Franco-German Partnerships in AI

Red Baron took part in the French Summer University at the Frankreich Zentrum of Freiburg University once again this year.

One of the topics covered at the Sommeruniversität was artificial intelligence, a field where Europe lags behind and where one looks for Une intelligence artificielle européenne with partenariats franco-allemands dans le domaine.

Our teacher surprised us with an AI-generated photo. Nice try, but you can't see the Minster Church from the lecture hall. Madame had crutches, alright, but she exuded a "few more years" of experience.

AI is almost everywhere.

ChatGPT, how does it work?

AI understands, learns, and generates.

The slide above shows the European misery. Only DeepL and Mistral make it in the European charts, while the software market is dominated by American companies.

 

The challenges

Working together to build European technical, ethical, and competitive sovereignty.

 
Geopolitical and economic challenges
- Digital sovereignty
- Strategic independence
- Competitiveness

 
Ethical and societal challenges
- Respect for values
- Data protection

 
Technological and industrial challenges
- Access to resources
- Brain drain*
*The French have that cute fuite des cerveaux, while in German we simply adopted brain drain since Fachkräfteabwanderung sounds indeed clumsy.

Red Baron thinks the European program is too ambitious and comes too late, especially since international players tend to regard ethical and data protection concerns as secondary when it comes to maximizing profits.

Moreover, the mills of EU bureaucracy in Brussels turn too slowly and are already being steamrolled by accelerating technological developments.

 

French President Emmanuel Macron (l) and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz
take part in the European Digital Sovereignty Summit
Nov. 18, 2025, in Berlin, Germany (©Kay Nietfeld/dpa Picture-Alliance via AFP)

Still, President Macron and Chancellor Merz believe it is worth a try.

Marianne kicks out Windows while little Linux walks in

American dominance is overwhelming, yet France got the ball already rolling with some housekeeping.

So far, Europe hasn't fully taken Chinese AI into account.

And what about the ecological impact of AI?

A simple query to ChatGPT requires 0.3 Wh and produces up to 4.3 g of CO₂. AI's electricity consumption already accounts for 2% of global electricity generation, and that figure is rising.

 
The lively discussion gave us plenty of opportunities to practice our French.

 

At the end of the course, our teacher invited us to write the lyrics for a chanson, which ChatGPT Suno then set to music. It was fun.

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Peter Günther

Last Friday at the memorial service for Professor Peter Günther, Red Baron said goodbye to a friend.

A simple memorial service at the Protestant church in Merzhause (©GvS)

Peter was a member of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft (FMG) and the Museumsgesellschaft. I held Peter in high regard as a kind, empathetic, and people-oriented person.

We had just arrived in Madison.
Peter is flanked by his charming wife Ulrike and Red Baron.

I learned about his expertise as an Americanist back in 2009 when we visited our sister city, Madison, with the FMG.

His lecture, “Puritan Heritage and Political Religion,” which he gave at the FMG’s regular Stammtisch in October 2010, remains just as relevant today. I was excited, so my comment followed promptly.

I will miss Peter. RIP

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Moi non plus

The subtitle of Professor Stefan Pfänder's lecture was, "It was a cultural shock for me!" That is what a French lady felt when, as a student, she met her future German husband in a Wohngemeinschaft (shared apartment).

In his sociological research, Prof. Pfänder has been documenting German-French couples on audio and video for years. With the examples he showed, his lecture was extremely colorful and lively. 

The novel "Hirishima mon amour" unfolds as a literary drama. By this I do not mean the amour fou between the Frenchwoman Elle and the Japanese man Lui, but rather her wartime experience as a girl.

In her youth, she had fallen in love with a German occupation soldier in Nevers. The two lovers had planned to leave France and get married in Germany. But then she had to watch as her lover was shot by a Résistance fighter in the street right in front of her house and saw him bleed to death before her eyes.

Red Baron still vividly remembers the filmic scene when the German, with blood pouring from his mouth, breathed his last. The girl was branded a collaborator, had her head shaved, was locked in a cellar, and finally sent to Paris for further treatment.

