A MIRROR FOR NUREMBERG, A MIRROR FOR GLASGOW
Duncan McLaren
DAY ONE
I’m sitting on a bench in the back garden of Schloss Almoshof,
with the cereal, water and fruit ingredients of a healthy breakfast
spread out over the trestle table in front of me. It feels good
to be in Germany for the first time ever, other than when I’ve
been on the way to somewhere else. But am I really in Germany? Yesterday
evening, I landed at a modern international airport, a place that
one could imagine finding close to any Western city. Then, in heat
I associate only with the likes of Athens and Istanbul, I was given
a straw hat and a bicycle with which to make the journey of less
than a mile to the formidably walled sixteenth century castle in
which I’ll be staying for the week. If this really is Germany,
it would seem to be a toy-land version that’s been dreamed
up by a child.
Nicola Atkinson-Davidson emerges from the castle with coffee for
two. No child, Nic, but I suppose it’s her that’s responsible
for the Nuremberg I’ve so far been presented with. She’s
the one that’s here for three months as artist-in-residence.
The residency will lead to a show in the schloss towards the end
of her stay here. But, the residency is also contributing towards
the putting together of an ambitious project that she’s been
in the process of developing for months now.
Nic pours the coffee. Actually, she wants to talk about her multi-faceted
project right now. We’ve already agreed that this afternoon
is the best time for me to do what I really want to do while I’m
in Nürnberg (the German pronounciation is something I should
try and get used to) that is, visit the Documentation Centre and
the Nazi Party Rally Grounds that surround it. But tomorrow morning
I’m accompanying Nic to several meetings and I need to be
briefed if I’m to get the most out of that process. And so
that briefing better happen before I disappear for the day into
the turbulent history of the Third Reich. I can’t see me not
wanting to talk about that stuff when I get back to castle base
this evening. And I can’t see Nic not wanting to discuss such
fundamentals either.
So. On one level Nic’s project is simple. She wants local
people to contribute to a show of mirrors: one in Scotland, one
in Germany. But that is a deceptive and misleading way to put a
project that is turning out to be – by necessity - extremely
complicated. The show of mirrors in Scotland will be at Paisley
Museum and Art Gallery in September, just a few months away. The
Paisley contact, with curator Andrea Kusel, I understand. After
all, the three of us met for lunch in Glasgow not long ago. Nic
explains how this initial contact led to a hook up with Glasgow
council departments, then the organisation that deals with Nürnberg’s
friendly international relationships, then a twinning officer in
Fürth. But, despite my concentration being at a peak of coffee-induced
sharpness, the names and the precise sequence of developments, go
in one ear and out the other. I retain an overview though. Glasgow
and Paisley are near neighbours, one bigger than the other. Nürnberg
and Fürth, likewise. Glasgow is officially twinned with Nürnberg,
while Paisley is twinned with Fürth. There is no single person
or organisation that Nicola can use as her contact in order to achieve
all she wants to in the large and satellite Scottish and German
settlements. Indeed not: she has to negotiate with lots of individuals
in series and in parallel, as it were. Of course, she rather enjoys
the process; that’s all part of her work, as I understand
it. But it doesn’t have to be part of my work to follow the
minutiae. Not yet, anyway. So the names of several organisations
and a dozen individuals remain safely stowed away in Nic’s
mind. Not mine.
I notice that the day is heating up. Schloss Almoshof’s main
function is to host a variety of cultural and social events for
the people of Nürnberg in general and the immediate locality
in particular. As part of this, there is a nursery sited in the
grounds of the castle. It was noisy first thing this morning, when
we were still lying in our beds. It’s noisy again now. A little
blonde boy who has been running round the castle with a chum suddenly
stops at our table and blurts out a full minute’s worth of
German. Neither Nic nor I speak the language, but we both make sympathetic
eye-contact, and we listen to the stream of earnest words coming
out of his mouth. When he finishes, I say much the same as I said
to Nicola a few minutes ago:
“That would seem to be an extremely interesting project you’ve got on the go there. And if I can help you with it in any way, either now or in the future, then I surely will.”
Suddenly self-conscious, the infant runs off. And right now it’s
equally clear to me what I should do. I have to collect the bicycle
that’s been provided for me by Gabi, who organises the art
side of things here at the schloss. I must rub sun-block onto my
face and ride the bicycle to the airport where I will immobilize
it using the key provided for me by Manfred, the castle’s
friendly caretaker. Then I will descend into the underground station
and zoom south to whatever awaits me when I emerge from –
only to immediately disappear back into - the darkness at the far
side of town.
