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The absence of Liu Xiaobo from this year's Nobel prize ceremony has raised the ghost of Carl von Ossietzky, the 1920s/30s German pacifist.
Important to me is that Von Ossietzky in the 1920s and early 1930's was very active in exposing Germany's secret rearmament strategy. In a bid to overthrow the peace of Europe, Germany and the Soviet Union closely co-operated in the 1920s/1930s. Ossietzky showed how Germany in the 1920s transferred American funds to the Soviet Union, rebuild an airforce, and secretly trained a new generation of pilots in Stalinist Soviet Union.
Ossietzky, a pacifist and a man of great insight, saw the storm that was brewing. Alas, his writings could not stop the tide, could not prevent the final act of the German conservatives dangerous game, the installation of their puppet in 1933. This meant game over for Ossietzky, who was almost immediately send to a concentration camp, was miserably tortured for years, and died in 1938.
The Nobel committee was so divided over his Peaze Prize in 1935, that initially no prize was awarded. In the fiercely extremist political climate of the 1930s, Conservatives, including the Norwegian king, oppossed Ossietzky as a traitor to his country, as a Christian from a converted Jewish family, and as an enemy of Germany. Eventually, Ossietzky was awarded the prize in 1936, amidst controversy and great pressure for Germany. It very much resembles the current row over Liu's Prize, and China's fierce, vehement, reaction.
I would say that history has vindicated Ossietzky, but sadly modern popular history has adopted the German ultra-nationalist / nazi concept of Germany suffering as a victim of conspiracy in this period, and, perhaps even more sadly, the German federal court of justice in 1992 upheld the verdict of 1931: Ossietzky's publishing of Germany's secret re-armament was an act of treason. Shame on both accounts.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...Ossietzky.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Ossietzky
Important to me is that Von Ossietzky in the 1920s and early 1930's was very active in exposing Germany's secret rearmament strategy. In a bid to overthrow the peace of Europe, Germany and the Soviet Union closely co-operated in the 1920s/1930s. Ossietzky showed how Germany in the 1920s transferred American funds to the Soviet Union, rebuild an airforce, and secretly trained a new generation of pilots in Stalinist Soviet Union.
Ossietzky, a pacifist and a man of great insight, saw the storm that was brewing. Alas, his writings could not stop the tide, could not prevent the final act of the German conservatives dangerous game, the installation of their puppet in 1933. This meant game over for Ossietzky, who was almost immediately send to a concentration camp, was miserably tortured for years, and died in 1938.
The Nobel committee was so divided over his Peaze Prize in 1935, that initially no prize was awarded. In the fiercely extremist political climate of the 1930s, Conservatives, including the Norwegian king, oppossed Ossietzky as a traitor to his country, as a Christian from a converted Jewish family, and as an enemy of Germany. Eventually, Ossietzky was awarded the prize in 1936, amidst controversy and great pressure for Germany. It very much resembles the current row over Liu's Prize, and China's fierce, vehement, reaction.
I would say that history has vindicated Ossietzky, but sadly modern popular history has adopted the German ultra-nationalist / nazi concept of Germany suffering as a victim of conspiracy in this period, and, perhaps even more sadly, the German federal court of justice in 1992 upheld the verdict of 1931: Ossietzky's publishing of Germany's secret re-armament was an act of treason. Shame on both accounts.
Originally Posted by :
Mr Liu, 54, is currently serving an eleven-year sentence on the charge of "inciting subversion" after he co-authored a petition for political reform in China.
Mr Ossietzky, a German journalist and pacifist who spoke out against Hitler's rise to power, was convicted of high treason and espionage in 1931 after publishing an article about Germany's efforts to rebuild its air force, in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles.
He was tortured in Spandau prison in 1933, after the Reichstag fire, and was interned in the KZ Esterwegen concentration camp near Oldenburg when he was awarded the prize in 1936.
