Was Rabbit Maranville a Nazi? Should be referred to as Herr Maranville, or better yet, “Hare” Maranville?
The answer is, of course, no, but the investigation at Baseball Researcher is well-worth reading. Nor was the usage confined to baseball players. A quick search of the New York Times prior to 1918 revealed a sailing boat named “Swastika”, an antique Chinese rug on auction with a lovely “swastika border,” and a “Swastika edition” of the works of Rudyard Kipling.
(Updated title per this kind correction)
59 comments
February 20, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Jonathan Dresner
The swastika is still widely used in Asia, mostly in Buddhist contexts (Japanese maps use it to mark Buddhist temples), and it comes up as a design element in all kinds of interesting places.
February 20, 2010 at 3:12 pm
elaine
True, but not just in Buddhism. It is also a central image in Hinduism and Jainism.
February 20, 2010 at 4:11 pm
jlpasley
Last spring in DC, we noticed a prewar building on Mass Ave. east of Dupont Circle that had masonry decorated with a swastika motif. I think it may have been the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s building, or near there.
February 20, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Jon H
A linked-swastika motif is used in the facade of Harvard Medical School’s main quad buildings (as far as I can tell, it was built in 1906 or thereabouts.)
February 20, 2010 at 5:09 pm
grackle
I have an old Navaho rug (1880-1930?) with a swastika motif including left hand, right hand styles and a variation with an ox yoke pattern built from both.
February 20, 2010 at 5:44 pm
TF Smith
Native American use of swastika-like designs, of course, long predated Nazism; so much that when the US Army’s 45th Division was formed after WW I to provide a headquarters for National Guard units in the Southwest and Oklahoma, the division insignia was this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:45th_INFANTRY_DIVISION_swastika.jpg
Not surprisingly, given the connotations of the swastiak by the 1930s, the division dropped the old patch and adopted the “Thunderbird,” which it wore throughouyt the ETO and Korea; today, the 45th Infantry Brigade continues to wear the same patch.
Best
February 20, 2010 at 6:34 pm
ben
Basically, if you’re making geometric patterns, you’d have a hard time not coming up with a swastika.
February 20, 2010 at 7:22 pm
dana
Especially if those geometric patterns are the result of weaving.
February 20, 2010 at 8:08 pm
chingona
Could you explain that, dana?
February 20, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Western Dave
Yeah, it’s always fun in my World History class when we do Hinduism and the swastikas are everywhere. There are several examples of Pueblo Deco architecture here in Philly, two on City Ave (City Line to locals) and the old Wannamakers building had Pueblo Deco stuff added after the fact that include swastikas.
February 20, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Ben Alpers
This phenomenon has been covered at great length by the sports uniform blog UniWatch. Lots of links to photos of early 20C teams sporting swastikas. And a mention of the town of Swastika, Ontario. According to the ever accurate Wikipedia, during World War II, the provincial government attempted to rename Swastika “Winston,” after a certain Allied leader. But the Swastikans resisted and the name persists to this day.
The family of a college friend of mine owned a 19th-century Passover seder plate in a Neoclassical style that prominently featured swastikas as a decorative motif. They’d bring it out to show guests but wouldn’t actually use it on pesach, for pretty obvious reasons.
February 20, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Cheryl
A friend of mine has made it a kind of project to reclaim the symbol and take it back to its roots. I’m not sure if that’s really still possible. But it is a shame.
February 21, 2010 at 7:12 am
kid bitzer
i’m always slightly surprised to see that the german army still uses the maltese cross:
http://www.bundeswehr.de/portal/a/bwde
February 21, 2010 at 8:05 am
dana
Could you explain that, dana?
Oh, just the claim that once you have vertical and horizontal interlocking fibers, and a method of reproducing them it’s not going to be much of a stretch to make a pattern that takes advantage of that interlocking. The swastika pattern or ones very similar to it pop up in so many different cultures.
I do have a fondness for the word Hakenkreuz. It’s just fun to say.
