Sarcopenia

Age begins with immobility.

Red Baron's equilibrium is greatly disturbed. So, I had to give up cycling and sold my e-bike one year ago. Instead, I walk intensely for at least 30 minutes a day.

According to experts, this is not sufficient to fight sarcopenia. In fact, my weight has decreased over the years, and I have developed a slight belly. My doctor told me, "You can't get rid of that belly." Since the density of muscle at 1060 kg/m³ is higher than that of belly fat at 920 kg/m³, this is a typical sign of muscle loss.

Sports science knows muscle training is highly effective as a therapy against sarcopenia. Regular visits to the gym combined with balance training and a protein-rich diet have the most significant effect on quality of life for people with age-related muscle loss.

For years, Red Baron has been trying to counteract sarcopenia with Kieser Training. I work my muscles twice a week for 90 minutes, doing 14 exercises, many specifically to strengthen the legs. Mind you, the pre-printed training plan only allows for a maximum of 10 exercises per session.

Yet, over the last few months, I've become increasingly wobbly. When I read an expert's statement, "The older you are, the more strength training you need," I decided to train three times a week.

And I was surprised. My scales, which "measure" total weight as well as various components such as fat, water, and muscle mass, have been showing a decrease in fat percentage and a simultaneous increase in muscle mass for a month now.

Still, Red Baron doesn't expect miracles.

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Ablöse

is translated into replacement, e.g., in the military, changing a guard. In this blog, Ablöse means the full repayment of a debt. The term was recently frequently used in the German press when discussing the repayment of obligations that go back to Napoleon's time. Once again, Napoleon is to blame for everything*.

*Famous German film comedy of 1938 by Curt Goetz: Napoleon ist an allem schuld.

Even though the state tax offices collect the church tax - in 2021, around 6 billion euros for the Protestant Church and 6.7 billion euros for the Catholic Church - State and Church are separated in Germany.

©ZDF

Still, the German state and states also pay more than 600 million euros annually to the two Churches as state benefits. Why?

Let's go back in history.

During the Napoleonic Wars, France took over the territories on the left bank of the Rhine. Prussia, Bavaria, and Baden-Württemberg, in particular, suffered territorial losses. The affected princes demanded compensation.

This was when the Imperial Estates turned their attention to the gigantic assets of the Churches. The idea of expropriating Church lands and awarding them to the princes who had suffered territorial losses was obvious.

At its last session on February 25, 1803, the Permanent Diet passed one of the last laws of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Red Baron visited the modest meeting room in Regensburg in 2020.

The negotiated treaty known as the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss stipulates, among other things: All goods of the founded monasteries, abbeys, and convents ... whose use has not been formally determined in the previous decrees, are left to the free and full disposition of the respective sovereigns, both for the purpose of expenditure for worship, teaching and other charitable institutions, as well as to facilitate their finances.

The papal nuncio in Vienna was surprised, "Even Jews stand up for their rights*; only the bishops remain silent. "
*in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Shylock is standing for his bond

This secularization deprived the Churches of substantial assets and income. In Germany, state benefits have compensated these for over 200 years. Since the foundation of our Federal Republic in 1949, a sum totaling 19.6 billion euros has been paid up to 2021.

These payments are rightly criticized because all taxpayers pay to the Churches, "The state benefits are an absurdity for those distanced from the Church," says a church law expert, "State and Church are clearly not separated here."

Constitutional law expert Bodo Pieroth demands: "Bundestag (parliament) and the government should remember that they must represent the interests of all citizens, including the non-denominational majority. They and numerous Church members no longer sympathize with continuing the anachronistic state benefits."

As a declared constitutional demand, the goal of abolishing state benefits has been around for a long time.

In fact, already the Weimar Constitution of 1919 stipulated the replacement of state benefits in Article 138: "State legislation shall replace state benefits to religious societies based on law, treaty or special legal titles. The principles for this shall be laid down by the Reich."

Nothing happened except that the constitutional article was adopted when Germany's Basic Law was passed in 1949. State benefits continued to be paid.

Experts largely agree that the two Churches have now been amply overcompensated, but all initiatives in the Bundestag to replace them have failed so far.

The Christian Democrats' religious policy spokesperson said, "You can get the impression that neither the Churches nor the federal states are in any particular hurry to replace the state benefits."

©DW

State benefits have increased since the founding of the Federal Republic. This is due to the development of pay scales in the public sector. When salaries rise, so do the so-called endowments to the clergy financed by the federal states via state benefits.

Our government wants to end the annual payments and has enshrined this plan in its coalition agreement. Still, the federal states have opposed its current proposal to replace them, saying it is far too expensive.

Indeed, more than ten billion euros are in the offing as an Ablöse sum, which corresponds to 18.6 times the previous annual payments.

