License plates

License plates in the US follow the States, whereas towns and districts issue those in Germany. The first letters (up to three) printed on a German license plate designate the vehicle's origin.

It is easy with single letters, e.g., B stands for Berlin, M for Munich and H for Hamburg. Well, that is wrong. Although Hamburg is bigger than Hannover, the Hanseatic citizens left the H for the smaller town, preferring HH standing for Hansestadt Hamburg. 

Even though the Hanse has since long disappeared, the people of Hamburg are so proud that entering the city by car, you will read: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg (The Free and the Hanseatic City of Hamburg). I really miss that road sign. During the last 30 years, I crossed the city's boundary, where I spent all my high school days only by train or plane.

In fact, three big German cities are federal states: Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen (HB for Hansestadt Bremen). Smaller cities get two letters, and my friends in Madison know that FR stands for Freiburg. Like in the States, the administrations issuing license plates let you choose the following letter-number combination (here for an extra fee of 20 euros). Below is my Freiburg license plate:

Guess what MH and 635 stand for.

When driving along the German autobahn, you will notice that the variety of license plates is great. People like to play games with those letter combinations, So you may read BA for the city of Bamberg interpreted as blutiger Anfänger (bloody learner), GS for Goslar: genüsslich schlafend (sleeping pleasurably), WW for the district Westerwald: Wilder Westen (wild west). Three letter combinations for smaller towns are even funnier, like FFB for Fürstenfeldbruck: Fahrer fährt blöd (conductor drives stupidly), OAL for the district Ostallgäu: Ochse am Lenkrad (ox behind the wheel), and SAD for Schwandorf: sieht alles doppelt (meaning the driver is drunk).

Many letter combinations in Germany have disappeared over the last twenty years in combining small towns and districts to form larger entities. Some people are unhappy, having lost their identity like the inhabitants of Merseburg (formerly MER) now driving with new license plates QM (district of Querfurt-Merseburg). 

Two weeks ago, a German professor (doesn't he have anything else to do?) opened the theater to fill the famous journalistic summer hole, proposing reactivating those lost license plates. In addition, he advocated the introduction of new ones keeping people attached to their hometown happy. Forget about the Euro crisis and the war in Syria. Instead, think about new letter combinations like LOL?

Well, there is still one benefit to all this. In the future, guessing license plates on long car drives will keep grouching kids quiet, hopefully for extended periods.

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Edith Stein

Poster with Edith Stein. I took the photo in her cell in the St. Placidus guest house.
Note the mirror image showing a photo gallery and the entrance door.

Seventy years ago, on August 9, 1942, the Nazis murdered Edith Stein in Auschwitz. Yesterday Elisabeth and I participated in a guided tour of Edith Stein's traces in Freiburg.

The stained-glass window in the choir ambulatory of the Freiburger Münster.
Note in the back the Carmel mountains, in front the cross, the seven-branched candelabrum,
 and the evergreen Mediterranean cypress as a symbol of eternal life.

I am not going through the biography of that extraordinary woman you may like to read on Wikipedia. Born as a Jew, she became an atheist during her studies. While working as an assistant for the philosopher Edmund Husserl at Freiburg university during the First World War, she lived her Damascene conversion.

Here on Goethestraße 63, Edith Stein lived as Husserl's assistant from 1916 to 1917
in about 200 meters distance from the professor's house on Lorettostraße 40.

When visiting the widow of one of her colleagues who had just fallen on the Western front, she did not meet a desperate woman but a lady comforted and fortified by her Christian faith. Deeply disturbed, Edith looked further. After reading the autobiography of the mystic St. Teresa of Ávila, who on her deathbed ought to have said sin amor, todo es nada asked to be baptized catholic. When Edith wanted to enter Teresa's Order of the Carmelites right away, the prior of the abbey of Beuron convinced her not to hide her light in a Carmel but rather to serve the catholic cause, e.g., as a teacher.

Edith, being a woman, had tried vainly to become a full professor during her years with Husserl. In 1918, she gave up her assistantship with him to teach at the Dominican nuns' school in Speyer, continuing her philosophical studies to conciliate Husserl's phenomenology with Thomism.

An altarpiece in the cathedral of Speyer named Edith Stein
a Jew, an atheist, a Christian,  a Carmelite, and a martyr.
I took the photo in August 2011 when visiting the exhibition:
The Saliens.

In the fall of 1931, she quit Speyer and returned to Freiburg to work again on a habilitation treatise at the philosophical faculty. Now she lived in a small room under the roof of the guest house St. Placidus of the monastery St. Lioba in Günterstal, participating as closely as possible in the nuns' daily life.

