Democracy And Basic Law

The speaker was none other than Prof. Andreas Voßkuhle (fox‘s lair in lower German), former President of the Federal Constitutional Court. Since - unlike in the USA - Germany’s supreme judges are elected for a fixed term, Prof. Voßkuhle is back at his old university in Freiburg.

Chairman Werner Frick (right) introducing the speaker Andreas Voßkuhle

Voßkuhle's popularity is so great that the lecture hall was bursting at the seams. The organizer of the Samstags-Uni, Prof. Werner Frick, had to ask the audience several times to leave escape routes open.

The Athenian city-state was the cradle of democracy, but Prof. Gehrke told us that many customs and actions in ancient Greece do not fit in with the idea of democracy today. That's why Prof. Voßkuhle repeated the statement 

Modern democracy is the rule by the people

several times in his lecture.

Lecture outline
Core elements of the democratic principle of the Basic Law "revisited." A critical "tour d'horizon".
 

I. The fundamental problem of every society: How do we legitimize rule?
II. Do we have a choice?
III. Is parliament still the center of democracy?
IV. Temporary rule. For how long?
V. A simple rule and its pitfalls: the majority principle.
VI. The litmus test: does the minority have a realistic chance of becoming the majority?
VII. The blessing and curse of party democracy
VIII. The "double-edged sword" of a so-called defensive democracy
IX. Do we need to dare more direct democracy?
X. Democracy and Europe

Here, I would only remind you that a ruling majority should not suffocate the minority; otherwise, the latter will not have a chance to change power. This is a must in modern democracies, and it works smoothly in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom and stuttered once in the USA. Although the constitutional bodies in those countries differ, they share the separation of powers and are representative democracies.

This is different in Switzerland, where the sovereign, the people, may have the final say in government decisions. For many, this kind of direct democracy - including all adult people - is the ideal form of (Volksherrschaft) popular sovereignty.

During his many years in Switzerland, Red Baron often experienced people voting against government proposals with no rational reason, apparently. Still, the government accepted the sovereign's decision and usually found detours to pass its then-softened ideas. Prof. Voßkuhle spoke of the government's fear of the people's voice.

I cannot discuss the many exciting aspects of Prof. Voßkuhle's lecture here. I'll limit myself to the various voting systems in democracies.

For organizational reasons alone, for large populations, representative democracy is the better choice than direct democracy.

In a direct election, in its purest form, the person obtaining the majority of votes in a constituency is elected. The number of seats in parliament corresponds to the number of elected deputies.

Churchill said of the direct election of MPs, as practiced in the UK and the USA, "It isn't one hundred percent democratic, but it works."

"The winner takes it all" suppresses small parties and minorities. This is why proportional representation is more democratic, but the presentation of smaller parties leads to a fragmentation of votes in parliament, making it more difficult to form governments.

The negative example of a proportional vote refers to the Weimar Republic before its collapse when the Nazis seized power. End of the 1920s, it became impossible to bring the opinions of the many small parties in the Reichstag under one democratic umbrella and thus form a government.

This is why the electoral law of the Federal Republic of Germany has the so-called five percent hurdle. Only parties that receive at least 5% of the votes are represented in the Bundestag, although this is not 100% democratic either.

For me, the best form is the French electoral law. Parties put up their candidates in constituencies, and the people vote. If a party candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, he/she is elected.

If none of the candidates receives the absolute majority, there is a "second tour" between two and sometimes three candidates who received the most votes in the "premier tour." In the run-off election, the candidate with the relative majority of votes is the winner.

This "mixed "mode comes closest to my understanding of democratic voting, as the candidate elected represents a constituency in which he/she is known to the people. At the same time, such an election procedure still reflects the balance of votes between the parties quite well.


Today, Germany's constitution, our Grundgesetz (Basic Law), turns 75. It was promulgated on May 23, 1949, which also marks the founding date of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Because of the crimes Nazi Germany committed against humanity during the 3rd Reich, the most important provision of our GG is Art. 1 Para. 1: Human dignity is inviolable. Respecting and protecting is the obligation of all state authorities. 