Replacing state payments has been a constitutional mandate for more than 100 years! In the spirit of the strict separation of Church and State, there is no way around an Ablöse as compensation for the Churches.
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Erasmus in Freiburg

In her book Erasmus, The Biography of a Free Thinker, Sandra Langereis writes little about Erasmus's stay in Freiburg. Let me fill in the missing information.

In April 1529, as the riots against followers of the Old Faith intensified in Basel, Erasmus fled to the Catholic city of Freiburg. The 62-year-old Erasmus, reverently known as the Prince of Scholars, initially stayed in the Haus zum Walfisch (House of the Whale), built by King Maximilian's treasurer Jakob Villinger. The building is now home to the Municipal Savings Bank.

Haus zum Walfisch on Franziskanerstraße

Shortly after he arrived in Freiburg at the beginning of May 1529, Erasmus wrote enthusiastically to his long-time pen pal Willibald Pirckheimer in Augsburg, "At last, I have changed the clod, the Rauraker* has become a Breisgauer ... The little journey went better than I had expected. The city council showed me all their kindness of their own accord, even before King Ferdinand recommended me by letter. I was given a princely house built for Emperor Maximilian but remained unfinished... and then a letter later: Ubi bene ubi patria, as the saying goes. So, I can enjoy the friendly climate here for a year if Mars doesn't drive me away." 

*Augusta Rauraca, the Roman, i.e.. the Latin name for Basel

However, he was mistaken in assuming that he would only stay in Freiburg for a year and that Emperor Maximilian once chose the Haus zum Walfisch as his retirement home.

Erasmus believed that the town would let him live in the Haus zum Walfisch free of charge. He was furious when the mayor sent him a bill of 30 guilders for the rent at the end of the year. 

The memorial plaque for Erasmus at the Haus zum Walfisch contains a correction.
He lived here from 1529 to 1531, not until 1535, as initially stated.

So it was not Mars, the god of war, who drove Erasmus out of his domicile on Franziskanerstraße but trouble with the city. In 1531, he bought the house Zum Kind Jesu (To the Child Jesus) on Schiffstraße 7 as his new residence for 600 Rhenish guilders, which he paid in cash with coins he had saved in Basel.

Haus zum Kind Jesu on Schiffstraße 7 before the bombing of Freiburg.
There is a picture of Erasmus on the façade (©Peter Kalchthaler)

The house purchase contradicted the city charter, according to which only Freiburg citizens were allowed to acquire property. Four years after arriving in Freiburg, Erasmus finally entered his name in the university register as a professor theologiae to legalize the purchase. From then on, he lived as an academic citizen in a privileged house exempted from taxes.

When Rector Paulus Getzonis joyfully announced to the members of the Senate in 1533 that Erasmus had been accepted onto the university's register, he had no idea that Erasmus would neither lecture at the Albertina nor attend the Senate meetings. From the outset, he accepted and possessed the dignities but rejected the burdens.

Yet the city and university continued to court the great humanist, who spread his wings and found, "Theology is pursued here more weakly than I would like, and the study of languages flourishes mediocrely. Although the university is well equipped, it is poorly attended and has more honorable students than numerous ones."

Instead of being seen at the university, Erasmus had been working since 1533 on his Liber de sarcienda ecclesiae concordia, deque sedandis opinionum dissidis, cum aliis nonnullis lectu dignis*, in which he describes Europe as a unified populus Christianus (Christian people) which also inhabits an eadem domus (shared house), in ecclesia (the Church). He considered the differences between Catholics and Lutherans to be bridgeable and, like many of his contemporaries, hoped for a general, unifying council that would create a concordia fidei in a concordia caritas. This would require reforms in the education of the clergy, reforms in morals, and reforms in the church.
*Book on the restoration of ecclesiastical harmony and the elimination of differences of opinion

As the schism progressed, Erasmus felt that the religious cohesion of Europe by the Roman Church was waning. Instead, he foresaw the emergence of pro-national structures, "One tribe is driven to battle with another tribe, city against city, faction against faction, ruler against ruler ... The Englishman is the enemy of the Frenchman for no other reason than that he is French. The Scot is the enemy of the Briton for no other reason than that he is a Scot. The German is the enemy of the Frenchman, and the Spaniard is the enemy of both. The various faiths wear themselves out in a narcissism of slight differences. They practice reinforcing their contrasts."

With all his efforts, Erasmus could not heal the disease of schism.

In Erasmus's new domicile on Schiffstraße, renovation work was pending, so he had to deal with blacksmiths, stonemasons, carpenters, plumbers, and glaziers. He wrote in a letter in 1531, "You know this sort of people; it is so disgusting that I would instead occupy myself for a full three years with scientific work, however unpleasant, than be plagued with this kind of worry for a single month." Craftsmen yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

He continued to grumble about Freiburg, "The city is pretty, but not populated enough, "and furthermore, "the town is small, and the inhabitants are superstitious."

