The Lost Cause

Today, the Thema des Tages (The Topic of the Day) in the Badische Zeitung commemorated the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession from the Union. When the resulting Civil War between the Yankees and the Rebels ended, bemoaning more than 600.000 dead, many a man in the South instead moaned about the Lost Cause. So far, so bad, but then the author, in his article about the Civil War, managed to smuggle in the German "Dolchstoßlegende" (stab-in-the-back legend) and the claim that "Not all was bad (in the Third Reich).

Eventually, the author regarded the feelings of those Americans in the Deep South as something in between.

Propaganda drawing from 1860? Black Union army men under the command
of a white officer are attacking the Confederates.
Notice the couple below on the left-hand side fighting to the finish:
Is this a stab in the back?

I shake my head! The Dolchstoßlegende, born after the lost First World War, claimed that it was the home front and socialist Jews who had not supported the German fighting men in those trenches in Flanders. They virtually stabbed them in their backs. It was one of those brainwashings of the people by the right-wingers and later by the Nazis.

However, during the Civil War, the conspiracy theory accused Southern generals of treason.

Germans remember it well! Philipp Scheidemann, who had proclaimed the German Republic, has a dagger in his hand, while Matthias Erzberger, a catholic Jew of the Zentrum Party, is watching. In the background, wealthy Jews sit on their gold and count their paper money.

Whether in the South it was not all bad before the Confederate States were forced back into the Union, I cannot judge, but all was bad as far as the Nazi regime is concerned! The Nazis started with total domination of the people, changed to a total war, and ended in total defeat.

Here's a lesson: Be cautious when comparing historical processes and events.

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Mark or Franc that is no question

My son found the following cartoon on the internet:

This only reinforces my remark made in the blog below. Don't bail out of the Euro to reintroduce the Deutsche Mark, but don't buy Swiss Francs either.

Our chancellor has the perspective: If you can't beat them, join them.

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The Freiburg Gipfel

Ouff, the Franco-German Gipfel (summit) in Freiburg between Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel is history. Last Friday, the town came to a standstill. From 8h30 to 17h30, no streetcars in the city. Backpack-loving Freiburgers passing through had their Rucksacks checked several times by security forces.

  

Without comment

A hundred-strong police unit kept some demonstrators disguised as clowns encircled. As they polluted the air with terrible sounds, one officer confiscated a small drum, but, being a perfect German official, handed the drummer a receipt.

When a bystander criticized the expense of such summits, I answered, One day in Afghanistan costs more than ten Gipfels."

Let Angela and Nicolas be guided by the Archbishop in person, visit the Münster church, sign Freiburg's Golden Book - with our Lord Mayor watching from behind -, and let them eat a free lunch (?) specially composed by the one-star cook in town; all this doesn't disturb me if it helps French-German friendship.

However, it annoys me when those two leaders pretend to protect the euro.

Spraying Sarkozy. A French guy splashes his President with a water gun.
The clustered security force reacted much too late but arrested the man.

Addressing the demand from Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, and Greece to issue euro bonds, Merkel said, "We cannot allow mutualizing the (financial) risks." Nicolas paid her lip service by adding, "I don't see how far Germany would be selfish. Germany is the biggest (financial) contributor to the European Union."

Greece and Ireland, for years indeed, lived on credit, striving beyond their financial possibilities. They now must pay more for bonds on the international market than Germany to refinance their debts. But since we have a common currency, the old German proverb holds: Mitgefangen, mitgehangen (Captured together, hung together).

In fact, Euro bonds will be only a small remedy to cure the imbalance between rich and poor European countries. These bonds present a lesser evil for Germany than a Länderfinanzausgleich (balancing budgets between different countries). The latter is practiced in the Federal Republic between various States. From time to time, this compensation creates fury in those Länder that always have to pay to the States that, according to the givers, don't do their financial homework correctly. I agree that such a European system will require a more united community than countries bound together by a common currency.

By stirring up public opinion in Germany against euro bonds, opponents deprive the man in the street of higher interest rates on his money. With those, he could compensate for inflation. Meanwhile, people who lack confidence in either the euro or the dollar buy gold, although it has become so expensive that some have started converting their money into Swiss francs.

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Baubürgermeister

Yesterday a friend from Madison sent me an article by Barry Gore: Madison needs a professional City Council, asking me at the same time whether the Freiburg model of city government may not serve Madison.

I understood that Madison is run from the Mayor’s Office by experts and twenty alders in a city council who are paid U$ 7545 per annum to cover their expenses.

In a first approximation, Freiburg’s administration structure is similar. The city has a Lord Mayor and a city council with 48 members elected by the people representing the usual German party spectrum. All council members are working on an honorary basis with their expenses covered.

Madison and Freiburg differ in that we sport four additional mayors, each heading a Dezernat (department). These mayors are elected by the city council and hence mirror the party composition of the latter but are supposed to be experts in their departments. Like the Lord Mayor, the four mayors are fully paid.

The Lord Mayor’s office treats general organization, administration, personnel matters, law, and public relations (partner cities). One of the mayors deals with the economy, finance, housing, sports, and public order (police). Another cares about the environment, forests, schools, and waste. The third one is responsible for social affairs, culture, youth, and the integration of people. The fourth mayor runs the building departments and annexed activities.

