De-Risking

It's summertime, and journalists tend to fill the upcoming Sommerloch (summer slump) with attractive news of minor importance.

In Germany, a discussion flared up about the notion of de-risking. Who coined the term first?

Ursula and Olaf in Munich on February 18 (©Anna Szilagyi)

Was it the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, or German Chancellor Olaf Scholz? And being of German mother tongues, how dare they invent an English word?

Our chancellor used the word first at the end of last year, "And that is the policy we need to start now. Building resilience, diversifying in our economic and trade relations; de-risking, to put it this way," and he meant China.

Von der Leyen was second in her Mercator speech on March 30 when she stated, "Our relationship with China is neither black nor white. That's why Europe needs to focus on de-risking rather than decoupling."

So Scholz was first, but he did not invent "de-risking." For some time, the term has been used in the finance sector when banks or investors restrict or completely terminate business relationships to minimize the risk of default.

The US was a long-time advocate of decoupling its economy from China. However, three weeks after von der Leyen's Brussels speech, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen left the strict US line, "We don't want to decouple our economy from China's; a complete separation of our two economies would be disastrous for both countries."

Although a decoupling will be less disastrous for the US than for Europe, two weeks later, National Security adviser Jake Sullivan had another go, "The US is for 'de-risking,' not 'decoupling,'" and he emphasized, "as President von der Leyen recently put it."

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Kochland Germany?

When the other day, Red Baron read an article in Der Spiegel titled Die heimlichen Einflüsterer der FDP (The Secret Influencers of the Free Democrats), Charles Koch was frequently mentioned. His influence on the thinking of a hardcore in our liberal party was extensively discussed.

Multi-billionaire Charles Koch:
According to "Forbes" worth 57 billion dollars (©Axios On Hbo/imago)

I learned that Koch had revered the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises who stated in 1929, "There is no other choice than this: either to refrain from isolated interventions in the play of the market or to transfer the entire management of production and distribution to the authorities. Either capitalism or socialism; there is simply no middle ground."

These ideas are propagated by Frank Schäffler, deputy of the Free Democrats in the Bundestag (Germany's federal parliament), with reference to climate change. As you know, Germany is governed by a three-party coalition, the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Liberals. Conflicts are frequent between the two latter parties.

Publicly Schäffler last denied climate change in 2014, "I am a climate skeptic." He used vocabulary like "climate hysteria," "guilt complex," and "re-education attempts." Schäffler even strained a phrase that Koch's remote-controlled citizens' initiatives had used in 2009, "The polar bears are becoming more numerous."

Since then, Schäffler became more prudent, but in the traffic light coalition government's attempt to push the Gebäudeenergiegesetz* (GEG = building energy law) through parliament, he sowed uncertainty among the German citizens on June 12, saying, "Recently the chimney sweep was with me; if you want to install a heat pump, invest around 150,000 euros with all the trimmings."
*In principle, from January 1, 2024, every newly installed heating system (in new and existing buildings, residential and non-residential) must be powered by at least 65 percent renewable energy.

The formulation that climate policy is a "planned economy" gains respectability within the FDP up to its chairman, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

While Germany is slowly progressing and reducing CO₂ emissions in industry and heating, road transport fails to follow. Confronted with the unpleasant situation on national television, Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) blamed German drivers, "In 2022, citizens were not able to emit as little as prescribed." "After all," he continued, "it's not politics that drive around with many cars."

Red Baron never read such a radical rejection of the authority of a government by libertarian ideologues, "The government can do nothing to meet its targets on greenhouse gas emissions; the population must manage that on its own."

In this spirit, we still have no general speed limit on our autobahns that would reduce CO₂ emissions. Instead, the FDP demands "Freie Fahrt für freie Bürger (Free driving for free citizens)."

Red Baron is worried about days with temperatures of more than 30 C (86 F) already in June and increasing surface water shortages with groundwater levels falling.

Recent measurements show the unabated rise of CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere.