The Nazi regime put enormous pressure on the Nobel committee not to award him the Peace prize, to the extent that the 1935 Peace prize, which he had been nominated for, was not awarded at all.
It took the Nobel committee a year to work up the courage, and two members withdrew, before it finally announced the 1935 prize to Mr Ossietzky on the same day as awarding the 1936 prize to Carlos Saavedra Lamas, who brokered a truce between Paraguay and Bolivia. Mr Ossietzky's prize was described by newspapers at the time as "a slap in the face of fascism".
King Haakon VII of Norway stayed away from the ceremony, while the award was generally condemned by conservatives. Aftenposten, the Norwegian newspaper, argued that Mr Ossietzky was a criminal who had attacked his country "with the use of methods that violated the law long before Hitler came into power".
One of the German activists supporting Mr Ossietzky in Norway was Herbert Frahm, a 21-year-old exile who took the name Willy Brandt and would eventually become chancellor of West Germany and win the Peace prize himself.
Germany reacted with fury, and an unnamed official called the award "preposterous". The Nazi government told Mr Ossietzky, by then suffering from severe tuberculosis in a hospital bed, that he had to decline the prize, a demand that he refused. A year-and-a-half later he died, at the age of 48.
Meanwhile, Hitler established his own alternative Peace prize and declared that no Germans were to ever accept the Nobel prize again. The University of Oldenburg is now named after Mr Ossietzky.
I was going to put this in the Monastery, but then, a thread touching on Hitler, Chinese Communists, Jews and treacherous kings is a bit Backroomish.Mr Liu, 54, is currently serving an eleven-year sentence on the charge of "inciting subversion" after he co-authored a petition for political reform in China.
Mr Ossietzky, a German journalist and pacifist who spoke out against Hitler's rise to power, was convicted of high treason and espionage in 1931 after publishing an article about Germany's efforts to rebuild its air force, in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles.
He was tortured in Spandau prison in 1933, after the Reichstag fire, and was interned in the KZ Esterwegen concentration camp near Oldenburg when he was awarded the prize in 1936.
The Nazi regime put enormous pressure on the Nobel committee not to award him the Peace prize, to the extent that the 1935 Peace prize, which he had been nominated for, was not awarded at all.
It took the Nobel committee a year to work up the courage, and two members withdrew, before it finally announced the 1935 prize to Mr Ossietzky on the same day as awarding the 1936 prize to Carlos Saavedra Lamas, who brokered a truce between Paraguay and Bolivia. Mr Ossietzky's prize was described by newspapers at the time as "a slap in the face of fascism".
King Haakon VII of Norway stayed away from the ceremony, while the award was generally condemned by conservatives. Aftenposten, the Norwegian newspaper, argued that Mr Ossietzky was a criminal who had attacked his country "with the use of methods that violated the law long before Hitler came into power".
One of the German activists supporting Mr Ossietzky in Norway was Herbert Frahm, a 21-year-old exile who took the name Willy Brandt and would eventually become chancellor of West Germany and win the Peace prize himself.
Germany reacted with fury, and an unnamed official called the award "preposterous". The Nazi government told Mr Ossietzky, by then suffering from severe tuberculosis in a hospital bed, that he had to decline the prize, a demand that he refused. A year-and-a-half later he died, at the age of 48.
Meanwhile, Hitler established his own alternative Peace prize and declared that no Germans were to ever accept the Nobel prize again. The University of Oldenburg is now named after Mr Ossietzky.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...Ossietzky.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Ossietzky
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
He was nothing more than a communist sympathizer and a traitor. He was acting to hurt Germany long before Hitler came to power. In fact, it was people like Ossietzky that spurred the reactionary anti-communist shift to the far Right in Germany that swept Hitler into the Chancellery.
