Thermonuclear Fusion

Our Celestial Fusion Reactor

This is a long story of hope for pollution-free cheap energy that neither produces CO₂ nor long-lived radioactivity to dispose of.

Click to enlarge

Here is the time scale we are discussing, garnished with promises that an energy-producing fusion reactor is just around the corner.

Red Baron reported about another milestone in 2022, but then he gave up. On the other hand, some like it cold.

Worldwide research is conducted on thermonuclear fusion. Most of it involves containing and compressing hot plasma in a vessel with magnetic fields.

Recently, Sabine Hossenfelder, the girl who talks about things she knows about, reported on a new idea for a Dipole Fusion Reactor forwarded by an Australian team.

Scientists at Openstar could contain a plasma of 30,000 centigrades for 20 seconds. They proudly declare:

Really?

*

A War or a Revolution that is the Question

New in 2025, and again, there is an anniversary: 500 years of the German Peasants' War, or was it a Revolution?

   

Spirited Horst Buszello making his points:
The Peasants' War is an example on par with the French Revolution.

Last Thursday, Professor Horst Buszello explored this question in his lecture entitled: "Bauernkrieg" oder "Revolution"? - Der Aufstand von 1525 im Streit der Meinungen“. 

In Wikipedia, you find the notions of the Great Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt, a widespread popular revolt in some German-speaking areas in Central Europe from 1524 to 1525. It was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising before the French Revolution of 1789. The revolt failed because of intense opposition from the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers.

One of the rare originals of the 12 Artikel

The revolt was launched as a charge raised against the Swabian League in Memmingen in March 1525 in a pamphlet of 12 Articles: Dye Grundtlichen Und rechten haupt Artitkl, aller Baurschafft und Hyndersessen der Gaistlichen und Weltlichen oberkayten von wölchen sy sich beschwert vermainen  (The thorough and lawful main articles of all peasantry and vassals of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, of which they believe themselves to be aggrieved).

Under these 12 articles, the rural population from Swabia to Thuringia, from Brandenburg to Bavaria, formed fraternal associations, gathered for Christian meetings, or joined evangelical heaps in which they wanted to uphold the gospel and support justice: "Here there is neither slave nor master, we are all one in Christ."

In November 1520, Luther published one of his most essential writings, On the Freedom of a Christian. In it, he cites the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians: "A Christian is a free lord of all and subject to none. A Christian is a servant of all and subject to everyone."

The new spiritual freedom of the believer is a life in the grace of God and not a turning away from the Ten Commandments. Brother Martin demands that people give charity freely, willingly, cheerfully, and without charge out of faithful obedience to God and the authorities, too. He emphasizes verse 13 of Paul's letter to the Romans: "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves."

Luther advocates his "two kingdoms doctrine," which states that the worldly kingdom and the kingdom of God are separate. Since power is ordained by God, all those who have not been called to govern are subject to the duty of obedience if they do not want to resist God's order. Let every soul be subject to the authorities with fear and honor.

Luther was of no help to the rebels. However, Christoph Schappeler wrote the political tract "An die versamlung gemayner Bawerschafft (To the Assembly of the Common Peasantry,)" probably during the gathering of Upper Swabian farmers and craftsmen at Memmingen in March 1525. The work appeared anonymously in print in Nuremberg in May 1525. 

On the pamphlet's title page, the farmers are on the left, and the nobles and prelates are on the right. They are standing armed against each other at a wheel of fortune, and the papacy is tied to the wheel. 

In his pamphlet, Schappeler justifies the right to resist tyrannical authorities with many quotations from the New Testament, trying to prove that all people have a right to personal freedom and political participation. His historical models are the Roman Republic, the Israelites, and the Swiss Confederation (Wer meret Schwytz). 

Although the authorities had been established by God, when they acted tyrannically, they forfeited their right to rule. He advocated that the rebels base their actions on divine law, opposing Luther's "two kingdoms doctrine." So Schappeler's belief that society and politics could be reformed for the better through the Old and New Testaments is close to Huldrych Zwingli, who had written, "All earthly laws must be conformed to the commandments of God and the spirit of the gospel." 

