Small Rembrandt Monologue

(for the cover montage)

London, Feb. 8th (A.N.P.). The „Daily Herald“ reports from Prague that the directors of German museums have been instructed to remove paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Rembrandt. The directors were summoned to Berlin, where they attended lectures by the painters Hansen and Willrich, who called van Gogh a „half Bolshevik“ and condemned Rembrandt for having lived in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam. Robert Schmitt, in protest, left the meeting along with a few others. He was dismissed. Many museum directors are sabotaging the order. Last year, Hansen and Willrich organized the „degenerate art“ exhibition in Munich. – 1938

Today I stand in the German Empire
Alas, by God, not in honor,
When I compare it to before
It seems almost unexplainable

Earlier, people were much warmer towards me
And more passionate,
There were many Rembrandt enthusiasts,
But today Germany prefers

A completely different painter,
That bungler Adolf Hitler
They revere him with colossal
Reverence, while the nitpickers

Deny my qualities,
Because I lived among Jews
I couldn’t paint and draw,
Me, who always throned high

On the painter’s firmament
They no longer want to recognize,
They deny my talent,
Purely because they hate Jews.

They banish Jacob’s blessing,
Moses with the Ten Commandments,
Nothing matters to me anymore
And I see the idiots,

How these nine-time foolish fools
Banish and reject me
And stare at this Hitler
It gets very much on my nerves.

And they call me degenerate,
Rembrandt, me, the painter king,
I would never have expected such,
And it annoys me a bit.

But stop lamenting,
Rembrandt, I tell myself, stay cool,
I‘d be ashamed of myself,
If those guys would like me.