Every nation has the right to defend itself, and German re-armament in particular was in the best interest of the German people. Despite Louis' claims of some conservative conspiracy, most moderate and even many leftist German politicians saw Stalin's military buildup and the growing threat of expansionist international communism and knew that Germany stood helpless against outside threats under the Versailles conditions. That is why re-armament was sought by the Weimar Republic long before the Nazis ever came into existence. Ossietzky, a communist supporter, sought to weaken Germany not under Hitler, but under a democratically-elected representative government.
He received the prize because he later became a victim of the Nazi Party. It was a convenient choice out of thousands of others because of his outspoken anti-Nazi positions. It was also convenient to ignore that he was a traitor to a legal government before he became a victim. The German Federal court, of course, could not ignore that.
Every nation has the right to defend itself, and German re-armament in particular was in the best interest of the German people. Despite Louis' claims of some conservative conspiracy, most moderate and even many leftist German politicians saw Stalin's military buildup and the growing threat of expansionist international communism and knew that Germany stood helpless against outside threats under the Versailles conditions. That is why re-armament was sought by the Weimar Republic long before the Nazis ever came into existence. Ossietzky, a communist supporter, sought to weaken Germany not under Hitler, but under a democratically-elected representative government.
He received the prize because he later became a victim of the Nazi Party. It was a convenient choice out of thousands of others because of his outspoken anti-Nazi positions. It was also convenient to ignore that he was a traitor to a legal government before he became a victim. The German Federal court, of course, could not ignore that.
Originally Posted by :
According to the case law of the Supreme Court of the German Reich, the illegality of covertly conducted actions did not cancel out the principle of secrecy. According to the opinion of the Supreme Court of the German Reich, every citizen owes his Fatherland a duty of allegiance regarding information, and endeavours towards the enforcement of existing laws may be implemented only through the utilization of responsible domestic state organs, and never by appealing to foreign governments. –Ruling of the Federal Court of Justice, 3 December 1992
According to the case law of the Supreme Court of the German Reich, the illegality of covertly conducted actions did not cancel out the principle of secrecy. According to the opinion of the Supreme Court of the German Reich, every citizen owes his Fatherland a duty of allegiance regarding information, and endeavours towards the enforcement of existing laws may be implemented only through the utilization of responsible domestic state organs, and never by appealing to foreign governments. –Ruling of the Federal Court of Justice, 3 December 1992
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger:
Every nation has the right to defend itself, and German re-armament in particular was in the best interest of the German people. Despite Louis' claims of some conservative conspiracy, most moderate and even many leftist German politicians saw Stalin's military buildup and the growing threat of expansionist international communism and knew that Germany stood helpless against outside threats under the Versailles conditions. That is why re-armament was sought by the Weimar Republic long before the Nazis ever came into existence. Ossietzky, a communist supporter, sought to weaken Germany not under Hitler, but under a democratically-elected representative government.
Ah, but Ossietzky was not a Communist. Leftwing, but bourgeois. Every nation has the right to defend itself, and German re-armament in particular was in the best interest of the German people. Despite Louis' claims of some conservative conspiracy, most moderate and even many leftist German politicians saw Stalin's military buildup and the growing threat of expansionist international communism and knew that Germany stood helpless against outside threats under the Versailles conditions. That is why re-armament was sought by the Weimar Republic long before the Nazis ever came into existence. Ossietzky, a communist supporter, sought to weaken Germany not under Hitler, but under a democratically-elected representative government.
The Weltbühne-Prozess, the trial in question is about Ossietzky exposing the cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union! Both countries together ran a secret airbase 400 kilometer from Moscow. Here German pilots were trained, and a new airforce was build. All in secret. Starting in 1925. This is what Ossietzky revealed. Far from being helpless against outside threats, the revelations of Ossietzky showed that Germany was in full co-operation with the Soviet Union, both biding their time to overthrow the peace together.
With the revelation, Ossietzky did not betray German interest to the communists. Not at all. Ossietzky exposed the alliance between the two revisionist powers. He revealed the close co-operation between Germany and the Soviet Union.
