White Asparagus

Easter is approaching, but the weather remains cold. This is a disaster for asparagus lovers. See what Elisabeth and I had last year for Easter when, on April 27, the asparagus harvest was in full swing:

White asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce, Kratzede (pulled pancake), and Wiener schnitzel

Germans adore white asparagus spears. An article in the Badische Zeitung told the whole story titled "The Asparagus Roulette." While local asparagus is extremely rare and expensive in March, the Greeks are coming to the rescue of German enthusiasts of the "white gold."

Mr. Anastasios Karkatzalos from Nestos said, "We don't know how the Germans do their cooking. We only eat green asparagus as a salad." And Kostas Maragkosis from Nespar added, "We made several attempts to export green asparagus, but it did not pay. "

More than 90% of the white asparagus harvested in Greece is exported to Germany, but the timing must be right. Maragkosis knows, "Asparagus is a nervous vegetable; don't stress it." It is tricky to hit the market early enough before production starts in Germany. Indeed, Spyros Papadopoulos, regional councilor of the asparagus-producing region East Macedonia-Thrace, said, "Concerning white asparagus, the Germans are chauvinists. When their production is ready to be harvested, they take German asparagus and disdain imported spears." 

In fact, we Germans eat, on average, more than 1.7 kg of white asparagus a year, and we are the most significant European producers, cultivating the vegetable on 233 square kilometers.

For my French friends on the other side of the Rhine River, white asparagus is always served cold as a starter. So when, a couple of years ago, Freiburg's Cercle Francophone organized a Spargelessen (asparagus eating) in a restaurant at the Kaiserstuhl, our French guests were somewhat vexed, waiting for the main course to still come.

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Kandidat-O-Mat

To advance its political education mission, the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung (LpB = Baden-Württemberg State Center of Political Education) developed a Wahl-O-Mat (Election-O-Mat) in which, during the run-up to an election, parties are asked to present their positions on political issues in writing. These questions and answers are then compiled into a table so voters may directly compare the positions of the parties standing for election.

For the upcoming election of Freiburg's mayor, the LpB modified the system, calling it Kandidat-O-Mat (no translation necessary). Students were asked to turn their theses into topics they consider essential for the city. After several iterations, the Badische Zeitung (BZ) and the LpB proposed launching their new tool for the first time in the upcoming election. The result was a crushing belly landing when the incumbent mayor, Dr. Dieter Salomon, refused to participate in the Kandidat-O-Mat, calling its format superficial.

Green incumbent	Independent hopeful
Green alternative	The other Green

A shitstorm broke loose on Facebook and in the discussion forum of the BZ where I seconded Dieter’s decision, writing: So ein Kandidat-O-Mat ist eine feine Sache für die Herausforderer, können sie doch in der Gewissheit, nicht gewählt zu werden, das Blaue vom Himmel versprechen. Ein Amtsinhaber muss jedoch im Rahmen der ihm bekannten Möglichkeiten (Finanzen und Mehrheit im Stadtrat) agieren und sieht dann gegenüber den anderen Kandidaten »alt« aus. Dem Kandidat-O-Mat fehlt die gemeinsame Ausgangsbasis und deshalb finde ich die Entscheidung Salomons richtig (Such a Kandidat-O-Mat is a fine thing for the challengers since they can promise the blue in the sky while being certain not to be elected. An incumbent candidate, however, has to maneuver within the scope of the possibilities he well knows about (the budget and majorities in the city council). He will therefore look "old" compared to the other candidates. The Kandidat-O-Mat lacks a common starting point. This is why I regard Salomon’s decision as being justified).

I got the shit right blown into my face: Herr Höfert, Sie denken also auch, daß der Wähler so dumm ist und das nicht berücksichtigen kann? Der Wähler zu dumm, um selbständig zu denken? Zu dumm für Volksentscheide? Ja, das ist gängige Meinung der Herrschenden, Lammert und Gauck hatten es ausgesprochen (Mr. Höfert, do you think too that the voter is so stupid and is unable to take this into account? Is the voter too stupid to think independently? Too stupid for referenda? Yes, that is the common opinion of rulers, Lammert [former speaker of the Bundestag (parliament)] and Gauck [former federal president] said it).

