He will do it again

Today, Red Baron discovered the following photo in the Badische Zeitung:

Four forerunners of a planned 400 Goethes
in front of Frankfurt's Johann Wolfgang Goethe University (©dpa)

On June 11, Ottmar Hörl will take the occasion of the centenary of Frankfurt's Johann Wolfgang Goethe University to decorate its entrance with 400 colored sculptures of our national poet. According to Hörl, corn-yellow stands for Goethe's intellect, night-blue for his phantasy, purple-red for his reasoning, and turquoise-green for his sensuality.

By 2010, Hörl had 800 Martin Luther sculptures populating the Reformer's city, Wittenberg, and Red Baron blogged about the artist's 2013 projects: Wagner and Marx.

800 Martin Luthers in Wittenberg's marketplace (©dpa)

Usually, Hörl's sculptures come in various colors, but Marx only had several shades of red. Remember my blog about the color-coding of political parties in Germany? What about making plastic doubles of Social Democrats in various reds according to their conviction? 

I can also imagine several shades of green for green politicians: From dark green, shutting down all nuclear power immediately, to light green, switching to renewable energies according to our technical possibilities. I admit that I see difficulties with the black generally attributed to the Christian Democratic Party: Are not shades of black nothing else than shades of grey?

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Fritz Geiges

In 1835, he was christened Alois Sigmund Friedrich Geiges, but he insisted that they call him Fritz. He had a significant influence on Freiburg's cultural heritage. A well-known example is his impressive painting of St. George at the Schwabentor (Swabian Gate).

©miJoergens/Wikipedia

 Another example is the stained-glass windows of Sankt Johannes (St. John's Church) that Geiges created between 1898 and 1901.

Emperor Saint Heinrich II. He was canonized for being the donor of Basel's cathedral. Here, he carries a model of the Johanneskirche.

In Mediaeval style: Professor Fritz Geiges as a donor figure in the corner of one of his stained-glass windows. In the bottom left, Geiges' coat of arms, the Freiburg raven.

Fritz Geiges was one of the founders of the still-existing Breisgau Geschichtsverein (historical society) Schau-ins-Land in his youth. The first edition of the society's annual book carries his handwriting, and he made nearly all of the drawings.

Page 77 of the first-year edition of the journal "Schau-ins-Land," written and drawn by Geiges.

During his life, Fritz was a workaholic and was known throughout the 2^nd Reich for his "historicizing art." At the invitation of Emperor Wilhelm II, he conceived the decoration of Berlin's Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (memorial church). Wilhelm was impressed and attributed the title of professor to Fritz. He was so proud that he signed all of his future works with Professor Fritz Geiges.

Fritz conceived the mosaic in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, 
showing some of the Prussian royals.

In 1890, Geiges restored the sculptures in Freiburg's Minster Church port. Before, he had made watercolor paintings of all the objects. Based on these paintings, a second restoration of the sculptures began in 2001. It was completed in 2004, i.e., the Medieval figures were cleaned and restored to the state Geiges had documented in the late 19th century. The Münsterbauverein took the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the second restoration to honor Fritz Geiges with an exhibition, a series of lectures, and guided tours: Gothic in the Workshop.

Honoring Professor Fritz Geiges: Gotik im Atelier (©Münsterbauverein)

In the entrance hall of Freiburg's Minster church: Visitation of Our Lady.  Both Mary and her cousin Elisabeth  are bearing children.

The wall painting by Fritz Geiges of 1909 shows Dr. Faustus's end in Staufen.
When M. Hickel restored the painting in 1994, he forgot to add Geiges' title.

Following Geiges's success with restoring the statues of the Münster porch in 1917, the city council entrusted him, the expert on stained glass, with the restoration of the medieval windows. Fritz worked according to his own ideas, rarely adhering to the maxim of monument preservation: "Niemals restaurieren, möglichst nur konservieren" (Never restore, if possible only conserve). In the 1920s, Geiges was highly criticized for his "restoring vandalism."

Today, visitors of Freiburg's Münster enjoy the old and the new parts of the stained-glass windows and sometimes look with astonishment at the following example in the so-called baker's window:

©miJoergens/Wikipedia

The pretzel on the left looks bright; it must be one of Geiges's new additions. You are mistaken! Geiges had added missing glass windows and varnished them to fit the dirty originals. When the Münster windows were cleaned in 1980, the restorers were fascinated by the blaze of the Medieval originals, as shown on the left-hand side.

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Sunday Election

Today Red Baron voted for the European Parliament and Freiburg's city council. Strasbourg is far away, but our Rathaus (city hall) is within walking distance.

Freiburg's city council has 48 members, meaning I had an equal number of votes to cast. This has historical reasons. Up to 1248, the city council only had 24 members, all of the noble families who were city councilors by birth and for a lifetime. Because they mismanaged public property, a small revolution occurred in May 1248. All citizens assembled in the Münster church square and demanded that an additional 24, mostly younger members of the nobility, merchants, and craftsmen, be added to the city council, helping the established 24 with the administration. These new members were elected every year. This timid "democratization" continued up to 1386.

The document of May 1248 enlarging Freiburg's city council

When in the Battle of Sempach in the same year, the Swiss slaughtered 656 earls, noblemen, and patricians, mostly from Freiburg, these people suddenly lost their majority in the city council. The Austrian Duke Leopold IV., Freiburg's new ruler, decided in 1392 that all 48 council members be elected yearly, composed of 12 patricians, 12 merchants, and 18 masters of the guilds plus 6 additional guild members.