February 21, 2010 at 8:08 am
Ben Alpers
As Tom Lehrer sang: Heil…hail…the Wehrmacht….I mean the Bundeswehr!
Shouldn’t we just be pleased they got rid of the Totenkopf?
February 21, 2010 at 8:36 am
dave
The Maltese cross goes back to the very origins of Germany, in the modern sense, being first awarded as the ‘Iron Cross’ decoration by the Prussian state during the ‘War of Liberation’ against Napoleon. As such, it is a less ‘Nazi’ symbol than the straight-armed cross, the Balkenkreuz, used for example as a Luftwaffe recognition emblem and on WW2 panzers. The use of the Maltese cross in these latter functions is a conscious departure from 1933-45 iconography. Just saying.
February 21, 2010 at 8:36 am
Dr J
Psst… it’s Tinker. Singular.
February 21, 2010 at 9:12 am
kid bitzer
thanks, dave. so the maltese cross is kosher, but the balkenkreuz is not, even though the balkenkreuz seems to be a stylization of the earlier maltese cross in the iron cross. uh, okay.
so far as the totenkopf goes–i always get creeped out by dia de los muertos stuff. yeah, it’s another piece of folk iconography etc. but i find it very hard to associate it with good cheer.
then again, i hate halloween, too, so maybe i’m the wrong person to ask.
February 21, 2010 at 9:27 am
Terence Dodge
My father was employed in the American merchant marine, his last employer was “States Line” prior to WW2 their logo was a “swastika” on the ships funnel, it was changed around the outbreak of the war. Most of is “states line” time was in the Pacific rim cargo haulage.
Astoria Oregon maritime museum has an example of the company logo in the form of a postcard the company provided from the 1930′s era.
February 21, 2010 at 10:50 am
teofilo
I have an old Navaho rug (1880-1930?) with a swastika motif including left hand, right hand styles and a variation with an ox yoke pattern built from both.
The swastika is a pretty common motif on Navajo rugs from that period. As dana notes, as a design it’s particularly well suited to weaving.
February 21, 2010 at 12:23 pm
dana
It occurs to me that if the human race still exists six hundred years from now, determining which Western usages of the swastika were Nazi and which were innocuous is going to yield lots of dissertation chapters. We’re talking a very stark change in meaning in a very short period of time.
February 21, 2010 at 12:27 pm
kid bitzer
the alarming thing is how pervasively the national socialist conspiracy was woven into unlikely places.
i mean–it’s no great surprise that the harvard medical school was founded by crypto-nazis. just look at amy bishop!
nor is its presence in hindu art that strange–aryan, duh. and we knew the japanese were just waiting to join the axis all along.
but the navajos? the jains? all part of the same, vast warp and woof? all patiently waiting for the beer-hall putsch, the reichstag fire, and the nuremberg rally?
the mind reels. a conspiracy so immense….
February 21, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Vance
That Mitchell and Webb routine is good. What I’ve seen of them before is all almost quite funny, but somehow a little bland or slack in the delivery. Maybe adding more words helped, maybe the silliness of costume.
February 21, 2010 at 2:23 pm
snarkout
KB, you’re suffering from a real failure of imagination as re: the arcane Nazi/Navajo connections. Go ask Alice Lee Jemison – I think she’ll know.
February 21, 2010 at 4:51 pm
DCA
As a child I remember being puzzled by one of the illustrations in our family copy of Kipling’s Just-So stories. The caption referred to a “magic symbol” on a rock in the picture–but the rock had nothing on it. My parents had to explain that it had been a swastika, and had been removed (note that the direction of Kipling’s swatika is the other way around from that of the Nazi party). I don’t have the book but imagine it was printed in the 30′s or 40′s.
February 21, 2010 at 5:19 pm
kid bitzer
unexpurgated here:
http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/kipling/20.html
and dated to 1926.
(don’t know when your expurgated copy dates from).
