Madison Here We Come

What a chance. Red Baron will finally meet his readers and friends in Freiburg's sister city Madison. Nothing gonna stop me now.

©John Quinlan, Madison

It all started in 2020 when following the area Salomon-Soglin the "new" mayors of Freiburg and Madison wanted to get to know each other.

 
This was a chance for Red Baron and his co-members of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft (FMG) to see their American friends again. We last visited them in 2013 on the occasion of celebrating 25 years of partnership between Freiburg and Madison.

Since Red Baron's passport had expired, he applied for a new one, but then Corona blew it all, and the new document was stowed away, staying virginal.

Nevertheless, Mayors Satja Rhodes-Conway and Martin Horn met last July … on Zoom, but nothing replaces the personal touch.

The official Freiburg Delegation of seven persons headed by Martin Horn will be in Madison from September 1 to 3. As in the past, FMG members of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft, guided by our president Toni Schlegel take the opportunity to visit our partner city during the same period. As chance would have it, our FMG group comprises seven people too.

The program our American friends have prepared is rich. We will first meet at the Madison Municipal Building on the morning of September 1.

Next in the afternoon will be the presentation of the electrical fire truck that Satja Rhodes-Conway mentioned during the Zoom conference. Martin Horn complemented the information with Freiburg's hydrogen fuel cell-driven garbage trucks. A Meet & Greet party will start late afternoon and last into the evening.

The next day, the State Capitol and the Olbrich Botanical Gardens are on the menu, followed by a presentation on resilience and stormwater management, an important topic these days. Remember, the Bohrerdamm project protecting Freiburg against the flood of the century was highly controversial.

On Saturday morning, the Delegation will visit the Farmers Market on Capitol Square before parting in the afternoon for Chicago, while members of the FMG group will leave in various directions.

*

Kartoffeln

in Germany used to be a Sättigungsbeilage (staple food), while potatoes in other civilized countries are a vegetable.

©Stephen Colbert

Recently on his Late Show, Stephen Colbert made jokes about the Russian way of life, always ending with the words "is potato" as a running gag.

©Stephen Colbert

Even Lenin was quoted ...

©Stephen Colbert

... and the audience went along enthusiastically with people presenting their t-shirts.

Stephen is mistaken for the word for potato in Russian is картофель, a German loanword. Kartoffel derives from tartufolo, the Italian word for truffle, which in turn is derived from the Latin terrae tuber (earth tuber).

On the other hand, the word "potato" comes from the Haitian word "batata," which is their name for a sweet potato. This later came to Spanish as "patata" and eventually into English as "potato." Well, let's not Quayle on, adding a little to the end there.

Germans love their Kartoffeln such that we eat 57 kg per capita and year. Other names for the tubers are common: Grumbeeren (ground berries), Erdäpfel (cf. French pommes de terre), Tüffel (verbalization of truffles), and Bodabirras (ground peers).

Both Kartoffel and potato are used in pejorative ways (cf. couch potato). The Brothers Grimm already wrote in their German Dictionary, “die frucht, neben dem getraide jetzt heimisch wie keine andere, dient sprachlich zu mancherlei scherz" wie kartoffelgesicht oder kartoffelnase ("The fruit, besides the grain now native as no other, serves linguistically to many a joke" such as potato face or potato nose).

These days Germans are regarded as Kartoffeln* possibly because of our numerous Turkish fellow citizens. "Alman" is the Turkish word for German and potato.
*When you think that krauts is the correct designation for Germans, you are wrong, for the home of the real and best sauerkraut is the French Alsace serving la Choucroute Royale.

Thinking of the French named frogs, the Italians called spaghetti, and the Turks referred to as Kümmeltürke (caraway Turk), aren't we Germans not spoiled with Kartoffel as a swear word?

*

Age Discrimination

Sybille Berg, a former German, now Swiss author, lives in Zürich as a writer. She is one of the most frequently performed playwrights in the German-speaking world. Since 2011 Sybille has regularly written articles for DER SPIEGEL.

@smartboy10/Getty Images

Her recent essay deals with age discrimination, i.e., about a gray mass that almost fills younger people with disgust. Is it so because no one still in Lohn und Brot (in wage and bread) likes to think of a time when he/she will belong to the same category of people and face the unreasonableness of his/her mortality?

Sybille claims that only those who can perform, multiply, and be active have value in our society and that old age is a blind spot in the increasingly sharper debate on equity and participation.

When people are old, they walk more slowly, hear worse, and are often entirely pushed out of social life. They hinder the fast pace, are Nazis, can't install an app, and have ruined the planet.

Wait a moment, Sybille, you lump together all those being of "old age?"

