130 km/h

or 80 mph is the speed limit that a working group of the Ministry of Transport has proposed for German autobahns. The group's mandate was to consider ways and means to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in transport activities. It was just one of the many recommendations the group has forwarded, but the outcry among German drivers was loud as expected. Had they not been promised Freie Fahrt für freie Bürger (Free speed for free citizens) when previous proposals to limit the speed on the autobahn had been made?

The offending traffic sign (©RijschoolPro)

Even Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer - although he had set up the working group - said that the recommendation of a speed limit sei ge­gen je­den Men­schen­ver­stand (is against all common sense).

Andreas Scheuer looking at speed limits in other countries:
Irresponsible. Against all common sense (©Stuttmann).

Cem Özdemir, a leading German Green politician, stepped up the discussion, contradicting the minister, saying that, on the contrary, a speed limit is a Gebot der Vernunft (matter of common sense). He added, "The discussion of a speed limit in Germany is a bit like discussing the right to bear arms with Americans." With only a slight majority favoring a speed limit in a recent poll, our nation is deeply divided on the issue.

Red Baron's car will accelerate to more than 120 mph, but I rarely go faster than 80 mph on an autobahn*. I do not accept the argument of the adversaries of a speed limit: On about 40% of the autobahns, there already are speed limits, while on the other 60%, you may drive as fast as traffic permits ... until you get stuck in a Stau (traffic jam). While the motor is idling, the adversaries argue that CO₂ emissions are more significant than driving more than 130 km/h on stretches with only minor traffic.
*Being an old man, I only drive about 3000 miles in a year, covering long distances instead by train at speeds up to 186 mph

Heavy traffic on the Inn-Autobahn. No chance of even driving 130 km/h (©dpa)

Red Baron has driving experience on motorways in France, Italy, Switzerland, and the US. I always enjoyed stress-less driving when all vehicles move at a moderate but synchronized speed. In those countries, neither gas is wasted, nor CO₂ is emitted by useless acceleration and braking as on German autobahns, where a few people drive hard to gain a couple of minutes going from A to B.

Yesterday the Federal Government decided that free citizens will keep their free speed.

I instead think, "It is high time that Germany's holy cow is slaughtered."

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Damian

Since 1970 and nearly every Sunday night, a show called Tatort* (crime scene) has been running on German television during primetime and is still popular. Sometimes more than 10 million viewers nationwide follow the episodes, in which various teams investigate murder cases in different German cities and in cities in Austria and German-speaking Switzerland.
*When I lived in Geneva watching French-speaking Swiss television, a lady once announced the evening program of the German-speaking program by presenting the series as "T'as (Tu as) tord," meaning "You are wrong."

Red Baron has given up wasting his time watching Tatort except for episodes featuring two teams that investigate in Mannheim or Münster, i.e., six evenings a year. Here my interest is solely aimed at the actors. In Mannheim, an initially demure investigator has developed over 19 years into a skinny middle-aged lady. In Münster, a detective superintendent and a forensic doctor form a permanently quarreling couple à la Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

In the spring of 2018, German television shot the Tatort episode #1075 titled Damian in Freiburg. Some scenes were set in the fraternity house of Burschenschaft Franconia* just across the street from my apartment. For two weeks, the film crew turned night into day. 

*The other fraternity, Teutonia, lives in the house beside my apartment. Red Baron has reported about this Burschenschaft on two occasions.

As fraternity students helping as extras told us: Some of the scenes were shot twenty times so that in one case, filming a day scene only finished at 4 a.m. Daylight in the interior was guaranteed by brightly illuminating the front of the Franconia fraternity house.

Street in front of the Franconia house during the day

Same at night

Your broadcasting license fee for a good program.
In Germany, all households pay a compulsory monthly fee for
the reception of two public service television channels, ARD and ZDF.
Both programs are nearly free of commercials.
So Damian is watched without any interruption.

The light pollution affected the whole neighborhood, so it was to be expected that Franconia invited those concerned to an evening of television presenting Damian on a big screen last week.

On-screen: Damian dancing with his girlfriend.
In the other room is Franconia's bar.

An eerie dinner scene. Damian, sitting at the head of the table,
 is serving wine to his girlfriend on his left.

We started with an aperitif followed by a guided tour of the premises where scenes were filmed and ended with beer and potato chips during the presentation of the Tatort. With great astonishment, we noted that the film crew had remodeled the house's interior completely to match the new plaque at the entrance of the fictitious Landsmannschaft Brankia. All photos are screenshots that I took during the introduction of Damian at the Franconia house.

New Landsmannschaft Brancia ...

... and its colors.

