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For the hell of it, I was checking Amazon.de to see if they have baseball equipment, since our local sports store has stopped carrying anything (though I did get a couple gloves dirt cheap on the closeout).
Amazon.de does, in fact, carry baseball stuff. However, their "Better Together" feature -- Wird gern zusammen gekauft in German -- is, uhm, interesting. Amazon even helpfully lets you order both at a discount.
Yup. German baseball apparently requires pepper spray. (Presumably for the umpires.)
Meanwhile on the "customers also bought" list are such items as tear gas canisters, ski masks, black US Army ballcaps, and black leather gloves.
Baseball is such a wholesome sport for kids, don't you think?
For anyone who's into film history, Metropolis -- a movie from the high-water mark of the German film industry, when Babelsberg competed with Hollywood's best -- is a true classic. Even today, though it is a silent movie, it is eminently watchable and the special effects quite impressive.
Sadly, complete prints of the movie have been lost for years, so any time you saw a copy of Metropolis, it invariably had gaps in it, usually filled by text trying to explain what the curators think should have been there based on best guesses and old reports. Imagine a movie like, say, Blade Runner with the scenes where Tyrell gets murdered and parts of Roy's soliloquy are missing, and you get the idea (a nice parallel, since parts of Blade Runner were clearly inspired by Metropolis).
Now a complete print has been found in Argentina, of all places. It will finally be possible to piece together the classic story and the orchestral score -- for "silent" movies were usually accompanied by live music. The times I've seen the movie, they had a pianist playing throughout, who freely admitted that he had to improvise the missing bits based on his own interpretation.
I'm looking forward to seeing the complete version -- I love the movie. I even did a postcard design based on one of its promotional posters once (that and King Kong), back when I was first self-employed.
Though the talk of a Blu-Ray version is a bit silly -- come on, it's not like it's going to look any better in 1080p...
If you're looking for other early German film classics, I highly recommend:
The following is translated from German – I mention that because there are a few spots where the phrases don't translate well into English. This was the sermon I gave yesterday when I was subbing for our priest, who's on a trip this week.
I don't know who of you likes to work in the garden or in the fields, but if so, then today's readings are just for you. The opening hymn, Morning Has Broken, fits this theme. All that's missing are the chirping of birds and perhaps as a Communion hymn the "Morning Mood" from the Peer Gynt suite.
Today we hear about seeds, sprouts, blooms and grains. That all has something to say, a mystical meaning, a message for us. Unfortunately for us modern people, we tend to associate different things with gardening: mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges, pulling weeds, maybe spray against bugs. It's all about appearances, largely a façade for the neighbors – so that everyone in the neighborhood knows that no slobs live here.
But that's not at all what is meant in the readings. Most people today in Europe or North America no longer have a close connection to Mother Earth. Gardens are a thing of hobbies or for show. Tilling the fields is just a thing for farmers, while we go and buy our food at the supermarket. Fresh food from the garden is uncommon, sometimes even a burden: anyone with a friend who gardens will no doubt be showered with extra zucchinis and apples and cherries until you can't stand them anymore. But our existence certainly doesn't depend on it.
Back then, in Jesus' time, it was different. The overwhelming majority of people had to till the fields so that they had anything to eat. Even those who did not have to work in the fields were intimately aware of the work required and how it was going. Everyone knew if the harvest was good: you couldn't just go and get bananas from Central America or apples from Spain or asparagus from Greece. If the harvest wasn't good, you went hungry, and everyone else you knew did, too. In times of starvation, whosoever didn't grab a farming tool didn't eat.
Whoever works in their garden today thus only gets a tiny inkling of the enormous labor required to get nourishment from the fields. For tilling the soil is of necessity communal work. Alone, one can't sow the seeds, milk the cows, cut the fruit trees, and so on. Out in the fields, community is necessary, even vital. It's no coincidence that the earliest mighty civilizations – Egypt, for example – crystallized around agriculture. The first states – the first societies capable of survival – were primarily for encouraging and managing agriculture, and were made possible by agriculture's own existence.
