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Rockers & Nazis

DW staff / AFP (als)April 17, 2007

British singer Bryan Ferry has said he is sorry for comments he made in which he described elements of the Nazi regime in Germany as "just amazing."

https://p.dw.com/p/AGFY
Ageing rock dandy Bryan FerryImage: AP

Bryan Ferry, frontman of the 1970s band Roxy Music, praised the style of Adolf Hitler's far-right regime during the 1930s and 1940s in an interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

"The Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves," he was quoted as saying.

"I'm talking about the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass parades and the flags -- just amazing. Really beautiful," he said.

Riefenstahl was Adolf Hitler's official filmmaker, who pioneered film techniques but also glorified National Socialism. Speer was a Nazi architect.

"Only praising Nazi aesthetics"

Leni Riefenstahl überprüft eine Kamera-Einstellung
Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl at work in 1934Image: Presse

Ferry added that he calls his studio in London the "Führerbunker," a name for the underground rooms in Berlin where Hitler killed himself in 1945.

In a Monday statement, Ferry said he was "deeply upset" about the negative publicity the interview had triggered.

His statement later stressed that he was only praising the Nazis' aesthetics, not the regime itself.

"I apologize unreservedly for any offence caused by my comments on Nazi iconography, which were made solely from an art history perspective," he said.

"I, like every right-minded individual, find the Nazi regime, and all it stood for, evil and abhorrent," he said.

Former lawmaker Lord Greville Janner, ex-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said he was pleased Ferry had apologized, adding: "I trust that he will never make the same mistake again."

Ferry is known for his sharp dress sense and hits such as "Virginia Plain" and "Love Is The Drug."