Just as a short taste of what is to come I thought I would zoom in on this amusing little statement by our favourite comic genius:
Wagner called his autobiography Mein Leben; Hitler called his Mein Kampf.
P94 Wagner's Hitler.
The only proof that there might be any relation between them is the common word "Mein"! He offers no other evidence at all of any connection between the two titles beyond this.
So I thought I would go through German Amazon looking amongst the countless books there that started with Mein.
1. Mein erstes Fühlbuch
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| Quack! Quack! Herr Köhler — Quack! Quack! |
2. Mein Zwergkaninchen (My Little Bunny)
3. Mein Laufrad
4. Meine Küchengehemnisse (My Cooking Secrets)
5. Meine Schwangerschaft (My Pregnancy)
6. Mein Leben by Eric Clapton
7. Mein Leben by Marcel Reich-Ranicki
8. Mein Leben by Gandhi
9. Mein Leben by Alma Mahler-Werfel (1963)
10. Mein Garten (My Garden)
9. Mein Leben by Alma Mahler-Werfel (1963)
10. Mein Garten (My Garden)
I don't know about you, but it sounds like more "musicological quackery" to me trying to associate two books together just by the use of the word "mein"! I must seriously buy myself a little rubber ducky for the bathtub, so I can name him Joachim. However, some of those little bunnies were seriously cute:
Perhaps I should call one of them "mein".
The worst part of Koehler's assertion is not that's it's such an absurd non sequitur but that it lies about how the title of Hitler's book first cam to be. Hitler originally wanted to call it "Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice". It was Max Amman, one of his earliest associates and a cellmate in Landsberg prison that suggested "Mein Kampf".
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