These four mayors and their departments cost a lot of money. So a few years ago, the city council decided that Freiburg could do with only three additional mayors. Without going into detail, the decision to oust the mayor responsible for building and to dissolve the Baudezernat was based on the issue of competence and economy.

This year the city council eventually came back on its decision. Despite city finances running low, the council reinstalled the fourth mayor, the Baubürgermeister. The official reason was the excess work for the previous three mayors and their departments.

Freiburg's new Baubürgermeister Professor Dr. Martin Haag (©Thomas Kunz/BZ)

In the northern part of Germany, we say: Rut us de Kartüveln, rin in de Kartüveln, or if you understand what I mean, is it better to say: Out of the cotton field, back into the cotton field?

Considering the outcome of the recent elections in the States, how do Americans feel about more administration, even on a level as modest as a city?

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Functional Illiterates?

The other day I read an article in the Washington Post on the issue of the ever-increasing public expense. A Republican-minded citizen complained in a letter to the editor: Not just the armed forces, every Federal agency and appropriation is handled in this way. Even schools. They can whine and complain all they want about "cuts," but school budgets increase every year, and they turn out functional illiterates. We are a land where failure is richly rewarded, and productivity is criminally penalized. Is it no wonder that we're in a fix we're in?

Far from judging the issue of public spending in the States and the resulting consequences, the last part about schools producing functional illiterates electrified me.

Sprachkompetenz? (©yirsh)

In Germany, we are not better off. The magic word here is mangelnde Sprachkompetenz (insufficient command of spoken and written German). The young generation clearly lacks competence in two of the three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic). 

So school bashing is typical but aren't we beating the wrong donkey? I see kids, including my oldest grandson, spending time with audiovisual gadgets instead of books. As we say: Von nichts kommt nichts (Nothing will come out of nothing).

In the long run, the saddest aspect of this development is the loss of Sprachreichtum. Who can express his ideas clearly and with the subtlety of a rich vocabulary? Even more so, who will understand all those funny words and expressions grandparents still use in future years?

Old man = pessimist? Perhaps, but this topic unsettles me and is always on my mind.

*

Liebermann

No, I am not writing about the American politician Joe Lieberman spelled with one n but about Max Liebermann with a double n.

As usual, when in Berlin, I visit places with historical relevance. One place that I had never seen before is the infamous Villa on the Wannsee, where in 1942, Himmler's right-hand-man Heydrich held a Konferenz (meeting) to co-ordinate the Endlösung (final solution) for Europe's Jews. The place is way out of the city. You first take the S-Bahn to Wannsee Station and then ride the 155 Bus to the Villa on the Wannsee. The bus runs every twenty minutes, and while studying the timetable, I read Liebermann Villa marked as a stop. I spontaneously decided to visit that place too.

The Villa of the Wannseekonferenz became a memorial center only in 1992, following a long fight about financing. It now houses an exhibition documenting how the Nazi regime, once in power, had systematically transformed the latent anti-Semitism in Germany and elsewhere in Europe into a campaign of annihilation. In presenting the Jews as the scapegoat for Germany's misery (Die Juden sind unser Unglück), six million were hanged, shot, and gassed.

Entrance to the exhibition is free, but the main iron gate to the surrounding park is locked and only opens after the girl at the counter has considered the televised visitor acceptable. On this gray November morning, the visitors comprised a few old guys, but primarily pupils. Their teacher had formed groups of two and attributed them to the various rooms. Now she ran from team to team, giving instructions on how the kids had to do Vergangenheitsbewältigung. i.e., come to terms with the past of their great-grandfathers.

What would you expect? There was shouting, running around, tussling, and even laughing. After an hour of distraction from the kids' behavior and feeling depressed by the exhibition, I had enough. I stepped out into the park and walked back two bus stops to Liebermann's villa on Lake Wannsee too.


Max Liebermann (1847-1935), a Jewish-German painter born into a wealthy family, built the house in 1909. He lived there during the summer months from 1914 to the end of his life. Liebermann is regarded as the father of German impressionism and, while in Berlin, became famous as the painter of portraits.

What Liebermann saw from his studio on Pariser Platz in January 1933. 
The new US embassy is just located across

During his life, Liebermann always held strong opinions on art and politics. While watching the Nazis' brown hordes torches lit celebrating their victory in marching through the Brandenburg Gate on January 30th, 1933, Liebermann is reported to have commented in his typical Berlin dialect: Ick kann jar nich soville fressen, wie ick kotzen möchte (I can't eat as much as I would like to vomit). The old man is one of my heroes!

Max standing in front of his Villa.

Liebermann, who had become president of the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1920. and a Berlin honorary citizen in 1927, resigned from his post in 1933, just in time before the Nazis ousted him.

Reading in his living room.

Flowers in Liebermann's garden. In the back, his Castle on the Lake

After he died in 1935, the new rulers forced his widow, Martha, 1940 to sell the house to the Reichspost. Max had called the place his Castle on the Lake, which he had loved so much, always looking for corners with flowers for his paintings. Martha committed suicide in 1943, just ahead of her deportation to Theresienstadt.

