Dirndl-Gate

Rainer Brüderle pointing at Katja Suding
not wearing a Dirndl (©dpa)

Remember my blog about the color code for political parties in Germany? Presently the yellow Free Democrats (Liberals), or rather their top candidate for the next federal election in the fall, Rainer Brüdele, are enduring a hostile press campaign and a shitstorm on Twitter. All this ado is about a sexist remark Rainer had made in a hotel bar one year ago to STERN journalist Laura Himmelreich. Pointing at her décolleté he said, "Sie könnten ein Dirndl auch ausfüllen (You too could fill a dirndl)."

Publishing the episode one year later, is this just crude electoral manipulation? It could be deadly for the Liberals scraping the five-percent hurdle, i.e., the number of votes necessary to sit in the next Bundestag (Germany's parliament or congress). Or is the publication nothing else than reporting about everyday Sexism?

In vain Hamburg's leading Free Democrat Katja Suding tried to play down Rainer's faux pas, "Überall, wo Menschen aufeinandertreffen, wird nun einmal auch geflirtet (Wherever people meet there will be philandering)." 

The press, however, knows: Sex sells. Sexism sells even better, in particular in connection with dirty old men.

Do we not have other worries in Germany? As my Norwegian boss frequently said, "I shake my head."

Rainer Brüderle (67) and Laura Himmelreich (29) (©dpa)

Yesterday, on January 30, Rainer Brüderle invited journalists to his routine meet-the-press breakfast. On that occasion, Laura and Rainer saw each other for the first time after one year of abstinence. Contrary to the few attendees usually listening to Rainer's bland political statements, the interest was huge this time, and many journalists fought for Schrippen and coffee.

Everybody was waiting for a statement about the dirndl-gate, but Rainer instead talked about German debts and his party's coalition with Merkel's Christian Democrats. In the end, he stated, "Sexism is a current debate with political relevance. That there are debates in a democracy is an objective legitimate phenomenon." To me, this sounds like phrase-mongering or pompous logorrhea.

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Drawn by the Hair*

German girls have been allowed
to fight since 2001 (©dpa)

We just learned in the press that women will be integrated into the US Armed Forces with all rights and duties. 

Three notions come to mind when thinking about American soldiers: Marines, leatherneck, and crew cut. So I wondered how the American girls would hide their superb head of hair below a mundane steel helmet?

Hair was an issue even with the boys in 1970 in the newly formed German army. The long-haired citizens in uniform regarded the old practice of putting the steel helmet on with a barber cutting off the protruding hair as incompatible with their habeas corpus. 

Our then Defense Minister Helmut Schmidt issued the now famous hair net decree (Haarnetz-Erlass) in February 1971 demanding that hair and beard be neat and that the former had to be controlled should its length hamper the tasks of the soldier by wearing a hair net. Our Federal Army (Bundeswehr) acquired 740,000 hair nets at that time. Soon the size of the hair of the drafted men was no longer an issue, so I wonder what the Bundeswehr did with all those unused hair nets.

How will the US Armed Forces deal with the hair of their female soldiers? In the photo, admire a ponytail hairstyle looking out from under a NATO steel helmet. How does the American Army helmet compare?

*Drawn by the hair is the translation of the German idiom an den Haaren herbeigezogen meaning far-fetched, but using this correct English title for the blog lockt keinen Hund hinter dem warmen Ofen hervor (does not attract a dog reposing behind a warm stove).

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Weckle or Schrippe?

Initially, I did not want to bore you with another querelle d'Allemand. Still, when even the New York Times reported a sarcastic remark of one of our deputy speakers of parliament (Bundestagsvizepräsident), Wolfgang Thierse, the German press and I became excited.

Wolfgang Thierse (right) with Freiburg's MP Gernot Erler
on a visit in front of the Neues Rathaus in August 2002

Up until now, I have admired Wolfgang, who, in 1989, lived in East Berlin and was one of the architects of the Wende in the GDR, leading to Germany's reunification. He still dwells on Käthe-Kollwitz-Platz at Prenzlauer Berg, one of the Berlin quarters that are "in." This led to gentrification since about 90% of the people moved there after the Wende and dislodged the original population. Wolfgang pointed his finger at newcomers from Swabia, "In Berlin, I want to buy Schrippen and no Weckle."