Nowadays, our 48 city councilors are elected for a 5-year mandate. Thirteen parties would like to sit in Freiburg's town hall. The lists of candidates of the various parties are contained in a longish booklet where the voter has the agony of choice. Is this the reason why less than half of Freiburg's citizens cast their votes?

 

The title of the booklet. It contains 13 ballot sheets.
Only half the length is shown.
On the bottom, it reads: You, therefore, have 48 votes.

In fact, the voting system for city councils in Baden-Württemberg is rather complicated. The easiest way to vote is to tear one page for a particular party out of the booklet, place this ballot sheet in a prepared envelope, and then into the voting box. If you like to calculate, a party list for one seat in the city council must draw a minimum of 2.08% of the votes.

Red Baron likes to have it complicated. First, I never support my party's order of its 48 candidates on the ballot sheet. Here I can häufeln (cumulate) up to three votes on particular candidates, thus moving them up the list. A party getting 14% of the votes will have 7 seats in the city council. So the first 7 persons from their list are elected. You can (slightly) influence the order on the ballot sheet in cumulating your votes.

Second, I know several candidates from other parties personally and want to give them some of my votes. In this case, I panaschiere (mix) my choice in adding the names of the persons of other parties on my party list by hand. Then I attribute to them up to three votes. In these games, there is only one condition to fulfill: Your ballot sheet must not count more than 48 votes in total.

P.S: The voting results for Freiburg's city council were known only today (May 27) as the poll workers first had to count the votes for the European parliament. Whereas in Europe, the Eurosceptics increased their number of deputies by 50%, Freiburg's city council results show no surprises. Here are the seats for the various parties in the new assembly (in brackets is the distribution of seats in the previous council elected in 2009):

Green Party (Grüne)               11 (11)
Christian Democrats (CDU)    9 (10)
Social Democrats (SPD)          8  (9)
Leftist List (LiSSt)                  4  (4)
Free Voters (FW)                     3  (3)
Livable Freiburg (FL)             3  (0)
Free Democrats (FDP)            2  (4)
Culture List (KULT)               2  (2)
Young Freiburg (JF)               2  (1)
Alternative Greens (GAF)      1  (2)
Independent Women (UFF)    1  (0)
The Party (DIEPARTEI)         1  (0)
Christians for Freiburg (CFF)  1  (0)

Mayor Dieter Salomon commented: Freiburg bleibt regierbar, aber der Gemeinderat wird bunter (Freiburg remains "governable," but the city council is more colored). It will be challenging to attribute different and distinct colors to all thirteen parties presented in Freiburg's new city council, although some only with one seat.

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New York Food

Some people will argue that there is no particular New York food. They are right insofar as the melting pot of people has many restaurants serving international cuisine. Nevertheless, the various national specialties are always presented with an American touch.

A typical attribute of food in the United States is that portions are huge. Another feature of American food is the many calories. I use to say, "It is sufficient to look at US food, and you will gain weight."

©Wikipedia

Katz's, where Harry and Sally had lunch.

While in the city that never sleeps, Red Baron revisited one of his favorite places: Katz's Delicatessen on Houston Street. I had what "most of the others are having": Pastrami on rye bread with a glass of Pilsner Urquell beer. You simply say in Yiddish: Me ken lecken di finger (You want to lick your fingers).

For photographic clarity, only half the portion is shown.

However, after the meal, I was unsure whether I had followed Katz's basic advice: Ess gesunt (Eat in good health).

Dumbo

Pizza is one of America's favorite foods, best in Brooklyn's Dumbo district (Down under Manhattan Bridge) at Ignazio's. When my son and I entered the pizzeria around noon, we had to wait for the oven to heat up, but it was well worth the wait. 

We ordered The Pizza with tomato, garlic, basil & olive oil, and the White Pie with ricotta & mozzarella. Simply delicious.

The Pizza and the White Pie

The Heartland Brewery premises (©Heartland Brewery)

One evening, just around the corner from my son's apartment, we looked for a snack and a beer and landed at the Heartland Brewery on the lower floor of the Empire State Building. 

For the first time in my life, I had Pulled Pork made from house-smoked pork, served on a sesame bun with coleslaw and fries, which I downed with a glass of Farmer Jon's Oatmeal Stout.

Pulled pork

McDonald's MMMM on Times Square

Before I leave the Big Apple, I usually visit a place full of memories. A couple of years ago, Elisabeth and I stayed at a hotel near Times Square for a week, doing lots of sightseeing. One day, we saw people coming out of McDonald's with French fries in cups, which sparked an irresistible desire for pommes frites. 

We entered, stood in line, and drew strange looks from the vendors when we ordered the biggest portions of fries available without a Big Mac, sat down, and enjoyed our potatoes. Since then, Elisabeth and I have claimed that McDonald's at Times Square serves the best French fries in New York.

My meal

This time, I sat alone with my French Fries and a McCafé Vanilla Shake, which I had better not have ordered, since it was pure calories.

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World Without God

Recently the New Scientist's deputy editor Graham Lawton wrote an article about the World without God or people losing their religion.

People in various countries were asked in 2005 and seven years later in 2012: Are you religious?

The decrease in the number of "believers" over the seven years is dramatic. In Germany, their percentage fell from 60 to 51%, and in France, la fille ainée de l'Eglise (the adult daughter of the Roman Church), from 57 to 37%. Most Europeans regard the people in the States as very religious, i.e., a "people of God," but even in the US, although starting out at a high figure of 74% in 2005, the believers dropped to 57% in 2012.

