Dietenbach

Not only do my friends in Madison know that Freiburg is an attractive place to live in. Wealthy retired chief physicians from northern Germany and not only those looking for an apartment to buy will pay any price while young couples planning offspring desperately search for an affordable rental flat in vain. Freiburg's housing market is leergefegt (swept empty), and prices are at an all-time high.

POTUS campaign pledge was to build a southern wall, that of Freiburg's young and surprise Mayor Martin Horn was to provide affordable housing.

Enter Dietenbach, a new quarter to be built on farmland between the recently added quarter Rieselfeld, the four-lane feeder road to the autobahn A5, and Freiburg's animal park Mundenhof*.
*Madisonians will recall the Prairie Project.

The streetcar line 5, ending at Rieselfeld, will be prolonged to Dietenbach.
(©Freiburger Amtsblatt)

Farmland Dietenbach, future space for 14,000 new citizens?
In the background, the Rieselfeld quarter (©Freiburger Amtsblatt/A.J. Schmidt)

From another angle: Harvested Dietenbach.
In the background, the Mundenhof (©Patrick Seeger/dpa)

Architect's view of the new quarter (©Freiburger Amtsblatt)

Tomorrow Freiburg's citizens will be called to the polls to vote in favor of building the new quarter Dietenbach by answering the one and only tricky question:

Shall the area of Dietenbach remain undeveloped?

It means those who like the new quarter to be built must check the Nay on the ballot paper.

Nearly all political parties, i.e., 43 of 48 city councilors, are courting voters with the slogan:

Never a NO was so future. 

A Nein from Right to ...

... Left ...

... from Young Freiburg to Liberals, ...

... and even in grumpy English.

Opposition advocating an Aye came from the five deputies of the city council group Freiburg Lebenswert/Für Freiburg (Freiburg Liveable/For Freiburg) and naturally from the farmers losing their land.

Yes! Farming instead of concrete gold

Two facts perturb Red Baron's mind. The area on which Dietenbach shall be built is a wetland. So the terrain must be filled up to a height of up to 3 meters. The action group Pro Farming calculated that 66,000 trucks transporting soil are needed and will pollute the air. Pro Farming called the landfill an ecological madness.

The Ayes give the erroneous impression that once Dietenbach is approved, rents in Freiburg will become "Family-friendly, affordable, sustainable, making a family four times* happy." Only optimists think Dietenbach's first buildings will be ready for occupation in 2024. The happy couple's children will look much older.
*O, I see an already happy family will then be three times happier

It is expected that participation in the referendum will be low. Its result will already be known by 1900 hours (7 p.m.). So please stay tuned for an update of the blog tomorrow.


February 24, at 1930 hours (7:30 p.m.): The unofficial complete result of the referendum is as follows:

The Nays have it 60 to 40%. Without any decimal wavering, we Freiburgers are clearly split.

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Must lose weight

In an earlier blog, I dealt with the Holbeinpferdchen, located on a small lawn triangle just around the corner from my apartment. The sculpture of a foal is frequently painted and repainted.

The Holbein horse in January 2006 (©BZ/Ingo Schneider)

Due to the many paint shops since 2006, the slim concrete sculpture created by Werner Gürtner became a heavy, cold-blood horse, so it was time for a reducing diet.

The same sculpture in January 2019 (©BZ/Lisa Petrich)

At the end of my previous blog, I mentioned that the last time the layers of paint were removed was in 1997. Since then, the expertise on how to do the job has been lost, so experts were scratching their heads.

Now apparently, the solution was found; yesterday morning, the Holbein horse was removed from its location.

Das Pferdle shows the call to vote No in the referendum next Sunday 24 (©BZ/Patrick Kerber)

It was lifted from its pedestal with the help of a small excavator and - secured with belts - moved on a small truck for transport to a stonemason's workshop at Freiburg-Haslach.

On the hooks (©BZ/Patrick Kerber)

All the layers of paint - several centimeters thick - will be removed. "It will take a little longer," said Martina Schickle, press spokeswoman for the city.