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The Galileo Conflict: Cosmology, Physics and Bible Hermeneutics (Ockham’s Razor)?

This was the first in the series of student contributions to a seminar titled "Which truths can we build upon? Physics and Theology in Discourse."

Galileo's conflict with the church is common knowledge since it is described in many books. It is also central to Bert Brecht's play The Live of Galilei, so I am not going into historical details.

The idea of a geocentric world is at least as old as Aristoteles 400 B.C. For people observing the daily sunrises and sunsets, the sun naturally moves around the earth. Although geocentrism was the consensus, heliocentric ideas were supported by Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century B.C. In the 2nd century A.C., Ptolemy in introducing circular orbits, advanced geocentrism considerably

Then, the students projected the two most important sentences of the seminar:

- Mathematics describes quantitatively and solves practical problems.

- Natural philosophy describes qualitatively looking at the fundamental relationships between all components rather than details.

These sentences indicate a paradigm shift that began earlier and intensified with Copernicus. He developed mathematical models that predicted the position of the planets.

Johannes Kepler's laws, published in 1609 in his work Astronomia Nova, were a breakthrough. The introduction of elliptical orbits made it possible to fully explain our helocentric planetary system with the knowledge available at the time, i.e., Tycho Brahe's measurements.

In Italy, Galileo Galilei, who advocated the heliocentric system, came under increasing pressure. His patron, Pope Urban VIII, encouraged him to publish on the Copernican system as long as he treated it as a hypothesis.

 
Galileo attempted this in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo), published in 1623, in which an enlightened Copernican argues with a traditional Ptolemaic.

Einstein commented, "Galileo's dialog, apart from its groundbreaking factual content, represents an almost mischievous attempt to ostensibly obey [Urban's] commandment, but de facto to disregard it."

Indeed, the dialog intended to reconcile the two world systems brought Galileo a new accusation from the Inquisition.


Max Planck once said, "From time immemorial, as long as there has been an observation of nature, its ultimate, highest goal has been to summarize the colorful diversity of physical phenomena into a unified system, possibly into a single formula." Where I would like to add: provided the mathematics is available.

So, in his admiration for the explanatory power of Maxwell's elegant equations, Ludwig Boltzmann prefaced his lecture on electrodynamics in 1893 with a modified quatrain from Goethe's Faust I:

War es ein Gott der diese Zeichen schrieb, Die mit geheimnisvoll verborg’nen Trieb Die Kräfte der Natur um mich enthüllen Und mir das Herz mit stiller Freud erfüllen?

Was it a god who wrote these characters, Which, in a mysteriously concealed way Reveal the forces of nature around me And fill my heart with quiet joy?

At the latest, from this point on, beauty or elegance criteria have played a role in assessing physical theories. However, there is no well-founded justification for this. Why can't a theory that describes a law of nature be "ugly"?

The Franciscan William Ockham was one of the most knowledgeable persons of his time. He distinguished clearly: Science is a matter of discovery, and theology is a matter of revelation and faith. He is best known to posterity for his razor.

 

Ockham's Razor demands that scientists accept the simplest possible theoretical explanation for existing data. This principle of parsimony is not a physical law but a rather dangerous practice when more complex theories may equally explain the data.

Both models can be calculated with sufficient accuracy.
Would you like to apply Ockham's Razor?

Still, the physics principle of least action points to a simple, efficient nature and its laws.

On the other hand, I find the effort of probability theory to "prove" Ockham's Razor far-fetched, "The accuracy of a theory is not improved by additional assumptions. They are bound to introduce uncertainties, increasing the probability that the whole theory is wrong."

Karl Popper argued we prefer simpler theories to more complex ones "because their empirical content is greater; and because they are better testable."

In physics, the following statement read in Wikipedia must hold: If multiple models of natural law make exactly the same testable predictions, they are equivalent, and there is no need for parsimony to choose a preferred one.

