Von Der Schulenburg
In the last decade, the alternation of governments which have governed the city government, the urban landscape of Verona is populated by many things ugly and often on the edge of kitsch, if not longer, from bronze effigies of Shakespeare and Don Leonardi peeking under the doors of the Bra and Via Mazzini Reset the churchyard of St George's Square and islands, from nano policeman who stands outside the Porta San Zeno unlikely lampposts style Rive gauche planted on the geometry of the rational-lictors riverside between Ponte Garibaldi and the Ponte Pietra.
In this depressing list, from which emerges, inexorable extinction of basic aesthetic principles and good manners that until the middle of last century were easily mastered by the last surveyor of Civil Engineers, a special place it is without doubt the monument opened in 2003 at the Courtyard of the Court neatly ignoring the many prestigious levatesi voices of protest against the operation.
The object in question, focusing on the supposed statue of Marshal J. Matthias von der Schulenburg, a man of Prussian arms to the pay of Venice at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, was created to celebrate the great-grandson Werner (1881-1958), diplomat, money order, writer, playwright and an expert on Italian culture .
This complex and controversial character back in the limelight today thanks to the fictional biography dedicated to him and published by his daughter Sibyl by publisher Hypertext Verona (Baron, pp. 430, € 25).
The affection that the youngest of the German nobleman's love for the mythologized figure of a lost father at a very early age shines through every page of the volume of its kind that is well written, full of interesting anecdotes and animated by a gallery of fascinating characters among which Bismarck, Mussolini (which Von der Schulenburg translated the play Villafranca), Goebbels, Lenin, D'Annunzio, Pavolini, Sarfatti, De Pisis and many others.
This same affection, however, resulting in spasmodic attempt to enhance the fed dissent against the Nazi regime by Baron, nothing less than angelic as "major player in Europe for peace oppressed by Nazi Germany," leads to a distortion of the historical perspective dangerously confusing and at times even grotesque.
For a script that aims to offer credible testimony of an era as unconvincing are several aspects: the placing of documents in the text certainly true but not always truthful, artfully chosen to emphasize the character and the continuous incessant reference to the horror aroused in the Baron from Nazi antisemitism, the repeated and insistent as to be suspect or at least to attempt to reconstruct a functional virginity posthumously; l’inverosimile ritratto di un diplomatico che, aggregato all’ambasciata tedesca di Roma negli anni della guerra con non meglio definiti incarichi culturali e ancora operativo a Venezia dopo l’otto settembre, non perderebbe occasione per contestare ed ostacolare i nazisti tanto apertamente ed imprudentemente da suscitare in diverse occasioni, e questo la dice lunga, il sospetto di essere un agente provocatore al servizio della Gestapo; la rimozione dal glorioso album di famiglia del Von der Schulenburg maggiore dell’esercito tedesco e responsabile delle stragi di civili compiute nel 1943 a Matera e Roccaraso.
Il dato in assoluto meno convincente però è un altro e risalta anche dando per oro colato, dalla prima all’ultima, all the events narrated in the Baron. Neither the proud display of feelings filosemiti or continuous, willful distancing from the excesses of the 'painter' Hitler may have overshadowed the complete line of Von der Schulenburg with the solution created by the fascist dictatorship, or rather from fascism , Europe in the First World War. Similarly, more generally, the fact that the diplomatic-military caste of the "Von" a noble Prussian family with barely concealed disgust judge the "stench of the people" that emanated from National Socialism and its leader should not make us forget that the the same caste, groped to drop before the war is now lost, was not hesitated a moment to use the Nazis to overthrow parliamentary democracy, fundamental freedoms and clean erase Germany from socialists, communists, liberals, trade unionists and all those persons whose political activities were seen as troublemakers and anti-national.
In other words, the dissent personality colluded with a power system can not in any way be equated with the resistance of those who openly opposed to that system. Otherwise the risk, for example, is that a hierarchy as Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini court fierce misery, declared anti-Nazi, a signatory of the agenda that brought down the regime, shot by the fascists, ends to be equated with ethical and ideal Gobetti, Amendola and brother Rosselli.
culture and historical memory will live well the dark days (in this regard we take this opportunity to point out that in the hymn of Mameli, strictly speaking syntax, "slave of Rome" is "victory," not "Italy ') but not to that point, hopefully.
Those who wish to seriously deepen the knowledge of the tragedies of the twentieth century and can therefore dispense with the pleasant volume signed by Sibyl von der Schulenburg, as well as Verona could easily do without a monument away by her beauty and placed in the heart of Town to celebrate, with the excuse of a mysterious statue, a figure from the past to say the least cloudy.
A few feet away, as long as they last, the carved profiles of Garibaldi, Cairoli, Cavallotti, Baptists and Matteotti are fortunately well to remember other struggles and many other freedom fighters.
Stefano Biguzzi