Nevertheless, throughout history, the Great Peasants' War was interpreted in the zeitgeist.

Günther Franz published the most extensive monography about The German Peasants' War on October 1, 1933, the Day of the German Farmer. He, a devout Nazi, could not help but criticize earlier publications in the preface to his book, "Consciously or unconsciously, all these works made the history of the Peasants' War serve political purposes and thus blocked the path to fundamental knowledge."

"Today, at the end of the first victorious German revolution, the peasant in the Third Reich has finally gained the position in the nation's life that he was already striving for in 1525."

This obviously was no political statement. Still, Franz's book, written in a narrative style and expurgated of Nazi passages in later editions, remains a standard reference of German peasants' revolts that started much earlier than 1524. Red Baron reported about a precursor in the Freiburg region.

In 1524, the common man (der gemeine Mann) stood up and demanded that the Old Law be re-established. The divine law stipulates that men/women are created equal. As Adam was plowing and Eve was stretching, where was the nobleman?

The Great Peasants' War was a genuine political revolution, 

*

Timescape

From previous blogs, my readers know that both Dark Matter and Energy are needed to fit data to the standard cold dark matter (⁠ΛCDM) cosmology.

Very unsatisfactory. Only about 5% of the universe consists of matter known to us.

Dark matter pulls things together, forming galaxies, while dark energy is necessary to explain the accelerated speed with which our universe expands.

As the MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) model gets rid of Dark Matter, the Timescape model does away with Dark Energy.

The mathematics for both models looks complicated.

The Timescape model is based on evidence from cosmological data showing that mass in the universe is not as continuously distributed as presumed in ΛCDM but instead structured. There are voids with regular time scales and clusters of matter where clocks, according to the General Relativity Theory, run slower.

The results rely on data from a supernova database.

  

The data were analyzed and plotted against the minimum redshift cutoffs for the observed supernovae.

Overall, Timescape (red area) fits the data better than ΛCDM (blue area). However, the authors stress the need for further analysis on how the redshift distribution of supernovae and the probed redshift range impact evidence for cosmological models.

No reason for astrophysicists (not astronomers) to cheat,
but they should still be allowed to look

So, as in the case of MOND, the data are not conclusive enough to write a new “standard” cosmology model, but cracks in ΛCDM are getting wider.

*

Le Colloque

 In November last year, Red Baron reported about a colloquium at Ensisheim. Still, he left the question, "Why did Ensisheim become a central place for the Habsburgs in the region?" unanswered but promised to do it in a future blog providing some highlights.

Here is a "crown" made from wood showing the Austrian colors and the Upper Alsace's coat of arms. It was on display during the colloquium.

Habsburg territories in the Upper Rhine region around 1100

The Habsburgs had a slow start in the region. They only owned small estates but ruled the earldom of Upper Alsace.

Click to enlarge

Around 1260, Alsace was a dispersed region. In addition to free imperial cities, small princes held land, prince bishops, and prince abbots had vast territorial possessions, and Habsburg rights were distributed in between.

Click to enlarge

By 1500, the Habsburgs' territorial situation was somewhat better, as they now possessed larger contiguous areas in Upper Alsace and in Breisgau on the other side of the Rhine River (white color), notably the cities of Mulhouse and Freiburg.

It would have been natural for territorial conflicts to break out in this mingled situation. However, the close neighbors were concerned about their freedom and aware that peace was central to the stability of their territories and domains. 

That we, to the praise of Almighty God and in honor of our most gracious lord,
the Roman emperor, and especially as members of the Holy Roman Empire,
in the strength of the imperial peace of 1471 at Regensburg, by all our subjects
 and allies and all other members of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
have all come together in unity.

And indeed, the so-called Lower League of 1474 on the Upper Rhine successfully defeated Charles the Bold of Burgundy. 