There were people in Europe - an increasingly lonely, but proud minority - who resisted both the extreme left and the extreme right. For unlike the propaganda of these two, the choice was not at all between either extreme left or extreme right. The real choice in the 1930s was liberal democratic pacifism and moderateness, or either extreme left / right madness. The latter two were merely two cheeks of the same arse. Sadly, this was not understood by most people, the voices of moderation drowned in the sheer volume and vehemence of the extremists.
Dismissing Louis' post based on "Traitor to his country" = 
Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat:
Ah, but Ossietzky was not a Communist. Leftwing, but bourgeois.
Note that I did not say he was a communist. From my understanding of his biography, I believe him to be a communist too savvy to adopt the label (there were many), but IIRC he never joined the party. He certainly played in those social circles and often wrote favorably about the cause. Ah, but Ossietzky was not a Communist. Leftwing, but bourgeois.
Further, he was a supporter of Ernst Thälmann, who unlike some of the more organic German communists, took his orders directly from the Soviet Union and Stalin. Had he won, he likely would have mirrored other Stalinist puppets in cruelty and oppression.
Originally Posted by :
The Weltbühne-Prozess, the trial in question is about Ossietzky exposing the cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union!
Of course. His revelations of low level military cooperation between the two international pariahs was meant to have a twofold effect. The Weltbühne-Prozess, the trial in question is about Ossietzky exposing the cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union!
It was to first damage and further ostracize Germany in the eyes of the Western Democracies. Second, it was to make the Soviet Union appear to the German people to be a friend, an ally, of Germany; when in actuality the military cooperation was strictly out of necessity, not any grand strategy.
Thus, Ossietzky's piece was no real effort in pacifism, but an effort to keep Germany ostracized from the West and push her closer to the Soviet Union.
Originally Posted by :
There were people in Europe - an increasingly lonely, but proud minority - who resisted both the extreme left and the extreme right.
Indeed there were. Ossietzky was not one of them.There were people in Europe - an increasingly lonely, but proud minority - who resisted both the extreme left and the extreme right.
Originally Posted by Beskar:
Dismissing Louis' post based on "Traitor to his country" =
I assume this is directed toward me. First, thank you for your contribution. Second, I did not dismiss Louis' post. He elicited opinions about the man's legacy and I gave mine. I appreciate all of Louis' historical posts, despite disagreeing with most of his analyses. Third, you'll note that the German Supreme Court agreed with my position.Dismissing Louis' post based on "Traitor to his country" =
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger:
I assume this is directed toward me. First, thank you for your contribution. Second, you'll note the German Supreme Court agreed with my position.
Doesn't mean anything. Especially if you consider the ones who were 'loyal' to the country. They would also rule that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was a traitor to his country as well, along with Oskar Schindler, Julius Leber and various other big names.I assume this is directed toward me. First, thank you for your contribution. Second, you'll note the German Supreme Court agreed with my position.
So ultimately going "he is a traitor" =
Originally Posted by Beskar:
Doesn't mean anything. Especially if you consider the ones who were 'loyal' to the country. They would also rule that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was a traitor to his country as well, along with Oskar Schindler, Julius Leber and various other big names.
Really? You think the German Supreme Court would rule Stauffenberg a traitor?Doesn't mean anything. Especially if you consider the ones who were 'loyal' to the country. They would also rule that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was a traitor to his country as well, along with Oskar Schindler, Julius Leber and various other big names.
Originally Posted by :
The Memorial to the German Resistance (German: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand), is a memorial and museum in Berlin, capital of Germany. It was opened in 1980 in part of the Bendlerblock, a complex of offices in Stauffenbergstrasse (formerly Bendlerstrasse), south of the Tiergarten in western Berlin. It was here that Claus Graf von Stauffenberg and other members of the July 20 plot of 1944 that attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler were executed.
