Thank you endless repeats.. Thank you…

I like the advert and the guy in it is hot. I still wouldn’t buy a Citroen though.

Worst article ever.

I have immense respect for this advert, I love it!

First of all, the first take is located in south-western Germany, in fact, it’s somewhere in Baden-Wuerttemberg, in fact it’s one part of the Alps near the Swiss border, called the Allgaeu, where one can find high enough mountains AND funny looking manors.

We hear “The Ride of the Valkyries”, a part of the opera “The Valkyrie” composed by Richard Wagner, which had it’s premiere in 1870. It’s no Nazi music at all, Wagner, a nationalist and antisemite, intended to write a kind of prototypical German music with German libretti – so did Bedrich Smetana in Czechoslowakia (“The Moldau”) and Modest Mussorgsky (“Boris Godunow”) in Russia. That’s nationalism, not National Socialism, and quite bombastic – Twain describes three hours of agony while listening to a Wagner opera in “A Tramp Abroad”.

The fact, that Hitler adored Wagner and that this music was played in German extermination camps doesn’t do any harm to it’s artistic value and to the fact, that many people associate it with Germany, which was crucial for Wagner’s intention to compose it. On the other hand I fully understand, why this music was banned in Israel.

The “fight” in the beginning shows in fact, that both of the ones fighting are members of a so called “fighting student corporation”, Twain takes at least one chapter to describe all that stuff, the so called “Mensur” (measure). It’s a very ritualised kind of fighting, with very strange rules.

All student corporations, which also had prominent members of jewish descent, such as Heinrich Heine, no matter, if they were fighting ones or not, where forbidden and disbanded by the Nazi Regime by 1935 and converted into one organisation, ruled by the Nazis, the so called “Nationalsozialistische Studentenbund”. This process was called “Gleichschaltung”.

The next important scene is the village, the car is entering shortly afterwards. The architecture, the musicians… That’s in Bavaria! The guy has travelled frickin’ 400 kilometers to eat some Nürnberger Rostbratwürstel or Thüringer, or whatever? By the way – if you ordered Nürnberger Rostbratwürstel in Upper Bavaria they look at you, as if they want to stone you to death, as they prefer white sausages! And there’s nothing Nazi about it – it’s plain regional stuff and habits.

All that dead stuffed or skeletonized animals on the walls – normal for me. I grew up with that, as my grandpops did some hunting, he even wore that loden jackets and those silly hats. No worry about that. Most people likely to be dressed like that are Japanese or other Preissn (Prussians – pejorative for everyone who doesn’t belong to the Bavarian natives).

Nazi guys like Hitler or Himmler also loved to run around in what Bavarians mostly regard as festive costume. There’s nothing Nazi about that clothes, people who regarded themselves as anti-Nazi also wore them at the same time as Hitler.

The “Reichsadler”. Some European countries seeing themselves as heirs to the Roman Empire have chosen the eagle as heraldic animal, so did Russia, Austria and – surprise, surprise! – Germany. Do you even know where the term “3rd Reich” comes from? The Nazis regarded themselves in the continuity of the Roman Empire. After the Roman Empire had declined the “Sacrum Romanum Imperum”, in German “Heiliges Römisches Reich” was founded. It included parts of the modern states of Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Slowakia, Italy, Belgium – and that was about the year 1000 AD. The “Sacrum Romanum Imperum” which was more like a loose federation of small dukedoms ended in 1806, when Europe’s map was fragmented into nations after the Napoleonic Wars. Metternich and Talleyrand, anyone? The Nazis tried in a way to legitimate their regime by pretending that they would restore the old pre-WWI-empire of 1890 or earlier.

Most of the motifs of this ad are based in this time and have nothing to do with Nazis.

It is a large black and white bear that comes from China….