What a Waste

That politicians manipulate their voters is a platitude. They stretch the truth to be re-elected, although they do not tell straight lies. I still remember the slogan of a German minister of social affairs: Die Rente ist sicher (The old-age pension [run by the government] is sure). Well, that is basically true, but now it turns out that future old-age benefits will be so low that many people will drift into Altersarmut (old-age poverty) following retirement.

In previous blogs, Red Baron has dealt with another critical political topic: The disposal of radioactive waste that politicians like to cover with a smoke screen. Recently, two small notes in the Badische Zeitung (BZ) reminded me of the storage problem that is still unsolved. However, our elected representatives boast that The permanent disposal of radioactive waste must not be left to future generations. In the following discussion, it is fair to distinguish between low to medium-level and high-level radioactive material.

So far, I have thought that the former class of radioactive waste had found its future home in an old salt mine named Konrad in Lower Saxony. Now Baden-Württemberg's environmental minister of the Green Party warns that the capacity of 300,000 cubic meters of the mine in northern Germany may not be sufficient to store all containers with low to medium level radioactivity. At the former Nuclear Research Center Karlsruhe alone, 13,000 containers wait for their final home. There are many more stored in so-called Zwischenlager at nuclear power reactor sites. These interim storage facilities are authorized for 40 years. Nevertheless, a court in the state of Schleswig-Holstein recently declared radioactive storage at the former reactor site of Brunsbüttel illegal due to deficiencies in the protection against terrorist attacks. Indeed, security measures are not better than those of other Zwischenlager.

Radioactive storage will soon become dramatic with the outphasing of eight of Germany's power reactors. The other bad news is the significant delay in the fit-out of Mine Konrad, which was supposed to start operation this year. Optimists speak of a delay of five years, while pessimists aim at a distant 2021. Is it progress that a state minister has put his finger on this open sore? Red Baron is sure that the smoke screen will soon come down again.

The second note in the BZ concerned our Swiss neighbors and the storage of high-level radioactive waste. In the late 1990ies, Red Baron observed the research efforts of some Swiss physics colleagues in a lab below the Jura mountains. They were trying to confirm that the geological formation of opalinus clay presents a safe enclosure for storing high-level radioactive waste over extremely long periods. Here, I gave my opinion about the "safe" storage of waste containing deadly Plutonium.

Since then, a special task force has started searching for disposal sites in Switzerland. Now, I read that the search for a final storage site will not be finished in 2020 but will be delayed until 2027. Such a delay is politically highly welcome, with many possible sites located in the High Rhine Valley close to the border with Germany. Presently a couple of minor issues mar German-Swiss relations as the fly-over noise of planes from Zürich Airport and the bank secret concerning untaxed German money in Switzerland. Apparently, politicians consider those issues more manageable than a proposal for a storage site for highly radioactive material close to the German border.

A presentation of possible storage sites for high-level radioactive waste in Switzerland
close to the German border (©Badische Zeitung in 2010)

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. Indeed, Red Baron will no longer be concerned.

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Dr. Faustus

Markus Gabriel's New Realism philosophy has a feature that he describes in his TED talk on YouTube: The concept of an existing World gets rid of the infinity of things and facts. The fear of infinity makes us reason in many worldviews, whether scientific (catchword: world formula) or religious (catchword: death is not the end), etc. 

In particular, because there is no overall structure, the idea must be corrected that everything is connected and interacting. However, some things are connected, such that man/woman introduces worldviews to simplify things. None of these worldviews work; they simply express our fear of infinity. As mentioned before, we are alone, but as free autonomous human beings, we have the privilege of exploring infinite possibilities.

Following Gabriel's argument that the World does not exist, he elaborated on the meaning of life in an interview: Life's purpose is not all-embracing. It develops out of the attitude of each individual who happens to be part of a community. Men (Women) do not live and work alone, so, commonly, people abandon their freedom and their egos in the interest of groups, communities, or religions. 

