It should not be necessary for me to point out that the former Roxy Music star and singer Brian Ferry is not and never has been, a Nazi sympathiser.  It was with some bemusement on my part therefore when I read that he had apologised yesterday for saying Nazi imagery was “amazing”.

It seems that Mr Ferry had said in an interview with a German newspaper that the Nazis “knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves” and that Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl’s movies, Albert Speer's buildings, the mass parades and the flags were “just amazing. Really beautiful.”

Mr Ferry explained that he was “deeply upset” by the negative publicity his remarks had caused and added,

“I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused by my comments on Nazi iconography, which were solely made from an art history perspective. I, like every right-minded individual, find the Nazi regime, and all it stood for, evil and abhorrent.”

Given the death and destruction caused by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 it is difficult to credit Germany with creating anything worthwhile during that period. The despatch of eight and a half million people in murder camps (everyone forgets about the two and a half million gypsies, two hundred and fifty thousands communists/trade unionists and two hundred thousand homosexuals) gives rise to an instinctive, overwhelming revulsion to the whole concept of Nazism and everything and everyone associated with it. Helene Riefenstahl is intimately and forever associated with the Nazis having directed Der Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith) about the Nuremberg rally in 1933 and Triumph of the Will, the notorious documentary glorifying Adolf Hitler. As Riefenstahl was steadfastly unapologetic about her close collaboration with the Nazis, praise for her was always going to raise eyebrows.  Nevertheless, though critics have agreed that it is difficult to "separate the subject from the artist behind it", Riefenstahl’s work during that period is generally regarded as masterful, epic, and innovative. She is renowned for developing new aesthetics in film, especially in relation to nude bodies.  Anyone who has seen those Nazi propaganda documentaries, though repelled in significant measure, cannot deny that they are impressive.  Similarly some of Albert Speer’s architecture and designs were little short of magnificent.

No one can suggest reasonably that Brian Ferry did not make his comments in good faith from an “art history perspective”.  It is highly questionable whether he had anything for which to apologise.  That there was a suggestion that Marks & Spencer, for whom Mr Ferry models, should “reconsider [his] contract”, is wholly unacceptable. 

Mr Ferry’s opinions were unremarkable and did not merit censure.

Martin Beckford

Karen McVeigh