Waldsterben 2.0

Several times, I wrote about the German Wald (forest), a soul topic for most of my compatriots. Waldsterben, their ultimate sorrow, had already found its way into the English language by the 1980s.

For Germans Waldsterben equals Götterdämmerung, “Erst stirbt der Wald, dann stirbt der Mensch (When forests die, men/women will follow)."

In 2015, I wrote cautiously optimistic: There is good news concerning oak trees. While in 2012, 50% of their tree-tops were sick, the figure dropped to 36% in 2014. Germany's agricultural minister commented on the positive trend: "Es ist schön, sagen zu können: Viel Laub auf Deutschlands Eichen (It is nice to be able to say: Much foliage on Germany's oaks)."

In the meantime, the situation has undergone a dramatic change. The new emotive word is Kronenverlichtung (crown defoliation). The Waldsterben is back.

For several reasons, "The storms, the drought, the massive bark beetle infestation, and the increased forest fires in the past three years are the apocalyptic horsemen of climate change."

A bark beetle looking for a maiden spruce tree

Up to 10,000 bark beetles can infest one spruce tree. They are to blame for the mass death of the trees, which have no chance of survival. The animals found ideal conditions last year because 2020 was the third consecutive year with a dry summer, following 2018 and 2019.

Insects are the leading cause of tree damage.

 Due to the lack of water, the beetles could easily invade spruce trees that later had to be felled en masse. In some federal states, even soldiers arrived to deal with dead trees. 245,000 hectares of trees were destroyed, and the supply of spruce wood has increased massively. 

Two-thirds of the timber in Germany is from damaged trees

The result was a rapid decline in prices, by around 35 percent in three years.

35% of the trees in Germany show a significant crown defoliation

The beech trees are even worse than the spruce, for only one in ten remains intact. Although fewer of these deciduous trees have been dying for more than ten years, up to 60 percent of them have been showing Kronenverlichtung, i.e., beech trees, are missing 25 percent or more of their average leaf mass. In 2020, more than half of all trees were in such poor condition.

What about the oak tree, the symbol of the German love of freedom, pride, power, and strength? It was balm to the Teutonic soul that the condition of the oak trees improved somewhat last year. The Forest Condition Survey Report notes, "The oak is thus showing the first signs of regeneration but remains at a high level of damage."

**

Tests für Freiburg

 According to our Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, corona quick tests shall be freely available in Germany at the beginning of March. They will be performed by family doctors and qualified people, e.g., in pharmacies. Another of Spahn’s announcements concerns self-test kits for laypeople that will be simultaneously available in supermarkets, drugstores, and pharmacies.

In Freiburg, many entrepreneurs did not want to wait another two weeks and started a program.

Dear doers,

Last Sunday evening, some entrepreneurs from Freiburg and the VBU (Baden Business Association) decided to jointly launch the initiative.

Tests for Freiburg

Starting next week, 1000 quick tests will be made available to educators, teachers, and senior citizens free of charge and financed by donations.

 
With this initiative, we want to shake up the ponderous government and administration to - finally - actively take up the vital testing topic. The more testing is done, the more infection chains can be broken.

The voluntary initiative is funded by donations and sponsors.

The president of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft, Toni Schlegel, is one of the doers. He offered the test premises at his Hotel Rappen on Münsterplatz.

Corona quick tests are touted as an effective tool to fight the virus. Infected people are detected and will go into quarantine. The positive result is reported to the local Gesundheitsamt (health authorities), which will subsequently start the tracing, thus breaking the chain of infection.

I have my doubts regarding the self-tests bought and performed by laypeople. How many false-negative results will there be, and how safe does the tested person feel after a negative test?

A negative test is nothing else than a snapshot of the present personal COVID situation. It should never lull the person into a sense of security, leading to disregarding the AHAL rules.

If a positive self-test results, will the person inform the health authorities and voluntarily undergo a ten-day quarantine? I doubt it.

*

Gender Madness

While politically correct people struggle with the natural and grammatical gender of nouns (NG and GG) in German-speaking countries, gender developments are becoming insane in the UK.