Although the memorial is primarily intended to commemorate those members of the German Army who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944, it is also a memorial to the German Resistance in the broader sense. Historians agree that there was no united, national resistance movement in Nazi Germany at any time during Hitler's years in power (1933-45). Joachim Fest describes it as "the resistance that never was."[1] Nevertheless, the term German Resistance (Deutscher Widerstand) is now used to describe all elements of opposition and resistance to the Nazi regime, including the underground networks of the Social Democrats and Communists, The White Rose, opposition activities in the Christian churches (e.g. the Confessing Church), and the resistance groups based in the civil service, intelligence organs and armed forces.
The visitor enters the museum from Stauffenbergstrasse through an archway, on the wall of which is inscribed: "Here in the former Supreme Headquarters of the Army, Germans organized the attempt of 20 July 1944 to end the Nazi rule of injustice. For this, they sacrificed their lives. The Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Berlin created this new memorial place in the year 1980."
The Memorial to the German Resistance (German: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand), is a memorial and museum in Berlin, capital of Germany. It was opened in 1980 in part of the Bendlerblock, a complex of offices in Stauffenbergstrasse (formerly Bendlerstrasse), south of the Tiergarten in western Berlin. It was here that Claus Graf von Stauffenberg and other members of the July 20 plot of 1944 that attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler were executed.
Although the memorial is primarily intended to commemorate those members of the German Army who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944, it is also a memorial to the German Resistance in the broader sense. Historians agree that there was no united, national resistance movement in Nazi Germany at any time during Hitler's years in power (1933-45). Joachim Fest describes it as "the resistance that never was."[1] Nevertheless, the term German Resistance (Deutscher Widerstand) is now used to describe all elements of opposition and resistance to the Nazi regime, including the underground networks of the Social Democrats and Communists, The White Rose, opposition activities in the Christian churches (e.g. the Confessing Church), and the resistance groups based in the civil service, intelligence organs and armed forces.
The visitor enters the museum from Stauffenbergstrasse through an archway, on the wall of which is inscribed: "Here in the former Supreme Headquarters of the Army, Germans organized the attempt of 20 July 1944 to end the Nazi rule of injustice. For this, they sacrificed their lives. The Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Berlin created this new memorial place in the year 1980."
Originally Posted by Beskar:
Doesn't mean anything. Especially if you consider the ones who were 'loyal' to the country. They would also rule that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was a traitor to his country as well, along with Oskar Schindler, Julius Leber and various other big names.
I enjoy my little bouts with PJ about the history of this period, even if his ideas differ from mine.Doesn't mean anything. Especially if you consider the ones who were 'loyal' to the country. They would also rule that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was a traitor to his country as well, along with Oskar Schindler, Julius Leber and various other big names.
Nor is the case for Ossietzky completely closed. The fact remains that to the German court - of modern, democratic Germany - the man is still a traitor! A travesty, as far as I'm concerned. To no small degree owing to a historical idea about Weimar as a somewhat clumsy, failed, doomed but peaceful Germany. I think that underestimates the incessant agitation of national-conservatives in many sectors of Germany before 1933. Very much so the German judges of this period, who showed as poor judgement before Hitler as they did in the period 1933-1945. which was one long and sad legal travesty.
You do marvelously bring the focus to the essence of this thread, short of the historical details which are perhaps of little interest to most. Namely, what makes a hero, and what a traitor?
Is Liu a traitor, like the Chinese claim? Assange? Sacharov? Mandela? Three of which have won the Nobel Prize, and the fourth, like the other three, a contender for both imprisonment and the Peace Prize itself.
Edit: Also, there is a remarkable similarity in the Prize and the reaction to it by Nazi Germany and Communist China. A shared vehemence, complete with foreign threats, blackmail of third countries, and lots of show and bogus other prizes. By comparison to these two, the reaction of the Soviet Unio to Sacharov's Prize seemed very mellow. The response of the Burma regime to the Prize for what's-her-name-again, that I don't really know, the country is a complete mystery to me.
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