Commemorative plate at the entrance to St. Placidus guest house at Günterstal

Sister Placida, her mentor, remembered: When I visited her in her cell in the early evening hours, I was always astonished to find not too many books. It was the crucifix above her desk that taught her ultimate knowledge. One evening she looked up to the crucified King of the Jews and sighed: How much will my people have to suffer. I was stunned, but considering the mounting hate against the Jews, a thought flashed through my mind: Edith will make herself a sin offering for her people.

Edith Stein's desk in her cell at the St. Placidus guest house.

In 1932 Edith took up an appointment as a lecturer at the Institute for Pedagogy in Münster, Westphalia, but following anti-Semitic legislation passed by the Nazi government in 1933, she, being a Jew, resigned not to damage the reputation of her institute. When a letter she had sent to the pope deploring the inhuman Nazi regime in Germany remained unanswered, Edith considered that she was of no use anymore in this world and entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery St. Maria vom Frieden (Our Lady of Peace) at Cologne in October 1933. She took the name Teresia Benedicta a Cruce (Teresia Benedicta of the Cross).

Following her arrest in a Dutch Carmel on October 2, 1942, a Gestapo henchman asked her about her confession. She answered Catholic, but he retorted: You are just a Jew. When a train took her to her final destiny five days later, Edith confessed: I shall die for my people.

Commemorative stone in Freiburg's university church.

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Odd Potsdam

With 160,000 inhabitants, Potsdam is smaller than Freiburg, where 220,000 people live. Houses in the city's old quarters are mainly only two stories high with rooms built into the roof for - Potsdam was a garrison town - housing soldiers. At the time of the Prussian kings, cuddling up was encouraged, and many a man ended up in a rapid marriage with the landlord's daughter. The king needed soldiers.

Although these houses look like brick buildings today, is it sufficient to remove the plaster to discover their timber frame construction? What you see in the gateway is not smoke but a droplet of water on the lens of my camera, for we had April weather in July.

The Steuben monument, too, defied the rain.

Once donated by the American Congress, the statue was lost during the war and re-cast.

The many parks amid lakes and along the Havel River make Potsdam a pleasant place to live. Here, you look along with one of Potsdam's famous sightlines (Sichtachsen) from the Neuer Garten over the Heiliger See to the dome of St. Nikolaikirche.

Map of historical Potsdam

The Stadtschloss is the big building on the left-hand side, the bridge pointing to it. Located above on the other side of the square called Alter Markt is St. Nikolaikirche.

Re-building of the exterior of the Potsdam Stadtschloss in its original splendor is underway. The interior, however, will fulfill present needs. The Brandenburg state parliament, now housed outside the city, will move in.

The distribution of deputies according to their parties in the Brandenburg State Parliament

In this peculiar case, the color code of the German parties I presented earlier does not hold. Only the Green Party and the Free Democrats keep their colors, while the seats of the Christian Democrats - there is no visible black light - are shown in a somewhat fitting clerical violet. A red-red coalition governs the state of Brandenburg; however, it is challenging to distinguish between Social Democrats and the post-communist Die Linke for their color. Usually, in graphical presentations, Social Democrats keep their red, with Die Linke being shown in amber. Here, Die Linke is coming out somewhat pink, while the Social Democrats have lost some traditional red, intermixing some liberal colors for an unusual orange.

Under the communist regime in the GDR, Christianity declined to the extent that nowadays, the federal states in Germany's east are missionary territories. There is a Kircheneintrittsstelle (a long word for mission point) at St. Nikolaikirche. In the background is the building site of the Stadtschloss. 

A unique Brandenburg vocabulary at the entrance door of the Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte that I tried to order historically: Fehrbellin, Hugenotten, Toleranz, Kartoffel, Wanderungen (durch die Mark Brandenburg), Pfifferlinge, Pickelhaube, Sommerferien, Automobil, Neubauern, Pionier, Mauer, Wende, Punk.

By the way, fried Pfifferlinge (my first chanterelles in 2012!) is one of my favorite dishes. I downed them, you guessed it, with Köstritzer Schwarzbier. 

At the hotel bar, I ordered top-fermented wheat (Weizen) beer strangely made from rye (Roggen). The brewery calls the beer Roggen-Weizen, which I found disturbing, although the beer was excellent in its crooked glass.

Many regard Klaus Störtebeker as the German Robin Hood. He and his companions, the Victual Brothers (Viktualienbrüder), practiced piracy on the Baltic Sea and the estuary mouth of the Elbe River. Whether he really was the Likedeeler (lower German for dealing with everybody alike), always taking from the rich and giving it to the poor, is challenging to say, for he and his staff were beheaded in Hamburg back in 1401.

A modern castle called Cecilienhof, built in 1917 for Crown Prince Wilhelm and his wife Cecilie and located in the park Neuer Garten (New Garden), served as the place where, in 1945, the Big Three decided about Europe's future after World War II.