Society itself is like a plant. It needs a bit of "tender loving care", as we say in English. It needs love. Plants may not think, but they need love anyway. Whosoever cares most for his plants will bear the greatest fruit.
I hear from some people that it's not necessary to go to church every Sunday, that the institution of church itself is a load of crap, that they feel turned off by organized religion (which sounds rather like "organized crime", and maybe intentionally). Such people like to say that nature is their church.
What the images in today's readings show us, however, is the exact opposite. Nature, life itself, needs community to flourish and grow. Whosoever cares most for his plants will bear the greatest fruit. Whosoever works most in the fields will reap the greatest harvest. Nature needs this care, this attention, this work so that it is useful to us. Society benefits when we all work together.
Further, it's of course the case that we can "meet God" anywhere in the world, whether in church or on the highest mountain or the deepest valley. But the question is rather, how and where can I most likely meet and experience God?
It is perhaps the case that Nature can be a church. But the truth is, society – the Church – is our nature.
In the community – communion – we celebrate Nature, and indeed our nature. Just as the individual can't bring nature to its fullest flower without the community, so too can one not bring oneself to the fullest flower without community. Naturally I get annoyed with things in the church's institutions. You have no idea how angry I get about the church, whether it's the recent vote on female bishops in the Church of England, or the fighting over our own central common funding scheme, or the latest pronouncements from Rome or Constantinople or Moscow. Nevertheless this community is vital for finding our own fulfillment, so that our nature finds its fulfillment – so that the Kingdom of God gets ever closer. It begins by going to church on Sunday, but also must continue with deaconry and social welfare, personally caring for others while also donating to worthy causes. It's work. Back-breaking work even. But if we want to reap the harvest, we have to till the fields.
In nature's fields, we are ourselves the seeds. We need this attention, this tender loving care. We bloom ourselves. The celebration of Holy Communion is an important part of this care, where we both in a mystical as well as literal sense water and feed ourselves, so that we can be a rich harvest.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Whosoever cares most for his plants will bear the greatest fruit. If we love one another and work for and with one another, then the harvest will be truly great. Amen.
80% of Germany's 50 oldest existing companies began as monastic breweries.
The oldest company in Germany (and sixth-oldest in the world), the Bayrische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan, founded 1040 by Benedictine monks, is the oldest existing brewery in the world. It is now owned by the state government of Bavaria.
Somehow that little nugget says everything about Germany: its history, its thing for beer, and the belief in the mission of the government to secure supply of vital things (like, well, beer).
As you've no doubt caught by now, Europe is in the throes of the European soccer championships. As it happens, this year England failed to qualify, and ze Germans can't resist rubbing it in like crazy, like pretending to be astonished when noticing no English team taking the field, etc. etc. etc.
Thing is, I normally wouldn't really give a flying rat's ass, but because I have an English last name and sometimes can be heard speaking English, people try to rub it in with me. "Say, England's not in the championships, I noticed." My standard reply: "No shit, neither's America."
Meanwhile I just got an e-mail from an English friend in Hannover inviting people to watch the final game on Sunday, leading off with the text:
As you all know, Germany will be nailed to the floor by Spain on Sunday.
Found here in German, translated into English by yours truly.
Shocking news in never-before presented context
What industry has for long kept silent:
It can no longer be kept under wraps. The health and social consequences of consuming bread lead to the urgent conclusion that bread should be added to the list of controlled substances. Here are the results of a UN study about this dangerous baked good:
More than 98% of all prisoners are bread consumers.
Half of all children who live in households where bread is consumed perform under average on aptitude tests.
In the 18th century, when bread was still baked at home, the average life expectancy was only 50 years; the mortality rate of children was unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; epidemics such as tuberculosis, flu and cholera terrorized whole nations.
More than 90% of all violent crimes take place within 24 hours of consuming bread.
Bread is made from a substance known as "dough". It has been conclusively proven that a mouse can choke on as little as a pound of dough. The average German eats at least this much each month.