First impression of the Germans

In Franco-German zwischenleiblichen (interpersonal) relationships, painful, traumatic memories cannot be suppressed, as evidenced by the statement of a French woman: "And everything that was unpleasant, uncomfortable, or dangerous - that was always the German."

In 1946, when French troops occupied Baden, German girls fell for the men in uniforms and formed interlingual couples.

Here is a slide from Prof. Pfänder's lecture.

 

How does bilingualism change how people see themselves in the eyes of their partners?

Bilingual individuals develop a heightened metalinguistic sensitivity and experience identity as dynamic and negotiable.

Living between multiple languages promotes flexibility and reduces rigid national stereotypes.

And he continued, "How do bilingual, intercultural couples communicate?" How do they share stories - separately or together? What are the challenges of such a partnership? And what are its potential benefits? His answers were:

Intercultural couples more frequently report stress caused by differences in values, religion, and communication.

Intercultural couples develop new shared routines, forms of communication, and identities beyond their respective cultures of origin.

Acceptance or rejection by their families depends on language skills, cultural expectations, and migration experiences.

In fact, differing language skills generate feelings of exclusion, frustration, isolation, and cultural alienation. On the other hand, bilingualism changes self-perceptions and strengthens the ability to adopt multiple cultural perspectives simultaneously.

Red Baron found all these facts interesting, but since he's never had a French girlfriend, he can't contribute to the experience.

However, some of Prof. Pfänder's observations can generally be applied to multilingual environments, such as that of Red Baron, who has been working at CERN and communicating in Franglais for 32 years.

Here, somewhat out of context, I add some photos of the couple Franco-Allemand:

A historic embrace between two old men in Reims Cathedral.
Where's the champagne?

De Gaulle's pathetic speech: "My heart is overflowing, and my spirit is filled with gratitude now that I have just signed the Treaty on Cooperation between Germany and France with the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. No one in the world can fail to recognize the immense significance of this act. Not only does it mark a turning point after a long and bloody history of struggle and war, but it also opens the door to a new future for Germany, France, Europe, and thus the world."

Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand, holding hands, stand over the graves at Verdun.

Chancellor Angela Merkel cuddles up to President François Hollande.

An embracing armistice between President Sarkozy and Merkel

French and Germans: a history full of "I love you" and "Not me anymore."

NB: As in previous years, Red Baron has again booked the French Summer University.

Entente cordiale between President Macron and Angela.
Merkel's husband, Professor Sauer, doesn't he look a little sour?

A couple enjoying a romantic moment in the Compiègne Forest.

In the Compiègne Forest, the armistice between the French Republic and the German Empire, which ended the First World War, was signed in a Wagon-Lits (?) on November 11, 1918.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, and the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Angela Merkel, reaffirmed the value of Franco-German reconciliation in the service of Europe and peace.

Back to the lecture. A man from Cognac gave his reasoning in nearly perfect German as to why his girlfriend moved to be with him:

That's just love - it does that kind of thing!

It wasn't only the director of the Freiburg Adult Education Center, Dr. Philine Weyrauch-Herrmann (holding the mic), who thanked Prof. Pfänder for his engaging lecture.

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Lüften

According to the New York Times, this German word went viral on the Internet. Red Baron blogged about lüften previously, so there is no need to repeat the information here.

 
What is interesting is the adopted American word for lüften: 'house burping'.

 
The Environmental Protection Agency (Hasn't POTUS cancelled it?) sees an argument for "burping" American homes that I hadn't heard yet. 

"EPA  recommends opening windows to reduce the concentration of volatile organic compounds in the home, which are released by a vast array of household items, including furniture, mattresses, cosmetics, and cleaning products. These compounds can cause adverse reactions like headaches, itchy eyes, and breathing problems."

 

In summer, Red Baron sleeps with the bedroom window tilted; in winter, it is too cold. So in the morning, I get the following warning:

Before midnight, I had already exhaled 1000 ppm of CO₂. So in the morning it was time to burp my bedroom.