Brötchen (©Wikipedia)

In High German, a roll or a bun is called Brötchen, meaning small bread,   as in French petit pain. This word is supposed to be understood in all parts of the country. Nevertheless, Elisabeth still likes to tell the story of when we lived as a young couple in Munich, and she went to a local bakery to buy a few Brötchen. The lady behind the counter taught her, "Brötchen hoamer net, wir hoam nur Semmeln (We have no Brötchen, we only have Semmeln)." You may have guessed by now that Brötchen is called Schrippe in Berlin, Weckle in Baden-Württemberg, and Semmel in Bavaria.

However, there are more regional names. You buy Rundstücke in Hamburg, Wecke in Hessia, Brüdche in Cologne, and Brötli in Switzerland. In addition, there are lots of variations carrying unique names, which I like in particular:

Röggelchen is made partly from rye flour. Served in Cologne
with a chunk of medium-aged Dutch cheese, such as Halve Hahn.

Doppel-Bürli, with its dark crust, is baked in Switzerland
and best with butter and a slice of Gruyère cheese (©Wikipedia)

Schusterjunge (cobbler's apprentice) in Berlin. A roll made from rye.
Simply delicious when spread with crackling fat (©Wikipedia).

But enough of rolls and buns, as the story that by now should be over shows signs of a civil war. The slogan from November 1989 - perverted already in November 2009 against West German domination of the East - suddenly rears its head again on a poster:

We are one people; you are another (©dpa)

The highlight of the Schrippe-Weckle quarrel so far was that the head of Käthe Kollwitz's sculpture was decorated with Spätzle, i.e., the pasta from Swabia. The police downplayed the affair, saying it was not criminal property damage because the next rain would easily wash off the pasta.

Käthe Kollwitz sculpture on Käthe-Kollwitz-Platz (©dpa)

For this carnival season, the Swabians bestowed the golden fool's Bell upon Wolfgang Thierse. He, the first non-Swabian to be honored, regarded the honor as a Prussian-Swabian reconciliation, commenting," Differences make Germany richer."

Wolfgang Thierse with the Golden Fool's Bell (©Der Spiegel)

On February 1, separatists announced the creation of a Swabian enclave on Prenzlauer Berg called Schwabylon, from which they would ban Thierse into exile.

A Swabian enclave on Prenzlauer Berg

Nota bene: We, the people of Baden, are not concerned. In Freiburg, the homemade pasta is called Knöpfle.

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All Contend for Gold,

and all depend on gold (Nach Golde drängt, am Golde hängt doch alles. Goethe's Faust I, verses 2802-4).

A couple of weeks ago, the German Federal Court of Auditors (Bundesrechnungshof) complained about the sloppiness with which the German Federal Bank checks the gold reserves it has bunkered in London, Paris, and (not Rome) New York. 

And continuing with the Voice*: It would be much nicer if they came home to Frankfort, where the Bundesbank only keeps 82857 bullions or 31 percent of Germany's reserve. 

*Frank Sinatra, who liked to go traveling to London, Paris, and Rome but found it so much nicer to come home

The reason that most of Germany's gold is not in Frankfurt is due to the Cold War. At the end of the last war, Germany had no gold, but the Bundesbank started to change some of their US dollars, British pounds, and French francs into gold but kept it in those countries out of fear of a Russian invasion. 

Foreign storage was also one out of convenience for in times of exchange rate fluctuations of those currencies mentioned above, German gold in London, Paris, and New York could be used as a fast buffer for stabilizing the exchange rate of the Deutsche Mark. 

Since 2001 France and Germany have shared the euro, so the 29775 ingots kept in the Banque de France will be brought home wholly. With the British pound still being a global player, the amount of gold in the Bank of England remains. This is, in fact, nothing compared to the 122597 bullions Germany presently keeps in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York 24 m below street level in Lower Manhattan. That 21795 ingots of this gold will be repatriated has spread rumors that Germany does not trust the Fed anymore and, even worse, as a conspiracy theory stated: What Do German Central Bankers Know That We Don't?

Well, was it not Republican Ron Paul mistrusting the Fed in the first place asking that holes be drilled in the Fed's ingots to check if they are solid gold? In Germany, Rolf Baron von Hohenau articulated the German angst saying, "We need to know if it's real gold or is it something covered with gold." Let's face it, it is not easy to fake a bullion. The density of pure gold (19.32 g/cm³) is high, so diluting it with copper (density 8.96 g/cm³) will not do the trick. You could however use gold-coated tungsten (density 19.25 g/cm³) and possibly get away with it.