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Pounds into Dollars

On my way to Berlin, riding the ICE again, digesting the previously described pot of coffee and Butterkuchen, and reading the freely offered newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine I came across an article about early stereotypy. In this process, pictures are transferred to metal plates that are subsequently used for printing.

Already in 1729, Benjamin Franklin had pleaded to increase the amount of money circulating in the colonies to fight consumer abstinence. Today the reason obviously is the consumer's indebtedness; in those days, the Brits apparently were the culprits prohibiting silver export from their colonies. Printing paper money: Franklin an early Bernanke?

©FAZ

In fact, Benjamin started printing pound notes together with D. Hall as early as 1760. To avoid counterfeiting, the paper money had to be forgery-proof. Technically minded, Franklin used stereotypy. Note the fine structures of those leaves on the 5-pound/100-shilling denomination. Printed in red: To Counterfeit is DEATH. Those good old times!

©FAZ

In 1776 one year after the War of Independence had broken out, the dollar had replaced the pound in the thirteen colonies and - note the intertwined rings - bound together in Olympic competition? The dollar was then divided into six parts. British heritage?

©FAZ

Already in 1778, Hall & Sellers printed a 50-dollar note as an early sign of inflation? Again the fine structure of stereotypy made forgery of the paper money difficult.

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Thank you, Google, thanks!

Presently Google is under attack in Germany because many people don't like to see their houses in street view. Public pressure was so high that Google agreed to pixel those protested pictures on request. 

Some house owners probably were ashamed and possibly feared fellow citizens, eventually becoming aware of how badly front gardens and faces were kept when zooming their objects more closely on the web.

But here I have come not to bury Google but to praise them. I was preparing a talk about the Revolution in Baden in 1848/49 to be given here in Freiburg, and I was browsing the web for original information on Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve. Both are among those who had actively fought in Baden for the German Republic as early as the middle of the 19th century. And there I suddenly found two books written by these very persons while they were in Switzerland, the country just across the border where they had initially fled to before emigrating to the States. The two books published in Switzerland are:

Dr. Fr. Hecker: Die Erhebung des Volkes in Baden für die deutsche Republik im Frühjahr 1848, Druck von J. C. Schadelitz, Basel 1849 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München) and

Gustav Struve: Geschichte der drei Volkserhebungen in Baden, Verlag von Jenni, Sohn, Bern 1849 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München).

These publications are available on Google books in facsimile as PDF files and as text in the epub format. The originals scanned were taken from the Bavarian State Library in Munich. I enjoy reading their Gothic print on my iPad and admire all the graffiti readers have left over the years on those pages as an extra bonus. In the app GoodReader, I can mark paragraphs for future reference, but I take refuge in the processed text for copy and paste. It is not easy to recognize Gothic printed characters correctly, but the people at Google did a marvelous job, although you get the rough text without any corrections. 

Wikipedia has a similar project making old texts publicly available on the web called Wikisource. All texts must have been proofread three times before they are accepted.

The web is full of treasures. Let us find and use them.

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Chilling Schill

Ferdinand Batista von Schill

The other day, I read that blond, blue-eyed, and naïf Siegfried is the last German hero. Indeed, these spoilers are depriving us of all the others.

What about Arminius, the guy who, in beating the invading Romans, deprived the German people of civilization? As historians found out, Herman, the Cheruscian, was a traitor and troublemaker within his own family.

Barbarossa was a power-hungry ruler without scruples. He lost a war against the pope and died a silly death, drowning on a crusade in a brooklet in Asia Minor (today Turkey), as Umberto Eco writes in his novel Baudolino.

Already, Heine had knocked Martin Luther from his pedestal, describing him as the typical German, a tag sufficient to drag a person down.

And now, in his book: Die Zeit der schweren Not Günter de Bruyn demounts Ferdinand Baptista von Schill, the man the people of his time hailed as a freedom fighter against Napoleon's tyranny. They mentioned him in the same breath as Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow and Theodor Körner. For de Bruyn Schill, the 2nd Brandenburg Hussar Regiment commander is an uneducated, silly imposter. However, as a guerrilla, he had such success against the occupying forces that his picture, frosted in red on cakes, was admired in Berlin coffee houses.

Aristocratic ladies considered it a grace to touch his saber. Mind you, Emmanuel Geibel, in his poem Schill, had already described the hero as a man who rode faster than his time, i.e., seeking glory at a time when the resistance of small military units against Napoleon's main forces was simply madness.

On April 28, 1808, Schill left Berlin with his regiment without authorization. Once outside the city boundaries, he talked to his men, leaving the impression that he had an order from the all-admired and beloved Queen Luise, Prussia's Jeanne d'Arc. Later, Schill simply ignored the King's order to return to his home base. Instead, he marched to Dessau on the river Elbe, took the city on May 2, and published his proclamation: An die Deutschen (to all Germans).

Schill's Memorial Stone in the pavement on Fährstraße

Napoleon's youngest brother, Jérôme, King of Westphalia, put 10,000 francs on Schill's head and sent Danish and Dutch reserve troops, commanded by Generals Ewald and Gratien, respectively, to pursue the resistance fighter. Schill escaped to the north and entered the city of Stralsund, hailed by its Mecklenburg-Polish garrison. 

