|
||||
RSSArchive for the ‘germany’ CategoryArt Heist: What’s Your Theory?Posted February 12th, 2008 by Jen in arts & crafts, germany, politics/world news5 Comments »
The spectacular art heist of this past Sunday at the Bührle Museum in Zurich has rocked the art world, and police are working around the clock to solve the case and find any possible connections with other recent thefts, including the theft the previous week of two Pablo Picasso paintings stolen from a Swiss exhibition near Zurich. A note on the museum’s website says “The museum remains closed.”
The stolen art work has been valued at $180 million and comprised four Impressionist masterpieces: Poppies near Vetheuil by Claude Monet (1879), Count Lepic and his Daughters by Edgar Degas (1871), Blossoming Chestnut Branch by Vincent Van Gogh (1890) and Boy in a Red Waistcoat by Paul Cezanne (1888). Since this month my blog features have been about great artists, and the first artist I covered was Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, this breaking news certainly caught my attention. The Bührle Museum did have a Renoir on display, Little Irene, but it wasn’t touched, probably because the three masked gunmen couldn’t carry anymore heavy paintings, and the robbers appeared to have just taken the first four they came to. Motive? I mean, you can’t go out and sell the famous stolen art. “It’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to sell these works,” said Michaela Derra of Ketterer Kunst GmbH, a Munich, Germany-based purveyor of modern and contemporary art. Here is a speculation:
However, I have my own little theory. There is apparently a Saudi collector sending his thugs out to steal art for his private collection. None of the current stories I’ve found on the Bührle theft have mentioned this connection, so I could be promoting an absurd idea. Nonetheless, just two months ago, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, paintings by Picasso and Portinari were stolen, but recovered. One of the suspects in the case told detectives the paintings were to be delivered to a Saudi collector, who has not been publicly named by authorities. The history of Mr. Emil G. Bührle is very interesting, and perhaps he himself was a collector who obtained stolen art, and conceivably everything has come full circle. Bührle, born in Germany, was an industry tycoon who provided weapons to the Third Reich during World War II. In the aftermath of the war, he amassed one of Europe’s most valuable collections of art. It’s a tragedy of the war that the Nazis looted much of the great art owned by Jews, and many of Bührle’s pieces were on a “looted art list.” Exactly how Bührle obtained his collection is unknown, but some of it is “flight art,” works smuggled out by Jews and sold at bargain-basement prices to avoid confiscation by Nazis. Maybe this art heist was Jews taking back their rightful property, via a Saudi collector, who will ask for a ransom. At this point, any theory can be thrown into the ring. Bonhoeffer and Gatto on EducationPosted September 15th, 2007 by Jen in education, germany8 Comments » For Natasha, a post for her International Freedom in Education Day. Since I just spent a great deal of time reading about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I’ll submit something interesting I came across in Eberhard Bethge’s Biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. From p. 17, where he briefly discusses the fact that Dietrich’s mother, Paula Bonhoeffer, homeschooled all eight children for their early schooling:
If Paula Bonhoeffer were raising her family in Germany today, would she have landed in jail? Would Dietrich and his siblings have become wards of the state? Those sound like ridiculous questions; however, that is the reality of what is happening in Germany today. John Taylor Gatto’s The Public School Nightmare: why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought is an excellent essay in which he describes the evolution of modern compulsory education.
Gatto continues his essay with a very interesting remark from none other than Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
I’ll wrap up this post with a simple warning given by Gatto. My hope is that if people understand what sinister objectives lurk beneath compulsory schooling, they will stop being so willing to comply. German citizens need to rise up, en masse, and rebel against this kind of tyranny that leaves them no options, no power to choose.
International Freedom in Education DayPosted September 14th, 2007 by Jen in education, germany5 Comments » Natasha over at Educating Germany is hosting the International Freedom in Education Day. If you have a post to add to her carnival, please head over there; she’ll be running this through tomorrow. If you would like to learn more about the education crisis in Germany, spend some time browsing her site. I’ve written several times, including here and here, about Germany’s mandatory school laws which leave homeschooling families living in fear, often being fined, jailed, or having their children taken away by the state - simply for refusing to send their kids to the public school, choosing instead to educate their own children. I’ll have something by tomorrow to add to Natasha’s effort. She just moved her family to Germany and certainly needs our prayers as she not only works for reform but is putting her words into action, homeschooling her children in Germany. There is also an incredible wealth of information on education/homeschooling in Germany at Dana’s site, just do a search on her site for Germany. Why do I care? I live in the United States and have the freedom to homeschool my kids if I want. Well, I could talk about the fact that there is indeed a trickle-down effect in the international community, I could talk about the U.N. trying to apply international law to the United States, I could talk about many legal or political issues. However, the reason I truly care is not even definable. It’s something about being human and loving and caring for other people, no matter where in the world they live. It’s about brothers and sisters in the Lord who are being persecuted for their faith. It’s about freedom. |
Search
Categories
arts & crafts
blog stuff
book reviews
carnivals
china
education
germany
family life
features
france/french
general
giveaways
health/cooking/food
history
holidays
humor
music
parenting
persecuted church
poetry
politics/world news
product review
religion
science
sports
the office
the ranch
Recent Posts
Photohunt: Pointed (rock and spade)
Independence Day!
WW: Christmas in July
America: the good, the bad, and the ugly
It’s all in the glasses.
Finish Strong
The Unknown Insect (that’s giving me nightmares).
Don’t ask for just a few.
Drywall and Paint
The Squeaky Wheel…gets locked in the bathroom.
Blogroll
A Thousand Words
A True Believer
Ambleside Online
An Island Life
An Untraditional Home
Bending the Twigs
Blind Pig & The Acorn
Boomer in the Pew
Chasing the Wind
Chrysalis
Coffee Mom
Consent of the Governed
Demand Debate
Dishpan Dribble
Dr. Sanity
Educating Germany
French Word-A-Day
Heart of the Matter
Homeschool Radio Shows
Learning As We Go Homeschool
Life Nurturing Education
Marriage Monday
Meditations and Confessions of a Homemaker
MooBee Farm
Mrs. D’s Multiplication Lapbook
No Fighting, No Biting!
Our Seven Qtpies
Peace Hill Press
Pebble Chaser
Postcard from Provence
Pounding the Pavement
Principled Discovery
Pseudo-Polymath
Rapp Family Aixtreme Life
Rocks In My Dryer
Rouge-Bleu
Sandier Pastures
Shore Stories
Simple Pleasures
Small World
Sprittibee
Susan Wise Bauer
TeamMASCOT
The Baldwin Project
The Bonny Glen
The Parenting Diaries
The Thomas Institute
Timberdoodle
Timothy Moms
Under His Construction
RSS Feeds
RSS 1.0
RSS 2.0
ATOM
|
|||

Oh, did the Bonhoeffer family have it right, way back in the first decade of the 1900s! Does German schooling “break the back” of its children? Could this be a reason for the number of homeschooling families in Germany, despite the dire consequences? Yes, it’s illegal, since about 1938 (and do you know 