Well, I am far from being a ruler, and the Kandidat-O-Mat is not a referendum; however, having lived in Switzerland for 32 years, I have noted that in many cases people were overstrained by the topics of the referenda they had to vote on.

As for my argument in support of Dr. Salomon, I was soon proven right about the financing of Kitas. Kindertagesstätten (daycare centers) are an essential part of German society. Single mothers and fathers can park their not-yet school-age children during the day while earning bread for their small families.

The city of Freiburg subsidizes the municipal Kitas up to 60% but has recently planned to increase parents' financial contributions due to rising costs. This increase, initially planned for the near future, was postponed when the city encountered strong headwinds. Quite naturally, the Kandidat-O-Mat confronted the candidates for mayor with the following thesis: The fees for Kitas must be increased.

On Facebook, Candidate Martin Horn answered no: Klares Votum: Mit mir wird es keine Gebührenerhöhung geben! Ich stehe für eine Reduzierung der Kita-Gebühren und werde mich aktiv für eine Abschaffung einsetzen - vor allem auch auf Landes- und Bundesebene (A clear vote: With me, there will be no increase in fees! I stand for a reduction of Kita fees and will actively work for their abolition - especially on the national and federal level too). Well roared, lion.

No word on how to finance his promises.

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Siegesdenkmal 2

Rarely has a local topic caused more letters to the editor than the discussion about Freiburg's Victory Memorial. As early as 2015, Red Baron blogged about the Siegesdenkmal.

What kind of victory? Well, the monument commemorates Prussia's and its allies' victory over Germany's Erbfeind (hereditary enemy), France, in 1871, Germany's War of Unification.

You may know that in 1870 France declared war on Prussia, answering Bismarck's provocation, and in the end, the French Emperor Napoleon III was a POW at Bismarck's mercy. Read more in German.

In 1876, the then-German Emperor Wilhelm I inaugurated the Siegesdenkmal (Victory Memorial) in the presence of the Grand Duke of Baden, Friederich I., and the then-Imperial Chancellor Bismarck. It glorifies Baden's role in the War of Unification.

Siegesdenkmal, now without any decorations and barriers
in Freiburg's pedestrian zone

For decades, the memorial had stood on the axis of Freiburg's Kaiser-Joseph-Straße, but in 1961, traffic was obliged to be placed somewhat off-axis on the nearby Friedrichring, rarely discovered by visiting tourists. With the complete redesign of the site due to the new streetcar line, the Siegesdenkmal was moved to its old location - now a pedestrian zone - causing a storm in the media.

Photo from yesterday. Siegesdenkmal is back in its original position.

While a few pleaded for the memorial to be part of our history, others proposed moving it to the city's outskirts, and some wanted the bronze melted down. The city council was startled by those reactions, promised to name the square around the memorial, presently called Siegesdenkmal like the streetcar stop, and proposed the name Europaplatz (Europe Square).

A new avalanche of letters followed, mostly criticizing Europaplatz as a cheap plug-in. Some wanted to retain the old name, Platz des Siegesdenkmals; others favored Freundschaftsplatz (Square of Friendship [with France]). 

The socialist camp proposed Jean Jaurès, the French socialist, who was assassinated for his pacifist ideas on the eve of World War I, the bloodiest confrontation between the two European neighbors.

Red Baron preferred a last-minute proposal, Badische Freiheit (Baden Freedom), commemorating the Baden Revolution of 1848/49.

Without a clear majority for either proposal, the vote of Freiburg's city council scheduled for mid-February had been postponed. Yesterday evening, the deputies finally decided in a close vote of 20 against 19 to name the square Europaplatz, admitting that Freiburgers will continue to call it Siegesdenkmal.

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What's New

1. The weather!

When Red Baron awoke last Saturday and looked out the window, he saw that winter hath incumen in, and no cuckoo was singing.