Still, peace did not remain over the years because the imperial central power had little presence in the southwest of the empire; the region was left on its own. 

A league of ten imperial cities formed in the 14th century, the Decapolis, worked better and lasted longer. They still stood to the emperor for their liberty when the Habsburg possessions in Alsace had reverted to the French crown in the Westfalian peace treaty in 1648.

So, the Habsburg authorities moved from Ensisheim to the right bank of the Rhine River and opened in Freiburg. Were the Habsburgs perhaps glad to get rid of Alsace because of their permanent financial difficulties?

In the final discussion at the colloquium, the question arose as to why Ensisheim was so significant for the Habsburgs until the Thirty Years' War?

It was proposed since the founder of the House of Austria, Rudolf, had fortified the place and also moved the district court there that the later Habsburgs remembered the past. So small Ensisheim became their central administrative center in the southwest.
*

Singing Christmas Carols in Freiburg‘s Minster Church

Red Baron likes to sing, so he went to Freiburg's Minster this afternoon. But when I arrived at a quarter to five, the church was already full to bursting.

I walked with my stick to the front without hoping for a place in one of the pews. However, in row six, a young lady was keeping a few seats free, desperately looking for three latecomers from her family. I counted and said that a thin person would still fit in. So she offered me the seat by one of the church pillars.

Needless to say, only one additional person showed up, and Red Baron eventually had lots of free space and a perfect view into the church choir.

When the event started, I got my fill. Here is the complete list of Christmas Carols I sang out loud with the people around me strangely remaining as mute as a fish.

All the songs you find on YouTube. Some melodies are familiar to my English-speaking readers, so they may like to sing or hum along without an English text. Click on the German titles below.

Tochter Zion freue dich 

Nun freut euch ihr Christen 

Es ist ein Ros entsprungen 

Ich steh an deiner Krippen hier   

Ihr Kinderlein kommet 

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht 

Hört, es singt und klingt mit Schalle

O du fröhliche, o du selige

It is not surprising that the text of most of the songs contains the word "peace," for as Luke 2:14 states, "In the highest heaven, glory to God! And on earth, peace among people of goodwill!"

Let's hope that in 2025, decision-makers in the various regions of our earth will show goodwill for peace and stop the suffering of civil populations.

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The Beginninglessness of the Universe and the Theological Consequences

Remember the Seminar early this year titled:

Which Truths Can We Build Upon? Physics and Theology in Discourse?

My friend Thomas made me aware of the seminar, and he and I attended. As a result, I wrote a few blogs (Click on the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ).

The discussions were not over for Thomas, so he proposed an institute discussion as a follow-up. The topic he formulated was:

The Beginninglessness of the Universe and the Theological Consequences

The discussion took place on December 19 in a small circle at the Theological Institute of Freiburg's university, comprising the theology professors of the seminar. The conversations were animated by wine and Christmas goodies. The physics professor could not attend, so experimental physicist Red Baron had to stand in for questions of modern cosmology.

In the run-up to the event, Prof. Magnus Striet had put forward eight theses with the title:

Creation Out Of Nothing Or an Eternal World?

1) From the point of view of scientific theory, theology is an integrative science. This means that knowledge complexes from non-theological sciences must be incorporated into theological thinking about the world. Theology interprets them under the hypothetical assumption of God.

2) The concept of God must
a) be defined,
b) it must be possible to think it consistently in relation to world knowledge and 
c) it must not collide with the (transcendental-logical) fact of human freedom.

3) From a historical point of view, the concept of creation out of nothing emerged in the emerging Christianity because one wanted to think of God's historical power, which in turn presupposes freedom on the part of God.
This cannot be conceived under the presuppositions of Greek philosophy. At the same time, one wants God to think of an absolute, which is not given if matter or the world are eternal.
Neither the concept of nothingness nor that of eternity can be positively defined.

4) The practical needs of reason (which can be traced back to contemporary philosophy) allow us to hold on to the concept of a free God.

6) Identifying the cosmic process with the "divine" and abandoning the distinction between God, the world, and man is contrary to the needs of practical moral reason.