Tatort Damian has all the odd ingredients of a modern crime movie: The schizophrenic law student and main character Damian, an overworked detective superintendent and her always-tired male assistant, a somewhat older tennis trainer and his teenage trainee being shot while in the act, a transvestite as prime suspect shooting selfies while wearing female underwear, Damian's father shattered because his son had refused to take over his inn located in the Black Forest, a devoted mother making the best cake far and wide, Damian's rich girlfriend hoping for more than just a couple of actions in bed, and a charred body in the remains of a Black Forest cabin.

It was an evening well spent in a hospitable company.

The film crew left a souvenir:
"The banner is Brankia."

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Fridays for Future

It all started in Sweden in August 2018, when Greta Thunberg cut classes, camped in front of the Swedish parliament, and protested against the government's inactivity concerning climate change.

School strike for the climate (©Der Tagesspiegel)

Her protest became viral, so last Friday, pupils all over Germany left their schools, marching in protest through 60 inner cities. Their motto: "Fridays for Future." The largest protest rally occurred in Freiburg, where 3500 pupils cut classes although school officials warned them about the consequences. Mind you, in Germany, education in official schools up to the age of 16 is compulsory.

Yesterday Red Baron was in town but only saw the protest march from behind. So here are some photos, all copyrighted by Badische Zeitung.

St. Martin's Gate in the background.
Most of the banners were in English.

One banner was not very original, while the other,
"Why should we learn if we have no future" was pessimistic.

Some  banners were witty but only in German,
"Kale instead of lignite (Green cabbage vs. brown coal)"

"Hey! It's our future."

Even some teachers preferred a "system change to climate change."

Will there be future demonstrations? 

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Rosa

was not rose but rather deep red. On this day, 100 years ago, right-wing Freischärler (irregular troops) murdered Rosa Luxemburg and her comrade-in-arms Karl Liebknecht in cold blood in Berlin.

Rosa Luxemburg on a German stamp of 1974

A little bit of German history. With the First World War outbreak in 1914, the strongest party at the Reichstag was in a dilemma. On August 4, Emperor Wilhelm II declared, "Henceforth, I know no parties; I know only Germans." This so-called Burgfrieden (a truth between the emperor and all German parties) made it difficult for the Social Democrats (SPD) - although, in essence, pacifists - not to vote in favor of the requested war loans.

However, Karl Liebknecht (the son of SPD founder Wilhelm Liebknecht) and Rosa Luxemburg, prominent members of the left-wing faction of the SPD, voted against it. They believed in an international revolution of the proletariat overthrowing capitalism, imperialism, and militarism even during the war. Later, Rosa and Wilhelm called their movement the Spartacist League.


On March 7, 2014, on the eve of Europe's catastrophe, Rosa visited Freiburg and gave a speech. Roger Chickering, in his famous book, "The Great War and Urban Life in Germany," describes her visit as follows, "To the consternation of the non-Socialist press, she packed the Festival Hall (Festhalle), the largest hall in town. Here she delivered an impassioned attack on class inequality and German militarism."

She confirmed that in times of peace, she had been condemned for being a pacifist, "I was sentenced to one year in prison in Frankfurt for what the prosecutor and the court considered a criminal act. This action consisted of my shouting to the workers on both sides of the border: Thou shalt not kill!"

She continued denouncing the social climate in the late years of the German Empire, "Living in Germany in a time of the most terrible unemployment when tens of thousands of industrious, honest proletarian families do not know what they will feed their hungry children tomorrow an official government representative declares: Not the support, not the feeding of these hungry is the lifeblood of the state, but barracks, bayonets, and spiked helmets are its lifeblood."

She ended, "We turn to all the working people, to whom we say: All of you, you are millions, you men and women of labor, you pay taxes to preserve the state and the wars and the military. You will send your sons into the fire, and you will have to shoulder all the troubles and pains when a war will stop the calm economic and cultural development not for years but for decades. It depends on you to veto this breakneck policy of the ruling class."

Chickering continues, "Few in the audience took the provocation as seriously as did the public prosecutors, who initiated legal action against the visitor for sedition and subversion, but 280 people did join the local Social Democratic Party in the wake of her speech ... Her exuberant reception in Freiburg illuminated other features of life in town: resentments over massive poverty and social inequality, the persistence of labor strife, and the lingering isolation of the Socialist labor movement itself. "

Rosa's continuous efforts to convince Germany's proletariat of an anti-war general strike resulted in her and Karl Liebknecht's imprisonment in June 1916. Liberated by an amnesty at the end of the war, both revived the Spartacist League,

The League organ, Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag).

On November 9, 1918, Liebknecht declared the formation of a Freie Sozialistische Republik (Free Socialist Republic) from a balcony of the Berliner Stadtschloss two hours after Philipp Scheidemann's declaration of the German Republic from a balcony of the Reichstag.