Daily surface temperature variations in the Atlantic over the years
and 2023 anomaly in red

And recently, scientists observed an unexplained rise in the surface water temperature of the Atlantic. The consequences are unclear, but warmer water evaporates more rapidly, giving rise to denser clouds and violent thunderstorms. They will discharge their water locally, leading to landslides and inundations, while most parts of the European continent lack rain.

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Stockholm II

On the one but last day of our Swedish trip, the group continued visiting Stockholm. We started in the morning with a guided tour of the city. 

We visited the grounds of the famous Stadshuset (town hall), from where we had a view of the Gamla Stan (Old City).

August Strindberg statue in the Stadshuset Park.

On our way to the Kungliga slotted (Royal Palace), a reminder of this year's jubilee.

    

The Royal Opera, the Riksdag (parliament), and the Palace (©Apple Maps)

Beautifully restored houses on Stortorget (Large Square)

Svenska Akademien and Nobel Museum on Stortorget

Cheekily, as always, I "trumpeted" that Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen had received the first Nobel Prize. Our guide Tina, on the other hand, said that Henry Dunant was the person. It turned out that both received a Nobel Prize in 1901, Röntgen for his discovery of a new type of rays and Dunant for founding the International Red Cross.

Flag of the Svenska kyrkan, a Lutheran denomination, the former state church of Sweden.

On the Palace grounds, the Storkyrkan (Big Church). On the right side, a monument for Olaus Petri.

Olavus Petri, originally Olof Pettersson, studied theology at Wittenberg and was an eyewitness of Luther's posting of his theses in 1517. He is regarded as Sweden's reformer. Petri was city secretary and preacher at St. Nicolai Church (Storkyrkan) in Stockholm.

Inside the Palace: the throne room.

In 1810, French Marshall Bernadotte was elected Swedish Crown Prince to the childless Wasa King Charles XIII. Charles XIV, John of Sweden, was handsome, but his wife, Désirée Clary, was even more beautiful.

In Sweden Désirée is known as Drottning Desideria

A polished marble backside was the desire of all photographers.

The Palace Cabinet Room is only used on special occasions.
According to British practice: the king "goes" to the Riksdag (parliament).

A special event: On October 18, 2022, following general elections, Sweden got a
new Government led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (sitting left to the king)
of the Moderate Party

Little Versailles. Hall of Mirrors in Stockholms slott.

In those many rooms we visited, Red Baron noticed all types of mechanical clocks, all precise within seconds.

Meet the charming Royal Clockmaker. She makes her rounds and "watches" that all the clocks are always on time. Still, she had the time for a little chat, or didn't we interview her?

        

Another reminder. From Wasa to Bernadotte 1523•1973•2023 Culture and service for the realm.

While others stretched their necks to watch the changing of the guards, Red Baron stood at the right corner at the right time and saw them marching by. The men still carry those Prussian spiked helmets; officers show theirs in polished brass. 

We had lunch at Sten Sture on Stortorget and, as a dessert, a little rain shower.

An Evening at the Royal Opera

Benjamin Britten's

LED technic makes those scenes possible (©Royal Opera Stockholm)

During the break, a view from the balcony of the opera house:
Riksdag building and the Stadshuset

Thank you. The applause is well deserved.

Red Baron loves the theater but is not an opera aficionado. Strangely enough, he not only listened to A Midsummer Night's Dream but lately to Wozzeck and the Threepenny Opera.

 
Suddenly I feel like the Hauptmann von Köpenick alias Wilhelm Voigt. After he was arrested and interrogated, the head of the commissioner's office slapped his thighs in glee at the shoemaker's audacity. He offered him a glass of red Bordeaux and asked, "How do you like it, Voigt?" Wilhelm answered in his Berlin dialect, "Daran könnt’ ick mir jewöhnen (I could get used to that).

On our way out of Sweden, Red Baron noted the following panel:      

Down to earth: AI on everybody‘s mind.

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Third Reich Berlin Walking Tour

After lunch on Saturday at Brasserie Colette with my grand-cousin, he drove me to Friedrichstraße station.

A walking tour through the history of Berlin during the Third Reich awaited me.