Red Baron noticed with astonishment the numbers for Ireland. Irish monks brought Christianity to Central Europe, and Eire has remained a Catholic stronghold for nearly 2000 years. Within seven years, the percentage of religious people dropped from 69% to 46%. There are a few exceptions to the general downtrend. In the Netherlands, traditionally critical of religious issues, Dutch believers increased between 2005 and 2012 from 42 to 43%.

Nearly empty basilica of St. Blasien. Award-winning photo ©Sebastian Morlock, Wikipedia

Being non-religious is not the same as being an atheist. The fact is that people, in particular in the "Western" countries, simply no longer care about religion, so, as Lawton states, by now, the "nones" are holding the majority in the world.

For example, for people experiencing security and wealth, the Scandinavian countries no longer pray Aus tieffer not schrey ich zu dir, Herr Gott (Out of the depth I cry to you, o Lord), a text taken from Psalm 130 and set into a cantata by Bach. We, the 21st-century bourgeois, no longer feel the need to follow Christ's invitation: Come to me, all weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28).

Modern over-consuming societies are no longer searching for God but rather adore golden calves and dance around as described in Exodus Chapter 32: And the people said to Aaron: Make us a god, which shall go before us ... And he received all their gold, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it a molten calf; and the people said: "This is thy god, O Israel" ... And the LORD said unto Moses: "I have seen these people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people" ... And it came to pass, as soon as Moses came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing ...

I remember a classmate who said that in times of examination stress, he tended to become religious, a fact that Lawton describes as the Christchurch phenomenon where the natural disaster of the New Zealand earthquake in 2011 caused a resurgence of religion.

The argument remains that religions hold societies together, a statement that most people will buy. However, a survey has shown that on just about every measure of societal health, the more secular a country or a state, the better it does, including the States in the US. Lawton quotes Professor Zuckerman: I now believe there are aspects of the secular worldview that contribute to healthy societies. First, if you believe that this is the only world and there is no afterlife, that's going to motivate you to make it as good a place as possible. Number two is the emphasis on science, education, and rational problem-solving that seems to come with the secular orientation - for example, are we going to pray to end crime in our city, or are we going to look at the root causes?

However, dancing around golden calves is not sufficient for people in a secular society. The longing for some belief even drives enlightened people into all kinds of spiritualism, astrology, karma, voodoo, you name it, proving that there is a human need for religion or some sort of ersatz religion.

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NY Taxi Drivers

Red Baron likes to walk for miles, particularly in foreign cities, but given the distances, I took a cab a couple of times during my recent visit to New York. The drivers I had were undoubtedly international.

New New York taxicabs: higher, shorter, and made by Ford

The first one was a Russian Jew or, rather, a Jewish Russian. He told me his father is a Jew and his mother is a Russian. So when he - freshly married to a Byelorussian girl - emigrated to Israel, he, with his non-Jewish mother, was considered just being a Russian. The discriminated and frustrated couple went to the States when his wife, a programmer, got a job offer from a New York firm. Now she is satisfied, but the guy still feels discriminated against and is frustrated because his wife earns all the money, whereas he, an architect by education, drives a New York taxi.

The second guy driving me came from Yemen. He told me that he has three uncles in Germany living in Cologne, Hamburg, and Berlin he is going to visit this summer. By then, his Berlin uncle will have moved to Munich. I informed him that his uncles had chosen the four most significant cities in Germany to live in.

After stepping off the cab, I thought, why are those Yemenis in Germany, and what are they doing there? Had his uncles got political asylum, but was Yemen not one of those Schurkenstaaten (pariah countries)? Following some research on the Internet, I found out that the US regards Yemen as a Tier 3 country, i.e., the people there are trafficking persons with the Yemeniti government not caring at all. In fact, the sea around the Horn of Africa is infested with pirates capturing ships and whole crews demanding their liberation ransom from shipping companies and governments.

The third guy did not speak to me at all, but driving with only one hand, he was talking nonstop into his mobile phone. I recognized many French words and thought his language might be Creole. When leaving the cab, I asked him, but he said he was from Ghana.

The language he spoke made me curious. In the German Wikipedia, I read: English is Ghana's official language, but in Ghana, more than eighty different languages are used such that most Ghanaians speak several of them. The government pushes French as an additional language, so since 2006, Ghana has been associated with the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Do they need a second lingua franca, or don't they like English? It was a pity that I could not ask my taxi driver those questions and, above all, test his personal language skills.

New York taxi drivers, indeed, are cosmopolitan.

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What a Waste

That politicians manipulate their voters is a platitude. They stretch the truth to be re-elected, although they do not tell straight lies. I still remember the slogan of a German minister of social affairs: Die Rente ist sicher (The old-age pension [run by the government] is sure). Well, that is basically true, but now it turns out that future old-age benefits will be so low that many people will drift into Altersarmut (old-age poverty) following retirement.

In previous blogs, Red Baron has dealt with another critical political topic: The disposal of radioactive waste that politicians like to cover with a smoke screen. Recently, two small notes in the Badische Zeitung (BZ) reminded me of the storage problem that is still unsolved. However, our elected representatives boast that The permanent disposal of radioactive waste must not be left to future generations. In the following discussion, it is fair to distinguish between low to medium-level and high-level radioactive material.