Such an attitude that, Gabriel calls personal nihilism, will frequently lead to crises in life or faith. Typical examples are firm believers developing doubts and atheists catching themselves, thinking there may be something behind their existence.

In all these arguments, I recognize Goethe's Faust, who states at the summit of his personal crisis:

Habe nun, ach! Philosophie, Juristerei und Medizin, Und leider auch Theologie Durchaus studiert, mit heißem Bemühn. Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor! Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;

I've studied now Philosophy And Jurisprudence, Medicine, And even, alas! Theology All through and through with ardor keen! Here now I stand, poor fool, and see I'm just as wise as I formerly was.

We see a desperate Faust who wants to break out and regain his autonomy, his infinite possibilities of exploring even for the prize of "pacting" with the devil. In fact, Mephistopheles gifts Faust all freedom of action. Getting Gretchen pregnant is only one of Faust's deadly sins. 

Therefore in the Christian tradition, the saga of the historical? Faust ends in a catastrophe in the nearby townlet of Staufen as we read on the wall of the restaurant and hotel Zum Löwen, "Anno 1539 ist im Leuen zu Staufen Doctor Faustus so ein wunderlicher Nigromanta gewesen, elendiglich gestorben und es geht die Sage der obersten Teufel einer, der Maphist stopilis den er in seinen Lebenszeiten nur seinen Schwager genannt, habe ihm, nachdem der Pact von 24 Jahren abgelaufen, das Genick abgebrochen und seine arme Seele der ewigen Verdammnis überantwortet (Anno 1539, in The Lion at Staufen Doctor Faustus who had been such a whimsical necromancer died miserably, and according to the legend one of the supreme devils Maphist stopilis - whom he called in his lifetimes only his brother-in-law, broke his neck after the pact of 24 years expired and surrendered his poor soul to eternal damnation)."

Breaking Dr. Faustus' neck. Wall painting on The Lion at Staufen

This end sharply contrasts the hero's destiny in Goethe's Faust. In part II of the drama, near the end, a choir of angels announces, "Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, Den können wir erlösen (Whoever strives with all his might, That man we can redeem)." 

Goethe's conclusion is comforting that a free autonomous human being using his (her) infinite possibilities to explore until his end is redeemed.

You will find this basic idea of "using your talents" in the New Testament in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30): 

For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one, he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey ... When the Lord came back from his trip, the two servants with the five and the two talents had gained on them. Then he, who had received the one talent, came and said, "Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours." But his Lord answered and said to him, "You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming, I would have received back my own with interest" ... And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

It is interesting to read that Jesus even accepts the help of bankers to gain with money transactions that - regarding current interest rates - is hardly possible these days.

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Why the World Does Not Exist

In 2013 Markus Gabriel, a young philosophy professor at the University of Bonn, wrote a book with the provocative title: Warum es die Welt nicht gibt (Why the World does not exist).

On June 23, 2011, Gabriel had lunch with his Italian colleague Maurizio Ferraris in Naples. When they had finished their ristretti, they had also finished or instead founded a new approach to philosophy. This so-called New Realism is an advancement of both metaphysics and constructivism. Somewhat simplified, Gabriel states: Whereas metaphysics claims that the World is different from how it appears to us, constructivism claims that we construct things in recognizing them. New Realism, however, claims that when we realize something by seeing, hearing, or sensing, there is really something.

Gabriel's reasoning starts with a standard definition of the World: The World is the totality of things and facts. Things have specific properties, but facts consist of concepts, and concepts are never fully settled. Gabriel then introduces Sinnfelder (fields of context) and formulates the first law of New Realism:

Existence is the recognition in an area of context (FOC).

According to Martin Heidegger, the World is - in Gabriel's language - the field of the context of all FOCs in which all other FOCs appear.

©Ullstein Verlag

We now assume for a moment that the World appears in a field of context S1 being one of many other FOCs S2, S3, etc. If the World is the FOC in which all other FOCs appear, then any other FOCs appear in S1 as subfields, for in S1, the World appears, and in the World, everything appears. This situation Gabriel illustrates in a few sketches: The World does not appear in the World or, for short: The World does not exist.