He only found the 68-year-old Huldrichus Zasius worthy of praise, "I have never seen anything in Germany that I have admired as much as the character of Ulrich Zasius. He is sincerity itself, not just sincerity towards his friends. Physically, he is aging, but it is hard to believe how mentally he is still quite fresh; his sharpness of judgment and memory have not suffered in any way. I have never noticed such quick-witted, witty, apt, and well-extemporized speech, even from an Italian. The speech flows sweeter than honey over his lips. I expected to find a lawyer, an excellent one, to be sure, but only a lawyer. But what is there in the mysteries of theology that he has not examined and thought through? In what part of philosophy is he not fully versed? Is there any book of the Old and New Testament that he has not opened, perused, absorbed?"

Erasmus's high regard for Zasius can probably be traced back to the Freiburg Lenten controversy of 1523. You may read the story here.

Erasmus's rejection of Freiburg culminated in the remark, "I would rather live among the Turks."

Ultimately, he secretly left Freiburg for Basel in 1535, where he died a year later.
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The Biography of a Free Thinker

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, the prince of scholars, was a genius far ahead of his time.

Toward the end of his life, marked by countless recriminations and accusations, he turned into a Stinkstiefel (grouch, grumbler) while living in exile in Freiburg.

Red Baron collected all the information about Erasmus's stay in Freiburg from 1517 to 1521 on his history page and has already written one blog. Here is another titled Erasmus in Freiburg.

Langereis‘ book cover shows a painting by ©Neel Korteweg,
Amsterdam 2012. Erasmus in a poppy shirt. Acrylic on linen 100/85 cm

In 2021, the Dutch historian Sandra Langereis published Erasmus's ultimate 1200-page biography, which Bärbel Jänicke translated into German in 2023. I read this opus magnum as an e-book.

My readers may remember my blog about Wieland's biography. Red Baron is fascinated by the lives of prominent personalities of the past, particularly when they met other prominent contemporaries of their time. The descriptions of those encounters bring back the past.

So it was with Erasmus who gave a welcoming speech for Philip the Fair in Brussels, met Kings Henry VII and VIII of England, and wrote letters to popes such as Leo X.

As the illegitimate child of a priest, Erasmus was not destined for such a future. He was not entitled to receive ecclesiastical ordination. The flaw of his damnable birth runs like a red thread through his life.

In a Compendium*, Erasmus euphemistically reports disguising its origin that his father, Gerard, was destined by his parents to lead a consecrated life, but he fell in love with Margareta, the daughter of a doctor. When Gerard's parents refused to consent to the intended marriage, the son ran away, leaving behind a farewell letter adorned with the symbol of the marital handshake, "Farewell, never to be seen again."

*A brief description of his childhood

Gerard went to Italy to study law without a degree. He earned his living as an excellent copyist with manuscripts of essential authors. He received a letter from his parents while he was in Italy with the news that his lover Margareta had died. Grief-stricken, he became a priest. From then on, he dedicated his life body and soul to the faith. When Gerard later returned home, he found Margaret alive and well. She had given birth to a child of his: Erasmus. Priest Gerard "never touched Margareta again." 

And Gerard did not abandon his child. On the contrary, he gave his son a good education.

However, new research has revealed that Erasmus was only conceived long after Gerard had returned from his Italian study trip to Holland. Erasmus was, therefore, the son of a priest. Worse still, Gerard and Margareta lived in concubinage, and Erasmus had a brother, Pieter, who was three years older.

Erasmus was about 13 years old when his mother died of the plague, and his father followed shortly after. His guardian placed the boy in a boarding school. His relatives then forced him into a monastery run by the Augustinian canons. As a canon, Erasmus was ordained a priest in 1492. He secretly legalized this ordination in 1516 following correspondence with Pope Leo X.

As a schoolboy, Erasmus decided to become a writer and, while studying in Paris, wrote the proverbial dictionary Adagia, which became a bestseller.

Another famous work is the satire Moriae encomium, "Praise of Folly," where not he but the personized Folly denounces ecclesiastical and secular grievances. To learn more, consult my blog about the opera titled The Folly.

Above all Erasmus's works, the Novum Instrumentum stands out. It is an entirely new translation of the New Testament into Latin from original Greek sources. Red Baron once attended a lecture and wrote a blog about the Novum Instrumentum, but there is more to report in another blog.

The young, culture-loving Medici Pope Leo X was delighted when the world-famous author dedicated him this famous Novum Instrumentum. In return, Erasmus asked Leo for a favor, which the pope delivered when Erasmus was in London.

On Good Friday 1516, Leo's special representative Andrea Ammonio absolved his friend Erasmus in a strictly closed ceremony in his private chapel and granted the Dutch humanist a triple papal dispensation. Erasmus' unholy origins were thus finally a thing of the past.

