Thought it strange this Mayor Bloomberg chose today to light up the
World Trade Center site - 5 more bodies of dead firemen were taken from
the ground.
Albert Speer in his Diary, might add, makes reference to the watchword
Bible Calendar the Baron had which the Communist guard took from him
claiming it was "coded"....really....who ever would have thought and I
wonder, where this man got this "calendar".
Regardless it was Albert Speer who lit up German with his Cathedral of
Light....many pictures of this and it was a sight to behold in fact
looking at the Twin Towers lights tonight - I thought shades of Albert
Speer - He's Back.
Normally one celebrates a birthday - not like some say the want to
celebrate the day Martin Luther King was killed rather than day he was
born.....this Twin Tower Lights what kind of a celebration is this - to
a death and not a rebirth?
Albert Speer was a great architect - but his Cathedral of Light was
something for which he will long be remembered.
Strange though that Bloomberg would light up this light on a day of
death for it is more of a memorial to Albert Speer than to the nearly
3,000 who died that day - the sitting ducks in the tower.
Wonder who those two guys were who thought this upfor the Twin
Towers.....were they maybe thinking of Speer that day?
Sppers work with lights was something to behold....later after he left
Spandau (where Trithemius is alleged to come up with a bible calendar
code) Speer visited Washington DC while von Braun was working on beating
Russia to the Moon which he did. Had he gone to the Russians, well
maybe we would be sining Russia My Native Land?
Saba
Light Show Stirs Dark Memories by Steve Kettm
Light Show Stirs Dark Memories
by Steve Kettmann
3:00 a.m. Dec. 14, 1999 PST
BERLIN -- The ghosts of Germany's Nazi past have a way of popping up
when you least expect it, even when people are trying to have a good
time.
It's happening again, as this city that loves to party gears up for a
New Year's celebration that will be capped by a massive light show
expected to draw half a million people to the famous Victory column at
the center of the Tiergarten. Organizers of the "Art in Heaven" light
show bill it as the largest ever, and there's no doubt it will be a
technological wonder.
As the project Web site makes clear, this is meant to be a dramatic
statement. Using 3.8 million watts of electricity and sending light 70
kilometers into the sky, it should be visible as far away as Dresden and
Hamburg. A crew of 760 will work for five days to set it up, laying 70
kilometers of cable.
Even on the site, the show looks impressive, but artist Gert Hof has in
mind a different sort of drama for shortly before midnight. The plan is
to have the Victory column, or Siegess�ule, lit by 250,000 torches.
"I wish to create a moment of silence," Hof said. "Everybody should
experience these first seconds of the new millennium in a peaceful and
thoughtful manner, before the massive light cathedral will build up in
the sky."
But not everybody likes the idea. Especially those with long memories.
Much of the controversy has to do with the Victory column itself,
sitting in the park and topped by a golden angel.
Although it dates back more than a century and was built to commemorate
Prussian military victories under the first kaiser, the column does have
associations to Germany's Nazi past, too: Albert Speer, the Third
Reich's armaments minister and Hitler's favorite architect, moved the
column to its present location in the Tiergarten.
Speer's name also comes up when the subject of dramatic lighting is
raised.
Joern Jensen, mayor of the Tiergarten district, wants the light show
scrapped, saying that it harkens back to Speer's illuminated spectacles
that glorified the Nazi regime. He says the current plans will tar the
city's reputation and taint the celebrations.
"When I found out what would happen there -- this was in late November
-- I was scared about all the associations that could take place if this
event shall happen," Jensen told Wired News. "This spectacle of the
lights is just like the light show Albert Speer made for the Nazi party
rallies in Nuremberg.
"I think all those associations are too much for you to say 'This is
only art and there's nothing about the history we Germans have at that
place.' I think art always is combined with space and time, and this
light show at that place and at this time is wrong, and is political
failure.
"You can't do that with this history we have in Germany. We shouldn't
give a message to the next millennium with a kind of art like the Nazis
did, because all our neighbors, especially those in the East, are afraid
of this big Germany in the middle of Europe again."
Unpleasant echoes from the past are a given in Germany, but the
light-show controversy appears to have kicked up an even stronger
reaction than usual in favor of putting the past in the past. Even the
head of Berlin's Jewish community, Andreas Nachama, issued a strong
public statement defending the light show. "It's just a party," said
Nachama, whose father survived Auschwitz and helped rebuild Berlin's
devastated Jewish community after the war.
"So maybe I'm more sensitive about our history and about the political
conflicts that could follow this event," said Jensen, 56, a Green Party
member who has lived in Berlin since 1963.
"Most people I talk to tell me it's all right that I speak out about the
light show, but of course those people are mostly intellectuals. I'm
sure there are many people that don't care about all this. They only
want to have a party and a big show. They don't care about history. It's
mostly important for me to speak out to academics and others who are the
most informed about this background."
Peter Massin, a spokesman for "Art in Heaven," said Jensen does not
speak for many. "I think it's only a few who make this association," he
said.
"It's a most crazy thing to make a light show and then get a comparison
to a Nazi event. This is very, very far out. This is no political
statement whatsoever. The main discussion now is about 'are we allowed
to do something like this? Can we use light for a show when Mr. Speer
also used light for a show? Is it morally right? Or should we stop all
light shows?'"
It's true that the Nazis eagerly embraced technology, in the propaganda
arena as well as on the battlefield.
Germany was the first nation to use jet fighters in combat, and its V1
and V2 rockets were the ancestors of the modern ICBMs. Ironically, they
failed to develop an atomic bomb, a weapon that was never taken
seriously by Hitler, according to scholars.
But the Nazis were innovators on the propaganda battlefield as well.
In devising his dramatic effect for one of the Nuremberg rallies, Speer
hit on the idea of arranging more than a 100 spotlights in a huge
circle, then pointing them straight up into the night sky. The result
was chilling, aptly described by Neville Henderson, then Britain's
ambassador to Germany, as a "cathedral of ice."
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