National Socialism in Freiburg

Don't panic; it's all history. Yesterday Red Baron attended the opening ceremony of an exhibition: Nationalsozialismus in Freiburg, at the university's auditorium. The entrance to the building was well protected by security staff, for the organizers feared demonstrations by right-wingers.

Mayor Dieter Salomon greeted the audience.
The photo in color behind him shows a scene of a rally
on Münsterplatz during the NSDAP district assembly in 1939.
The guy in traditional costume looks skeptical.
Is he aware of the war that started in September of the same year?

The auditorium was fully packed when Mayor Salomon addressed the assembled dignitaries and everyday people. This remark was the only joke in his heartfelt speech. He deviated from his manuscript several times, speaking off the cuff. With the rise of populists worldwide putting democracies to the test, people in Germany are particularly perturbed. As the Holocaust survivor, the Italian chemist Primo Levi once wrote: It has happened, and therefore it may happen again.

Admittedly the Weimar Republic was an unloved child attacked by the Communists on the left and the Nazis on the right, the latter winning in 1933. So when putting in one, i.e., the populist basket, Donald Trump in the States, Marine le Pen in France, Nigel Farage in England, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and Frauke Petry in Germany, democratic-minded people generally stress the stability of modern democracies, although with an uneasy feeling remaining.

Same rally as in the photo above.
People raising their right hands in the Nazi salute convey an eerie atmosphere.

Following a reception in the auditorium's foyer, attendees were invited to walk 500 meters and see the exhibition at the Augustinermuseum exceptionally open until 11 p.m. on the occasion. The place was too crowded, so Red Baron stayed for a while but shall return another day.

Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller visiting Freiburg in 1935

Here is one of the exhibition items that has already excited me. I did not know that the gleichgeschalteten (brought inline) Lutherans called themselves not only Deutsche Christen (German Christians) but evangelische Nationalsozialisten too.

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