Red Baron's Blog

Where is the Iranian Flag?

2012-01-08T16:44:00.000+01:00

Last Tuesday on 3 January a city councilor of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) asked the Mayor to strike the Iranian flag flown on Freiburg's Kaiserbrücke because the Mullah administration in Teheran preaches the destruction of the Israeli State and threatens the world with war.

The back-story is that before the pope visited Freiburg the city considered the status of the flags flown on Kaiserbrücke, one of the main entries into town. The flags were all dirty, many of them torn. Looking into their provisions the responsible persons located new cloths from Freiburg's partner cities and hoisted them.

Freiburg is the only city in Germany that has a sister city in Iran. The partnership with Isfahan had been criticized in the past but the argument to keep it alive had always been based on human contacts with political contacts non existing. The picture from Tuesday in the BZ shows the Iranian flag flanked by the English (Guildford) and the Ukrainian (Lviv) colors. Note that the Iranian flag is upside down. By the way, having the same patron saint England's and Freiburg's flags are identical both showing St. George's Cross.

On Thursday morning on 5 January the Iranian flag had disappeared. The flag pole had been dismounted and was located below the bridge in the Dreisam river. The city councilor frustrated that he had been deprived of a media-effective striking of the Iranian flag was unhappy and called the under the cover of darkness action vandalism.

Photo taken today on Sunday 8 January at a wider angle. In front are the Stars and Stripes (Madison). Between the English and the Ukranian the Iranian flag is missing.
On the left hand side in the back is the Martinstor.

Where is the Iranian flag? It seems that the never ending story of our fibbing President on the national scale eventually got its local counter part.

And here we go:

9 January: The Left Party (Die Linke) asked the city council to replace the Iranian Flag as soon as possible: As long as countries like the US and Germany carry war and death into the world we should not dictate the Iranians what to do.

12 January: Answering the request of Die Linke the city administration said that they have no ersatz flag in stock but they will soon publish a statement who in the Building and Gardening Department is responsible for choosing the countries and their flags to be flown in public places.

14 January: Today the BZ wrote: Neuer Dreh im Fahnen-Fall (New turn in the fall/case [it's a pun in German!] of the flag). The Association of the Friends of Tel Aviv (Israel) asked the Mayor to replace the missing Iranian flag as soon as possible claiming that the flag is a symbol of the Iranian people and not of the present administration. The CDU city councilor being himself member of this association doesn't understand his friends anymore and said: The flag stands for the Mullah regime. The CDU spokesman for the city council group had initially endorsed the move but now somehow paddled back saying: This issue needs to be discussed.

16 January: Today the youth organisation of Die Linke hoisted a home-made flag of the city of Isfahan as ersatz and in protest. For the left youth like for the Association of the Friends of Tel Aviv the stolen flag is a symbol of the partnership with Isfahan.

The city administation had the poor product removed and didn't comment whether for political or esthetical reasons.

18 January: The Christian Democrats are tired of the debate and propose to fly the flags of Freiburg's partner cities instead of the national flags. A city councilor of the Unabhängige Liste (Independent List) smirked: "We note with pleasure that the CDU follows the proposal of Die Linke's youth organization." There are however complications as the city administration had already found out that Wiwili (Nicaragua) does not have a city flag.

24 January: The city council wanted to end the farce and decided to stick to the national flags not all partner cities having their proper flag. The German expression Freiburg zeigt Flagge means that Freiburg will again show the Iranian colors to honor its unique partnership with Isfahan. To continue with the saga a lady claimed from the off that the flag of Liberia must be shown too although the negotiations with its capital Monrovia for a partnership were put on ice in 1990.

Year of the Beer Garden

2012-01-04T18:01:00.000+01:00

In 2012 Germany celebrates the 300th birthday of Frederick the Great. It started already on 2 January with a commemorative stamp of 55 cents, the domestic postage for letters i.e. the most common value. Many books had already been written about the Prussian king in 2011 so that they were ready for last year's Christmas Season.

What Schiller once wrote about Wallenstein: Von der Parteien Gunst und Hass verwirrt, schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte (His character sketch alternates, is perturbed by favor and hatred of opposing camps) he could have written about Frederick. Some consider the man who has invented the pre-emptive war as one of the greatest war mongers in history chasing his infantrymen into enemy fire shouting: You dogs, do you want to live forever? For others he is the enlightened monarch who made Prussia one of the Great Powers in his time, practiced religious tolerance, became in later years as Alter Fritz the first servant of his crippled people, assured his country’s provisions in introducing the potato as staple food. When Schiller was once asked to write a hymn of praise about Frederick he said: I cannot grow fond of this guy (Ich kann diesen Charakter nicht liebgewinnen) and neither can I.

Let us rather switch to the Year of the Beer Garden. Exactly 200 years ago on January 4th 1812 King Max I of Bavaria (Where else?) decreed that breweries are allowed to serve their beer on top of their beer cellars. How come?

In those times cooling equipment did not exist. So during the winter brewers cut out thick ice plates from the frozen Upper Bavarian lakes and stored them in deeply dug cellars near their breweries together with the beer. To avoid the sun heating up the top of those caves the brewers planted chestnut trees on top providing some shade. During the summer season people came to the caves and bought their cold beer in pitchers. However some of them couldn’t wait to drink the brew at home but rather settled underneath the chestnut trees emptying the pitcher already there together with some food they had brought from home. This idea didn’t please the nearby inn keepers and starting in 1791 a long legal and sometimes physical battle (Willst raufi?) between them and the breweries resulted. It was not until 1812 that King Max gave those breweries the right to sell their beer in their chestnut shadowed gardens provided guests are allowed to bring their own food.

Empty steins made from glass in the beer garden of the Münchener Hofbräu brewery after 11 p. m. (drink up time). Note the two soft drink bottles being tolerated in Bavaria.
(Photo dpa)

Whether the latter condition is valid in Baden-Württemberg too I shall test during the coming summer holidays at Toni’s beautiful chestnut garden* taking along my home-made Brotzeit.
*also on Facebook

Merry Christmas

2011-12-21T17:42:00.000+01:00

Many of you know that throughout the year I keep my eyes open looking for some original depictions of the Christmas scene to be used at the end of the year. This season instead of one, I have chosen two, an old and a modern presentation of the birth of Christ.

The first one is a photo I took during my "homage to Kleist trip" at St. Mary in Frankfurt on the river Oder, a church situated near Heinrich's birth place. The church windows had been under Russian custody until they were eventually returned completely in 2008. Three impressive strips of colored glass in Gothic arches show the story of salvation. In the middle window is the story of Christ, on the left hand side run in parallel the usual precursor scenes taken from the Old Testament alluding to the coming Messiah, whilst on the right hand side medieval legends about the antichrist are woven in a texture of images.

Middle window (Photo Wikipedia)

Jesus had announced the antichrist according to St. Mark 13:
21 And then if anyone says to you, 'Behold, here is the Christ'; or, 'Behold, He is there'; do not believe him;
22 for false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order to lead astray, if possible, the elect.
23 But take heed; behold, I have told you everything in advance.

In Middle Ages pious story tellers spread legends about the antichrist who is generally depicted looking like a teaching Jesus guided by the devil.

The antichrist guided by the devil (Photo Wikipedia)

Back to Christ's birth scenes. The following picture is an impossible freehand photo I took as close as I could get standing legs wide apart in the transept using the ten power zoom of my Panasonic LUMIX DMC-TZ10. As it should be: new born Jesus is in the center of the picture closely watched by ox and donkey while Maria strangely turns her head away from the scene. Joseph as usual in old illustrations is a somewhat uninvolved bystander.

The next picture in the left church window scanned from a poster shows the birth of the antichrist.

For Luther the antichrist existed in the person of the pope. According to the Apocalypse the antichrist on the see of St. Peter means that the end of the world is near. In fact, Luther during the last years of his life developed strong eschatological ideas: Mundus ... mox mutandus, Amen (The world will soon vanish, Amen)

The pope as antichrist. Woodcut from the time of Luther

Enough of medieval theology. Let us go back to our times.

The second Christmas photo I took in Baden-Baden when, following the Kiefer exhibition, I visited the local Weihnachtsmarkt. It was not just jingle bells and those booths selling Christmas decorations or seasonal food and drinks. Some lanes were lined with paintings by Baden-Baden school classes imagining the Christmas scene. One of those pictures in the form of a Gothic church window is in jolly contrast to what I had seen in Frankfurt's St. Mary. While Joseph is sketched in the old tradition as the somewhat absent-minded old man Mary is hugging little Jesus. He likes it and thanks her with his most charming smile.

Keeping this comforting and touching scene in my mind, I wish you all a

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year

Kiefer meets Kleist

2011-12-20T16:29:00.001+01:00

On 10 December I visited an art exhibition at the Frieder Burda Museum in Baden-Baden devoted to Anselm Kiefer. It so happened that on 13 December the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland) awarded the artist the Leo-Baeck-Medal honoring his efforts in the reconciliation between Jews and Germans. Gay Guido, our foreign minister, handed the medal to Kiefer during a ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

The exhibition at Burda's is already impressive because of the sheer size of the paintings. In fact, painting is probably not the right word as the large canvases exhibited are mostly covered with thin lead sheets on which paint is distributed such that one wonders how these monumental collages hold together.

Most impressive from the year 2010 is Kiefer's picture of the Tower of Babel measuring 7.6 x 4.6 m that he had named The Fertile Crescent since his interpretation of the tower in shambles differs from the classical bible story. Looking at Kiefer's picture Pieter Breugel's painting comes right to my mind showing the unfinished tower as a symbol for the hubris of mankind subsequently separated by their different languages. Kiefer however says forget about languages, the base of the tower is still intact such that Occident and Orient meet in fertile Mesopotamia and fructify their cultures mutually.

Walking up a staircase I read one of Kiefer's statements on the wall: Ich denke vertikal, und eine der Ebenen ist der Faschismus. Doch ich sehe alle diese Schichten. Ich erzähle in meinen Bildern Geschichten, um zu zeigen, was hinter der Geschichte ist. Ich mache ein Loch und gehe hindurch (I think vertically and one of the layers is fascism, but I see all those layers. I tell stories in my pictures to show what is behind history. I make a hole and walk through).

Although taking photos in the exhibition was not allowed I took a shot of the wording trying hard to digest its meaning on the spot. Advancing further I discovered another monumental collage 7.2 x 4.35 m signed Wege der Weltweisheit Die Hermannsschlacht a theme perfectly fitting to this year's Kleist anniversary. Suddenly I had my light bulb moment: Kleist is a progenitor of fascism.

Kleist wrote his drama in five acts in 1808 at a time when Napoleon had occupied all German speaking territories. Die Hermannschlacht (The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest) features battle winning Arminius. The chief of the Germanic Cherusci tribe fights against the Romans invading Germania. No phantasy is needed to read in those fiery speeches Hermann gives in the name of Kleist the appeal for an uprising against the French occupants. Napoleon had just defeated Prussia. Needless to say the theater piece could not be staged then. During the following restoration the liberal ideas presented in the drama did not fit at all with the period of Biedermeier. Only after the Franco-Prussian war as late as 1875 when the "Hermannsschlacht" against the Erbfeind (hereditary enemy) had been won did the piece see some performances on German stages.

Kiefer in his collage now tells the story behind the story showing portraits of those Franzosenhasser (French haters) at the time of Napoleon I, their lower layered progenitors, the next layer of hate at the time of Napoleon III, and how this had been transported during the Weimar Republic into the upper Nazi layer: The brownshirts never forgot the dishonor of the Versailles peace treaty, the French diktat.

Advancing in history I have chosen some key persons from those 36 portraits that I cannot show you in detail because of copyright:

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) who wrote his famous antinapoleonic Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die Deutsche Nation).

Luise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1776-1810), Prussian queen considered by many as the German Jeanne d'Arc because she stood up against Napoleon calling him a monster.

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742-1819) was somewhat late* at the Battle of Waterloo but is still considered in Germany as the co-winner.
*Wellington ought have moaned: I want night or Blucher! (Ich wollte, es wäre Nacht, oder die Preußen kämen).

Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836) who not only wrote a drama about Napoleon's last one hundred days but also a remake of the Herrmannsschlacht.

Georg Herwegh (1817-1875) implored the French to stop intervening in German affairs when he conducted his German Legion from Paris into Baden to help Friedrich Hecker in the 1848 uprising.

Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874) author of the Deutschlandlied with its pan Germanic first stanza.

Albrecht von Roon (1803-1879) one of the key generals in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71.

Alfred von Schlieffen (1833-1913) who developed a military plan for a pre-emptive attack on France.

Walter Flex (1887-1917) a nationalistic poet and soldier during the first World War.

Albert Leo Schlageter (1894-1923) the man from Wiesental near Freiburg sabotaging the French during their occupation of the Ruhr district and being shot for that.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) who perceived Schlageter as a martyr of the German cause.

Horst Wessel (1907-1930) the author of the Horst-Wessel-song, shot by the communists, an early martyr for the Nazis.

Thank God, there is no further layer.

Incense and Gunsmoke

2011-12-06T16:09:00.001+01:00

Yesterday Dr. Jenisch, the director of the Bakola excavation, guided a group of the Breisgau Geschichtsverein (historical society) through the exhibition of charts documenting the archeological results and presenting the artifacts he and his team had dug out at the former site of Freiburg's Dominican monastery. When the building of the Badische Kommunale Landesbank (Bakola) built in 1954 was taken down in 2007 to make room for a modern shopping center scientists searched for traces of earlier settlements at the place that had been always within the inner city boundaries.

The exhibition called Weihrauch und Pulverdampf (Incense and gunsmoke) is devoted to the former monastery and the times when Freiburg was besieged in the 17th and 18th century by Swedish and French troops. The Dominican monastery within and close to the city walls was located near an important access gate called Predigertor (preacher's gate). The monastery became famous when from 1236 to 1238 the great Albertus Magnus held the position of Lesemeister (reading master). Read more on my history web site.

Albertus Magnus' monument at the site of the Dominican monastery (Photo Wikipedia)

Among the most interesting artifacts of the later "gunsmoke times" found at the site of the monastery were hand grenades made from glass. The word grenade comes from pomegranate (Granatapfel) because the original grenades were formed so.

French hand grenades made from glass around 1740

For me the term hand grenade bears some reminiscence of the 1970s when at CERN we were building the Intersecting Storage Rings for protons. To assure the necessary water pressure in the magnet cooling circuits of the ISR it became necessary to erect an old-fashioned water tower. Soon my Anglo-American colleagues had nicknamed the building the German hand grenade. In fact, the stick hand grenade for a long time was in competition with the pineapple design also called Eierhandgranate (egg hand grenade).

Aerial view of the ISR ring stucture with the German hand grenade in the back
close to the CERN fence (Photo CERN)

The glass hand grenades found in Freiburg are from 1745 and are of French origin. During the dismantling of Vauban's fortifications, they were used as explosives but did not detonate. In battle, a grenadier (sic!) i.e. infantryman throwing a glass hand grenade lived dangerously for the time between ignition and detonation was ill-defined and many a man lost his life before he could fling the grenade at the enemy.

A "grenadier" his shoulder bag full of hand grenades igniting one

No Ticket for the Pope and finis Kommando Rhino

2011-12-01T16:49:00.001+01:00

On page 21 today my favorite newspaper BZ published two additional pieces of news about topics I had dealt with in earlier blogs.

One informed the reader that Pope Benedict will not get a ticket in Freiburg for driving in his papamobile without a seat belt. The charge was dismissed because he had used the papamobile on a street closed for public traffic where the German road traffic act does not hold. Will the man from Dortmund be satisfied with the argument and give up? To be continued.

On the other hand the Wagenburgler story is definitely over for the Rhinos as the Kommando disbanded following internal quarrels about the question of violence against police actions in the past. Some members of the group moved together with other Wagenburglers to the point that the city officials counted more vehicles on the agreed site Eselwinkel than the authorized 45. Since the city has all interest to de-escalate the situation the police did not take any action.

Benedict Bashing

2011-11-28T14:09:00.001+01:00

Those who follow my blogs may remember the one I wrote about Pope Benedict's visit in Freiburg. The other day I made some comments about what is typically German with respect to seeking justice in court.

Now, here comes a surprising association: A guy from Dortmund had his lawyer in Unna file a suit against the Pope for not having put on a seat belt while touring Freiburg: Mr. Joseph Ratzinger born in Marktl/Landkreis Altötting on 16 April 1927 drove on 24 and 25 September 2011 for more than an hour without a seat belt in his papamobile. Witnesses are the Archbishop of Freiburg Robert Zollitsch and Baden-Württemberg's Ministerpräsident (governor) Winfried Kretschmann. Freiburg's district court confirmed the receipt of a fax to this respect.

Pope Benedict XVI in his papamobile without a seat belt on Kaiser-Joseph-Straße (Wikipedia)

The Dortmund guy said he didn't mind the publicity but justice must be done. There is a 30 euro fine for driving without a seat belt in Germany increasing up to 2500 in case of recurrence which the Pope surely was guilty of. Do you still feel that my earlier allusion to Shylock standing for his bond was far-fetched? I am convinced the man from Dortmund if not satisfied by the decision of the district court will drag the case up to our highest court in Karlsruhe.

What will possibly happen? Freiburg's district court will declare not competent in the case as the Pope being head of state enjoys diplomatic immunity. And indeed, taking the fact that diplomatic staff serving in Berlin gets away unpunished with drunken driving and car crashing the not wearing of seat belts is just a petty offence. The declared incompetence of Freiburg's district court however will open up the way for an appeal to the next higher instance and if all goes wrong the Pope's case will end up in Karlsruhe.

My First Referendum

2011-11-27T17:14:00.001+01:00

Today I cast my vote in my first referendum in a typically German affair what the French call querelle Allemande.

Over more than ten years discussions and plans had been going on for replacing Stuttgart's 19th century terminus station by a modern underground through station. A win-win solution that will accelerate train traffic and at the same time liberate precious ground within the city for green spaces and urban development. The project named Stuttgart 21 was discussed in all aspects by experts, presented in public hearings, and easily passed in its final version the state parliament since the Federal Railway will bear the lion's share with respect to financing. Only the Green party always was against the project. All seemed clear and had been democratically approved but when the construction eventually began citizens opposing the project started public protests at the building site hindering the progress of the work. A mediator failed in his attempt to arbitrate.

For Baden-Württemberg's green-red state government the situation became delicate with the Social Democrats in favor, the Greens against Stuttgart 21. The only possibility to keep their coalition intact was to ask the people and have them decide in a referendum. Such a procedure is complicated to launch. Eventually we were asked whether we agree that the government starts bail out negotiations with the Federal Railway. Estimated costs for abandoning Stuttgart 21 the state of Baden-Württemberg would have to shoulder range from only 350 million believing the adversaries to 1.5 billion according to the supporters of the project.

From my previous blogs you know that I am a railway aficionado preferring a six hour train ride to a ninety minute flight like the other day from Freiburg to Berlin. I hate the stress of going to Basel airport by bus having to be there too early. I detest the checks after the check-in and don't like landing far out of the city taking a bus downtown Berlin. On the other hand I step on the train in Freiburg and step off in Berlin main station enjoying a good book and you guessed it the pot of coffee and the Butterkuchen now 5.70 euro compared to 5 euro last fall.

Coming back to our topic: A couple of weeks ago the state government had issued a booklet containing the pros and cons of Stuttgart 21. This didn't change my mind but not because I am biased. I was open for any good argument but those of the adversaries were just aggressive statements.

What made the story of the referendum really weird was that those who want Stuttgart 21 being built must vote no and those who are against have to vote yes because - as I said before - we only decide about a law authorizing the government to enter into negotiations with the Federal Railway to abandon the project.

Although it is quite certain that the nays will have it the protests against Stuttgart 21 will continue. Crazy!

28 November 2011
Note added in proof: As expected the referendum ended with 58.8% nays in Baden-Württemberg. Thus Stuttgart 21 will be built. The participation was only 48.3%. Even in mostly concerned Stuttgart 52.9% of the people voted with no. Freiburg however was the great exception and had with only 33.5% the lowest figure of naysayers in our Ländle. Should I now feel like a loser or winner?

In today's Badische Zeitung

Even before the final result of the referendum was known adversaries brandished panels in front of Stuttgart's main station: You won't get rid of us.

In memoriam Heinrich von Kleist

2011-11-21T10:00:00.000+01:00

Two-hundred years ago today Heinrich von Kleist a giant of German literature committed suicide at the Kleiner Wannsee near Berlin at the age of 34. For me he is one of the grand masters of the German language together with Georg Büchner, Heinrich Heine and Berthold Brecht. Goethe and Schiller are great but they didn't write with such a density. One critic said if you take just one word away or you try to add a word to one of Kleist's texts the masterpiece is spoiled.

I do not want to develop Kleist's biography. Many new books have been written on the occasion of the sad anniversary. I have read: Peter Michalzik, Kleist, Dichter, Krieger, Seelensucher, Propyläen Verlag Berlin 2011.