7) Philosophically, the question of whether the world (the quantum vacuum) is eternal or not cannot be decided. Nor can the existence of a free God be sufficiently proven.

8) Theologically, the existence of a free God is posited. In this perspective, the fact of the world is anchored in a reason that is this God without being able to conclusively clarify the relationship between the free God and the beginning of the cosmic process.

Freiburg, 18.12.2024

Red Baron received a copy of these theses, which included additional information (printed in red). Here, I would like to come in (the original text is in italics). In a physical sense, the quantum vacuum preceding the Big Bang is not nothing. In a scientific way of thinking, it can no longer be asked whether this vacuum has a non-physical reason.

At the end of the paragraph, the author writes, We cannot say anything about the nature of the world before/beyond the Big Bang. Red Baron would underline this, although theoretical colleagues have speculated about a quantum vacuum before the Big Bang and accordingly made model calculations.

Taking up the argumentation, The vacuum of quantum mechanics is the energetic ground state of a (bound) physical system. It is directly linked to the existence of space (or an associated measurand)."

Indeed, the present standard Lamda Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) model of cosmology describes the beginning of our space-time and makes no statement about what was before the Big Bang.

This present-day knowledge contrasts the beginninglessness of the universe, meaning that it has no beginning in time. However, there are several theories to it, just to name a few:

1. The universe is eternal. It has no beginning and has always existed in some form.
2. The universe bounces through cycles of Big Bangs (expansion) and Big Crashes (contraction), with no definitive beginning.
3. The universe could have originated from quantum fluctuations ex nihilo, which does not require a precise beginning time.

However, with all those theories, there is a caveat: These studies rely on mathematical models that cannot be directly verified by current observational technologies. The theoretical findings assume specific conditions that remain hypothetical.

On the other hand, experiments have repeatedly confirmed Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. However, dark matter had to be introduced into the standard ΛCDM model to fully align with cosmological observations.

Other descriptions of the universe exist, like the MODified Newtonian Dynamics theory, or MOND for short. This model eliminates the ugly dark matter assumption.

Recently, astrophysical results obtained from the James Webb Space Telescope supported MOND. Astrophysicists observed large, bright galaxies in the early universe instead of the small, simple ones predicted by the ΛCDM model. These observations impressively fit the MOND theory.

In conclusion, the authors write in their paper:

A number of puzzling observations in cosmology were anticipated by MOND, including the early formation of massive galaxies.

Despite the predictive successes of MOND, we do not yet know how to construct a cosmology based on it. In contrast, ΛCDM provides a good fit to a wide range of cosmological observables but does not satisfactorily explain the many phenomena that were predicted by MOND.

We find ourselves caught between two very different theories that seem irreconcilable despite applying to closely related yet incommensurate lines of evidence. The simple force law hypothesized by MOND has made enough successful prior predictions that it cannot be an accident; it must be telling us something.

And then the authors can't resist a side blow: What that is remains as mysterious as the composition of dark matter.

Red Baron's initial religious education was based on Bible stories. However, as a young student, I realized I had to take up the subject again as an adult and deepen it.

A great help was my father-in-law, a teacher at the Catholic Apostel Gymnasium (high school) in Cologne, who introduced me to Rudolf Bultmann, Edward Schillebecckx, Karl Rahner, and Joseph Ratzinger. With Toni, I had long discussions. Later, Hans Küng was my favorite reading. Despite all my efforts, I never found proof of the existence of God.

That is why verse 13 of St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians has always been my maxim, So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. This verse is preceded by For now, we know, in part, regarding theologians, philosophers, and physicists alike.

As for verse 13, let me put hope above love for once in the coming year. Hope for a lasting peace in our world.

*

We Will Never Surrender!

The third session of the seminar "80 Years, End of the War in the Southwest" (1944/45) dealt with the final military battle in spring 1945 (Der militärische Endkampf im Frühjahr 1945).