This is what I get after a ten-minute lüften.

The word lüften is written with an umlaut where the ü is pronounced like "rue" in French. Will lüften lose its tüttels in America like über? 

Uber means 'super' or 'extra'. So Übermensch became Superman/Woman. It is uber-cool to read Friedrich Nietzsche's book.

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Ian McKellen

I must confess my shame that I was not familiar with this legendary 86-year-old actor.

My loyal readers know that I regularly watch The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. His monologues are hilarious. As a non-English speaker, I often have to think long and hard before I understand a pun.

After his solo performance, Stephen welcomes guests, and that's when I usually switch off.

But on February 5, a sonoric voice caught my attention. Sir Ian McKellen fascinated me with his fine British accent and humor. I stayed tuned until the end of the 26-minute interview. Towards the end, Ian talked about a literary find. Here is a partial transcript of the interview:

Ian: Shakespeare wrote many plays, 37 of them, by himself, but he also contributed to other people's shows. And one of the speeches he wrote for a play called Thomas More has been preserved. And it’s the only sample of his actual handwriting of some of the words of a play by him. And it’s not in the Fuller library. It’s in the British Library; you can see it. It’s on display there in London.


And hark. On December 23 last year, I published a blog post that drew only mediocre interest from my readers. The blog addressed the Thomas More manuscript by William Shakespeare that I read in 2015 and had since forgotten.


Ian McKellen continued: And it happened that the play was never performed during Shakespeare’s lifetime because it was thought to be a bit seditious.

It had its actual premiere on stage in 1964. It was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, and I played Thomas More. So you are looking at a man who created a part by William Shakespeare.

Stephen: So this is handwritten. They know this is his handwriting of this monologue that you did ...

Ian: ... of a speech you probably don’t know but you ought to because it’s a wonderful speech.

Stephen: I don’t know that. Would you mind? Would you mind doing it for us?

Ian: No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t mind because you’ll enjoy it. All right. Live Theatre.

Stephen: What’s the setting?

Ian: It’s all happening 400 years ago and in London. There’s a riot happening, there’s a mob out in the streets, and they’re complaining about the presence of strangers in London, by which they mean the recent immigrants who arrived there. And they’re shouting the odds and complaining, and saying that the immigrants should be sent back home wherever they came from. And the authorities sent out this young lawyer, Thomas More, to put down the riot, which he does in two ways, one by saying that you can’t riot like this. It’s against the law. So shut up, be quiet, and also being by Shakespeare with an appeal to their humanity. So, in order to set it up, we really need somebody to shout that the strangers should be removed. Could someone do that?

And the audience shouts: The strangers be removed!

Because of the present situation in the ICE age, Ian McKellen’s performance went viral online.  

Here is a DEEP DIVE helping native speakers with Shakespeare’s English.

And finally, here is the whole 26-minute interview with Ian McKellen.

**

Sir Thomas More

Nine years ago, Red Baron read an article in The Guardian that fascinated him, but he never found the time to write a blog.

 

This is the last surviving script handwritten by William Shakespeare, in which he imagines Sir Thomas More making an impassioned plea for the humane treatment of refugees. The theater piece about the life of Henry VIII's councillor and lord chancellor was not staged because of fears it might incite unrest.

British scholars found out that Shakespeare wrote the play "Sir Thomas More" actually in collaboration with Henry Chettle, Anthony Munday, and others in 1592. It survived only in fragmentary form after being censored by Edmund Tylney, Master of the Revels, in the government of Queen Elizabeth I.

Here is the powerful scene, featuring More challenging anti-immigration rioters in London against the number of French Protestants (Huguenots) seeking asylum in the capital.

 
"You'll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in lyam
To slip him like a hound.
Alas, alas! Say now the King
As he is clement if th'offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you: whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, Spain, or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England:
Why, you must needs be strangers."

In two cases, Red Baron needed some help with the English: "And lead the majesty of law in lyam" translates to "keep the authority of the law under restraint," and "Why, you must needs be strangers" reads in modern English as "Well then, you must necessarily be foreigners."