The book cover shows the only existing portrait of this disturbing personality. He was soldier, student, dropout, traveler, letter artist, farmer, soul seeker, playwright, civil servant on probation, hater of Napoleon, war correspondent, short novel writer, publisher of a literature magazine, newspaper editor, and rebel who during his whole short life was always attracted by suicide. His "problem" was that he didn't want to go alone. All of his friends, although sometimes depressed like him, refused. Eventually he found a 31-year-old married woman, a friend, cancer stricken, Henriette Vogel, who was ready to accompany him on his last journey.

I would like to show some pictures I took from 12 to 15 November attending the Kleist Festival in and around Berlin including a theater marathon of three pieces on three evenings: Der Prinz von Homburg, Penthesilea and Der zerbrochene Krug (The Broken Jug) followed by nightly discussions with the director and actors.

The Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin Unter den Linden.

On its frontface Kleist's Das Erdbeben in Chili (The Earthquake in Chile).

The Kleisthaus where Kleist lived during his last years in Berlin
is not the original building.

The relief at the front shows a scene from Penthelisea and Kleist's profile.

The Kleistmuseum in Frankfurt on the Oder in an old manor house.
The house where Kleist was born was destroyed during the war.

A modern Kleist portrait I like most showing him as a rebel.

We experienced a sunny November morning at the Wannsee, like the one Heinrich and Henriette lived through before their deaths.

Kleist's memorial stone at the place where he shot Henriette first
and later killed himself.

Nun, o Unsterblichkeit bist du ganz mein! (Prinz von Homburg)

O immortality, now you are all mine!

Sascha’s German Neologisms

2011-11-18T14:14:00.001+01:00

Living languages need and subsequently bear new words mostly for terms our ancestors didn’t know. Luther when translating the Bible into German created neologisms for Latin words like Morgenland (land where the morning sun rises) for orient, Schauplatz (site where something can be looked at) for scene, Ehrgeiz (craving honor) for ambition, and Vorhaut for prepuce. Question: Was the English word foreskin known before the German Vorhaut?

Later in the middle of the 17th century a guy called Philipp von Zesen fought the pernicious influence of French on the German language and created words like Abstand for distance, Anschrift for adresse, Mundart for dialect, Leidenschaft (creating suffering) for passion, Rechtschreibung for orthographie, and Emporkömmling for parvenu.

American English words that are nowadays adopted in German are mostly due to technical developments in spite of the fact that in many cases German native words exist but are rarely used. For to browse the old German verb stöbern could be revived, Klappliste could replace the drop down list. I personally find it difficult having learned computers in an English speaking environment to integrate the perfect German term Festplatte for a hard disk into my vocabulary.

Sascha Lobo, a Spiegel columnist, recently published a book with 698 new German words for many new situations in life*. Most of those creations are based on hackneyed English like e.g. Talkoholismus for an illness many politicians in Germany suffer from given the too many talk shows they attend. Other new words Sascha proposes are just translations from English like Einling for single. Here are more of his interesting creations:

Affärmann is the male part in an affair playing on the resemblance with Fährmann (ferryman).

Unterlastung the contrary of Überlastung (overload or overstrain).

The neologism verversprechen is playing on the German double meaning for versprechen meaning a promise or a slip of the tongue. The new word actually means that a promise of a politician before the election was just a slip of the tongue.

Dreifel is a superlative of Zweifel playing on the words zwei for two and drei for three.

Namnesie is the illness progressing with age not being able to remember names from Amnesie (amnesia).

Schnice a German brew of schön and nice.

With komplimieren we may have a German verb for to compliment rensembling the pronounciation of komprimieren (to compress).

Ultratasking is the superlative of multitasking.

The German word Eifer for zeal, favour, eagerness now has a new form iFer. It is the obsession to be the first acquiring the latest Apple gadget.

Many of Sascha's 698 neologisms are either just fun or nuts. On the other hand he has pointed out the need for creating new and fitting words for all situations. He calls for adding to the classical three educational Rs (Reading, writing, 'rithmatic):

Rechnen und Lesen,
Schreiben und Zesen,

thus honoring Philipp’s efforts in the 17th century.

*Sascha Lobo, NEON: Wortschatz: 698 neue Worte für alle Lebenslagen, rororo, November 2011

Typically German?

2011-11-17T10:37:00.001+01:00

We always end up with a couple of clichés when trying to describe what is typical of a nation. This becomes really dangerous when we start to talk about national traits.

When I started my job at CERN 43 years ago I had a Norwegian boss who spoke German better than English mostly because during World War II the Nazis had deported him to Heidelberg. At the university they taught him German Physics, a 'science' that among other things rejected Einstein's theory of relativity because Albert was a Jew. One day good old Johann, as we used to call him, told me: You are not a typical German, a multilayered remark. At that time I took it as a compliment for I had in mind all those films running on Swiss and French television showing the dumb and ugly German. I also remembered a scene from a political cabaret where they played desperate Germans deprived of love from other nations ending in a bitter refrain: Nun liebt uns endlich, oder es knallt! (Love us at last or it will backfire).

A newspaper from Cologne, the Kölner Stadtanzeiger, had asked a couple of young journalists what might be typically German. The US correspondent wrote that the question itself was typically German because Germans are always keen to know what other countries think about them whereas other nations couldn't care less how they are considered by their neighbours. On the other hand, the journalist of the Irish Times took a step forward and recommended to send this question into retirement because it will only lead to quarrels.

Whether the question leads to quarrels I don't know but the various answers given by those foreign correspondents were interesting. Let me make some comments. The American also wrote that Schadenfreunde is typical for Germans because they have this special word for it. He is possibly right. We even have a proverb about this: Those having the damage needn't worry about any lack of mockery (Wer den Schaden hat, braucht für den Spott nicht zu sorgen).

The Dutch guy found the wearing of bike helmets and the eating of thick slices of Schwarzbrot (coarse rye bread) as being typically German. He is utterly mistaken with respect to helmets on bikes. The situation is so disastrous that our Minister (State Secretary) of Transportation is considering an obligation (a typically German regulation frenzy?) to wear helmets when cycling.

As far as Schwarzbrot is concerned I have it for breakfast daily although in thin slices. This bread is healthy and tasty. Germans living in foreign countries usually take big supplies with them before crossing the border and later have it sent by air.

I love my Kraftklotz (Power log) for breakfast

For the Italian correspondent Germans constantly think about money in particular about a coming inflation. Should we instead have the same relaxed attitude towards the rotten mammon like our southern neighbours? Inflation, we Germans have lived through twice in the last century whereas the Italians didn't even notice theirs just adding another zero to their lira. Do Germans as pedestrians really obey red traffic lights such that the Italian journalist having lived here for a while now feels obliged to do the same? I must say, the guy hasn't extended his research to cyclists for then he might have noticed that in Freiburg they never observe any traffic sign including red lights.

The Mexican had found out that Germans start any conversation complaining about the weather. Could this be an atavistic heritage when more than 90% of Germany's population worked in agriculture or have you ever met a farmer not complaining about the weather?

The Frenchman seriously asked: Are the French better Germans? in comparing the way how universities are run in both countries. In cool Germania students lead an anarchistic life compared to the high-school like teaching in French universities. He did not mention that as a result of the academic freedom in Germany nowhere in Europe students do spend a longer time with their alma mater. Sitting in selection boards at CERN I have seen French academics 24 years old competing with Germans aged 29, the first speaking French the second broken English. Guess what the outcome was.

For the Polish guy Germans are a strange mixture between good citizens and grumblers. Their deep rooted obedience toward authorities and love for law and order is paired with a growing self-awareness of their rights. They are standing there for their bonds even taking minor quarrels up to the highest court.

Last not least the Austrian girl still hadn't overcome the Habsburg inferiority complex towards the Prussians. Yes, it was the Prussians and not the Germans that had beaten the Austrians on several occasions in the past. The cliché of the Prussian officer having switched off his brain and shouting has left its mark for posterity in Karl Kraus' drama Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The last days of mankind). The trauma of dominant Prussia is still rooted in the heads of many Austrians. But then she admitted that having lived in Germany for a couple of years: It is typical that a typical German trait doesn't exist.

Does this mean that we will eventually get rid of the typical German wearing Lederhosen? If this is typical at all, it is Bavarian.

Wine Tasting Marathon

2011-11-05T19:14:00.002+01:00

Last weekend I lived through a wine tasting Marathon. Freiburg's Adult Education Center (Volkshochschule) had chosen the cultural asset wine its principal topic for its 2011/2012 courses. It happened so that the center of gravity of the events was located on three consecutive days.

On Thursday we had a presentation on the History of Wine in Freiburg at the beautiful Wentzingerhaus. In focus was the city's oldest documented winery the Holy Ghost Infirmary (Heiliggeist Spital) of 1298. In the Middle Ages its residents had the right to six liters of wine per day. Note that the alcohol content of the then rather bad wine was much lower than today and above all it was dangerous to drink water generally polluted. We tasted four white and two red wines of the Stiftungsweingut Freiburg starting with the classical local wine of the Markgräfler Land a 2010 Gutedel, the German name for the Chasselas grape. Next was a 2010 Riesling from the Freiburger Schlossberg.

Entrance to the Schlossberg vineyard of the Heiliggeist Spital

Because of its slopes facing south the wine growing there is of an exceptional appellation. The next two wines were a 2009 Grauburgunder (Pinot gris) and a 2009 Chardonnay. Due to its abundance in California some wine drinkers in the States coined the abbreviation ABC (Anything but Chardonnay. The two red wines following were both 2009 Spätburgunder (Pinot noir) with the latter coming from the Schlossberg.

The wines we tasted on Thursday evening

The Friday evening in the Baroque Hall of the Black Monastery was devoted to the Cultural Asset Wine. Vinissima or Wine and Women presented their wines ond offered the bread. This is an organization of female vintners who show to a male world that girls are better wine makers than boys. We listened to a couple of presentations and were subsequently complimented for our attentiveness with six wines, two served after each episode all coming from wine growing estates run by female vintners.

Before the tasting session proper started we were offered half a glass of sparkling wine brut from the Blankenhorn vinery south of Freiburg made from Nobling a relatively new cross-breeding of Sylvaner and Chasselas grapes. While we were still sipping the opener the attractive German wine princess of 2009 gave a talk about the history of wine. The origin of wine making is lost in the darkness of history but one is sure about the Romans giving wine to the world by spreading vineyards all over Europe. The princess' presentation was followed by two wines, a 2009 Kloster Heilig Kreuz Weißburgunder (Pinot blanc), dry, late vintage from Meißen, Saxony, and a 2010 Junge Wilde (Young and Wild) Grauburgunder (Pinot gris), dry, from Tuniberg near Freiburg.

After that we listened to a medical doctor praising the virtues of wine drinking. Wine savoured in moderation i.e. one-quarter of a liter (Viertele) for men, one-eighths for women will lower the risk of stroke and cancer due to its polyphenol content of up to 1000 mg per liter. One Viertele per day corresponds to 20 grams of alcohol. Since she had studied psychology too she added that for drinking in an animated company more than a Viertele wouldn’t harm but rather be beneficial. On the other hand up to 4 million people in Germany are alcoholics turning the health effect of wine into the contrary.

The third wine presented was a 2009 Rüdesheimer Klosterberg Riesling Kabinett, half-dry, Rhinegau. Riesling is the most important grape in Germany covering 11% of a total of 160 square kilometers of vineyards. The Riesling was followed by a 2009 Bornheimer Hähnchen, Malvasier, last vintage from Rhine-Hessen. Malvasia is an old grape already known in the Middle Ages when Greece was still an exporting country with wine in quantities from the port city of Monemvasia. Already at that time the Malvasia wine must have been too sweet like the one we tasted.

The last talk was about flora and fauna in the vineyard and centered on the vine fretter or phylloxera. These sap-sucking insects were brought into Europe from the States in the middle of the 19th century. By 1870 phylloxera had developed into a plague that had destroyed most of France's vines. The remedy eventually consisted in grafting European vine cuttings onto phylloxera resistant American rootstocks, a practice still used today.

The end of the lecture brought us to the tasting of two red wines, a 2009 Reicholzheimer First Schwarzriesling (Pinot meunier), dry, from Franconia on the Tauber river and a 2010 Lemberger or Blue Frankish Edition, dry, from Fellbach Württemberg the first one somewhat sweet, the second much too young for consumption.

On Saturday we were informed about Wine Adulterators and Fortification Grapes. Following a taste of Gutedel, at the Alte Wache on Münsterplatz - Home of the Wines from Baden - we started for a tour of the above mentioned Freiburger Schlossberg, a vineyard that was built on the ruins of Vauban’s fortifications. Normally the place is closed to the general public but our guide had the key.. The weather was exceptional and we felt nearly sorry when we had to return to the Alte Wache for our last wine tasting in three days.

Those sunny slopes at the Schlossberg

Again we were offered six different wines. First a 2009 Tiengener Rebtal, Rivaner (a cross-breed between Riesling and Sylvaner grapes like Müller-Thurgau), dry from the Vintners Association Tiengen followed by two wines from the Stiftungsweingut Freiburg (see above), a 2009 Freiburger Weißburgunder (Pinot blanc), dry, and a 2008 Freiburger Schlossberg, Grauer Burgunder (Pinot gris), dry. The last white wine a 2009 Opfinger Sonnenberg Gewürztraminer with 25 grams of sugar per liter was described as lieblich which translates into English as sweet. My grandchildren would have called it a Limonade. Of the following two wines the first one was a rosé 2010 Tiengener Rebtal Spätburgunder (Pinot noir), dry from the Vintners Association Tiengen. This is not to be confused with the traditional Weißherbst (Vin gris) made from red grapes where the reddish color results from pressing the grapes with their skins whereas for a red wine the skin is left in the grape juice during fermentation. It is common that if the color of the final product does not show the desired saturation juice of Färbertrauben (Teinturier) is added. The last wine was a 2009 Freiburger Kapellenweg Spätburgunder, dry, from the Vintners Association Munzingen.

The topic discussed between serves was wine making and adulteration. Here I learned why I don't get headaches anymore when drinking German wine. Although not consuming wine in excess I remember that as a student and even later I was never immune to a hangover the following morning. Since the Middle Ages these hangovers have been attributed to the quantity of sulfur added stopping the full fermentation of the grape juice in order to keep some residual sugar. As the only tangible result of the Imperial Diet held at Freiburg a Statute and Order for Wine (satzung unnd ordnung über die weyne) was passed as early as 1498. This Order fixed limits for the quantity of sulfur allowed in wine making. Violations called for Draconian measures sometimes ending up in hanging. Minor infringements were punished knocking out the bottom of the barrel concerned (dem Fass den Boden ausschlagen).

With the advent of modern cooling techniques there is no reason that people drinking wine should get headaches. Nowadays, before fermentation starts a small quantity of the grape juice is set aside and kept cool. The fermentation of the bulk is no longer stopped by adding sulfur but goes on until most of the sugar has turned into alcohol and the fermentation stops by itself. The wine is then filtered and left to repose. Before selling the wine part or all of the grape juice that had been set aside is added to achieve the desired residual sugar concentration in the final product. And indeed, following Goethe’s dictum: Das Leben ist zu kurz, um schlechten Wein zu trinken (Life is too short to drink bad wine) or I don't suffer from headaches anymore.

Cold Fusion in Brussels

2011-10-28T17:17:00.000+02:00

According to an article a friend made me aware of, today is the day when Andrea Rossi will demonstrate his Energy Catalyzer (E-Cut) producing energy by cold fusion*. Will this be the final breakthrough to free energy as alluded to in a Dilbert cartoon or just another of those many failures not to say hoaxes?

If Rossi is successful he wouldn't be the first to achieve the multiplication of something essential to mankind. Yes, you are all familiar with the miracle of the loaves and fishes but even then Rossi will miss second place with his free energy.

The honor of the silver medal goes to the European leaders as two nights earlier in Brussels they miraculously created euros in excess using the leverage technique enlarging the original euro rescue parachute (Rettungsschirm) from 750 to 1000 billion. The ESFS (European System of Financial Supervision) will both operate and supervise the leverage but who will be judge? Did somebody in the audience mumble: Separation of power? Needless to say that these miracle euros are not free like Rossi's energy is supposed to be. If the leverage works it will only prolong the agony of the indebted mankind, if it doesn't, the fall into nowhere will be even deeper than at present. It doesn’t help that we in Germany like in the States have anchored a debt brake (Schuldenbremse) into our constitution. Will that help? We Europeans were mesmerized watching the two Houses in Washington raising the US debt ceiling at the very last minute. Would you think that Germany will not do alike when all the chips are down?

Hurra, we are safe! Merkel is using the Rettungsschirm in an unorthodox way.
Of all the Europeans in the boat you may recognize Sarkozy.
Cartoon by Haitzinger, ©Badische Zeitung

Is there any escape? Well, there is an inherent solution built into the leverage system that is called inflation. Creating more money means just that. One recent example is Switzerland. Since investors rallied the Swiss franc as an ersatz to gold - that had become too expensive - the exchange rate of the franc had nearly approached parity to the euro, a disaster for the Swiss economy based on export and tourism. At that moment the Swiss government intervened switching on the money press a measure bringing the franc to and keeping it at a minimum rate of 1.20 to the euro. Is printing more money the solution? Not for Germans. We
had an inflation twice in the last century and are running from it like the devil runs from holy water.

*Note added: Apparently - subject to confirmation by others – Adrea made it in achieving 480 compared to the planned 1000 kW. However, to sustain the euro a 480 billion parachute compared to the 1000 billion promised wouldn’t be enough.

Socialism now?

2011-10-16T18:21:00.000+02:00

The movement that started in New York and termed somewhat imprecisely Occupy Wall Street made me think about a talk I listened to in 2010. At that time the possibility of social unrest in the States was discussed but the majority in the audience considered that traditional American values will detain people from demonstrating against the over boarding capitalistic system.

In the context of the NY demonstrations Nobelprize winner Joseph Stiglitz had coined the following expression on American Inequality: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% referring to the distribution of wealth in the States. However, going back to Lincoln’s original Gettysburg address: A government of the people, by the people and for the people NYT-blogger Bernard E. Harcourt claims that social inequality frequently quoted is not the main reason for those protests. It is rather the misgiving about the way we are governed turning into political disobedience. In fact, the NY protests unite people demonstrating against the financial system, those demanding a greener America, long time workless and young educated people unable to find jobs and many others.

One of those many 99% persons in Sidney

During the weekend people around the globe occupied parts of Sidney, Tokyo, Madrid, Rome, Los Angeles, the place in front of the Reichstag in Berlin, and many other cities. Men and women in the street feel that in spite of existing democratic structures they are badly governed. It is long known that most politicians are incompetent and their unique interest is to be reelected.

Adam and Eve in front of the Reichstag in Berlin

Now we see those few we up to now considered to govern us swimming helplessly in a sea infested with financial sharks. While banks - some subsidized with taxpayer's money - still pay ample bonuses to their CEOs, governments around the globe try hard to squeeze down on expenses thus killing jobs and the economy like in the case of Greece.

Occupy LA protesters:
Will taxation of the Rich be the solution?

Populist statements across the Atlantic that the others should do their homework don't solve the financial crisis. These remarks only show how helpless governments are in dealing with the problem. Are we too severe with our leaders when even financial gurus see no solution for the present situation? Still government officials claim that they are able to bail out the existing system and this without hurting their electors.

However, people are not dumb. They are full of apprehension mixed with angst for their future articulating their mistrust in our democratic structures that so far had been unable to act in the interest of Joe Public. In what kind of society are we living?

Slogans shown in Frankfurt read: Ihr verzockt unsere Zukunft (You are gambling our future) and Schranken für Banken (Barriers for the banks). Will those protests help? I doubt. Goethe once had written in Faust: Benefit depends on the money, but urges all (Am Golde hängt, zum Golde drängt doch alles).

Ite missa est

2011-09-26T15:39:00.000+02:00

The last of the Pope's stops during his official and pastoral visit to Germany was Freiburg and already now, the opinion about this event is divided, divided as Germany is in its faith. Yet in the country of Reformation the main dividing line nowadays runs no longer between Catholics and Lutherans - although still painfully separated - but between Christians and Atheists. Forty years of communist regime in the East and sixty years of capitalism in the West have brought it about that those who still believe in Jesus Christ are a minority in Germany ranging from thirty to three percent according to the region.

This is why the pontiff underlined in his sometimes highly intellectual homilies that all Christians must stand together for they all share the common belief in Jesus Christ. In this spirit he recognized Luther as a man who struggled during his whole life seeking his personal God. In all logic the Pope continued: the real crisis of the Church in the Western world is a crisis of belief and not a structural crisis. However, when the structure collapses due to the lack of priests who will put out the lambs running astray to pasture? Neither did the Pope give a practical hint how to solve the lack of priests nor did he allow intercommunion between Catholics and Protestants which is particularly distressing in a country of so many mixed marriages. This discordia about the Eucharist is as old as 1529 when during the Marburg religious conversations theologians already discovered that with respect to the mystery bread and wine > body and blood of Christ neither the word est nor significat can be read in the New Testament.