Henry VIII and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey then granted him an audience. Erasmus was told that they had in mind an annual income for him from a benefit yet to be determined.

Fiddlesticks, because the second common thread running through Erasmus' life is his lack of money. In a letter to his friend Guillaume Budé in Paris in 1501, he wrote, "I am married to Mrs. Poverty, and unfortunately she is so infatuated with me that I simply cannot drive her away, no matter how nasty I am with this woman."

His friend wrote back that Erasmus should cherish his wife, Poverty, because there would be no literature without her love. Budé also knew this woman, but he lovingly referred to her as his muse, not his curse.

Budé's answer is still practiced at universities where assistants to professors sometimes work for starvation wages. When asked about this, one professor said, "Hungry birds sing beautifully."

Erasmus's financial situation changed dramatically when he settled in Basel in 1521 to work for his favorite printer, Johann Froben. He labored tirelessly as an author, editor, and canvasser for five, six, and, when the Frankfurt book fairs were back on the doorstep, seven printing presses at the same time, single-handedly delivering manuscripts. Erasmus made sure that Froben could print around twenty new and old of his bestselling titles every year. Froben earned a fortune.

In December 1521, Froben bought Erasmus a house and "remunerated"* him with 200 gold pieces a year.
*Royalties were unknown, but pirate printing was standard at the time

Now, Erasmus supported young talents even more and remained in correspondence with many of them. "It is really clever to move into a room with a barber if you want to learn the local language," Erasmus wrote with amusement to one of his former students in Paris, who had reported that he wanted to work on his French. "But it would be even smarter to look for a sweetheart because a French girl would be better for his French than thirty teachers," added the Nestor in Basel very humanely.

This reminds me of the saying, "The best way to learn a foreign language is with a long-haired dictionary."

To Erasmus' great gratitude, the jovial publisher provided a further two hundred Rhenish gold pieces in 1526 to buy a city garden, which the star author had longed for for years.

But at the beginning of 1529, this good life ended. On February 9, the day before Ash Wednesday, when the Great Lent was to begin, a devastating iconoclasm took place in Basel with the approval of a reformist council majority and under the protection of an armed militia that occupied the market square with rows of cannons.

Erasmus recalls as an eyewitness: "Nothing of the statues was left intact, neither in the churches, nor in the vestibules, nor in the cloisters, nor in the monasteries. What there was of painted pictures was covered with a whitewash of lime; what was inflammable was thrown on the pyre; what was not was smashed piece by piece. Neither value nor art convinced them to spare anything. On Ash Wednesday, the iconoclasts set fire to a pyre of destroyed works of art on Münsterplatz."

As the riots against the followers of the Old Faith intensified, Erasmus fled Basel in April 1529 to the Catholic city of Freiburg. He lived there until 1535, when he returned to Basel, where he died on July 12, 1536.

After Erasmus's death, his considerable legacy became known as an efficient international subsidy system for gifted students needing a scholarship. They flocked to Basel from far-flung corners to enroll at the university.

Today's European Erasmus Foundation builds on this.
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Bunbury

Yesterday night, Red Baron went to the theater and saw Oscar Wilde’s comedy Bunbury, or The Importance of Being Earnest, in an open-air performance on a warm summer evening. My faithful readers may recall my recent visit to the Theater der Immoralisten.

Wikipedia knows, “This farcical comedy depicts the tangled affairs of two young men about town who lead double lives to evade unwanted social obligations, both assuming the name Ernest while wooing the two young women of their affections.” 

I first encountered Oscar Wilde as a schoolboy when we saw Lady Windermere's Fan at the Hamburg Kammerspiele. It was my first visit to the theater to see a socially critical comedy. 

My second contact with Oscar Wilde was through my mother-in-law, who raved about The Picture of Dorian Gray. She read the novel as a young girl, and she teasingly alluded to Oscar Wilde's homoerotic tendencies. 

The Freiburg performance could not resist this allusion either. After all, all the scenes in the play took place in a men's restroom, which in retrospect need not even be seen as an alienating gag. 

And, of course, it is an allusion to Wilde's homosexuality when one of the protagonists, Algernon Moncrieff, comes covetously close to his friend John Worthing and strokes his cheeks. 

Lady Bracknell, who does not want to marry off her daughter Gwendolen Fairfax to the foundling John Worthing, is played so wonderfully by a man. Shortly after her first appearance, she naturally empties her bladder in a urinal. 

The governess Miss Prism watching over Worthing's ward, Cecily Cardew, is also played by a man and occasionally gets a slap on the butt from the gay Reverend Canon Chasuble. 