February 21, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Jonathan Dresner
I found a few more pre-Nazi swastikas in my photo collection (thanks to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in KC) and created a flickr set. There’s a native American vest, some medieval European stonework, and a Qing dynasty Chinese bed.
February 21, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Ben Alpers
Denmark’s Carlsberg Beer used a swastika on its labels prior to World War II. It still appears on the carved elephants that form part of the entranceway to the Carlberg Brewery in Copenhagen; they are explained in rather apologetic tones when one takes a tour.
February 22, 2010 at 4:36 am
Walt
This may be the greatest post title in the history of the Internet.
February 22, 2010 at 5:41 am
ajay
The cover of this week’s Economist made me think that it would have been interesting if Hitler had used the same symbol as Mussolini. It’s a picture of the Lincoln memorial, with the arms of the chair formed very obviously from fasces – the bundles of rods used by the Roman magistrates that later became the symbols of the Fascisti. There’s a lot of fasces around still – I wonder if any were erased as a result of the war? Or was it simply not as well known?
Given that “fasces” means “bundle of sticks”, it strikes me that US war propagandists really missed a trick by not referring to their enemies as the Faggots.
February 22, 2010 at 7:13 am
kid bitzer
the mercury dime featured fasces on the back; the motif seems to be preserved in the torch that is the centerpiece of the u.s. dime’s verso.
(i.e., it’s definitely a torch, but it seems to be a torch wrapped in a bundle of sticks, and its placement is the same as where the fasces was on the earlier dime).
to the wwii ear, “fag” was more likely to mean cig, no? certainly in the u.k., possibly in the u.s. as well?
February 22, 2010 at 7:35 am
kid bitzer
and by the way, those carlsberg elephants are awesome.
they can wear swastikas anytime, if you ask me–they could even *redeem* the swastika, just by wearing it.
February 22, 2010 at 8:57 am
elizardbreath
I have a couple of the swastika-edition Kipling books (Rewards and Fairies, and Soldiers Three), and they’re lovely books, except that the tiny little gold-leaf swastikas do make them too embarrassing to carry around in public.
I remember a story about an NYC shul built in the early twentieth century with beautiful mosaic floors, that they’ve had to keep covered with rugs since the thirties, when the swastika pattern became unfortunate.
February 22, 2010 at 9:06 am
Anderson
There’s a lot of fasces around still
A lamppost in Washington Square Park used to have fasces on it, and was inscribed as dedicated by some Italian-American pride group during Musso’s tenure. Dunno if it’s still there any more; I know I’m not.
February 22, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Michael Holloway
some sort of comment about how the old baseball player with the swastika on his hat n the picture is ‘outside the lines’. :)
February 22, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Jackmormon
?Given that “fasces” means “bundle of sticks”, it strikes me that US war propagandists really missed a trick by not referring to their enemies as the Faggots.
Did they get to the more obvious “fasces/feces” insult?
February 23, 2010 at 3:20 am
ajay
I have a couple of the swastika-edition Kipling books (Rewards and Fairies, and Soldiers Three), and they’re lovely books, except that the tiny little gold-leaf swastikas do make them too embarrassing to carry around in public.
Me too. Fortunately, there’s a slightly later edition that is completely identical except that they don’t have any swastikas, so I’ve collected that edition instead.
February 24, 2010 at 7:19 am
chris y
The swastika on the Kipling is dexter (‘rotates’ to the right), that is the other way round from the notorious one. Often not noticed, but it isn’t the same symbol. I read somewhere that in some traditions the swastika dexter is held to be lucky, whereas the swastiks sinister, a la NSDAP, is unlucky. I suspect this is an urban myth from the 1940s.
February 24, 2010 at 8:49 am
kid bitzer
wikipedia notes that the naval ensign was through-printed, so that the swastika was rotating one direction on one side of the flag and the opposite direction when seen on the opposite side.
maybe this is why it was thought to be bad luck to pass nazi ships on one side, but good luck to pass them on the other? which was which again?