The pope greeting the Freiburgers in front of the Münster Church. In the back Lord Mayor Dieter Salomon (Green), the Ministerpräsident of Baden-Württemberg Winfried Kretschmann (Green), the Pope's secretary Peter Gänswein (called the Vatican's George Clooney) and Archbishop Robert Zollitsch (Photo: Der Sonntag, Freiburg). Following Zollitsch's address of welcome the Pope, being behind schedule, took over right away thus depriving Kretschmann and Salomon of their speeches. This morning we read: The two were not amused.

Benedetto, as enthusiastic youngsters shriek when they see him, impresses the people with a high intellect paired with his somewhat unmatched friendly shyness. For him it is most important that we live our faith with courage and humility and he added: Atheists seeking answers with burning hearts are often nearer to God than Church officials with hearts not touched by faith. Referring to King Salomon (1 Kings 3.7-3.12)* the Pope advised non-believers and Christians alike to listen to their hearts more often when making decisions in our modern times. In his last homily, he called for a complete separation of State and Church for only then the Church will be free to proclaim and live its faith. This remark reflects the particular situation in Germany where we pay a Church tax and where Church officials Catholics and Protestants alike in balance and ex officio are sitting in governmental and administrative committees - lobbying.

Benedetto’s message is clear but not appreciated by many: The Church needs no modernizing reforms but must go back to the roots as a community in faith and love.

*1 Kings 3: 7 “Now, LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?” 10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. 11 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.

Speedy Neutrinos

2011-09-25T16:46:00.000+02:00

Did you read about those neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light? If this were true, it would unhinge Einstein's special theory of relativity postulating that the speed of light is a constant. The exact value is 299792458 meters per second and nothing can travel faster in the universe.

A team of physicists working at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, now measured that neutrinos created at CERN, shot in the direction of the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy, and detected at a distance of 731.278 km (precision plus/minus 20 cm) in an underground detector travel faster than light.

The web is a fantastic source of information. I actually spent two hours watching the presentation and the discussion of the results of those measurements during a seminar at CERN. If you like listening to a strong European accent explaining complicated facts in simple English tune in to the CERN auditorium. As it stands the experimental results revealed that neutrinos starting from CERN arrive at the detector in Gran Sasso in 2.4382323 milliseconds i.e. 0.0010485 milliseconds or 0.43 per mille faster than when traveling at the speed of light.

The physicists presenting their results and the audience including me were and are still greatly disturbed. The general tendency is to suspect mistakes in those time measurements. A counter experiment confirming the results is urgently needed before one dares to throw Einstein's theory, solid up to now, overboard. Physicists at Fermilab near Chicago running a similar neutrino experiment are eagerly preparing their detectors for an independent measurement of those speedy neutrinos.

Here are some recent remarks from CERN.

The Berlin Pirates

2011-09-20T10:28:00.000+02:00

No, Berlin has no new baseball team but a new party in the state parliament. Remember my blog about color coding? Last Sunday a new color enriched Germany’s party spectrum. In the Berlin election the orange colored Pirates starting from zero won 8.9% of the votes resulting in 15 seats in the state parliament.

Their slogan against the other parties: You have the answers, we have the questions. Apparently voters too had more questions than they are given answers these days. All the other parties lost in comparison with their expectations. In particular the Liberals (yellow) have been marginalized to a mere 1.9% and will no longer be represented in the Berlin state parliament. The Pirates’ program is rather scanty except for their clear demands: Free internet for the people and the legalization of pot.

The established parties are distraught. The Social Democrats (red) intone that the Pirates are without content and Chancellor Merkel (black) dismisses their success as classical protest. And so it is up to the Greens to moan. Once they were lined up against the establishment, now they are part of it.

Yellow is out and orange is in. Above all, the revolution looks vegetarian eating Green.

Finkenwerder Speckscholle

2011-09-19T16:43:00.000+02:00

German cooking has a bad reputation. When you ask around the answer is unanimous: Sauerkraut, wurst and potatoes.

Well, sauerkraut is not best in Germany but a regional specialty across the Rhine in Alsace. Nothing has more cholesterol than a delicious choucroute royale prepared by a chef with all its sausages and bacon on the top.

The consumption of potatoes, the staple food in my youth, is in steady decline in Germany and only my grandchildren eating tons of pommes frites* with lots of ketchup make it possible that German potato farmers don't go bankrupt and that Italian tomato growers help to keep their country creditworthy.
*Pommes frites are a Belgian specialty not to be confused with French fries

Finally, with respect to wurst those critics of German cooking never say what kind of wurst they mean. Who dares to throw a Bavarian Weißwurst and a Frankfurter - we Germans call it a Wiener - into the same kettle and place a Thüringer Bratwurst and a Freiburger Rote on the same grill not to speak of the genuine German invention the Currywurst.

It is obvious that cooking and eating in Germany are not at all national but rather international or regional. Nowadays instead of potatoes Germans eat lots of Pasta from Italy, Döner from Turkey, Sushi from Japan, Borsht from Russia, Matjes herrings from Holland, Feta cheese from Greece, Rösti from Switzerland and ... Hamburgers from the States.

When I travel I prefer regional cooking. A few weeks ago in Palatinate I ate Pfälzer Saumagen (stuffed pig's stomach). During the last weekend attending my yearly class reunion in Hamburg I had Labskaus (lobscouse). The high point however was the Finkenwerder* Speckscholle. Such a combination of healthy fish and bad cholesterol i.e. a European plaice crisply fried in bacon is just delicious.
*Finkenwerder a formerly picturesque fishing village opposite the city of Hamburg on the other side of the river Elbe is now overgrown by Airbus Industries

A Hamburg potato salad and a draft beer accompany the fish. The desert that naturally goes with it is another Hamburg specialty: the rote Grütt (red fruit slightly stewed and thickened) with vanilla sauce.

9/11

2011-09-11T09:59:00.001+02:00

Decided not to leave the task of throwing my old papers away to my children I was looking the other day through some photos my mother had left behind when she died in 1996 at the age of ninety. I came across the postcard below I had sent her from New York in 1986 showing the World Trade Center.

I remember at that time I had a drink at the bar of the top restaurant Windows of the World. The view from up there was exceptional. My glances drifted from the tip of Manhattan to Miss Liberty and the Verrazano Bridge, wanted to catch the full view not missing the slightest detail. Next time in New York I had intended to impress my wife Elisabeth but bad luck. Following the 1993 bombing of the WTC basement the Windows of the World were closed.

When in 1998 I was feeling lonely and hungry in Manhattan after a day spent at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) discussing with colleagues. I hate to eat alone for sitting at a table eating and drinking should above all be social togetherness. But this time instead of eating a hot dog out of my hand I wanted to get the full treat and decided to visit the WTC again. I went up to the Windows of the World restaurant and ordered an American cut prime steak. Although I took one of medium weight I couldn't finish my dish not being accustomed to such quantities of meat.

On September 11, 2001 I was sitting in my garden in Meyrin (Geneva) enjoying my retirement in the mild afternoon autumn sun when the telephone rang. My son could hardly speak: Papa, switch on your TV. A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. I saw one of the WTC-towers emitting smoke but the correspondent of German television talking from New York couldn't make out what was going on. Suddenly a plane appeared on and disappeared from the screen. It had smashed into the second tower. This happened shortly after 3 p.m. As the German voice on my TV started to panic I switched to CNN. As time went by I learned that four US heavily fueled long flight carriers had been hijacked by terrorist commandos early in the morning and used as firebombs. I sat up the whole night listening and watching, horrified. What I experienced was beyond my imagination. I couldn't and wouldn't believe what I saw. Like in the case of Pearl Harbor America had again been maliciously attacked.

Only a few days later I realized that I had been witness of one of those dates that changed the world.

Missing the Bulb

2011-09-08T20:00:00.000+02:00

Europe has decided to kill another of those ingenious inventions Thomas Alva Edison once gave to the world. MP3 made the gramophone obsolete and now the incandescent lamp, vulgo light bulb, will disappear in Europe. New technologies are more complicated than a vacuum with a heated filament inside but what counts in times of global warming against the light bulb that once had replaced candles and oil lamps is its low light efficiency.

On 1st of September, following the phasing out of the 100 and 75 watts the 60 watts bulb must no longer be produced in and imported into Europe. But Germans like their good old light bulb and with the 60 watts disappearing many people fear the consequences and are building up stocks, for what is available on the market can still be sold.

I couldn’t care less for I always used higher power bulbs until I started to replace them by fluorescent lamps as early as the late 80s. In the beginning those energy saving light bulbs were heavy due to their choking coil and iron core. It took minutes before the coiled-up fluorescent tubes reached their temperature and their full light output humming along at 50 hertz. As time went by electronic replaced the inductive loads, the new lights sources fit into most existing lamps and reach their maximum light output more rapidly.

One German firm now sells 60 watts bulbs as culture reserve.

Nitpicking Germans found out that in the case of passive houses the energy supply by incandescent lamps will fall flat when people change to energy saving light sources. In order to compensate for the missing thermal energy one firm is now selling heatballs instead of meatballs.

Fission fungus

2011-09-07T07:00:00.001+02:00

What in English is sometimes called seed of contention is known in German as Spaltpilz. A couple of years ago Freiburg's Green Party had been infested by the fission fungus when two members decided to leave the main stream forming an even greener party, the Green Alternatives Freiburg (GAF).

Recently the Green Party went to court demanding that the GAF abstains from using the word green in their party name including the G in their acronyme. The Green Alternatives however claim that green is a generic word as used e. g. in Grünschnabel (greenhorn), Green City and greenback.

While waiting for the court ruling I remind you that the fission fungus is a common infection in Germany's party landscape. The most spectacular fission occured in 1917 when the Independent Socialists (USPD) - because as pacifists in World War One they didn't vote the war bonds - seceded from the Social Democrates (SPD). After the war the USPD was one of the germ cells of Germany's Communist Party (KPD).

It is interesting to see that political parties that were formerly seperated and then became united are not immune against the fission fungus. Following some social unrest during the first years of the new century some left leaning party members of the Social Democrats together with other left minded people in Germany's West founded in 2004 a new party called Work and Social Justice - the Alternative (WASG). It would have been quite logical to unite with the Party of the Democratic Socialism (PDS) - successor of the former SED in the East. Following lots of argy-bargy the two parties eventually came to grips launching in 2007 a united party Die Linke (The Left). Due to the many nostalgic people living in the East the new party got enough votes to be represented in the Bundestag and a few State Parliaments. However since the unification of the two left parties the fission fungus has become quite active trying to split Die Linke into fundamentalists and realists. Party members are fighting each other openly such that some of the supporters of Die Linke became fed up. In some recent state elections Die Linke kept losing votes.

It is quite noticibel that the fission fungus made it over the Atlantic infecting in the US both the Republican and the Democratic Party. Will the inherent healing forces overcome its attack?

Wagenburgler Blues

2011-09-02T14:38:00.002+02:00

Yesterday night the Wagenburglers of Kommando Rhino gave a street party at their former lodging now the construction site at the entrance to Vauban. Soon after sunset first a garbage can was set on fire and later around 10 p. m. an excavator with a drill was torched, a damage that will stop the construction work for a while.

The torched construction machine (Photo: Badische Zeitung)

When the police arrived they were charged. One officer who had hurt his hand was verbally attacked: Shitty cop pig! I hope your hand is broken. Next time we’ll break you. Bille Haag presenting the round table said: This is not acceptable and not useful however the Rhinos are not responsible for the aggression. A city official replied: These actions unmask all announcements of nonviolent protests for a new Wagenburg as a noncredible and worthless lip service.

As I already wrote: it’s not over yet

Unusual Views

2011-09-01T16:58:00.000+02:00

This quite recent photo gives an unusual view on Freiburg's St. Martin church. The shot became possible because on Kaiser-Joseph-Straße the Municipal Saving Bank is tearing down one of its buildings to reconstruct a new one. However, before they could start there was a big controversy because many citizens thought the old front face was more beautiful than the new one and fitted better to the style of the neighbouring buildings. Eventually the construction plans had to be modified and construction could start. Now Freiburgers stand on Kaiser-Joseph-Straße where you cannot tell whether they are watching the working of the shredding machines or are admiring the view on the buildings behind. On the right you catch a glimpse of the Haus zum Walfisch (House of the Whale) known for its most famous renter Erasmus of Rotterdam who lived there from 1529 to 1531. Some Freiburgers had a dream and sent a petition "not to construct the new building" to the bank's CEO to keep the charming view open thus becoming another Freiburg attraction.

The second rather old photo, dated 15 June 1955, I recently received by snail mail. A lady who participated in an excursion to Geneva in early summer including a visit to CERN (my former working place) seemed to have been so much impressed that she wanted to express her thanks. She had received this postcard in 1958 from her friend Mrs. Citron, wife of Professor Citron, one of CERN's founding fathers. The photo in black and white shows an aerial view of the accelerator site under construction located West of the village of Meyrin at the Swiss-French border. There is practically no building up but bulldozers are preparing the ground for the 600 meter ring tunnel of the Proton Synchrotron (PS) still working as a proton injector for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Nothing is seen either of the heap of dirt later called Mont Citron serving as radiation shield for the PS-target area. In the far distance the Alps are visible. The mountain between the city of Geneva and the Alps is the Salève. Left to the famous Jet d'eau stretches the Lake of Geneva. The road leading from CERN to the city is still called Route de Meyrin cutting the village in two. The Geneva airport hasn’t changed much except for a longer runway up to the Route de Meyrin and a completely new reception building.

Currywurst

2011-08-26T14:07:00.003+02:00

My previous blog dealt with the döner the owner of a fast food in Seattle, Wash. is marketing as Berlin food although it was the Turks who introduced the döner kebap in Germany. Now, here comes the currywurst which indeed was invented and first eaten in Berlin.

Let Wikipedia enlighten us: Currywurst (German pronunciation: [ˈkœʁiˌvʊʁst]) is a fast-food dish of German origin consisting of hot pork sausage (German: Wurst) cut into slices and seasoned with curry ketchup, regularly consisting of ketchup or tomato paste blended with generous amounts of curry powder, or a ready-made ketchup-based sauce seasoned with curry and other spices. It is frequently served at German 'Imbissbuden' and from food trucks.
The invention of currywurst is attributed to Herta Heuwer in Berlin in 1949 after she obtained ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and curry powder from British soldiers. She mixed these ingredients with other spices and poured it over grilled pork sausage. Heuwer started selling the cheap but filling snack at a street stand in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin where it became popular with construction workers rebuilding the devastated city.

Today, currywurst ... is popular all over Germany but particularly popular in the metropolitan areas of Berlin, Hamburg and the Ruhr Area. Considerable variation both in the type of sausage used and the ingredients of the sauce occurs between these areas. Common variations include the addition of paprika or chopped onions. Often currywurst is sold in food booths, sometimes using a special machine to slice it into pieces, and served on a paper plate with a little wooden or plastic fork.

An estimated 800 million servings are sold in Germany each year (Photo Wikipedia)

The actual reason why I write about the currywurst is an ironic comment in yesterday's Badische Zeitung. In Germany we have two rates of VAT: 19% on most goods and services and a reduced rate of 7% on e. g. books and notably food. So you pay 7% on pet food but 19% on pampers, the reason - as some people claim - that in Germany we have more dogs than babies. Now here comes the question: What is the VAT rate on a currywurst served on a paper plate at a sausage stand?

At long last our Federal Financial Supreme Court (Bundesfinanzhof) has ruled the following: The rate is 7% for food when the vendor hands the wurst over to you and you eat it standing. If however the stand offers a bench or chairs for sitting and you actually sit down this is amalgamated with a restaurant and you pay 19 % on services. Crazy, and who is going check this?

Well, I checked the situation on Freiburg's Münster market. Three of the now eight wurst stands offer currywurst but no place to sit. However, another thing struck me. In spite of the recent opening of the market there still is no competition: All vendors charge a uniform price of € 2.50 for a currywurst.

Please note the English influence on German orthography: Uhl's using the Saxon genitive is wrong in German; it must be Uhls but many shops and eateries find it stylish to use what we call the Deppenapostroph (dumb cluck's apostrophe) with the German genitive.

Döner, a German Food

2011-08-22T17:26:00.005+02:00

Today I read an article in the Badische Zeitung about döners in Seattle sold at a stand called The Berliner. As such the Turkish dish made of (preferable) lamb meat cooked on a vertical spit and sliced off has become German. The full Turkish name for this delicious food is döner kebap i.e. rotating roast. Döners must not be confused with gyros that is widely known in the States.

Slicing meat off a döner kebap's grilled surface (Photo taken from Wikipedia)

As background information we read in Wikipedia: A döner version developed to suit German tastes by Turkish immigrants in Berlin has become one of Germany's most popular fast food dishes. Annual sales in Germany amount to 2.5 billion euros. Veal and chicken are widely used instead of lamb, particularly by vendors with large ethnic German customer bases, for whom lamb is traditionally less preferred.

Serving döners in Seattle is not easy for instead of the original lamb meat also here beef or chicken is stacked on the vertically rotating spit. The Turkish bread called pide accompanying the meat is unknown in the State of Washington and Victor, the owner of the fast food, asked to have it specially baked. American Law requires that meat once prepared must be consumed within half a day, so Victor uses shorter spits to grill smaller meat quantities. The döner varieties he offers with sauce, salad, and pide are called The Mehringdamm or somewhat spicier The fiery Kreuzberg, named after the traditional Turkish quarter in Berlin. Still Victor's many ardent customers consider döners to be a typically German food. One enthused girl said when she learned that in Berlin there are döner stands on every corner: You Germans must be happy people.

Let me know when the first döner stand opens in Madison.

We Love Rhino

2011-08-17T16:25:00.002+02:00

The site of the Wagenburglers - they call themselves Kommando Rhino (Rhino Command) - was cleared alright on August 2nd.

What remains visibel at the entrance to Vauban is a banner: We ♡ Rhino.

However, the problem with those people who like to practice their alternative living in Freiburg persists. The city doesn't want to provide them a plot fearing that once they give it to Rhino other people with more vehicles from outside Freiburg will move in. The Rhino Command on the other hand claims: The authorities cannot banish us. We will remain in Freiburg and in our mobile homes.

In fact, some moved to another plot in Vauban on which they will be tolerated for another month. Four of the vehicles had eventually settled on a private ground in the suburb of Zähringen. When on the owner's request the police arrived they first tried to confiscate the mobile homes which was couterproductive hindering the Rhinos to move. Before these Wagenburglers had stayed on individual private places but the four had moved together again as otherwise they claim they cannot practice their way of life. Although one Freiburg party official has said: Now it is finished as his party will vote against Rhino getting space on public grounds in Freiburg other city council members feel that the Wagenburgler question will remain on the agenda for a long time. They were right as on the same day when I wrote this blog the Wagenburglers opened a protest camp in front of the Rathaus(Townhall) that the police soon cleared peacefully.

Wagenburglers' protest camp on Townhall Square

Meanwhile our local newspapers has figured out a lower limit of the costs for the police action on August 2nd including the damage caused by the nightly riot as being 371 100 euros. These are peanuts compared to the costs of the not so long ago riots in England.

Commemorating Boozing Dates

2011-08-16T17:36:00.003+02:00

Most beer drinkers know about the German purity decree for their favourite brew. It isn't actually German since it was Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria ordering on the 23rd of April 1516 the Reinheitsgebot that zu kainem pier merer stüchh dan allain gersten, hopfen un wasser genommen werdn (to any beer no more ingredients than barley, hop and water shall be taken and used). Well, they simply forgot the yeast without beer cannot be brewed. Nowadays we celebrate the 23rd of April as the day of German beer.

The decree of 1516 is not the first attempt to keep boozing headache free. Eighteen years earlier in 1498 the Imperial Diet had met in Freiburg to make peace with the Swiss who hadn't accepted the newly establihed Imperial court and above all had stubbornly refused to pay the Imperial tax i.e. the common Pfenning. The diet wasn't successful in putting the Confederates back into their place; on the contrary one year later when the Emperor wanted to bring the Swiss to their senses his army suffered a crushing defeat in the battle of Dornach such that Maximilian had to give way. However the assembled princes didn't leave the Freiburg diet empty handed for on the 24th of August 1498 they passed the satzung unnd ordnung über die weyne (rules and ordonnance about wine) limiting in particular the amount of sulfur to be used in the stabilization of wine already knowing that it was the concentration of this element causing headaches.

satzung unnd ordnung über die weyne of 1498

Why do I write about all this. The above story came to my mind when I recently visited the city of the Nibelungen, Worms. There I noticed yellow-white banners flying in front of the cathedral. Nothing exceptional for these are the colours of the Catholic Church. However when I came nearer I read: 500 Jahre Riesling-Urkunde von Pfeddersheim (Documentary evidence of 500 years of Riesling growing at Pfeddersheim). In this document dated 11th of November 1511 it is mentioned: Item ein halben morgen rissling wingart im Funtdaill (among other things [about] a quarter of an acre Riesling vine garden in Funtdaill, i.e. a plot of land with a fountain). Today this vinyard is still there as well as the Riesling.