The problem is that tungsten is a precious metal for industry and is relatively expensive (45 U$/kg). So why not take depleted uranium (density 18,95 g/cm³) that is in abundance, slightly cheaper (42 U$/kg), and sell the gold-plated uranium ingots as gold. Thus we transform all the DU floating around that nobody wants, but everybody wants to get rid of. If you have ever tried to drill a hole in DU, you will know that Ron Paul's suggestion will work in this case. However, there are more advanced methods to check gold ingots.

A German official testing gold ingots with ultrasound

At the end of the transaction, just 50% of Germany's gold reserve will be stored in Frankfort, idolized by many, neither growing nor diminishing except for about 5 tons annually that our Finance Minister buys to mint coins for collectors. In transforming gold into coins, Mr. Schäuble is double-gaining for not only the seignorage* but the profit of the Bundesbank will also flow back into the federal budget.
*the difference between the price of the metal and the coin's nominal value. One can overdo it by minting a few grams of platinum into a coin giving it a nominal value of one trillion US dollars.

In the meantime, the public full of German angst, demanded, "Bring all our ingots home!"

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50 Years Already

50 years ago in Reims

French and Germans are supposed to be the best of friends. In fact, this year, we shall celebrate the 50th anniversary of the re-conciliating Elysée-Treaty signed by President Charles De Gaulle and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

The two postal services issued a stamp showing the same motif as a visible sign. Nevertheless, you may notice two differences. The French stamp is slightly bigger and amounts to 80 cents; the foreign postage for a letter in Germany is 5 cents cheaper. The blue color of the French flag is lighter than on the German stamp. This reminds me of a flag dispute in Germany: Which blue color is correct, and why did the two postal services not talk to each other beforehand about such an "important" detail?

So let us instead look into the question of how Germans appreciate the French and vice versa: A survey by the German Embassy in Paris revealed that although the animosity generated during two world wars had gone, the stereotypes of the hard-working German and life-loving French had survived well into the 21st century.

Choucroute royale au vin blanc. The dish can still be improved in
changing the wine to champagne.

When asked for the first thing they thought of when considering Germany, 29 percent of the French people quizzed said Chancellor Angela "Merkel," followed by 23 percent who said "Beer." Following them were "Car" and "Strict" with 18 percent each. Then came the classics "Sausage" and "Sauerkraut," which each attracted 12 percent of first associations. Here I should add that the best Sauerkraut ever you will find in the French Alsace is called choucroute royale.

The Germans had a far more romantic image of France, with 56 percent associating it primarily with the word "Paris" (that should be the same or even higher with the Americans), 37 percent coming up with "Eiffel Tower," 32 percent going for "Wine" and a further 27 percent plumping for "Baguette."

What the survey revealed and what instead counts is that 85 percent of the French and 87 percent of the Germans like each other.

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St. Martin on the Gate

Another querelle d'Allemand is cooking up this time in Freiburg. Controversy about a picture at St. Martin's gate (Martinstor) looms on the horizon.

Again a tiny historical review is necessary to appreciate what is at stake. The Porta Sancti Martini is Freiburg's oldest and most picturesque gate. It was first mentioned in 1238 in a document, although the building is much older. 

The postcard shows the gate in 1905, where on the inner side, in 1851, Wilhelm Dürr the older painted the famous scene with the Roman soldier Martin cutting his cloak and handing one half to a naked beggar.

The above photo I shot in 2004. Two changes are clearly visible: the Restaurant Zum Martinsthor became a McDonald's fast food, and Dürr's painting on the gate disappeared. It had become necessary to take it off in 1968 when pieces of the degraded picture started to fall onto pedestrians. The face was plastered white and had been without decoration since then.

Simon Göser's St. Martin (©BZ)

From last Friday's Badische Zeitung, we citizens learned that a new painting shall decorate the Martinstor since Simon Göser's original oeuvre, painted around 1790, is permanently stored at Freiburg's central art depot. 

Red Baron dislikes Martin's rose-colored cloak and would prefer a more modern approach to the main message, "For I was naked, and ye clothed me" (Matthew 25,36). 

Are we already fixed when Freiburg's finance minister - although he will not contribute one cent to an operation that should be privately sponsored - stated, "Either Göser's painting or a white surface?"

Will modern painters get a chance? It will be interesting to see how they will attack the old story fulfilling at the same time the condition of Freiburg's head of Cityscape, "Any child looking at the picture will recognize, "This is St. Martin and the beggar."

©BZ

The BZ already published a photo on the Internet where Göser's painting is virtually mounted at the gate.