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Is There Any Good History of Quantum Physics, and if so, Should We Care?

was the title of a lecture given in English at Freiburg's Physics Colloquium. The speaker was Prof. Arne Schirrmacher of the Berlin Humboldt University.

Click to enlarge

Quantum physics will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year, and Prof. Schirrmacher is correct in questioning its history.

It may be important for historians, but I couldn't care less whether the letter h used for Planck's constant (Wirkungsquantum) initially stood for Hilfsgröße (auxiliary variable).

More interesting is to analyze Heisenberg's revelation - when staying on Helgoland from June 8 to 18, 1925 - on how to solve quantum mechanical problems with the help of energy matrices. Ηere is Heisenberg's personal account translated from his autobiography Der Teil und das Ganze (1969):

"So I concentrated my work more and more on the question of the conservation of energy and one evening, I was able to determine the individual terms in the energy table, or as it is expressed today, in the energy matrix, using calculations that are quite complicated by today's standards. When the first terms confirmed energy conservation, I got so excited that I kept making mistakes in the following calculations. As a result, it was almost three o'clock in the morning before the final result of the calculations was in front of me. Energy conservation had been valid in all its parts, and - since all this had come out by itself, without any acrobatics, so to speak - I could no longer doubt the mathematical consistency and coherence of quantum mechanics appearing in outlines. At first, I was deeply shocked. I had the feeling that I was looking through the surface of atomic phenomena to a deep underlying ground of strange inner beauty. I was almost dizzy at the thought that I was now supposed to follow this wealth of mathematical structures that nature had spread out before me. I was so excited that I couldn't think about sleep. So I left the house in the early dawn and went to the southern tip of the Oberland, where a solitary rock tower jutting out into the sea had always awakened my desire to try climbing. I managed to climb the tower without difficulty and awaited the sunrise at the top."

It is correct to accuse Carlo Rovelli of Geschichtsklitterung (historical distortion) when he writes in his best-selling book Helgoland:

"And here he* had the idea. An idea that could only be had with the unfettered radicalism of the young. The idea that would transform physics in its entirety - together with a whole of science and our very conception of the world. An idea, I believe, that humanity has not yet fully absorbed."
*young Heisenberg

Rovelli was carried away and went overboard. Heisenberg didn't invent or discover quantum mechanics on Helgoland. However, he found a - as he admits, clumsy - method to calculate energy states for quantum systems while away from his Physics Institute in Göttingen, away from his Professor Max Born and his colleague Pascual Jordan.

Prof. Schirrmacher had the argument that while Heisenberg was on Helgoland, his colleagues published About the quantum theory of aperiodic processes: Born, M., Jordan, P. Zur Quantentheorie aperiodischer Vorgänge. Z. Physik 33, 479–505 (1925). The paper was received at the Springer Publishing House on June 11, 1925.

Heiseberg‘s Helgoland paper On the quantum-theoretical reinterpretation of kinematic and mechanical relationships: Heisenberg, W. Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen.. Z. Physik 33, 879–893 (1925), was received on July 29, 1925.

This proves that Götingen was the productive center for quantum mechanics then. The coronation of the teamwork was the famous "drei Männer Arbeit": Born, M., Heisenberg, W. & Jordan, P. Zur Quantenmechanik II. Z. Physik 35, 557–615 (1926), received on November 16, 1925. The paper is generally regarded as the "birth certificate" of matrix mechanics. Needless to say, Schrödinger's differential equation of 1926 made the calculations of quantum states "easier."


The Nachsitzung (follow-up session) to the colloquium was a dinner at a Freiburg restaurant. My discussion with Prof. Schirrmacher revolved around German physicist Philipp Lenard. He got the Nobel Prize in 1907 and was director of the Physics Institute in Heidelberg.

Lenard argued that: "Science, like everything that humans produce, is racial, blood-related."

Why was Lenard an anti-Semite when he idolized his Jewish teacher, Heinrich Hertz? Prof. Schirrmacher suspected he was frustrated because no significant work was coming from his new and large Heidelberg Philipp-Lenard Institute. As compensation, he surfed on the "völkisch" wave.