Those thick layers of paint (©BZ/Patrick Kerber)

The father who had "dismantled" the foal in 1997 is watching his son
 trying to chisel off the layers of paint in 2019 (©Amtsblatt)

While the original sculpture is on a reducing diet,
a rocking horse is fulfilling the representative function
 in serving as the Stallvertreter (representative in the stable).
This is a German pun.
It should instead read Stellvertreter (deputy) (©Marie-Christine Poulet)

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The Wall After the Berlin Wall

A couple of days ago, Red Baron had an "aha" experience. The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) projected the trace of The Wall against Mexico POTUS insists so much in its total length (3200 km) onto a map of Europe. The WAZ wanted to give its readers a feeling of how long The Wall along the Mexican border is compared to the Berlin Wall. Readers were even invited to move the trace of The Wall arbitrarily around the European continent.

©WAZ

When choosing Paris as the western starting point of the imaginary wall, I suddenly realized that its trace nicely follows the traditional Orient Express track.

©Wikipedia/Arjan de Boer

Remember Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express? Detective Hercule Poirot was on the luxury train from London to Istanbul* in the 1930ies touching Paris, Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Munich, Vienna, and Budapest.
*It was in 1930 when the Turks renamed Constantinople

Remember the song?

Istanbul was Constantinople.
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople.
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it, I can't say
People just liked it better that way.
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks.

Back to Poirot's train ride. Hercule did not get to Constantinople because an avalanche stopped his Orient Express deep in the Yugoslavian wilderness. However, it is intriguing to note that the railroad track following the imaginary trace of The Wall abruptly ends at the Bulgarian-Turkish border on today's map.

Conspiracy alert! It certainly must have to do with the fact that POTUS and HEPOT (His Excellency President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), although partners in NATO, are no friends. While the latter wants to eliminate the Kurds in Iraque, the former likes to protect those eager fighters needed against ISIS. Fact is, the Kurds thriving for a State of their own - in the manner of the late 19th century - are, as on previous occasions in history, again caught between two stools.
*Already in 1892, German fiction author Karl May as traveling Kara Ben Nemsi, wrote about those rifle-loving men in his novel Durchs wilde Kurdistan (Roaming in Wild Kurdistan)

©Wikipedia/Arjan de Boer

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Schwarz-Rot-Gold

Today, 100 years ago, following the proclamation of the Weimar Constitution, the National Assembly declared the combination of black, red, and gold as the German national flag.

Red Baron wrote about the German colors before and simply would like to remind you that Schwarz-rot-gold was flown for the first time in 1832 when a patriotic crowd marched from the town of Neustadt to the Hambach Castle.

A Neustadt native, Johann Philipp Abresch, carried the Tricolore with an inscription: Germany's rebirth. The marching people demonstrated for freedom of the press and assembly and demanded German unity, a confederate European republic, and equal rights for women !!

The ravages of time gnawed on the gold. 

The Urfahne (original flag) was made from gold threads instead of dark yellow colored cloth. It is kept as a national shrine and on display at Hambach Castle.

Next, the colors of freedom of the 1848/49 revolutionaries were black, red, and gold, although their sequence was still a matter of luck at that time.

Invitation to stitch flags in the order Gold., Roth., and Schwarz.
 For a patriotic rally in Freiburg on March 23, 1848

Unlike in the States, Germans are still somewhat shy about showing "their colors," but they should be reminded that black-red-gold never stands for nationalism but for a united, free, and democratic Germany.

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Fake News

diesseits und jenseits des Atlantiks (on both sides of the Atlantic) was the title of the February Stammtisch of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft. As in previous years, Red Baron opened the series of Stammtisch introducing the subject.

According to Wikipedia, fake news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media. The article also contains the term "Lügenpresse," which is specific to Germany. Lügenpresse goes back to the revolution of 1848, was widely used by the Nazis, and is cheerfully celebrated by PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident).

Wikipedia continues: False information is often caused by reporters paying sources for stories, an unethical practice called checkbook journalism. The news is then often reverberated as misinformation in social media but occasionally finds its way to the mainstream media as well.

