Occasionally I receive essays from this Mutual Art outfit, like this one: https://www.mutualart.com/Article/A-Shi ... 7D?login=1
At first glance I thought "Ship of Fools" was a reference to the 1965 Jew-produced anti-German movie by that name. See WikiJew piece about that film:
Ship of Fools is a 1965 American drama film directed by Stanley Kramer, set on board an ocean liner bound for Germany from Mexico in 1933. It stars a prominent ensemble cast of 11 stars — Vivien Leigh (in her final film role), Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer, Lee Marvin, Oskar Werner, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal, Jos.e Greco, Michael Dunn, Charles Korvin, and Heinz Rühmann...
Selected passengers—mostly Aryan Germans—are invited to dine each night at the captain's table. Some are amused and others offended by the anti-Jewish rants of a German businessman, Rieber, who begins an affair with Lizzi, a statuesque blonde, who admires him for his vitality and mind, until she learns he is married. Austian born Rieber extols the virtues of German nationalism and eugenics. The captain is reassured by Rieber's rants, believing that nobody can ever take the Nazi party seriously..
And on and on like that. I read to the bottom paragraph of this piece to see that there is no reference to the anti-German Hollywood movie, but there is reference to Mr. Hitler and the evil "Nazis," anyway. I cut and pasted one image of the art embedded in this article. Other images can be seen at the Mutual Art link.
The reader can judge for himself the value of Mr. Weber's controversial art.
A Ship of Fools by Jürgen Weber
Combining biblical themes, medieval satire, and postwar politics,
Weber’s monumental sculpture examines humanity’s voyage through violence and fate
Michael Pearce / MutualArt
Jun 13, 2025
A short walk from the murky Pegnitz river that flows through Nürnberg, Bavaria, a multi-figure bronze of a writhing and tormented cluster of men and women crammed into a tiny boat dominates the Southeast entrance to the Hauptmarkt, raised upon a bowled mound of cobblestones emerging from the surface of the pedestrian street. Sculpted by Jürgen Weber, who died soon after the turn of the millennium, the figures of the Narrenschiffbrunnen (Ship of Fools Fountain) are distorted, even crude, but they are solidly positioned within the simultaneously serious and comical tradition of social satire, and such disturbances of physical proportion were Weber’s guide away from fantastic idealism toward parody. He reached the edge of vulgarity – and finding that fine edge is what makes Weber’s work so attractive and unusual in our time – his crudity balanced by his delicacy matches the spirit of this age... The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1966, including for Best Picture, Best Actor for Oskar Werner, Best Actress for Simone Signoret, and Best Supporting Actor for Michael Dunn...
Selected passengers—mostly Aryan Germans—are invited to dine each night at the captain's table. Some are amused and others offended by the anti-Jewish rants of a German businessman, Rieber, who begins an affair with Lizzi, a statuesque blonde, who admires him for his vitality and mind, until she learns he is married. Austian born Rieber extols the virtues of German nationalism and eugenics. The captain is reassured by Rieber's rants, believing that nobody can ever take the Nazi party seriously...
And on and on like that. I had to read to the bottom paragraph to see the movie was not referenced in Weber's art, but Mar. Hitler and "Nazis" are, and, of course, not favorably.
Jürgen Weber, A Ship of Fools, Bronze, (Death, and Eve)
Jürgen Weber, A Ship of Fools (Death, and Eve), Bronze.
The imagery is in a long tradition of ships of fools. Plato was the author of the allegory, writing in Book VI of his Republic about a ship filled with a mutinous crew who knew nothing of navigation, but all believed they should be in charge of steering, ignoring the trained but mediocre captain who they condemned as “a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing.” Naturally, when the mutineers gained control of the ship, they were incompetent, squandered its stores, and fought for supremacy.
Weber’s sculpture was loosely based on pictures he found in a popular Swiss book written in the last decade of the fifteenth century by Sebastian Brant known as Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools). The book was illustrated by a series of dozens of woodblock prints, many attributed to the young Albrecht Dürer, whose tall and half-timbered house is a little way up the hill from the sculpture, on the corner of a block not far from the Imperial Castle, which is a massive and medieval projection of solid power looming over the old city. Weber may also have referred to Hieronymus Bosch's brilliant Ship of Fools (Allegory of Greed), one of the surviving panels from his lost altarpiece themed around the seven deadly sins, which may also have been inspired by Dürer’s prints in Brant’s best-seller.
Woodcut from Sebastian Brant 1458-1521, Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools), K. J. Trübner, 1913
Woodcut from Sebastian Brant, 1458-1521, Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools), K. J. Trübner, 1913
Weber’s Ship of Fools is cleverly conceived partly as a biblical allegory combining imagery from the Genesis accounts of the creation, the expulsion from paradise, the flood, and the first murder – he explained the mast of the boat as a broken and stunted tree – the ruined tree of knowledge of good and evil that stood at the center of the Garden of Eden, and the naked man and woman as Adam and Eve, the parents of humanity, the first fools to disobey the order established by God who were exiled from the primordial arcadia of Paleolithic paradise to work the land as Neolithic farmers. Naked Eve shies from the raised arm of skeletal death swinging his mummer’s cat-o'-nine-tails to flog her for her sins, while fearful and protective Adam pulls her from the promise of pain. The raven balanced on the smashed tree is another biblical emblem of directionless doom. As the first bird sent from the ark after forty days of destruction to scout the deep waters of the flood that eradicated humanity, never returning, and wandering eternally like a gypsy traveler.