By then, Schill's troops, reinforced by recruiting, comprised up to 3000 men, but the fight for Stralsund against an overwhelming enemy approaching the city was lost from the beginning. Against all warnings, Schill was determined to hold out and said: Better an end with terror than terror without an end, an idea drawn from Psalm 73,19: How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!

Stalingrad anticipated: On May 31,  Napoleon's troops assaulted the city. Schill fell unnoticed and died his heroic death on Fährstraße. With him, he took many a man. It is a crazy and sad story.
**

Hawking's Bang

Stephen Hawking's latest book, The Grand Design, disappointed me. It was announced as a new approach to the classical question: Does (a) God exist? However, Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow turn around the pot and declare that God is not necessary to explain the world and the creation that exists. They formulate their basic questions as follows:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Why do we exist?

Why this particular set of (physical) laws and not some other?

However, before the authors answer these points in the last chapter on page 171 of their book, the reader gets a flash course in old, modern, and most recent physics. It is somewhat short for the layman to grasp but a good repetition for persons interested in the topic who have read this before. 

Luckily, once in a while, the authors like to be funny. For example, they explain symmetry by saying that a flipped donut looks the same unless it has a chocolate topping, in which case it is better just to eat it. We have observed that the moon is not made of Roquefort cheese, which is bad news for mice. These remarks have the advantage of keeping the reader alive.

Let us see how the authors tackle the answers to the questions posed above: Spontaneous creation of matter, i.e., new worlds, can be explained by combining relativity theory and quantum mechanics within the spatial dimension of a Planck length. 

A Big Bang starting within the size of 10^-35 meters can be macroscopically illustrated with microbubbles appearing in a boiling liquid, where some of those will expand to form giant vapor bubbles. Time originates within this image, and the question of what was before time zero becomes meaningless. 

Due to quantum fluctuations, new universes are spontaneously created out of the energy of empty space. Only to say that Einstein disliked quantum mechanics; for him, God doesn't throw dice.

The picture of microbubbles in a boiling liquid can be further stretched: Only those microbubbles, i.e., Big Bangs, will expand into universes where the combination of physical constants and laws just fit each other. Our world would not exist if constants like the gravitational constant, the speed of light, the electron radius, etc., were not those they are. Varying the values of our known physical parameters by only a few percent will lead to unstable universes, i.e., to worlds that cannot exist.

The salient question remains: Why do we exist? In a first step, the authors also stress a mathematical model called the Game of Life, where structures using energy and following defined laws reproduce themselves. Viruses do that; even the evolution to higher forms of life can be understood as complex systems of limited size that are stable and reproduce. Darwin's selection principle fits nicely into this pattern. 

However, as they are known to us, life formation in self-producing structures requires necessary conditions such as water, oxygen, and a friendly habitat with temperature variations remaining within certain limits, just like Mother Earth provides. Living systems can and will react when stimulated within limits; otherwise, they will die.

This does not explain why and when beings possess free will. For the authors, a robot's behavior is predictable because it is calculable. When, however, a living being has more than about 10²⁷ atoms, we would therefore have to say that any complex being has free will - not as a fundamental feature, but as an effective theory, an admission of our inability to do the calculations that would enable us to predict its actions. 

Nice try, but is the statement that we cannot calculate a structure the convincing evidence for the existence of free will? And will this free will push us to believe or not believe in a somewhat reduced God, a God just throwing dice? 

There was another approach precisely 40 years ago when Jacques Monod denied us our free will in his book Le hazard et la nécessité. Monod suspected a genetic defect as the origin of man's quest for God, a fault that we, according to him, must overcome. 

Oh Lord, wherein all this is the personal God that Jesus told us we shall call our Father!?

Hawking and Mlodinow summarize: Spontaneous creation is why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, and why we exist. It is unnecessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. The fact that we human beings - who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature – have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph. But perhaps the true miracle is that abstract considerations of logic lead to a unique theory that predicts and describes a vast universe full of the amazing variety we see.

Today I read in Murphy's Law Calendar that There are some things that are impossible to know - but it is impossible to know these things. Now, I am ready to read Küng's book about his beliefs!

**

My Fairy Tales

In 1792, Emperor Leopold I donated a School of Philosophy and Catholic Theology in Breslau (Wroclaw), which was named Leopoldina after him. As a Catholic institute run by the Jesuits in Protestant Breslau, the new university was an essential instrument of the Counter-Reformation in Silesia. A symbol of the Jesuit influence is the Auditorium (Aula), decorated in the late Baroque style. Although I am not an aficionado of that genre, I was impressed when our group visited the hall.

The Aula Leopoldina

The flowers are in Poland's red and white.
The motto Quod (bonum,) faustum, felix fortunatumque sit

is taken from Cicero's 'De Divinatione' (1, 45, 102):
May the outcome be good, propitious, lucky, and successful

Strolling through the university quarter afterward, I looked into the window of a second-hand bookshop and saw a battered edition of Märchen der Brüder Grimm.

This rang a bell deep inside. Didn't I love the fairy tale book with those colored pictures my mother used to read from? 