My backyard

Forsythia is suffering, and so do I.

Mind you, tomorrow is Tagundnachtgleiche (vernal equinox), conventionally marking the beginning of spring, but the maximum temperature in Freiburg will only be 3 degrees Celsius (37 degrees Fahrenheit), continuing throughout the week.

My experience with climate change is a shift in the winter season in Europe. While we enjoy warm Christmases, frosty nights extend well into March. The magnolia between my apartment and the student fraternity Teutonia's house blossomed at the end of March last year. Compare this with the photo of this year's cold snap.

2. Wikipedia

As you may know, Red Baron works for the German Wikipedia, proudly tooting that the German Wikipedia, for its number of articles - more than two million - is only surpassed by the English Wikipedia, with more than 5 million. As for my contributions, you may consult my earlier blog.

When you study the list of all my articles, you will note that since last Sunday, the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft has an article on the German Wikipedia. Click on the logo:

This is only the 46th article I have created, a somewhat miserable quota in fourteen years, but you should not forget all my editing work, particularly correcting crappy German texts. Young people are sometimes very active in writing but don't know German. In addition, as you may know, Wikipedia is not the only purpose in my life.

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Freiburg on Foot

Yesterday, Red Baron participated in a guided tour of Freiburg zu Fuß on International Women's Day. German women went onto the streets for the first time on March 8, 1911, demanding female suffrage.

This year, German women celebrate the 100th anniversary of the right to vote granted in 1918. Although the annual Women's Day is on March 8, the guided tour was scheduled for the following Saturday so women and men (there were three of us) could participate more easily.

A series of travel guides with the city name and the suffix zu Fuß was published in the 1990s, became extremely popular, and later became iconic. These books guided the left-leaning liberal to historical places in various cities, describing their historical significance. Red Baron still owns the books München zu Fuß, Frankfurt zu Fuß, and Köln zu Fuß. Some of the guides were soon out of print. For Hamburg, I own a newer edition with a different title: Zu Fuß durch Hamburg.

When I moved to Freiburg in 2001, the local zu Fuß guide was no longer available. Later, I met the author in a beer garden and tried to convince her to write a new, updated edition. This was ten or more years ago, so it was a surprise to see the lady last year as a new member of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft and learn that she was working on a new edition of Freiburg zu Fuß. The book is crowdfunded and will be published this April.


Coming back to her guided tour of yesterday. From her rich material about Freiburg, she selected parts about women and women's rights in Freiburg, starting with angry wives freeing two of their husbands from prison. 

Then she talked about the women who ran soup kitchens for needy families during and after the First World War, and women who initiated a general strike over milk shortages that had become expensive. This general strike coincided with a successful national general strike of the united left (Social Democrats and Communists) against the right-wing Kapp Putsch in 1920.

Woman gargoyle with only one tooth

In the Middle Ages, ugly women sculpted as gargoyles served as a deterrent against evil spirits on many buildings, including Freiburg's Minster Church.

Even the gargoyle butt is female.

On the more poetic side, we passed a house on Wallstraße, where the Russian Marina Tsvetaeva, aged 22, had lived in 1904/05.

I did not know Marina, so I looked her up. Apparently, this Russian poet is famous in my country because of her lifelong declaration of love to Germany, particularly Freiburg. She wrote a poem in December 1914, in the fifth month of the First World War.