----
It’s six o’clock by the time I emerge from the Documentation Centre. The museum houses a superb display of photographs, models, and text (available in English: first time I’ve ever used an audio handset while going round a museum or art gallery). I feel I’ve been given a historically grounded handle on what went on here in Nürnberg between 1930 and 1945. But I’m also feeling a little harassed as a result of having had to hurry through the last rooms of the building. Fact is, I experienced the Nuremberg Trials in five minutes flat. Time enough for a photograph of high-ranking Nazi corpses to make an indelible impression, but I would have liked to spend longer taking in the trial process itself.
I was also hurried along past a platform that sticks out into the
open area at the centre of the huge building. The award-winning
architecture of the Documentation Centre takes up just a corner
of what was intended to be the Nazi’s Congress Hall, and I
am now wandering into the middle of the courtyard. Was the platform
- which I’m now looking at from the outside and from below
- where Hitler was intended to stand at the end of? A photograph
on a display board shows me what the building would have looked
like if it had ever been completed. A hall with seating for 50,000
party members, all of whose seats would have been directed towards
a central plinth where the Führer would have stood and given
his audience a piece of his mind. A great white arena under a high
flat white ceiling was the intention. The hall was never finished,
thank God. What I’m actually looking at is a great curve of
red brick wall under a blue sky.
I walk to that very significant spot which is right in the middle
of the courtyard (quite a distance away from the platform) and decide
to take a picture of myself with Nicola’s digital camera.
Nic does this a lot, I’ve noticed. That is, she stretches
out her arm, points the camera at herself and shoots. She then flicks
the mode to playback and checks to see what she looks like on the
screen of the camera. So that’s what I’m going to do.
Why? Well, what better place for me to use the camera as a mirror?
I urgently need to check that I don’t look anything like a
certain leader of the National Socialist Party...
Hmm, I’ve never seen myself look more serious. I don’t think I do look like him. It’s not just the straw hat and the absence of a moustache. It’s not just the slightly reddened face (is that the effect of the sun or of not having drunk any water for a couple of hours?) in contrast to Hitler’s customary death-pallor. It’s a moral dimension. But no, that’s unsustainable. On the face of it, there is nothing of substance to separate my appearance from that of a tyrant who was only too willing to expend other people’s lives so that a personal ambition of his - a racist vision of the world - could come a little closer to reality.
I walk out of the courtyard in order to make my way to another of
the Nazi Party buildings. But which one? Let’s see…
The assembly area in front of the war memorial – standing
room for 150,000 people and a rostrum for one Adolf Hitler, according
to my guide book - isn’t there any more. And the enormous
horseshoe-shaped German Stadium with room for 400,000 interested
spectators plus one Führer was never built. So that leaves
the ‘Zeppelin Tribune and Fields’ as the best bet for
my next port of call. Once I get my bearings, I find I’m walking
along The Great Road. It’s 60 metres wide, apparently, and
it goes on like this for a couple of kilometres. The sunshine is
bouncing off the granite slabs and keeping my temperature up despite
the bottle of water I’ve now necked. I wouldn’t have
guessed this was a road, I would have said it was a car park. That’s
because most of it is being used as a car park today. It seems that
there is some kind of motor sport event, taking place in the Zeppelin
Fields. I haven’t got a ticket to get in, but the spectators
are making there way out now, and I’m advised by security
that if I leave it half an hour or so I should be able to get in
myself without any problem. So I walk round in a big loop, beginning
to realise just how huge these Rally Grounds are. I sit down with
my guide-book for a while in some shade. Albert Speer’s monumental
architecture consciously echoes the architecture of Greece and Rome,
I read. Concentration camp labour provided the stone for the buildings,
I now know. And as soon as that perspective sinks in, then the buildings
strike me as disgusting. Soon the Pyramids are horrible to contemplate
as well. Just another case of the lives of hundreds of thousands
being turned into monuments to the vanity of an elite few.
When I get to the Zeppelin Fields I am allowed in, sure enough.
