The Pension Taradiddle

The German national old age statuary pension (Gesetzliche Rentenversicherung) is in the news from time to time. Germany's tabloid Bild titled "Horrible Ruin of the Pension System."

The statuary pension dates back to the Second Reich and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. During the industrial revolution, workers streamed into the big cities, lived in cramped rental housing, led a hand-to-mouth existence, and, suffering their social standing, massively joined the Social Democrats. In 1878 Bismarck's Law against efforts of the Social Democrats that are dangerous to the public outlawed the party. However, workers continued their agitation and successfully stood for elections as private candidates.

Bismarck, the Realpolitiker (political realist), saw that social improvements for the working proletariat were necessary to take the wind out of the socialists' sails. He convinced Kaiser Wilhelm to send an Imperial Message to the Reichstag (parliament) on November 17, 1881: The legislature shall pass laws covering the workers financially in medical treatment cases, workplace accidents, invalidity, and old age.

The system financed by contributions from employers and employees during their working life, i.e., up to 65 years (nowadays 67), survived two world wars, two inflations, and numerous financial crises.

Nobi gluing posters (©dpa)

When in the 1980s, economists cast doubts about the future of the Rentenversicherung, the then-popular Minister for Social Affairs Norbert Blüm (Nobi) himself put up posters: Eins ist sicher: Die Rente (One thing is safe: the pension.)

In the article Die wahre Rentenlüge (The absolute lie about the pension), Sven Böll takes on doomsday scenarios mainly spread by the Bild-Zeitung.

Naturally, a system that pays out more than 300 billion euros per year to more than 20 million pensioners has its faults. And the problems of the scheme will not become smaller given the foreseeable demographic development.

But what is true, too, is that the statutory pension has proven astonishingly robust over the past decades. The rate of contribution has remained remarkedly stable.

A lot has happened since Blüm's promise, e.g., following German reunification, many people in the former German Democratic Republic received, and some still receive, benefits from the Federal Republic's statutory pension insurance system, into which they never paid directly or only relatively briefly.

Pensions were paid out - regardless of whether unemployment rose (which was the case for a long time) or stock market prices fell (which happened several times).

The doomsday messages spread are always the same. We will all have to work much longer and pay much more into the statuary pension, yet that's nothing like enough. Everything is very, very, very terrible. This is the absolute pension lie.

Forecasts are known to be particularly difficult when they concern the future. Sometimes it helps to look back: Which part of the way have we already traveled? And what was predicted in the past for the present?

At the beginning of the 1960s, every pensioner still had six working contributors. That there are now only about two means that the system has already adapted to an enormous demographic development.

Will the contributions to finance the statuary pensions rise? Here too, pessimistic predictions from the early days of Angela Merkel's chancellorship brightened. Every year, the government publishes a pension insurance report. Not to frighten the voter, the data are always tuned positively than too negatively. In 2006, the government predicted a contribution rate of up to 20.7% for 2020. Even in their optimistic scenario, it should be 19.6%. It is actually at 18.6%.

The best way to avoid the depletion of the national pension fund is the acquisition of fresh contributions. The most important lesson learned from the surprisingly positive development is a booming labor market and a sound economic policy.

The number of workers subject to statuary contributions increased,
while the number of those privately insured
 for their pension, and thus exempt declined.
Note the dip in the Corona year 2020.

No expert foresaw the boom that Germany experienced until the outbreak of the Corona pandemic. The number of people subject to social security contributions rose to ever-new record levels. Through their compulsory contributions, they keep the country running. Their number increased from a good 26 million in 2005 to around 33.5 million in 2019.

The most promising way to stabilize pensions is to slow down the foreseeable decline in the number of working people, e.g., through higher labor force participation of women and more qualified immigration. The more consistently this policy is pursued, the less it will be necessary to tighten the other screws of the system, i.e., later pension start date, lower pension level, higher contribution rate, and more money from the federal budget.

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Loretta

Loretta – von Keuschheit und Begehren (©Thomas Kunz/BZ)

The talk of the town is a sculpture by Freiburg artist Thomas Rees* that he called: "Loretta - of chastity and desire."
*Thomas likes to transform trunks into sculptures.

©Thomas Rees

The motif of a four-meter-high carving erected at the entrance of Freiburg's Loretto bath is a naked nymph with long, blond hair, an exposed right breast, and a wasp waist. A discontented shepherd god Pan crouches at her feet.

Rees refers to a Greek myth in which love-crazed Pan corners Nymph Syrinx. Not at all willing, she transforms into a reed. Pan, however, keeps the upper hand, cuts down the reed into seven pieces, and carves his famous flute out of her.