Indeed, Red Baron walks more slowly, but I am not a Nazi. I work with computers and sometimes have problems installing programs like everybody else. And yes, I ruined and am still ruining the planet simply due to my sheer presence.

You must invest actively in social life not to be pushed out of it. Look at those many aged benefactors who help care for the more elderly, are  Tagesmütter/väter (childminders) or work at Tafelläden (food banks). Without all the mostly benevolent helpers, our society would collapse.

One of Goethe's Maxims states, "Whoever strives, we can redeem." Red Baron remains active socially in particular since he lives as a widower.
*

Faith and Science

The official announcement read:

Faith and Science: A Journey Into God's Mystical Love

Reading and Talk with Robert J. Hesse, Ph.D., Galveston-Houston, Texas.

Faith and science - an interaction that can seem paradoxical and polarizing from a secular perspective. Robert Hesse is an ordained permanent Catholic deacon who serves in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and is the president of the nationwide Contemplative Network. He offers an informed and personal approach in his nonfiction book, Faith and Science: A Journey into God's Mystical Love. Hesse himself earned a doctorate in physical chemistry and worked as a management consultant before embarking on his spiritual quest and has been working with interfaith people ever since. In cooperation with Verlag Herder GmbH, Hesse will present his nonfiction book in conversation with publisher Manuel Herder on Friday, August 12 at 11 a.m. at Verlag Herder GmbH, Bibliothek, Hermann-Herder-Strasse 4.

The event will be in English.

Religion and Science is one of Red Baron's reoccurring topics (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2022). Will Deacon Robert shed new light on the subject?

The place, the library of the Herder Publisher, packed with religious books, was chosen with care.

Here are some snippets of Robert Hesse's talk that gave me some aha experience. I added some keywords as my reminder.

Robert started by saying that men/women call exceptions from science a miracle, and continued, yes, the world itself is a miracle; God manifests himself in his creation (Keyword: Creationists?).

In Genesis 1:26, God said, Let us make man in our image, but Robert stressed that this is not reciprocal: We develop an image of God, but there is no image. (Keywords: Feuerbach's human projection, Islam's banning of Allah's image, Jewish prohibition of pronouncing Jawe's name).

Man is trapped in the universe. We live on the border between earthly and eternal life, where there is no time and space. (Keyword: Before the Big Bang, there was no time and space).

God is universal consciousness. He talks within our unconsciousness that filters through to our consciousness. (Keyword: Descartes, Cogito ergo sum). Mysticism gives a little taste of Him (Keywords: Plato's allegory of the cave, Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians, 13-12, Hildegard von Bingen).

Can free will exist in a quantum world? Indeed, a quotation from Einstein deepens his conviction that God doesn't throw dice: "Every scientist becomes convinced that nature's laws manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men. Behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force is my religion. To that extent, I am, in point of fact, religious."

Einstein's faith rooted in Spinoza's ideas excludes a personal God. So I asked Robert in the following discussion to speak about the discrepancy between Einstein's and the Christian God we even shall call Father.

Robert did not enter into the debate but said this was rather personal and recommended I should read his book.

Indeed, I first bought his book and will study it with an emphasis on my keywords. Stay tuned for a future blog.
*

Hosanna

Styrofoam model of the Hosanna in the bell exhibition at the Meckel Halle

The Hosanna bell in Freiburg's Minster church is the oldest Angelus bell in Germany.

The inscription on the hem starts with O King of Glory, come with peace

and continues When I piously sound, hasten to the people's aid, Mary.

In the year of our Lord 1258, on July 18, an unknown bell founder from the Basel area cast the bell during the time of the Zähringer Duke Konrad I. The Hosanna weighs 3.29 tons, its diameter is 1.61 meters, and its tone is E-flat.

It rings every Thursday evening to commemorate Christ's agony on the Mount of Olives. This goes back to a foundation letter of Johann Heinrich Föst from 1635. Following an endowment by Baroness Maria Magdalena von Flachsland, widow of Field Marshal Franz von Mercy, in 1665, it also sounds every Friday at 11 a.m. to commemorate the suffering and death at the Battle of Freiburg in 1644. Finally, it rings on the evening of November 27 in memory of Freiburg blackest day, the bombing in 1944.

Fritz Geiges’ artist’s view

Since 1301 at the latest, the Hosanna, as well as a sermon and a prayer bell, have hung in the "nüwen turne" (new tower). Der schönste Turm auf Erden (the most beautiful steeple on earth) was built around the belfry made from fir wood, which forms a kind of tower within the tower. The belfry's oldest beams of fir wood date from 1290/91. It is a masterpiece of medieval carpentry and has been preserved until today.