Tribes of primitives who are not familiar with bread have fewer cases of cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Bread has been proven to be addictive. When bread is withdrawn from people and they are only given water, the people beg for bread within two days.
Bread is an entry-level drug. It leads to the consumption of other substances like butter, marmelade, peanut butter and even sausage.
Bread absorbs water. Since the human body is made of 90% water, bread can turn it into a thick, wobbly mass.
Newborn babies can go into shock from even small amounts of bread.
Bread is baked at a temperature of over 200°C. This temperature would kill a human being within a minute.
Most bread consumers are not able to differentiate between facts and statistical manipulation.
Yeast, a component of our bread, is made of bacteria. Uncontrolled use of it can lead to serious health problems in the bowel.
In recognition of these facts, the UN strongly recommends member states to undertake the following steps:
No sales of bread to the underage.
National TOAST: JUST SAY NO campaigns, supported by TV spots and informational materials.
300% tax on bread to reduce the damage caused by bread.
Our rector is currently on vacation, so yesterday it fell to me to plan and run the Sunday service in German. Here is a translation of the sermon I delivered. It has more or less the same starting point as the previous one because of the way the lectionary works.
In the readings in the Bible, we are confronted repeatedly with imagery that is clearly intended to illustrate the Christian message. The image that is perhaps most common is that of a journey: Abraham and Sarah leaving their homeland in what's now Iraq to go to Canaan, today's Israel; Noah and his Ark; Moses and the tribes of Israel on the way from Egypt back to the Holy Land; Mary and Joseph searching for a place to sleep, or indeed the Wise Men from the East searching for the newborn Jesus; Jesus wandering for forty days and forty nights through the wilderness.
In those times where Israel was held captive, whether in exile in Babylon or in Egypt, its people longed to go on a journey, back into their homeland, back into God's embrace.
In today's Gospel, we see this again. Jesus speaks of "lost sheep". For us today, that image isn't so pregnant as it was for people of those days, because most of us don't experience firsthand what a shepherd does. Most people, I think, have an image of the shepherd sitting there on a grassy hill watching over his flock. But shepherds rarely sit still. Mostly they are in constant motion, from one meadow to the next, and they have to pay great attention that all stay together -- for protection, for a feeling of safety. So Jesus asks the Twelve to find the lost sheep in His name and bring them back, so that all -- so that we -- can walk the same path together.
The psalm also mentions this idea: "we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture". Each of us is a sheep, and each of us sometimes gets lost or leaves the way -- we go in the wrong direction, separate ourselves from others and from the group that provides us protection and comfort. We have a word for that: sin. Sin is that which separates us from God, but also from each other.
Paul has the solution for us, but also a reminder. He notes that we human beings are not normally ready to stick out our necks for others. We don't like to sacrifice ourselves and seek first and foremost our own advantage. We do, however, have an example that leads us back together: Jesus Christ, who made the ultimate sacrifice, His own life. He did it so that we could reconcile ourselves -- so that we learn to get along; so that we learn to overcome our differences. And sometimes it's necessary that we forgive ourselves, so that we can forgive others and reconcile. When we are enemies of each other, we are enemies of God.
When we have problems with one another, it's very, very hard to admit our own error. That is a sacrifice that very few are willing to make. We lose face, or so we think. But in reality it is a thing that brings release and relief, just as it brings release and relief to admit our own sin. We say casually "nobody's perfect", but we don't take those words to heart. We can't manage to reconcile ourselves to others if we can't bring ourselves to admit our own faults clearly and openly -- and then the other is more willing to do the same.
So that we come together, whether it's in the family, at work, or indeed in ecumenism, we must all make sacrifices so that true community and reconciliation can take place. Holier-than-thou fingerpointing may feel good at first, but it doesn't really help us at all.