Another argument goes like this: A thing cannot exist isolated; it has to appear in a field of context. This field of context can only exist if it appears in another FOC, and again in another one. When we continue the argumentation, we shall never reach the last field of context, i.e., the World where everything appears. Ergo: The World does not exist.

We always look at things, i.e., items, notions, and concepts, under certain aspects, and place them into specific fields of context. A table can be regarded in the FOC of physics as an ordered ensemble of elementary particles. That is different from the FOC of furniture where a table could be placed, and that again is different from the community FOC, i.e., a table is a place where people eat, drink, and communicate. 

Gabriel continues: Some things are connected, but not all things are connected, again an argument that The World does not exist. Here shall I stop. For further explanations of New Realism, you must read Gabriel's book.

For Hamlet, To be or not to be, that is the question, but it was Heidegger who asked the question of all questions: Was ist Sein? (What is this: To Be?). Young Markus Gabriel asks offhand: Was soll das Ganze alles? (What is the purpose of all this?)

Whereas constructivist epistemology and metaphysics look for authenticity beyond the fields of context - we may know, or miss - Gabriel claims that there is nothing behind that settles things. Since an overall structure does not exist, we are not determined by it. That means that we are alone, but as free autonomous human beings, we have the privilege of infinite possibilities for exploring.

Comforting, isn't it? Watch Markus Gabriel on YouTube.

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Books

Red Baron loves books. Unfortunately, I have too little time (left) to read all that I once bought, still buy, and want to read. My love for books started with fairy tales. By the way, my blog about My Fairy Tales is the second most read of all my blogs so far.

The other day I read an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) about an early Frankfurt book fair. I knew that before the war, Leipzig and not Frankfurt was Germany's place for books, but with the German division, West Germany revived the Frankfurt Book Fair. Now my country has the luxury of two book fairs when paper books are increasingly replaced by electronic media.

Philipp Erasmus Reich (©Wikipedia)

How did it happen that in the 18th century, Leipzig took over from Frankfurt, becoming the home of Germany's book fair? 

The man behind the change was Philipp Erasmus Reich, the prince of Germany's booksellers. 250 years ago, on April 20, 1764, he packed all his books in Frankfurt and wrote a letter to the elector of Saxony, "Following the last Frankfurt fair, I and other colleagues bid farewell to the city and so to speak buried the book fair thereat."

In fact, Reich buried an agonizing fair for, in April 1764, only 34 publishers were present in Frankfurt, whereas, in May of the same year, 179 booksellers attended the Leipzig book fair. One reason for the change was that at the start of the 18th century, modern German science and literature had moved to and was at home in the area between Hamburg, Berlin, Breslau, Jena, Halle, and Göttingen. 

Another reason was the fight of publishers against pirate editions. In South-West Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, printers had begun systematically to reprint books from Saxony, Prussia, Hannover, and Hamburg. An existing imperial system of protection did not work anymore. Even the emperor in Vienna encouraged pirating books, so the imperial book inspector in Frankfurt was useless.

Some of Red Baron's books arranged on IKEA's Billy shelf units

With the lack of space, Red Baron started to buy e-books when available. Like many people, I miss the touch and feel of a paper book, but there are other advantages to reading e-books on an iPad: the possibilities of marking and noting text are remarkable.

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Georg Herwegh

Georg Herwegh (©Wikipedia)

Red Baron must apologize to Georg Herwegh, a German poet of liberty. A recent article in Die Zeit announcing the edition of Herwegh's complete works changed my attitude, which had been greatly influenced by Heinrich Heine satirizing Georg's flowery words in a poem Die Tendenz written in 1841:

Deutscher Sänger! sing und preise Deutsche Freiheit ... ... aber halte deine Dichtung Nur so allgemein als möglich.

German singer! Sing and praise German liberty ... ... but just keep your poetry as general as possible.