Stalin, honored by a red star in the courtyard of the building, decided that Eastern Europe was to be dominated by communism, extending the Soviet Union virtually over the Balkan states, Poland, and the eastern part of Germany. Factually, the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states.

Here, you may try your language skills.

The other two leaders in Potsdam were weak: Harry Truman, replacing the recently deceased Franklin D. Roosevelt, was not yet at ease on the international stage. At the same time, bull-doggy Winston Churchill had to make way for Labour's Clement Attlee in the decisive phase of the Conference when his Conservatives lost the general election.

East German nostalgia. I counted three Trabis, officially called Trabant, in front of our hotel. The parked cars reminded me of a defeatist story in the former GDR. Asking the question: What are one, two, or three Trabants, the answer was: One Trabant is a socialist achievement, two Trabants are the solution to the problem of finding spare parts, three Trabants are the weekly car production of the Zwickau auto works.

Here is a sign of a hairdresser advertising his no-waiting services. I discovered it in Neuruppin, a garrison town where King Frederick Wilhelm had once banned young Frederick following his aborted escape from his father. 

The writing on the sign is - as we say in German and fitting the circumstance - drawn by the hair, i.e., far-fetched. You just use "Kamm* in ohne Termin" to get your hair cut, whereas Kamm in German unfunnily means comb.

*pronounced "come" in German

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Friederisiko

The greeting of the Potsdam visitor

In my first blog in 2012, I not only mentioned the 300th birthday of Frederick the Great commemorated in Germany, but I also reflected on the character of this Prussian king joining Schiller in his remark: I cannot get fond of that guy.

Presently in Frederick's residence, Potsdam, an exhibition in the New Palace named Friederisiko tries to retrace the Prussian king's life, the title alluding to his frequently playing vabanque when at war. Frederick moaned through his early life: I must fight three women, Maria-Theresa of Austria, Madame de Pompadour of France, and Elisabeth of Russia. It is a historical fact that the sudden death of one of Frederick's archenemies, the Tsarina, averted Prussia's total military defeat. Her son and successor, Peter, the king's great admirer, agreed to an armistice. This unexpected turn became known as the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.

Following the peace treaty of Hubertusburg, Frederick started rebuilding his country and completing the Park of Sans Souci. In constructing the New Palace, he wanted to show the world that Prussia was still not on her knees and even had the financial resources to build such a useless building. In fact, Frederick preferred living in the Souci Palace and only used the New Palace for official receptions and for housing his guests. His successors chose to stay in Berlin, Prussia's capital, and when in Potsdam, resided in the cozier Charlottenhof.

Plan of the Sans Souci Park with important buildings marked in red.
To the right is the vineyard terrace leading up to Sans Souci palace.
The circular building in the lower middle is the tea pavilion, and to the left the New Palace.
Far in the south, the tiny red dot is Charlottenhof.

At the entrance to Sans, Souci Fredrick's revenant playing traverse flute asks for an obol.
In the back, the famous historic windmill.

Sans, Souci under thunderclouds

The comma behind Sans -- does it allude to Frederick's missing virile member?
It had been amputated in his young years following an infection of gonorrhea.
 Historians are still discussing the issue, including Frederick's sexual preferences.

Our guide honored Frederick's tomb with a potato, as other tourists had before.
Fredrick had introduced the potato in Brandenburg, a crop well suited for the sandy ground.
The story is that Prussian soldiers fed on potatoes fought better
than soldiers of enemy armies, still depending on cereals.

View of Sans, Souci from below. Today, the grapes grown on the wine terrace are Scheurebe.
At the time of Fredrick, gardeners tried out wide varieties to deliver grapes
to the king, who was crazy about fresh fruit of all kinds.
Frederick was willing to pay a fortune for a handful of cherries in February.

The tea pavilion in the park is constructed in what people thought to be Chinese style.
It was à la mode at Frederick's time.
The nuns had come all the way from Poland to honor a guy who did not care about religion:
Every man should go to heaven in his own way.

Apparently, the Chinese not only invented papel, gun powdel, and polcelain
but also the saxophone!

Frederick is everywhere and in all forms.
Here, with a hat made from porcelain inviting tourists to buy chinaware
 made in the Royal Prussian Porcelain Manufactory

Even in the hotel, a plastic sculpture bid us Good Morning on our way to breakfast.

While the guided tour concentrated on Frederick's Potsdam, we also visited Rheinsberg. As a young man far from his father's knout, the Prince felt happy writing poetry, making music, and partying with friends. Frederick wrote: My entire mind is turned to philosophy. It does me good service. I am happy, for I am much calmer than before.

Rheinsberg castle as seen from the lakeside with our group standing in front.

Young Frederick. His statue in Rheinsberg.

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