Mixing Beauty and Filth: It’s Complicated and Creepy

The choice of a first name for the pathetic ‘Fjordland’ character wasn’t immediately obvious, so I asked our German translator why he thought the ‘comedy’ writers team chose that first name. Why Heine? Isn’t that German?

Oh, wait. He’s in his Nazi uniform in the screen cap.

JLH’s answer to my question actually crossed in our emails. In other words, he’d been thinking of the same thing. So he said:

I think I see the “logic” of the first name, Heine. The character is not only misogynistic, Nazi and paraplegic--he is also a closet Jew.

Heinrich Heine was the great 19th century poet who was exiled from his home by the authorities of various German states who found him to be undesirable and revolutionary. What better way to evoke contempt in their little quisling hearts than to combine a woman-hater, cripple and Jew and call them all “Nazi”?

One example of Heine’s attitude toward, for instance, censorship is this “essay”:

The German Censors
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The university in his native Düsseldorf was named for him in 1988, after a stubborn, more-or-less underground resistance which was no doubt inspired by his Jewishness--despite that fact that he had converted to Protestantism.

JLH gives us some background on Heinrich Heine, he of Lorelei fame:

One of Heine’s best-known poems which was one of several made into Lieder and sung in almost every Lieder recital, is the Lorelei, about a fabulous, magical woman who entranced boatmen along the Rhine. I am sending you a link with the music and a translation.

It was so identified with Heine that it became a haunting leitmotif in an American TV mini-series in the 1950s or 1960s about Jews in Germany just before the Holocaust--played on the family piano, I think by the young daughter. It was shown in Germany too, and had a great effect.

Here’s some historical background on Lieder:

For German speakers, the term Lied has a long history ranging from 12th century troubadour songs (Minnesang) via folk songs (Volkslieder) and church hymns (Kirchenlieder) to 20th-century workers songs (Arbeiterlieder) or protest songs (Kabarettlieder, Protestlieder).

In Germany, the great age of song came in the 19th century. German and Austrian composers had written music for voice with keyboard before this time, but it was with the flowering of German literature in the Classical and Romantic eras that composers found high inspiration in poetry that sparked the genre known as the Lied. The beginnings of this tradition are seen in the songs of Mozart and Beethoven, but it is with Schubert that a new balance is found between words and music, a new absorption into the music of the sense of the words.

A blurb on Lorelei and Heine gives this information:

“Die Lorelei” is arguably the most famous of German folk songs, certainly it is the best known in the English speaking world. The Lorelei (or Loreley) is a rock on the River Rhine, and herein it becomes a mermaid or siren, doing what these fascinating but deadly creatures do best, luring hapless sailors to their deaths.

The song about this particular Rheine Maiden was actually written as a poem by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) and published in 1827; it was set to music by Friedrich Silcher (1789-1860). Heine was a Jew, and during the Nazi era an attempt was actually made to suppress the song, but the German people wouldn’t stand for this, so the name of the author was quietly forgotten in that time, although Heine is today one of the most famous German poets.

“Die Lorelei” has been recorded by numerous artists over the years, and remains popular as both a folk and a classical work.

Here is a version of Lorelei, sung simply, as a Lied should be:


Finally, regarding this whole ugly creation, I received this email last night from a young Norwegian man:

I watched the clip from the Welfare Office about “Heine Fjordland”. I used to love that show, but that clip made me sick. We can be glad that this show is sent late at night.. wait. This show used to be broadcast at 22.30, but it has been moved to 21.30 which makes it prime time television, on one of NRK’s less-watched channels, but still. Season premiere, ridiculing Fjordman, moved to be broadcasted at prime-time, smells fishy to me.

Yes, it does to me also. Fishy and cruel and inhumane. If this is how Norwegians collectively mourn their dead, they have a long way to go when it comes to common decency.

Instead of mourning, they mount an attack. They want Fjordman demonized, disgraced, and a figure of ugly fun. That’s how to create a scapegoat: dehumanize him. These people seem to be creepily good at it.

The campers on Utoya did the same thing regarding the Jews, during their loud support of Hamas, a recognized and contemptible terrorist group that kills Palestinians. Remember Utoya’s feckless BDS demonstration?

Now, in retaliation for Fjordman’s being cited admiringly in a killer’s writings we have the deformed Heine Fjordland - a paraplegic who is mute; who is both a Jew and a Nazi. How… umm… nuanced.

How despicable.