Emma Herwegh (©Wikipedia)

However, Georg Herwegh was more than just a flowery poet. German craftsmen and workers chose him as their - although an untalented - military leader in 1848 to guide them via Strasbourg into Baden to support Friedrich Hecker's uprising, his fighting for a republic. Needless to say that Herwegh's support operation was a failure, a military disaster. Georg and his beautiful wife Emma escaped and fled to Switzerland. In his exile, Herwegh kept the flag of freedom flying. In particular, he supported the underprivileged workers of his time, writing 1863 his famous socialist verses called Bundeslied:

Mann der Arbeit aufgewacht! Und erkenne Deine Macht! Alle Räder stehen still, Wenn Dein starker Arm es will.

Awake you working man And discover your potency! All wheels will standstill When your strong arm decides.

Referring to the many German territories with borders between them and ruled by princes and privileged groups with the help of undemocratic constitutions, the professor for constitutional law from Freiburg, Karl von Rotteck, had declared in 1832: Ich will die Einheit nicht Anders als mit Freiheit, und will lieber Freiheit ohne Einheit als Einheit ohne Freiheit (I want unity but not without liberty, and I prefer liberty without unity to unity without liberty).

Back in Baden - due to an amnesty in 1866 for political refugees of the 1848/49 uprisings - old Herwegh saw Bismarck forge the Second Reich in 1871 according to his declaration: Nicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden – das ist der große Fehler von 1848 und 1849 gewesen – sondern durch Eisen und Blut (No declaration or majority decisions will decide the big problems of our time - this was the big mistake in 1848 and 1849 - but iron and blood).

Following German unification as the result of the War of 1870/1871 against France Herwegh wrote in protest in January 1871 his Epilog zum Kriege:

Schwarz, weiß und rot! um ein Panier Vereinigt stehen Süd und Norden; Du bist im ruhmgekrönten Morden Das erste Land der Welt geworden: Germania, mir graut vor dir!

Black, White, and Red! Around one flag South and North now stand united. You became the first country in the world In murder wreathed with glory. Germania, you terrify me!

©Wikipedia

In writing these lines, did Herwegh augur the murderous wars of the coming century? At the beginning of World War One in August 1914, Friedrich August von Kaulbach painted a gruesome Germania. Some art experts say that her distraught looks reflect Germany's preparedness to fight the war; others, her patriotic martial inebriation. To me, Germania's eyes are just full of German angst.

Gandhi once said, "The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear."

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EU Coffee Makers

In keeping a close eye on their climate target figures on CO₂ emissions for 2020, the European Union (EU) has already banned all incandescent bulbs of more than 25 watts in Europe. In this respect, Red Baron is a model student. In 1995, I started changing all power hog light sources at home to fluorescent lamps, and I am presently converting these second-generation light sources to LEDs, thus making my CO₂ footprint even smaller.

As far as vacuum cleaners are concerned, the European Union decided that starting on September 1, 2014, machines with a power consumption of more than 1600 watts must no longer be sold in the EU. In 2017 the power of vacuum cleaners will be further reduced to 900 watts. Sorry, my present vacuum cleaner consumes 2200 watts, and it is unlikely that I shall replace it in my lifetime.

Photo ©dpa

This week the EU hit again! Today the Badische Zeitung (BZ) reported about a new Regulation for coffee makers. Starting on January 1, 2015, all machines sold in the EU must be equipped with an automatic shut-off of their warming plates. For non-insulated coffee pots, the time-lapse was fixed to less than forty minutes. 

I imagine such an attack on coffee makers in the US is unconstitutional, although Wally would notice such a time limitation with his ongoing coffee consumption. 

Non-obstat that I consider keeping a coffee warm an offense against good taste.

All cartoons on Wally and his coffee consumption are ©Scott Adams

Red Baron likes his coffee hot and freshly made. My machine produces the correct quantity needed for direct consumption without any after-warming. Currently, there is no regulation on that, but you are never sure about the EU.

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Datenvorratsspeicherung

One of those terrible German words meaning nothing else than data retention. With the NSA active worldwide, everybody knows what data retention means. However, here I am referring to the European Union.