This is why we have to learn to accept and deal with the idea of sin. We don't like to admit error, certainly not in public. It's embarrassing. Others make fun of us. But it takes courage -- the courage to admit our faults and to work on them, to improve ourselves for the future, without harping on (or even noticing) the faults of others. Once we forgive ourselves, forgive our friends and neighbors, and reconcile ourselves to one another and with God, we can fulfill the mission given us by Christ in today's Gospel: go to the lost sheep of Israel, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God is near. For when we do this, the Kingdom comes ever nearer. Amen.
I've often joked that one difference between Germans and the Brits is that while queue-jumping is practically a national sport in Germany, it's one of the few things punishable by death in Britain.
I had no idea how accurate that joke was.
Truth continues to bulldoze fiction into oblivion.
As most of y'all by now have gathered, I'm a huge fan of history, particularly British history, and read about it all the time.
An old running gag about the current British royal family is that they aren't really British, they're German. Queen Elizabeth's "real" family name is Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, changed to "Windsor" during World War I; Prince Philip's actual house name would be Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (while his mother's maiden name, Mountbatten, is an Anglicization of "Battenberg"), and both Elizabeth and Philip are direct descendants of the House of Hannover (i.e. from King George I, who before ascending the British throne was known as Prince-Elector Georg Ludwig of Hanover and Brunswick-Lüneburg). They're about as British as bratwurst.
So the fun question would be, suppose the Brits wanted a non-German monarch. One little footnote that has often popped into mind -- then is promptly forgotten again -- is to wonder who would be the Jacobite heir to the throne (that is, the descendants from the House of Stuart and in particular the heirs to Bonnie Prince Charlie). Just now I was poking around on Wikipedia, and found the current heir.
Sorry, Britain. Looks like it's bratwurst for you.
Stefan Raab, one of Germany's leading comedy TV hosts, tries to teach Kylie Minogue how to speak the Cologne dialect of German, which is called "Kölsch".
I stumbled across this video on YouTube, and it's a good illustration of something I was talking about earlier -- how local dialects of German are nearly unintelligible to speakers of other dialects. I can just barely understand what he's saying in Kölsch, and even then it's only because I can make a good guess as to what he's talking about. Not only is the pronunciation different, but so is the spelling and many cases even the words are different. (Raab, like all TV presenters, speaks plain vanilla High German on TV, but also speaks his local dialect.)
Check out this PDF file (in German, but still readable enough for English speakers). It tracks the number of people who are either Protestant ("evangelisch"), Roman Catholic ("römisch-katholisch"), no affiliation/non-believing ("ohne Konfession"), Muslims ("moslemisch"), and Other ("Sonstige").
The basis of this data is the official registration of each person. In Germany, you have to declare your affiliation for tax purposes, so that your church or other group gets their share of the tax support (if they collect it). There are predefined abbreviations to use for each major religious group. For those groups that do not actually collect church tax, there is still usually a separate registration to track them.
One thing anyone will notice is that the two mainline church groups, Protestant (actually an umbrella of the main Protestant churches, but not counting "free churches" that don't receive state support, such as Baptists) and Roman Catholic, have lost huge chunks of the population over the last 50 years, going from roughly 45-50% each in 1950 to in the low 30s today. Thus on that score, those who are fearmongering about Islam taking over Europe would seem to be right, in that mainline Christianity is indeed collapsing in Germany (a bellwether for Europe), and the trend is accelerating.
Muslims went from not even being on the radar in 1950 to 3.9% of the population today. That too seems to support the fear expressed that Islam is taking over.
However, note two things. One, Islam is growing, but its growth is dwarfed by the "Konfessionslosen". Two, the study notes that the data registers "Muslims" as being such not just by tax cards, but also by origin -- so that many people who are registered as "Muslim" are not actually believers, but are culturally Muslims, such as Turks. They estimate that no more than half are actually in any Islamic groups of any kind, and the bulk of them are in a Turkish Muslim association mainly noted for its mild form of Islam. And many Turks have actually registered as being "Konfessionslos", that is, officially nonbelieving. Indeed there is even a Central Committee of Ex-Muslims (the name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Central Committee of Muslims and Central Committee of Jews in Germany).
