Continuing the theme of the necessity of fiction, I found the following paragraph in an article Ian Buruma wrote about the nature of the portraits being painted in Weimar Germany:Civilized life cannot be sustained without hypocrisy. A certain moral code, a degree of courtesy and decorum, are necessary to keep out instincts under a modicum of control The unforgettable downfall of Professor Dr. Immanuel Rath, played by Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel, is a warning of what happens when all social niceties are stripped away, when a man loses all self-respect. When men and women are reduced to nothing but their lowest appetites, we live in a state of barbarism. This is what Weimar period artists painted, for this, in their view, was what society had become. Their honesty would be costly to them. When the Nazis made barbarism official, these artists were among the first ones to go—into exile, concentration camps, of "inner emigration."
Having already suggested that barbarism may have been made official over a decade ago, this observation seems particularly appropriate.
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