Oscar Wilde called his last comedy A trivial comedy for serious people. Although there is a happy ending for the comedy's bisexual protagonists, Wilde was accused of homosexual acts shortly after the premiere in 1895. In the course of a public trial, he was sentenced to two years in prison with forced labor. Ruined in health, financially, and socially, Wilde died in Paris in 1900 at the age of 46. 

A running gag is a play on words earnest and Ernest. Both Gwendolen and Cecily have the idea of marrying a man named Ernest. So, for the two, it is important to be earnest (Ernest?). 

Gwendolen places her entire faith in this forename, declaring in Act I, “The only really safe name is Ernest.” Cecily shares her opinion in Act II, “I pity any poor married woman whose husband is not called Ernest.” Luckily, this world play works as well in German, with Ernst being a name and ernst meaning serious(ly).

A blustering applause. From left to right:
Reverend Canon Chasuble, Gwendolen Fairfax, Lady Bracknell,
Algernon Moncrieff, Cecily Cardew, Miss Prism, John Worthing

My gentle readers may forgive me for not explaining the complicated plot of the comedy. Here is a link to Wikipedia instead. 

I admit that I was positively distracted elsewhere during the play.
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No Soul Comforter

Yesterday, I read an article in Der Spiegel that shocked me and no, it wasn't the infant mortality rate in the Middle Ages, around 30%.

At that time, people were deeply religious. For many, the salvation of their soul was more important than life in this world. So, for parents, it was essential that their babies be baptized soon after birth to cleanse them of their original sin.

In many cases, however, the child died before receiving the sacrament of baptism. This was a horror for the parents because it meant that the souls of these little beings fell victim to eternal damnation. Their corpses were not allowed to be buried in the consecrated earth of a cemetery.

The dead children were tainted with the stain of original sin*, and the medieval Church was no Seelentröster (soul comforter) for the parents.

*Here is a blog about a lecture on the original sin
 

Church Father Augustine (©Ercole De Roberti/Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images)

The strict rule that unbaptized children will go to hell comes from Church Father Augustine, who is still regarded by many Catholics as the second St. Paul in the interpretation of the faith.

 
So, it became custom, albeit forbidden, to bury the little bodies near the church wall so that they would be sprinkled with rainwater from the church roofs. This water was considered sacred, and so it had to have a healing effect. Although the sacrament of baptism may only be administered to the living, a Traufkind perhaps would become a Taufkind?*
*A play on words in German. Traufen, i.e., eaves catch water: A child buried below the eaves will become a baptized child.

A skeleton of a Traufkind afflicted with the stain of original sin
from excavations near the Church of Eggolsheim (©IN TERRA VERITAS Bamberg)

People's lack of understanding about the fate of innocent children ultimately led towards the end of the 18th century to the idea that unbaptized children endure a Vorhölle (limbo puerorum). Still, the idea of unbaptized children ending up in hell remained part of Christian heritage and in everyday life for much longer.

It was not until 2007 that the Vatican decreed that unbaptized children could at least hope for the "blissful vision" of God. Nowadays, those Sternkinder (star children) are also entitled to a church funeral.
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Radioactive Waste in the Summer Hole

In German, there is a word for the uneventful summer season called Sommerloch (summer hole), which can be translated as silly season or summer slump. Mind you, the Olympics are still on, Ukrainian troupes invade Russian territory, the world is waiting for the Iranian retaliation on Israel, and Kamala chose her running mate. Still, Red Baron is sitting in the summer hole, waiting for a worthwhile subject to write a blog about.

Yesterday, the Freiburg Institute for Applied Ecology made the national news with nuclear waste, a topic on which I have written several blogs.

©Sebastian Kahnert (dpa)

In most of those blogs, I castigated the various governments' obfuscation tactics. Their message is always the same: They will take care of nuclear waste, but for lack of a solution, they are putting the problem off until the Sankt Nimmerleinstag (doomsday or the day the cows come home), still keeping us citizens in the dark.

In my blog of June 2011, I criticized the complacency phrases: The unsolved global problem of the permanent disposal of radioactive waste must be solved, and The permanent disposal of radioactive waste must not be left to future generations.

My second blog of June 2013 summarized: High-level radioactive waste is a poisonous legacy for future generations. Considering all the costs nuclear energy will incur for our descendants, it is not a source of cheap electricity. We would be well-advised not to make their burden too heavy.

In my third blog of April 2014, I discussed the situation in neighboring Switzerland. They plan an underground site for nuclear storage near the German-Swiss border. If everything works out fine and the Swiss people decide positively in a national referendum around 2028, the final storage facility will start operating in Switzerland by 2060.

In my fourth blog of October 2014, I reported on a symposium: Where Shall We Store Our Radioactive Waste? The next day, a well-balanced article in the Rhein-Main Presse did not refrain from an attention-grabbing headline: Where to place the radioactive poison?

In my fifth blog of May 2015, I questioned whether the nuclear power plant operators had not bamboozled our government's lay(wo)men, who apparently do not know the difference between provisions and reserve allocations. 