Riesling is one of my favourite grapes only topped by the Chasselas
known in Baden as Gutedel and in Wallis, Switzerland as Fendant

What however is more impressive and human is that people always find an occasion for celebrating with and without a pretext.

This year in Worms the 11th of November is not only the feast of Saint Martin with children carrying their lanterns around and adults eating the traditional goose or the usual day of the opening of the Carnival season at exactly 11 minutes past 11 a.m., this time even on 11.11, but it will also be a 500 years anniversary and thus an additional reason for boozing with ... Riesling.

How to Recycle Liquids

2011-08-15T15:34:00.007+02:00

As you would suppose: Our Green City has a perfect recycling system. In Freiburg we use a green? container for paper, a brown bin for organic compostable stuff, and a yellow plastic bag for used packing. We pay an additional 25 eurocents for drinks in plastic bottles that are reimbursed when we give the empty bottles back. There are containers all over town accepting glass bottles to be separated in white, brown and mostly green colours except for those for which we had paid 8 eurocents in addition to their content. They are refundable when we hand those bottles in at the local supermarket.

The rest of the garbage that cannot be recycled we place in a dark gray bin. For this bin you pay a yearly fee based on the volume you require for your waste. Although the bins come in one size only plastic inserts reduce the fillable volume. Some people acquire those gray bins equipped with a lock for an extra fee such that your friendly neighbour doesn't deposit his garbage into your bin.

Garbage bin with lock and key

All in all the recycling and waste business booms in Freiburg. Only at the end of a year discussions and letters to the editor become hot when an increase in fee for those garbage bins for the coming year is in store.

You may imagine my choc when during my latest trip to the city of Speyer the hotel asked me for an additional way of recycling. Visiting the toilet I was confronted with individual panels over each of the urinals demanding that you pee as instructed. In addition to beer they had urinals for wine and water.

I was so disturbed that on my way back home I formulated a letter to the city counselors complaining about Freiburg's backwardness. Well, I eventually didn't send the letter since visiting the conveniences in one of my favourite places, the CouCou, I found that they even had a finer separation for liquids profiting from their number of urinals. A cuckoo nicely framed is watching your efforts. I admit my cheating. I emptied my beer into the champagne urinal.

Wagenburglers’ End

2011-08-03T15:17:00.002+02:00

As expected the Wagenburglers hadn’t all left by August 1st and the police was just waiting for an escalation of the situation to move them out. About 20 left-autonomous trouble makers offered an opportunity at 1 a.m. last night when they started to erect barricades at the entrance to Vauban and made those burn.

At 5:40 a.m. 40 police-persons arrived with heavy clearing gear. They started in lifting the sit-in and then moved on tearing down the remaining unoccupied broken trailers and rusted buses.

Her first engagement? This girl looks absolutely frightened.

The Sambastas were back alright with shiny new drums and made the accompanying noise.

At 7:45 a.m. the garbage collectors arrived and started cleaning the place.

Later barriers were moved in to avoid a return of the Wagenburglers to the lot. One positive note at the end. It seems that nobody had been hurt, so far.

All photos were taken from the website of the Badische Zeitung.

A Decisive Date

2011-07-25T17:21:00.004+02:00

The first of August will be the target date for Dominique Strauss-Kahn because the outcome of the scheduled court hearing will be decisive for him.

It also is the crucial date until which the American government must find a solution for the increase of the ceiling on the national debt as otherwise the US won’t be able to meet their financial obligations. This may result in an uncontrolled chain reaction causing more havoc to the world banking system and economy than the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.

Finally it is also the date when the Wagenburglers must have emptied the occupied lot at the entrance to the Vauban quarter. They had announced a demonstration in Freiburg’s city center for the 23rd of July protesting their eviction.

The photo below shows the peaceful demonstrators and anti-riot police near the Bertoldsbrunnen. There are estimations that the state of Baden-Württemberg had mobilized a police force of 250 men and women whereas there were only 200 demonstrators. Obviously the police had feared the participation of many professional rioters from outside. They didn’t show up however. Was it because the weather was cold and rainy or wasn’t the issue worth a journey to Freiburg?

Still the Wagenburglers haven’t counted their cause for lost. They call for the participation at an Anti-Eviction Festival for the coming weekend. Will this stay as peaceful as the demonstration last Saturday?

Göthe

2011-07-22T19:34:00.011+02:00

When Dante Alighieri is Italy’s and William Shakespeare England’s national poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is recognized as such in my country. He not only was a poet but one of the last universally educated geniuses of German tongue. There is not one place in Germany without a street or square named after him. In Freiburg many consider the Goethestraße as the most beautiful alley in town dating back to the beginning of the 20th century lined with beautifully decorated houses built in a variety of historic styles. This is not true for Munich’s Goethestraße running off the main train station where red light premises compete with cheap electronic stores. It was there where it happened. Road construction work around the station called for a detour signaled by panels showing Göthestraße instead of Goethestraße, an obvious mistake that was corrected the following day. A mistake? Hey, not so fast.

Our national poet was born in Frankfurt on 28 August 1749 as son of Johann Caspar Göthe. As a young man Johann Wolfgang changed the spelling of his name to Goethe, in his father's eyes a misdeed never he pardoned his son. The reason for Goethe’s change is not known. Did he as a young man already think of his international renown? Mind you, umlauts are rarely found in other languages if it is not for the Turks. By the way, they are called Törökök in Hungarian. Those Hungarians not only overdo it with respect to the frequency of their "ös" but in addition to the short “ö” carrying two dots they also know the long “ő” carrying two strokes.

The American keyboards I used during my work and later the internet forced me to change the spelling of my name from Höfert to Hoefert. My brother working in the UK was so annoyed with the umlaut that he simply dropped the “tüttels” all together. Maybe he did the right thing because when changing from “ö” to “oe” I suffered from the pronunciation of my name by my Dutch colleagues as in their language the “oe” stands for the phoneme “u”. Did Goethe consider this fact when he changed from “ö” to “oe”? and did he really want the Dutch to call him de oude Goede i.e. the old Good one?

Uta of Naumburg

2011-07-13T18:12:00.002+02:00

There a two sculptures in two German cathedrals that are considered to be very Teutonic: the Bamberg Horseman and Uta of Naumburg. In my reader in primary school their two pictures were shown together and considered as epitome of the German man and the German woman.

After the war Bamberg was situated in the West whereas Naumburg was in the East. The two pieces of plastic art were separated and became one of the many reminders that Germans were divided politically but not in their hearts.

With Germany's reunification in 1990 the Rider and Uta were united again. I last visited Uta, considered as one of most important sculptures of German Gothic, in 2003. On that occasion I read a text written in 1928 by Gertrud Bäumer, a well-known German feminist and not considered to display an excessive Germaness: Uta accrues from a relationship with the German woods, with long hard winters full of loneliness and horror in the dark, long waiting and longing, spring tempest over melting snow, hard and harsh but soaked with inner balminess. Well, don't worry, the German text is as incomprehensible as my English translation.

The other day I read in the German weekly Die Zeit about an exhibition called The Naumburg Master - Sculptor and Architect in the Europe of Cathedrals. The article showing Uta's picture was headed Très Deutsch and indeed I expected the old story that this woman is very German. The French très should however have warned me for the article revealed the crushing news that the creator of this German Gothic masterpiece possibly was French!

The full story I found on the Naumburg Exhibition web site: The sculptors and stonemasons associated with the name “Naumburg Master“ had an outstanding reputation throughout medieval Europe. From the 1220s on, German masters trained in the sculpture workshops of the Northern French cathedrals situated in Île de France, Champagne and Picardie. Their journey to Germany took them across the borders of the French kingdom via Mainz to Naumburg and Meissen. Their legacy is a body of work which is of outstanding quality and of worldwide importance. The sculptures of the west rood screen in Mainz Cathedral, the relief depicting the sharing of St. Martin’s coat in Bassenheim, the tomb slab of the Ritter von Hagen in Merseburg Cathedral, the statues in the choir and the octagon chapel of Meissen Cathedral and above all the unique west choir of Naumburg Cathedral with the Passion reliefs of the rood screen and the statues of the founders (Uta!) are impressive examples of the outstanding quality of workmanship from these medieval masters.

When looking at the Strasburg cathedral Goethe had once admired the Gothic style as native German but he had been badly mistaken. The Gothic architecture was actually born in France; it splashed over the Rhine river and subsequently spread over the rest of Europe. In the beginning German stonemasons educated in the Romanesque style imitated the new French style. The result can still be seen when looking at Freiburg's Münster church. Only when they called in the masters from the other side of the Rhine the construction of the windows got the lightness admired at the Reims cathedral.

The stonemasons at Freiburg's Münster worked from right to left starting with heavy German Gothic for their windows. When the French specialists had taken over the tracery in their window became much finer.

That Gothic means France is emphasized in the continued text on the exhibition's web site: During the first half of the 13th century, Reims cathedral, which hosted the coronation of many French kings, became increasingly the focus of German building work, until it was eclipsed, in the middle of the century, by architectural activities in generating the metropolis of Paris. The adoption of designs and sculptural ideas from France was certainly not only due to a general fascination with the French cathedral creation, which eclipsed all previous architecture, but also to the high esteem in which the sacrally distinguished French royalty was held.

So eventually it's European. The Naumburg Exhibition in fact is under the joined patronage of our Chancellor and France's President.

What about the Bamberg Horseman? I am sure that next year some scientists will come up with the story that the guy and his horse were sculptured by an Italian.

Wagenburglers

2011-07-09T17:46:00.004+02:00

The name Vauban melts in the mouths of many of my friends in Madison. When they arrive in Freiburg these days on an ICE (LOL) from Frankfurt Airport soaked because the air conditioning on the train is broken* they cannot wait to visit the greenest quarter of our Green City. It’s easy to get there. Just walk south on the platform, avoid taking the escalator to the deck of the bridge spanning the main station’s track field - since you are already soaked anyway - but rather climb those 40 steps in a temperature of 30 degrees centigrade (86 Fahrenheit) and mount a red! not a green streetcar named Vauban. It will take you to the entry of Vauban in just 15 minutes.
*This is nothing else than a contribution of our Federal Railway to fight climatic change

Stepping off the streetcar number 3 at Paula-Modersohn-PLatz

When stepping off the streetcar at Paula-Modersohn-Platz you will possibly suffer cultur shock: the gate to Vauban looks like a fort protecting a couple of wagons. This is the home of the Wagenburglers (wagon burgers). They live in their densely parked or rather packed camping cars and old buses on a lot that eventually will be covered with a multipurpose Green-Business-Center including a hotel and shops. The construction plans date back a couple of years but were often changed with changing investors. When nothing did happen until May 2009 the empty lot started attracting people who were looking for a place suited to live their alternative lifestyles.

The Wagenburglers claim their right to a selfdetermined life
and oppose the Green Party's policy of expulsion

When at the beginning of this year the construction plans had been finalized it was clear that the Wagenburglers had to leave the place. A hectic search went on (and still is on) for a site where these people could move to. The city immediately said that they had already set aside three lots carrying such poetic names as Eselswinkel (donkey's corner), Biohum (bio humus) and Schattenparker (shadow parker). These places however are filled with fellow Wagenburglers. Private people who were asked for some land to lease wearily signaled their refusal.

Although Vauban remains green, the Wagenburglers are mocking the Christian Democrats and the Green Party accusing them of a zero tolerance for space to place their wagons.
Their mocking cumulates in the phrase: Gypsies back to Africa

The last deadline for the removal of Fort Wagon is the 31st of July. So pressure is building up at the Rathaus: They must leave and if necessary be forced by law and with the Wagenburglers: We shall fight to stay. They have already announced a demonstration in the city center for the 23th of July. It is to be feared that more actions will follow in particular when the Wagenburglers will call in those professional demonstrators from all over Germany who like nothing better than bashing the police.

Please stay tuned for any future development

The Last Habsburg

2011-07-05T15:26:00.093+02:00

When strolling through Freiburg this morning I noticed a strange flag with a mourning band flying from a bookshop. When I came nearer I recognized the Austrian Imperial banner and had my light bulb moment (mir ging ein Licht auf): The bookseller wanted to remind the passers-by that the last of the Habsburgs, Otto, grandchild of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I, had passed away on the 4th of July at a biblical age of 99.

Polyglot Otto von Habsburg had lived through the last days of the Austrian Empire, somehow survived the Nazi rule, had nearly become the president of Hungary, and was elected as a German! Deputy into the European parliament where he fought against communism and for a strong united Europe.

My friend Jim took both photos
in particular the one of the shop window diplaying Otto von Habsburg's portrait.

Freiburg had been under Habsburg rule for 438 years when eventually in 1806 Napoleon ordered the Anschluss of the Breisgau to the Duchy of Baden. The Catholic population accustomed to the mild Austrian hand (Vienna was far away!) suddenly felt dominated by mostly Protestant Badeners. It is reported that many a man wasn't ashamed of his tears.

One of the means of integrating the Breisgau into the Duchy was the creation of a reading society (Lesegesellschaft) to marry the Protestant North with the Catholic South as the poet Johann Georg Jacobi then wrote. In those days this society, nowadays called Museumsgesellschaft, united the civil servants coming from Karlsruhe with the local intellectuals. It still exists and now is Freiburg's oldest civic society.

Today little reminds of the Habsburg rule in Freiburg if it's not for some historical buildings sometimes showing the Austrian colours red-white-red, the Vienna cuisine, and the fine bakery.

National Holidays

2011-07-03T17:48:00.002+02:00

That the US community in Freiburg celebrated their 4th of July holiday this year already on the 2nd certainly had to do with the fact that a sunny Saturday afternoon is better suited than an even sunnier Monday. Nevertheless a festivity being moved forward disturbs me somewhat although it is customary in Germany to celebrate birthdays conveniently following the due date.

The ongoing crazy hazy days of summer full of pretzels and beer (Brezel und Bier) remind me that German national holidays of the past never were sunny.

As you may recall Germany became a rather late nation with the creation of the 2nd Reich in 1871 but with no national holiday. Eventually the 2nd of September the Sedantag was tolerated as the day of the decisive victory over Germany’s Erbfeind France. The Freiburg people however preferred the date of 18 February when in 1871 the fortress of Belfort eventually had surrendered to the German coalition army; Belfort a place nearer to Freiburg than Sedan with respect to distance and to their hearts.

When on the 9th of November 1918 Germany had lost the First World War Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a German republic. This was a date many country fellows considered appropriate as being the day on which Robert Blum, deputy of the Frankfurt National Assembly and a strong advocate of a German Republic, had died in front of a firing squad in Vienna in the aftermath of the 1848/49 revolutionary uprisings.

The Nazis however always considered the 9th of November a date of surrender and national shame and attempted a Putsch in Munich on this very date in 1923 that broke down in the machinegun fire of troops loyal to the republic. However, when Hitler came to power in 1933 the 9th of November as a national holiday didn't change since it now became the day of the martyrs who had died for the Nazi cause in Munich. It was a day of bad emotion and became infamous in 1938 when in the so-called Reichskristallnacht - the night from the 8th to the 9th of November - not only the windows of Jewish shops were smashed but most of the synagogues were burned to the ground.

With the war and the nightmare being over the Federal Republic of Germany after having defined the day of the passing of our constitution (Grundgesetz) as the new national holiday spontaneously switched in 1953 to the 17th of June. On that date a general strike in East Germany against the communist regime - they hadn't been as lucky as we in the West with a teacher telling us how a federal state should work - was brutally crushed in the fire of Russian tanks. For years West Germans used the June date rather as a day of recreation than commemoration for it had the advantage of the summer season when compared to November.

But the 9th of November remained the day of German fate when in 1989 after twenty-eight years of separation the wall between the East and the West came down. Germany became unified again. In my and many other people's opinion it would have been most appropriate to switch back to the 9th of November again, a date illustrating the highs and the lows of German history.

When on the 3rd of October 1990 the first freely elected parliament of the GDR voted that East Germany shall adhere to the Federal Republic of Germany the then Kohl administration decided to make that date our national holiday. This was a wise, politically and seasonally correct decision giving to this last democratic vote of the East German parliament the importance that it deserves and to the people the chance to visit a chestnut shaded beer garden during a day of the Golden October (Germany's Indian summer).

Wikipedia tells me the remaining country still celebrating the 9th of November as national holiday is Cambodia but that in a much warmer climate than Europe.

Much Ado about Drums or German Justice at its Best

2011-06-29T20:47:00.000+02:00

Remember my blog about the French-German Gipfel in Freiburg where Nicolas S. and Angela M. were sprayed with water and bystanders with the sound of drums. The police found the noise the left-wing alternative (linksalternativen) Sambastas produced with their drums as too loud to be healthy and confiscated not one as I had wrongly reported but 13 instruments. The official reasons given were that communication between policemen had become impossible and that the sound level had exceeded the 100 decibel limit in Germany's Immission Protection Act. In fact, the highest level the police had recorded was 110 decibels being as loud as a compressed air hammer at one meter distance.

The giant of physics Richard Feynman
with his famous bongo drums

According to the public prosecuter such a noise poses a risk to the health. However, he concluded, the Sambastas hadn't done it on purpose and didn't assent damage to a third person. Anyway, nobody had been hurt and without a tinnitus or a burst tympanum there had been no bodily injury by negligence. And he added: There are realms where noise must be accepted as a socially adequate burden (sozialadäquate Belastung).

Following this statement the Sambastas had high hopes to recuperate their drums without paying the fee of 50 Euros each the city of Freiburg had asked for. The city officials however remain obstinate since the 650 Euros for the 13 drums had been fixed in court and there is no reason to deviate from this decision. Lets face it, the true reason is that Freiburg needs the money, even small sums will help the city's budget.

At present the Sambastas prepare a lawsuit against the city to force them to return the instruments without paying the ransom. The case is now fully in the hands of lawers and they surely will keep it alive. It's promised: I shall keep you abreast of the progress in the drum affair

Permanent Storage

2011-06-16T14:33:00.002+02:00

Whenever a Government cannot solve a problem in simply taking a decision they call in the experts. These wise women and men then sit together and eventually come up with one or a bunch of proposals which the government either will choose from or simply ignores. This happened lately when the Merkel administration called in an Ethic Commission to recommend on the abandoning of nuclear energy in Germany. For me this was once more all about stupefying the people (Volksverdummung) as the government had taken the decision to shut down our nuclear power stations before. They just wanted to cover their ... with a recommendation of the Ethic Commission to be used when in later years all our electric lights are low. Strangely enough a shortage in kilowatts may happen not so much in winter but in summer when all the rivers are low on water, the nuclear reactors in France must work on reduced power, and are not willing to export electricity.

The Ethic Commission also dealt with the permanent disposal of radioactive waste demanding that the problem must be solved. What a lucid statement! No wonder the Federal Office of Radioprotection responsible for the permanent disposal commented immediately. No phrase-mongering this time when they state: The worldwide unsolved problem of the permanent disposal of radioactive waste must be solved although they are somehow ducking the national issue heaving the waste to the world level.

What follows are just matters of course and déjà vus: German waste remains in Germany. All technical options for storage should be discussed, i.e. we continue talking in the coming years. Safety of storage has the highest priority. With the possibility of storage in abandoned salt mines greatly compromised the Federal Office recommends a comparative search for other sites: Permanent storage can only be solved with public participation in a way where the outcome is not known in advance (to say it short in German: ist ergebnisoffen).

To make the long story short: with the technical problem not solved and a storage site not found we either turn in circles or we are back to square one each time with more insight but fewer options. I fear that the statement the permanent disposal of radioactive waste must not be left to future generations remains just a statement.

All Metric?

2011-06-15T16:07:00.005+02:00

Strolling through the exhibition on Bad Mergentheim's history I suddenly was thunderstruck. Behind an old cupboard only half visible I read the word "Maaß" on a poster and rapidly figured out that it didn't mean a Maß of beer but an information panel introducing metric measures and weights as recommended by the authorities on 29 March 1870 for use in Baden's primary schools. Up to now I always had assumed that the metric system had been introduced in Germany with its unification in 1871. Looking up Wikipedia I read that the 2nd Reich had adopted the metric system indeed on 1 January 1872 but how to explain its earlier introduction in Baden at the eve of the start of the French-Prussian war in 1870?

The poster illustrates how up to 1870 technical exchange and trade between German territories were hampered by the use of feet having various lengths. In fact, the foot varied from a meager 0.25 m in the Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt to an enormous 0.3161 m in the Austrian Empire with the English foot of 0.3048 m in between. The foot in the Great Duchy of Baden measured exactly 0.3 m. Both Hesse's and Baden's feet are a clear deference to Napoleon's Rheinbund making the lengths easily convertible into the meter that France had introduced as early as 1799.