So far, I have thought that the former class of radioactive waste had found its future home in an old salt mine named Konrad in Lower Saxony. Now Baden-Württemberg's environmental minister of the Green Party warns that the capacity of 300,000 cubic meters of the mine in northern Germany may not be sufficient to store all containers with low to medium level radioactivity. At the former Nuclear Research Center Karlsruhe alone, 13,000 containers wait for their final home. There are many more stored in so-called Zwischenlager at nuclear power reactor sites. These interim storage facilities are authorized for 40 years. Nevertheless, a court in the state of Schleswig-Holstein recently declared radioactive storage at the former reactor site of Brunsbüttel illegal due to deficiencies in the protection against terrorist attacks. Indeed, security measures are not better than those of other Zwischenlager.

Radioactive storage will soon become dramatic with the outphasing of eight of Germany's power reactors. The other bad news is the significant delay in the fit-out of Mine Konrad, which was supposed to start operation this year. Optimists speak of a delay of five years, while pessimists aim at a distant 2021. Is it progress that a state minister has put his finger on this open sore? Red Baron is sure that the smoke screen will soon come down again.

The second note in the BZ concerned our Swiss neighbors and the storage of high-level radioactive waste. In the late 1990ies, Red Baron observed the research efforts of some Swiss physics colleagues in a lab below the Jura mountains. They were trying to confirm that the geological formation of opalinus clay presents a safe enclosure for storing high-level radioactive waste over extremely long periods. Here, I gave my opinion about the "safe" storage of waste containing deadly Plutonium.

Since then, a special task force has started searching for disposal sites in Switzerland. Now, I read that the search for a final storage site will not be finished in 2020 but will be delayed until 2027. Such a delay is politically highly welcome, with many possible sites located in the High Rhine Valley close to the border with Germany. Presently a couple of minor issues mar German-Swiss relations as the fly-over noise of planes from Zürich Airport and the bank secret concerning untaxed German money in Switzerland. Apparently, politicians consider those issues more manageable than a proposal for a storage site for highly radioactive material close to the German border.

A presentation of possible storage sites for high-level radioactive waste in Switzerland
close to the German border (©Badische Zeitung in 2010)

If everything works out fine and the Swiss people decide positively in a national referendum around 2028, the final storage facility will start operating in Switzerland by 2060. Indeed, Red Baron will no longer be concerned.

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Dr. Faustus

Markus Gabriel's New Realism philosophy has a feature that he describes in his TED talk on YouTube: The concept of an existing World gets rid of the infinity of things and facts. The fear of infinity makes us reason in many worldviews, whether scientific (catchword: world formula) or religious (catchword: death is not the end), etc. 

In particular, because there is no overall structure, the idea must be corrected that everything is connected and interacting. However, some things are connected, such that man/woman introduces worldviews to simplify things. None of these worldviews work; they simply express our fear of infinity. As mentioned before, we are alone, but as free autonomous human beings, we have the privilege of exploring infinite possibilities.

Following Gabriel's argument that the World does not exist, he elaborated on the meaning of life in an interview: Life's purpose is not all-embracing. It develops out of the attitude of each individual who happens to be part of a community. Men (Women) do not live and work alone, so, commonly, people abandon their freedom and their egos in the interest of groups, communities, or religions. 

Such an attitude that, Gabriel calls personal nihilism, will frequently lead to crises in life or faith. Typical examples are firm believers developing doubts and atheists catching themselves, thinking there may be something behind their existence.

In all these arguments, I recognize Goethe's Faust, who states at the summit of his personal crisis:

Habe nun, ach! Philosophie, Juristerei und Medizin, Und leider auch Theologie Durchaus studiert, mit heißem Bemühn. Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor! Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;

I've studied now Philosophy And Jurisprudence, Medicine, And even, alas! Theology All through and through with ardor keen! Here now I stand, poor fool, and see I'm just as wise as I formerly was.

We see a desperate Faust who wants to break out and regain his autonomy, his infinite possibilities of exploring even for the prize of "pacting" with the devil. In fact, Mephistopheles gifts Faust all freedom of action. Getting Gretchen pregnant is only one of Faust's deadly sins. 

Therefore in the Christian tradition, the saga of the historical? Faust ends in a catastrophe in the nearby townlet of Staufen as we read on the wall of the restaurant and hotel Zum Löwen, "Anno 1539 ist im Leuen zu Staufen Doctor Faustus so ein wunderlicher Nigromanta gewesen, elendiglich gestorben und es geht die Sage der obersten Teufel einer, der Maphist stopilis den er in seinen Lebenszeiten nur seinen Schwager genannt, habe ihm, nachdem der Pact von 24 Jahren abgelaufen, das Genick abgebrochen und seine arme Seele der ewigen Verdammnis überantwortet (Anno 1539, in The Lion at Staufen Doctor Faustus who had been such a whimsical necromancer died miserably, and according to the legend one of the supreme devils Maphist stopilis - whom he called in his lifetimes only his brother-in-law, broke his neck after the pact of 24 years expired and surrendered his poor soul to eternal damnation)."

Breaking Dr. Faustus' neck. Wall painting on The Lion at Staufen

This end sharply contrasts the hero's destiny in Goethe's Faust. In part II of the drama, near the end, a choir of angels announces, "Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, Den können wir erlösen (Whoever strives with all his might, That man we can redeem)." 

Goethe's conclusion is comforting that a free autonomous human being using his (her) infinite possibilities to explore until his end is redeemed.

