and foreign domination. Even if there had been no German Empire in history, there would still be time to build one. Not only would we then be following a law of nature, but our survival and freedom threatened by the Soviet Union, the United States and the British would be assured.

 

We must join this future community of all Germanic peoples with equal rights, but one can only speak of equal rights if one has fulfilled equal duties. This is a National Socialist principle for the common life of the peoples. Equality of rights presupposes equality of duties and benefits. We are convinced that in ten, twenty or thirty years’ time this great Germanic community will become a reality and that in the government of this great Germania there will sit men from the various Germanic regions who today fight in the SS. Just as today men from the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Sweden fight together, so they will work in the new community of peoples, supported by the loyalty of their fellow citizens, for the whole nation. The small disagreements that have arisen from time to time cannot destroy this great picture, this hopeful opening to the future. Adolf Hitler is its guide and guarantor.

 

Let’s open an important parenthesis about the German Empire. My father served in the Dutch army but never had to risk his life, nor did my grandfather or great-grandfather. And then, suddenly, I myself am a soldier in the front line and this peaceful, middle-class clan life is interrupted for the first time by my going to the front. This act is an important contribution to the formation of the future German Empire. Moreover, for the first time in our clan, my son will have a father who was a soldier at the front. In this way we are entering the heroic tradition as it lives in Germany.

 

This new emerging tradition also includes a proud generation of soldiers’ wives. Thus we are assured of the future, for National Socialism, in its warlike expression, can only be based on front-line soldiers.

 

In one of his last speeches, the Führer said: “No bourgeois state will survive this war”. This was of great importance to many workers, but it must also be important to us. No bourgeois state will survive this war; this means that a totally revolutionary society will arise. The struggle will not end with our victory, and the men at the front in all the German-speaking countries must also set to work after the war to make National Socialism a reality. The SS must be the driving force behind the National Socialist Revolution. The SS is not the Party, but only the storm troop of National Socialist ideology.

 

It is, moreover, a community of the Order whose aim, after the battle, is to transmit the ideological heritage seamlessly from generation to generation.

 

As we can see, there is hardly anything that separates the Dutch from the German or the Norwegian. The greatness that we all share is the sublime heritage of the Nordic race and National Socialism as an ideology in keeping with our species. We consider the combination of these two things to be the most important, and we will overcome the small differences. In faith in our historic mission, we want to build the new Europe together with all Germanic people. We are not only soldiers, but also pioneers and as such the guarantors of the race and the future of Europe.

 

The reality of the heroic commitment of an elite of Germanic peoples on all the fronts of Europe is a striking proof of the value of Nordic blood in general.

To Arms for Europe!

 

Speech given in Paris on 5 March 1944 at the Palais de Chaillot by SS-Sturmbannführer Leon Degrelle.

 

The health of the people

 

Unity there is made, and it is the only unity that will triumph. Europe is made not only because it is in danger, but because it has a soul. We are not only united by something negative, like saving our skin. What matters on earth is not so much to live as to live well. It is not to have dragged on fifty years of inactivity, it is, for one year, for eight days to have led a proud and triumphant life.

 

Intellectuals can develop their theories. They have to. These are innocent games, often games of decadence. How many French people take pleasure in these subtleties! How many French people believe that they have made the revolution when they have written a fine article on the revolution! Europe is the old country of intelligence, and the great laws of reason are indispensable to European harmony. But all the same, our century means something more than the awakening of the forces of intelligence alone. There have been so many intelligent people who were sterile beings. By awakening all the instinctive and rumbling forces of the human being, by recalling that there is a beauty of the body and a harmony, that one does not lead people with dwarfs, gringos and deformed beings, by reminding us that there is no action without joy, nor joy without health, racism, awakening those great forces that come from the depths of the world, brings back to the leadership of Europe a healthy and indomitable youth, a youth that loves, a youth that has an appetite. So, when we look at the world, it is no longer to analyse it... but to take it!

 

Germany will have done a priceless service to a decadent Europe by bringing it health. When we looked at pre-war Europe, when we went to the menageries that were the parliamentary assemblies, when we saw all those grinning faces, all those old, stultified gentlemen, their bellies falling out as if they had had too many pregnancies, their tired faces, their stained eyes, we wondered: “Is this our people? The French people still knew how to be witty, which was basically a form of sneer and revolt, but they no longer had this great innocent joy of strength, whereas Germany had this reservoir of limitless strength. What surprised you, men and women of France, when you saw them arrive in 1940? It was that they were beautiful as gods, with harmonious and supple bodies, that they were clean. You have never seen a young warrior, you don’t see him yet in Russia, with a democratic beard. All of this is clean, all of this has allure, race, mouth.

 

With racism, with this awakening of healthy strength, Germany restored health to her people first, and then to the whole of Europe. When we left for Russia, we were told: “Ah, you will suffer over there, you will be prematurely aged men”. When we came back from the front and looked at the others, we found them all to be old coils, while we felt in our veins a strength that nothing would stop.