I thought I had written enough on the topic, but yesterday, Red Baron learned that in a paper commissioned by the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) and now published by the Freiburg Institute for Applied Ecology, the search for a final repository for highly radioactive nuclear waste in Germany could take more than 40 years longer than initially planned. 

Already in November 2022, the ministry announced that the original timeline of 2031 could not be met. Shortly afterward, documents from the Federal Company for Final Disposal (BGE) became public, according to which the search could extend until 2046 or, in another scenario, even until 2068.

The latest report suggests that, under ideal conditions, a decision on the location of a final repository for highly active nuclear waste could be expected as early as 2074.

The Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety, and Consumer Protection, Steffi Lemke, of the Green Party hurried to say, "It has been known for some time that the finding process for a final storage site cannot be completed by 2031. However it is a "science-based, transparent and learning process, the requirements of which are geared towards finding the site that guarantees the best possible safety for a period of one million years."

Steffi continued, "The recent report does not reflect the latest progress. This study has not been able to incorporate all the latest information and facts because we have seen dynamic developments in recent months. For me, the demand remains that we must find a final repository as quickly as possible that is as safe as possible - for us and future generations."

Another load of empty phrases. What does Steffi mean by dynamic developments in recent months? 

The summer hole is not a black hole. So, the radioactive waste will not simply disappear.

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Statusangst

While writing the blog about status angst,  I came across a book by Alain de Botton with the same title. He defines status angst as "We are afraid of failing to meet the criteria for success set by society and consequently losing prestige and respect."

Red Baron was rather inspired by an article by Christine Holthoff on t-online titled Angst vor dem Abstieg. She writes that Germans have angst about losing their socio-economic status. Only we Germans?

©DW

German sociologist Hartmut Rosa explains, "The future today is nothing but a defensive struggle on a downward slope. Against the Russians. Against climate change. Against economic decline. Against the AfD. Against migration. That creates hopelessness and anger, and it will add voters to right- and left-wing populist parties.

Germans fear the loss. Whereas my parents rightly believed that their children would be better off than themselves one day, today, parents fear the loss and feel it the other way around: their children will be worse off.

This phenomenon is called status angst, the worry that one's own economic situation is at risk and that social decline is permanent. Those who fear that they could lose something become skeptical of democracy and move toward the political fringes. This explains why more and more middle-class citizens and young people are voting for the AfD and Sarah Wagenknecht's party. It also explains why those parties are strong in East Germany, where the people have already experienced a downward spiral in their lives.

Most of my country fellows are dissatisfied but are not doing so badly. Sociologist Rosa explains the strange discrepancy, "Our perception of whether we are living in good or bad times depends less on what we have and more on what we are moving towards."

And here, communication comes in. "Bad" things should be seen from Angela Merkel's 2015 angle: "Wir schaffen das (We'll make it)."

Is the future all renunciation, bans, and war?

We must reflect on our abilities and resources with which future challenges could be met. The more confident we are to overcome a crisis, the less threatening it becomes.

Instead of focusing on renunciation and bans to fight the climate crisis, it would be more helpful to emphasize what is gained when fewer combustion engines pollute the air, when cities become greener, or what individuals save when they use heat pumps instead of gas heating.

Instead of creating the impression that migration is bad and a burden, we should consider that without an imported workforce, branches like the nursing professions would collapse. At the same time, the statutory pension insurance scheme will have more contributors thanks to immigration from abroad.

Facing Russian aggression, terms such as "war capability (Kriegsfähigkeit)" and "new military service (neuer Militärdienst)" will make look the future consisting of war and rearmament. Instead, it should be emphasized that this is necessary for our long-term goal: A more peaceful world.

Our government should give people the feeling that, yes, although there are a lot of problems, we'll manage them because, firstly, we know where we want to go and, secondly, by what means.

Germany, the nation of poets and thinkers, is brooding and worried. It was never a country of ease and is permanently darkened by its Nazi history, its dense forests, and gruesome fairytales. We lack the savoir vivre of our southern neighbors.

The cheerful summer of soccer in 2006 showed that, at times, we can be like that, too. In the summer of 2024, Germany lost against Spain in the European championship. No cheering, but realizing that our southern neighbors play better soccer, too.

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Where to Take Our Books?

A few weeks ago, Professor Sabine Wienker-Piepho, the Vice President of the Freiburg Museumsgesellschaft, gave an enchanting keynote speech on book ownership today. 

The term "bibliocide" was only partly appropriate, but it was apparent how concerned she was about the future of printed books. Here are some of her slides.

The Encyclopdia Britannica is no longer available in print but on the Internet. Unlike the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, you have to subscribe. Some people only trust the EB and are suspicious of Wikipedia.