Later I devoured the stories of Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), Frau Holle (Mother Hulda), Aschenputtel (Cinderella), Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich (The Frog Prince), Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot (Snow-White and Rose-Red), you name them! Somehow, my book got lost during the war.

I entered the Antykwariat of Andrzej Jaworski and examined the book. It was indeed the same edition I once owned, and the price in Reichsmark was still written on the back in pencil: 2.85! The bookseller had pre-priced it at 48 Słoty, whereas I would have easily given him double that. I didn't trade, and as the old man apparently hadn't noticed the greedy glint in my eyes, he offered me the treasure for only 40. My fairy tale!

Indeed, the pictures are impressive. Here are two examples:

I liked the piece of Lebkuchen (a mild gingerbread) Hänsel had broken off
from one corner of the roof

Rumpelstilzchen

**

Duelling is crazy

Red Baron visited the Jewish cemetery while in Polish Wrosław, formerly German Breslau. I took a taxi because the place was not within walking distance of the city. My young driver only spoke broken English, whereas Wrosław's older generation often is entirely at ease with German.

One trip to the cemetery cost 18 Słoty, so I asked my driver how much he would take if he waited 20 minutes and took me back downtown afterward. He answered: Another 18. I said, "But you have to wait for me." He continued, "For that fare, I shall stay the whole afternoon." 

Ferdinand Lassalle
fighting for Social Democracy and human rights

I promised him 50 Słoty for all, including 20 minutes of waiting time, for my only intention was to visit Ferdinand Lassalle's tomb. This guy founded the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein in Leipzig on May 23, 1836, and is considered the father of social democracy in German-speaking countries. Note Lassalle was far from being a proletarian, for he died prematurely, shot in a duel.

An old man guarded the entrance to the quiet graveyard. He was born the same year as me, and we spoke German together. He offered me a special price for the entrance fee if I bought a brochure about the Jewish cemetery on sale in several major languages. He strongly recommended visiting Edith Stein's parents' graves, which were, strangely enough, buried in separate plots. Edmund Husserl's assistant, Edith Stein, once taught and lived in Freiburg before converting to Catholicism and entering the Carmelites' Order. When the Nazi persecution became violent, her order sent her to a hideout in a Dutch convent. All in vain, the Gestapo tracked her down and transported her to Auschwitz.

Lassalle's tomb is made from black marble.

Nevertheless, my attention was instead focused on Lassalle's clearly marked and well-kept tomb. I took several photos. Then I slowly went back to my waiting taxi, passing the weather-beaten tombstones of the Werths and Pringsheims, the Rubins and Edelsteins, the Cohens and Meyers.

I asked my driver to take me to the recently redecorated synagogue. This relatively small building hidden in a backyard cannot be compared with the impressive Breslau synagogue that the Nazis burned down in the Reichskristallnacht on November 9, 1938.

Breslau's New Synagogue (©Robert Geissler/Wikipedia)

They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground (Psalm 74.7)

I just arrived in time to catch the tail of a guided tour in German. A female guide informed us about Breslau's long-gone rich Jewish culture and history. She frequently took advice in Polish from an older, petite gentleman dressed in black and wearing a kippa. Still impressed by Lassalle's "aristocratic" death, I asked him how the Jewish faith considered fighting a duel, a deed that the Catholic church regards as a deadly sin. The interpreting guide said, "Here is an interesting question," and then translated it for the male expert. After some deliberation, he simply answered, "I don't know".

We continued our guided tour, passing many photos of famous Jewish personalities from Breslau, among them Max Born, the Nobel prize physicist, who was well known to me. Suddenly, a door in the back of the room opened, and an elegantly dressed gentleman wearing a beard and a kippa entered. The guide introduced him as the Great Rabbi of Wrosław. He carried a briefcase in one hand and held a Starbucks grande coffee-to-go in the other. He greeted our group briefly in German and started in accented Polish, telling us about the present Jewish community in Wrosław, counting 300 members. 

While I was deliberating whether his coffee was kosher, he continued explaining that a recent CNN report about Jewish revival in Poland has given rise to 20 telephone calls per day from people discovering their Jewish origins. When he had finished his lecture, I used the opportunity to formulate my question again. Following some back-and-forth discussions between our guide and the Rabbi, he answered, "It depends."

After the tour, I walked around a bit, studying the exhibition, and eventually left. And there it happened that just in front of me walked the Great Rabbi and the petite gentleman in black ... and they were talking in English! I approached and said, "Pardon me, Rabbi, was there some misunderstanding? Maybe I should have asked my question in English," and repeated it accordingly. He turned to me, "Oh, you mean Lassalle fought a duel because of a woman? That's crazy!" And left me stunned.

And suddenly everything fell into place: CNN, the coffee to go, his accented Polish. He was an American of Polish origin sent to Wrosław as a development worker (Entwicklungshelfer) for the Jewish community.

**

Stranded in Gelnhausen

On my way to Dresden for a one-week trip to Wroclaw (Breslau) and Cracow (Krakau), I started in Freiburg on Saturday, October 9, at 6.52 a.m. taking the InterCity Express (ICE) direction Frankfurt. Red Baron left instead at 7.15 a.m. since the train from Basel arrived in Freiburg twenty minutes late. Initially, I didn't worry about the delay but rather enjoyed the Butterkuchen (a piece of cake made from yeast dough covered with sugared sliced almonds roasted in butter) and the pot of coffee that one gets served at the seat. This treat has become my favorite standard whenever I travel by ICE in Germany.