Commemorating the Hosanna in an exhibition
and announcing a free bell concert on Münsterplatz

Especially in case of danger, the Hosanna was rung. So in the Thirty Years' War, when the Swedes conquered Freiburg in 1632. The enemy wanted to collect the bell and levied a high ransom of 500 riksdaler - the equivalent of two houses. To raise the money, valuable chalices from the Minster treasury were melted down. This proves the importance Hosanna had for the people of Freiburg.

A few decades later, during the French occupation, even the city treasury had to be emptied to save the bell.

In 1821, the Archbishopric of Freiburg was founded, and the Minster rose from a parish church to a cathedral. A new festive bell was ordered from the Rosenlächer bell foundry in Constance in 1843. The Hosanna was allowed to stay, although its E-flat no longer fitted into the new harmony. Freiburg's voice could only appear as a soloist.

The two world wars brought Hosanna and its younger sisters into the greatest danger.

Donation of bells (Glockenspende) in 1917
on a transport cart on the porch of the Minster church (©Stadtarchiv)

In 1917 the delivery of non-ferrous metal for war purposes was imminent. It became emptier in the tower. But Hosanna was allowed to stay.

Bell cemetery in Hamburg harbor 1944 (©Bundesarchiv)

During the Second World War, things got tight again, but the Hosanna was once again exempt from delivery. It also survived the air raid on Freiburg on November 27, 1944.

In 1959, Archbishop Hermann Schäufele, then new in office, and his dyed-in-the-wool conservative vicar general Ernst Föhr ordered that new bells be cast for the cathedral because the ringing was felt to be too small for a cathedral tower.

Cathedral priest Otto Michael Schmitt and the foundation board of the cathedral parish almost had a stroke. A "new ostentatious ringing," as Der Spiegel wrote at the time, was inappropriate to them.

Schmitt didn't take up a collection for new bells; luckily, the Heidelberg bell founder Friedrich Wilhelm Schilling refused to melt down the Hosanna. He instead wanted to return the order for the new bells.

So the Hosanna was safe but remained a soloist because it clashed in tune with the other bells. This was later changed when 15 new bells were cast for the west tower. Those responsible in the diocese moved away from chordal towards more melodic sounds. Still, the Hosanna, now the third largest bell, continued to be rung only individually because of space limitations within the belfry.

A look into the new, extended belfry (©Axel Kilian).
Note the new clappers made from stainless steel
 that were installed in December 2016.

For Hosanna's 750th birthday in 2008, the bell tower was extended by one floor, which gave her more space. Since then, it can be rung together with the other bells.

This led to the idea of a bell festival for Freiburg's 900th anniversary in 2020. Corona blew it all. On September 16 of this year, a bell concert will finally take place on Minster square.

*

Urea

The German word for urea is Harnstoff, a metabolic product released with the urine (Harn) when you pee. It makes an excellent fertilizer for urea has the highest nitrogen content with 46% of all conventional nitrogen fertilizers. Ammonium nitrate, also often used, has a nitrogen content of only 35%.

Gülleausbringung (spreading liquid manure) ©Westdeutsche Zeitung

Not only in Germany, farmers spread the metabolic product of their livestock as Gülle (liquid manure) on their fields. The motorist's comment passing, "It smells of agriculture."

Farmers indeed tend to put too much nitrogen fertilizer on their fields following the principle viel hilft viel (much helps much). It has come so far that the EU ostracizes Germany, i.e., its farmers, for polluting the groundwater.

An article in Scientific American titled, "Eating Too Much Protein Makes Pee a Problem Pollutant in the U.S." found my attention. The author Sasha Warren subtitled, "Protein-packed diets add excess nitrogen to the environment through urine, rivaling pollution from agricultural fertilizers."

Red Baron has been on medical observation for years. On my doctor's recommendation, I now undergo a medical checkup twice a year, including a full haemogram. The results show that my sugar levels approach a diabetic situation drawing comments from my doctor. These made me stop my consumption of sweets, including sugared drinks.

Another observation is that since 2015 the urea concentration in my blood has started to rise. The value should range between 10 to 45 mg/dl, but during recent years settled around 60. These results pass without my doctor's comment.

Red Baron cut down on carbohydrates and eats meat only when having lunch or dinner with friends. 

Found on Facebook

I don't buy any wurst anymore, remembering Bismarck's dictum. Am I consuming too much protein?

Indeed the missing meat is more than compensated by my consumption of yogurt and cheese. Lately, I discovered tasty fat-reduced chips made from lentils, i.e., vegetable protein.

Protein is muscle food, and although I try hard to keep my muscular mass constant at Kieser Training, all muscles are shrinking with age. So they can no longer handle my ample protein supply that flushes down the toilet in the form of urea instead.

Mind you. Red Baron will not change his eating habits. He rather likes to overprovision his shrinking muscles than have them undersupplied.
*