Other European countries have adopted the metric system well before Germany like the Benelux (Belgium, Luxemburg) in 1820, Switzerland 1835, and Italy 1861 following its unification. The UK is still in changeover to the metric system and the US Congress passed a Metric Conversion Act as late as 1975 with apparently no changes so far as the daily life of the US citizen is concerned. The Wikipedia page gives a lot of anecdotal information about the history of the metric system.

The metric system is not without flaws. I do not mean that the statement found on the poster one meter being the 1/40 000 000 part of the earth's circumference was wrong from the start* but that the basic unit of weight is the kilogram i.e. a metric quantity with a prefix. This is due to the fact that the initial French system had retained specific and sometimes traditional names for the new metric quantities. The basic unit for the weight (today it is rather defined as mass) was called the grave and one thousandth of it was the gram. Since grave sounded too aristocratic the name was abandoned in the course of the French Revolution.
*since 1983 one meter is defined as the distance light will travel in vacuum during 1/299 792 458 seconds

A simelar use of traditional names for the new lengths in German is found on the poster. One centimeter is called Neuzoll (new inch), ten meters are a decameter or a Kette (chain) and one kilometer is named Wegstrecke (length of way or path). These names never made it into common use.

Strange Borders

2011-06-08T11:53:00.001+02:00

Bad Mergentheim train station where in the old days traveling from Karlsruhe to Stuttgart you had to change (wechseln) from a Baden to a Württemberg train.

Strolling through Bad Mergentheim the second stop on this year's bicycle tour I happened to look into the window of an abandoned shop at the Market Place. Some local history nerds had used the "empty" opportunity to place an original drawing of Bad Mergentheim's train station there. The information said that the station had been inaugurated in 1870 jointly by the Great Duchy of Baden and the Kingdom of Württemberg: Two identical side buildings were connected by a middle part that used to house a common waiting room. On top of the middle part there had been a tower with two clocks showing the two different times valid in the two states.

An old map showing the region of Bad Mergentheim.
Famous Rothenburg ob der Tauber is shown in the right corner below.

I logically assumed that the border between the Baden and Württemberg States before Germany's unification in 1871 had run across the station with Bad Mergentheim a city built on the border. Nope! The following day visiting the exhibition on the city's history I learned that the old border ran slightly out of Mergentheim in the West. The historical map where I followed and marked the relevent borders in red shows to the left the Grand Duchy of Baden with the Württemberg enclave of Deubach in Baden territory. In the upper left the Kingdom of Bavaria is eating into Württemberg with the latter's microenclave of Bowiesen situated on the border between Baden and Bavaria. Notice the classical case of a Dreiländereck nearby (a region where borders of three countries meet) in the middle of Old Germany. With the creation of the federal state Baden-Württemberg in 1951 the border between Baden and Württemberg has disappeared although a consentually artifical animosity is cultivated between the Swabians and the Badeners thus keeping alive the former border in their heads.

Nowadays Bad Mergentheim's train station looks somewhat down and out. This impression is enforced when looking at the following photo.

Platform 1: Historical and hence beautiful the old mechanical signals protecting the three remaining tracks

Röntgen

2011-06-06T18:32:00.000+02:00

This year's bicycle tour with some of my former classmates took me to the banks of the Main and Tauber rivers. One of the highlights on our trip was the city of Würzburg particularly known for its Residence Castle (UN heritage) and its two old hospitals Julius- and Bürgerspital where nowadays Fraconian wine is served in special bocksbeutel bottles.

Röntgen's manuscript

Würzburg is also the city where in 1895 Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered the roentgen rays better known in the US as x-rays. Röntgen modestly used to call them X-Strahlen in German or in the scientific language of the 19th century rayons x. The laboratory room where Röntgen made his discovery can in principle be visited but going there with two friends I found the door locked. Luckily enough an excellent booklet about the history of the new kind of radiation (Über eine neue Art von Strahlen) was on sale at the secretariat of the now material research institute for a ridiculous price of € 2.50. Here I used the occasion to convince the two ladies present that I should be privileged to show to my two companions Röntgen's lab for I had written way back in 1960 my diploma thesis about: Applying the contrast transfer function to x-ray picturing. And o miracle, one of the girls left and came back with the key. The room we visited was filled with Ruhmkorff induction coils and Crookes tubes or Hittorf vacuum glass vessels. The picture below may give you an impression.

The room where Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen made his discovery

Röntgen was lucky that the vacuum he could achieve in his time was rather bad such that when applying high tension between two electrodes melted into a glass vessel the remaining positively charged gas ions hitting the metal cathode generated free electrons that in turn were accelerated by the high tension towards the anode producing x-ray bremsstrahlung. This term like eigenvalue is one of the few remaining German words or half-words in today's scientific language.

By the way, applying the contrast transfer function to the picture taken by Röntgen of a hand would have improved the quality of the photo considerably. Please compare the left hand left to the left hand right.

Grass Art

2011-05-18T16:48:00.000+02:00

No, I am not writing about Günter Grass, Nobel Prize winner in literature and known as a skilled sculptor and fine graphic artist too.

I would like to present a grass work of art made by Ralf Witthaus, an artist from Cologne, on the Stühlinger Church Square in mowing stripes into the lawn. My first reaction was: He cut too deep but his answer was: Nature is taking my work of art back. Art that does exist only for two or three weeks must communicate well. People living around the Stühlinger Church - situated just across the train station and often mistaken by passing travellers as being Freiburg’s Münster Church - look at this piece of art differently in branding a panel: This is no art, this is a noise nuisance! Indeed, Ralf had used a rather noisy lawn mower.

Heisenberg Re-read

2011-05-14T15:12:00.000+02:00

Some books you get acquainted with during school days you should absolutely re-read when being old and gray. Into this category, among many others, belong the Bible and Goethe's Faust. Up to now I didn't count Werner Heisenberg's The Part and the Whole (Published in an English translation titled rather commonplace: Physics and Beyond), a book that I read as a young physisist, among those but admittedly I was mistaken.

This year my annual bicycle tour will take me to Franconia. Wulf, a former classmate, retired College teacher for German and biology, organizes these yearly trips. He does a marvelous job not only in preparing these tours but while cycling during the day we learn about birds and plants along the way and for the evenings Wulf has prepared a reading choosing always an author and topic with relevance to the region we are cycling.

Apparently there are no famous regional authors connected with Würzburg but Werner Heisenberg, Nobel prize winner in physics, was born in this town in 1901. Since I had contributed to the evening entertainment on past bicycle tours too - although with mixed success - Wulf asked me whether I would be willing to read something written by Heisenberg. To this end I took his autobiography from the shelf and noticed it had been published in 1969 making it more than 40 years that I first read the book.

What is comprehension in physics? Are we satisfied with the understanding of a phenomenon when it is possible to describe it by a mathematical formalism? Although such an understanding will allow us to do calculations and hence make predictions the situation remains quite unsatisfactory. It turns out that terms and definitions of our daily experience will break down when we try to describe phenomena in the atomic world.

A cartoon by N. Harding showing Erwin Schrödinger clueless. His equation named after him allows to calculate discrete quantum states by using wave mechanics.

One famous example is the physical description of light. Whilst Christiaan Huygens in the 17th Century forwarding the wave theory of light had beaten Isaac Newton's corpuscular theory modern physics eventually englobed both ideas and talks about a particle-wave duality. This is not a fight between scientists but an attempt to explain the physics of light with pictures taken from our everyday experience where we need both complementary descriptions. The problem of comprehension and that our language is incapable of describing the phenomena in atomic physics in an inherently consistent way is one of Heisenberg's leitmotifs. Following my 40 year experience in the subatomic world it is just fascinating to read his book again.

Opalinus Clay

2011-05-09T16:43:00.003+02:00

With Osama had bin the German news is again Laden with the nuclear issue. No more energy from fission in the future that is decided but what to do with all that highly radioactive waste already present and still being produced until the last power reactor will have shut down in Germany?

So far our government had put all their money on or better in an abandoned salt mine located in Gorleben in the State of Lower Saxony to serve as the permanent radioactive disposal site. Citing the Anglo-American Wikipedia: The name "Gorleben" has become infamous both nationally and internationally because of plans to build a national deep geological repository for radioactive waste there, along with interim storage units. The waste comes from Germany's nuclear power plants, was reprocessed in France at La Hague, and the unusable remains then sent back to Germany in spent nuclear fuel shipping casks for final storage.

Abandoned salt mine Gorleben

A strong opponent to the Gorleben storage site is Anna Countess of Bernstorff who was honored in Freiburg last week with the Kant-World-Citizen-Prize 2011. She is an admirer of our designated green Governor (Ministerpräsident) for he had agreed to starting a search for a high level radioactive waste disposal site in Baden-Württemberg. Such an action the past Black-Yellow government had always refused arguing that one first has to show that Gorleben is no good. In fact, it had never been good for the Countess as part of the land on top of the Gorleben site belongs to her. No wonder she is strongly opposed to any radioactivity in her - although deep lying - basement. Slightly more objectively than this "not in my basement" attitude Green Peace has declared a risk of water infiltration into the salt mine and lately the news of natural gas diffusing into the cavern has created an "explosive mixture" for any further discussions.

When our designated governor considered the possibility of radioactive storage in Germany's South-West he certainly had the Opalinus clay in mind a geological formation that since years is under investigation in Switzerland in view of a long term safe haven for waste from their power reactors. Mighty layers of this particular clay are found in the North of Switzerland but somewhat delicately extend into Germany. Opalinus clay may in fact be better suited than salt as a geological storage medium since the stuff is waterproof and due to its elasticity will heal any developing geological faults thus keeping the storage cavern tight for generations.

Generally hailed as a courageous step the consent to search for the storage site in our "Ländle" is worth what it is: another brainwashing of the people. The investigation of the Opalinus clay formation will just cost taxpayers' money and - taking the Swiss example - continue for years well beyond the responsibility of any present government. Anyway the answer to all the search and research is already clear from the start: storing radioactivity into Opalinus clay will bear a residual risk (Restrisiko) just big enough to justify the usual statement: Not in my basement.

Let's face it: we simply don't know how to protect future generations against the radiological risk and consequences of all that artificial radioactivity we have produced and are still producing.

55 U$ per gallon?

2011-04-27T15:47:00.003+02:00

Like we in Europe you in the States experience increasing petrol prices but have you ever heard about a gasoline price of 55 U$ per gallon? The story goes like this:

About two months ago the German Government decreed in an act of ecological force an increase of the percentage of ethanol in premium (super) gasoline from 5 to 10%. Immediately a big tug of war started between the Federal Government and those car loving Germans fearing for the well being of there Audi, BMW, and Mercedes engines. In addition some Green came up with calculations that alcohol made from corn is less ecological than burning fossil fuel and above all food prices would necessarily increase as fertile land is rather used to produce ethanol than cereals. Fact is that in Germany Super E10 (Eurosuper) presently is a dead article whereas, as far as I know, Americans don't give a hoot what they fill into their tanks as long as it keeps their robust engines running and isn't too expensive.

Note the price tags at the filling station. Diesel: 7.6 U$ per gallon,
Super E10: 8.4 U$ per gallon and Super (premium gas): 55.4 U$ per gallon.

To promote sales of the biosprit (Would this be called organic gasoline in the States?) oil companies urged the government to tax Super E10 less than the traditional Super but the Ministry of Finance turned out to be as pigheaded as the German driver. Now tanks at the filling stations are full of Super E10 whilst supplies of the classical Super are dwindling. Some pessimists even predicted a shortage of the favorite brew in spite gasoline prices always climb and as usual soared before the Easter holidays.

In fact, with the content of its reservoir approaching zero, fearing that the pumps might run dry and be damaged a filling station in Filderstadt near Stuttgart displayed a price of 9.99 Euros per liter for Super just to block drivers from filling up. However it happened that one guy refueled 3 and a girl 6 gallons winding up with bills of 100 and 200 Euros respectively. A gasoline price of 55 U$ per gallon is this worth an entry into the Guinness book?

I actually don't care. On those rare occasions when I use my car it is either to go to France or Switzerland where Super is not only readily available but even sold at a lower price than in Germany.

Note added in proof: In the meantime Exxon has re-embursed the two persons from Filderstadt.

Of High and of Low Beds

2011-04-17T16:29:00.005+02:00

The other day I stepped into a furniture store. A salesperson (a man) walked up to me. Following the usual preliminaries he eyeballed me and firmly stated: You need a high bed. How did the guy know that my bed is only 45 cm (18”) high?

Although I get older each time between going to bed and waking up the following morning so far and until further notice I still managed to climb out of it.

Nevertheless, when visiting the States two month ago I savoured the high beds of at least 60 cm (24”). They reminded me of those at my grandparents' farm in Westphalia. When as a child I visited them and sat on the beds my legs were not long enough to touch the ground.

Admire the medieval student struggling with his high bed in the early days of Freiburg's university:

When looking at the picture I understand the expression to climb into bed because there is even a footstep. It seems that in the States they not only hung on to the tradition of high beds but to the traditions of the medieval university too.

In the early days of Freiburg’s university students (freshmen, no women) had to learn during two years (college years?) the seven free arts in the philosophical faculty. It was the Greek philosopher Boethius(480-524) who had divided the ancient knowledge into the subjects of grammar, rhetoric (elocution), dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. The students graduated in philosophy obtaining a baccalaureus artium (bachelor). Only then they were allowed to take up the study of theology, law, medicine or continue with philosophy to finish those four faculties with a degree of magister (master).

In a manuscript from the second half of the XII century called Hortos deliciarium (Garden of pleasance) the seven arts are depicted as women where Lady Grammar claims: From me you can learn what are the words, syllibales and letters. Difficult stuff not only yesteryear such that the lady typically is shown with a birch in her right hand ready to punish her pupils (naked) where one of them feigns reading his grammar book. This photo I took in the front porch of Freiburg's Münster where statues of all the seven arts are displayed.

Following a European directive but with lots of resistance universities in Germany are actually obliged go back to their roots in replacing the usual university degrees of diploma or state examination with bachelor and master degrees.

Coming back to discussion of the height of beds: How is it that contrary to the beds toilet seats in the States are so low, i.e. much lower than those in Europe. Kohler, was he a dwarf? Well, I agree this is another and completely different story.

Was-a-Belle

2011-04-10T17:33:00.002+02:00

When I visited Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on Long Island, NY late in 1983 the US government had just stopped the construction of a 200+200 GeV superconducting proton collider called ISABELLE (the Intersecting Storage Accelerator + "belle") after having already spent 200 Mio U$ on infrastructure and superconducting magnets. Frustrated my American colleagues had renamed the killed project Was-a-belle.

The most beautiful machine: A similar situation happed in Germany when in 1989 the State government of North-Rhein-Westfalia after having spent 2 Billion Euros stopped the operation of a pebble bed reactor (Kugelhaufenreaktor) what was then called the most beautiful machine. From today to tomorrow the high temperature reactor THTR 300 in Hamm-Uentrop had become a was-a-belle. The main reason for shutting down the is-a-belle machine had been the Chernobyl radioactive cloud that had passed over Europe in 1986.

What is it that makes the high temperature pebble bed reactor so beautiful? As any other reactor the THTR works on nuclear fission but the main material burned is Thorium-232 although 20% of Uranium-235 is needed to create a critical assembly sustaining the chain reaction. The moderator is graphite instead of light water and the coolant is helium gas. Elegantly the nuclear fuel is mixed with the neutron moderating graphite (carbon) formed into spheres of the size of a tennis ball. Such an assembly has a negative temperature coefficient i.e. as the temperature increases the fissionable material-carbon mixture eventually becomes uncritical i.e. the THTR had an inherent safety feature.

How does the THTR operate: When the THTR is running thermal neutrons breed Uranium-233 from Thorium-232 where the former is fissioned "on-line". Instead of uranium the THTR burns the on earth more abundant thorium with only a small amount of plutonium produced. The theoretical energy efficiency of boiling water reactors (like those in Fukushima) is 47%, the one for the helium cooled pebble bed reactor is 71%, for the beautiful machine did not only generate electricity but also high temperature heat. This heat was intended to be used for the hydrogenation of the abundant coal on the Ruhr producing methane and other hydrocarbons.

During operation fresh carbon-thorium balls were fed into the reactor vessel from above while burned out spheres were taken out from the bottom and reprocessed. Although the THTR produces a small amount of plutonium the radioactive waste from the burning of thorium due to the shorter half-lives of the fission products is less of a problem than the waste from light-water reactors.

The Rubbiatron: For those who are still worried about the small amount of plutonium produced Carlo Rubbia's energy amplifier may alley their concerns. In coupling a thorium assembly with a proton accelerator the nuclear fission is sustained by neutrons produced from spallation reactions. No Uranium-235 is needed and no plutonium is produced. Why is the machine called energy amplifier? One has to input a certain amount of energy to get the more energy producing chain reaction going. This also means: when the accelerator is switched off nuclear fission stops immediately. Such a proton accelerator could likewise be used to "incinerate" the nuclear waste produced.

When we discussed the Rubbiatron at CERN one technological issue seemed to be insurmountable. As an accelerators operates in a vacuum there must be a separation (a thin window) between the thorium assembly and the proton machine. Such a metallic membrane will be hit by enormous amounts of radiation and thus be damaged in a short time.

Epilogue: With all the present day nuclear hysteria in Germany the State government of North-Rhein-Westfalia suddenly claimed that 2000 of the 675 000 radioactive thorium-graphite balls used in the THTR had gone astray. However, this turned out to be a hoax!

Dr. Printz of the Jülich Research Laboratory proudly presents
one of the"missing" graphite-thorium balls (DPA)

Anything Goes

2011-04-09T16:20:00.000+02:00

Nothing is impossible: Der Spiegel on-line used this Toyota slogan: Nichts ist unmöglich as a title of an article referring to newly possible color combinations in German politics. Remember the color coding of our political parties?

Nothing is impossible? Rather the lyrics of an Ella Fitzgerald song come to my mind:

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
Now heaven knows, anything goes.

With the Greens flying high in the sky (like Ol' Blue Eyes with his gal or chick) the other colors become pale or nearly vanish like the yellow colored Liberals. Following their crushing defeat in the latest State elections they choose as a first remedy a new party chairman, a doctor by profession, to cure them from anorexia.

At present all political parties in Germany would like to get a bit of the anti nuclear bonus the Green Party is profitting from. All in vain, if there were federal elections today the Christian Democrats (black) will remain the strongest party but they would be unable to form a government for the Liberals (yellow) would fall below 5% and thus no longer be presented in the Bundestag (parliament). And as the Greens will have more votes than the Social Democrats (red) Germany would very likely have a green chancellor provided the Reds accept the rôle of a junior coalition partner for the Greens like in the State of Baden-Württemberg.

That this may not happen and with the yellows falling out of parliament the blacks are looking for a "new" coalition junior partner and suddenly anything goes. For them the Greens have become honorable.

However, all this is just a snapshot for the tide will change once Fukushima doesn't make it to the front page anymore and the Green-Red coalition in Stuttgart is showing syptoms of wear and tear.

Cold Fusion

2011-04-01T17:26:00.002+02:00

The recent electoral success of the Greens will accelerate the phasing out of nuclear power in Germany. The search for new energy sources is being intensified. Here I should admit: Freiburgs’s population is stuck between a rock and a hard place. So far the opposition against wind energy plants was great with one convincing argument that the rotating blades may kill bats during their night-flights. However, this is a trumped-up assertion, for the real reason is that nobody likes the technical asparagus on top of the black-forest and certainly not in his/her own backyard.

The other day I read: Dane County's manure digester ready to provide electricity. This certainly works if only there are enough cows or pigs to deliver the raw material. What does not work is Cold Fusion a flaw that Dogbert has lately re-invented as an energy source:

I still remember when in Spring ’89 Carlo Rubbia (later Nobel prize winner and my Director General) caught me in a hallway at CERN and said: Look what Fleischman and Pons do in the States and we are all sleeping here. I gulped and later provided to him and other teams at CERN neutron counters such that my Group could hardly fulfill our tasks in radiation protection at the Lab. Yes, even Cold Fusion if it worked will create radiation! To make a long story short: The CERN spokesman said that "essentially all" attempts in Western Europe to reproduce the results had failed (Wikipedia) what meant in clear: Cold Fusion did and will not work.

The Follow-up

2011-03-31T16:26:00.000+02:00

Smudged election poster

Ministerpräsident (governor) Mappus got the nuke issue right in his face. Last Sunday Fukushima in distant Japan has decided the state elections in Baden-Württemberg with the Greens more than doubling their votes.

Distribution of seats in the state assembly. In percentage: Christian Democrats 39.0%,
Greens 24.2%, Social Democrats 23.1% and Liberals 5.3%

Look at the new distribution of seats in Baden-Württemberg's state assembly. Not only did many base voters switch to green but people who had never cast their votes in the past put their ballot-paper into the box. The turnout of voters in 2011 was 66.2% compared to 53.4% in 2006. Note that the Liberals with 5.3% had nearly missed their entry into the legislature a fate that happened to the right and left wing parties since they missed the minimum quorum of 5% of the votes necessary to be presented in the state assembly.