Critics accuse Rees of sexism and a clichéd, sexualized depiction of the female body, while the artist sees "Loretta" as a symbol of self-determined women.

Remember my blog about the Damenbad Lollo, as visitors call Freiburg's unique bath reserved for women only? Its female visitors appreciate the Loretto bath as a male-free retreat where they are among themselves, showing themselves as they are protected from unwanted glances.

Under the impression of the continuing discussions, the association's executive committee of the friends of the bath offered its resignation last Wednesday.

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Annalena and the Ten Bans

We don't need any state religion (©INSM)

Annalena und die zehn Verbote is the latest attack by Germany's economic lobby against the Green chancellor hopeful Annalena Baerbock. But this attack wasn't necessary because the lady had already put her neck on the line beforehand.

The polls saw the Greens soaring in the past few weeks, two points ahead of the Christian Democrats. The state-carrying conservatives panicked. But then, Annalena started her self-destruction by not declaring to parliament the financial benefits she had previously received from her party. Finally, and on top of it, she had embellished her CV.

When on the political front, Annalena eventually dared a little honesty and clearly stated that the price of petrol would have to rise by 16 cents per liter to meet Germany's climate goals, indignation broke out. 

Higher petrol prices!

There are three holy cows in Germany you better not touch: a general speed limit on the autobahns, the Reinheitsgebot (purity law) for beer, and the gas(oline) price.

What a crash!

At the moment, the Greens are trying to pick up the pieces (of the Mosaic tablets, too?) at their party conference and glue them together.

Green bans won't lead us to the promised land (©INSM)

But the poster of the INSM (Initiative New Social Market Economy) drew wider circles. The Jewish community called the presentation of Annalena carrying the Mosaic tablets antisemitic.

The former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, tweeted, "The INSM would be well advised to leave the topic of religion, of which it obviously knows nothing, to others."

©INSM

So it was only a minor blow when the INSM caricatured the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, candidate for chancellor and present minister of finance, as "debt king" because of Germany's record debt resulting from the Corona crisis.

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Turenne

Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne was a promoted Marshal General of France. He died a hero's death 90 kilometers north of Freiburg at Sasbach in the Ortenau region on July 27, 1675. At the site where a cannonball hit him, the bishop of Strasbourg had dedicated a memorial stone in 1766. More monuments followed, and an obelisk was eventually erected in 1827. The site and its access road are German territory but belong to the French state. 

A three-face stone bearing inscriptions in Latin, French and German marks the place where Turenne died.

Turennius fell here on day July 27 the year 1675

Turenne was killed her

Turennius was killed here

 

At Sasbach, an obelisk was erected in Turenne's honor. Red Baron approached the monument taking the French Boulevard lined by poplar trees. 

It turned out that the granite needle is from 1945. Neither the Prussians, following their victory over France in 1871, nor the Germans during the First World War touched the Turenne Monument. But when France was defeated in 1940, the Nazis removed the obelisk from its site.

General de Gaulle personally cared that the monument was already back in place on October 5, 1945. He inaugurated the obelisk as a symbol of remembrance of the French marshal and the victory over Nazi Germany.

Going back in history, Turenne entered Freiburg's past in June 1644. The year before, on November 24, the general had suffered a crushing defeat of his Franco-Weimarian army in the Battle of Tuttlingen when Bavarian and imperial troops surprised the French in their winter quarters. 

 Of the original 16,000 men, 4000 fell, almost 7,000 went into captivity, and only 4500 escaped and made it over the Rhine, while the victorious Franz von Mercy had lost only 6 (!?) of his men. The booty included all the cannons, 560 horses, silverware, and the cash to pay the army for a month.

In the spring of 1644, in a case of forwarding defense, an Imperial-Bavarian army advanced into southwestern Germany to throw the French enemy out of Breisgau. It was led by the victor of Tuttlingen.

Awaiting the arrival of the Bavarian army, Obrist Kanoffski, the commander of the French-Swedish troops that occupied Freiburg, tried hard to make the city ready for defense with a garrison of only 1650 men.

On June 25, 1644, Franz von Mercy and his imperial armada were ante portas starting the siege.

Meanwhile, a newly formed Franco-Weimarian unit stayed entrenched within sight of the city near the village of Pfaffenweiler on the Batzenberg. This army, called de l'Allemagne, consisted of ten thousand men, half infantry and half cavalry. The troops were under the command of Turenne, who had been promoted to Maréchal de France by Cardinal Mazarin.