As an IM (informal contributor) to the German version of Wikipedia, I would like to emphasize the ongoing topicality of its information and its completeness through swarm knowledge. At the same time, I stress that some of my Wikipedia colleagues are in a frenzy about making corrections. On the other hand, the style and grammar of WP articles often need improvement.

That there is a 14-volume Fairy Tale Encyclopedia was new to me.

This is not a work of art, but are unsold copies of the "best-selling" The Fifth Shade of Gray arranged in some fancy way in a bookshop in the UK. Books may seem to be selling less and less, but in the States, every guest on Stephen Colbert's Late Show, whether actor, sportsman, or politician, presents his/her newest book.

"Intellectual" Boris in front of a half-empty bookshelf in 10 Downing Street? On the top left is the book Sabine described as the dystopia of book ownership: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury from 1955. Red Baron still remembers the movie in which government agents hunt down books with flamethrowers.

The Church and governments have always tried to eliminate unpleasant views by burning books. Luther's writings were burned; in 1817, students consigned reactionary books to the fire at Wartburg Castle, and the book burning by the Nazis in 1933 was the high point so far.

There were attempts to burn books not only in Berlin but also in Freiburg.

The Documentation Center in Munich displays some of the books' titles consigned to the fire during the 3rd Reich in its vestibule.

Red Baron loves books, but he also suffers from the accumulated crowd.

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Here is the main shelf in my study, which contains physics books, history books, books on languages, and literature.

In my study, there is also a cupboard with special editions such as the works and the complete scientific edition of Christoph Lichtenberg, my Hans Küng collection, Karlheinz Deschner's complete Criminal History of Christianity, Annegarn's World History of 1899, Gottfried Keller's works, Theodor Fontane's works, Jean Paul's works, a three-volume Meyers Lexicon from 1931 to 1934 with an addendum on the Nazi seizure of power in volume 3, and art volumes.

My bedroom has a shelf with a lot of literature about Freiburg and DVDs ...

... and a second one with travel literature and comics. Since starting my job at CERN, I've collected a complete French edition of all the Asterix comics and many secondary literature on the subject.  Queezed in a corner is a charger with multiple outlets for my various iDevices.

In the living room, I keep the German classics that Elisabeth once inherited from her aunt Kathi. Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Lessing Kleist, and even Shakespeare were once a must in every German bourgeois household. A French literary history and many unique individual books are on the lower shelves.

Where do I take my books?

When I moved from Geneva to Freiburg in 2001, I offered most of my math and physics books to the university library. I had kept them in Geneva for 32 years, as German textbooks are not in demand in a French-speaking environment. The university library showed interest and asked me to bring the books over. That was too much because they were in two small boxes. Eventually, they sent a van.

Four years ago, I offered my Freiburg books to the city archive posthumous. Yes, they already had an extensive collection and would like well-preserved individual copies. I assume that interest has since died out completely.

Sabine's last slide is giving me a headache: Do books have their fates?

In the Middle Ages, every handwritten book was a treasure, and even after the invention of printing, books were initially expensive. During the Thirty Years' War, entire libraries were plundered and taken away, from Heidelberg to Rome, from Prague to Upsala.

Today, many publications are not worth the paper they were printed on.

In the discussion, many people anecdotally talked about their own experiences with too many books but had no solutions for their own floods.

Red Baron also has no solution for where to take his many books. He has started reading e-books and sees the advantages, not only in saving paper, but that's another story.

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Democracy and International Organizations

This was the last Saturday lecture in the Studium Generale on democracy in all its facets: Democracy - Foundations and Challenges.

It was a refreshing end to the series, as Professor Paulina Starski gave her talk in a charming, spirited, and convincing manner.

Abraham Lincoln gave the best definition of democracy. My American friends will rejoice.

The normative bases of democracy are constitutional law and international law. The right to democracy is in Article 21 of our Grundgesetz (Basic Law), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But Paulina wanted to present the structure of democracy in a legally clean way. She showed the audience that in a democracy, there are structural principles such as the federal state, republic, democracy, and the rule of law. 

State objectives such as the welfare state, care for the environment, and animal welfare are distinguished from these structural principles.

Furthermore, in a democracy, there are objects of legitimacy, such as state authority, and subjects of legitimacy, such as the people.

Red Baron learned that the Peace of Westphalia concluded in Münster and Osnabrück is regarded as the birth of international law. Read more.

States, peoples, and individual groups, such as Non-Governmental Organizations and International Organizations (IOs), are important subjects of international law.

International Organizations deal with cross-border problems. Thus, some competences of individual states are assigned to IOs. When states cede sovereign rights to IOs, these bodies will have a de facto and legal impact on domestic issues.

Article 23 (1) of the German GG (Basic Law) stipulates that the federal government can transfer sovereign rights to IOs by law with the approval of the Bundesrat (German Senate).