The East

Before the Endkampf, the Russians had successfully pushed back the German Heeresgruppe Mitte (Army Group Center). 

The "Operation Bagration" began on June 22, 1944, with a massive artillery bombardment of German positions. Nothing was to be left to chance. Initially, four Soviet "fronts," i.e., the 1st Baltic and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Belorussian armies, went on the attack. In the rear area, the Red Army concentrated more than a dozen armies, more than two million soldiers, over 5,000 tanks, around 5,000 fighter planes, and tens of thousands of guns. The Heeresgruppe Mitte had nothing to oppose this enormous superiority.

The date of the attack and the name chosen were highly symbolic. On this day, three years earlier, Germany had invaded the Soviet Union and begun a merciless war of annihilation.

Joseph Stalin chose "Operation Bagration" for the name. Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration (1765 to 1812) was a Georgian compatriot of the Soviet dictator and a hero in the "Patriotic War" of 1812 against Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion.

No better name than Bagration could be chosen for the decisive offensive in the "Great Patriotic War," as the Russian defensive struggle since the German invasion in 1941 was called.

The Eastern Front collapsed within a month. By December 1944, the Red Army had "liberated" the Baltic states and was on the border with East Prussia. At the end of March 1945, the Russian Winter Offensive had reached the Oder River. During its advance, the Red Army had surrounded the cities of Danzig and Breslau, leaving them aside.

The West

 The Allies reached the Rhine River in March 1945. The metropolis Aachen had already fallen on October 21, 1944.

In mid-December, Hitler put all his eggs into one basket. He scraped together whatever reserves the German military machine had left and started an offensive against the Allies in the Ardennes on December 16.

The first wave of the German attack involved more than 200,000 soldiers spread across three armies, around 600 tanks, and assault guns. This concentrated power drove a bulge into the Allied front in Belgium and Luxembourg. For the Americans, this desperate attempt to turn the tide of the war went down in history as the Battle of the Bulge.

The predetermined target of the Battle was far away Antwerp, the Belgian port on the Channel, through which the Allies had been delivering large quantities of supplies for their troops.

While the fight was going on, Paul Scherrer invited Werner Heisenberg, head of the German atomic project, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, professor of physics at the Reichs University Strasbourg, to give a scientific lecture at ETH Zurich on December 18.

The OSS agent and former baseball player Morris Berg, whom Alan Dulles had smuggled in with Paul Scherrer's help, sat in the lecture hall. Although Berg had completed a crash course in physics with Bob Robertson in England, he, like the experimental physicist Scherrer, could not follow Heisenberg's lecture on the S-matrix theory. At the time, nobody in the room knew that Berg was carrying a loaded pistol with him to shoot Heisenberg if anything, he said, convinced him the Germans were close to a bomb. As is well known, this political murder in neutral Switzerland did not take place.

The follow-up meeting to the physics seminar was scheduled at the Kronenhalle restaurant. Heisenberg bought a copy of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung from a passing vendor, eagerly read about the Ardennenoffensive, and commented, "Sie kommen gut voran*." The Jewish physicists sitting at the table, who had fled from Germany and Austria to Switzerland to escape the Nazis, felt their blood run cold. After the war, Heisenberg's remark stamped him as a Nazi in the eyes of many of his colleagues.

*They are getting on well.

Hitler's Ardennenoffensive was as megalomaniacal as it was doomed to failure.

The Southwest

End of January 1945, the Gauleiter (Nazi Governor) of Baden and the Alsace, Robert Wagner, tried to boost the population's will for defense with daily slogans, 

We will never surrender!
Remain unyielding, believe, trust, fight.
Resistance to the last kitchen knife.
Victory or doom.
Fight back or die! Fight to the death!

We must replace what we lack in material things with faith, will, bravery, tenacity, and obedience ... We don't sit down; we fight! Anyone who leaves his place without orders will be tried by a court martial. There can be no doubt about his end.

End of March, security services reports frequently complain about the opinion in the population that the war will soon be over because of the rapid advance of the Anglo-Americans, while the majority is "almost happy" that this war is finally coming to an end.