Luckily, I caught my train to Dresden at Frankfurt's central station because my connection arrived on the other side of the same platform and was also delayed. Soon after the ICE to Dresden had left Frankfurt toward Fulda, the loudspeaker informed us about an abandoned Aldi plastic bag in coach 22. Oh, oh! A few minutes later, the train ground to an unscheduled halt at Gelnhausen station. All passengers had to leave the train, the platform, and even their luggage behind.

Gelnhausen is a small town in Hesse with beautiful half-timbered houses. The poet Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen was born there in 1622. He is famous for the first German novel, The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus, which was written during the Thirty Years' War. Gelnhausen also has the remains of a Kaiserpfalz (Emperor's palace).

Waiting at a safe distance on platform 1 for the big blow

Time was too short for a visit, although it took 30 minutes before the Federal Police arrived to investigate the plastic bag affair. At the same time, we waited at a safe distance on platform 1 for another 90 minutes. Luckily enough, it was a beautiful sunny day.

A female German shepherd on her way to sniff explosives

Suddenly, the crowd opened a passage for an awe-inspiring police officer and his dog. From then on, it still took another hour before the sniffing dog declared the plastic bag clean. Ultimately, we were invited to re-mount the train and meet our luggage again.

*

The Conquest of Space and Time

Professor Peter Günther's talk describing how the Puritan heritage developed into a political religion made me think about two points: Possible future developments in America's drive to new frontiers and, as Herman Melville saw it, the political Messiah had come in the American people.

Reaching New Frontiers
Once the settlers had arrived at the West Coast of the American continent and had pitched up their tents on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean, had they not reached their final goal? 

No, to me, President Kennedy's call to make it to the moon within a decade was a manifestation and continuation of the pioneers' spirit of conquering space and time. And even today, there are frontiers to be reached, e.g., in science, where the US has the highest rate of Nobel Prize winners.

What about old and new social challenges and how to meet them? The Puritan attitude, i.e., those who in this life count themselves already among the chosen people, clashes with charity for the unsuccessful and miserable neighbor. Is this why Socialism is the devil in person for some Americans? 

In 1848, Theodor Mögling, a leading figure during the German revolution in Baden-Württemberg, gave the following definition: "Socialism wants the unification of forces on a voluntary basis to reach goals that cannot be reached by an individual alone. However, the freedom and self-determination of an individual must only be limited to a degree necessary for reaching the goal." What could be wrong with that?

Spreading Freedom and Democracy
Europeans, mainly Germans, will never forget America's intervention during two world wars, where, in a second attempt, the US succeeded at "imposing" democracy in Central Europe.

Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George:
You, too, have the right to self-determination.
Would you like your pockets to be emptied before or after your death?
Contemporary cartoon by Th. Heine

The first attempt had to fail because President Wilson somewhat naively left the execution of his 14 Points to the Europeans. In his book 1000 Years of Annoying the French, Stephen Clarke writes, "Britain's Prime Minister, Lloyd George, thought the Allies should be less lenient on the Germans. He wanted to punish them while keeping their country healthy enough to act as a barrier against the new Communist state of Russia in the east. 

The French, though, were obsessed with bringing Germany to its knees. Remembering the Franco-Prussian War, France's Prime Minister, the 77-year-old Georges Clemenceau, was determined that the Germans should never be strong enough to invade France again - which makes it hard to understand why he insisted on a peace treaty so harsh that they would come back looking for vengeance only twenty years later."

After the first aborted attempt followed the successful second. In 1945, Europe was in such a shambles that only massive American help (the Marshall Plan) prevented the continent's western half from drifting under communist rule too. The American seed mostly fell on fertile ground. Germany is now a stable democracy, even to the point of being admired by some less fortunate countries.

The next international hot spot where the US successfully missionized was South Korea. However, the following Operation Vietnam failed to leave deep scars on how America sees itself. I will skip the Iraqi War, so next comes Operation Enduring Freedom focusing on Afghanistan. 

Here, a Western Alliance is fighting the Taliban militarily and politically together with the US, providing the lion's share as usual. Defending the US and Germany against the Taliban at the Hindu Kush? Concerning our troops, more than two-thirds of the German people deny that statement and would prefer to pull our personnel out by tomorrow.

My conclusion is that at the bitter end, the Alliance will not have established a democratic regime in Afghanistan but will count thousands of lives lost and billions of U$ and euros burned.

Is there another way to meet the aggressiveness of the militant faction of Islam? The question is not answered. The latest remark by our federal president, "Germany has a Christian-Jewish (yes!!) past, but in the meantime, Islam belongs to Germany too," neither helped nor calmed down the debate.

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Essen Reloaded

Before I attended my class reunion in Essen, I visited the places of my youth. Here is another photo of my early days:

My playmate from 1938 to 1942 and my beloved tricycle.
Me picking my nose? 

The house is well-kept, where I lived on the second floor.
I rang the bell, and who answered?

On the doorstep, Ursula, my former playmate, is still living in the apartment on the first floor.