Where rumors used to make their local rounds, nowadays, fake news spreads across the globe via social media in seconds. Some serious news media such as the BBC, POLITICO, or The Economic Times run special columns with the headline "Fake News."

During the 2016 US presidential election, journalists noticed an increase in made-up stories on Facebook that became viral. Strangely enough, most of the stories came from the Balkans. A small town called Veles in Macedonia was identified as a nest then. One of the fakers told a visiting BBC reporter team, "Americans love our stories, and we make money from them. Who cares if they are true or false?"

In December 2016, Hillary Clinton's speech condemned "the epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda flooding the social media" and went on. "It's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences," not yet thinking she would lose the election.

There even are notable fake news authors like Christopher Blair, called the godfather of fake news, who once launched the following message: "Clinton Foundation Ship Seized at Port of Baltimore Carrying Drugs, Guns, and Sex Slaves." Such communication is eagerly absorbed and spread by social media. But isn't Christopher Blair fake, too?

Nowadays, the web is also full of so-called deep fake, manipulated videos that make KGB's* black and white photos on which disgraced party officials were retouched look old.
*former Russian secret police

I shall spare my American readers the list of fake news spread by POTUS in the State of the Union (SOTU) speech just one day before FMG's February event. However, those at the Stammtisch mentioned and commented on them in the following discussion. The NYT analyzed the "alternative news" in SOTU, so I refer to the article. Isn't it a sad fact that the relevance of fake news has so much increased in post-truth politics?

Let me give you a recent example of fake news from Germany instead. You may have read that the diesel gate scandal deeply traumatized our car-loving nation. Our auto industry has cheated on its customers by manipulating vehicles' exhaust emissions of diesel engines. In some cases, the emission of nitrogen oxides (NOx) turned out to be an order of magnitude higher than the limits laid down by the European Union (EU) and cast into national law.

One of the consequences of these higher NOx emissions was that many air measuring stations in cities located at thoroughfares showed immission* values in the air above 40 µg/m³, the concentration limit for "members of the public" in the EU.
*NOx emitted from an exhaust pipe is "immited" into the atmosphere

These high air concentrations of NOx have already led to driving bans for "dirty" diesel engine cars in some cities, notably in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg's state capital. Therefore, diesel car lovers cast envious glances at the States where the immission limit prescribed by EPA is 103 µg/m³. On the other hand, the emission values for cars in the States are stricter than in Europe, i.e., 70 mg/mi (≈43 mg/km) versus 80 mg/km. Such low values can only be reached by a selective catalytic reduction of NOx with the help of urea, called the AdBlue technique in Europe.

With the burden of the diesel gate still heavy on their shoulders, German car manufacturers held back with arguments regarding increasing the European immission level, but don't they have any allies?

Lung specialist Dieter Köhler and EP deputy Peter Liese (©BZ)

A manifesto against the current NOx limits signed by 100 lung specialists came in timely. Spokesman Dieter Köhler commented on the "pollution lie," "Whether the concentration limit is 40 or 100 micrograms makes no difference. I have not seen anybody who died from NOx". Late-night show hosts took on Köhler's remark, "After all, dead people can no longer present themselves in a consultation hour."

Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) immediately took up the manifesto and described it as an important initiative to bring objectivity and facts into the diesel debate, "The scientific approach has the weight to overcome the approach of prohibiting, restricting, and annoying."

The chairman of the Free Democrats (FDP), Christian Lindner, doubled, "We can no longer allow mobility and key industries to suffer because purely ideological concentration limits are pursued."

The transport expert of the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Dirk Spaniel, felt astonished that "only under pressure from a whole armada of medical specialists is a pressure exerted on the absurd concentration limit policy of the CDU/CSU and SPD government coalition."

All three gentlemen are contradicted:

1. There is too much approach in Scheuer's statement, and Köhler's criticism of the current concentration limit is purely polemic and definitely not a scientific approach.