On April 1, we know from Goebbels's diary that Wagner complained to him about the people in Baden, that morale among the population and the troops had sunk extraordinarily. People no longer shy away from harsh criticism of the Führer ...

In contrast to the Soviets, the Anglo-Americans were not feared by the people ... on the contrary, large sections of the people were happy when they came so that they would be protected against the Soviets...

[In Alsace], the population exercising resistance has occasionally taken active action against the troops, which has a highly depressing effect on them.

This misery prompted Wagner to publish in a last effort the following leaflet at the beginning of April:

German men and women on the Upper Rhine! National Socialists!

The enemy is now trying to break into our immediate homeland with a violent attack. This means that we in the Upper Rhine region now have to pass the most challenging endurance test ... 

The Gaullist Negro divisions are to be unleashed on our women again as a black disgrace*. At the same time, behind the Americans, the Jews lurk as occupation officers, military policemen, and economic exploiters for the hour of their revenge ...
*Allusion to assaults after the end of the First World War

Even from Alsace, we have enough witness reports to make things unmistakably clear: Arsons out of sheer destructive rage, stabbings, non-stop theft, violent separation of German-conscious families, sadistic torture of German people, rape and defilement, alcoholic excesses... Forced labor in Negro quarters ...

There is only one thing to do against the intentions of our enemies. Fight to the death by all means, with our last strength. The Siegfried Line must be defended with fanatical ferocity! None of the positions erected by the Volksaufgebot (people's corps), no town, no village, no farmstead, must be abandoned without a fight. There is no turning back!

At the end of our brave struggle is our victory!

In the following days, no further consideration was given to the civilian population. The Führer's Nero-Befehl (officially "Burnt Earth Order"), issued on March 19, 1945, and aimed to destroy Germany's infrastructure, was primarily exercised in blowing up bridges.

Thousands of apprehended men were court-martialed by hastily assembled tribunals that carried out their bloody work.

Click to enlarge

The last edition of "Der Alemanne," the Kampfblatt (combat journal) of the National Socialists of Upper Baden, was issued in Freiburg on April 12, 1945. It had only two pages. 

In the article "Under the Sign of the Werewolf," we read that 1945 we entered the decisive phase of the mighty world struggle. And once again, the methods of warfare have intensified, for the final battle is always the hardest, cruelest, and most ruthless.

At the Yalta Conference at the beginning of February 1944, the Allies had formulated their war aims. Among other things, it was decided that France, if it so wished, would be invited by the three Allies to take over an occupation zone and participate as the fourth member of the Control Commission. The size of the French zone was to be decided.

The French wished to create a fait accompli and were hurrying towards the war's end. At the beginning of 1945, French troops, mostly comprised of colonial men, quickly advanced in southwest Germany, which the Americans did not like at all.

In the French press, the advance of General Jean-Marie Gabriel de Lattre de Tassigny is described as follows: To the complete surprise of the Germans and the Allied General Staff, General de Lattre pushed his forces southwards and seized Freudenstadt, at the foot of the Black Forest, cutting the enemy line in two. From there, he returned to the Rhine, between Offenburg and Kehl, and launched offensives in two other directions: south of Stuttgart, towards the Swiss border and the Danube. On April 21, Stuttgart was taken; on the 24th, our flag flew over the walls of Ulm. On the 26th, our tanks entered Constance. Two days later, our troops crossed the Austrian border.

The tricolor flies over the walls of Ulm, and French troops enter Austria; the thought of Napoleon may have inspired de Lattre in his advance.

Before that, on April 21, 1945, the French occupied Freiburg.

In the meantime, Werner Heisenberg had returned from Switzerland to his experimental nuclear reactor at Haigerloch near Hechingen. In his autobiography, Heisenberg reports that the last remnants of disbanded German troops moved eastwards through Hechingen in mid-April. One afternoon, we heard the first French tanks. In the south, they had probably already advanced past Hechingen to the crest of the Rauhe Alb.