Of course, before the atheists among us get too slap-happy, I should note that the "Konfessionslose" statistic is itself somewhat misleading. It primarily registers those who do not wish their tax money to go to the churches or organizations in the church tax system (though the churches that do collect church tax require their members to pay it), not what they actually believe. Thus not all those people are actually atheist or agnostic -- not even close (though that group is indeed growing dramatically). Anglicans in Germany, for example, do not pay church tax -- and thus aren't listed in the statistics, and my tax card claims I'm "Konfessionslos", even though I most certainly am not. Same goes for Baptists, Pentecostals, Mormons, and many other Christian groups not in the church tax system (while Buddhists, etc. are summed up under "Other"). Put them all together, and you get pretty significant numbers.
The other hitch with the "Konfessionslos" numbers is that many people game the system, a side effect of the church tax. There is a loophole in the law that is increasingly being exploited, where married couples with only one income earner (which is still very common in Germany) have the non-earning spouse register with the church, and the breadwinner declare himself or herself be "Konfessionslos" -- thus entitling the family to weddings, baptisms, outreach and so on, while not paying any church tax. The churches know about this and are trying to figure out ways of "fixing" the problem (such as it is), but even so, there are very many supposedly non-Christian people who are, at least notionally, Christian.
Even so, these numbers do put the phobia of a supposedly soon-to-be Islamic Europe into perspective. Not only is Islam still tiny in Germany in spite of generations of massive immigration from Turkey, what little Islam there is -- no more than 2% of the population, roughly in line with the percentage in America -- tends to be of the very mild variety. There is little chance of extremist Islam taking root.
Em and liberaltarian reminded me of this movie, which happens to be one of my favorites.
Here is a trailer:
If you want to understand modern Germany, you have to see this movie. Far from the jokes about militarism or Pickelhauben oder wanting to invade France again, this movie captures Germany's and particularly Berlin's essence in a remarkable way.
It is melancholy like the endless, sunless iron grey of a German winter sky. It portrays the helplessness of angels unable to do much except try to silently provide comfort where none can be given, helplessness against the passage of time and of events much greater than you or me.
Yet it is also bittersweet, with moments of great tenderness and affection and intimacy. Germans have their wall of formality to ward off feelings, but when the wall cracks open and someone is let inside, the raging emotions that are exposed are overpowering. There is nothing more tragic or romantic than a German friendship.
The symbolism of the angels is fascinating. The angels are unseen, except by children, or in dreams, or by the insane. They are immortal, but virtually powerless to affect what happens around them. They have no sense of smell or taste or even of color (hence the dominant black and white aspects of the movie). They don't even have much in the way of control over their lives, being moved about at will by an unseen and distant Fate, which is God.
This is how the Germany of the Cold War viewed itself. Sad, powerless, lashed to the fates of others, wanting to do good but unable to do so, being carried on a powerful river to places unknown. And no place embodied this more than West Berlin, itself an isolated island in a hostile sea, and littered with angels from times past by -- the Siegessäule or the Quadriga on top of the Brandenburg Gate, once symbols of victory, but pockmarked by war and stained by the polluting fires of industry.
Even now the reunified Germany has much of that feeling to it. It is more dynamic, flashier, a touch more confident than before, but ultimately it is still fearful of its own nature as well as of what comes next.
To indulge in some generalizations, the contrast to can-do Americans couldn't be more striking. Americans adopt new technology happily and without an afterthought; Germans do so only after skeptically turning it over in their hardened minds (but once they do, they do it to perfection, for fear of getting it wrong). Americans try first and perfect it later; Germans perfect it endlessly, rather than risk having it go wrong, as things went so badly wrong so many times before.
Berlin itself has changed a lot since Wim Wenders made the movie, but it is still Berlin, with layer upon layer of tragic past building up like strata of rock, and new strata being added with each passing decade. Many of the landmarks in the movie are gone -- not least The Wall -- but they are still there in spirit, like ghost pains from lost limbs or old wounds. Even now the course of The Wall is detectable in the layout of streets and the weirdly preserved pre-war subway stations of East Berlin.