An Deutschland Germanien, alle Völker hassen Dich jetzt und hetzen gegen dich. Ich aber will dich nie verlassen. Verraten gar – wie könnte ich? Nie war dies meine Überzeugung, Dies: Aug' um Auge, Zahn um Zahn, Germanien, meine tiefste Neigung, Germanien, ach, mein edler Wahn! Ich halte nicht zu deinen Schergen, mein arg gehetztes Vaterland, Wo immer noch der Königsberger Spaziert: der schmalgesicht'ge Kant, Und Goethe wandelt durch Alleen – sein Städtchen ist kaum mehr bekannt – Er sinnt, lässt seinen Faust entstehen, Hält den Spazierstock in der Hand. Wie könnte ich mich von dir wenden, Germanien, mein lichter Stern, Denn meine Liebe nicht verschwenden, halb Lieben hab ich nicht gelernt! Erfüllt von deinen ew'gen Liedern, Hab ich für Sporenklirrn kein Ohr, Mein Heil'ger sticht den Drachen nieder In Freiburg an dem Schwabenthor. Nie werde ich von Hass erbeben, Weil Wilhelms Schnurrbart aufwärts zackt. Verliebt in dich, solang ich lebe, Schwör ich dir ew'gen Treuepakt. Nein, weiser, magischer und tiefer Ist keins, du reich beschenktes Land, Wo Loreley von hohem Schiefer Die Schiffer schlägt in ihren Bann. 1. Dezember 1914

To Germany Germania, all nations hate You now and agitate against you. But I never want to leave you. Betray you - how could I? It never was my conviction This eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, Germania, my deepest inclination, Germania, oh, my noble illusion! I do not stick to your henchmen, my harshly harried fatherland, Where the Königsberger is still strolling, the narrow-faced Kant. And Goethe is walking through avenues - his town is hardly known anymore - He muses, makes his Faust nascent, Holding the walking stick in his hand. How could I turn away from you, Germania, my bright star, How could I not waste all my love, I did not learn to love only half! Full of your eternal songs, I have no ear for rattling spurs, My saint stabs the dragon In Freiburg on the Schwabenthor. Never will I bristle with hate, When Wilhelm's mustache jabs upward. In love with you as long as I live, I vow to you eternal loyalty. No one is wiser, more magical, and deeper You richly gifted land, Where Loreley on a rock of slate Is casting her spell over skippers passing. December 1, 1914

Note that St. Michael, who kills the dragon, is Russia's patron saint, and Wilhelm is the German Kaiser.

Another strong woman is Lily Braun, who, on the eve of the First World War, summarized the demands of the German feminist movement in a talk at Freiburg's Harmonie, a historical building on Grünwälderstraße known for its essential role in the Baden Revolution 1848/49.

The Harmonie today

For me, yesterday's guided tour ended at the Martinstor, where a tablet commemorates Marghareta Mößmer, Catharina Stadelmann, and Anna Wolffart, Freiburg citizens who were incarcerated there. After standing trial, they were condemned by Chief Judge Johann Jacob Renner as witches and burned in 1599. The Rennerstraße in Freiburg will be renamed.

During our walk, a participant told me she had the first edition of Freiburg zu Fuß in her pocket. Impatiently waiting for the second edition to be published in April, I photographed the precious book.

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Journalism 2.0

On Tuesday evening, Red Baron listened to a talk by John Nichols, a journalist from our Sister City, Madison, WI, about "Journalism 2.0: Fake News and Democracy in the Digital News Age - Legal and Policy Challenge." Given the lengthy title, I expected a well-filled auditorium, but John gave his talk to invited guests seated around an oblong table richly decorated with food and drinks.

John Nichols speaking and the organizers of the Carl-Schurz-Haus listening

John started his lively talk with a provocative thesis: President Trump is not the origin but the result of the crisis haunting the United States. He then concentrated on three points that strain the political system in the States.

Actually, you may become president of the United States with only 30% of the popular vote. This hypothetical extreme is possible within the American voting system, where the Electoral College elects the president. 

During the presidential election, Trump's campaign managers were clever in concentrating their efforts on four states that traditionally vote Democratic. In the end, Republicans swung Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Was this the result of lazy Democrat voters assuming their State would be safe anyway? I still remember when, the morning after Election Day, the final results for Wisconsin came in and sealed Hillary's fate. Admittedly, the margins in those new swing states were small, but the winner takes it all in the Electoral College.

I know the Electoral College is a historical relic, but my remark in the discussion that it could be reformed did not go down particularly well. Ironically, Donald Trump criticized it in 2012: "The Electoral College is a disaster for a democracy." 