Mein Kindergarten is below and behind the Collegiate Church of Rellinghausen.
The church was founded in the Romanesque style in 996.

At the Primary School, in the rooms on the left-hand side,
they taught me how to handwrite in Sütterlin (Gothic)

The station where I used to take the train going downtown together with my mother 

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Essen!

  I do not know why, although I was born in the city of Essen. Whenever I hear the word, Madison's Essen Haus comes to my mind. During my visits to our Sister City, I have never made it to the place. It resembles Bavarian, featuring Gemuetilichkeit with an additional "i" and a charming selection of antique Hummels! Promise, next time in Madison, I shall visit Essen Haus.



 The city name Essen has nothing to do with a meal or eating. Because of the heavy industry that boomed around the Ruhr River in the late 19th century, a pun was shared that the name Essen is derived from die Essen (German for "the smokestacks"). All wrong! Essen may be derived from the common ash tree (Esche in modern German).

The big name in those times was Krupp, and boozing men used to boast: Was Krupp in Essen, sind wir im Trinken (What Krupp stands for in Essen, we stand for in drinking).

This weekend I shall be in Essen for my yearly class reunion. I only had two years of primary school in Essen and later went to and finished high school in Hamburg. My former classmates change meeting places yearly to make our gatherings more interesting.

Here is an old photo from 1938. It shows a tiny Red Baron with his father in front of our house in Goldammerweg 4. No, the car is not an Audi; it is a DKW.

Later, during World War II, when I visited my grandparents' farm in Westphalia, I encountered the following teaser: "In Essen gibt es große Schüsseln, aber nichts zum Fressen" (In Essen, there are big bowls, but there is nothing to eat). This was partly true; I remember the big but simple meals my grandmother prepared on an enormous stove. 

Just across the expansive kitchen, I sat around a large wooden table with all the farmhands. We dug into the food once my grandfather had said grace.

In the Herrgottswinkel (the corner where a crucifix hung), the only modern accessory set on a high shelf was the Volksempfänger (the people's wireless set). God and Goebbels, what a vicious combination! But that is a different story.

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German Language Day 2010

Somehow typical showing the European Flag
and the UN-logo

Today is German Language Day (Tag der deutschen Sprache), and it happened that this very morning I finished Günter Grass's latest book: Grimms Wörter; Eine Liebeserklärung. The New York Times wrote about Grimm's Words: The book is a declaration of love, as the subtitle states, to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's collection of German words into a dictionary. 

The Brothers Grimm started their Deutsches Wörterbuch in 1848 when following a conflict about the Hanover Constitution with their king, they - together with five other colleagues (the Göttingen Seven) - were not only ousted from their professorships but also expelled from the Kingdom of Hanover.

The Wörterbuch is more than just a dictionary. It is like an encyclopedia of German words, their origin, and their development. It is a treasure trove, particularly for a writer like Günter Grass, who loves German Baroque authors and their style.

Coming back to German Language Day 2010, the Badische Zeitung published an interview with Professor Ludwig Eichinger, full professor of German linguistics at the University of Mannheim. It is there where the Duden, Germany's reference source for our language, is published. When Eichinger was asked about the influence of American English on the German language, he gave an all-clear.

We had earlier impacts on our language. In the 18th century it was the Français that caused outbreaks like: O spei aus, vor der Hausthür spei der Seine häßlichen Schleim aus! Rede Deutsch, o du Deutscher (Oh, vomit in front of the front door, vomit the Seine river's hideous slime! Speak German, oh you German). 

Concerning the American influence, we are far from such outbursts. Why not use the English word if there are no acceptable German translations? Who knows the German equivalent of "upgrade?" 

The other day I read cute translations for drop-down lists and browsers: Klapplisten and Stöberer. Since my early days with the computer, I have fought a personal battle using the word hard disk for the good German Festplatte. After all, I try to compensate for my lapsus linguae by forcing E-Post instead of e-mail.

In fact, in recent years, German enterprises have rediscovered German like the Deutsche Bahn (German Railway). They promised to rename their Service Point into Kundenzentrum.

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St. Odile

Today I took part in an excursion with colleagues of Feierabend. The English translation of Feierabend is "quitting time," but this does not convey the sentimental German meaning: Imagine a farmer or a blacksmith sitting on a bench under the linden tree in his village. After a hard day's work, he has folded his brawny hands in his lap, watching the sunset. This is German Feierabend!

In our case, Feierabend stands for a bunch of older-generation people interested in computer activities, garnishing their hobby with other group activities, mostly excursions.

Statue of St. Odile with attributes of an abbess of Hohenburg

A one-and-a-half-hour walk took us to a chapel above Freiburg built in 679 at the place where St. Odile once found refuge in a rock that opened just in time before her father's men arrived to catch her. In fact, Duke Etichon of Alsace had ordered his daughter to marry, which she refused. Eventually, her only solution was a getaway. Her hiding in the rock blessed the region with a source.

Grotto and entrance to the source below St. Odile's chapel

You must descend into the grotto below the chapel to get to the source. An iron gate blocks access to the water. On the rock above the praying St. Odile is barely recognizable. 