Whenever I'm in Berlin, I try to capture some of the history of the place. Much of it I have described in blogs and other posts. Last but not least, my History of Freiburg in Quotes is also a source of information about the events in the Third Reich, particularly in Berlin.

I was met by several younger people and our guide, Jörg. He spoke English with an American accent, so I asked, "Jörg is not an American name." He replied, "I am German but went to high school in the US." That's indeed the best way to learn to speak American English without an accent.

Our group walked toward the Reichstag, where Jörg gave a lengthy introduction to the history of the building. I wrote a picture report about that earlier. 

On June 9, 1881. Note Otto von Bismarck in a white uniform
watching the Kaiser swinging the little hammer.

By the way, we passed the Reichstag on the 142nd anniversary (plus one day) of laying the foundation stone by Kaiser Wilhelm I.

We continued to the Russian War Memorial on the Straße des 17. Juni (Street of June 17). On those grounds, 2000 Russian soldiers are buried who died Heroic Deaths during the storming of the Reichstag. Although it had burned out during the Reichstag fire and never served the Nazis as a meeting place, Stalin regarded the building as the symbol of National Socialism and ordered it to be taken as quickly as possible.

A Russian soldier raises the hammer and sickle flag on the ruins of the Reichstag building.

The photo is a fake; it was taken two days after the Fall of Berlin and colored even later.

Ironically, the Reichstag's last "German" defenders were men of the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS "Charlemagne" from Alsace.

We then walked past the Brandenburg Gate to the Holocaust Memorial.

I visited the Memorial on the way to a bike tour in 2005 during a stopover in Berlin.

The site was still new at that time, and the concrete slabs did not yet show any cracks.

Further, we went toward Wilhelmstraße and passed a parking lot. Here Jörg stopped and explained to us that at this spot in the courtyard of the Reichskanzlei (Reich Chancellery) near the entrance to the Führerbunker, SS men tried to burn Hitler's and his wife Eva Braun's bodies that they had previously doused with gasoline.

Führerbunker, Myth, and Historical Testimony (click to enlarge)

The burning did not work out entirely because of the continued fighting in the area. Hitler's unburned skull is said to be in Moscow as a trophy of victory.

We continued to the street corner Wilhelm-Leipziger Straße. In the Weimar Republic, the Reich Defense Ministry was located on Leipziger Straße 5.

The text reads: In 1933, the newly formed Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Reich Aviation Ministry), headed by Hermann Göring, moved into the building. Göring had the complex demolished in 1935, and a monumental new building designed by Ernst Sagebiel with over 2000 rooms was built on the site.

The giant Aviation Ministry (©Wikipedia)
on a welfare stamp 4+3 Pfennig Winterhilfswerk (winter relief) of 1936 

The Aviation Ministry was actively involved in the plans for a "Pan-German Reich," in waging the war and looting and murdering entire population groups.

Nowadays: Undestroyed Nazi architecture as a historical film set.
Note the German and European flags in front (©telenickkel/Wikipedia)

The giant building remained substantially undamaged in the last war. Jörg had his own theory. The Allies spared the Reich Air Ministry to preserve the incompetent people working there. In fact, the Luftwaffe lost the Battle of Britain and was powerless against the Allied bomber waves.

After the war, because of the size of the building, several ministries in the GDR used it as their duty station. It became known as the House of Ministries.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Federal Ministry of Finance moved into the building, and boy, did they need all the space.

The street corner shown on the stamp was made into a memorial for the people's uprising of June 17, 1953, and named Platz des Volksaufstandes von 1953.

70 years ago, about a million people demonstrated throughout the GDR against higher labor standards, but also against the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands = Socialist Unity Party of [East] Germany) and for free elections and more prosperity. One of the protesters' slogans was: "Spitzbart, Bauch und Brille sind nicht des Volkes Wille (Goatee, belly, and glasses are not the will of the people)" referring to Party Leader Walter Ulbricht.

In Berlin on June 17, 1953, near the ruins of the Brandenburg Gate (©dpa)

The Soviet occupation forces and the People's Police put down the protests, some of them in a bloody manner.

Being there on June 10, our group missed the 70th anniversary of the People's Uprising by seven days.

