Wax Likeness of Hitler: Art

Wax Likeness of Hitler: Art in Bad Taste

If one wants notoriety, then the way to achieve that is to select one of the most controversial, perhaps even the most despised figurehead in the history of the world, make a wax likeness of him, and call it art. The story was reported by journalist Steven McElroy in the New York Times in July 7, 2008 (in the Arts section; and posted to the NYT web site that same day (found online at (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/arts/design/07arts-WAXLIKENESSO_BRF.html).Madame Tussard's Wax Museum in Berlin opened for the first time on Saturday, July 7, 2008. There were objections before the opening day, but Madame Tussard argued that the Fuehrer was part of Germany's history. Like it or not, Madame Tussard made a valid point. Many Germans, and many people around the world, too, would prefer that Hitler had not existed, and that the Holocaust had not occurred and had not put a dark mark on an otherwise remarkable and proud people. Hitler, however, is part of the German past, and he belongs to the history of Germany, and that history belongs to the German people as much today as it did while Hitler was in power. To attempt to ignore it, or to eradicate the memory of it Hitler is revisionist, and cannot be allowed.

What might surprise many people today is that Germany's young people are fed up with the memories of the war (Marzynski, Marian, 2005, film documentary). In Marian Marzynski's 2005 documentary film, a Jew Among Germans, Marzynski met with young German school students. All of the students were high school age, and preparing for the years ahead. Marzynski met with the students, a small group, about 15 in number, and discussed the Holocaust. It was clear that the young students resented being asked questions about how they felt about the Holocaust. These young students do not want German guilt. They perceive themselves as good people, and one student specifically told Marzynski not to put that guild on them. They felt that it was sad, but it belonged to a different generation. They said they did not like the way that others from around the world looked at them because they were Germans. They felt that they were two generations removed from the Holocaust, and that it is not their history.

Later, Marzynski finds that the parents, those who lived through the Holocaust, will not speak of it to their families and children. The grandparents, the fathers, will not discuss World War II, or whom or how many lives they believe they were responsible for taking. It is not acceptable in Germany to ask about the Holocaust. For the second and third generation Germans, the Holocaust does not exist.

Elizabeth D. Ezell and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser (2003) examined Germany's national identity. Ezell and Seeleib-Kaiser describe Germany as a country that has had to reinvent its identity (280). That is if the population that is reinventing their identity experienced the past. Today's young Germans, who did not experience the past, do not want that past laid on them. Like the young people of the United States, Great Britain and other countries throughout the world, they do not believe that they created that past, and do not feel responsible for it.

Seeleib-Kaiser and Ezell conducted a research study of Israeli and German students with the goal of measuring their attitudinal tolerance of culture (280). They studied 276 Israeli students, and 118 German students (280). The results were interesting, even hopeful. Forty-one percent of the German students felt that Hitler was a bad leader who pursued personal interests over the national interest (280). Just 3% of the students felt that Hitler was a good leader who did his best for Germany according to his own outlook (280). Nine percent of the students said that Hitler was a bad leader who did his best for Germany according to his own outlook (280). These last two cause concern as to the understanding of whether or not the students understood the nature of the questions.

Nine percent of the 110 students selected to for the next part of the survey supported a dictatorship (280); 21% expressed an indifference to a dictatorial regime (280). Here there should be concern, because it appears as though the students either did not understand the question, or that they don't care, and they do not understand the difference between a dictatorship and a free government. This is a concern, because these young people are the children of German parents who lived under an East/West German separation and communism. That they have not learned a lesson in communism from their parents, or do not have a historical sense of the experience of their parents and grandparents is reason for concern.

In 2005, Marian Marzynski found that there was still a prevailing sense of anti-Semitism. Shmuel Shamai, Eren Yardeni, and Benjamin Klages (2004) say that education is an essential. If the Holocaust is not included in the German history taught in German schools, there can be no German hereditary conscience surrounding the events of the Holocaust. There is a concern, Marzynski says, that the Holocaust could become a horrible symbol - and Marzynski finds that curious. One of the problems, Marzynski found, is that the Holocaust was treated as a horror story, in a surreal way, as though it did not exist and that the ancestors of the second and third generation Germans did not participate in the war.

As we consider what Madame Tussard has done, it could be that what she defends as art is not a bad thing for Germans. They have very little in their lives to remind them of the history that the rest of the world continues even today to be interested in to the point of obsession. During the month of November, 2008, at least three different programs on World War II Germany and the Holocaust ran on the History and National Geographic channels. In America, there is no lack of interest in the subject, especially as research and studies find other aspects of the Nazi persona that comes forward and can be presented in a new light, such as the occult and Nazi leaders. Or recent memorabilia that was anonymously delivered to the American Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, which shows the candid photographs of the camp leaders and workers at Auschwitz (Applen, Tudor, 2007, film documentary). It is eerie and frightening to look at photographs of German soldiers, men and women, conducting themselves in a social celebration, as appeared in some of the photographs, amongst the concentration camp where in the background you can see Jews in various stages of death, dying, and starvation (Applen, documentary).

What Madame Tussard has done in her wax museum may be self-serving, a type of notoriety in bad taste, but she is correct in what the image represents to the German history. Adolf Hitler is a part of the German past, and while post World War II Germans have made every effort to eradicate the memory of their past from the lives of their children and their history, there is no escaping that past. The children of Germany would be better served to be educated in their past, and to be educated, too, in how to cope with that, and how to move past it as a different people. This is accomplished with multi-cultural education. The goals of multi-cultural education are:

Attitudinal: Cultural Awareness, Sensitivity and Awareness

Cognitive: knowledge of other specific cultures

Instrumental: correcting distortions, stereotypes, omissions, and misinformation about ethnic groups, providing strategies for dealing with differences among people and the conceptual tools for intercultural communications, and dealing with values clarifications (Ekstrand, 1997) (Shamai, Yardeni, and Klages, 765).

Forty-one percent of the students surveyed by Shamai, Yardeni, and Klages indicated that there is no way that someone like Hitler could rise to power in Germany again. This is dangerous, it is unaware, and unpreparedness for the reality of the world around us. Not only has the Holocaust repeated itself in places like Rwanda, Darfur, and Iraq, there is a strong possibility that these young second and third generation Germans will encounter a world figure who, like Hitler, comes to power with a personal agenda, a demented and horrifying agenda.

Madam Tussard, therefore, has done a controversial thing by creating a wax likeness of Adolf Hitler, but it is also a useful and important thing that she has done too. Madame Tussard has put a likeness to the history, a history that is at risk of becoming a myth for many young Germans. The past cannot escape us, but it can help us to become different, better as a people, and as a society.

Israeli and German Students' Views on Hitler's Leadership

Israeli

German

Hitler was a bad leader who looked after his own interests, and because of it Germany lost the war.

Hitler was a good leader who did his best for Germany according to his outlook.

Hitler was a bad leader who did his best for Germany according to his outlook.