The water of the source is said to have curative virtues in case of eye trouble. It flows out of a green garden hose below the gate. To reach the water, you must bend down quite a lot. Eventually, I managed and rinsed my eyes, although I washed my hands at the dedicated facilities before our group had lunch at a tavern adjoining the chapel. The place now called St. Ottilien is a popular excursion site for Freiburgers.

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The Grand Design

The latest book by the Oxford genius, Stephen Hawking: The Grand Design, will be in bookstores next week. In advance, I read the following catchphrases on CNN's website: Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, and why we exist, and it is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the Universe going. I pre-ordered the book immediately.

The question of Intelligent Design has occupied me for years and is a permanent topic of discussion in the States, where many people fight against Darwinism. 

When I finished Hans Küng's last book, Der Anfang aller Dinge (The Beginning of All Things), in 2005, I discussed the topic at one of Freiburg-Madison's Stammtische in 2006. Near the end of this book, Professor Küng gives a small glimpse of what he believes. I wanted to learn more.

Since then, Küng has published a new book in 2009: What I believe. Although I was hot on the topic the book is still lying on my desk unread. When I now opened it, I started reading at the end and found what I expected: Saint Paul’s visio beatifica from 1 Corinthians, 13: Die Liebe kommt niemals zu Fall: Prophetische Gaben – sie werden zunichte werden; Zungenreden – sie werden aufhören; Erkenntnis – sie wird zunichte werden. Denn Stückwerk ist unser Erkennen und Stückwerk unser prophetisches Reden. Wenn aber das Vollkommene kommt, dann wird zunichte werden, was Stückwerk ist. Als ich ein Kind war, redete ich wie ein Kind, dachte wie ein Kind, überlegte wie ein Kind. Als ich aber erwachsen war, hatte ich das Wesen des Kindes abgelegt. Denn jetzt sehen wir alles in einem Spiegel, in rätselhafter Gestalt, dann aber von Angesicht zu Angesicht. Jetzt ist mein Erkennen Stückwerk, dann aber werde ich ganz erkennen, wie ich auch ganz erkannt worden bin. Nun aber bleiben Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe, diese drei. Die größte unter ihnen aber ist die Liebe. (Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. Right now, three things remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.)

Spontaneously, I decided to read Küng's book first before digging into Hawking's The Grand Design. Hawking's book has already started a new debate on the fundamental question of creation. 

The head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, said that physics alone will not settle why there is something rather than nothing. Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe. It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence.

Britain's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation ... The Bible simply isn't interested in how the Universe came into being.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, endorsed the Chief Rabbi's eloquent statement about the relationship between religion and science.

As I had expected, Imam Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, expressed his fundamental belief: If we look at the Universe and all that has been created, it indicates that somebody has been here to bring it into existence. That somebody is the almighty conqueror.

Like in physics, where the Standard Model matured into the Grand Unified Theory (GUT), Intelligent Design evolved into a more extensive Grand Design (TGD). Perhaps I should have read Hawking's book first.

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LLL

Today, I read an article in the Badische Zeitung titled Der Blick nach Deutschland (Looking unto Germany), referring to a blog by Richard C. Longworth called Another Way To Work. The blog published in The Midwesterner discusses a book entitled Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? by Thomas Geoghegan.

In his blog, Richard gives lots of flowers to Germany, particularly to its economy. For me, however, the article smacks of the stinking dictum: Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen. (The German spirit shall heal the world.) I instead prefer the German proverb: Not all is gold, what glitters.

Let us compare job security. Traditionally, jobs are more secure in Germany than in the United States, but one can still lay off people when they are no longer needed. Since unemployment (which comes right after inflation) is a political issue in Germany, firms asked their staff to work fewer hours during the recent economic crisis (Kurzarbeit) instead of laying off part of their workforce. 

This practice was honored by the German government, paying most of the difference between the full pay and the loss of income due to Kurzarbeit. This measure - meant to avoid social tensions and psychological traumata for unemployed workers - had an additional benefit. When China re-started ordering massively high-technology products in Germany, production could be increased without delay with the trained workforce still present. All seems to look good; however, since Germans are notorious Bedenkenträger (worry warts), they ask: What will happen in the long run if the diligent Chinese have copied Germany's high technology?


Enter education. We can only keep our export-driven economy alive if we always remain a step ahead of our competitors. This means keeping up or even increasing the standard of our educated and skilled workforce. When comparing our education system to the States, we feel humble. Most Nobel prize winners come from the US, and I am convinced that all these people practice lifelong learning (LLL).

Good old Wilhelm Busch wrote in 1856 when schooling in Germany became compulsory:
It was decided that man/woman must learn.
One can learn, thank God, also throughout one's life. (German stamp)

LLL, lebenslanges Lernen, recently became the catchword in discussing Germany's education system. As in the States, education here is not centrally organized as in France. We in Germany boast of as many and even more education systems as we have Länder (States). 

In European comparisons (PISA Studies) of schooling results, German students never even come near the top, which regularly causes a national outcry. At present, university reforms within the European Union, e.g., changing the traditional diploma degrees to bachelor and master, cause frustration among students. Will Germany meet the challenge of keeping its educational system at a necessary high standard? Will people accept LLL? Only the future will tell. Discussions about education and formation in Germany are in full swing.

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