On June 17, 1953, from a safe distance and the safety of the American sector, protesters and onlookers are watching the action outside the House of Ministries on the corner of Wilhelmstraße and Niederkirchnerstraße. They stand on the debris of the Gestapo (Secret Government Police) headquarters. They were destroyed during the war and later wholly demolished. However, some former torture cells in the basement were opened, made accessible, and now serve as a memorial.

Here our guide Jörg abruptly stopped the tour, for we had way overrun the 90 minutes. Red Baron learned quite a lot.

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Humboldt Forum

Wikipedia knows: The Humboldt Forum is a museum dedicated to human history, art, and culture, located in the Berlin Palace on the Museum Island in the historic center of Berlin. It is in honor of the Prussian scholars Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt.

Berlin Castle and the Monument of the Great Elector around 1900

The Berlin City Palace (Berliner Stadtschloss), formally the Royal Palace, was the principal residence of the House of Hohenzollern from 1443 to 1918. Expanded by order of King Frederick I of Prussia according to plans by Andreas Schlüter from 1689 to 1713, it was thereafter considered a major work of Prussian Baroque architecture.

Palace of the Republic, popularly derisively called Erichs Lampenladen
(Erich's Lamp Shop). Erich Honecker was an East German leader.

The Stadtschloss was damaged during Allied bombings and the Battle of Berlin in World War II and was demolished by the East German authorities in 1950. In the 1970s, it became the location of the modernist East German Palace of the Republic (the parliament building of East Germany).

After German reunification and several years of debate and discussion, particularly regarding the fraught historical legacy of both buildings, the Palace of the Republic was demolished in 2009. The reconstruction of the Berlin Palace started in 2013 and lasted until 2020.


Whenever Red Baron was in Berlin, he observed the building progress at the Humboldt Forum. The "museum" is now finished, and nearly all, mostly ethnological, exhibitions have moved in. So I decided to spend my birthday at the Forum.

From my hotel near the Hauptbahnhof, I took the new subway number five that runs below Unter den Linden to Alexanderplatz. Stepping off the train at Museumsinsel,  you have a surprise.

The barrel vault of the station presents a starry sky, a homage to Schinkel's stage design for the opera The Magic Flute in 1816.

View of the Altes Museum and the Berliner Dom

The Humboldt Forum is the natural extension of a chain of museums flanked by the Berlin Cathedral on the right.

A bronze model of the Humboldt Forum clearly shows how the Stadtschloss rose again from scratch.

The entrance to the Forum, the side portal 3, faces the left arm of the Spree River. The original facade was meticulously reconstructed.

On the left side of the portal, a plaque and a relief commemorate the first king in (!) Prussia, Frederick I. Architect Andreas Schlüter presents the model of the new palace to the king. In the background, master builder Johann Friedrich Eosander explains the plan of the palace extension to Queen Sophie Charlotte. The Latin inscription reads, "Frederick I King of Prussia, Elector of Brandenburg 1688-1713. I will conduct my royal office in such a way that I know it is a public matter and not my private affair."

On the right side, it is not Frederick the Great who is commemorated, but Elector Frederick II of Brandenburg at laying the foundation stone for the first castle in 1443. The accompanying inscription in Low German reads, "It is well known to everyone that we have never insisted on strife or war throughout our lives and still today desire nothing but my honor and right."

In the morning, I booked an architectural tour, "All a facade?" in English because all guided tours in German were overbooked. So we were only nine people, and our guide took it friendly and easy.

Above is the original facade of the Stadtschloss, and, yes, the replica, built from scratch according to old photographs, is a concrete construction with a "new" but familiar face. The front of the building is so long that the wide-angle lens of my iPhone only embraced half of it.

LHS

RHS

The courtyard (Schlüterhof) is faithfully rebuilt with all its statues and decorations. 

Mercury looking at Hercules.

Some salvaged originals are on display at the Sculpture Hall. 