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Here is an overview of the individual organizations of the United Nations.

Prof. Starski spent the rest of her presentation on the relationship between individual states and the European Union (EU). The institutions are listed as:

European Parliament

European Council is a collegiate body that defines the overall political direction and priorities of the European Union.

Council of the European Union, also known as the Council of Ministers, is the second legislative body. Together with the European Parliament, it amends and approves or vetoes the proposals of the European Commission.

European Commission

European Court of Justice

European Central Bank

European Court of Auditors.

The institutional structure of the EU is complex.

On the democratic legitimacy of the EU, Paulina showed a couple of densely labeled slides that were difficult to read and digest during the presentation. I reproduce two of them here.

Prof. Starski concluded that the European Parliament has only limited democratic legitimacy.

Paulina transferred Willy Brandt's famous call on her last slide: We should "dare more democracy" in the context of International Organizations.

I want to answer Paulina's call with a quote about democracy in the United Kingdom that I have never forgotten since my school days: "Our government system isn't one hundred percent democratic, but it works." My English teacher attributed the quote to Winston Churchill.

Churchill's statement, "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time," is better known and documented.

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Science, Society, and Politics

This was the last seminar in the series Which Truths Can We Build Upon? Physics and Theology in Discourse, and it was held entirely in English. In the final discussion, it turned out that language was an issue. I'll come back to it later.

The seminar's organizer, Prof. Buchleitner, gives some ultimate instructions
to students Jayadevan and Sakhibov.
This scene reminds me of the recent European Football Championship
 when a coach talks to players before they enter the field. 

On previous occasions, up to five students had organized a seminar, but in this case, only two dealt with the topics of science, society, and politics.

Their second slide, which showed two of my favorite physicists, Sabine Hassenfelder and Neil deGrasse Tyson, already left me wanting more.

In my home country, everything has to be orderly and defined, so the students showed us two formulations of science.

Immanuel Kant wrote: "Every doctrine if it is to be a system, i.e., a whole of knowledge organized according to principles, is called science.

The Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht) defined science as everything that, in terms of content and form, is regarded as a serious attempt to ascertain truth.

The subtitle of this seminar was Critique of Scientism. Here is a definition:

The students presented even more subdivisions of scientism but concluded that scientific methods are not the only reliable avenues for obtaining knowledge.

As far as society is concerned, it sometimes has problems with science:

To contradict such a statement opens a new can of worms and goes beyond the scope of this blog.

In the States, some Evangelical parents keep their children out of certain science classes, afraid that scientific education will lead them to doubt and ultimately reject their faith.

On the other hand, Neil deGrass Tyson has a strong opinion on science education. But what really shocked me was when Karthik showed the following headline:

Will there no longer be contributions to physics from outstanding scientists from India? Who hasn't heard of Raman scattering and the Bose-Einstein statistics?

In the seminar discussion, somebody raised the question of whether there is ethics in science. I stood up and declared categorically: Physics has no moral, but physicists should have one!  

Remember Heisenberg's visit to Copenhagen, where he tried to convince Niels Bohr to talk to the Allies not to build the bomb. The meeting ended in a complete misunderstanding. 

In the movie Oppenheimer, the pricks of conscience of the builders of the bomb are apparent.

The discussion on ethics in science reminded me of a statement by Richelieu on the morality of states.

After the energetic intervention of Catholic France on the side of the Protestants in 1635 during the Thirty Years' War, the cardinal was reminded of the Christian virtues of forgiveness and charity. Richelieu responded with the following astonishing argument: "The interests of a state and religion are entirely different. The state must pursue Christian goals, but it is a political collective without an immortal soul and can advocate things not permitted to an individual Christian. The salvation of man, on the other hand, is finally realized in the hereafter, so it is not surprising that God wants the individual to leave vengeance to Him ... But the states have no continuance after this world; their salvation is now or not at all, i.e., The Bourbon king fights Habsburg emperor.

Here is another statement by Neil deGrasse Tyson:

I do not share Neil's opinion since this seminar posed the question that physicists can't answer, but theologians do. My Catholic school catechism from the elementary school in Hövelhof had the answer to, "What are we on earth for?" To love God, to serve him, and thereby go to heaven.

Astrophysicist deGrasse Tyson is an atheist. So the following statement is in line with his "belief" and research: I want [upon death] to be buried, just like in the old days, where I decompose by the action of microorganisms, and I am dined upon by any form of creeping animal or root system that sees fit to do so.… I will have recycled at least some of the energy that I have taken from it back to the universe.

Many foreign students study at German universities; their lingua franca is English. Holding this course in both languages was only partly successful. In the general discussion about the seminar, English-speaking students complained about the sometimes complicated German contexts. Nobody likes to reveal information beforehand, but I proposed that the slides to be presented be available on the university's ILIAS platform for study before the lecture.

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