However, Lenard had already argued with Einstein as early as 1920 at the Congress of Natural Scientists and Physicians in Bad Nauheim. Under Max Planck's chairmanship, he criticized the relativity theory as unanschaulich (unclear).

Lenard's new institute was only inaugurated in 1935 with a speech by his colleague, Nobel Prize winner, President of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, and anti-Semite Johannes Stark:

"Einstein's theories of relativity were basically nothing more than an accumulation of artificial formulas based on arbitrary definitions and transformations of space and time coordinates. The sensation and publicity of Einstein's theory of relativity were followed by Heisenberg's theory of matrices and Schrödinger's so-called wave mechanics, the one as opaque and formalistic as the other. Despite accumulating such theoretical literature in piles, it did not provide any significant insight into reality in physics."

In January 1936, an article appeared in the Nazi journal Völkischer Beobachter with the title Deutsche Physik und Jüdische Physik. It was Philipp Lenard who had, in his 4-volume textbook on physics published in 1935, distinguished between German Physics and Jewish Physics. He wrote in the preface:

"With the end of the war in 1918, when the Jews became dominant and set the tone in Germany, Jewish physics in all its peculiarity suddenly emerged like a flood ... To characterize it briefly, the activity of its most outstanding representative, the pure-blooded Jew A. Einstein, is here recalled. His 'theories of relativity 'were intended to reshape and dominate the whole of physics, but they have now completely failed in the face of reality. They probably never wanted it to be true. The Jew conspicuously lacks an understanding of truth, for more than just an apparent correspondence with reality independent of human thought; this contrasts the Aryan researchers' irrepressible and anxious desire for truth." Nazi jargon of the worst kind.

In July 1937, the other Nazi physicist Johannes Stark published an essay in the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps "Weiße Juden in der Wissenschaft" and identified Heisenberg as a White Jew.

In response, Heisenberg wrote to Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS, "I must ask you for a fundamental decision: If Mr. Stark's views coincide with those of the government, I will naturally ask for my dismissal. But if this is not the case, as I have been expressly assured by the Reich's Ministry of Education, in that case, as Reichsführer SS, I ask you for adequate protection against such attacks in the newspaper under your command."

The Reichsführer buckled, but in a letter to Reinhard Heydrich, the second man in the SS, Himmler wrote, "We cannot afford to kill this young man."

You may read the whole story in German here.
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Origins of Democracy in Antiquity?

Antike Ursprünge der Demokratie? was the title of a lecture Professor Hans-Joachim Gehrke gave in the framework of the Samstags-Uni. This summer semester, the series of presentations is devoted to "Democracy,"

Yes, the Greek polis (cities) developed in communities and particularly in Athens democratic structures that could be looked upon to be the origins of modern democracy.

A pompous, lurid title

No, the ancient Greeks did not save democracy but defended Athens against Asian intruders.

Here is a comparison of Athens' "democracy" with modern democracies

Voting: Free men only (about 10% of the people)  > The adult population 

Representation of the people: Direct > Representatives

Jurisdiction: People are the judges > Separation of powers

Religion: Part of the system  > Separation of church and state

Equality:  Exclusion of women and slaves > Basic human rights

Athens' agora around 500 BC

The most important meeting place in the ancient polis (cities) was the agora (marketplace), where you paid in tetradrachma and now pay in euros.

Tradition: Carrying owls to Athens?
Instead, carry them in your pocket when visiting the agora.

In ancient Greece, education was a valuable commodity. People must learn to live in community. Decency and justice are necessary, and these virtues should be taught so that, according to Plato euboulia, i.e., excellence in counsel and sound judgment can be achieved.

Notice the tablets with the law set in stone.

Ultimately, Athenian democracy developed in tension between dictatorship and the rule of law. Kylon's attempted coup was followed by Drakon's legislation, "The editors (anagrapheis) must write down his law (nomos) on manslaughter [...] together with the scribe on a marble stele and erect it in front of the Stoa Basileios ..."