You will find this basic idea of "using your talents" in the New Testament in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30): 

For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one, he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey ... When the Lord came back from his trip, the two servants with the five and the two talents had gained on them. Then he, who had received the one talent, came and said, "Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours." But his Lord answered and said to him, "You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming, I would have received back my own with interest" ... And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

It is interesting to read that Jesus even accepts the help of bankers to gain with money transactions that - regarding current interest rates - is hardly possible these days.

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Why the World Does Not Exist

In 2013, Markus Gabriel, a young philosophy professor at the University of Bonn, wrote a book with the provocative title: Warum es die Welt nicht gibt (Why the World does not exist).

On June 23, 2011, Gabriel had lunch with his Italian colleague Maurizio Ferraris in Naples. When they had finished their ristretti, they had also finished or instead founded a new approach to philosophy. This so-called New Realism is an advancement of both metaphysics and constructivism. Somewhat simplified, Gabriel states: Whereas metaphysics claims that the World is different from how it appears to us, constructivism claims that we construct things in recognizing them. New Realism, however, claims that when we realize something by seeing, hearing, or sensing, there is really something.

Gabriel's reasoning starts with a standard definition of the World: The World is the totality of things and facts. Things have specific properties, but facts consist of concepts, and concepts are never fully settled. Gabriel then introduces Sinnfelder (fields of context) and formulates the first law of New Realism:

Existence is the recognition in an area of context (FOC).

According to Martin Heidegger, the World is - in Gabriel's language - the field of the context of all FOCs in which all other FOCs appear.

©Ullstein Verlag

We now assume, for a moment, that the World appears within a field of context S1, one of many other FOCs S2, S3, etc. If the World is the FOC in which all other FOCs appear, then any other FOCs appear in S1 as subfields, for in S1, the World appears, and in the World, everything appears. This situation Gabriel illustrates in a few sketches: The World does not appear in the World or, for short, The World does not exist.

Another argument goes like this: A thing cannot exist in isolation; it must appear within a field of context. This field of context can exist only if it appears in another FOC and again in another one. When we continue the argumentation, we shall never reach the last field of context, i.e., the World where everything appears. Ergo: The World does not exist.

We always look at things, i.e., items, notions, and concepts, under certain aspects, and place them into specific fields of context. A table can be regarded in the FOC of physics as an ordered ensemble of elementary particles. That is different from the FOC of furniture, where a table could be placed, and that again is different from the community FOC, i.e., a table is a place where people eat, drink, and communicate. 

Gabriel continues: Some things are connected, but not all things are connected, again an argument that The World does not exist. Here shall I stop. For further explanations of New Realism, you must read Gabriel's book.

For Hamlet, To be or not to be, that is the question, but it was Heidegger who asked the question of all questions: Was ist Sein? (What is this: To Be?). Young Markus Gabriel asks offhand: Was soll das Ganze alles? (What is the purpose of all this?)

Whereas constructivist epistemology and metaphysics look for authenticity beyond the fields of context - we may know, or miss - Gabriel claims that there is nothing behind that settles things. Since no overall structure exists, we are not determined by it. That means that we are alone, but as free, autonomous human beings, we have the privilege of infinite possibilities for exploring.

Comforting, isn't it? Watch Markus Gabriel on YouTube.

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Books

Red Baron loves books. Unfortunately, I have too little time (left) to read all that I once bought, still buy, and want to read. My love for books started with fairy tales. By the way, my blog about My Fairy Tales is the second most read of all my blogs so far.

The other day, I read an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) about an early Frankfurt book fair. I knew that before the war, Leipzig, not Frankfurt, was Germany's center of book publishing, but after the German division, West Germany revived the Frankfurt Book Fair. Now my country has the luxury of two book fairs, even as paper books are increasingly replaced by electronic media.

Philipp Erasmus Reich (©Wikipedia)

How did it happen that in the 18th century, Leipzig took over from Frankfurt, becoming the home of Germany's book fair? 

The man behind the change was Philipp Erasmus Reich, the prince of Germany's booksellers. 250 years ago, on April 20, 1764, he packed all his books in Frankfurt and wrote a letter to the elector of Saxony, "Following the last Frankfurt fair, other colleagues and I bid farewell to the city and so to speak buried the book fair thereat."

In fact, Reich buried an agonizing fair: in April 1764, only 34 publishers were present in Frankfurt, whereas in May of the same year, 179 booksellers attended the Leipzig book fair. One reason for the change was that at the start of the 18th century, modern German science and literature had moved to and were at home in the area between Hamburg, Berlin, Breslau, Jena, Halle, and Göttingen. 

Another reason was the publishers' fight against pirate editions. In South-West Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, printers had begun systematically to reprint books from Saxony, Prussia, Hannover, and Hamburg. An existing imperial system of protection no longer worked. Even the emperor in Vienna encouraged pirating books, so the imperial book inspector in Frankfurt was useless.

Some of Red Baron's books are arranged on IKEA's Billy shelf units

Due to limited space, Red Baron began buying e-books when available. Like many people, I miss the touch and feel of a paper book, but there are other advantages to reading e-books on an iPad: the possibilities of marking and noting text are remarkable.

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Georg Herwegh

Georg Herwegh (©Wikipedia)

Red Baron must apologize to Georg Herwegh, a German poet of liberty. A recent article in Die Zeit announcing the edition of Herwegh's complete works changed my attitude, which had been greatly influenced by Heinrich Heine satirizing Georg's flowery words in a poem, Die Tendenz, written in 1841:

Deutscher Sänger! sing und preise Deutsche Freiheit ... ... aber halte deine Dichtung Nur so allgemein als möglich.