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Another German Flag Dispute

No, I am not referring to the flag dispute in the Weimar Republic, where right-wingers regarded Black-White-Red as the Reich's legitimate flag and insulted the Republic's colors as Black-Red-Mustard, referring to the dark yellow instead of a golden shade.


I will inform you about the latest flag dispute, one of those typical querelles d'Allemand. A publisher in Karlsruhe started it, stating that Germany's correct colors are defined in our Basic Law (Grundgesetz) Article 22 as Black-Red-Gold. However, these are not the RAL colors Jet black-Traffic red-Mellon yellow (RAL 9005, 3020, and 1028) the Federal Government fixed as corporate design in 1999. Hence, the publisher sent a letter to our Federal President complaining and demanding that our constitution be followed.

Let us go back in history. According to most historians, the German colors date from the liberation wars against Napoleon's occupation, wherein their beginning, the Freichor Lützower Jäger, did not wear uniform uniforms. The easiest way to achieve uniformity was to dye all clothes black. But soldiers like decorations, so they added red-colored sleeves and collars to their black outfits. The buttons of their uniforms were made from brass, looking golden. When starting their studies after the Napoleonic Wars, the guys being poor continued wearing their uniforms. Naturally, the colors of their first fraternities (Urburschenschaften) became Black-Red-Gold.

On a German stamp, people are on their way to the Hambach castle in 1832.
Behind the German colors flies the Polish flag.
Many Germans supported the Polish fight against their Russian occupants at that time.

This is why, following the Restoration, Johann Philipp Abresch, for the first time, carried a flag with the colors Black-Red-Gold - highly symbolically woven by virgins - in front of those people demonstrating for freedom from princely bondage at the Hambach castle in 1832. The original flag is now displayed at the Hambacher Schloss as a national shrine. The disputed band is interweaved with golden threads in that flag, whereas the red field carries the embroidered inscription Deutschlands Wiedergeburt (Germany's Rebirth). Few participants were still alive when, 39 years later, the 2nd Reich was born. Bismarck's Reich showed the colors Black-White-Red, corresponding to a rather undemocratic rule.

The famous French historian Jules Michelet explained the origin of the German colors differently when he wrote on the occasion of the commemorative ceremony for the victims of the 1848 revolution in Paris's Madeleine Cathedral: Au bas, une chose retenait mes regards, tous les drapeaux des nations ... Jamais je n'avais vu le grand drapeau du Saint-Empire, de ma chère Allemagne noir, rouge et l'or, le sait drapeau de Luther, Kant, Fichte, Schelling et Beethoven. Je fus attendri et ravi ...

Well, except for Fichte, Luther could not have cared less about the colors of the old Reich, and it is doubtful that Kant, Schelling, and Beethoven were even aware of them.

Invitation and direction for patriotic Freiburgers
to make their flags

This latest flag dispute would not have caught my attention except that a personal flag dispute started a few weeks ago. A reader of my web pages about Freiburg's history criticized that I had written Abresch's flag codified the German colors. I did not make such a statement explicitly, but you may like to read it between my lines. Well, the guy is correct concerning the order of the colors: In 1848, the revolutionaries hoisted the colors of freedom, and they often chose an order different from the one on Abresch's flag.

The flag carried by the freedom fighters at Freiburg's Predigertor (Gate of the Dominicans) on April 24, 1848, had neither been made Black-Red-Gold as mentioned in the text of a direction issued in Freiburg one month earlier nor in the inverse sequence Gold-Red-Black as recommended according to the sketch given in the instruction. The flag displayed shows Red-Gold-Black.

Fighting at the Predigertor in April 1848

Look at the flag carried by Hecker's men during their battle against government forces at Kandern on April 20, 1848, which is Black-Gold-Red.

Death of General Gagern (in the back) at the Kandern skirmish

The 48ers fought for a right cause but frequently under a false flag.

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iPad 3 and iPad mini

In two previous blogs, I dealt with the iPad. After more than two years of experience, this tablet fulfills all my mobile computing needs, particularly when bluetoothed to the Logitech keyboard. The keyboard is a perfect cover for the iPad 3 screen when not in use. However, reading e-books in bed on the iPad3 becomes "heavy" with time. So why not get an iPad mini?

I received my pre-ordered iPad mini on December 7 and started loving it immediately. During its initial setup, I simply copied the content of my iPad3 to the iPad mini but immediately became more selective to applications. I keep on the mini only those programs I am likely to use. It is convenient to have two machines that are programmed alike but fulfill different purposes. The iPad 3 is the tablet I now use at home as my "notebook," whereas the iPad mini is the ideal travel companion and e-book reader. Hence, I shall choose a WiFi-only model if I ever change my iPad 3 to a newer edition.