Ancient Greek law tablet

However, it was the laws of Solon (594 BC), known from school lessons, that made it difficult to establish a tyranny. Solon wrote, "To teach this to the Athenians has occupied my mind since most of the evils of the city are brought by unlawfulness (dysnomia). Legality (eunomia), however, proves everything to be well-ordered and straightforward and imposes ample restraints on the unjust. "

"I achieved this by exercising my power (krótos) in combining coercion (bía) and law (dikē) and completed it as I had promised. The laws (thesmoí) I wrote are equally for the bad (kakós) and the good (agathós)."

How Athens' full citizens (men) participated in managing the polis.
Note that in many cases men are not elected, but a lot decides.

The polis (police!), i.e., the state, stands against violence and is linked to the law. The people stand for and commit themselves to the rule of law (nomocracy).

The Athenians had their laws chiseled in stone for consistency. The protection of laws through citizen involvement was the path to democracy.

Prof.  Gehrke showed the various types of rules according to Polybios. The best illustration in the form of a table I found in the German Wikipedia:

On the left, the number of rulers (one, some or all)
Above, the orientation (common good or self-interest)

Changing the ending "ie" to "y" means you'll have nearly all the English words. Ochlocracy stands for mob rule. 

The Roman Republic had three pillars: the People's Assembly, the Senate, and the Consuls, elected for a fixed term.

The Constitution of the US is based on the Greek model, as explained in the Federalist Papers.

The autonomous basic unit for democracy is always the citizenry (civitas in the west and polis in the east): civitas sibi princeps (the city [itself] is the prince [the ruler]).

Indeed, democratic structures work best in small entities. On June 9, we will hold elections to the European Parliament and local elections, i.e., we will elect a new city council in Freiburg. Red Baron has the choice between more than 900 candidates for 48 seats. Indeed, the coming city council will work as harmoniously as the old one.

The situation is alright, too, on the level of the German states. Coalitions of parties work for the benefit of their "citizens." However, political quarrels develop as entities become bigger. The opposition attacks not only the government but also the parties supporting the government and their members personally. Our political culture is going down the drain. 

But who am I telling this?

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Happy Days at Obersalzberg

Last night, Red Baron went to the Theater der Immoralisten, a well-known stage in Freiburg, to see Happy Days at Obersalzberg, written and directed by Manuel Kreitmeier. Why the title of this typically German play was in English goes over my head.

The play is set in 1944 and features the Führer Adolf Hitler, his mistress Eva Braun, Hitler's personal physician Doctor Morell, and architect and armaments minister Albert Speer. Later, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler makes a short appearance.

Those pre-war years. Hitler reads the local newspaper Berchtesgadener Anzeiger at his Berghof.
A photo taken in late 1938s (©LIFE Picture Collection)

With the curtain still down, the play begins with a few remarks from a guide who explains to us, the tourists, what it looked like on the Obersalzberg back then when Nazi celebrities went in and out of the Berghof. Historical film footage by Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, and a trained film assistant, is projected onto the curtain and shows the Führer's and his entourage's life at the Berghof.

At times, the performance reminded me of the alienated scenes in Bert Brecht's Mr. Puntila and his servant Matti. 

A quote from the great German playwright fits here, "The great political criminals must be exposed, and especially ridiculed. For they are, above all, not great political criminals but the perpetrators of great political crimes, which is something quite different."

Manuel Kreitmeier has exploited precisely the stylistic element of comedy to gain access to the incomprehensible events of the Third Reich. However, unlike Chaplin's The Great Dictator, the focus is on the bourgeoisie life in Hitler's Berghof.

Hitler and Eva Braun eat Linzer Torte.
An allusion to Adolf's dream of Linz as Germany's cultural capital (©Manuel Kreitmeier)

There are the recurring afternoons with coffee and cake, Hitler's monologues, and finally, the daily excursions to the Mooslahner Kopf.