German singer! Sing and praise German liberty ... ... but just keep your poetry as general as possible.

Emma Herwegh (©Wikipedia)

However, Georg Herwegh was more than just a flowery poet. German craftsmen and workers chose him as their military leader in 1848, although he was untalented, to guide them via Strasbourg into Baden to support Friedrich Hecker's uprising and his fight for a republic. Needless to say, Herwegh's support operation was a failure, a military disaster. Georg and his beautiful wife, Emma, escaped and fled to Switzerland. In his exile, Herwegh kept the flag of freedom flying. In particular, he supported the underprivileged workers of his time, writing in 1863 his famous socialist verses called Bundeslied:

Mann der Arbeit aufgewacht! Und erkenne Deine Macht! Alle Räder stehen still, Wenn Dein starker Arm es will.

Awake you working man And discover your potency! All wheels will standstill When your strong arm decides.

Referring to the many German territories with borders between them and ruled by princes and privileged groups with the help of undemocratic constitutions, the professor for constitutional law from Freiburg, Karl von Rotteck, had declared in 1832: Ich will die Einheit nicht Anders als mit Freiheit, und will lieber Freiheit ohne Einheit als Einheit ohne Freiheit (I want unity but not without liberty, and I prefer liberty without unity to unity without liberty).

Back in Baden - due to an amnesty in 1866 for political refugees of the 1848/49 uprisings - old Herwegh saw Bismarck forge the Second Reich in 1871 according to his declaration: Nicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden – das ist der große Fehler von 1848 und 1849 gewesen – sondern durch Eisen und Blut (No declaration or majority decisions will decide the big problems of our time - this was the big mistake in 1848 and 1849 - but iron and blood).

Following German unification as the result of the War of 1870/1871 against France, Herwegh wrote in protest in January 1871 his Epilog zum Kriege:

Schwarz, weiß und rot! um ein Panier Vereinigt stehen Süd und Norden; Du bist im ruhmgekrönten Morden Das erste Land der Welt geworden: Germania, mir graut vor dir!

Black, White, and Red! Around one flag South and North now stand united. You became the first country in the world In murder wreathed with glory. Germania, you terrify me!

©Wikipedia

In writing these lines, did Herwegh augur the murderous wars of the coming century? At the beginning of World War I in August 1914, Friedrich August von Kaulbach painted a gruesome Germania. Some art experts say that her distraught looks reflect Germany's preparedness to fight the war; others, her patriotic martial inebriation. To me, Germania's eyes are just full of German angst.

Gandhi once said, "The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear."

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EU Coffee Makers

In keeping a close eye on its climate target figures for CO₂ emissions in 2020, the European Union (EU) has already banned all incandescent bulbs with a wattage over 25 watts in Europe. In this respect, Red Baron is a model student. In 1995, I started replacing all power-hogging light sources at home with fluorescent lamps, and I am currently converting these second-generation light sources to LEDs, thus making my CO₂ footprint even smaller.

As far as vacuum cleaners are concerned, the European Union decided that starting on September 1, 2014, machines with a power consumption of more than 1600 watts must no longer be sold in the EU. In 2017, the power of vacuum cleaners will be further reduced to 900 watts. Sorry, my present vacuum cleaner consumes 2200 watts, and it is unlikely that I shall replace it in my lifetime.

Photo ©dpa

This week, the EU hit again! Today, the Badische Zeitung (BZ) reported on a new Regulation for coffee makers. Starting on January 1, 2015, all machines sold in the EU must be equipped with an automatic shut-off of their warming plates. For non-insulated coffee pots, the time-lapse was fixed to less than forty minutes. 

I imagine such an attack on coffee makers in the US would be unconstitutional, although Wally would notice a time limitation in his ongoing coffee consumption. 

Non-obstat that I consider keeping a coffee warm an offense against good taste.

All cartoons on Wally and his coffee consumption are ©Scott Adams

Red Baron likes his coffee hot and freshly made. My machine produces the correct quantity needed for direct consumption without any after-warming. Currently, there is no regulation on that, but you are never sure about the EU.

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Datenvorratsspeicherung

One of those terrible German words meaning nothing else than data retention. With the NSA active worldwide, everybody knows what data retention means. However, here I am referring to the European Union.

In 2009 Brussels passed the EU Directive 2006/24/EC that obliged its 28 member states to introduce a data retention system. Many countries already have national laws concerning the storage of telephone and Internet data to prevent (organized) crimes and terrorism. Hence, the EU Directive was thought to harmonize national legislation given the retention duration and easy data exchange.

Germany was a particular case in so far as in 2010, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Court) declared our national law on data retention unconstitutional. The old Black-Yellow coalition was unable to consent to new legislation. So this became a task for the new Black-Red coalition following our general election in the fall of last year. 

While the CDU-Innenminister (secretary of interior) wanted to jump on the project immediately, the SPD-Justizminister (secretary of justice) put the brakes on it. He proposed to wait until the European Court of Justice had decided about the lawsuit of Irish civil rights activists and the Carinthian government (Austria) against Directive 2006/24/EC. The Court's verdict came on April 8, 2014: The present Directive violates basic civil rights and therefore is null and void.

Was our minister of justice right to postpone new German legislation on data retention?