Which is why the American remake of Der Himmel über Berlin, City of Angels, fell so flat in comparison. It was a good effort, but in the end Los Angeles lacks Berlin's ashen sky and the muscle to carry the story built by bearing the leaden weight of history on its broad shoulders.
Which is what separates Berlin from the other cities of the world. New York has wealth, London has culture, Parish romance, Los Angeles glitter, but Berlin has Fate itself.
If you want to understand Germany, you must see this movie. Even if you don't, it is worth seeing anyway, if only to see how good City of Angels could have been.
As a followup to this blog entry, The Economist has an interesting article on the arrival of large numbers of (largely quite nonreligious) Russian Jews, who are radically changing the landscape of Jewry in Germany.
(Indeed it is interesting to note that the website of the Hannover synagogue is trilingual -- English, German and Russian -- and, before it went under construction, most of the names of people on the site were clearly Russian.)
Already wrote this in Tammy's blog, but saving it here for posterity.
When BoE and I were still studying, we would occasionally drive from the town where we lived at the time to where BoE's family lives. The route took us over land and through a number of small villages, one of which had a fairly large house at the main intersection (the town was just a wide spot in the road) and with a parking lot in front, conspicuously with cars only having out-of-town plates.
Once my parents visited us, and BoE and I were driving them to visit her family. Naturally we drove through that town, and my dad (who tends to be amazingly naïve sometimes, and who likes to vocally point out anything and everything of remote interest to him) pointed at the house and said, "Ooooh, look at the purty red lights!"
BoE and I sniggered while my mom asked him through clenched teeth if he knew what the red lights were for. He was utterly mystified.
Of course, in his defense the house otherwise looked pretty innocuous -- obviously an old half-timber farmhouse that had been converted to the purpose, and there were no obvious signs other than the parking lot and red lights. If you didn't know what red lights mean, you could have taken it for a restaurant or club or even a private home with too many cars. Even so, whenever my parents are here and we're out for a drive, invariably "look at the purty red lights" comes up.
The funny thing is that Hannover has a big bordello (link semi-SFW) that even advertises on taxis, street signs and the radio. That kinda blew my circuits when they started up.
And yes, prostitutes have to pay taxes on their income. It is considered a regular profession. It used to be that prostitution was technically illegal (or in a legal grey zone), but prostitutes had to pay taxes anyway. But some years ago they just fully legalized it, removing the last major bars from doing it.
One other fun bit about prostitution in Germany: One fairly traditional way of doing it was (and still is) for individual prostitutes to buy an old trailer, RV, or camper, park it alongside a country road and that was their place of business. If you see her sitting at the wheel, she's open for business. If not, she's...occupied. (If the RV is rocking, she's really occupied.) You see them once in a while, though not too frequently. But the funny part was that last year we drove to Wolfsburg with my parents to visit the VW factory (they have a snazzy experience museum). I had never been on that stretch of road before, and it was packed with those RVs.
And once again my dear old dad innocently wondered what all these women were doing parked on the side of the road. :-D
In the discussion in the Atheism in America blog entry, I mentioned a poem that I think illustrates the understanding of how God is responsible for suffering. Here it is:
(English translation by yours truly)
Encircled by force of good so still and constant, wondrously caring and shielding, I would live these days out with you and go forth with you into the new year;
yet the old burdens our hearts still, still do evil times weigh upon us. O Lord, grant our frightened souls that healing that you made for us.
And as you hand us the laden and bitter cup of sorrow, filled up to the brim, so we take it gratefully and without trembling from your good and loving hand.
Though when you grant us happiness once again in this world and in its sunshine, then we shall remember things past and then our lives are truly yours.
Today let those candles burn bright and warm which you have brought us in our darkness, lead us, if it can be, together again! We know that your light shines out in the dark.