Jürgen Weber, A Ship of Fools, Bronze, (Adam, Eve, and Cain)
Jürgen Weber, A Ship of Fools (Adam, Eve, and Cain), Bronze.
Other elements of the composition are less clear – perhaps Weber embellished the Tanach account with hints of Northern mythology, threatening the elemental couple with Garmr, the black hound of hell, and cast the raven as one of Odin’s familiar companions, Huginn or Muninn. On the other side of the boat two men bear their tools – one a clumsy cudgel, the other a proletarian’s hammer and a wrench – crude violence and technology play their part in the destruction of the garden. Weber cut two inscriptions into the rail – the deepest reads, “Violence and technology and resignation destroy life, death laughs in scorn.” These, too, must be expelled from the garden, then. The longer text reads, “A fool is he who hears much good and yet does not increase his wisdom, he who always wishes to have much experience and does not want to improve himself from it,” on one side, and “A fool is he who thinks it's a miracle that God the Lord is now punishing the world and sending plague upon plague, even while we are Christians. S. Brant 1494” on the other, quoting Das Narrenschiff.
Jürgen Weber, A Ship of Fools, Bronze, (Resignation) Jürgen Weber, A Ship of Fools (Resignation), Bronze.
The direction of the ship’s future is unknown. There are two figureheads – a slack-jawed and gaping male fool’s face fills one end of the keel, and a female with closed eyes the other – there can be no forward progress when either the stupid or the blind lead the way. The Lincoln-bearded and bushy-browed male is capped with a jingling jester’s cap of flopping crowns and sleigh bells, which morph into the suckered tentacles of an octopus. A knife-wielding child who must be Eve’s murderous son Cain clambers over his forehead, armed with his weapon of war and death and attempting to usurp leadership. The woman’s hat dangles like donkey ears and a long chain of broad jewels wraps her neck, over the tight twin prow of her pointed breasts. The naked drunkard of allegorical resignation drapes himself over her, another emblem of the stupidity of those who aspire to steering the ship.
Jürgen Weber, A Ship of Fools, Bronze, (Violence and Technology)
Jürgen Weber, A Ship of Fools (Violence and Technology), Bronze.
There is supposed to be fountain water splashing from the inside of this sinking ship, as it does from Weber’s similar vessel at the overflowing base of his History Column in Koblenz, but the Nürnberg city council never managed to make arrangements for plumbing its installation, sadly leaving their dry Ship of Fools aground.
Weber was one of twentieth century Germany’s most interesting but most controversial post-war creators of monumental public sculptures – his provocative work is scattered in cities throughout the country, often serving as uncomfortable reminders of the folly and danger of unscrutinized government. When his The City was unveiled in Goettingen City Hall it provoked dozens of complaining letters and even a criminal complaint filed under the code regulating obscenity. His 2000 Years of Christianity was challenged by a lawsuit over his inclusion of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in a sculpture based on the theme of religious tolerance. In the United States, Weber is known for two long friezes installed in the courtyard of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts titled Amerika, and War or Peace, gifts from the Federal Republic of Germany to memorialize the murdered president, who was killed in 1963. The sculptures offer little narrative on Kennedy, and much social commentary on the United States. The Amerika frieze is in five grim panels – the first a mass and tangle of hungry men struggling for liberty in the face of overproduction, followed by intimidating skyscrapers, cars with demonic teeth, the contradictory ‘walk don’t walk’ messages of street crossings, and disembodied forms swelling around a caricatured Statue of Liberty. Speaking about the meaning of the gift Weber said, "The tragedy of America is the tragedy of power, which is always necessary but always a threat to mankind," baring the same themes of misguided leadership and the crude paradox of power and corruption which seem to extend throughout his body of work. The four scenes of War or Peace end more cheerfully, with musicians massed together as an exuberant jazz band under crystal chandeliers. Like their German cousins, these monumental and didactic pieces were criticized in the press – the New York Democrat and Chronicle complained they “chant cynical commentaries in bronze,” but Weber defended them, explaining the "real source of tension is the contradiction between the way we live and what we aspire to be."
Weber’s thematic skepticism may seem overwhelming, and contemporary twentieth century complaints about his work were usually that they were inappropriate for the public spaces they occupied, but the iconic platform of the Reichsparteitagsgelände (Reich Party Congress Grounds) where Adolf Hitler addressed massive National Socialist rallies in the 1930s stands only a few miles away from Weber’s Ship of Fools – the ranked concrete stadium steps rising around it are split and weed-grown now, and the stern square plinth where the people’s foolish Führer stood and preached his mad polemic pushes through the green leaves and the white swell of the decrepit stairs almost like the prow of a ship. Weber’s sculptures are a frightening German reminder that when reason is cast out, fools step in.