Albert Speer stands a little awkwardly on the terrace of the Berghof
(©National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized)

On those walks, Hitler's repetition of the question, "What have I done wrong?" is particularly striking. No one around him dares to give him weighty answers. Only Albrecht Speer finally squeezes out, "Dunkirk* perhaps?"

*At "Dunkirk, after the Blitzkrieg against France, the Wehrmacht failed to destroy the British bridgehead, so the encircled troops could escape to England, for the most part, by adventurous means in small boats.

Following this answer, Hitler collapses, and birdshit* lands on his uniform. 

*In 2018, AfD chairman Alexander Gauland described the Nazi era as being just a "birdshit" of German history.

Der Führer with Eva and German shepherd Blondi at the terrasse of the Berghof
 (©Federal Archive)

Later, Speer drowns Blondi's puppies because, in Hitler's opinion, they will not make it over the winter; they are not worth living. This is reminiscent of Governor Kristi Noem, but it is more obvious an allusion to the death of the forced laborers employed in Germany's armaments industry, whose inhumane conditions only became known after Speer's death.

During the performance, Hitler frequently looked at his wristwatch, which stopped not at five minutes to twelve but at four to twelve.  

©Manuel Kreitmeier

Then he addresses his physician, "Our last afternoon, doctor. Your steroids and vitamins could not avert the inevitable: Germany has failed! It must fall down." Hitler leaves. 

The end is near when Eva prepares her luggage to join her "Führer" in the Berlin bunker. 

Today's right-wingers advertise the seemingly "good old days" when all was right with the world. The author counters this at the end of the play, "Don't do as we did!"

Applause, applause, and thank you!

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The Fairy Tale of Cheap Nuclear Power

ends, "Electricity produced from nuclear power is cheaper than electricity produced by renewable energies. And power reactors live happily ever after. "

This is not the correct ending. Old reactors are phased out, and cheap electricity is no longer available when they die.

Nuclear power from existing plants was one of the cheapest forms of energy to close the acute supply gaps caused by the discontinuation of cheap Russian gas. The variable electricity generation costs for existing nuclear power plants are 20 to 25 euros per megawatt hour. This includes, for example, the costs of fuel rods and the maintenance and operation of the getting-on-in-years plants.

However, we must not forget the so-called hidden costs of nuclear power. It only appears cheaper than green electricity because the massive taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power - in Germany between 1950 and 2010, more than 200 billion euros - are usually not taken into account.

Nuclear heritage in Germany (©Der Spiegel)

Finally, we must add the costs for the final storage of nuclear waste and incident and accident risks. Nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity if these costs are considered. Today's society and future generations are burdened with accumulated nuclear waste. Taxpayers pay four-fifths of the expenses for its disposal.

 
Still, since most of the old nuclear power plants have been written off, their continued operation is tantamount to a license to print money.

The situation doesn't look so bright for nuclear power plants that recently came into operation or those still under construction.

Long construction periods and increased safety requirements are driving up the costs of building new reactors to the extent that the generation costs per megawatt hour now exceed those for green electricity.

©ZDF

In Finland, the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant cost €11 billion, 4 times more than planned.

©ZDF

Flamanville 3 on the English Channel in France was 6 times more expensive at €19 billion. Electricity will cost 110 to 120 euros per megawatt hour, double the price of the two reactors already in operation. And the new reactor will have to be shut down already in 2026 because its cover must be replaced..

©ZDF

The twin reactor at Hinkley Point in the southwest of the UK was initially expected to cost €21 billion but is now estimated to cost at least €50 billion. By the way, who wants to learn about Nuclear power stations on television at 6:14 a.m.?

Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson wrote, "Investing in new nuclear power is the surest way to climate disaster." He is assisted by Ben Wealer from the Technical University of Berlin, who succinctly said, "[Nuclear] blocks the cash we need for renewables."

Here is a comparison of energy costs.

©US Energy

As the cost of renewables continues to decrease, nuclear power costs are increasing. Between 2009 and 2021, renewables like wind and solar have declined by 90 percent, while nuclear power has increased by 33 percent.