Like Latin, as you may know, German has three grammatical genders, much to foreign learners' chagrin. Simple sets like cutlery come in three GGs, i.e., der Löffel, male (the spoon), die Gabel female (the fork), and das Messer neuter (the knife).

Already Mark Twain complained: To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female -- tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it -- for in Germany all the women, either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.

Then Twain drives the difference between GG and NG ad absurdum in a conversation about die Steckrübe (the turnip) and das Mädchen* (the girl):
*All words in German ending on the diminutives -chen or -lein are neuter.

Gretchen: Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
Wilhelm: She has gone to the kitchen.
Gretchen: Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?
Wilhelm: It has gone to the opera.

During my time at the university, we were Studenten (students), and it was understood that the word comprised both male and female students. The problem arose because die Studenten is the plural form of der Student. So feminists argue that female students are not included in the "male" plural form.

Well, you could use the female form Studentin and address a crowd of students as Liebe Studenten, liebe Studentinnen, but never say Liebe Studenten. The German federal justice ministry now emphasizes that all state bodies should stick to "gender-neutral" formulations in their paperwork.

In the case of Studenten, a dreadful form based on the present participle Liebe Studierende (Dear those that study) is officially used as "gender-neutral" throughout. The American AYF-Studierenden in Freiburg got a special treat. They are affectionately called Studies.

In my days at the University of Tübingen in 1955, we frequently had our lunches not at the student's canteen but at the Schlatterhaus on Österberg. The Evangelische Studentengemeinde (Lutheran Students' Community) ran the Haus. It not only had better food but many female students. Girls visiting the community house did not mind being called Studenten.

How different the situation is today. In Freiburg, the Lutheran Regional Church proudly presents the word monster Evangelische Studierenden-Gemeinde.

There are other proposals to remedy female discrimination in "male" words. Red Baron already reported that the gender starlet forms the non-discriminating form of Student*innen comprising all students. Other suggestions are the Binnen-I (within-I), i.e., StudentInnen, or the gender gap, which is written as Student_innen.

In the meantime, radical feminists supported by the University of Leipzig simply demand the total Frauisierung (womanizing) of the language, i.e., the female form Studentinnen is used throughout, making male Studenten look bad. Others argue that Studentinnen will comprise transgender people?

Proposed gender-appropriate traffic signs of crosswalks in Hamburg (©Elbvertiefung)

The German word for the crosswalk is Fußgängerüberweg. This already heavy construct becomes a gender-appropriate monster: Weg für die Zu-Fuß-Gehenden (path for those who go on foot).

Spoken language is important, too. In fact, anchor "people" on German television have started 

replacing die Demonstrierenden in Myanmar with die Demonstrant'innen, marking a hiatus behind the "t." What a mess!

This could have been avoided had Luther used the low German dialects when translating the Bible from Greek. Lower German knows only one article, "de" instead of "der, die, das." So, we Germans call anglophone speakers lucky. With their "the," they avoid any gender madness. Really?

The Guardian recently reported that the Brighton and Sussex University Hospital (BSUH) is the first in the UK to formally implement a gender-inclusive language policy for its maternity services department — now known as "perinatal services."

BSUH follows in their approach the British Medical Association, which said pregnant women should not be called "expectant mothers" but "pregnant people" as it could offend intersex and transgender men.

The BSUH Staff have been told to avoid using the word "mothers" on their own. They have been given a list of alternative terms to use when addressing patients, including "mothers or birthing parents," "breast/chestfeeding," and "maternal and parental."

Instead of saying "breastmilk," they can choose from "human milk," "breast/chest milk," or "milk from the feeding mother or parent."

Don't they have any other worries?

*

Out of Time?

Lately, Red Baron learned that wokeness is the powerful way of watching for political correctness.

In the States, one recent example of wokeness is the renaming of schools in San Francisco. Among those were the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln High Schools. Both men were "engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings. "

The trend to look into the sexism and racism of famous people long gone is not only en vogue in the States. Are those current efforts on dead people not falling out of time?