Around three o'clock, I set off on a bicycle toward Urfeld*. When I reached Gammertingen at dawn, I had probably already left the battle line behind me. I only had to avoid the threat of strafers again and again. Because of this threat, I traveled principally at night in the following two days.
*in Bavaria on Walchensee

On the third day, I came to Urfeld and found the family safe and sound.

Many returnees were not so lucky.
*

Wokeness

Wokeness is often identified with non-national/non-religious identity politics. It claims that under the guise of equal rights for all kinds of marginalized identity groups, a claim to power is enforced by authoritarian means. 

 Red Baron is appalled by the extent the wokeness has reached. Anyone who criticizes 'woke' theories that advocate for the oppressed automatically makes common cause with the oppressors. This divides the world into strict categories of good and evil, and wokeness exerts moral pressure to silence its critics. 

 Even in a factual debate, criticizing wokeness is impossible because it makes itself irrefutable: It rejects scientific objectivity as a fairy tale of white, patriarchal, Western-individualistic knowledge production. Michel Foucault should have already stated that every claim to truth, including that of science, is nothing other than a claim to power. 

 And even worse. Wokeness scrutinizes every even thoughtless statement for political correctness, and if it doesn't meet the standard, it is denigrated as hate speech. 

In his lecture at the Museumsgesellschaft  Science and Freedom of Opinion in the Whirlwind of Contemporary Cultural Wars, Prof. Rainer Asch discussed the limits that wokeness imposes on freedom of opinion in science. Do scientists have to bend politically correct, for example, when justifying the financing of their research projects? Isn't this opening the floodgates to hypocrisy because the proposed project could fail without great overcautiousness in the wording?

Universities feel compelled to establish professorships or academic positions dedicated to critical race theory, diversity (LGBTQ+ studies), and social justice in inclusivity and that critically assess how language and behavior impact marginalized communities. These institutions develop a life of their own.

Cancel culture can erase parts of our history, such as renaming the Eberhard Karls University ofTübingen. Canceling the founder's name for Eberhard Karl was an anti-Semite like many of his contemporaries.

For Red Baron, above all, the corruption of the German language is an abomination. It all started with the Green Party, which introduced the gender starlet in November 2016. What is simply called migrants in English will become one word in German, too, using a starlet: Migrant*innen. 

This would "correctly" address the two genders, Migranten (male) and Migrantinnen (female). When written, it is ugly, but what is worse is when speakers on television try to pronounce the starlet, inserting an artificial pause between Migrant and innen. 

You may think that English-speaking people don't have the same problems as Germanophones. However, there is gender madness at Brighton and Sussex University Hospital (BSUH). It is the first hospital in the UK to formally implement a gender-inclusive language policy for its maternity services department, now known as "perinatal services."

*

Association Supporting the Freiburg Documentation Center on National Socialism

The Förderverein Dokumentationszentrum Nationalsozialismus Freiburg held its annual meeting on November 18. Red Baron has previously reported on the Center.

The flyer

Having been a member of this supporting association for nine months, this was the first time I could meet fellow supporters of the Center in person. Indeed, the annual meeting was well attended.

The new logo

The association board gave its annual report and showed photos of the progress of the construction work at the former tourist office that will become the NS Documentation Center, which is due to open in March 2025.

Last year, donations to the Center amounted to almost 35,000 euros, and membership rose from 39 to 147.

The resurrection of the Old Synagogue, which was burnt down
on Reichskristallnacht on November 9, 1938, in its present surroundings.

The Center will employ the latest technologies to make the past present.

During the slide show, Red Baron suddenly appeared in a photo, listening attentively to Prof. Bernd Martin, who gave a guided tour to members of the Förderverein Dokumentationszentrum Nationalsozialismus Freiburg in 2022 about the Nazi history of the Albert Ludwig University.

Here he talks about the Nazi eagle that used to hang on the façade of the Kollegiengebäude 1 above the university seal. It was removed after the war, but you can still see the traces all too clearly in the photo.