Although there were occasional skirmishes between the roaming Weimaraners and the besieging Bavarians, Turenne, commanding a mixture of soldiers still shocked by the previous year's defeat and of new, inexperienced men, preferred not to attack Mercy's numerically more significant troops. Apologetically, he wrote to Mazarin, "Il y a encore ici trop de gens qui se souviennent de la journée de Tuttlingen (There are still too many people here who remember the day of Tuttlingen)." Indeed, later during the Battle of Freiburg, Turenne's troops were only good for flank protection.

Turenne preferred to wait until the Duc d'Enghien stationed with his Armée de France in the region around Verdun had joined him. This decision turned out to be a strategic blunder because the besieged city of Freiburg surrendered to Mercy's Bavarians on July 29, 1644, before the Armée de France was in place.

With the duke's arrival, Turenne was reduced to second rang. As a superior, the young Duc d'Enghien assumed supreme command of the combined Franco-Weimar forces. In his impetuosity, he wanted to lead his tired and Turenne's inexperienced troops immediately into battle against Mercy's Bavarians.

The duke ignored Turenne's prudent advice to occupy all the approaches to the Black Forest. Dominating the flat country, the French could cut off every supply and compel the enemy army to surrender without a stroke of the sword by starvation. 

 In his desire to increase his glory, the duke engaged in an uphill battle on the flanks of the Lorettoberg. Without pause, the Bavarian artillery shot into the onrushing infantry. All French attacks collapsed in the murderous fire. 

 Enraged, Enghien threw his marshal's baton among his fighting men, and with the cry encore mille*, he drove fresh troops up the Lorettoberg. 

*Another 1000 

In his History of the Thirty Years War, Friedrich Schiller wrote, "The Duc d'Enghien had to retreat after he had slaughtered 6000 of his men in vain." The Bavarians lost about 1100 men, most of them wounded. 

 In a review of the Battle of Freiburg, we read, "Although the initial battle was very hard, on Lorettoberg the next day such a bloody encounter took place on both sides that even Johann von Werth, as well as almost all generals and soldiers trained and experienced in the war of recent times, confessed that they had never seen anything like this." Indeed, the Battle of Freiburg was one of the bloodiest of the Thirty Years' War. 

Following the Westphalian Peace Treaty, the Alsace became French except for the Decapolis, a league of ten imperial cities that kept sending their deputies to the Imperial Diet. At the Vienna court, they called those faraway places. "Our cities in Alsace."

This situation was intolerable for the French king, Louis XIV. Cardinal Mazarin wanted to impose the oath of allegiance to the French crown on those cities. After all, the French king expected money, soldiers, obedience, and respect. 

In 1670,  Louis XIV started to force one town after the other into his realm. Most cities gave in when the French army arrived; only a few resisted the French occupation openly.

An example is Türkheim, where Turenne inflicted a crushing defeat on an Imperial army led by the young and not yet Great Elector of Brandenburg, Fredrick William, on January 5, 1675.  This was according to Turenne's principle, "Tant qu'il y aurait un soldat Allemand en Alsace, il ne fallait pas qu'en France un seul homme de guerre restât en repos (As long as there is still a German soldier in Alsace, no man of war may stand at gunpoint in France)."

As for the nearby imperial city of Türkheim, the magistrates fled to Colmar, still under imperial rule, instead of entering into negotiations of surrender. Turenne overreacted to this insult, and his revenge was terrible. In the account of the citizens of Türkheim, it reads. "Things then turned cruel in this town. Turenne not only had Türkheim completely plundered and destroyed without protest, but all honest girls and women were raped and tortured to death. For 14 days, the French troops stole and killed, sparing neither children, women, nor the church."

In 1935, the city of Türkheim erected an obelisk to Turenne in front of its South Gate. On one side of the monument, the dedication reads, "Alsace to the French armies. "In the face of the political and later military threat from the other side of the Rhine in the 1930s, the French emphasized their national integrity.

 
At first sight, it is incomprehensible that the citizens, so battered in 1675, should dedicate a monument to Turenne, the great son of France. Bernard Wittmann, a chronicler Alsatian, writes, "Et que dire des monuments et des statues qui, outre leur rôle de marquage du territoire contribuent souvent à conforter la manipulation historique? Ainsi en est-il du monument de Turenne, le bourreau de Türkheim statufié par les descendants de ses victimes (What about monuments and statues which, in addition to their role of marking the territory, often contribute to reinforcing historical manipulation? This is the case with the Turenne monument, the butcher of Türkheim, immortalized by the descendants of his victims)."

The inscription on the front of the obelisk reads: A la gloire de Turenne également pleure des soldats et des peuples, i.e., not only the glory of Turenne is mentioned, but also the soldiers and people the marshal had on his conscience are commemorated.

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Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire

While in my English textbook, the queen went down to Tilbury to see her ships, Red Baron took the train to Geneva to see his grandchildren.