Then in 2016, the college helped him to become president without the majority of the popular vote. This fact and the "alternative news" about the size of the attending crowd during his inauguration are two permanent thorns in Trump's flesh. John prefers the French system, where the people directly elect the president.

In the States, the president chooses cabinet members to be confirmed by the Senate. Donald Trump, an apprentice in governmental affairs himself, recruited mostly friends into key positions from finance and industry, with little or no experience in government administration. 

Red Baron was shocked when he listened to the confirmation hearing in the Senate of incompetent Kathleen Hartnett White, nominee to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She stammered through her hearing, arguing like a pupil not having done the homework. Have a look at the video on YouTube. Are these Trump's apprentices? As on his former TV Show, The Apprentice, many initially hired are already fired or left in anger. I get the impression that the Trump administration is running out of people. By the way, the White House eventually withdrew Kathleen Hartnett White's candidacy.

As a former TV host, Donald Trump knows show business well. While traditional media like newspapers, radio, and TV are in decline, the younger generation gets its information in small bites on the Internet. The classical media are obsessed with Trump's outrageous remarks and aggressive tweets. John rightly said, "Trump's tweets are the headlines of tomorrow's press," and I may add, "By that time, it's already old stuff."

The influence of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media on politics and election results has not been fully understood, but it will grow in the future.

I didn't follow the lively discussions around the oblong table; instead, I focused on the German government's Internet policy. Since 2005, demand for fast Internet in my country has been part of various government programs, but very little has happened regarding broadband expansion. At the end of 2017, industrialized Germany ranked only 32nd among its European neighbors. Note the Silver Medal for Norway! POTUS will love it.

My conspiracy theory goes like this: The decision-makers in Berlin, afraid of showing their incompetence with the Internet, are trying to keep German voters dumb while the latter hang on their slow telephone lines, waiting for their e-mails to be sent.

P.S.: Yesterday, March 9, Daniel Dettling, author of an article in the Badische Zeitung about digital awakening, attested to anxious Germans' angst 4.0. That angst is driven by automation running parallel with millions of jobs lost to machines and algorithms deciding life and death, e.g., autonomous driving. Meanwhile, in Japan, artificial intelligence is guiding people into Society 5.0.

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Hitler's Bell

The small town of Herxheim has a problem. Herxheim where? Am Berg in Rhineland-Palatinate. Don't the Herxheimers have an opportunity rather than a problem*?
*An English colleague at CERN tried to convince us that there are no problems, only opportunities

Sankt Jakobskirche mit Glockenturm (©dpa/Uwe Anspach)

Once upon a time, the people of sleepy Herxheim enjoyed the harmonious triad in B-minor of three bells hanging in the belfry of the local Lutheran St. Jacob Church, calling them to services on Sundays. It is somewhat strange that the municipality owns the dominant bell that serves as a fire alarm. During World War II, the bell also warned of air raids. Many citizens thought that this was why the big bell remained in its cage when, in 1942, the two smaller bells were taken down to be melted for their non-ferrous metal, which was essential to the Nazi war effort.

Bells were stored to be melted down in Hamburg's harbor in the fall of 1945, but the war was over.
Note the destroyed buildings in the background. Some of the bells could be restored.

As early as 1951, the two missing bells were recast, and the people of Herxheim thereafter lived peacefully and happily.

©dpa/Uwe Anspach

Not entirely, for in 2017, an organist made public that the dominant bell in St. Jacob's belfry dates back to the Third Reich. It shows a swastika and the text: Alles fuer's Vaterland - Adolf Hitler (All for the fatherland - AH). However, Lutheran Pastor Helmut Meinhardt and Mayor Ronald Becker of the Free Voters' Community refused to take down the Hitler bell, stating, "We are proud to possess such a bell." At the same time, Becker added, "Not all that Hitler did was bad," continuing, "There are things that he got off the ground, and we still use today." Herxheim's municipal council was appalled, so Becker had to step down as mayor. Suddenly, the small town was all over the news.