The intention of the Social Democrats had been to form a coalition with the Greens ousting the present black-yellow government. Now however the Greens having more than doubled their seats and gained one more than the Reds will form a green-red government with their leader becoming the new Ministerpräsident.

Suddenly an existing schedule in Germany to phase out nuclear power in the coming years without jeopardizing our electrical supply is questioned. Even the in the past pro nuke Liberals now try to jump on the "Abandon Nuclear" bandwagon. And there are those for whom Angst transforms into panic when they demand: Stop all nuclear power stations now!

Will they still be satisfied when Germany has to import "nuclear" electricity from France with prices per kilowatt-hour going up? As long as the Japanese do not come to grips with their reactor disaster the issue of nuclear power in Germany will overshadow all other problems.

Abwählen = recall?

2011-03-25T18:34:00.001+01:00

If I understood correctly: it is possible to recall senators in Wisconsin before the end of their term by public vote. When you look at the black-yellow election poster for next Sunday’s vote in Baden-Württemberg you read the words: Jetzt abwählen (recall now) and you wonder. You can vote alright but how is it possible to recall the Christian Democrats (Conservatives or black) + the Free Democrats (Liberals or yellow)?

What actually is meant is not to vote in Sunday's election for nuclear power an issue loaded with German Angst since Fukushima and represented by the present coalition government of black and yellow here in the Ländle. Whilst it is impossible to recall deputies in Germany it is possible not to vote for them in the upcoming election.

Color Coding

2011-03-20T20:23:00.003+01:00

During my recent visit to Madison when talking with the protesting people around the Capitol some of them wanted to know about coalitions between various political parties in the Old World and how they could possibly work. Even the UK, motherland of the one party majority rule, is now governed by a coalition of Conservatives and Liberals in Parliament with the Labor Party in opposition.

In Germany the situation is even more colorful since we have a whole "spectrum" of parties. The Christian Democrats (CDU with usual 30 to 40% of the votes in elections) are our conservatives where people have recently become uneasy about the adjective Christian as some of the great leaders are divorced and one has fathered an illegitimate child. The other Volkspartei, our GOP*, are the Social Democrats (SPD with 25 to 35% of the votes). They traditionally are the party of the working class. Recently however they renewed their pact with industry that had worked so well under the Schröder administration. The SPD eventually understood that elections are won only when firstly the party is appealing to the middle class and secondly is following the rule: thou shalt not kill the cow (industry) that gives the milk (jobs). Such an attitude however never pleased the traditional left wingers. When the German Democratic Republic (DDR) was integrated into West Germany's Federal Republic in 1990 nostalgic Marxists in the East founded the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The PDS in suffering great labor pains eventually amalgamated with the extreme left of theSocial Democrats in the West to form the Left Party (Die Linke, 5% of the votes in the West to 20% of votes in the Eastern parts of Germany).

Coming back to the party spectrum: the Christian Democrats traditionally are attributed the black color since they have their origin in the Zentrum, the Catholic Party in the Weimar Republic. You guessed it: the Social Democrats carry red as color. Since however there is no red redder than red the PDS is presented in pie charts by magenta. Green for the Green party (10 to 20% of the votes) is obvious and the Liberals (5 to 10%) are painted yellow. New parties have to take what is left over in the spectrum. The recently formed Pirate Party (<1% of the votes asking in there program for a free internet access for everybody) had to choose orange.

Now let us form coalitions. The hard part is to find a compromised common governmental platform for surviving for a whole legislature with a usual small majority in a coalition government against a strong opposition. The easy part are the colors. In the past a traffic light (Ampel) coalition of red, yellow and green became quite popular. When in some of our State governments (Länder) the Social Democrats are replaced by the Christian Democrats a Jamaica coalition may be formed being my favorite only as far as the combination of colors is concerned: green, yellow and black.

More common than three party coalitions are two parties forming a government like black-yellow as presently in the Federal Government Berlin. The other proofed working combination is red-green. There have been successful cases of red-black coalitions too. These are called great coalitions because of large and comfortable majorities in parliament seats. In such a combination the Social Democrat Party generally is the junior partner and usually suffers a setback in the following election. On the other hand, an experiment of a black-green coalition in the State of Hamburg ended in an electoral disaster for the Christian Democrats.

If you have been wondering about some recent erratic reactions and decisions of our present Federal Government (the hectic dealing with the minister of defense Guttenberg's copy and paste thesis, the sudden about-face in the support of nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster, and the negative vote in the UN security council about the Libyan no-fly zone) you should know that there are upcoming elections in three of our Federal States. Since their outcome is important for the majority in our Senate (Bundesrat) the government avoids any unpopular decisions that could cause voters not choosing black-yellow.

Today is Election Day in the State of Thuringia. Will there be a new edition of a great coalition or are we going to see the formation of a red-magenta government?

Next weekend Germany is looking forward to a Super Sunday. I shall vote in the election for the State parliament of Baden-Württemberg. At the same time people elect their State parliament in the Land of Hessen. For the latter it is practically certain that Hessen will be governed by a red-green coalition. For my Ländle however the result of the election is a thriller: will the incumbent black-yellow government survive or will a green-red coalition take over. You read correctly: Green-red means that for the first time in German history a green Ministerpräsident (Governor) would form a coalition State government. Stay tuned for a possible political earth quake in Germany’s South-West.

*Not ideologically but just what it literally means: the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands is our Great Old Party as it was founded in the 19th century and still exists. Due to Germany’s industrialization in the 2nd Reich the number of voters for the SPD increased steadily. Bismarck tried to take the wind out of their sails in creating an old age and health insurance for the working class. When the roll back didn’t work as he had hoped for Bismarck had the Reichstag (parliament) pass the socialist act banning the movement. Later the SPD was admitted again and Emperor Wilhelm II needed the votes of the socialists for passing the war budget in 1914. Following the lost war the social democrats were the party wholeheartily supporting the Weimar Republic. It was the only political formation that voted in parliament against Hitler’s Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) that eventually assured absolute power to the Nazi regime. Also today the Social Democrats present one of the backbones of German democracy.

Nuclear Power and No End?

2011-03-14T14:27:00.003+01:00

In writing this I don't mean electrical power from nuclear fission that will surely come to an end. I mean the renewed discussion in Germany on nuclear power in view of the present catastrophe in Japan. The apocalyptic scenario we watch with great sympathy for the Japanese people in fact furnishes no new arguments in the debate about the safety of nuclear power reactors.

Let me say this clearly: Present power reactors are safe as long as a team of incompetent technicians does not mess around with the cooling system (Three Mile Island), an overambitious engineer does not play with the control rods (Tchernobyl) or an earth quake of magnitude 8.9 followed by a tsunami wave of 10 meters height does not hit a nuclear power plant. Whilst the last scenario can be excluded in Germany nobody is safe against human foolishness. This and the unresolved storage of nuclear waste are the main reasons that Germany has an established time-table for phasing out its nuclear power reactors. Let us face it: Presently there is no alternative for "cheap" energy as nuclear fusion still is in the stars only (in both senses).

There is a new generation of power reactors propagated by industry being more compact and working at higher temperatures hence more efficient than those we presently operate. Don't believe the people telling you that this new line of power reactors is safer than the old one. Due to the higher energy density and the higher neutron flux density inside the nuclear core the materials used for the reactor vessels will rapidly become brittle and fail much earlier than in present day reactors. Mother Nature presents us with marvelous elements that we melt into alloys showing properties our ancestors only have dreamt of. We have however come to the technological limit of stability of metal alloys as far as the combined influence of neutron bombardment and temperature is concerned.

So please no new nuclear fission reactors and let the old existing ones eventually come to a well-deserved rest. What makes me nervous is that most people today are not aware that the energy they use still is too cheap and they moan if prices for petrol, gas, and electricity steadily go up. The increasing stress on their purses and wallets will hopefully trigger their consciousness for an economical use of our limited resources.

Fabulous Fred

2011-03-07T17:41:00.002+01:00

With Wisconsin's 14 Democrat Senators having fled their State, Republican Governor Scott Walker's contested budget repair bill cannot be passed. The Republicans have a majority in Wisconsin's upper house alright but for passing a bill touching on financial matters the quorum is needed. With the Democrat Senators absent the upper chamber falls short of just one vote.

Among those 14 expatriated Democrats Fred Risser is an outstanding person. Senator Risser has served Wisconsin for 55 years in the legislature and is the longest serving state legislator in American political history. When in 2009 the Freiburg-Madison Gesellschaft had organized a trip to Madison Senator Risser then 81 years old showed us his working place in the Capitol and explained to us the working of the two chamber legislature on State and Federal level. Nobody could foresee that this personality now "hides" in Illinois out of the range of Wisconsin troopers who have received order to "escort" at least one Democrat Senator back into Wisconsin's Senate Chamber.

State Senator Fred Risser, primary democratic rock, addresses us visitors at Madison's Capitol in 2009 ending a tour of the building arranged by the Mayor's wife Dianne right to him.

The picture below taken from a local newspaper shows Risser end of February 2011 together with State Senator Robert Rauch changing hotels in Illinois (frequently) to avoid harassment by Tea Party activists. Fred wears a red cap but all my American friends keep telling me that this has no political significance.

Bannmeile

2011-02-25T09:32:00.000+01:00

With great interest I follow the hefty altercation in the State of Wisconsin about budget cuts that has resulted in a showdown between the Governor and state employees. The day before yesterday even Freiburg's local newspaper Badische Zeitung published an article about the social unrest in Madison.

Without being able to judge the situation and refraining from comments about the affair two side issues that have occupied my thoughts. There apparently are subtle differences in the understanding of democracy in the States and in Germany. I saw masses of protesters holding up panels with various slogans inside Madison's Capitol Building. It must have been physically difficult for senators to reach their chamber not to talk about the psychological effect such protesters certainly have on legislators.

That protesting crowds invade the building of a state parliament or the Bundestag in Berlin is unthinkable in Germany. While parliaments are in session protesters are not allowed within a defined perimeter around the building such that deputies may exercise their debates and votes undisturbed. The map taken from the German Wikipedia shows the perimeter around the Reichstag building in Berlin called Bannmeile. It is not called kilometer but mile based on the measure of distance used in the various German territories before Germany's unification in 1871. The Second Reich not only adopted the (French) metric system such that all people should use the same measure for distances and weight but introduced a common currency, the Reichsmark, as well. Not even being a mile the Bannmeile around the Reichstag is just a few hundred meters wide. Inside the perimeter you find buildings where rooms for committee meetings are located too. The Bannmeile is valid only during scheduled sessions of the Bundestag.

In Germany protests are frequent and after all considered a serious business because in principle authorities must be informed before and authorize the protest. Nevertheless you find authorized and un-authorized protesters everywhere. Sometimes I have the impression some of the participants are professionals traveling from protest to protest all over Germany. Authorized protests even are protected by the police against anti-protesters. There is a continuous protest in Freiburg each first Monday of the month against Hartz IV, a bundle of social laws that way back in history the Schröder government had passed. It is heart-warming to watch the lonely policeman walking along the marching half-dozen people until they settle on Freiburg's Rathausplatz but only in case our town parliament is not in session.

The other minor difference between our democracies is that apparently in the States deputies can be forced to be present for voting. In Germany deputies simply walk out of their respective parliaments unhampered to the point that the quorum is no longer reached. In the States it seems that Wisconsin senators not willing to vote crossed the State boundary to be safe against the intervention by whom? Does the governor? call in the State troopers? to take senators having left the chamber back to their working place, hand-cuffed? That is what I would call a forced democracy. Next week I would like to learn more about these procedures when I am in Madison.

A Monument for Apo

2011-02-19T15:34:00.001+01:00

When reading the other day in my favorite newspaper the headline: A monument for "Apo" I was somewhat disturbed. Apo, this is how my grandchildren call me and not Opa being the standard form for grandpa in German. It happened when my oldest grandson started to speak that he used Apo instead of Opa such that the younger grandchildren adopted Apo as well. Elisabeth is called in an even kinder way Ami (French for friend) instead of Omi oder Oma. Our odd names help to distinguish us from the other grandparents.

What about the monument? Reading the article it turned out that people from a community outside Freiburg indeed had erected a statue for their defunct pharmacist (in German Apotheker) called Apo who had rendered outstanding services to local clubs and societies.

Just to tell you I am still alive!

Baden's Blessed Bernhard

2011-02-13T14:40:00.001+01:00

Beautiful statue of Bernhard,
the Christian warrior

Today in the Sunday Newspaper I read an article about the blessed Bernhard of Baden and how all attempts so far had failed to make him a saint. Having studied regional history for nearly a decade I was shocked that I hadn't read about him earlier.

Margrave Bernhard lived from 1428 until 1458 when he died from the plague in Moncalieri, Italy. Little is known about Bernhard and is this scanty information worthy of a saint? He as all rulers of that, earlier and later times tried to find glory in war activities. So in 1453 Bernhard led a group of mercenaries to Italy to conquer Naples for his uncle René of Anjou.

But mind you there are just and unjust wars depending from which side you are looking. What makes Bernhard worthy in the eyes of the Church is his call for a crusade against the Turks, who had taken Constantinople in 1453. They called the city Istanbul what according to a song of the 70ies anyway is nobody's business than the Turks. What helps in Bernhard's canonization process is that this crusade with all its war atrocities never took place such that the Battle of Varna in 1444 is considered to be the last crusade.

Now Freiburg's archbishop makes another attempt to convince the Congregation for the Causes of Saints of Bernhard's holiness. I regard this with envy for who is looking into Blessed Manfred’s cause (see previous blog).

Manfred

2011-02-11T17:36:00.001+01:00

The other day I visited the Hohenstaufer Exhibition in Mannheim. Time was too short to see all the interesting exhibits but there was one name, my own, that fascinated me.

Manfred, King of Sicily, and son of Emperor Frederick II. What a consolation! Although he never became German Emperor I finally found an interesting character. What else do we have?

I don't have a Saint but just the blessed Manfred of Rive commemorated on January 28.

There is the famous physisist Manfred von Ardenne who changed his socks from brown to red and still managed to lead a luxurious and happy life.

Manfred the Symphony in B minor, Op. 58, composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and treating Manfred's incest with his step sister is not relevant since I don't have a sister.

Remains Manfred von Richthofen, the Prussian junker, racist, arrogant, flying an airplane in the First World War painted in red, a daredevil par exellence. This guy at least was so prominent that he carried several nicknames: The Red Baron, The Red Battle Flyer, Red Devil, Le Diable Rouge, Le petit Rouge, and the Red Knight. He himself used the name The Red Fighter Pilot as title of his memoirs of 1917.

Groundhog Day in Freiburg?

2011-02-01T18:08:00.001+01:00

This morning on the title page of the Badische Zeitung I read the word Murmeltiertag and wondered if in addition to Halloween we had imported the Groundhog Day from the States.

Here in Freiburg we have no zoo proper but a farm transformed into a vivarium where children and adults may observe domestic and some exotic animals in a natural environment. No groundhogs live there. So what can we do? The chief keeper was interviewed and he answered that Freiburg’s groundhogs are the water turtles. If they come out and stay for a week then the frosty period is over. As presently their pond is frozen; spring is still far away.

In Geneva it is not an animal but the chestnut tree de la Treille that with its first leaf will announce: Spring is icumen in.

Let us agree: any sign will be good. We are all waiting for Spring!

10 Years Wikipedia

2011-01-14T14:43:00.002+01:00

Special Freiburg Logo (source Badische Zeitung)

Tomorrow on 15 January 2011 the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia celebrates its 10th anniversary. Time goes fast. Looking back I found out that my first article written about Karl von Rotteck, the liberal Professor from Freiburg, dates back as early as 6 March 2004. Since then I document my mayor activities in Wikipedia (without mentioning my work of correcting mistakes or improving stylistic nightmares) on my personal Wiki-page.

Here in Freiburg we cultivate a monthly Stammtisch. For me, the old guy, it is refreshing to learn from those younger colleagues all the tricks they know by heart. As an additional bonus the discussions at the Stammtisch keep me abreast of new developments in the computer world.

We had invited the local press earlier, and today the rather generous article about 10 years of Wikipedia written by local correspondent Gerhard M. Kirk appeared in the Badische Zeitung: To be fast you must take your time. For tomorrow a more general article will remind the Wikipedia user community about the anniversary.

Wurst War

2010-12-28T14:36:00.001+01:00

In Freiburg's Münster market traditionally six licenced vendors sell roasted wurst (sausages) at their booths to natives and tourists alike. The Freiburger Red (wurst) served with slightly stewed onions in a bun surely is my favorite but you can also opt for a Polnische (is this the same as a Krakauer?), a Krainer with and without cheese and a Thüringer. There is wurst made from veal and cholesterol-poor from Turkey. An orderly market order orders that the order of the booths in the Münster market rotates daily such that each vendor in turn is first in line.

Mr. Meier at his Wurststand proudly holds up Freiburg's Rote in a Brötchen for the iPhone photo shooting. Note the brin of onion looking out on top of the bun

Presently there is some agitation among those traditional vendors as - l'Union Européenne oblige - the precious license must be newly tendered Europe-wide! Imagine some Turks disguised as Greeks selling Döner wurst! A scandal? but if it's good why not. But don't be afraid: the German inventive talent doesn't sleep when dealing with wurst (wenn es um die Wurst geht). In a letter to the editor a tofu producer from Freiburg would like to make the business in his life claiming one of the future six licensees must be selling veggie wurst.

Mind you. The idea of vegetarian meat ersatz is not new. You can already read in the Vegetarian Journal as early as 2000: Veggie burgers and dogs are generally lower in calories and fat than hamburgers and hot dogs. Even extra lean ground beef gets more than half its calories from fat; most veggie burgers have less than 20% of calories from fat. Meat has no fiber; most veggie burgers have at least 3 or 4 grams of dietary fiber per serving. While veggie burgers have little or no cholesterol, a 3.5 ounce hamburger made with extra lean ground beef has 90 milligrams of cholesterol. Veggie burgers, especially those made with soy, contain generous amounts of protein and iron. Vitamin B-12 is added to some veggie burgers. The only negative for veggie burgers is that most are higher in sodium than ground beef.

I don't know about the quality of veggie burgers in the States but those I have tasted in Germany were simply awful. Maybe contrary to the States the ones sold over here contain less salt. That indeed makes them 120% healthy food but uneatable.

Veggie dogs are also lower in calories, fat, and cholesterol than hot dogs. Some veggie dogs have more protein and iron and less sodium than do hot dogs. Both hot dogs and veggie dogs contain little or no fiber. So what will a roasted tofu wurst served at a vegetarian booth here in Freiburg contain?

In the States they already sell the Veggie or the somewhat speedier Leaner Wiener, the Meatless Frank (the poor guy), the VegiDog and somewhat hotter the Veggie Chili Dog. When you don't like adults take a Tofu Pup. For all those cat lovers there is a SoyBoy Not Dog on the market. I suppose all this stuff is not roasted so I wonder what will happen to a tofu wurst on a grill. Maybe we shall know by the coming World Veggie Day, October 1st, 2011.

I wish you all a Happy New Year !

Winter is icumen in

2010-12-21T14:13:00.005+01:00

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.

wrote poet Ezra Pound once in a persiflage of the well-known poem from the middle of the 13th century:

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!

Pound's appreciation is too rough. Also winter has its charms. My friend and English mentor Jim took this exceptional photo on December 1st, 2010. Fresh snow had just powdered streets, roofs and trees.

The photo shows Oberlinden, a square in Freiburg you cross when you enter the city through the Schwabentor (the gate opening to Swabia). Note the linden tree in the middle decorated with Herrnhuth Stars. In the back you sense the steeple of Freiburg's Münster Church.

Herrnhuth Stars became fashionable in Freiburg last year. I bought one for my balcony and took a photo last year. For those who haven't yet seen one up close here is my photo:

It's twilight time. You can make out trees of the Black Forest in the background. The illuminated windows mark study rooms for students at the Max-Planck-Institute of International Law

In the meantime last week's snow has completely disappeared. Freiburg is likely to be the only major city in Germany without a white Christmas.

I wish you all a peaceful Christmas and
a healthy New Year!

The Lost Cause

2010-12-20T14:16:00.006+01:00

Today the Thema des Tages (The Topic of the Day) in the Badische Zeitung was the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession from the Union. When the resulting Civil War between the Yankees and the Rebels had ended, bemoaning more than 600000 dead, many a man in the South rather moaned about the Lost Cause. So far so bad but then in his article about the Civil War the author managed to smuggle in the German Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back legend) and Not all was bad (in the Third Reich) and eventually considered the sentiment of those Americans way down South as something in between.

A propaganda drawing from 1860?: Black Union army men under the command of a white officer attack the Confederates. Notice the couple below on the left hand side fighting to the finish: a stab in the back?.

I shake my head! The Dolchstoßlegende born after the lost First World War claimed that it were the home front and in particular socialist Jews who not only didn't support the German fighting men in those trenches in Flanders but virtually stabbed them into their backs. It was one of those arguments of the right wingers and later the Nazis. In the Civil War however the conspiracy theory accused the Southern generals as traitors.