We in Freiburg slave (?) away on Karl von Rotteck, Professor at the University; he was, as Wikipedia knows, a political activist, historian, politician, and political scientist. He was a prominent advocate of freedom of the press and the abolition of compulsory labor.

Still, in 1821 as a deputy in Baden's state parliament, he was the spokesman for complete Jewish emancipation in the State of Baden under well-defined conditions only, i.e., the postponement of the Sabbath, the abolition of the dietary laws, the renunciation of Hebrew, and the purification of the Talmud from "anti-state tendencies." In other words: Jews shall earn their civil rights through increased integration.

And in Rotteck's Freiburg constituency, the resistance against the settling of Jews was fierce. For fear of competition, the merchants wanted to retain the prohibition of Jews, a ban that had existed since 1424, and the city council had once more confirmed in 1809. A petition addressed to the Baden parliament stated, "Wir werden zum Judennest (We shall become a Jewish nest.”)

In 2010, given the antisemitism of its famous citizen, Freiburg's municipal council abolished the Karl-von-Rotteck-Medal. Still, it kept as a compromise the name of the city's main boulevard, Karl-von-Rotteck-Ring. The medal had been attributed as a distinction to people who had rendered outstanding service to Freiburg.

Charles Darwin's sexism has been known for long but has now been brought back to light.

 

The essay in the New York Times was written by Michael Sims. Immediately Darwins's unconditional admirer Jerry Coyne went to the barricades. How dare you knock my icon off its pedestal? Jerry writes in his impeccable English.

You could take nearly any male Briton from the mid-19th century and, if you could suss out his views, discover that he was a sexist and a racist. That makes Darwin simply one of many. But it's good clickbait to indict Darwin because he's the most famous scientist of his time—perhaps of any time. And it's no surprise that the New York Times, mired as it is in identity politics and ideological purity, decided it needed the clicks of calling out Darwin for sexism.

But let me quote from Sims's essay.

Despite many respectful and admiring interactions with female writers and thinkers, as well as with his intelligent and well-read sisters, wife, cousins, and colleagues' wives, Darwin comprehensively dismissed women's intellectual potential. "The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes, "he stated in "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex "(1871), "is shewn by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman — whether requiring deep thought, reason or imagination or merely the use of the senses and hands. "

Later in 1881, Darwin confirmed, "I certainly think that women though generally superior to men [in] moral qualities are inferior intellectually."

He conceded that there was "some reason to believe that aboriginally (& to the present day in the case of Savages)" men and women demonstrated comparable intelligence, thus implying the possibility of regaining such equality in the modern world. "But to do this, as I believe," he added, "women must become as regular 'bread-winners as are men; & we may suspect that the early education of our children, not to mention the happiness of our homes, would in this case greatly suffer."

What would have been Darwin's reactions to the multitasking emancipated superwomen of today? Excelling in their professions, they educate their children, look after the households, and keep their men's* backs free.

*Nowadays, "husbands" are a sub-category

*

Trumpet Language

Trompetensprache is a New German word that one of my favorite columnists, Florian Harms, propagated. According to him, this language is used if something uncommonly changes our everyday life profoundly.

Yesterday, Monday, was a highlight of the trumpet language. The onset of winter was hyped up as a "snow catastrophe," having the whole of Germany "firmly in its grip."

The whole of Germany? Looking from my balcony into our small park.

Germany was again divided but not into East and West. 

This time the weather cut the country into North and South. A cold front from the Pole met with warm dust from the Sahara over Germany, causing lots of precipitation as freezing rain or snow.

Looking like nickel-and-dime stuff
to my blizzard-accustomed friends in New York and Wisconsin

The trumpet sounded on. "Cities sank deeply into the snow," mutated in some places even to the "blood snow." The "cold claws" were invented, and the "crisp-cold winter."

There was "chaos on the highways," "chaos in train traffic," and possibly also chaos in the heads of some reporters when they headlined "Snow! Snow! Snow!" followed by a disappointing trumpeting "... so far only fender benders and car body damage".