In 2009 Brussels passed the EU Directive 2006/24/EC that obliged its 28 member states to introduce a data retention system. Many countries already have national laws concerning the storage of telephone and Internet data to prevent (organized) crimes and terrorism. Hence, the EU Directive was thought to harmonize national legislation given the retention duration and easy data exchange.

Germany was a particular case in so far as in 2010, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Court) declared our national law on data retention unconstitutional. The old Black-Yellow coalition was unable to consent to new legislation. So this became a task for the new Black-Red coalition following our general election in the fall of last year. 

While the CDU-Innenminister (secretary of interior) wanted to jump on the project immediately, the SPD-Justizminister (secretary of justice) put the brakes on it. He proposed to wait until the European Court of Justice had decided about the lawsuit of Irish civil rights activists and the Carinthian government (Austria) against Directive 2006/24/EC. The Court's verdict came on April 8, 2014: The present Directive violates basic civil rights and therefore is null and void.

Was our minister of justice right to postpone new German legislation on data retention?

No, says the minister of interior, for the Court decision does not concern existing national laws. Germany needs new legislation immediately, a law that must be wise, constitutional, and have a majority appeal.

Yes, the minister of justice answers, "We are not in a hurry. Now we know what our Federal and the European Court might accept such that we likely are to get our new national legislation to conform to their decisions."

Politics!

The new one billion Euro building complex of Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst
 (BND in Berlin., I call it Mini-NSA) (©dapd)

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The Greek from Toledo

Yesterday the Badische Zeitung (BZ) made Red Baron aware of another anniversary in 2014. One of my favorite painters El Greco (The Greek), was born 400 years ago on April 7.

Whenever you visit a picture gallery with old paintings, those of El Greco immediately stick out, fitting neither the Renaissance nor the Baroque styles of his epoch. The choice of colors (most important for El Greco), the form of his figures, and the composition of his pictures are far ahead of his time. Masters like Vicent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc, and August Macke took up El Greco's audacity in painting only 300 years later. Marc and Macke were killed in the First World War on the Western Front.

Laocoön in the Vatican Museums (©Wikipedia)

Everybody has at least seen pictures of Laocoön and his sons. An ensemble sculptured in marble - now in Rome in the Vatican Museums - shows the scene where the previously blinded priest Laocoön and his two sons are killed by sea serpents. This is how goddess Athena made him double pay his warnings concerning the wooden horse the Greeks had left behind when they lifted their siege of Troy. While Laocoön proposed to burn the horse, the Trojans took it within the city walls with all the consequences we know from the movie.

Suffering without measure.

At the end of the article, the BZ showed a copy of the picture of Laocoön and his sons painted by El Greco. The father fighting with a serpent knows that one of his sons lying at his side was already crushed to death. In agony, he turns his dead eyes toward his second son, who, in vain, fights the attack of another serpent. The unnatural flesh tones of the bodies and the threatening clouds put the observer into a depressive mood. 

What makes the situation so hopeless are those indifferent bystanders. They are looking at the scene with bored interest but make no move to help Laocöon and his sons against the attack of the serpents. In the back, you distinguish the city of Toledo, El Greco's home. Some experts interpret Laocoön's deadly fight as an allegory of the horrors of the Inquisition being highly active in Toledo at El Greco's time.

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Robert Wagner

Vonau's book describing Wagner's role in Alsace

Last Monday, Red Baron listened to a presentation by le professeur Jean-Laurent Vonau, historian de Strasbourg, about Robert Wagner. 

My American friends will immediately think of Natalie Wood's husband, but here I refer to the so-called bourreau d'Alsace (the Hangman of Alsace) of the same name. The lecturer informed the large audience that Wagner's original name was Robert Backfisch. 

Literarily translated, Backfisch means fried fish but is an archaic German label for a teenage girl. 