Philipp Scheidemann who had proclaimed the German Republic stabbing with Matthias Erzberger, a catholic Jew of the Center Party, watching. In the background those rich Jews sitting on their gold but counting their paper money.

Whether in the South it hadn’t been all bad before the Confederate States were forced back into the Union I cannot judge upon but as far as the Nazi regime is concerned all was bad! It started out with a total domination of the people, changed over to a total war and ended in a total defeat.

Here is a lesson to be learned: Be careful when comparing historical processes and events!

Mark or Franc that is no question

2010-12-17T18:44:00.000+01:00

My son found the following cartoon in the internet:

This only reinforces my remark made in the blog below. Don't bail out of the Euro to reintroduce the Deutsche Mark but don't buy Swiss Francs either. Our chancellor has the perspective: If you can't beat them join them.

The Freiburg Gipfel

2010-12-12T17:09:00.000+01:00

Without comment

Ouff, the Franco-German Gipfel (summit) in Freiburg between Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel is history. Last Friday the town came to a stand still. From 8h30 to 17h30 no streetcars in the city. Bagpack loving Freiburgers passing through had their Rucksacks checked several times by security forces and a hundred-strong police unit kept some demonstrators disguised as clowns encircled. As they were polluting the air with some terrible sounds one officer confiscated a small drum but being a perfect German official he handed out a receipt to the drummer.

When a bystander critizised the expense for such summits I answered: One day in Afghanistan costs more than ten Gipfels. Let Angela and Nicolas guided by the Archbishop in person visit the Münster church, let them sign Freiburg's Golden book with our Lord Mayor watching from behind and let them eat a free lunch? specially composed by the one star cook in town; all this doesn't disturb me if it helps French-German friendship. However it annoys me when those two pretend to protect the Euro.

Spraying Sarkozy. A French guy splaches his President with a water gun.
The clustered security force reacted much too late but arrested the man.

Merkel said addressing the demand of Luxemburg, Italy, Spain, and Greece for issuing Euro bonds: We cannot allow to mutualize the (financial) risks and Nicolas paid her lip-service in adding: I don't see in how far Germany would be egoistically. Germany is the biggest (financial) contributer in the European Union.

It is true that Greece and Ireland for years lived on credit striving beyond their financial possibilities. They now must pay more than Germany for bonds on the international market to re-finance their debts. But since we have a common currency the old German proverb holds: Mitgefangen, mitgehangen (Captured together, hanged together).

In fact, Euro bonds will be only a small remedy curing the imbalance between the rich and the poor European countries. For Germany these bonds present a lesser evil than a Länderfinanzausgleich (a balancing out the budgets between different countries). The latter is practiced in the Federal Republic between various States. From time to time this compensation creates a fury in those Länder that always have to pay to the States that according to the givers don't do their financial homework correctly. I agree such a system in Europe will require a more united community than countries just bound together by a common currency.

In stiring up public opinion in Germany against the issuing of Euro bonds the oponents deprive the man in the street of higher interest rates for his money. With those he could somewhat compensate inflation. In the meantime people without confidence in neither the Euro nor the Dollar buy gold, that has become so expensive that some have started to change to and into Swiss Francs.

Baubürgermeister

2010-11-29T17:54:00.000+01:00

Yesterday a friend from Madison sent me an article by Barry Gore: Madison needs a professional City Council asking me at the same time whether the Freiburg model of city government may not serve in Madison.

What I understood was that Madison is run from the Mayor’s Office by experts and twenty alders in a city council just paid U$ 7545 per annum to cover their expenses.

In a first approximation Freiburg’s administration structure is similar. The city has a Lord Mayor and a city council with 48 members both elected by the people representing the usual German party spectrum. All council members are working in an honorary capacity.

The difference between Madison and Freiburg is that here we sport an additional four mayors each of them heading a Dezernat (department). These mayors are elected by the city council hence mirror the party composition of the latter but are supposed to be somehow experts in their departments. Like the Lord Mayor the four mayors are fully paid.

The Lord Mayor’s office treats general organization, administration, personnel matters, law, and public relation (partner cities). One of the mayors deals with economy, finance, housing, sports, and public order (police). Another cares about environment, forests, schools, and waste. The third one is responsible for social affairs, culture, youth, and integration of people. The fourth mayor runs the building departments and annexed activities.

These four mayors and their departments cost a lot of money. So a few years ago the city council had decided that Freiburg could do with only three additional mayors. Without going into the detail, the decision to oust the mayor responsible for building and to dissolve the Baudezernat was based on the issue of competence and economy.

This year the city council eventually came back on its decision. In spite of city finances still running low the council reinstalled the fourth mayor, the Baubürgermeister. The official reason was the excess of work for the previously three mayors and their departments.

In the Northern part of Germany we say: Rut us de Kartüveln, rin in de Kartüveln, or if you understand what I mean, is it better to say: Out of the cotton field, back into the cotton field?

My question is, considering the outcome of the recent elections in the States, how do Americans feel about more administration even on a level as modest as a city.

Functional illiterates?

2010-11-24T10:19:00.001+01:00

The other day I read an article in the Washington Post on the issue of the ever increasing public expense. A citizen, possibly Republican minded, complained in a letter to the editor: Not just the armed forces every Federal agency and appropriation is handled in this way. Even schools. They can whine and complain all they want about "cuts," but school budgets increase every year, and they turn out functional illiterates. We are a land where failure is richly rewarded and productivity is criminally penalized. Is it no wonder that we're in the fix we're in?

Far from being able to judge upon the issue of public spending in the States and the resulting consequences it was the last part about schools producing functional illiterates that electrified me.

In Germany we are not better off. The magic word over here is mangelnde Sprachkompetenz (insufficient command of spoken and written German). In two of the three Rs (reading, writing, arithmetic) the young generation is clearly missing competence. So school bashing is common but aren't we beating the wrong donkey? I see kids including my oldest grandson rather spending their time with audiovisual gadgets than with books. As we say: Von nichts kommt nichts (Nothing will come out of nothing).

On the long run the saddest aspect of this development is the loss of Sprachreichtum. Who will be able to express his ideas clearly and with the subtlety of a rich vocabulary and even more so who will in future years understand all those funny words and expressions grandparents still use?

Old man = pessimist? Perhaps, but this topic unsettles me and is always on my mind.

Liebermann

2010-11-21T16:08:00.000+01:00

No, I am not writing about the American politician Joe Lieberman spelled with one n but about Max Liebermann with a double n.

As usual when in Berlin I visit places with a historic relevance. One place that I had never visited before is the infamous Villa on the Wannsee where in 1942 Himmler's right-hand-man Heydrich held a Konferenz (meeting) to co-ordinate the Endlösung (final solution) for Europe's Jews. The place is way out of the city. You first take the S-Bahn to Wannsee Station and then ride the 155 Bus to the Villa on the Wannsee. The bus runs every twenty minutes and while studying the time table I read Liebermann Villa marked as a stop. I spontaneously decided to visit that place too.

The villa of the Wannseekonferenz became a memorial center only in 1992 following a long fight about its financing. It now houses an exhibition documenting how the Nazi regime, once in power, had systematically transformed the latent anti-Semitism in Germany and elsewhere in Europe into a campaign of annihilation. In presenting the Jews as the scapegoat for Germany's misery (Die Juden sind unser Unglück) six millions were hanged, shot, and gassed.

Entrance to the exhibition is free but the main iron gate to the surrounding park is locked and only opens after the girl at the counter has considered the televised visitor acceptable. On this gray November morning the visitors comprised a few old guys but mostly pupils. Their teacher had formed groups of two and attributed them to the various rooms. Now she was running from team to team giving instructions how the kids had to do Vergangenheitsbewältigung i.e. come to terms with the past of their great-grandfathers.

What would you expect. There was shouting, running around, tussling and even laughing. After an hour distracted by the kids' behaviour and feeling depressed by the exhibition I had enough. I stepped out into the park and walked back two bus stops to Liebermann's villa situated on Lake Wannsee too.

Max Liebermann (1847-1935) the Jewish-German painter born from a wealthy family built the house in 1909. He lived there during the summer months from 1914 to the end of his life. Liebermann is regarded as the father of German impressionism and while in Berlin became famous as the painter of portraits.

What Liebermann had seen from his studio on Pariser Platz
in January 1933. The new US embassy is just located across

During his life Liebermann always held strong opinions on art and politics. While watching the Nazis' brown hordes torches lit celebrating their victory in marching through the Brandenburg Gate on January 30th 1933, Liebermann is reported to have commented in his typical Berlin dialect: Ick kann jar nich soville fressen, wie ick kotzen möchte (I can't eat as much as I would like to vomit). The old man is one of my heroes!

Max standing in front of his villa

Liebermann who had become president of the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1920 and a Berlin honorary citizen in 1927 resigned from his post in 1933 just in time before the Nazis ousted him.

Reading in his living room

Flowers in Liebermann's garden. In the back his Castle on the Lake

After his death in 1935 the new rulers forced his widow Martha in 1940 to sell the house to the Reichspost, the house Max had called his Castle on the Lake and had loved so much always looking for corners with flowers for his paintings. Martha committed suicide in 1943 just being ahead of her deportation to Theresienstadt.
.

Pounds into Dollars

2010-11-20T17:11:00.002+01:00

On my way to Berlin riding the ICE again, digesting the previously described pot of coffee and Butterkuchen, reading the freely offered newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine I came across an article about early stereotypy. In this process pictures are transferred to metal plates that are subsequently used for printing.

Already in 1729 Benjamin Franklin had pleaded to increase the amount of money circulating in the colonies to fight consumer abstinence. Today the reason obviously is the indebtedness of the consumer, in those days the Brits apparently had been the culprits prohibiting silver export from their colonies. Printing paper money: Franklin an early Bernanke?

In fact Benjamin started printing pound notes together with D. Hall as early as 1760. To avoid counterfeit the paper money had to be forgery-proof. Technically minded Franklin used Stereotypy. Note the fine structures of those leaves on the 5 pound/100 shilling denomination. Printed in red: To Counterfeit is DEATH. Those good old times!

In 1776 one year after the War of Independence had broken out the dollar had replaced the pound in the 13 colonies bound together in Olympic competition? The dollar was divided into 6 parts. British heritage?

Already in 1778 Hall & Sellers printed a 50 dollar note as an early sign of inflation? Again the fine structure of stereotypy made forgery of the paper money difficult.

Thank you Google, thanks!

2010-11-14T17:22:00.000+01:00

Presently Google is under attack in Germany because many people don't like to see their houses on street view. Public pressure was so high that on request Google agreed to pixel those protested pictures. Some house owners probably were ashamed and possibly feared fellow citizens becoming eventually aware when zooming their objects more closely on the web how badly front garden and faces were kept .

But here I have come not to bury Google but to praise them. I am actually preparing a talk about the Revolution in Baden in 1848/49 to be given here in Freiburg and was browsing the web for original information on Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve both among those who had actively fought in Baden for a German Republic as early as the middle of the 19th century. And there I suddenly found two books written by these very persons whilst they were in Switzerland, the country just across the border where initially they had fled to before they emigrated to the States. The two books published in Switzerland are:

Dr. Fr. Hecker: Die Erhebung des Volkes in Baden für die deutsche Republik im Frühjahr 1848, Druck von J. C. Schadelitz, Basel 1849 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München) and

Gustav Struve: Geschichte der drei Volkserhebungen in Baden, Verlag von Jenni, Sohn, Bern 1849 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München).

These publications are available on Google books in facsimile as PDF-files and as text in the epub-format. The originals scanned were taken from the Bavarian State Library in Munich. I enjoy reading their Gothic print on my iPad and admire as an extra bonus all the graffiti readers have left on those pages over the years. In GoodReader I can mark paragraphs for future reference but I take refuge to the processed text for copy and paste. It is not easy to recognize Gothic printed characters correctly but the people at Google did a marvelous job although you get the rough text without any corrections. Wikipedia has a similar project making old texts publicly available on the web called Wikisource. Here all texts must have been proofread three times before they are considered as accepted.

The web is full of treasures. Let us find and use them.

Chilling Schill

2010-11-01T17:12:00.006+01:00

Ferdinand Batista von Schill

The other day I read that blond, blue eyed and naïf Siegfried is the last German hero. Indeed there are these spoilers depriving us of all the others.

What about Arminius, the guy who in beating the invading Romans deprived the German people of civilization? He was a traitor and trouble maker within his own family as historians found out.
Barbarossa was a power-hungry ruler without scruples, lost a war against the pope and died a silly death drowning on a crusade in a brooklet in Asia Minor (today Turkey) as Umberto Eco writes in his novel Baudolino.
Already Heine had knocked Luther from his pedestal describing him as the typical German a tag sufficient to drag a person down.
And now Günter de Bruyn in his book: Die Zeit der schweren Not demounts Ferdinand Baptista von Schill - the man the people at his time hailed as a freedom fighter against Napoleon's tyranny and mentioned in the same breath as Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow and Theodor Körner. For de Bruyn Schill, the commander of the 2nd Brandenburg Hussar Regiment, is an uneducated silly imposter although as a guerrilla he had such an success against the occupying forces that his picture frosted in red on cakes was admired in Berlin coffee houses and aristocratic ladies considered it as a grace to touch his saber. Mind you, already Emmanuel Geibel in his poem Schill described the hero as a man who rode faster than his time, i.e. seeking his glory at a time when resistance of small military units against Napoleon's main forces was simply madness.

On April 28th 1808 Schill left Berlin with his Regiment unauthorized. Once outside the city boundaries he talked to his men leaving the impression that he had an order from the all admired and beloved Queen Luise, Prussia's Jeanne d'Arc. Later Schill simply ignored the King's order to return to his home base. Instead he marched to Dessau on the river Elbe, took the city on Mai 2nd and published his proclamation: An die Deutschen (to all Germans).

Schill's Memorial Stone in the pavement on Fährstraße

Napoleon's youngest brother Jérôme, King of Westphalia, put 10000 Francs on Schill's head and sent Danish and Dutch reserve troops commanded by the Generals Ewald and Gratien respectively at the pursuit of the resistance fighter. Schill escaped to the North and entered the city of Stralsund hailed by its Mecklenburg-Polish garrison. Although by then Schill's troops reinforced by recruiting comprised up to 3000 men the fight for Stralsund against an overwhelming enemy approaching the city was lost from the beginning. Against all warnings Schill was determined to hold out and said: Better an end with terror than terror without an end an idea drawn from Psalm 73,19: How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!

Stalingrad anticipated: On 31st May Napoleon's troops assaulted the city. Schill fell unnoticed and died his heroic death on Fährstraße. With him he took many a man. It is a crazy and sad story.

Hawking's Bang

2010-10-30T11:31:00.002+02:00

Stephen Hawking's latest book: The Grand Design left me quite disappointed. It was announced as a new approach to the classical question: Does (a) God exist? Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow however turn around the answer and declare instead: God is not necessary for explaining the world and the creation to exist. They formulate their basic questions as follows:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Why do we exist?

Why this particular set of (physical) laws and not some other?

Before however the authors come to answer these points in the last chapter on page 171 of their book the reader gets a flash course in old, modern and most recent physics, somewhat short for the layman to grasp but a good repetition for persons interested in the topic who have read this before. Luckily once in a while the authors like to be funny e.g. when explaining symmetry that a flipped donut looks exactly the same, unless it has a chocolate topping, in which case it is better just to eat it or We have observed that the moon is not made of Roquefort cheese which is bad news for mice. These remarks have the advantage of keeping the reader alive.

Let us see how the authors tackle the answers to the questions posed above: Spontaneous creation of matter i.e. new worlds in fact can be explained in combining relativity theory and quantum mechanics within the space dimension of a Planck length. A Big Bang starting within the dimension of 10^-35 meters can macroscopically nicely be illustrated with the appearance of micro bubbles in a boiling liquid where some of those will expand to form big vapor bubbles. Within this image time has an origin and the question of what was before time zero becomes meaningless. New universes are spontaneously created out of the energy of empty space due to quantum fluctuations. Only to say that Einstein disliked quantum mechanics as for him God doesn't throw dice.

The picture of micro bubbles in a boiling liquid can further be stretched: Only those micro bubbles i.e. Big Bangs will expand into universes where the combination of physical constants and laws just fit each other. The world in which we live would not exist if constants like the gravitational constant, the speed of light, the electron radius etc. were not those they are. Varying the values of our known physical parameters just a few percent will lead to unstable universes i.e. to worlds that cannot exist.

Remains the salient question: Why do we exist? In a first step also here the authors stress a mathematical model called the Game of Life where structures using energy and following defined laws reproduce themselves. Viruses do that, even the evolution to higher forms of life can be understood as complex systems of limited size that are stable and reproduce themselves. Darwin's selection principle fits nicely into this pattern. However the formation of life in the form of self-producing structures known to us requires as necessary condition water, oxygen and a friendly habitat with temperature variations remaining within certain limits just like mother earth provides. Living structures can and will react when stimulated within limits otherwise they will die.

This however does not explain why and when beings possess a free will. For the authors the behavior of a robot is predictable because it is calculable. When however a living being has more than about 10²⁷ atoms, we would therefore have to say that any complex being has free will - not as a fundamental feature, but as an effective theory, an admission of our inability to do the calculations that would enable us to predict its actions. Nice try, but is the statement that because we are unable to calculate a structure the convincing evidence for the existence of a free will? And is it this free will that pushes us to believe or not believe in a reduced God, a God just throwing dice? There was this other approach exactly 40 years ago when Jacques Monod in his book: Le hazard et la nécessité denied us our free will. Monod suspected a genetic defect as the origin of man's quest for God, a fault that we according to him must overcome. Oh Lord, where in all this is the personal God that Jesus told us we shall call our Father!?

Hawking and Mlodinow summarize: Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exist, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going and The fact that we human beings - who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature – have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph. But perhaps the true miracle is that abstract considerations of logic lead to a unique theory that predicts and describes a vast universe full of the amazing variety that we see.

Today I read in Murphy's Law Calendar: There are some things that are impossible to know - but it is impossible to know these things. Now I think I am more than ready to read Küng's book about what he believes!

My Fairy Tale

2010-10-28T15:01:00.002+02:00

In 1792 Emperor Leopold I donated a School of Philosophy and Catholic Theology in Breslau (Wrosław) that was called Leopoldinaafter him. As a Catholic institute run by the Jesuits in Protestant Breslau the new university was an important instrument of the Counter-Reformation in Silesia. A symbol of the Jesuit influence is the Auditorium (Aula) decorated in the late Baroque style. Although I am not an aficionado of that genre I was impressed when our group visited the hall.

The Aula Leopoldina

The flowers are in Poland's red and white.
The motto Quod (bonum,) faustum, felix fortunatumque sit

is taken from Cicero's 'De Divinatione' (1, 45, 102):
May the outcome be good, propitious, lucky and successful

Strolling through the university quarter afterwards I looked into the window of a second hand bookshop and caught the sight of a battered edition of Märchen der Brüder Grimm.

This rang a bell deep inside. Didn’t I love my fairy tale book with those colored pictures my mother read from. Later I devoured the stories of Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), Frau Holle (Mother Hulda), Aschenputtel (Cinderella), Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich (The Frog Prince), Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot (Snow-White and Rose-Red), you name them! Somehow this my book got lost during the war.

I entered the Antykwariat of Andrzej Jaworski and examined the book.It was indeed the same edition I once had owned and the price in Reichsmark was still written in the back in pencil: 2.85! The bookseller had pre-priced it for 48 Słoty where I would have given him easily double the price. I didn't trade and as the old man apparently hadn't noticed the greedy glint in my eyes he offered me the treasure for only 40. My fairy tale!

Indeed the pictures were impressive. Here are two examples:

I liked the piece of Lebkuchen (a mild gingerbread) Hänsel had broken off
from one corner of the roof

Rumpelstilzchen

Duelling is crazy

2010-10-20T16:18:00.010+02:00

Ferdinand Lassalle fighting for Social Democracy
and human rights

While I was in Polish Wrosław formerly German Breslau I visited the Jewish cemetery. As it is not in walking distance from the city I took a taxi. My young driver only spoke broken English whereas Wrosław's older generation is often quite at ease with German. One trip to the cemetery was 18 Słoty so I asked my driver how much it would cost if he waited for me 20 minutes and took me back downtown afterwards. He answered: another 18. I said: but you have to wait for me. He continued: for that fare I shall wait the whole afternoon. I promised him 50 Słoty for all including a 20 minutes waiting time as my only intention was a visit of Ferdinand Lassalle's tomb. This guy is considered the father of social democracy in German speaking countries. Lassalle was far from being a proletarian for he died prematurely shot in a duel.

An old man guarded the entrance to the quiet graveyard. He was born the same year as me and so with him I talked German. He offered me a special price for the entrance fee if I bought a brochure on sale in several mayor languages about the Jewish cemetery. He strongly recommended a visit to the graves of Edith Stein's parents strangely enough burried in seperate plots. Edith Stein as professor Edmund Husserl's assistant had once taught and lived in Freiburg before she converted to the Catholic faith and entered the Order of the Carmelites. When the Nazi persecution became violent her order sent her to a hideout in a Dutch convent. All in vain, as the Gestapo tracked her down and transported her to Auschwitz.

