August 26

Today we discussed our visit to the Mathausen concentration camp in class. Everyone started to share their feelings on the experience. One of the things that came up was the question of whether people should be allowed to visit such places. In her book, Still Alive, Ruth Kluger stated that she would never go back to a concentration camp and she doesn’t understand why anybody would want to. Many of my classmates, including myself, initially agreed with her that we didn’t feel a need to go to a concentration camp before we went. After visiting the camp though, most of us changed our minds. I think it is good to visit these places so that we can understand what actually happened during the war and so that we will never forget it. We also talked about how the camp was surrounded by a neighborhood. The people that lived in this town had to have known what was going on at the camp, yet they didn’t do anything about it. Yet again, what could they do about it? They were almost as powerless as the prisoners in some respects because they were so scared of what the Nazis could do to them. Most people didn’t know who they could trust because at the time, the secret police were everywhere.
After class, I went to the Kaisergruft (Imperial crypt) with Stephanie and Jennifer. Since 1633, the Kaisergruft has been the main burial place for members of the Habsburg dynasty. There were many elaborate coffins down there. The most elaborate ones belonged to the most important people, such as Maria Therresia and Franz Joseph and his family. Most people seemed to be most interested in the sarcophagi of Emperor Franz Joseph, Empress Elizabeth, and Crown Prince Rudolf. There were still lots of fresh flowers on their coffins.
After the Kaisergruft, we went back to the Kunsthistorisches Museum to look at more paintings. We were able to look at some paintings by Catholic and Protestant artists. The paintings done by Catholic artists were usually more elaborate. The Catholic artists wanted their subjects to be drawn in by their paintings. They also depicted many saints, whereas the Protestant paintings did not. The Protestant artists from the Reformation usually painted smaller, more portable paintings that were not meant to be ridiculously elaborate. They were more practical with their art. A few of the Catholic artists who had paintings displayed in this museum are Rubens, Peter Bruegel, Tintorretto, Parmigiano. Some of the Protestant artists are Peter Aertsen, Hans Baldung Grien, Lucas Granach, Durer, Hansttolbiem, and Bosch. Examples of Protestant artists’ paintings are Frans Floris’s “The Last Judgement,” “Lucas Cranach’s Judith and Holofernes.” Generally, Catholic artists were from Southern Europe and Protestant artists were from Northern Europe. I didn’t have a certain type of painting that I liked better. Sometimes I liked the simplicity of the Protestant paintings, and sometimes I enjoyed the more elaborate Catholic paintings. I am generally not an art person though, and I can only spend so much time looking at paintings.
The German word of the day is heute, which means “today”.