Thomas's powerful rhetoric urges the crowds to empathise with the immigrants. He is asking the rioters to imagine what it would be like if they went to Spain, Portugal, or German provinces*, they would then be strangers. Thomas is pleading for empathy.

*Provinces, indeed. Germany was founded as late as 1871.

Wasn't it always, and isn't it still like this with strangers seeking protection and peace?

With greetings from Bethlehem, a Merry Christmas to all my readers.

**

Thomas Mann - His Work and the Answers to His Time

Thomas Mann – Sein Werk und die Antworten auf seine Zeit was the titel of Prof. Helmut Koopmann‘s talk. It served as a starter for a lecture series in the framework of the Studium generale to mark the 150th anniversary of the poet's birth.

The lecture hall was filled to capacity when the 91-year-old doyen of Thomas Mann research started his talk with the wisdom, "A good lecture has three parts: It is one third known, one third new, and one third incomprehensible.

Red Baron has a very special interest in the lecture series. As a young student, he read Die Buddenbrooks and, now, during his advanced years, has taken on Mann's 1100-page novel Der Zauberberg.

Whereas in The Buddenbrooks I lived through the story of a decaying bourgeois family, I now face in The Magic Mountain a multi-layered, dazzling plot with many people who surround the protagonist Hans Castorp. Thanks to Mann's genius, the novel is a unique experience of the power of the German language.

In the sixties and seventies of the last century, Thomas Mann was described by authors writing realistically as having fallen out of time, and not just because of his style. This view changed when Mann's diaries from 1918 to 1955 were published in 1977, 20 years after his death.

Now, the poet's epigones wrote doctoral theses and habilitation treatises on Mann's life, thoughts, political views, and writings.

Prof. Koopmann gave some general insight into Mann's authorship.

Mann was a precision writer who had and consulted a rich collection of notes on subjects such as medicine, natural sciences, etc. In his detailed descriptions of people, it is striking that every one of his characters seems to be blessed with an abnormality by nature.

The central theme of almost all novelists is sexuality. This is also the case with Thomas Mann, but one gets the impression that he suppresses it. This may have something to do with Mann's homosexual inclination. It is also fitting that he frequently draws on Greek mythology in his descriptions. In Der Tod in Venedig (The Death of Venice), the adored young man is an image of Adonis.

So it is no wonder that after his diaries were published, researchers pounced on them to find out more about Mann's sexual concealments.

Thomas Mann's political transformation from a nationalist to a democrat is astonishing, something that many found difficult to believe. In his 1918 book Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Reflections of an apolitical man), he plays the reactionary war-monger who writes about the arch-enemy France and places civilization, which he hates, against culture.

In 1922, two years before the publication of Der Zauberberg, he declared his support for parliamentary democracy in his speech on the German Republic. He accepted the unpopular peace agreement, and in The Magic Mountain, the protagonists Settembrini and Naphta discuss the political ideas of the time. The novel is filled with bizarre characters from a torn society that is unable to come to terms with itself against the backdrop of crises and, not least as a result, slips into the First World War.

In his novels, Mann describes a world in which nothing is fixed. Everything seems interchangeable, can be viewed differently, and, yes, can be called into question.

The auditorium was overwhelmed with Thomas Mann and gave the speaker a never-ending round of applause.

*

Germany's First Democracy

Click all pictures to enlarge.

The Walther-Rathenau-Gewerbeschule (Vocational School) in Freiburg hosts an exhibition dedicated to the Weimar Republic.

Naturally, this school should shed light on this period of German history, as its namesake, Walther Rathenau, was a key figure of the Weimar Republic. As an entrepreneur, politician, and diplomat, he shaped the period immediately following the First World War. 