Lassalle's tomb made from black marble

My attention was rather focussed on Lassalle's tomb that was clearly marked and well kept. I took several photos and then went back slowly to my waiting taxi passing the weather beaten tombstones of the Werth- and Pringsheims, the Rubin- and Edelsteins, the Cohens and Meyers.

I asked my driver to take me to the recently redecorated synagoge. This a relatively small building hidden in a backyard and cannot be compared to the impressive Breslau synagoge that the Nazis had burned down in the Reichskristallnacht on 9 November 1938. I just arrived in time to catch the tail of a guided tour in German. A female guide informed us about Breslau's long gone rich Jewish culture and history. She frequently took advice in Polish from an older small gentleman dressed in black and wearing the kippa. Still impressed by Lassalle's death I asked him how the Jewish faith considered fighting a duell, a deed that the Catholic church regards as a deadly sin. The interpreting guide said: Here is an interesting question and translated it for the male expert. After some deliberation he simply answered: I don't know.

We continued our guided tour passing many photos of famous Jewish personalities from Breslau among them Max Born the Nobel prized physicist well known to me. Suddenly a door in the back of the room opened and an elegantly dressed gentleman wearing a beard and a kippa entered. The guide introduced him as the Great Rabbi of Wrosław. In his one hand he carried a briefcase in the other a Starbucks grande coffee to go. He greated our group briefly in German and then started in an accentuated Polish telling us about the present Jewish community in Wrosław counting 300 members. Whilst I deliberated whether his coffee was cosher he continued explaining that a recent report on CNN about Jewish revival in Poland had given rise to 20 telephone calls per day from people discovering their Jewish origins. When he had finished his lecture I used the opportunity to ask my question again. Following some back and forth discussions between our guide and the Rabbi he answered: it depends.

After the tour I walked around a bit studying the exhibition and eventually left. And there it happened that just in front of me walked the Great Rabbi and the small gentleman in black ... and they were talking in English! I approached and said: Pardon me Rabbi, was there some misunderstanding? Maybe I should have asked my question in English and repeated it accordingly. He turned to me: Oh you mean Lassalle faught a duel because of a woman? That's crazy! and left me stunned. And suddenly everything fell into place: CNN, the coffee to go, his accented Polish. He was an American of Polish origin sent to Wrosław as a development worker (Entwicklungshelfer) for the Jewish community.

Stranded in Gelnhausen

2010-10-17T18:28:00.003+02:00

On my way to Dresden for a one week trip to Wroslaw (Breslau) and Cracow (Krakau) I started in Freiburg on Saturday October 9th at 6.52 a.m. taking the Inter City Express (ICE) direction Frankfurt or rather at 7.15 a.m. since the train from Basel arrived in Freiburg twenty minutes late. Initially I didn't worry about the delay but rather enjoyed the Butterkuchen (a piece of cake made from yeast dough covered with sugared sliced almonds roasted in butter) and the pot of coffee that one gets served at the seat. This treat has become my favourite standard whenever I travel by ICE in Germany.

That I did eventually make it to the connecting train in Frankfurt's main station was due to the fact that it had arrived on the other side of the same platform and was delayed too. Soon after the ICE to Dresden had left Frankfurt in the direction of Fulda the loudspeaker informed us about an abandoned Aldi plastic bag in coach 22. Oh, oh! A few minutes later the train ground to an unscheduled stop at Gelnhausen station. All passengers had to leave the train, the platform and even their luggage behind.

Gelnhausen is a small town in Hesse with beautiful half-timbered houses where in 1622 the poet Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen was born. He is famous for the first German novel ever written: The adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus during the 30th Years War. In addition Gelnhausen sports the remains of a Kaiserpfalz (Emperor's palace).

Waiting at a safe distance on platform 1 for the big blow

Time was too short for a visit although It took 30 minutes before the Federal Police arrived for an investigation into the plastic bag affair while we waited at a safe distance on platform 1 for another 90 minutes. Luckily enough it was a beautiful sunny day.

A female German shepherd on her way to sniff explosives

Suddenly the crowd opened a passage for an awe inspiring police officer and his dog. From then on it still took another hour before the sniffing dog had declared the plastic bag as clean. At the end we were invited to mount the train and meet our luggage again.

The conquest of space and time

2010-10-08T11:41:00.006+02:00

Professor Peter Günther's talk describing how the puritan heritage developed into a political religion made me think about two points: Possible future developments in America's drive to new frontiers and as Herman Melville saw it: the political Messiah having come in the American people.

Reaching New Frontiers:

Once the settlers had reached the West coast of the American continent erecting in a first phase their tents on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean (as one listener added during the discussion) hadn't they not reached their final goal? No, to me President Kennedy's call to make it to the moon within a decade was a manifestation and continuation of the pioneers' spirit conquering space and time. And even today there are frontiers to be reached e. g. in science (the US has the highest rate of Noble prize winners).

What about old and new social challenges and how to meet them? The puritan attitude of those who in this life count themselves already among the chosen people easily grinds with charity for the unsuccessful and miserable neighbour. Is this the reason that for some Americans socialism is the devil in person? In 1848 Theodor Mögling a leading figure during the German revolution in Baden-Württemberg gave the following definition: Socialism wants the unification of forces on a voluntary basis to reach goals that cannot be reached by an individual alone. The freedom and self-determination of an individual however must only be limited to a degree necessary for reaching the goal. What could be wrong with that?

Spreading Freedom and Democracy:

Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George:
You too have the right of self-determination.
Would you like your pockets being emptied before
or after your death? Contemporary cartoon by Th. Heine

We Europeans and particularly we Germans will never forget America's intervention during two world wars where in a second attempt the US succeeded "imposing" democracy in Central Europe. The first attempt had to fail because President Wilson somewhat blue eyed left the execution of his 14 points to the Europeans. As Stephen Clarke writes in his book 1000 Years of Annoying the French: Britain's Prime Minister, Lloyd George, thought the Allies should be less lenient on the Germans. He wanted to punish them while keeping their country healthy enough to act as a barrier against the new Communist state of Russia in the east. The French, though, were obsessed with bringing Germany to its knees. Remembering the Franco-Prussian War, France's Prime Minister, the 77-year-old Georges Clemenceau, was determined that the Germans should never be strong enough to invade France again - which makes it hard to understand why he insisted on a peace treaty so harsh that they would come back looking for vengeance only twenty years later.

After the first followed the second attempt and that was successful. In 1945 Europe was in such shambles that only massive American help (the Marshall Plan) prevented the Western half of the continent from drifting under communist rule too. The American seed mostly fell on fertile ground. Germany now is a stable democracy even to the point to be admired by some less fortunate countries.

The next international hot spot where the US missioned successfully was South Korea. The following operation Vietnam however failed leaving deep scars in how America sees itself. I'll skip the Iraq war so next comes Operation Enduring Freedom accented on Afghanistan. Here a Western Alliance is fighting the Taliban both militarily and politically with the US providing the lion's share as usual. Defending the US and Germany against the Taliban at the Hindu Kush? For our troops more than two third of the German people deny that statement and would rather like to pull our personnel out by tomorrow. My personal conclusion is: at the bitter end the Alliance will not have established a democracy in Afghanistan but will count thousands of lives lost and billions of U$ and Euros burned.

Is there another way to meet the aggressiveness of the militant fraction of Islam? The question is not answered. The latest remark of our President: Germany has a Christian-Jewish (yes!!) past but in the meantime the Islam belongs to Germany too has neither helped nor calmed down the debate.

Essen Reloaded

2010-09-27T11:52:00.034+02:00

Here is another photo of my early days:

My playmate from 1938 to 1942, me poking my nose? and my beloved tricycle

Before I attended my class reunion in Essen I visited the places of my youth:

The house is nicely kept where I lived on the second floor. I rang the bell and who answered?

On the doorstep my former playmate still living in the appartement on first floor

Mein Kindergarten below and behind the Collegiate Church of Recklinghausen. The church was started in romanesque style in the year 996.

The Primary School where in the rooms on the left hand side they taught me how to write in Sütterlin (Gothic)

The station where I used to take the train together with my mother going downtown

Essen!

2010-09-22T19:33:00.015+02:00

Although I was born in the City of Essen whenever I hear the word Essen rather the Essen Haus in Madison Wisconsin comes to my mind - and I don’t know why. During my visits to our Sister City I never made it to this place. It looks so much Bavarian, features Gemuetilchkeit? with an additional "i" and sports a really nice selection of antique Hummels! Promised, next time in Madison I’ll visit Essen Haus.

Essen, the city's name has nothing to do with to eat. Because of the heavy industry that bloomed around the Ruhr River in the 19th century a pun was common that Essen is derived from Essen (German for chimney stacks).

The big name at that time was Krupp and so boozing men used to boast: Was der Krupp in Essen ist, das sind wir im Trinken (What Krupp represents for Essen, we stand for in drinking). All wrong! The Name Essen possibly stems from ash tree (Esche in modern German).

This weekend I shall be in Essen for my yearly class reunion. I had two years of primary school there but I went to and finished High School in Hamburg. To make our reunions more interesting my former class mates vary meeting places from year to year.

Here is an old photo from 1938. It shows tiny Red Baron with his father in front of our house in Goldammerweg. No, the car isn’t an Audi, it's a DKW.

Later during World War II when I visited my grandparent's farm in Westphalia I suffered from the following rhyme: In Essen gibt es große Schüsseln, aber nichts zum Fressen (In Essen there are big bowls but there is nothing to eat). Indeed, I remember the big but simple meals my grandmother prepared on an enormous stove. Just across in the vast kitchen sitting together with all the farm people around a large wooden table I dug into the food once my grandfather had said grace. In the Herrgottswinkel (the corner where the Crucifix hung) there was the only modern accessory placed on a board: the Volksempfänger (the people's wireless set). God and Goebbels, what a vicious combination! But that is a different story

Addendum 2

2010-09-17T17:29:00.001+02:00

As an addition to my blog about cycling I would like to comment a phrase an American friend has sent me describing his experience of cycling in the States: When I am in one mode I hate all the others.

I must admit I feel similar: When riding a bicycle I am annoyed by cars and pedestrians. Although at my age I am a most defensive driver, I curse cyclists in front of me and pedestrians crossing the street at any moment whereas as a pedestrian I hate any cyclist on and parked cars blocking my footpath. What kind of atavistic feelings are unlashed here? Does anybody know the answer?

Addendum 1

2010-09-13T10:14:00.002+02:00

You may remember my earlier blog where the victim apparently had written in blood: Omar m'a tuer. This cartoon somehow complements the or was even initiated by the old story.The text It was suicide convinces the officer who shouts: Feierabend !

German Language Day 2010

2010-09-11T13:56:00.012+02:00

Somehow typical showing the European Flag
and the UN-logo

Today is German Language Day (Tag der deutschen Sprache) and it happened that this very morning I finished Grass’s latest book: Grimms Wörter; Eine Liebes-erklärung. The New York Times wrote about Grimm’s Words: The book is a declaration of love, as the subtitle states, to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s collection of German words into a dictionary. The Brothers Grimm actually started their Deutsches Wörterbuch when in 1848 following a conflict about the Hanover Constitution with their king they - together with five other collegues (the Göttingen Seven) - were not only ousted from their professorship but also expelled from the Kingdom of Hanover.

The Wörterbuch is more than just a dictionary. It is rather like an encyclopedia of German words, their origin and development. It is a treasure trove particularly for a writer like Günter Grass who loves German baroque authors and their style. I shall consecrate a special blog to Grass’s book.

Coming back to the German Language Day 2010 the Badische Zeitung published an interview with Professor Ludwig Eichinger, full professor for German linguistic at the University of Mannheim (it is there where the Duden is published). When he was asked about the influence of the American English on the German language he gave an all-clear.

We had earlier impacts. In the 18th century it was the French language that caused outbreaks like: O spei aus, vor der Hausthür spei der Seine häßlichen Schleim aus! Rede Deutsch, o du Deutscher (Oh vomit in front of the front door vomit the Seine river’s hideous slime! Speak German, o you German). With respect to the American influence we are far from such outbursts. If there are no good German translations why not use the English word? By the way, who knows the German equivalent for upgrade? The other day I read cute translations for drop down list and browser: Klappliste and Stöberer. Since my early days with the computer I fight a personnel battle using hard disk all the time for the good German Festplatte. After all, I try to compensate my lapsus linguae in forcing E-Post instead of e-mail.

In fact, during the last years German enterprises have rediscovered German like the Deutsche Bahn (German Railway). They promised to mend their service point into Kundenzentrum.

St. Odile

2010-09-09T18:44:00.023+02:00

Statue of St. Odile with attributes of an abbess
of Hohenburg

Today I took part in an excursion with members of Feierabend. The American translation of Feierabend is quitting time but it does not transmit the sentimental German meaning: Imagine a farmer or a blacksmith sitting on a bench under the linden tree in his village. After a hard day's work he has folded his brawny hands in his lap watching the sunset. This is German Feierabend! In our case Feierabend stands for a bunch of people of the elder generation enjoying the computer but garnishing their hobby with other activities mostly excursions.

A one and a half hour walk took us to a chapel above Freiburg built in 679 at the place where St. Odile once found refuge in a rock that opened just in time before her father’s men arrived to catch her. Actually, Duke Etichon from Alsace had ordered his daughter to get married what she refused. Eventually her only solution was a getaway. Her hiding in the rock presented the region with a source.

Grotto and entrance to the source below St. Odile's chapel

To get to the water you must descend into the grotto below the chapel. An iron gate blocks the access to the source. On the rock above praying St. Odile is barely recognizable. The water of the source is said to have curative virtues in case of eye trouble. It flows out of a green garden hose below the gate. To reach the water you must bend down quite a lot. Eventually I arrived and rinsed my eyes but washed my hands rather at the dedicated facilities before our group had lunch in the tavern adjoining the chapel. The place now called St. Ottilien is a popular place of excursions for Freiburgers.

The Grand Design

2010-09-04T17:42:00.016+02:00

The latest book by the genius from Oxford Stephen Hawking: The Grand Design will be in the bookstores next week. In advance I read the following catch phrases on CNN’s website: Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist and it is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going, I preordered the book immediately.

The question of Intelligent Design has occupied me for years and is under permanent discussion in the States where quite a number of people fight Darwinism. When in 2005 I had finished Hans Küng’s one but last book titled: Der Anfang aller Dinge (The Beginning of all Things) I discussed the topic at one of Freiburg-Madison Stammtische in 2006. As near the end of his book Professor Küng gave a small glimpse on what he believes I wanted to learn more.

Since then Küng has published a new book in 2009: What I believe. and although I was hot on the topic the book is still lying on my desk unread. When I now opened it, started reading at the end and found what I had expected: Saint Paul’s visio beatifica from 1 Corinthians, 13: Die Liebe kommt niemals zu Fall: Prophetische Gaben – sie werden zunichte werden; Zungenreden – sie werden aufhören; Erkenntnis – sie wird zunichte werden. Denn Stückwerk ist unser Erkennen und Stückwerk unser prophetisches Reden. Wenn aber das Vollkommene kommt, dann wird zunichte werden, was Stückwerk ist. Als ich ein Kind war, redete ich wie ein Kind, dachte wie ein Kind, überlegte wie ein Kind. Als ich aber erwachsen war, hatte ich das Wesen des Kindes abgelegt. Denn jetzt sehen wir alles in einem Spiegel, in rätselhafter Gestalt, dann aber von Angesicht zu Angesicht. Jetzt ist mein Erkennen Stückwerk, dann aber werde ich ganz erkennen, wie ich auch ganz erkannt worden bin. Nun aber bleiben Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe, diese drei. Die größte unter ihnen aber ist die Liebe. (Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. Right now three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.)

Spontaneously I decided to read Küng’s book first before digging into Hawking’s The Grand Design.

Hawking's book has already started a new debate on the fundamental question of creation. The head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams said that physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe. It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence.

Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation ... The Bible simply isn't interested in how the Universe came into being.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols totally endorsed what the Chief Rabbi said so eloquently about the relationship between religion and science.

As I had expected, Imam Ibrahim Mogra, chairman at the Muslim Council of Britain, expressed his fundamental belief: If we look at the Universe and all that has been created, it indicates that somebody has been here to bring it into existence. That somebody is the almighty conqueror.

It seems that like in physics where the Standard Model matured into the Grand Unified Theory (GUT), Intelligent Design evolved into a more extensive Grand Design (TGD). Perhaps I should read Hawking’s book first?

LLL

2010-09-01T13:28:00.008+02:00

Today I read an article in the Badische Zeitung titled: Der Blick nach Deutschland (Looking unto Germany) referring to a blog by Richard C. Longworth in The Midwestener called Another Way To Work. The blog discusses a book entitled Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? by Thomas Geoghegan.

In his blog Richard gives lots of flowers to Germany and in particular to its economy. For me, however, the article smacks of the stinking dictum: Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen. (The German sprit shall heal the world). I rather prefer the German proverb stating: Not all is gold what glitters.

Let us compare job security. Traditionally this is much greater in Germany than in the States but it does not mean that one cannot lay off people when they are no longer needed. Since unemployment (comes right after inflation) is such a political issue in Germany firms during the recent economic crisis asked their staff to work fewer hours (Kurzarbeit) instead of laying off part of their work force. This practice was honored by the German government paying most of the difference between full pay and the loss of income due to Kurzarbeit. This measure- in the beginning meant to avoid social tensions and psychological traumata of the workers being unemployed - had an additional benefit. When China re-started ordering massively high technology products the production with the trained workforce still present could be increased without delay. All seems to look good, however, since Germans are notorious Bedenkenträger (worrywards) they ask: But what will in the long run happen if the diligent Chinese have copied Germany's high technology?

Comes in education. We can only keep our export driven economy alive if we always remain a step ahead of our competitors. This means keeping up or even increasing the standard of our intellectual and skilled work force. When comparing our education system to the States we feel quite humble. Most of the Nobel prize winners come from the US and I am convinced that all these people practice life-long learning (LLL).

LLL, lebenslanges Lernen, recently became the catch word in the discussions about Germany’s education system. Education here as in the States comes within federal competence. Compared to France where education is centrally regulated we in Germany boast of as many and even more education systems as we have Länder (States). In European comparisons (PISA Studies) of schooling results German students never even come near to the top, a fact that regularly causes a national outcry. At present the university reforms within the European Union e. g. changing the traditional degrees of diploma to baccalaureus and master cause frustration among students. Will Germany meet the challenge of keeping its educational system at a necessary high standard? Will people accept LLL? Only the future will tell. The discussions about education and formation in Germany are in full swing.

Marianne m'a tuer

2010-08-31T12:00:00.000+02:00

Recently I read a book by Bernard Wittmann titled: Marianne m'a tuer. According to the critics I actually expected a book about the history of the Alsace but instead read how governments in Paris had subdued and still tuent (kill) according to Wittmann the German-Alemannic dialect spoken by the local population, the Elsassdütsch to foster (or force) the French language. Bernard chose the book’s title - it surely is its most interesting part - for publicity reason as at the origin is a well-known catch phrase in France: Omar m’a tuer. (Omar has killed me).

A distinguished widowed lady living in her villa in Mougins the South of France employed a Moroccan gardener called Omar. One day in June 1991 she was found stabbed dead in her cave. On the door the police read written in blood: Omar m'a tuer. The gardener was arrested and indicted for murder. Soon the prosecutor was in a dilemma. How can an educated old lady write such a grammatical blunder: tuer instead of tuée?

A similar mistake is neither possible in English nor in German. In these languages there is a distinct difference between the infinitive and the past participle of a verb, i.e. kill and killed or töten and getötet. In principle the same is true in French. However the pronunciation of tuer and tuée is exactly the same and uneducated French are known to have difficulties to choose the correct grammatical form. But if the educated lady had not written the grammatically incorrect phrase with her own blood had there been a third person putting the blame on an innocent Omar?

Fact is, Omar needed money as he had gambling debts and 5000 francs the victim had kept at home were gone. On the other hand Omar had an alibi for the time of the murder. To make a long court case short he was condemned in 1994 for first degree murder to a prison sentence of 18 years although Omar had been defended by the best council for the defense in France Maître Vergès. He in his since then famous last words went back in history reminding the court of the Dreyfus affair: Il y a 100 ans on condamnait un officier car il avait le tort d'être juif, aujourd'hui on condamne un jardinier car il a le tort d'être maghrébin. (Hundred years ago one condemned an officer because he had the flaw of being Jewish, today one condemns a gardener because he has the flaw of being Maghrebian). It is known that many people in France applauded Omar’s sentence in the way as a good friend of mine felt when he once told me: Tu sais Manfred je ne suis pas raciste mais je n'aime pas les Arabes ( You know Manfred :I am not a racist but I don't like the Arabs).