There are people and vehicles everywhere. But I can see where it
is I want to get to. The main ‘tribune’ is the tiered
spectators’ area at the front of the Fields, which used to
have a giant swastika of gilded copper on top of it. This was blown
up at the end of the war by American troops. However, still in existence
is one of those optimally situated rostrums that Hitler was so keen
on. That’s where I’m heading. I make a start by stepping
up onto the white stone of the tribune itself. It’s been used
as a grandstand today, and I think the Formula 3 cars have been
racing around the great stone construction. There is litter everywhere,
though groundsmen are already getting rid of it. I’m being
cautious about where I go, but it seems there is nothing to stop
me from walking along the top row of the tribune. There used to
be a row of columns adding to the height of the structure, but these
were blown up when deemed unsafe in the sixties. The place must
have looked at its most striking - its most chilling - when in 1936
the pillars and swastika were here, and in addition a cathedral
of light effect was created by a hundred anti-aircraft spotlights
being switched on at once while directed up into the sky. Enter
Adolf from the raised area under the giant swastika to a standing
ovation. ‘Heil Hitler’ they all mouthed, as they did
that Nazi salute. What was it called again, the stiff arm job? Maybe
it didn’t have a name. But if it did I’m pleased to
realise that I’ve forgotten what it was.
In this central spot, directly under where the giant swastika used
to be, there is a black doorway, which is from where Hitler and
his henchmen would have walked out to the adulation of the crowds.
On that black door someone has painted a white swastika, and then
scored though it and written, ‘no more’ in English.
But its crazy of me to pick out that detail, when all around there
are garish flags and banners (motor company flags, not National
Socialist party ones, I should add). There is a light blue banner
covering much of the front of the top of the tribune, advertising
Nestlé ice-cream. Looking down from the grandstand I can
see a giant screen that is showing a post-race interview. And everywhere
there are mechanics and roadies, packing things away.
The Hitler rostrum itself is just a few rows of cement-cum-granite
below me. It’s a little balcony with a metal railing all round
it. I want to stand exactly there so as to get the precise perspective
that Hitler got. Trouble is, there’s a wire fence between
me and the balcony. However, it seems that if I go to the side of
the fence, and step onto the two-foot high wall that leads to the
balcony, then take a couple of careful steps, I’ll be on the
rostrum itself. Shall I do that? Well, first let’s read what
it says on the wire fence:
Sperrzone
TV Kamera
Betreten verboten
Technischer Aufbau
MotorSport Club Nürnberg
I translate this as permission to go wherever my conscience dictates.
Yes, it seems I am allowed to stand on the very rostrum that Hitler
occupied. Why else would it still be in existence other than to
chasten the living with the mistakes of the dead? So let’s
not think about it any more, let’s just go.
The view from here is incredible. I can’t remember ever feeling
as weighed-down with what? Not guilt, exactly. The Holocaust was
nothing to do with me. But at some level I do feel responsible.
If I want Einstein to be part of my tribe – which I do - then
I have to accept that Hitler is a member as well. It’s a tribe
called the human race and it’s full of plonkers as well as
stars. Actually, for me Isaac Newton is a better example of a star
than Einstein, because I understand the Law of Gravity, whereas
I’m not sure that I do understand Einstein’s Theory
of Relativity. I know how Newton must have felt the day he woke
up to the realisation that he could explain almost everything he
saw from the window of his Lincolnshire home. He could explain it
by the fact that all things in the universe were attracted to all
other things in the universe in proportion to their mass and in
inverse proportion to the distance between the things. Ha! The simple
law explained why the apple fell from the tree to the ground; why
the moon stayed up in the sky; why when a man ran he moved across
the surface of the earth and not either into it or up into the sky!
And I have shared the joy Newton felt on another day when he proved
his vision using mathematics. Isaac was humble about his discoveries,
invoking the efforts of other scientists when he said he’d
been: ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’. And so
here I am standing in the jackboots of a dwarf. Yes, I feel responsible
for the Holocaust, once removed. Hitler was a human being; he was
one of us. I’m trying to think how the leader of the National
Socialist Party must have felt the day in 1933 that he came up with
the Nürnberg Laws that began the disenfranchisement of the
Jews in Germany. He should have felt a huge weight on his shoulders.
He should have felt terrible. And as I’m trying to get my
head round this I look in the camera-mirror:
If I looked never-more serious in the last mirror, I look never-more steadfast in this one. No anti-semitic laws are going to be passed while I’m standing here. A moral stance has been taken and there will be no shifting from it. I’m not used to taking moral stances. There isn’t an everyday need for them any more. (There are enough people taking a moral stance to keep things going pretty smoothly in my part of the world.) But it’s good to know I’ve got such a thing up my sleeve.