©Der Spiegel

Above is the development of electricity produced in Germany over the years from various energy sources.

©AEE

While Germany boasts that more than 50% of the electricity was produced by renewable energy in 2023, the situation doesn't look so bright on the world scale.

Breakdown of the primary energy consumption from fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables worldwide
(©Energy Institute)

Even the most optimistic assessments suggest it could take more than 30 years to transition the world to renewable energy. Eventually, the economic question of nuclear energy and renewables becomes furtive. We no longer have 30 years before the climate catastrophe strikes, and even if we increase nuclear power dramatically, it will not shorten the time we have left considerably.

Development of nuclear power in Europe.
France, in particular, is pushing nuclear energy as a "green" energy (©Der Spiegel)

UN Secretary-General Guterres recently called for a dramatic increase in spending on renewables, saying, "Had we invested massively in renewable energy in the past, we would not be so dramatically at the mercy […] of fossil fuel markets."

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Tyranny of the Majority or the Minority? Development of the American Democracy Since the Writing of the Constitution

As part of the "Democracy" lecture series at Freiburg's Samstags-Uni, yesterday, Professor Manfred Berg spoke about

   

The lecture hall was fuller than ever. The audience waited eagerly for some helpful comments on a possible President Trump. But first, Professor Berg spoke about the historical development of American democracy.

What was new to me was that the United States was founded as a republic, not a democracy. But at the latest, since the German Revolution of 1848, the two concepts have blurred into one, when Friedrich Hecker demanded in the pre-parliament in Frankfurt that only a Federal Republic modeled on the North American free states can ensure the unity and freedom of Germany.

The revolution failed, as did the attempt to introduce democracy permanently in the Weimar Republic.

Following the Second World War, the Americans fulfilled Hecker's demand by successfully transferring their Republican system to the Federal Republic of Germany. We are still thankful.

Professor Berg showed a slide listing the primary conditions of democracy.

He then categorized the history of American democracy.

 

Checks and balances are the firm corsets of American democracy where ambition counteracts ambition.

The first transition of power between two presidents occurred peacefully after the 1800 election. This tradition was broken with the last presidential election.

Click to enlarge

I had never seen such an informative power distribution map on the eve of the Civil War of 1860.

The freed slaves were given the right to vote during Reconstruction. Yet, 160 years later, some States continue to hurdle the independent, free exercise of voting with administrative and bureaucratic requirements that discriminate against entire groups of voters.

The demographic development in the States to 2045 shows that the proportion of the white population is being pushed into a minority, primarily due to Hispanic immigration. This is a cause of division in American society, too.

The widening gap between the rich and the "poor" is not unique to the US. Social explosives?

The suffragette refers to the treatment of the Germans at Versailles by President Wilson, who, unlike the British and French, gave the Germans credit for not having lived in a democracy.

In the end, Professor Berg did not fail to promote his new book, A House Divided.

©Time

A future President Trump has announced gruesome things. After a chaotic first term, he is already having his vassals prepare for his likely second term.

Trump will undoubtedly try to increase his executive power at the expense of the judiciary and the legislature.

He plans to demote the Department of Justice to his instrument of revenge. Trump said at a rally, "That means if I win and somebody wants to run against me, I'll call my attorney general. I say, 'Listen, indict him'."

When murmurs in the audience occurred, Trump continued in the voice of his future attorney general, "But he hasn't done anything wrong. I don't know." Trump ended with an order, "Indict him on income tax evasion. Figure it out."

Can the legislative power of Congress be overridden by executive orders?

We Europeans will be in for a rough ride. Are we sufficiently prepared for Trump's well-prepared second term? I doubt it.

Will Trump end the Ukraine war to Putin's liking? Will he hollow out NATO?.

If he does not win the presidential election, will the US be faced with a bloodbath? Given the density of firearms in the country (1.2 per person) and the January 6, 2021, events, this is not excluded.