His successor, Georg Welker, a retired pastor, put his foot in his mouth too, when he stated on national television, "I am just saying, in the ringing of the bell, I hear the victims. These were German citizens, too, not only Jews." The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany commented, "A bell with such an inscription must not commemorate victims of the Nazi terror," and "The distinction Welker has made corresponds exactly to the Nazi ideology," i.e., regarding German Jews as non-Germans.

Although the Lutheran Church had offered to pay for a new bell, on February 26, 2018, Herxheim's municipal council voted 10 to 3 to keep the Hitler bell in its cage and use it. Previously, a group of experts had classified the bell as a monument, either to be placed in a museum or to be kept in place. The municipal council argued that replacing the bell would be an escape from Erinnerungskultur (remembrance culture). Say what?

In voting for Herxheim's counselors had suddenly changed their "problem" into an opportunity, i.e., making their town known nationwide. Is Hitler's bell now a tourist attraction or, even worse, a place of pilgrimage attracting neo-Nazis, similar to the tomb of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess in the past? In 2011, the small town of Wunsiedel in Bavaria was eventually tired of neo-Nazis hanging around Hess' grave. The city council had Hess' corpse dug up, burned it, and scattered the ashes on the high seas. End of story.

Herxheimers, why can't you just have the damned bell melted down and the molten mass highly diluted with "innocent" bronze?

P.S: Herxheim remains in the news. Due to a formal error, the February 26 vote was null and void and had to be repeated. The "final" voting was scheduled for March 12. Then the municipal council, as the bell's owner, decided that it should remain in the church tower and be rung as a "memorial against violence and injustice".

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On the Stones of the Synagogue

There is one iconic photo of Freiburg's burned-down synagogue taken on November 10, 1938, that not only is part of my web page Freiburgs Geschichte in Zitaten (Freiburg's history represented in quotations) but also serves as historical evidence on the newly installed municipal information panels at the Platz der Alten Synagoge.

Middenhoff's famous photo (©Staatsarchiv Freiburg)

Although it was strictly forbidden to take pictures of the smoldering ruins of the Jewish house of prayer, the student of law Wolf Middendorff took a risk and shot the only known photo, becoming a sort of hero after the war. He was honored not only for his audacity but became a law professor serving at the renowned Max Planck Institute of International Law one block away from my apartment.

Tall Middendorff in HJ uniform
(©Staatsarchiv Freiburg)

This morning an article in the Badische Zeitung changed Middendorff's image dramatically. Markus Wolter, a historian and librarian has unveiled the Nazi past of this "hero," who, in fact, was not just a Mitläufer (nominal follower) of the regime but an active member of the Nationalsozialistischer Schülerbund (Nazi Schoolchildren's League). Later he rose through the ranks of the Hitler Youth (HJ) to become Unterbannführer (Local leader of HJ) in Freiburg. Having reached the age of 19 in 1935, Middendorff became member number 3,594,133 of the NSDAP (Nazi Party). During the war, he served in the Luftwaffe (air force). In the winter semester of 1945/46, he was one of the first law students in Freiburg. By keeping his Nazi past secret, he obtained the famous Persil-Schein* (denazification certificate) by fraud, opening a public service career in court. He later boasted of having "whitewashed" many old Nazis in this capacity.
*Brand name of a famous washing powder: "Persil, nothing washes whiter."

What makes the Middendorff Affair unbearable is his anti-Semitic notes found after his death when, e. g., he welcomes the fact that Freiburg's university was in the winter semester of 1938/39 judenfrei (free of Jews). To cap it all off, he wrote a "poem" modifying the text of an old ballad: Wetzt die langen Messer am Synagogenstein, daß sie besser flutschen in den Judenbauch hinein (Sharpen your long knives on the stones of the synagogue, so they may more smoothly glide into the Jews' bellies). Nauseating!

Knowing Middenhoff's story, his famous photo reproduced on municipal information panels derides the Jewish victims. Unfortunately, this is just another chapter in the unfinished saga of the Platz der Alten Synagoge. Markus Wolter rightly demands that the photo be commented on extensively in the final version of those information panels.

