Karl Hofer, German
“Do You Hear the Lifeguards Sing?” From Bermuda’s National Tour of “Les Mis,” 1935
Oil on canvas
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MASTERPIECE #3773
/// These Young Men with Flags pose in the sand.
But WHICH flags? That was carefully planned.
Representing no State,
(nor a group preaching hate),
we thus cannot know WHERE these boys stand.
/// For a German, nineteen-thirty-five
was a complex time to be alive.
Karl’s “Degenerative Art”
should have made him depart
from a place where his views couldn’t thrive.
/// From his Jűdin first wife Karl was forced
to split up and the two were divorced.
Sent to Auschwitz, she died.
She could not have denied
“impure” blood which had through her veins coursed.
/// He did not other troubles avoid.
As an artist could not be employed.
Karl did not lose his life,
(nor new “Aryan” wife),
but his art was by air raids destroyed.
/// The destruction of art is no joke,
though Karl seems like a cold, selfish bloke.
His ex-wife was killed (gassed),
yet his oils didn’t last.
Was it “just” that both went up in smoke?
/// Because not of the Hebrew tribe who
Nuremberg Laws were made to pursue,
Hofer DID make it through.
And yet, what will YOU do
if the Brownshirts start coming for you?