Although I still remember the Tilbury phrase from my school days, I had forgotten the context and browsed Wikipedia. In 1588 Queen Elizabeth I came ashore here to review her main army at the nearby village of West Tilbury. There she gave her famous speech on August 8.

On July 21, the Great Armada had been dispersed, but the threat of a Spanish invasion persisted. Despite the danger, Elizabeth refused to seek shelter and gave confidence to her troops, insisting that God instead was with the British Crown then with the Spanish.


Back to Geneva. We had planned a family dinner, so I had a few hours in the afternoon to stroll the city.

In 1968 the night before my CERN selection board, I stayed near the train station at Hotel Strasbourg, which was closed due to corona. So nostalgia got a minor setback when I booked the nearby Chrystal hotel.

On my walk to the lake, I passed Geneva's pompous post office building,

 

had a look at the English Church where they announced a Spring Fair for June 5,

and suddenly stood at a construction site with men at work blocking Geneva's bottleneck, the Pont du Montblanc,

Heights in meters of  nearby mountains

Distances in km to places in Switzerland and nearby France

Turning right, I took a photo of Geneva's geodetic point. Then I crossed the River Rhône by the Pont des Bergues reaching the Île Rousseau.

Here is the lone stroller's monument. The Reverie of the Solitary Walker is an unfinished book by Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written between 1776 and 1778.

Time for a rest with an Apérol Spritz at La Riviera du Rhône in memory of my late son, who had his anniversary yesterday. Note my walking stick in view.

On my way out, I had another view of the Pont du Montblanc.

On la rive gauche, I approached the Place de la Petite-Fusterie. The bistro that used to be there is now run by the Riverside Café.

Time to stay for an espresso and a "glace Mocca."

I still had two hours to kill. So why not visit Meyrin-Village, where I have lived for more than 20 years. A  streetcar that did not exist at my time took me to the center of the village.

The restaurant Pizza d'Oro on my left is still there but has a new look. When looking from the village height down the road to CERN, the once-green valley was no longer. Now enormous apartment blocks fill the meadows. 

Mournful in my soul, I returned to the village where the Cafe de la Place and the restaurant La Meyrinoise were closed. 

But the village had opened the square behind the church and installed a water fountain. There I found Gianni Caldognetto's place open to serving drinks.

Why not have my aperitif already here before giving my grandchildren a bad example. I ordered a coup de blanc of the local Chasselas. They call the wine Perlan in Geneva. 

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Friedrichsbau

©BZ

On Easter Sunday, April 16, 1911, the Lichtspiel-Theater zum Friedrichsbau opened on Kaiserstraße. Non-other than the well-known Jewish architect Arthur Levi had remodeled Frederic's building into a cinema. 

As for the names: Friedrich was Grand Duke of Baden, while Kaiserstraße referred to the son of Maria-Theresia, Emperor Joseph II.

©BZ

Sadly, the celebration for the 110th anniversary had to be postponed due to the Corona lockdown.

The Friedrichsbau cinema has survived two world wars, the hyperinflation of 1923, the world economic crisis of 1929, television, and the video recorder, making it the fifth or sixth oldest cinema in Germany still in existence.

In fact, according to cinema operator and Doctor of Islamic studies Ludwig Ammann, "There were only a few interruptions in the cinema's operations in the 110 years of existence. Apart from a few rebuilds, operations were interrupted because of the hyperinflation in 1922/23, and they were temporarily suspended during World War II - and now because of the Corona lockdown."

He confirms, "We will survive the pandemic too. Next year we'll celebrate appropriately - the 'schnapps number' 111 invites us to do so."

And he continues, "Nowhere in Germany is the cinema attendance per capita as high as in Freiburg. I assume we will have a skidmark of one to two years until everyone who wants to go to the cinema dares to return. Last summer it was also noticeable that the young people came back immediately because the particular film is the one you want to see in the cinema.”

Indeed, when the Lichtspiel-Theater zum Friedrichsbau celebrated its premiere, Freiburg was already considered a cinema city.

At that time, films were shown at five cinemas in Freiburg, i.e., the Zentral-Theater, the Welt-Kinematograph, the Apollo-Kinematograph, the Colosseum, and the American-Biograph*. Programs with short films were still standard; feature-length films were new at that time.

*None of these cinemas survived

©BZ

The Friedrichsbau cinema advertised a dozen films in the Freiburg newspaper. Among them was the film debut of the great diva Asta Nielsen: "Der Abgrund (The Abyss)" from 1910, a 38-minute silent drama already considered a feature-length film.

Red Baron is looking forward to the "schnapps" anniversary on April 19, 2022.

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