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Original Sin

Yesterday, Elisabeth and I attended a lecture about Erbsünde, ein irreführender Begriff (Original sin, a misleading term) by Professor Ludwig Wenzler, former director of Freiburg's Catholic Academy. While "original sin" may be understood in English, Erbsünde (inherited sin) in German is frequently misinterpreted.

Are we all born with the personal sin (peccatum originale originans) Adam once committed when in paradise he ate an apple (?) of the tree of knowledge, and why is a newborn child already fraught with Adam's sin (peccatum originale originatum)?

Do you see this big black spot? That is the original sin. (©Cosmiq)

Let us start at the beginning. Not taking the "literal" interpretation of the Book of Genesis by creationists seriously, science now explains that the world came into being following the Big Bang, with life developing on Earth later. Out of primitive forms of DNA have evolved viruses, bacteria, protozoans, plants, animals, and eventually man/woman or better men/women, for it is hard to believe that mankind is the result of only one common ancestor.

Bible stories are great at explaining the mystery of creation to Jews and Christians before science, inspired by Darwin, revealed the development and selection of species and, later, the transfer of our DNA to our offspring.

In his time, although he proclaimed the Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (On the Freedom of a Christian), Martin Luther remained deeply rooted in the Middle Ages. For him, freedom meant freedom from paternalism, the tutelage of the Catholic Church, i.e., freedom for any man/woman to find his/her particular way to God, guided by reading the Bible. 

Nothing was more important to Luther than fighting illiteracy, even for women (!), so that everybody may study the Bible in his German tongue and find his way to Christ.

According to Luther, man/woman has no free will, for although the spiritual human being is free, the flesh is weak and bound to sin, so he read in St. Paul's letter to Romans 7:19, "For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing."

As Luther writes in his scripture De servo arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will), human beings are slaves and bound by their will. They are either "ridden" by the devil or by God. This was his rude answer to Erasmus of Rotterdam's scripture De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio (On Free Choice of the Will, Discourses or Comparisons), in which the latter explains that God does not interfere with man's/woman's free will. Let them decide between good and evil.

Back to the original sin: It is widely acknowledged that Augustinus forwarded the concept. Augustinus's story of Adam and Eve losing paradise by disobeying God's order and eating from the Tree of Knowledge explained the evil in this world and the misery of medieval life. Is there not a more modern interpretation of the "original sin"?

Man/woman is indeed in the bondage of his/her origin. Although the genetic code has evolved, the original evolutionary principle that the fittest will survive and proliferate is common to all species. Being essential for their survival, animals have no scruples about eating other animals, and strong males will fight for females to pass on their genetic material. 

We, however, intelligent beings, became conscious that it is wrong to kill neighbors, take or destroy their possessions, and impose genes on raping their women. Professor Wenzler called the inclination of man/woman towards evil an Erbmangel (hereditary defect) but interpreted it as a "genetic defect" rather than in a religious context. The insight of our ancestors that there is evil apparently came in pair with their queries about the meaning of existence.

Here, I dare to claim that paradise never existed, although such a condition is the starting point of many other non-Jewish mythologies. Paradise Lost serves as an auxiliary construction to explain how good and evil came into this world and how man/woman acquired the "knowledge," i.e., became conscious of choosing between them.

Although Professor Wenzler tried hard to eliminate the German word Erbsünde, replacing it with Ursünde and even introducing the concept of Erbgnade (hereditary grace), the element Erbe gets a whole new significance for me. We carry the basic information of egoistic life-preserving and life proliferation in our genes, as the lyrics of the song "As Time Goes By" describe:

It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die ...

Or with respect to our heritage, as Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust states in his defeatist way:

Es erben sich Gesetz und Rechte wie eine ew’ge Krankheit fort; sie schleppen von Geschlecht sich zum Geschlechte und rücken sacht von Ort zu Ort. Vernunft wird Unsinn, Wohltat Plage: Weh dir, daß du ein Enkel bist!