2. The present concentration limits of NOx and fine dust in the air are not ideological but based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations and were adopted by the European Union (EU). Germany has legally bound the concentration limits in its 39th Bundesimmissionsschutzverordnung (Federal Immission Control Ordinance).
*My English-speaking readers will love that word

3. There is too much pressure in Spaniel's statement. The present limits have nothing to do with CDU/CSU and SPD policies but are: Read under 2.

More than 5500 specialists are organized in the two societies of adult and pediatric pneumatologists, the German Society for Pneumology and Respiratory Medicine (DGP) and the German Association of Lung Specialists for Children and Adolescent (GPP), of whom just 1.8% of its members have signed the manifesto. They are not an armada.

The GPP wrote, "We stand behind the WHO recommendations. 70,000 scientific publications prove the harmful effects of NOx and fine dust on health. For 30 years, the WHO has regularly checked the limits and confirmed the "correctness (?)" of the 40 µg/m³ concentration for NOx. The limit primarily serves to protect risk groups such as children, pregnant women, and the sick."

The President of the European Pneumatological Society (EPS), the Professional Association of Pneumologists (BdP), and the DGP also clearly contradicted the "100" who have shed doubt on the present limits, "The questioning of scientific statements in general terms, without citing evidence, is not serious. Anyone spreading public doubts about the harmful potential of air pollutants without quoting scientific work violates the principles of medical-scientific ethos"... and spreads fake news, I like to add.

Köhler was unimpressed. At the invitation of Peter Liese, a European Parliament (EP) member, he went into the lion's den to Brussels. There, Köhler became virulent concerning the concentration limits for NOx and fine dust, "Not a single German was consulted or medically examined. The risks found are in the percentage range. Smokers are exposed to concentrations that are one thousand times higher."

Yes, most smokers know about the risks of smoking and accept them. To defend his standpoint on the imposed concentration limits, Köhler used the far-fetched argument that other factors were given too little weight in previous studies. Lower-income people have an unhealthy lifestyle - considerable nicotine and alcohol consumption - and frequently live on pollutant-loaded thoroughfare roads.

While in Brussels, Köhler clashed with Holger Schulz, an epidemiologist at Munich's Helmholtz Centre. According to Schulz, the body reacts to the most minor amounts of pollutants with inflammation, so the harmful effects of low concentrations are disproportionately severe.

Listening, EU Commissioner for the Environment Karmenu Vella was untouched by the dispute. He considered the present limits scientifically sound and even pleaded to lower the existing values.

Meanwhile, the government coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD agreed that driving bans should only be appropriate if the annual average air pollution exceeds 50 µg/m³ of NOx instead of 40. Since Germany and France are the two supporting pillars of the EU, it is no wonder that the EU Commission accommodated the Federal Government in the dispute over concentration limits and diesel car driving bans four days ago. The Commission decided it had no objections to the coalition's plans to take a more generous approach to the concentration limit for NOx.

Last year's concentration levels at Freiburg's thoroughfare, the Federal Highway 31, were 49 µg/m³. Aren't we lucky that the coalition government plans to pass a law "allowing" 50 µg/m³ as soon as possible? Therefore, driving bans in Freiburg are off the table.

To complicate things further. Köhler himself now admits that some of his calculations are incorrect. Even so, Federal Transport Minister Scheuer sees no reason to dissociate himself from Dieter Köhler, "The manifesto of the lung specialists has reopened the debate on the European NOx limits."

Red Baron shakes his head.
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Vale senex magister civium !

This morning: Signing the book of condolence at Freiburg's Alte Gerichtslaube (Old courthouse)

Freiburg‘s former lord mayor Dr. Rolf Böhme died on February 12.

Chancellor Helmut Schmidt supported the bid for Freiburg's mayor of his former state secretary,
 party comrade, and friend in 1982. In the back young Gernot Ehrler (©Heinz Wurzer/BZ)

Elected in 1982 and re-elected in 1990 and 1998, the social democrat served 20 years as Freiburg's lord mayor until 2002, when Green Dr. Dieter Salomon took over.