As the stillness spreads all 'round us so let us hear that full sound of the world that stretches itself around us unseen, of all your children's high songs of praise.
Guarded wondrously by force of good we await patiently what may come. God is with us night and morn and most certainly every new day.
(German original)
Von guten Mächten treu und still umgeben, behütet und getröstet wunderbar, so will ich diese Tage mit euch leben und mit euch gehen in ein neues Jahr;
noch will das alte unsre Herzen quälen, noch drückt uns böser Tage schwere Last. Ach Herr, gib unsern aufgeschreckten Seelen das Heil, für das Du uns geschaffen hast.
Und reichst Du uns den schweren Kelch, den bittern, des Leids, gefüllt bis an den höchsten Rand, so nehmen wir ihn dankbar ohne Zittern aus Deiner guten und geliebten Hand.
Doch willst Du uns noch einmal Freude schenken an dieser Welt und ihrer Sonne Glanz, dann woll'n wir des Vergangenen gedenken, und dann gehört Dir unser Leben ganz.
Laß warm und hell die Kerzen heute flammen die Du in unsre Dunkelheit gebracht, führ, wenn es sein kann, wieder uns zusammen! Wir wissen es, Dein Licht scheint in der Nacht.
Wenn sich die Stille nun tief um uns breitet, so laß uns hören jenen vollen Klang der Welt, die unsichtbar sich um uns weitet, all Deiner Kinder hohen Lobgesang.
Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen erwarten wir getrost, was kommen mag. Gott ist bei uns am Abend und am Morgen und ganz gewiß an jedem neuen Tag.
63 years ago, on 19 December 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote those words while in prison for conspiracy, sedition and treason for his involvement in the resistance and in the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, awaiting his transfer to the concentration camp Buchenwald. On 5 April 1945, Hitler ordered the executions of all "traitors" who had been involved in the plot. Bonhoeffer was moved from Buchenwald to the concentration camp at Flossenbürg.
In the dawn of 9 April, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged. Two days later, Buchenwald was liberated by US forces from the Third Army.
On the front page of the local section of today's local paper, it was reported:
that the fire department was summoned by a fire alarm at a big supermarket. It turned out to be a balloon that had gotten itself in the laser detectors and was tripping the alarm. The fire department didn't have any ladders tall enough to retrieve it, so they in turn called the animal control department to bring a dart gun, which was used to shoot down the balloon.
that the local airport was laid low by a mouse. It seems the mouse chewed through a cable on a transformer in a nearby hotel, which set off a chain reaction that caused a temporary power outage, delaying some flights. The mouse, alas, did not survive.
Though a rather more lively report was that the neo-Nazi political party NPD had a party meeting in Hannover, with some 500 attendees. The city tried everything it could to block them from having the meeting in the city's convention center, but legally there was nothing they could do, since the NPD is a registered political party. So the meeting went ahead -- oddly enough they had to share the building with a New Age esoteric trade show that had already been booked previously, and which decided to stay in spite of the neo-Nazis next door.
Panicked about a possible violent confrontation, 2,000 police were brought in from all over Germany to seal off the meeting.
In response, the hoi polloi of Hannover organized an anti-NPD rally, with leaders of all the major churches, other political parties, Jewish representatives, union leaders, leading business figures and so on participating in a rally at the opera house, then a march to the convention center, and culminating in a rally in front of the convention center, with the theme Bunt statt braun (literally "colorful instead of brown", brown referring to nationalist extremism in German political jargon). In all, the police estimated 20,000 people joined the various rallies, which for a city of Hannover's size is pretty huge.
Thankfully, no serious confrontation happened -- one policeman was injured by a lefty radical breaking his hand (needless to say, the radical was arrested) and one NPD member was arrested for greeting the demonstrators with a Heil Hitler salute, but otherwise everything went peacefully and without incident.
I came across this image on the German edition of Wikipedia.
The funny thing is, you don't even really need to understand German to get the point. (It's a ballot for the "referendum" in Austria regarding the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in 1938.)