On leaving, the director of the Freiburg Studium Generale, Professor Werner Frick, rightly said that the speaker was sending us into the weekend with pessimistic feelings.

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The Seminar

The University of Freiburg is organizing a seminar this summer semester entitled Which Truths Can We Build Upon? Physics and Theology in Discourse.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Buchleitner, a physicist, is in charge. Other lecturers are theologians Prof. Dr. Helmut Hoping, Dr. Matthias Huber, and Prof. Dr. Magnus Striet.

Yesterday, theologian and priest Matthias Huber, who also has a degree in physics, introduced the seminar with a lecture titled Critical Realism - Models and Theories - Explaining versus Understanding (Science - Humanities).

©Matthias Huber

In his first slide, Dr. Huber showed various possibilities when science and theology meet. There is the conflict model, the independence model, the dialog/convergence/consonance model, and finally, the integration model.

©Matthias Huber

Photos of the protagonists of the above models can be seen in the picture above.

Dr. Huber started his lecture proper by citing Horst W. Beck, who shed light on the incompatibility of religious statements and earth history: "The task is, of course, no less than to create an alternative cosmology, biology, geology based on salvation history [...]. Anyone who takes the judgment of God about the biblically and extra-biblically attested Flood catastrophe seriously must rewrite geology (1979)." 

Karl Rahner sees no areas of friction since "theology and science cannot in principle come into conflict with each other because both differ from the outset in their subject matter and method (1983)." 

 Finally, Rudolf Mosis goes so far as to say that natural sciences and theology ultimately do not interfere with each other at all: "The natural scientist can discover whatever he wants with his observations; he can build whatever hypotheses and theories he wants on them: it is always only about 'nature,' never about 'salvation.' So, faith cannot be affected by all this. After that, natural scientists and theologians would perhaps live in separate houses as good, or at least compatible, neighbors. Men/women would greet each other in a friendly manner. But there would be nothing left to argue about and nothing to talk about: We would simply have nothing more to say to each other." 

These citations were an excellent introduction to the topic. But then the lecturer showed a slide whose content made me stop my hooves from pawing.

©Matthias Huber

The above table made it clear to me that natural science - and here I mean physics as in the seminar's title - is objective. Still, theology must be viewed from a subjective angle.

 In physics, the interplay between theory and experiment is fruitful. Non obstat that theorists tend to forge hypotheses, such as string theory, that still need to be supported by any experiment.

Physics is not free of induction. For example, the fluctuations in the energy field after the Big Bang, which led to the formation of galaxies in the cooling phase of our Universe, are hypothetically transferred to the state before the Big Bang. According to this hypothesis, fluctuations in the primordial energy field triggered the Big Bang. This, however, means that several Big Bangs are possible, and with them, the existence of other universes.

In the early days of physics, personal influence on experimental results may have existed. In the meantime, however, every experimental result is verified by independent parallel measurements.

What is a "truthful representation of reality?" When the tool describing phenomena in physics is mathematics how true and how real is mathematics?

The starting point of theology is a subjective personal experience of God. People wrote the holy books as a result of their interpreted experience. After the Jew Saul had his faith experience with the Lord outside Damascus, the first written testimony of the Christian faith is found in St. Paul's letters.

New experiences of God caused a split in Christianity between Catholic and Protestant theology. Islam, too, with its Sunnis and Shiites, is not free of man-made divisions, without forgetting the deep shades between orthodox, reformed, and liberal Jews.

©Matthias Huber

Dr. Huber closed his lecture with a slide stressing the consonance between science and theology.

I shall mention only three points from the following discussion:

In 1957, when Red Baron attended a lecture on theoretical mechanics in Göttingen, the lecturer referred to the teleology of mechanical processes. Still, physics is not goal-oriented in the philosophical sense.

The measurement of the Higgs (© Prof. Karl Jakobs)

The comparison between the concealment of God and the Higgs boson is absurd because the latter leaves its trace in measurements.

God does not change the past. Does God exist in our time frame?

An excited Red Baron left the seminar wanting more.

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