February 27, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Geoff Robinson
John Monash, the great Australian WW I general and Jew, writes in his war correspondence of using the swastika as a label in military exercises.
February 28, 2010 at 9:46 pm
teofilo
Monash.
February 28, 2010 at 11:16 pm
andrew
Interestingly, some independent youth gangs in Cologne took the name “Navajos” in the 1930s.
March 1, 2010 at 4:47 am
kid bitzer
‘apache’ was standard french slang for ‘hooligan’ since i don’t know when–earlier than 1890′s anyhow.
March 2, 2010 at 6:50 am
Ahistoricality
Well, the French did control a big swathe of North America for a while, though I don’t know enough about Native American distribution off the top of my head to know if they’d have likely encountered the Apache, or what their relationships were. It’s a starting place, though.
March 2, 2010 at 8:28 am
kid bitzer
“I don’t know enough about Native American distribution off the top of my head”
so now he makes with the scalping jokes. racist.
March 2, 2010 at 8:47 am
Vance
This source says it’s not from any Francophone conquests, but adopted from the US frontier experience (by way of one Gabriel Ferry, in a novel of 1853). Rather like Karl May, who probably influenced the German usage andrew mentions above.
March 2, 2010 at 9:45 am
Ahistoricality
Goodbye.
March 2, 2010 at 10:22 am
Vance
Um…was it something I said?
March 2, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Ahistoricality
No, Vance. You’re fine: good link.
March 2, 2010 at 9:01 pm
teofilo
The French were in contact with some of the southern Plains tribes, but I don’t know that they ever encountered any of the Apache groups. Even if they had, they presumably would have come up with their own name for them rather than using the Spanish one.
March 2, 2010 at 9:11 pm
teofilo
Here‘s a good map of the distribution of Apachean groups in the relevant period. As you can see, the closest French would have been in Louisiana.
March 2, 2010 at 9:21 pm
andrew
The link I gave has more information about the use of Navajo in the 1930s Germany context, but my German isn’t up to understanding it.
March 2, 2010 at 9:25 pm
teofilo
The Wikipedia Apache article has a ton of information, and the parts of it I’ve looked closely at are all quite accurate and well-done.
March 2, 2010 at 9:48 pm
Vance
andrew, it says the members of the group themselves didn’t know (one told the Gestapo he thought the Navajos might be an Indian tribe) — that the name was given them, unflatteringly, by the Hitler Youth.
Back in the day I did read one Karl May novel, but I’ve forgotten it completely (apart from the name Old Shatterhand). Googling suggests that the Navajos do appear in the series, but that the Indian hero, Winnetou, is an Apache.
March 3, 2010 at 12:05 am
andrew
Thanks, Vance.
March 3, 2010 at 3:16 am
ajay
‘apache’ was standard french slang for ‘hooligan’ since i don’t know when–earlier than 1890’s anyhow.
“Mohocks” or “Mohawks” were, basically, upper-class hooligans in early 18th century Britain.
March 3, 2010 at 5:54 am
ajay
And, now I come to think of it, the razor gangs of Glasgow in the 1960s called themselves things like the Tongs (which I think comes from the name of the Chinese secret societies) and the Zulu. Note that there’s no racial identification here – both gangs would have been almost entirely white.
March 3, 2010 at 11:39 am
JPool
There were also street gangs in colonial African cities (Soweto, Dar es Salaam, Lagos) that took on various cowboy or Indian names. The accounts I’ve read generally link this to the circulation of various Hollywood Westerns. (Literary Westerns don’t seem to be a thing until the turn of the century, so my guess would be that the late-19th century uses of “apache” in French that Vance cites were derived from journalistic accounts of the Indian Wars.) This naming practice seems to have been part of a broader cross-cultural logic where youth subcultures select names and images taken from foreign conflicts. Clive Glaser describes both the Apaches and the Berlins as streetgangs operating in 1950s Soweto.
March 4, 2010 at 2:27 am
ajay
And “thug”, of course.