Dr. Dieter Salomon, newly elected first Green mayor of a major city in Germany
on election night in 2002 with his wife Helen and "former" mayor Dr. Rolf Böhme (©BZ)

During Böhme's first term of office, NATO and Warsaw Pact had serious confrontations over the deployment of medium-range missiles in Europe. NATO's Double-Track Decision resulted in mass protests, primarily by young people in Germany and neighboring European countries.

Disarmament negotiations that started on November 30, 1981, remained without conclusion. When the German Bundestag agreed to the deployment in 1983, the Soviet Union aborted the talks.

Eventually, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on December 8, 1987. It provided for the destruction of all middle-range weapons and ended an episode of the Cold War until the recently canceled INRF treaty.

During that turbulent period, the idea was born that Freiburg should establish a partnership with an American city and a city in the Soviet Union. Rolf Böhme, a dedicated advocate of international understanding and détente, supported the move wholeheartedly. Following Böhme's visit with a delegation from Freiburg, Madison, the Capital of Wisconsin, was chosen in the States. Lord Mayor Dr. Rolf Böhme and Madison's Mayor Joseph Sensenbrenner signed the partnership agreement on May 31, 1988. Frauke Feix, vice president of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft, has extensively described Dr. Böhme's merits for the partnership between Madison and Freiburg.


Elisabeth and I met Rolf Böhme and his wife at a private dinner arranged by a friend in 2004, where we had a lively conversation. Later I met the retired mayor and honorary citizen on several occasions and frequently in the street, for we were neighbors. Whenever he had time, we had a friendly chat.

Leberle mit Brägele (Roasted fine cut liver and sliced onions with fried potatoes as a side dish) is a regional specialty. One evening Elisabeth and I were eating with some friends at a nearby restaurant that offers Baden cuisine. When I read "Leberle" on the menu, my choice was clear, but I became deeply disappointed when the waitress told me that Leberle ist aus (is no longer available).

Enter Rolf Böhme with his wife and friends seated at a nearby table. Suddenly he stood up and approached our table smiling but complained bitterly, "You ate my Leberle!" I told him my chagrin was as great as his and even a few minutes older.

When suddenly, due to a severe illness, Dr. Böhme had to live in a nursing home, I missed our street contacts. I saw him last in the film Weltweite Freundschaften when he, sitting in a wheelchair, commented on his Freiburg-Madison partnership.

This morning: Freiburg's flag in mourning at the town hall. 

R.I.P. Rolf Böhme

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Berlin is not Weimar

was the title of a talk by Germany's Nancy Pelosi. Yes, Freiburg-born Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) is president of the Bundestag, i.e., the speaker of the German parliament. As such, he holds the second-highest office in Germany after the federal president.

Dr. Schäuble's political career is impressive. At 77 years, he is now the oldest member of the Bundestag but still young compared to Wisconsin State Senator Fred Risser. Schäuble is one of the major architects of German unity. You may like to read more about Wolfgang on Wikipedia.

Knowing that the topic of Schäuble's talk would attract many people, Red Baron arrived at the university's main auditorium one hour early only to find that the Audimax was already fully packed, mostly with young people. Eventually, I found one free seat somewhere in the middle. My neighbor to the left was a freshman studying law with whom while waiting, I had an exciting discussion, whereas to my right, an old mumbling man was seated.

The speaker arrives in his wheelchair
while Freiburg's young Lord Mayer greets those sitting in the first row.

Germany has seen three attempts to introduce a democratic constitution. The first one, following the revolutionary movements of 1848, was adopted by the Frankfurt Parliament in 1849 but did not find the approval of the majority of the states forming the then-German Federation. The rejection of the Frankfurt Constitution ended in the restoration of kings and princes.

On April 3, 1849, Frederick William IV of Prussia declined the imperial crown offered
to him by a delegation of the Frankfort National Assembly, mocking
it as a parliamentarian dog collar having the slutty smell of revolution.
The king added that the offer was nothing else than an imaginary bait baked from dirt and clay.