Given the media excitement surrounding the weather, one might think we were the first bipeds to have a few flakes fall on our heads. Wasn't there such a thing as snow ten, twenty, or thirty years ago? As one experienced journalist said, "We should report in detail on the weather situation, but keep our language moderate. "

"Grandpa, were there past weather disasters with snow and ice and icy roads? "
 "We called it winter. "©Mario Lars

Note: A trumpet is most beautiful when it falls silent.

*

Postal Ballots

Postal ballots = fraud was Donald Trump‘s mantra before, during, and after the recent presidential elections in the States.

In Germany, voting by mail was an exception in the good old days. You had to have convincing arguments, e.g., being absent from your place of voting on Election Day. Sundays were chosen as voting days to ensure a high turnout at the polls because people having travel jobs make it a point to be home for the weekend.

On the other hand, left-leaning parties argued that Catholics had chosen Sunday as Election Day during the Weimar Republic so that the pastor had the last chance to remind his sheep from the pulpit to vote for the Catholic party (Zentrumspartei) when leaving the mess for the polling station.

In Germany, absentee ballots have dramatically increased over the years. Today every citizen has the right to choose freely between going to the polls or voting by mail. During the pandemic, a record number of postal ballots is expected.

Here is the point. In 2021, Germany faces a super-election year.

March 14, state elections in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate.

June 6, a state election in Saxony-Anhalt

September 26, Super Sunday, state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Berlin, Thuringia, and the Federal election of the Bundestag (House of Representatives).

On March 14, Red Baron is called upon to vote in Baden-Württemberg’s state election.
I’ll walk to my polling station at the Walter-Eucken-Gymnasium (a high school and not a sports hall) and will place my ballot into the box.

*

Privileged?

As you know, Red Baron has been vaccinated against Covid-19. Due to his age, he belongs to the 1% of Germans inoculated up to now. Although in its vaccination rate Germany is behind many other countries, e.g., the United States, recently a discussion picked up speed about privileges for vaccinated people compared to nonvaccinated citizens.

The mere one percent vaccination coverage is an obvious argument that discussions about privileges are premature. However, this attitude is offending the German trait to solve all problems fundamentally.

Enter the German Ethics Council, an independent body of the medical, church, political, and philosophical sages advising the Federal Government in questions of abortion, active euthanasia, etc.

Now the Ethics Council had to decide whether the government should (and perhaps even must) give more freedom to vaccinated than nonvaccinated citizens.

The Council advised against lifting contact restrictions and other anti-corona measures for vaccinated persons. It cited two arguments in particular:

- up to now, no proof that vaccinated people can no longer carry the virus exists and

- as long as every citizen has not got the opportunity to be vaccinated, these "privileges are likely to be perceived as unfair."

Indeed, a majority of 68% of Germans oppose lifting Corona restrictions on vaccinated people.

Professor Alena Buyx at the Bundespressekonferenz (Federal Press Conference) ©dpa

When asked whether one should speak of "privileges," the Ethics Council's chairwoman, Professor Alena Buyx, said, "I would be happy if people stopped using the term. The word "privilege" is imprecise and causes an unnecessary aggravation of the public debate."

Chancellor Angela Merkel added, "Privileges in this context are nothing else than fundamental rights that everyone has in non-Corona times." Left-wing leader Katja Kipping said, "If you introduce two forms of citizen status via the detour of vaccination, fundamental rights become privileges."

The Ethics Council emphasized:  A distinction must be made between government measures and private companies requirements. If, after a general reopening of concert halls, an organizer decides to allow only vaccinated people to enter, this would be possible.

Let us put it the other way, freedom will return when everyone has the chance to be immunized as promised by our chancellor by the end of summer, i.e., September 21.

When herd immunity is not reached by that date, it is quite possible that the debate will turn into the complete opposite. If today's discussion is about fewer restrictions for vaccinated people, it could be about: More restrictions for people who don't want to be vaccinated.

Is this a mandatory vaccination coming through the back door?

*