As far as the arrangement of apps on my iPad home screens is concerned, they both look the same. However, compared to the display shown in my previous blog, there are some changes:

For managing my appointments, tasks, and contacts, I still adore the eventually matured Pocket Informant. I now use iOS calendars that perfectly synchronize in iCloud with all my devices (Desktop PC, iPad3, iPad mini, and iPhone5). Cloud services make all the difference in modern computing. There are no longer any "lost" appointments or double entries for tasks.

Contacts in Pocket Informant are also kept in an iOS database except for group e-mails. Apple still needs to provide a decent possibility to build groups from single e-mail addresses. A third-party application is available in the Apple Store, but setting up groups with more than ten people is a lengthy operation and bound to crash, preferably when I had just entered 90% of the names. So I still manage my e-mail distribution groups in MS Outlook on my desktop.

The many third-party apps for managing tasks in the Apple store without proper synchronization are not worth downloading. Apple offers its frugal Reminder application, so lately, I have used the task database of my favorite Pocket Informant that I keep synchronized between my iOS devices using Toodledo. Luckily things have moved. Two months ago, Pocket Informant incorporated iOS Reminder into their platform in a significant update. Tasks are now accessible and editable in PI and synchronized in the cloud. The only thing still needing to be added, and I like to see, is the fusion of iOS Notes with the notes in Pocket Informant.

Mail is the following icon in the first row of applications with, as mentioned above, the restriction of offering no group mail.

The next icon on the screen, marked Launch, hides an iPhone-only application that runs on the iPad too. A panel opens with nine programmable fields you may assign to apps and actions when you tap on it. Instead of moving to and struggling through menus and other pages to launch less frequently used apps, using Launch the following apps are just two clicks away: YouTube, my Wikipedia watch list, Google Maps, Toggle brightness, the Kindle book reader, Quickoffice that can handle MS Office files, Wikipanion (switching quickly between the German, English and French versions of Wikipedia), the iBooks reader, and PCalc, an RPN-calculator. It seems that Launch is one of those applications Apple dislikes, for the authors of the app so far hesitated to launch a dedicated iPad version.

Nothing is to be added about Apple's Safari browser. Facebook still allows me to follow my son's travel.

The first application in the second row remains Flipboard, that gorgeous newsreader. With Flipboard, I follow the most important national and international news. However, I replaced the Pulp reader with the somewhat faster Newsflash app for further reading. The next icon launches PhatNotes, the most cherished carryover from my Windows Mobile days. The database contains all my personal information and passwords. Of all those browsers available in the Apple Store, I eventually retained Google's Chrome as fast and stable if Safari is compromised.

I still jot down my ideas with the simple text processor Nebulous (they changed their icon), synchronizing the texts into Dropbox and retrieving them with TextPad on my desktop. The additional row of freely programmable keys in Nebulous stays on the screen when the Logitech keyboard is connected via Bluetooth, but I changed the disposition of these keys slightly.

The fourth row starts with my now favorite weather application. Meteogram is a graphical presentation of temperature, rainfall, etc., detailed for the next two days and spanning the coming week. The following icon marked Wetter, contains my collection of nearly all of these weather applications I accumulated when I used to look up the best weather forecast available. 

In Utilities, I keep stored useful apps, some of which I described previously. Both my iPads are delivered with a camera I never use. Don't people simply look ridiculous taking photos with the iPad? Should the need for a camera shot with my iPads arise one day, the Camera+ app features more possibilities than the native one. Notizen is what is called in English Notes.

In the last row, the SPORT1 app and the DB Navigator are known to those who have read my earlier iPad blog. New are ReaddleDocs and an alarm clock (Wecker), the latter chosen among a dozen others. ReaddleDocs is remarkable for it allows me to view all my files stored in my clouds in a single application. 

Besides the old and faithful workhorse Dropbox, I am hooked to Google Drive and Microsoft Sky Drive services. I am still deciding the possible use and usefulness of these various cloud services hoping that ReaddleDocs will eventually help spark my ideas on this matter.

On the apps bar at the bottom, there is one newcomer: Bluetooth on/off again is one of those applications Apple does not like. Without getting astray in the submenus of iPad Settings, just hitting the button will toggle Bluetooth on and off, connecting or disconnecting my Logitech keyboard instantaneously.

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