The origin of the word is unclear. Some attribute it to the Mediaeval Latin word baccalaureus for an unfinished student; others think it has to do with fishing and the English word back, i.e., the throwing back of fish into the water too small to be kept.

Whatever the final explanation, Backfisch is not a name for a man who wants to make his way in life, mainly when he is an unconditional Nazi follower and admirer of Adolf Hitler. At the age of twenty-six, Robert opted for his mother's name, Wagner.

There, he was in good company with his master, Adolf. Hitler's father, Alois, had been an "illegitimate" child born to Maria Anna Schicklgruber. Later, Maria Anne married Johann Georg Hiedler, who adopted young Alois at the age of five. However, when registering the boy, the government official transformed the name Hiedler into Hitler.

So, when Alois's second son was born in 1889, his name was Adolf Hitler, not Adolf Schicklgruber. Some historians claim that a guy named Adolf Schicklgruber would have never made it to become der Führer.

Back to Robert Wagner. During the First World War, he bravely fought on the Western Front and was highly decorated. Like many young soldiers, he was depressed by the war's outcome, particularly by the Treaty of Versailles, making Germany the one and only war culprit. He joined Hitler early, and on November 9, 1923, he took part in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch and convinced his colleagues at the Munich officer training school to join him. Therefore, he was condemned for high treason and imprisoned at the Landsberg fortress with his master. When the Nazi Party was again permitted in February 1925, Wagner, under his adored Führer's spell, rapidly climbed the party hierarchy being a Kämpfer der ersten Stunde (Combatant of the first hour).

Comrades awaiting their sentences in front of the Munich Justizpalast (courthouse).
The man on the right is Robert Wagner (©Bundesarchiv)

For the following, I shall limit Wagner's biography to a few facts - you may dislike reading from Wikipedia. In May 1933, he was Gauleiter in Baden and became Reichsstatthalter, i.e., the deputy of der Führer in southwest Germany. Wagner increased his power following France's defeat in 1940 and Alsace's incorporation into the Reich. He resided on both sides of the Rhine River, in Karlsruhe or Strasbourg.

Gauleiter Wagner's task was to Germanize and to nazificate the annexed Alsace. To this end, he recruited many of his Kreisleiters (district leaders) among Alsatian autonomists. These so-called nanciens (people from Nancy) had fought against French rule and had been prosecuted by the former government. At the beginning of the war, the French government, afraid of a fifth column, had evacuated "unsure" people from Alsace into southern France, sometimes under inhuman conditions. The Statthalter had most of them repatriated, receiving them with open arms. In some sort of exchange, Wagner now deported "incorrigible" French persons into the part of France under the Vichy government. Between July and September 1940, more than 23,000 disliked French people and Jews were forced to leave Alsace for Vichy-France, a zone unoccupied by the German Wehrmacht.

Once in full swing, Wagner became active in Baden in the fall of the same year. On October 21 through 23, all Jews, a total of 6504, from Baden and Palatinate were herded up and jammed into nine trains that took three days and four nights to reach Gurs, a former detention camp in Vichy-France. Located at the foot of the Pyrenean Mountains, the Camp de Gurs had served to intern Spanish refugees who had escaped into France during the Spanish Civil War. Proudly, Wagner reported to his Führer: Baden ist als erster Gau judenfrei (Baden is the first district free of Jews). In August 1942, the Jews who had survived the detention in Gurs - about 4300 - were transported to the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Freiburg's memorial for the deported Jews in the form of a German traffic sign
at the Square of the Old Synagogue near the university campus.

Professor Vonau only briefly mentioned this crime against humanity. For him, Wagner's ultimate crime was introducing the general compulsory military service in Alsace, recruiting young men into the German army, and even into the Waffen-SS: French people were forced to shoot at their compatriots. Deserters were court-martialled and shot. Today's views on Wagner and his crimes are pretty different on the two banks of the Rhine River.

In Wikipedia, we read: At the war's end, Wagner was arrested by the French, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by the Permanent Military Tribunal in Strasbourg in 1946. The sentence was carried out by firing squad on August 14, 1946.

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