I keep walking. As I make my way to the underground station from
which I started my afternoon, I realise that I must be getting close
to some other event. I follow the stream of people with picnic baskets
and suddenly come across an extraordinary sight. Thousands of people
are sitting down over a huge green area. And just as I’m taking
in the densely packed scene - brightly dressed people lying on their
backs, lying on their fronts, sitting on rugs - music starts up.
Classical music. This must be the concert that Gabi invited Nic
and I along to. She will be here amongst the sitting thousands.
Isn’t that great? A Nürnberg Rally for the twenty-first
century.
Evelyn Waugh comes to mind, I’ve been holding off his robust
appearance there since rushing through the Nürnberg Trial display
at the Documenation Centre, but now I’m ready for him. The
British writer, who I hope to be writing a biography about in months
to come, spent a couple of days in Nürnberg while the Trials
were in full swing in 1946. He described the town as consisting
of a courthouse and a five-star hotel in a desert of corpse-scented
rubble. Ha! Look at it now. The medieval centre has been rebuilt
and the people devote their leisure time en masse to enjoying the
fruits of a classical tradition.
A year or so before coming to Nürnberg, Waugh had been given
permission by the Home Office to take leave from the army, enabling
him to write the magnificent Brideshead Revisited. I suppose the
scene I’m looking at now could be related to that book’s
protagonist’s surprise and joy when, on taking a day trip
out of Oxford during the University’s summer term, he turns
a corner and catches his first sight of the glorious stately home
that is called Brideshead.
Still fresh from this literary triumph, Waugh’s intention
was to write about his Nürnberg visit, at least for journals
and newspapers, but all he managed was a single letter and a one-page
diary entry. A month or so later he was invited to Spain, and out
of this free trip came the short novel Scott-King’s Modern
Europe. The premise of the book is that a dim little classics master
from an English public school is invited by a post-war socialist
government to a celebration of the classical poet, Bellorius, who
the classics master knows a great deal about and whom the modernist
nation claims as its own. The celebration turns out to be entirely
bogus, its sole intention being to create positive public relations
for a philistine government. Ultimately, Scott-King is left stranded
in the middle of Europe without funds or official status and with
no easy way back to his tranquil home village of Granchester. So,
it seems that Evelyn felt more compelled to say something about
the undesirability of the new post-war socialist administrations
in Europe, than to come to terms with the terrible fate of a German
civilisation that could be traced back through the Renaissance.
I feel…How do I feel as I look around once more? I’m
too tired to think of a phrase that means the complete opposite
of corpse-scented rubble, but that’s what I need right now.
This place would seem to have risen from the smouldering ashes that
Evelyn Waugh looked disinterestedly upon. That the city has pulled
itself up by its own bootlaces is another cliché I could
use in lieu of the exact words to describe what’s in front
of me: this landscape of enlightened listeners. I’ll just
take one more picture and maybe that will tell the story as well
as any words of mine could do.
DAY TWO
This morning we had to get going a bit too early for my liking.
I didn’t get to lie for long in my schloss bed, listening
to the kids arrive for nursery. And there was no leisurely breakfast
for me and Nicola, sitting at the trestle table drinking first one
then a second mug of quality coffee, swopping notes about life.
In fact we’ve been a bit off with each other this morning.
Nic’s got these meetings that she wants me to attend, but
which she’d clearly have liked to travel to in solitude, allowing
the opportunity for some low-key mental preparation. Instead, there
was me walking by her side, if not chatting inanely then at least
puncturing her train of thought from time to time in order to ask
where we were going and such like. The main problem for her was
that, having at one stage shown her irritation, she had to exert
a lot of charm demonstrating that I wasn’t being a nuisance
and that she was cool with me being there. And I had to waste resources
trying to make out that I was relaxed about it all from my own standpoint.
Whereas, in fact, for a few minutes I was really pissed off about
being there at Nicola’s invitation and yet having become uncomfortably
aware that she wanted me to as good as disappear.
We got over it though. And I feel we’re back on an even keel
again, thanks to the surfeit of goodwill that I know lies on both
sides. We’re sitting in the offices of an organisation that
Nic refers to as ‘Internationale’. This runs the relationships
of Nürnberg with the cities it’s twinned with. Nic must
liase with this place in order to get permission to do what she
wants to do. What she wants to do, is to get permission from the
relevant authority in the city council to use the interior of a
picturesque medieval bridge, one whose covered area used to be the
dwelling place of Nürnberg’s former hangman. She wants
permission to install the mirrors she intends to collect from residents
of Nürnberg in what must be the German equivalent of a listed
building, and a most evocative space. The main person Nic liases
with at Internationale is Christina Plewinski, who we’ll be
meeting for lunch. But Nic’s also been given the part-time
services of an intern, called Johanna , and it’s her that
Nic is talking to right now.