The second attempt of 1919, the Weimar Constitution, was progressive* and liberal. The Minister of the Interior, Eduard David, called the Weimar Republic the most democratic democracy globally, although it turned out that it was a democracy without democrats. The Republic was destroyed internally, crushed between left and right-wing parties within the framework of the conditions following Germany's defeat in 1918. There was the humiliating Treaty of Versailles, blaming the country with the sole guilt of war and the global economic depression with its unemployment and resulting poverty. The Weimar Republic ended in the Nazi dictatorship.
*introducing women's suffrage. The NYT published the full text of the Weimar Constitution in an English translation.

The President of the Reich, Friedrich Ebert, and
the President of the National Assembly, Constantin Fehrenbach, a Freiburger,
hail the promulgation of the Weimar Constitution at the balcony of the Weimar theater on
August 19, 1919: Es lebe die Republik! (Long live the Republic!).
It only lived 14 years.

The third constitution of 1949, called Grundgesetz (fundamental law), was the work of democrats having survived the Third Reich. They were carefully watching that the Constitution of the Federal Republic was not only liberal but that the democracy was well-fortified. In 1949 the founding fathers and mothers created a Grundgesetz that, unlike 1919, defends the freedom and self-determination of the individual, a basis that even the largest majority in parliament cannot eliminate.

A Federal Constitutional Court watches that the political parties at the Bundestag stick firmly and unconditionally to our constitution, fully accepting the core values of our society. Since 1949 several left and right-wing parties had been judged unconstitutional and were outlawed. Note that in the present Bundestag, a left post-communist Die Linke and a right-populist AfD are seated. Both parties nervously assure their loyalty to the Grundgesetz mantra-like, while our Constitutional Court monitors their activities vigilantly.

In the first years of our Federal Republic, the political circumstances were favorable. The economic growth called the German miracle provided a fair division of wealth so that the Grundgesetz became firmly anchored in the people's minds.

Although objectively, prosperity was never so abundant as nowadays, the so-called Berlin Republic is not free from being endangered. With its digitalization and globalization, the angst of the future weighs heavily on the minds of many citizens. According to Schäuble, responsible politics must slow down rapid changes and take people's anxieties concerning the loosening of social ties seriously. Communication between people must be strengthened on a personal basis and not via social networks.

One important aspect of the Grundgesetz is that it limits the arbitrary rule of the majority and protects minorities. This requires respect for other opinions nowadays, frequently disregarded in many discussions and, above all, on the Internet. Controversial discussions must never end in hate speech but in an appeasing compromise.

Dr. Schäuble talking to a fascinated audience in an overcrowded auditorium.

Because of those "modern" trends, Schäuble reminded the predominantly student audience that without the active support of democrats, there would be no democracy. "Although during the 70 years of its existence, the Federal Republic was not even near to the situation of the Weimar Republic, we must remain vigilant", Schäuble ended his much-applauded talk.

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White Supremacy

Last week Red Baron attended a book presentation at Freiburg's old Ratssaal (council chamber). He was lucky to get one of the rare seats still left.

The Imperial spiked helmet in a sandy color

Four Musketeers, Professor Bernd-Stefan Grewe, Johannes Theisen, Heiko Wegmann, and Markus Himmelsbach, introduced their book Freiburg und der Kolonialismus (Freiburg and its Colonialism).

The glorious four in the order mentioned in the text show their book.
Red Baron is sitting in the second row, undoing his red scarf. What else? (©Rita Eggenstein/BZ)

The authors have accomplished an astonishing document. When in a southern Baden city, the interest or rather the enthusiasm for German colonies - particularly following their loss after the First World War - was so overwhelming, how was it like in other more directly affected cities near the coast?

Freiburg seems to be the first major city where a reappraisal of Germany's colonial past was seriously undertaken. In the course of the evening, during the presentation of the four authors, I realized more and more that even today, an attitude of white supremacy is not only widespread in American minds.

When I worked at CERN (European Laboratory for High-Energy Physics), I lived in a house in a Geneva suburb. One of my neighbors was a professor of economics from British Guyana, holding a high position at the WHO (World Health Organization). He was married to a charming lady from Jamaica who was an English teacher at Geneva's International School. The couple had two daughters about the same age as my children, and as the four kids went to the same French college, we parents rapidly became close friends.