Prof. Martin, an expert on Martin Heidegger, naturally focused on the philosopher who joined the Nazi Party as early as 1933, became chancellor of the university, and worked to subordinate it to the Führerprinzip (leader principle). Here, he was supported by a right-wing student body where National Socialist ideas were most strongly within the medical faculty.

The renovation work at the former tourist office is on schedule. Red Baron is eagerly awaiting the opening of the Documentation Center.

*

80 Jahre Kriegsende im Südwesten (1944/45)

This year is not only the 80th anniversary of Freiburg's bombing but also the twilight of the Third Reich. This is why Dr. Heinrich Schwendemann is offering a seminar entitled "80 Years, End of the War in the Southwest" (1944/45).

Red Baron has long known and respected Dr. Schwendemann as the expert on Freiburg's Jewish and Nazi history.

Before I started writing blogs, Heinrich once led a group and explained how Freiburg had changed structurally during the Nazi era and would have changed after the final victory.

The name Joseph Schlippe recurred throughout the tour. As Freiburg's master builder under the Nazis, he retained this post after the war.

©Förderverein NS Dokumentationszentrum

One of Schlippe's preferred architectural elements was the installation of open arcades. The tourist information center on the corner of Rotteckring and Rathausgasse was already built during the Nazi era. Presently, Freiburg's National Socialism Documentation Center is moving into these premises.

Following the bombing raid of November 27, 1944, which destroyed the city center, Schlippe essentially implemented his idea of arcades after the war to expand the traffic area on Kaiser-Josef-Straße.

Before the coronavirus brought human contacts to a virtual standstill, Dr. Schwendemann's last guided tour took place in March 2020. In freezing temperatures, he led us through Jewish Freiburg.

Due to his trip to Hamburg, Red Baron could not attend the seminar introduction and only joined the participants on the second evening. The event is scheduled every second week in a room on the upper floor of the Breisacher Tor.


On November 5, the session's topic was: Fall 1944 "People's War" at the Upper Rhine?

Dr. Schwendemann showed a map of the military situation in June 1944. The Russian central front had collapsed while the Allies, who had landed in Normandy on June 6, were advancing in France.

Territory lost by the German armed forces between April and December 1944

With the advance of the Allied forces in France, Baden suddenly became the front line in the fall of 1944.

    

The Military Situation on the Upper Rhine in early 1945

In Alsace, in a wide bridgehead around Colmar, fierce battles were fought between Wehrmacht units and American-French troops.

Old men and children are called into service to build ramps.

On the other side of the Rhine, the Baden Governor (Gauleiter) Robert Wagner called on the population to wage a "People's War."

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They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind

This verse 7 of Hosea 8 came to my mind during an ecumenical night prayer at the Freiburg Münster Church.

The Münster Church was packed. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Last night, we commemorated the 80th anniversary of Freiburg's bombing by the Royal Air Force that nearly annihilated the city.

Four years before, on November 14, the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) had bombed Coventry.

From a distance, the writer Christoph Meckel described the fire that followed the bombing of Freiburg, "And where, a few kilometers away, the silhouette of the city could usually be seen, a single, mighty flame was burning. The mountain walls were flooded with a flickering firelight, the valleys on the sides were immersed in black shadows, and the fir trees on the slopes of the Roßkopf stood out clearly. Thick orange smoke billowed into the night, rolling voraciously over the mountaintops, engulfing everything in darkness."

The three mayors, Sallie Barker, Guildford*, Martin Horn, Freiburg, and Anne Vignot (with an interpreter) Besancon*, united in their addresses: They called for peace.

*Freiburg's English and French sister cities

Together, they lit a peace candle that will shine in the Freiburg town hall.

After the prayers of intercession and the Lord's Prayer, the cathedral parish priest and the Protestant dean jointly gave the appropriate ecumenical blessing, "Go and bring peace!"

Meanwhile, a peace demonstration took place in front of the cathedral's main portal.

May Freiburg bear the title of City of Peace.

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