As I understand it, Johanna, Nicola and I are going to walk to what’s
most commonly referred to as ‘The Hangman’s Bunker’,
where we’ll meet the bloke who is responsible for the building.
We must get his (or his department head’s) permission to use
the space as a gallery in which to hang domestic mirrors. So Nic
talked through (last week) with Johanna exactly what she wants in
a general way to propose to the official, and Johanna has turned
it into a page of German. But before the page is handed to him for
his perusal, Nic has to check that it doesn’t say anything
that could be undiplomatic at this delicate stage of the negotiation.
In other words, Johanna is verbally translating her German back
into English, and Nic is talking this through with her. A process
that is resulting in Johanna making the odd change to the document
as they go along.
I’m here to observe in the widest sense, so having understood
what’s going on at Johanna’s work-station, I take a
wander out into the corridor. There is a display of gifts from Nürnberg’s
various twinned cities. A pennant from Strathclyde Police is Glasgow’s
most obvious contribution. What other cities is Nürnberg twinned
with? There is a pigeon-hole for each city, and each of these is
filled with a pile of A4 sized sheets of card. These are headed
up: Atlanta, Venice, Cracow, Skopje, San Carlos, Gera, Khorkov,
Prague, Haclera, Antalya, Shenzhen and Kavala. I don’t know
where about half of these cities are, but I do surmise it’s
an impressive list. Glasgow’s card has a pink border and I
pick one off the top of the pile and sit down with it in the office.
Of course, it’s written in German and so my eye only picks
up the odd real name. ‘Robert Burns’, for example. Now
the poet had very little to do with the city of Glasgow. And for
a second it makes me defensive about having started off my take
on Nürnberg by referencing Adolf Hitler. But I can relax about
that, because there is a vital link between this city and that individual.
Burns and Glasgow, though? I suppose all it means is that with the
Glasgow twinning comes a link with the whole of Scotland, past and
present. Yes, that makes sense.
I turn over the card and again only a few words are recognisable,
essentially the names of the famous: William Wallace and Mary Queen
of Scots, for goodness sake. By which I mean they have no solid
link with Glasgow, as such, and only an old, historical and semi-fictional
link with Scotland. However, near the bottom of the page are the
words ‘Alasdair Gray’. Now his novel Lanark is as good
an introduction to Glasgow as it would be possible to get. In this
bold book, the Scottish city is given the fictional name of ‘Unthank’.
The author describes an emotionally cold and intellectually dismal
place whose inhabitants are incapable of loving each other. Gray
is extremely open and crucifyingly honest throughout, and I imagine
any reader (German or otherwise) would be as much struck by these
positive Scottish attributes as the negative ones Gray determinedly
brings to light.
I’m fascinated by the card, and keep turning it over. From
Robert Burns to Alasdair Gray and back.... Which side of the mirror
shows the true side of Glasgow, the true face of the Scot? And,
talking of mirrors, I wonder what the equivalent take of Glasgow’s
International Relations office on Nürnberg is. I suppose I
could find out via the PC behind Johanna that I’ve already
used to check my e-mail. I sidle over and put ‘Glasgow’s
twin cities’ into Google, and there they are: Dalian (China),
Havana (where Nic has forged ties and completed a project thanks
to resources made available through this official twinning business),
Nuremberg, Rostov-on-Don (Russia) and Turin (Italy). What does the
Glasgow City Council website say about Nuremberg? Just a sober paragraph
about population and economic prosperity. Apparently, Nuremberg
is perfectly placed to take advantage of the new markets developing
in the east. Nothing about its 1000 years of civilisation, though.
Well, what would a Glasgow town councillor know about that? Still,
I dare say care has been taken in keeping the foreign city’s
pen-portrait from going altogether off the rails:
Senior Council Employee: “Ye haven’t mentioned Hitler
on the Nuremberg web page, have ye, son?”
Junior Council Employee: “Not a word about that cunt, boss.
Not a fuckin’ word.”
Oh yes, there is something mad and funny about Scottishness. Or
at least the Scottishness I was subjected to in early life and which
I now carry around with me, unable - and unwilling - to shrug off
its distorted reflections.
Nicola interrupts my reverie to let me know that we’re off
to the Hangman’s Bridge, with Johanna as translator. Great,
I’m all for getting more thoroughly immersed in our host city.
TO BE CONTINUED…
