Plenty of Nothing

Narrenschiff by Werner Tübke

The Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen contains one enormous painting in the round by Werner Tübke commemorating the Peasants' War of 1524-26. Though commissioned by the government of East Germany, it is not in the Socialist Realism style, but references the masters of the German Renaissance. And because it's so huge there's room for Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools.

I found out about this place at J. P. Kleiner's fascinating blog, The GDR Objectified, and the image comes from here. See also. And.

Le Nef des Fous

Hieronymous Bosch, Le Nef des Fous, held at the Louvre. Source. And.

Douce 66

Read the Bodleian Library's copy of Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff (Douce 66) here.

Carne Vale

Werner Lehmann has a whole series of ceramic narrenschiffs at the Janzen Galerie in Dusseldorf.

Buchhandlung Das Narrenschiff

Das Narrenschiff Bookstore in Basel, Switzerland. Source.

Das Narren Schiff (1923) by Oskar Laske

Oskar Laske. Source.

Ship of Fools

Narrenschiff by Jürgen Weber, in a shopping concourse in Nurenberg, is based ultimately on Sebastian Brant's 16th-century satire, but with some modern anxieties thrown in. You really have to view it in the round, which you can do here. Picture source.

Everybody Have Fun Tonight (1986)

I usually had about six or eight draft in me whenever I saw this Wang Chung video during the Golden Age of Video, so I never really appreciated the editing in it, as the rest of the room was behaving the same way. D

Mount Allison University Axes German Literature

So how long before no one in Sackville recognizes this picture?  There's always a stink whenever a university chops a department, and this particular downsizing probably won't cause student riots (though read one rant here), but you have to wonder what in hell the administrators are thinking.  Germans love Canada, and have been buying up the Atlantic Provinces for the past two or three decades.  So there's money for German Studies there.  With university recruitment stagnant in the Maritimes, there's a premium on international study programs like MASSIE, which brings in planeloads of Japanese sophomores for English language immersion.  Aren't there German sophomores who'd like to spend a term in New Brunswick, among all that forest?   Can Mt A ditch a major European language and maintain its MacLeans score against liberal arts colleges like St FX and Acadia that still teach it?  And does the Mt A classics department image that laying hands on the German budget will benefit its own program?  Because I took classics, and I'll tell you, you can't make heads or tails of the criticism if you don't read German.  Douglas [Postscript: They changed their mind. You can minor in German.]