 

People’s revolution

 

Everywhere in Europe the people were unhappy, everywhere happiness was monopolised by a few dozen anonymous monsters – material happiness locked up in bank vaults, spiritual happiness smothered by all forms of corruption. Europe was old because it was not happy; the people were no longer smiling because they no longer felt alive.

 

At this very moment, what else is going on? Whether you look at Paris or Brussels, you find the same humiliated people in the suburbs, with starvation wages, with leper supplies. You arrive on the boulevards and find these big indolent pashas, larded with beefsteak and thousand-dollar notes, and who say to you: "It’s practical, the war: before the war we were winning, during the war we are winning, after the war we will win. Oh, let them count in the end, they will win our machine-gun discharges, they will win the rope of the hangmen!

 

For what interests us most in the war is the revolution that will follow, it is to give back to these millions of working-class families the joy of living, it is that the millions of European workers should feel free, proud, respected beings, it is that throughout Europe capital should cease to be an instrument of domination of the peoples, to become an instrument in the service of the happiness of the peoples.

 

The war cannot end without the triumph of the socialist revolution, without the worker in the factories and the worker in the fields being saved by the revolutionary youth. It is the people who pay, it is the people who suffer. The great experience of the Russian front still proves this. The people have shown that they are capable of making their revolution without the intellectuals. In our ranks, eighty per cent of our volunteers are workers. They have shown that they have a clearer head and that they can see further than thousands of intellectuals who have nothing left but ink in their penholders, nothing left in their heads and above all nothing left in their hearts, intellectuals who claim to be the elite. That is all over.

 

The real elites are formed at the front, a chivalry is created at the front, young leaders are born at the front. The real elite of tomorrow is there, far from the gossip of the big cities, far from the hypocrisy and sterility of the masses who no longer understand. It is created during grandiose and tragic battles, like those of Cherkasy. It was a great joy for us to find ourselves there among young people from all corners of Europe. There were thousands of Germans from old Germany, men from the Baltic – and in particular the Narva Battalion with the Latvians – there were tall blond boys from the Scandinavian countries, the Danes, the Dutch, our brothers in arms the Flemings, Hungarians, Romanians. There were also a few Frenchmen, who represented you in this scrum, while so many of your compatriots were engaged in other sectors of the Eastern Front And there, between all of us, a complete fraternity was established, because everything has changed since the war. When we look at a slouching old bourgeois in our Fatherland, we do not consider that man to be of our race, but when we look at a young revolutionary from Germany, or from elsewhere, we consider him to be of our Fatherland, since we are with the youth and with the Revolution.

 

We are political soldiers, the SS badge shows Europe where the political truth is, where the social truth is, and, joining this political army of the Führer from everywhere, we are preparing the political frameworks of the post-war period. Tomorrow Europe will have elites such as it has never known before. An army of young apostles, of young mystical men, stirred up by a faith that nothing will stop, will one day emerge from this great seminary at the front. It is there too, Frenchmen, that we must be present

 

Every people must earn their place

 

In the national parties, there are now in France, men who have understood that it is necessary to work with the whole of Europe, who have understood above all that the revolutionary unity of Europe is the SS. The first, the SS, had the courage to go straight ahead, to hit hard and to want the real socialist revolution. For a year or two, at the front, we have seen France. And now inside, we see France: the France of the de Brinons, the Deats, the Doriots, the Darnands, and above all the France of the young. We see something other than little guys on the corner of bars, with a cigarette falling out and a Pernod ready to be swallowed. We see big, well-built boys, capable of making the revolution and then choosing a beautiful girl in France to give her vigorous children.

 

For years, you have had proportionally three times fewer children than the Russians, twice as few as the Germans. One wonders why in this country of love. Love cannot go without children! Aren't they the poetry and the resurrection of love?

 

This denatality was one of the symptoms of the general impotence of democratic peoples, impotence to think far ahead, impotence to be bold, impotence in the face of revolutionary fervour and impotence in the face of privations, in the face of suffering itself. You must be told, Frenchmen, that you have lost fifty years in a Europe of soldiers, which is fighting, which is showing its courage, which needs to be heroic, but which is preparing a social revolution and a moral foundation for each people. It is no longer possible for these hundreds of thousands of men to have died, borne by the most sublime virtues, only to return to the dunghill of mediocrity, baseness and spinelessness. The front has created not only forces of salvation on the military field, revolutionary forces which tomorrow will pass through everything, but it is preparing the revolution which is most necessary for Europe: the spiritual revolution. We need upright and pure men, who know that the highest joys of man are in the soul. We will no longer admit the mediocrity of souls, we will no longer admit that men live for sordid joys, for their egotism, in a narrow atmosphere. We want to elevate the people, to give them back their appetite, their grandeur. We want people to have the sovereign joy of rising above everyday life.

 

That is why, my dear comrades, we must be united. Europe, standing up against Communism, in defence of our civilisation, our spiritual heritage and our ancient cities, must be united, and each people must earn its place, not by adding up the past, but by giving the blood that washes and purifies. Europe must be united in order to carry out, under the sign of the SS, the National Socialist revolution, and to bring to souls, the revolution of souls.

 

You don’t beg for a right.

We fight for him.

 

Adolf Hitler