Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840 he later composed works for piano and orchestra many Lieder (songs for voice and piano) four symphonies an opera and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Indeed, the EU could not have been born without its founding fathers making the bold decision to end centuries of war and enmity.Robert Schumann was a German composer and influential music critic. It is a reminder too about how the EU and the post-Communist reunification of Europe have been a source of rapprochement between countries, despite the bitter experiences of war. But the Polish reaction is a timely reminder about how the past makes it difficult for Europe to speak and act with one voice.
#UNSERE MÜTTER UNSERE VÄTER ALBUM ART SERIES#
No doubt, Poland’s anger with the series will subside. The case of Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter shows that despite the close personal ties that Chancellor Merkel has forged with her Polish counterpart Donald Tusk-leading to vastly improved relations between the two countries-the past can still easily puncture any relationship. But there were also numerous cases of Poles protecting and hiding Jews from the German occupiers. In July 1946, 40 Jews who had survived the Holocaust and returned to their home city of Kielce were killed in a Polish pogrom. Anti-Semitism was widespread in Poland even after 1945. In Poland alone, nearly 6 million people were killed during German occupation, including 3 million Polish Jews.
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His intention was to encourage a debate among generations “to speak for the first time about the experience” of the war. The drama, he argued, was based on historically vetted material. Nico Hofmann, the producer of the series, said he had been scrupulous with his research. “I am shocked.” Other Polish diplomats, among them Poland’s ambassador the United States, Ryszard Schnepf, have also spoken out against the program. “The image of Poland and the Polish resistance against the German occupiers as conveyed by this series is perceived by most Poles as extremely unjust and offensive,” he wrote. The Polish ambassador to Germany, Jerzy Margański, has complained bitterly in a letter to ZDF about this depiction of Poles. In another scene, a Pole belonging to the Home Army, the dominant Polish resistance movement during the war, says that Jews should be drowned like rats. When he seeks refuge among resistance fighters in Poland, he hides his Jewish past after he hears their anti-Semitic remarks. One scene in the series shows Viktor, the young Jew, escaping from a train on the way to a concentration camp.
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The headline read “Falsification of History: How the Germans are Turning Themselves Into Victims of the Second World War.”īesides the belief that the ZDF series was rewriting history by portraying the Germans as victims, what particularly rankled the Poles was the assumption that they were all anti-Semites. Indeed, so great is the Poles’ anger over the series that the conservative weekly news magazine Uważam Rze recently published a cover with a mock-up of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a concentration camp prisoner. To this day, Germany’s Nazi past continues to influence the country’s relations, especially with its Eastern neighbors.īesides dealing with the human side of the war, ZDF reopened old and deep wounds between Germany and Poland, exposing the fragility of the rapprochement between the two countries, which began in the early 1970s. Yet the passage of time has not diminished the burden of guilt and responsibility.