{"id":7034,"date":"2017-08-25T05:27:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T05:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7034"},"modified":"2017-08-25T05:27:34","modified_gmt":"2017-08-25T05:27:34","slug":"a-german-ozymandias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/08\/25\/a-german-ozymandias\/","title":{"rendered":"A German Ozymandias"},"content":{"rendered":"

We visited another fine museum on our trip. \u00a0Eschewing the sculpture, china, and old masters available in Dresden's partially-restored splendour, we went to the suburbs and visited the Bundeswehr's Museum<\/a> of Military History. \u00a0This was not the eccentric choice it might appear.<\/p>\n

There are two parts to the building: an arsenal built in 1877 and an wedge-shaped extension completed in 2011 that slices through it. \u00a0We were told that the light and shadow effects produced by the wedge \"symbolise the eventful military history of Germany\", and that the\u00a0exhibitions confront \"the visitor with his or her own potential for aggression and shows violence as a historical, cultural, and anthropological phenomenon\". \u00a0 Well, maybe \u2013 but it works \u2013 and we did not have enough time to explore it in full.<\/p>\n

The extension focuses on issues such as War and Memory, War and Suffering, Language and the Military, Politics and the use of Force, Protection and Destruction, War and Play, <\/em>and Fashion and the Military<\/em>. \u00a0The older part is a more conventional chronological journey: the Late Middle Ages to 1914, the Age of World Wars, and 1945 to the Present.<\/p>\n

Two artefacts stood out for me. \u00a0The first was a wrecked toy that had been found in the rubble of Dresden in 1945. \u00a0It was a toy tank that would spit out sparks when run along the ground. \u00a0The second was \u00a0an almost completely corroded typewriter that was found in the ruins of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin: one of many such machines used to issue orders and seal fates \u2013 a quotidian instrument of death and ruination in the 1000-year plan. \u00a0It seemed a fitting tribute, and Ozymandias<\/a> came to mind:<\/p>\n

I met a traveller from an antique land
\nWho said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
\nStand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
\nHalf sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
\nAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
\nTell that its sculptor well those passions read
\nWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
\nThe hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
\nAnd on the pedestal these words appear \u2013
\n\"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
\nLook on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!\"
\nNothing beside remains. Round the decay
\nOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
\nThe lone and level sands stretch far away.'<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Germans do this reflective, honest, soul-searching of their past rather well. \u00a0In addition to the museums we went to, there's also\u00a0the Documentation Centre <\/a>in Nuremberg or the Topography of Terror<\/a> in Berlin, and that's not counting the many Holocaust memorials, concentration camp memorials, or smaller civic museums, such as the one in Cologne that I'm most familiar with. \u00a0There is, of course, much soul-searching that still needs doing, but that applies to most of us on way or another. \u00a0Monday's post will be about why Germany now needs 5 versions of its national flag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We visited another fine museum on our trip. \u00a0Eschewing the sculpture, china, and old masters available in Dresden's partially-restored splendour, we went to the suburbs and visited the Bundeswehr's Museum of Military History. \u00a0This was not the eccentric choice it...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}