Liebknecht's Free Socialist Republic was nothing more than a German-Soviet republic (Räterepublik) following the Russian model. However, Rosa sharply criticized the Lenin administration concerning the freedom of the press. Her pamphlet contains her famous dictum "that the rule of the broad masses is completely unthinkable without a free and unimpeded press, without an unhindered life of associations and assemblies ... Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for members of a party - as numerous as they may be - is no freedom. Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently".

Rosa Luxemburg's speech at the Gründungsparteitag (founding congress) of the KPD

On January 1, 1919, the Spartacus League was renamed KPD, the German Communist Party. Later in the month, still dreaming of a Räterepublik, Rosa and Karl participated in the so-called Spartacist Revolt against the existing government. With the help of right-wing militia and his Social Democrats, Chancellor Friedrich Ebert squashed the uprising brutally.

Workers, citizens!
The fatherland is doomed. Come to its rescue!
 It is not threatened externally but internally by the Spartacus League.
Beat to death their leaders!
Kill Liebknecht!
Then you will have peace, work, and bread.
The front-line soldiers.

Wikipedia reports, "By January 13, the uprising had been extinguished. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were captured by Freikorps troops on January 15, 1919, and brought to the Eden Hotel in Berlin, where they were tortured and interrogated for several hours. Following this, Luxemburg was beaten with rifle butts and afterward shot, and her corpse thrown into the Landwehr Canal, while Liebknecht was forced to step out of the car where he was being transported, and he was then shot in the back. Official declarations said he had been shot in an attempt to escape."

The division continues into modern Germany. On the one hand, the SPD that with time, has achieved so many benefits for the working class and kept well in mind not to kill the milk-producing cow (capitalism). On the other hand, Die Linke rightly points the finger at those social inequalities in a wealthy society: single mothers with too low an income, homeless people who cannot afford the high rents, and retired persons who do not know how to live on their mini-retirement pensions.

Aufstehen! founder Sahra Wagenknecht (©Aufstehen!)

Who likes aufstehen (rising)? Does a yellow vest, carried in front of the Federal Chancellery, help?

*

The Wall

Red Baron admits that we Germans have a particular attitude to walls and, by the way, to wheels as well. The latter is natural in a country relying on its economy with Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes. German carmakers do not intend to reinvent the wheel but are still betting on stone-age technology, particularly air-polluting diesel engines.

Back to walls. I still vividly remember Ronald Reagan contemplating the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987, imploring," Mr. Gorbatschow, tear down this wall!" Note: pre-Merkel Chancellor Helmut Kohl, as usual, grinning, this time in the background.

In 2019 another wall emerged as a protagonist of world history, symbolizing the struggle for humanity and freedom, with POTUS demanding, "This barrier is absolutely critical to border security."

This is how German cartoonist Klaus Stuttmann© "saw" POTUS on television

In his speech on television, POTUS claimed, "The wall will also be paid for, indirectly, by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico."

Since Mexico will pay for it, Democrats see no reason to yield to the president's demand for 5.7 billion U$ to finance "his" wall. Subsequently, POTUS refused to raise the US debt ceiling, thus forcing his government into a shutdown. Government institutions stopped working, and their employees were no longer paid. I once lived through a shutdown in Wahington, DC, as a tourist in 2013.

POTUS is desperately trying to fulfill his campaign pledge, where he promised to build a 1,000-mile concrete southern border wall. Now, he calls the wall whatever you like, a steel barrier, sometimes even a fence (wooden?), although he has frequently rejected suggestions that it is just a fence.

In an interview Senate, minority leader Chuck Schumer mentioned a wall 20 feet high. Still, historical examples show that to fight tunneling techniques, it is more important how deep a wall reaches into the ground.

Since ancient times, people have dug tunnels to "undercome" walls. Here is an example of what the French troops under the command of General Louis Hector de Villars achieved during the siege of Freiburg in October 1706. Mineurs* (sappers) approached the city in approches* (covered ditches) until they reached the wall when they started to dig tunnels. After filling the tunnel stub with gunpowder and igniting the fuse, they hoped for a breche* (breach) in the wall.
*note that all those military terms are French

French miners approached Freiburg's walls from the west in 1706.
The fortifications were built by the famous French architect Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban
thirty years earlier.

A recent example is the escape tunnels dug under the Berlin wall from 1961 to 1989.

Built escape tunnels are marked in red.

Note that the border protection facilities built by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) comprised a pre-wall, a barbed-wire fence, a death strip with patrolling dogs, observation towers manned by border guards with submachine guns, and the proper wall right on the border, and visible from West-Berlin.

These were long tunnels of about 50 meters (©Onetz.de)

While President Reagen had a clear message concerning a political wall, POTUS instead has a vague idea about his wall. In his televised address to the American people, he said, "So sad, so terrible," which I would like to agree with and add, "so true."

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