No, says the minister of interior, for the Court decision does not concern existing national laws. Germany needs new legislation immediately, a law that must be wise, constitutional, and have a majority appeal.

Yes, the minister of justice answers, "We are not in a hurry. Now we know what our Federal and the European Court might accept such that we likely are to get our new national legislation to conform to their decisions."

Politics!

The new one billion Euro building complex of Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst
 (BND in Berlin., I call it Mini-NSA) (©dapd)

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The Greek from Toledo

Yesterday the Badische Zeitung (BZ) made Red Baron aware of another anniversary in 2014. One of my favorite painters El Greco (The Greek), was born 400 years ago on April 7.

Whenever you visit a picture gallery with old paintings, those of El Greco immediately stick out, fitting neither the Renaissance nor the Baroque styles of his epoch. The choice of colors (most important for El Greco), the form of his figures, and the composition of his pictures are far ahead of his time. Masters like Vicent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc, and August Macke took up El Greco's audacity in painting only 300 years later. Marc and Macke were killed in the First World War on the Western Front.

Laocoön in the Vatican Museums (©Wikipedia)

Everybody has at least seen pictures of Laocoön and his sons. An ensemble sculptured in marble - now in Rome in the Vatican Museums - shows the scene where the previously blinded priest Laocoön and his two sons are killed by sea serpents. This is how goddess Athena made him double pay his warnings concerning the wooden horse the Greeks had left behind when they lifted their siege of Troy. While Laocoön proposed to burn the horse, the Trojans took it within the city walls with all the consequences we know from the movie.

Suffering without measure.

At the end of the article, the BZ showed a copy of the picture of Laocoön and his sons painted by El Greco. The father fighting with a serpent knows that one of his sons lying at his side was already crushed to death. In agony, he turns his dead eyes toward his second son, who, in vain, fights the attack of another serpent. The unnatural flesh tones of the bodies and the threatening clouds put the observer into a depressive mood. 

What makes the situation so hopeless are those indifferent bystanders. They are looking at the scene with bored interest but make no move to help Laocöon and his sons against the attack of the serpents. In the back, you distinguish the city of Toledo, El Greco's home. Some experts interpret Laocoön's deadly fight as an allegory of the horrors of the Inquisition being highly active in Toledo at El Greco's time.

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Robert Wagner

Vonau's book describing Wagner's role in Alsace

Last Monday, Red Baron listened to a presentation by le professeur Jean-Laurent Vonau, historien de Strasbourg, about Robert Wagner. 

My American friends will immediately think of Natalie Wood's husband, but here I refer to the so-called bourreau d'Alsace (the Hangman of Alsace) of the same name. The lecturer informed the large audience that Wagner's original name was Robert Backfisch. 

Literally translated, Backfisch means "fried fish," but it is an archaic German term for a teenage girl. 

The origin of the word is unclear. Some attribute it to the Medieval Latin word baccalaureus for an unfinished student; others think it has to do with fishing and the English word back, i.e., the throwing back of fish into the water too small to be kept.

Whatever the final explanation, Backfisch is not a name for a man who wants to make his way in life, especially when he is an unconditional Nazi follower and admirer of Adolf Hitler. At the age of twenty-six, Robert opted for his mother's name, Wagner.

There, he was in good company with his master, Adolf. Hitler's father, Alois, had been an "illegitimate" child born to Maria Anna Schicklgruber. Later, Maria Anne married Johann Georg Hiedler, who adopted young Alois at the age of five. However, when registering the boy, the government official transformed the name Hiedler into Hitler.

So, when Alois's second son was born in 1889, his name was Adolf Hitler, not Adolf Schicklgruber. Some historians claim that a guy named Adolf Schicklgruber would have never made it to become der Führer.

Back to Robert Wagner. During the First World War, he bravely fought on the Western Front and was highly decorated. Like many young soldiers, he was depressed by the war's outcome, particularly by the Treaty of Versailles, making Germany the one and only war culprit. He joined Hitler early, and on November 9, 1923, he took part in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch and convinced his colleagues at the Munich officer training school to join him. Therefore, he was condemned for high treason and imprisoned at the Landsberg fortress with his master. When the Nazi Party was again permitted in February 1925, Wagner, under his adored Führer's spell, rapidly climbed the party hierarchy being a Kämpfer der ersten Stunde (Combatant of the first hour).

Comrades awaiting their sentences in front of the Munich Justizpalast (courthouse).
The man on the right is Robert Wagner (©Bundesarchiv)

For the following, I shall limit Wagner's biography to a few facts - you may dislike reading from Wikipedia. In May 1933, he was Gauleiter in Baden and became Reichsstatthalter, i.e., the deputy of der Führer in southwest Germany. Wagner increased his power following France's defeat in 1940 and the incorporation of Alsace into the Reich. He resided on both sides of the Rhine River, in Karlsruhe or Strasbourg.

Gauleiter Wagner's task was to Germanize and to nazificate the annexed Alsace. To this end, he recruited many of his Kreisleiters (district leaders) among Alsatian autonomists. These so-called nanciens (people from Nancy) had fought against French rule and had been prosecuted by the former government. At the beginning of the war, the French government, afraid of a fifth column, had evacuated "unsure" people from Alsace into southern France, sometimes under inhuman conditions. The Statthalter had most of them repatriated and welcomed them with open arms. In some sort of exchange, Wagner now deported "incorrigible" French persons into the part of France under the Vichy government. Between July and September 1940, more than 23,000 disliked French people and Jews were forced to leave Alsace for Vichy-France, a zone unoccupied by the German Wehrmacht.

