I got a fair amount of grief from the pro-Russian crowd in my last post about the Russian Military Cathedral which I felt tried to reconcile communism with orthodoxy. Commo-Orthodoxy much like Judeo-Christianity is fundamentally incompatible due to their foundational premises. As I tried to point out in my last post, patria and Christianity are compatible, Communism (and fascism for that matter) is not.
The allies destroyed of confiscated a lot Nazi art following the war, and I'm not sure how much of it had a religious element. But I managed to find an example of religious art produced in a time of totalitarianism that gets it right.
Oskar Martin Amorbach was a well renowned painter during the time of the Third Reich. He painted one of my favourite works from that time, The Sower. What I was not aware of is that he also painted a mural in the The Holy Trinity Chapel in Waldsassen. The mural was completed in 1940 while the Reich was on the rise. Titled, The Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, the mural of the German soldiers is seen as an allegory of the corporal acts of mercy. Of note, you have to look very carefully to see any Nazi imagery. The emphasis is clearly on German soldiers being good Christians.
They guys are clearly Wehrmacht but it's very difficult to see an Nazi symbolism at all. In this image we see the German give a drink to French, Italian and Spanish prisoners of War, visiting the sick...
...and burying the dead. Note, the grave next to German grave is French. The imagery is clearly one of Christian morals, rather than a celebration an attempt to reconcile Nazism and Christianity.
Even this sort of thing from another Church and from the First World War, put in a Russian context would have been more appropriate.
I'm not an artist, but it isn't too hard to see how faith and patria could be depicted in a way which acknowledged historicity while criticising totalitarianism. Even some of the icons of Alexander Schmorell, a saint of the Russian Church, acknowledge his German military background in their depiction of him:
Note the German uniform under the white overshirt.
Now the guys who built the Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces weren't stupid, they could have chosen to depict the Russians who fought during the Soviet era in a way which emphasised the faith and downplayed the Soviet.
They didn't and that's the problem, they're trying to reconcile the two.
BTW, I have taken most of the images here from the site of a Russian Photographer, Vladimir Pomortzeff, The Woe of the Vanquished. Great site, have a look.
7 comments:
Still waiting for the Christian iconography of the modern west. Maybe it will have a pfizer vaccine forcibly injected by a Victorian police officer while he beats a civilian over the head while the civilian thanks him. Or maybe the rainbow flag being waved by Noah to finally show the contempt the western governments have for faith and tradition.
https://thepostmillennial.com/australian-anti-lockdown-protest-leader
I'm sure this is the type of freedom austrailians and other commonwealth citizens should fight for in ukraine. Make sure to take the EU and the rest of the covidians with you.
How do you feel about the Solomon islands and the Chinese? Do you feel the red line? Or does that only apply the fascist commonwealth? Maybe the Chinese can adorn the supposed cathedrals of totalitarian Australia with some more enlightening art work.
@Anon
I don't know why everyone is up in arms with regards to the Chinese moves on the Solomon island when our government is selling our infrastructure to them (Port of Darwin). China can have the Solomons. War's changing. Bases are a liability. The future is in going to be small and mobile.
The Solomons has just made itself one big fat target.
A target at least to the fascist totalitarian commonwealth. The forced confiscation of arms and the forces injection of poison show how much self respect the commonwealth subjects have for themselves and their German monarchs. Hopefully the commonwealth and communists destroy each other on that side of the world.
@SocPath:
Americans from Kentucky don't need to die fighting Ivan because you don't like their religious artwork. If your country had any merit you would have rebelled against the British and adopted something like the 2nd amendment, rather then get slaughtered in Gallipoli for your Limey overlords. My tax dollars pay for SLBMs to protect your crummy country. The future is going to be 20-30 states with at least an India-sized minimum nuclear deterrent. I hope Australia isn't one of them and you get nuked by Indonesia or Vietnam.
@Anon
I hope Australia isn't one of them and you get nuked by Indonesia or Vietnam.
I can feel the love.
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