Saul Friedlander quotes

One of the characteristics of kitsch is precisely the neutralization of 'extreme situations', particularly death, by turning them into some sentimental idyll.
-- Saul Friedlander

#Kitsch #Sentimental #Characteristics

Susannah Heschel's The Aryan Jesus is a brilliant and erudite investigation of the convergence between major trends in German Protestantism and Nazi racial anti-Semitism. By concentrating on the history of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, Heschel describes in forceful detail the Nazification of all aspects of Protestant theology, including the Aryanization of Jesus himself. This is a highly original and important contribution to our understanding of the Third Reich.
-- Saul Friedlander

#Religious #Jesus #Understanding

Facing the kitsch aesthetic is the unfathomable world of myths.
-- Saul Friedlander

#World #Kitsch #Myth

There is a kitsch of death. For example, death transformed into sweet sleep: The 'good night, sweet prince' of the last scene of Hamlet.
-- Saul Friedlander

#Good Night #Sweet #Sleep

Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

Every ambiguous, false, tearful, emotional exaggeration brings about that typically kitsch attitude which could be defined as "sentimentality."

But as I see it, the most corrupt art is the sentimental the art of orange blossoms which make pale women swoon.

Women are not as sentimental as men, and are not so easily touched with the unspoken poetry of nature, being less poetical, and having less imagination; they are more fitted for practical affairs, and would make fewer failures in business.

What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.

Maxwell is serious, dedicated, awkward, forgetful, pompous to a certain degree, sentimental.

I revolted from sentimentality, less because it was false than because it was cruel.

One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.

No one can do inspired work without genuine interest in his subject and understanding of its characteristics.

Characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.