Once in full swing, Wagner became active in Baden in the fall of the same year. On October 21 through 23, all Jews, a total of 6504, from Baden and Palatinate were herded up and jammed into nine trains that took three days and four nights to reach Gurs, a former detention camp in Vichy-France. Located at the foot of the Pyrenean Mountains, the Camp de Gurs had served to intern Spanish refugees who had escaped into France during the Spanish Civil War. Proudly, Wagner reported to his Führer: Baden ist als erster Gau judenfrei (Baden is the first district to be free of Jews). In August 1942, the Jews who had survived the detention in Gurs - about 4300 - were transported to the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Freiburg's memorial for the deported Jews in the form of a German traffic sign
at the Square of the Old Synagogue near the university campus.

Professor Vonau only briefly mentioned this crime against humanity. For him, Wagner's ultimate crime was introducing the general compulsory military service in Alsace, recruiting young men into the German army, and even into the Waffen-SS: French people were forced to shoot at their compatriots. Deserters were court-martialled and shot. Today's views on Wagner and his crimes are pretty different on the two banks of the Rhine River.

In Wikipedia, we read: At the war's end, Wagner was arrested by the French, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by the Permanent Military Tribunal in Strasbourg in 1946. The sentence was carried out by firing squad on August 14, 1946.

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Typical German?

Intolerance, schadenfreude (spitefulness), stubbornness,
smugness (narrow-mindedness), nitpicking, bureaucracy, jealousy (©Wikipedia)

According to Rolf Sachs, his exhibition Typisch Deutsch? (Typical German?) at the Museum of Applied Art in Cologne is intended to clear up outdated prejudices about German traits. In taking his paternal ancestors' stringent trash separation practices for a ride, he places trash bins of various colors in front of the museum entrance. The bins are marked Intoleranz, Schadenfreude, Sturheit, Spießigkeit, Pingeligkeit, Bürokratie, Neid.

Sorry, which of those negative traits are really so typically German that we have to put them into the trash? You encounter intolerance, bureaucracy, and jealousy all over the world. Stubbornness is a unique feature, and narrow-mindedness often results from a strict upbringing. The cliché of stubbornness you usually find in novels, theater pieces, and movie plots where, e.g., at the happy (?) end, Irma la Douce has - not without difficulty - transformed the stubborn but honest cop Nestor Patou into a bon vivant.

That leaves nitpicking and schadenfreude. Many Germans are indeed Prozesshanseln (litigious persons); they like to go to court for nullities. A typical issue may be the neighbor's high tree casting a shadow on the plaintiff's lawn. In Germany, litigious persons are encouraged by the relatively small costs of court cases of a low Streitwert (amount involved).

As a student, I once set my goal never to see a doctor or a lawyer. As you may imagine, I could not avoid doctors but lawyers. I managed not to meet until three years ago when my neighbor took all the apartment owners in our building to court. The other owners and I did not like some iron bars he had placed - without authorization - in front of some windows in the entrance hall. Stepping out of our apartments made us feel like being in prison. 

We simply and courteously asked him to remove the iron bars. To make a long and ugly story short: I found myself in court for the first time in my life. Needless to say, our neighbor lost his case, but we all still had to pay our lawyer. Do you understand that I just say Good day and Goodbye to the guy who has changed the course of my life?

That leaves the trait of Schadenfreude being so typically German that the English-speaking world adopted the word, not having an equivalent in their language. There is even a German proverb: Wer den Schaden hat, braucht für den Spott nicht zu sorgen (The laugh is always on the loser).

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Stone Age Lost

For some beer lovers, the title is metonymic with Paradise Lost. I am referring to the proposal of the European Union to ban beer stones. In their mania for regulations (Regulierungswut), Brussels' Eurocrats rarely do any good. However, many hail their regulation of the micro-USB plug as being the one and only for mobile phones as a successful Befreiungsschlag (the act of liberation). According to one estimate, using a single charger type for all mobile phones of various brands will avoid 51,000 tons of electronic waste per year in the EU. It will be interesting to see how Apple will solve the problem of the unique plug.

Coming back to the beer stones, I initially thought that the Eurocrats' argument to ban them was based on their inherent lack of hygiene (the stones, I mean). Due to the rough surface, I always considered cleaning a stone more difficult than cleaning a glass mug. I had to accept that my idea was far from Brussels' argument: Customers shall be able to check the correct filling of their beer mugs.

They have a point. Red Baron remembers his days in Munich and his evenings at the Oktoberfest. Many visitors did not care about the filling level of their Maß (one-liter stones) but as students with no money to spare, we wanted to get our fill. When Zenzi (the waitress, they are all called: Zenzi, schau, dass herkimmst) arrived at our table with those half-filled stones, we took a few sips and then returned to the tap where strong men manipulating big barrels were filling them. In shouting and accusing: Schlecht eingeschenkt (poorly filled), we always got our stones filled up, for the conscience of those filling guys was as flexible as ours.

Admire the richness of beer receptacles in Germany (©Jörg Block Die Zeit)

The practice of schlecht eingeschenkt did not change when the Munich breweries changed their Maß from stones to glasses. Now you clearly see that occasionally there is more foam than beer in the glass. 

The only positive effect of the change is that glasses are less attractive than stones to souvenir hunters, so now the number of thefts has dramatically decreased at the Oktoberfest.

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