German Cultural Life in 1944

Signal.
The Indestructible.
When Dante was a student, the audience sat on bundles of straw under the open sky at the University of Paris. Today, the same is the case with many German students. Many lectures are held in cellars. The Hamburg Opera performs in operetta theaters or barns. The most famous theater groups perform in rural dance halls. The Berlin Conservatory for singing is housed in a café. Laboratories are destroyed, but scientific researches continue. Many musicians from the Philharmonic Orchestra have lost their tailcoats and bow ties, but they play amidst the ruins in jackets, and Mozart and Beethoven are no less impressive. “I am still alive, living in the theater, ladies‘ dressing room,” wrote Berlin actress Gretl Schörg on the door of her burned-out house. The new issue of Signal (with Léon Degrelle on the cover) illustrates these facts with 21 captivating photos, showing how phosphorus and explosives can destroy much, but not the cultural will of people for whom culture is not an empty form of civilization or social fashion, but the highest revelation of their own essence. You can take much from a nation, but not its soul. – 24-4-44

The latest German achievement is:
Lectures in the open air,
Because buildings are in a bad state,
Many professors have fled

With their audience to the woods
And there they teach their lessons,
And the students on the moss
Hope for good weather today.

From many universities
Only a pile of grit remains,
The science of this time,
The science of the swastika

Is now en vogue in cellars
And Germany’s youth listens eagerly,
And they appear completely undaunted,
On the contrary, they are delighted.

The opera performs in a barn,
The stars in farmer’s shirts
Play their roles with enthusiasm,
The rural audience is amazed.

The situation seemed critical,
But it turned out not too bad in the end,
The Academy of Music
Gives education in a café.

Laboratories are destroyed,
But their research continues,
They are full of life’s courage,
Even if it doesn’t look particularly good.

Because their tailcoats and bow ties
Were taken away by bombing raids,
They give in jackets and raincoats
Their concert on a pile of rubble.

And an actress sets up her tent
In the ladies’ dressing room,
Not as luxurious as she was used to,
But courageously, she bears this burden.

And when one reads it, one shakes one’s head,
They didn’t think it would be so bad,
They have been deprived of everything,
This is how far Hitler has brought them.