Would You Drink a Nazi Wine??

Very interesting article in Grape Collective on Zweigelt wine from Austria:
Zweigelt
Back in the early '30, Dr.Fritz Zweigelt headed the research institute at Kloster Neuburger, tasked to develop new grape varieties particularly suited to Austria. He developed a Blaufrankisch X St.Laurent cross that was particularly good and is now the most widely planted red grape in Austria. He named the grape Rotburger, not a very good marketing name. At the behest of LenzMoser, the name Rotburger was officially renamed to Zweigelt in 1975, in honor of the developer.
It turns out there was a dark side to Dr.Zweigelt. He was a fervent supporter of the National Socialist movement of Germany. When they took over Austria in 1938, he became member of the National Socialist party and espoused their views widely. He was responsible for the purges at Kloster Neuburger that destroyed the careers of many of his colleagues who did not support the Nazi cause. After the war, he was charged w/ treason & warmongering and convicted. His sentence for “warmongering” was subsequently reduced to “oratorical lapses”. He returned to Graz & lived out his life quietly, dying in 1964.
As described in the article, there has been some recent detailed research into the wartime behavior of Dr.Zweigelt. There is now a move afoot in the Austrian wine community to remove the name Zweigelt and return it to Rotburger. In fact, some producers (Hannes Schuster, for one) have already renamed their Zweigelt to Rotburger. An official decision is to come in December.
Anyway, a rather interesting article, also touched upon in the “Godforsaken Grapes” book.
So…would you refuse to drink a Zweigelt, now knowing the background of its developer? Would you favor returning the official name of Zweigelt to Rotburger? Would you favor destroying all the memorials to Robert E. Lee in this country?
Tom

Deleted.

no, yes, yes

Well, we gave Egas Moniz the Nobel Prize for Prefrontal Leukotomy, and have rewarded others for carrying out medical abuses in Colonial populations so…to make an analogy, would you forgo medical or psychological treatment today because some of their research informed medicine today? Or should someone work with nuclear weapons in spite of the fact of knowing what those weapons can do?

Not sure I see the parallels Markus. No to the question in the title of the thread

Don’t destroy history. Use it to teach lessons, both the bad and the good. Right next to that memorial to Lee should be extensive information discussing all of the negative repercussions of his actions. Those who fail to LEARN from history are doomed to repeat it.

I would love to drink Nazi wine. I’d get to try something new and get satisfaction from knowing they would hate the fact that I’m drinking their wine.

My grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust; their children, spouses, siblings and parents were not. Growing up, I was told by family members and teachers to boycott German products. Following the Holocaust, Germany paid reparations to survivors and today, Germany is a friend of Israel and seems, at least on the governmental level and many individuals as well, to have atoned for and made up for its terrible past. Boycotting German products does nothing to undo the terrible past. Last week, Austria passed legislation granting citizenship to descendants of Holocaust survivors. That’s another step in the right direction of making amends.

Nazi origin impact is minimal, IMO. People drive Volkswagens, the world’s largest selling brand in 2017, 80 years after it’s Nazi inception.
The current push for a name change may be a reaction to the recent rise of Austria’s Freedom Party.
They have the horrific Mauthausen camps as reminders, but need to update and bring back the lessons.

Reichsadler then




Reichsadler now

Nice one, equating Moniz and Zweigelt.

Same motivation, I am sure! [cheers.gif]

The question doesn’t have much to do with the grape though, does it?

I have always known about the origin of Zweigelt and I am happy to drink it. There’s no reason to change the name.

Throughout history there have been horrific crimes committed by some people against others. To the people who were exterminated, it really doesn’t matter if your killers were supporters or followers of Julius Caesar, Atilla, Ghengis Khan, King Ferdinand, George Armstrong Custer, Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot - you and your family and friends were considered expendable and were exterminated. And as for grapes, well, we drink wine from France and other places where it was introduced by invaders who preferred that you were dead. You can’t rewrite the past and the grape surely never cared one way or another. It’s just a grape.

I am sure there are many creepy winery owners and winemakers, so this fact doesn’t bother me overly much given we are 80 years down the road and those policies are not publicly promoted by the winery.

So, I would drink the wine.

I don’t care if they change the name, or not.

The Robert E Lee stuff…what are they commemorating? Second place in the Civil War? By all accounts, he was a gentleman, but he led an army against my country and killed American soldiers, should I put up memorials to Isaac Brock, as well?

This is a delicious wine distributed by Louis Eschenauer before he was tried and convicted as a collaborator for his work with Heinz Boemer the weinfuhrer. Made by the ladies of Cheval Blanc during the 1943 vintage for distribution by the Germans. Bought by Bern’s steakhouse later. I was warned about it maybe not being up to snuff but it stood up to a gorgeous 1964 Cheval Blanc in finesse and complexity. I had no trouble drinking it.
IMG_3671.jpg

Couldn’t agree more. Which is why I’m glad Germany didn’t bulldoze Auschwitz after the War. Turn it into a learning experience.
Tom

Volkswagon, Hugo Boss, Bayer…Nazi’s.

Given French government collaboration, how about French wine in general?

Well, Auschwitz was in Poland, and keeping institutions that were actually war related IS a way to study/learn from history. The monuments to Southern rebels were largely erected well post Civil War as monuments to white supremacy. And there are a lot of them. Simply putting a plaque next to each to provide context is fatuous. Rot burger is fine with me.

The Robert E Lee stuff…what are they commemorating? Second place in the Civil War? By all accounts, he was a gentleman, but he led an army against my country and killed American soldiers, should I put up memorials to Isaac Brock, as well?

It’s a little more complicated. The Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismark, united Germany with blood and iron. He first united the smaller northern German states behind Prussia, and then incorporated the southern states.

His contemporary, Abraham Lincoln, did the same in the US. Had Lincoln not done so, the US today would be a fairly loose confederation of states and there would be another fairly loose confederation of states in the south. But at the time, Lincoln had no authority to force states to remain in the union. As conceived by the founders, the US was a voluntary organization of mutual dependency. Before Lincoln, there were united states. After Lincoln, there was the United States.

I’m glad it worked out and everything, but Lee didn’t really lead an army against your country because the concept of the country in those days was very different. His view was that he was defending his state and its allies against invaders who wanted to impose their will. South Carolina had seceded and Major Anderson kept occupation of the incomplete Fort Sumpter, which the state, considering itself sovereign, had asked him to leave. Lincoln decided to reinforce it and we know what happened next.

I don’t want to go overboard defending Lee, but we need to understand that his context was very different from ours today. And as mentioned above, I think a lot of the Civil War statues were not so much directly after the war as they were much later and for different reasons.

I don’t mind you defending Lee, I wish he had won.