France's harsh position against loser Germany became particularly evident in 1922 at the economic conference in Genoa, where Germany and Communist Russia found themselves completely isolated. This led to the rapid signing of the Treaty of Rapallo between the two states, the preliminary draft of which had already been drawn up in lengthy negotiations. Chancellor Josef Wirth and his Foreign Minister Dr. Walther Rathenau had thus demonstrated to the world that Germany, which had been shaken to the core, was free to act, albeit to a limited extent. In response, France occupied the Ruhr region, as it now had to fear that Germany would no longer meet its obligations to pay reparations: "Germany only understands the language of violence, snorted the French right, while the communists raged: Poincaré - la guerre. 

In Germany, on the other hand, the right wing raged because the fact that a Jew, Rathenau, who had a doctorate in natural sciences, was now representing the Reich government's policy of fulfillment vis-à-vis the Allies as foreign minister was a provocation that could no longer be surpassed. So right-wing Freikorps fighters got serious with their threat: "Knallt ab den Walther Rathenau, die gottverdammte Judensau (Shoot-down Walther Rathenau, the goddamned Jew sow)."

When Rathenau was "executed" with a machine gun in his car on an open road on June 24, 1922, in despair, Chancellor Wirth exclaimed in a speech to the members of the Reichstag, turning to the right: "There stands the enemy, dripping his poison into the wounds of a people. - There stands the enemy - and there is no doubt about it: this enemy is on the right."

The exhibition illustrates the political, economic, and social life of the Weimar Republic, from the founding of the first German democracy to the challenges that the young republic failed to face. As Red Baron showed in a previous blog, those years were not golden for most people. 

For this blog, I primarily selected pictures from the exhibition I had not seen before. For the entire history of the Weimar Republic, I refer you to my German website.

It all began with a defeat.

The war was lost and was followed by ...

... riots in Germany's capital, Berlin.

Following the Kaiser's abdication, Germany became a republic and needed a constitution.

The constituent assembly convened in Weimar at the German National Theater on February 6, 1919.

     

The key figure of the Weimar Republic, President Friedrich Ebert,
with the Mexican president on a state visit to Berlin

Vae victis. What Germany is supposed to lose

In his opening speech to the constituent assembly, Ebert reminded the assembled men and women of all that was left of defeated Germany: "Now the spirit of Weimar, the spirit of the great philosophers and poets, must once again fill our lives."

On February 11, 1919, before the delegates began deliberating the constitution's text, they elected Friedrich Ebert as the first president of the German Reich.

     

The Kaiser, in exile in Holland, was not amused by a harness maker becoming president.

Female members of the National Assembly from the Catholic Zentrum Party

As the first German democracy, the Weimar Republic created many foundations that our societies are still based on today.

    

It is done. Habemus constitution!

Inflation! In the fall of 1923, two employees of a company
pick up the daily paid wages in sacks at the Reichsbank.

Elections to the Reichstag.
Here, "postermen" of various parties stand side by side peacefully.

SA marschiert and has those injured in Saalschlachten (brawls)
with the political opponents, march in front as martyrs.

Millions of unemployed gehen stempeln.
After the benefit has been paid out, an official stamps the unemployment cards.

Culture, the arts, and science flourish.
Max Liebermann paints President von Hindenburg.
From 1933 on, the Impressionist painter was ostracized as a Jew. 

Following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of the Reich, the SA triumphantly marched through the Brandenburg Gate near his studio. At the sight of the brown hordes, the aged artist is said to have exclaimed, "Ick kann jar nich soville fressen, wie ick kotzen möchte (I can't eat as much as I want to throw up)."

     

Bertolt Brecht, Lotte Lenya, and Kurt Weill celebrate the success
of their Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera) in Berlin.

The Zeppelin over the Brandenburg Gate

Am Tag von Potsdam, Reich Chancellor Hitler, in a lively conversation
with the son of the last emperor and a Nazi from the very beginning:
Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia.

With Him. Will he save the republic? President von Hindenburg was impressed
by the Day of Potsdam and covered up the establishment
of the Nazi dictatorship until he died in 1934.

Burning of books all over Germany on May 10, 1933

The history of the Weimar Republic is a lesson that democracy cannot be taken for granted but must be fought for and defended repeatedly.

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