In those days, my mother took the then 12-hour train from Hamburg to Geneva to spend her summer holidays with us. She was raised in a strict Catholic faith on a Westphalian farm with seven brothers and one sister.

When our neighbors invited us to a grill party one evening, my mother became quite nervous, telling Elisabeth, "Ich kann doch einem Schwarzen keine Hand geben" (I cannot give my hand to a black person). Later she shook hands with Harvey and Jennifer when we entered their house and even enjoyed practicing her English* with our hosts.
*She had learned English only after the war with the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), "Lernt Englisch mit dem britischen Rundfunk."

While at CERN, I was frequently invited by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in Vienna to serve as an expert in radiation protection. We sometimes had to draft education documents for developing countries in those working committees. I still remember the outcry of the chairman when one participant on the committee talked about underdeveloped countries.


Back to colonialism in Freiburg. The enthusiasms for Ostafrika (Tanzania), Deutsch-Südwest (Namibia), and Kamerun were already intense in all social classes before the Great War. Merchants made enormous profits on Kolonialwaren (colonial goods), the churches were collecting money focused on the conversion of Heidenkinder (pagan children), and even the working class - although condemning the exploitation and the poor treatment of the natives in Germany's colonies - wanted to keep those territories by all means.

A handful of distillers, military suppliers, and shipowners have the benefits
from the colonial policy, all others experience only damage.
The Social Democrats would like to reach out their hands to a colonial policy that
is pursued in a cultural sense benefitting the German people.
But we will always do all that we can to resist a colonial policy
where cruel officials torture negroes to death and
unscrupulous speculators and traders cheat the natives out of their belongings
so that the latter are driven to rebellion.

In the Weimar Republic, the Kolonialfrage was only a secondary political battleground. 

A highlight in Freiburg was the 50th anniversary of the Reichskolonialtagung (Imperial Colonial Conference), combined with a colonial exhibition in 1935. Although the then Nazi rulers celebrated the day as a national event, it had been Lord Mayor Karl Bender of the Catholic Centrum Party who, in 1932, had already paved the way for the event.

When in 2019, I see French troops keeping order in their former African possessions, should I rejoice, "Thank God that we Germans lost our colonies already in 1918?" Not really. Presently German troops are in Africa helping our friends from outre-Rhin.

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Steve, a Thread to Europe?

Bosom buddies?

Remember Steve Bannon? Jobless in the States, Trump's former idea provider* is roaming Europe because of the upcoming elections to the European Parliament.
*Rumor has it that Steve gave Trump the idea of building a southwestern wall.

Steve offers a special message as a campaigner to the right-populist parties in various European countries. "The heart of the globalists beats in Brussels. If I hit the stake through the vampire, everything will disappear", he told the Guardian.

What the hell! Europe is none of your damn business! Is this his attempt to regain his former boss's esteem, or has (fake news) POTUS asked him to help destabilize the EU? I am inclined to shout right into Steve's face the classic slogan, "Ami, go home."

Nationalist Modrikamen

This, however,  is not as easy as it seems, for Steven has a satrap residing in Brussels: Mischaël Modrikamen, president of the foundation "The Movement." Mischaël openly preaches that Europe should disintegrate or instead fall back into nation-states, a situation that plunged the continent into a nightmare during the first half of the 20th century.

Bannon with Italy's Salvini ...

... and with Hungary's Orban

So far, France's Marine LePen, the Netherlands' Geert Wilders, Italy's Matteo Salvini, and Hungary's Viktor Orban wholeheartedly accepted Steve's electoral support. Only Germany's AfD shows anxiety to the stranger that Chairman Jörg Meuthen expressed.

Hesitating Meuthen 

When the AfD drew up their list of potential deputies for the European Parliament, the candidates said, "When we are elected, we will do everything to destroy our job."

More hate towards Europe is not possible.

All pictures are ©ARD

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