The wording of the question is pretty off the wall, too:
Plebiscite and Greater German Imperial Parliament
BALLOT
Do you [informal "Du", interestingly enough -- has a commanding tone as a result] accept the
REUNION OF AUSTRIA WITH THE GERMAN EMPIRE
completed on 13 March 1938, and vote for the party list of our Leader
ADOLF HITLER?
no (tiny circle)YESno (tiny circle) (big honking circle)
It would be really very funny if it wasn't for the knowledge of what came after. (I especially like the way it asks people to approve something that already happened.)
Of course, I'm forced to think of electronic voting machines, ya know? :-P
There is a brouhaha over here about a well-known German TV presenter, Eva Herman, who for some time has been pushing her ideas about how women shouldn't do careers, should stay at home and just be good mommies. It began, oddly enough, about the time she had her baby; then she began praising breastfeeding on TV, and gradually she started a sort of mommy crusade, culminating in a controversial book, The Eve Principle ("Das Eva-Prinzip"), where she called men who didn't provide for their wives "wimps" and laid out her belief that it is a waste of time for women to pursue a career (pretty rich coming from a wealthy career woman who is still working after becoming a mother).
In other words, she is having a mid-life crisis and is doing it very publicly.
The crowning glory, though, was her recent assertion that the Nazis had a good family policy. (To quote: "...much was of course bad, such as Adolf Hitler, but some things were also very good. For example the high esteem of mothers. This was gotten rid of by the 1968 generation, and that's why we now have our social mess.")
When her employers demanded an explanation, she offered a half-hearted apology (or non-apology -- more like an attempt to explain it) which only served to tick people off even worse, and her state TV network, NDR, promptly sacked her. And sure enough, neo-Nazi parties such as the NPD are claiming her as an icon.
Yesterday's edition of our local paper has an editorial that is suitably acid (quick and dirty translation by yours truly):
Please stop babbling!
People say a lot about women. For example, they like to say that women talk too much. There was even a scientific study recently that took up the question and recorded the flow of speech of men and women with a stopwatch. Without scientific aid, a prominent TV presenter has offered proof that not just men, but women too should sometimes rather remain silent. Eva Herman could have saved herself -- and her public audience -- a lot of trouble.
But she didn't do that and impudently blabbed on about what was supposedly "good" about the Nazi dictatorship. It resulted in her dismissal by the public TV networks. Rightly, in spite of her proffered apology. For a little basic knowledge would have sufficed to expose the reality behind Hitler's praise of the family for what it was: a façade, hypocritical and part of an inhuman racial ideology that removed the rights of families and destroyed them. Even in the rearing of children, parents were mistrusted: Jungvolk (German Youth), Hitler Youth and Bund deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls) were there to twist them to the will of the Party. Ms. Herman's problem is not so much her sloppy handling of the blackest chapter of Germany's history, but rather -- see above -- her loquaciousness and her strident crusade for home and hearth. Both paid off well until now. In talk shows, in which endless babbling and shallow provocation are of the essence, she made a name for herself as the jokester and big mouth. With books about God-willed gender roles, she became a leading woman for all those who dreamed about returning to a time when women would clear out the dirt without complaint and wouldn't compete with men for jobs.
What went wrong, Ms. Herman? A PR gag turned into a campaign; the campaign turned into a mission. For applause is addicting. That it came increasingly from the far right was -- apparently -- unimportant to the author and antifeminist Herman. For every provocation -- that's the rule in the media circus -- wears out. She had to lay it on again to secure her own success. And keep on babbling -- preferably that which Joe Sixpack also says. That the 1968 generation is to blame for everything. That not all was bad "back then"...until the gaffe that didn't even get the point across.
Men, according to Herman, are unfortunately sometimes wimps. Nonsense. The men at NDR certainly aren't. They fired their employee. Now Ms. Herman can live the life that she proclaims -- a life for the family, without a career. Wanna bet she doesn't make it? (Gabi Stief)