We were on historical grounds. At the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss:

HMS Victory

The legend reads: Kaiser Wilhelm II and his wife, Auguste Viktoria, received twelve silver models of ships for their silver wedding anniversary in 1906. Among them was the Victory, Nelson's flagship in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. In leading the British to victory, the admiral was also establishing the pre-eminence of Great Britain at sea. 

Wilhelm II had the ships exhibited in his apartment at the palace. His enthusiasm for all things maritime was affiliated with German imperial politics. The empire was on a quest for global influence and expanded its fleet considerably. This posed a challenge for Great Britain in particular.

And the East German Palace of the Republic once stood here:

The Volkskammer (East German parliament) votes on German unification.
Martin Kirchner, CDU deputy, at the ballot box. (©ullstein bild)

The legend: This is the place where the Volkskammer, nominally the country's highest constitutional organ, met from 1976 onwards. Until the peaceful revolution in the autumn of 1989, however, the Volkskammer was a rubber-stamp parliament that simply ratified documents presented to it by the East German party leadership.

The deputies used the above glass ballot box to vote in the first freely elected Volkskammer in March 1990. It symbolized the new transparency of parliamentary decision-making in a democracy. On 23 August 1990, it was used to vote on East Germany's accession to the territory governed by the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The eastern concrete facade of the Humboldt Forum opening on a vast terrace remained undecorated.

The Western sun is reflected in the sphere of the TV tower, forming
the shape of a cross. This optical phenomenon was
a stake in the flesh of the communist rulers in East Berlin.

From the terrace facing the right arm of the Spree, you may admire the excursion boats and the Berlin TV tower.

At the end of the guided tour and being my birthday, I invited the participants to an aperitif at the Schlüterhof.

In the afternoon, I started with the following:

This is an exhibition on the historically and currently globally networked city of Berlin. Various "information islands" named Revolution, Boundaries, Fashion, Dictatorship, Emigration, etc., are each accessible through two gates asking the visitor to decide: conservative, liberal, left-leaning, progressive, religious, nationalist, cosmopolitical, you name it. Red Baron was equipped with a sensor and went through the exhibition. The decisions he took at the gates were recorded.

You can spend hours in "Berlin Global." Here are some objects that caught my attention:

And when the wall came tumbling down ...

... behind the Potsdamer Platz was barren and empty.

Emigration. The legend tells us: When the Nazis established their dictatorship, many artists - Jews, communists, liberals, and others - were sacked as "undesirable elements." They were banned from working and persecuted. Thousands of artists were forced into exile. This is vividly illustrated here by the signatures of 43 theatre and film workers from Berlin. They all had links to Max Reinhardt. 

Most of them had to face immigration rules and restrictive labor laws that made it difficult to get settled in their new countries. Actors were specifically affected by language problems. Many of them had to find alternative work. 

Other exiles were able to use their professional experience to win influence in film production in Hollywood.

Here is the result of my evaluation based on my choice of gates: Equality is not too bad, but I had hoped for more Freedom.

I needed a coffee break, and for a moderate fee of 3 euros, I found my way to the Dachterassencafé (rooftop café) Baret. As a bonus, I enjoyed a fantastic view.

View of the Museum Island. On the left side is the German Historical Museum,
and on the right is the Berlin Cathedral.
The high building in the back on the left is the hospital Charité.

The castle cupola

The Prussian King Frederick William IV chose the script surrounding the dome in 1844. He took these words from the Bible: "Salvation is not found in no one else, (...) but in the name of Jesus. That at the name of Jesus, all the knees of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth should bow." (Acts IV, 12 and Philippians II, 10). The inscription, characterized by the rule of divine grace and therefore highly controversial, was re-engraved true to the original.

 

View toward the east. From the left: St. Mary Church, Berlin's TV tower,
the steeple of the Red Town Hall, Nikolei Church, and don't know

After the break, I visited Nach der Natur im Humboldt Labor (After Nature at the Humboldt Laboratory.

Here I learned about "interaction."

What a deception. The exposed items were poorly illuminated, the inscriptions were hard to read, and experiments didn't work. An exhibition conceived by physicists of the Humboldt University without professional help?

I was tired and had dinner with a family member at an outdoor restaurant.

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