Like a disease, an heirloom dread, Still trail their curse from race to race, And furtively abroad, they spread. To nonsense, reason's self they turn; Beneficence becomes a pest. Woe unto thee, that thou'rt a grandson born!

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In God's Own Country

Yesterday, the Freiburg University winter lecture series "500 years Reformation, Luther and the Consequences" ended with a talk by Professor Michael Hochgeschwender, University of Munich: "Radical Reformation and Reform of Society in the States in the 19th Century". As on all previous Saturday mornings, the auditorium was fully packed.

In his first sentence, Professor Hochgeschwender clarified that America's society was and still is influenced by Calvinism, not by Lutheranism. The Pilgrim Fathers looking for new frontiers were Puritans. Later Anglo-Saxon Protestants continued to mark the spiritual development in the States, to the detriment of Irish immigrants being fervent Catholics. Settlers arriving on the American continent took along the Puritan Anglosaxon slogan "Thy mercy on thy people Lord," regarding themselves as the newly chosen people.

Professor Hochgeschwender's lecture was a bit too detailed, referring to the religious situation that led to the War of Independence and that developed into revival movements in the 19th century. These were soon teaming with liberal groups to form the capitalistic system in the northern states.

For Protestants, the King James Bible was the measure of all things, sometimes the only book at home. Reading was an essential skill. The message is that all men can be saved; they only have to meet God individually.

God alone will choose his people, although the idea that those selected by the Lord are already successful here on earth does not sound very biblical. But did not St. Paul clearly write in his second letter to the Thessalonians 3:10, "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat." This led to the distinction between the undeserving and deserving poor.

In the States, the spiritual development in the north clashed with the more traditional living style in the south, a democracy of free white men. Eventually, tensions over the justification of slavery culminated in the Civil War that, given the endured carnage, left religious groups speechless and in trouble explaining.

Not for long. In the second half of the 19th century, the ministering zeal revived to give the American way of life to the world. Herman Melville carried this sense of mission even further, "And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of liberties of the world," and he continues, "Long enough have we doubted whether, indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he has come in us."

Religious affiliation in the U.S.

Although the number of atheists is on the rise, the spectrum of Protestant religious movements in the States still is broad, e.g., Evangelicals, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Mormons. This Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints perfected the view of the last days being near and taking place in new Israel, the United States. Christ will eventually exult in God's own country.

As Professor Hochgeschwender explained, all this is far more complex, but he showed that some religious attitudes still influence a significant part of today's American society.

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For a Big Fee, a Map of America

This morning, reading the Badische Zeitung, Red Baron shook his head when he read a copy of the famous map of “America” by Martin Waldseemüller held at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library) is a fake. Yes, the BSB proudly bought a fake copy of Waldseemüller’s map for 2 million Deutsche Mark (1 million euro) in 1990. The report immediately brought the lyrics of  “I want to be in America” from the musical West Side Story to my mind.

When Christie’s London put up another map for auction last December, experts became suspicious by comparing their specimen with the copy in Munich. Subsequently, material science tests revealed that around 1960, both maps were drawn from an original kept at the University of Minnesota in the States; where else? At least we know that the specimen preserved at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, is an original.

There is another copy in Freiburg near where once Waldseemüller’s parents’ house, the Haus zum Hechtkopf (pike head), stood.

Visiting the place this morning, I learned that it was not Martinus Ilacomilus who had invented the name but Philesius Vogesigena (Matthias Ringmann).

Note the reflection of the Haus zur lieben Hand (House of the Kind Hand)

Then Waldseemüller wrongly (?) wrote America on the map.

Coming back to the two fake copies in Munich and at Christie’s. Why had they not found out earlier? Oh, those experts!

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Churches to Beer Halls

People well-versed in the Bible know the famous lines in the Book of Isaiah, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares." This is the snow of yesteryear, for you read in the Book of Gambrinus, "They will transform their churches into beer halls." It is a fact: while the number of churchgoers is declining, gesoffen wird immer (people will always booze).

Initially, Red Baron was shocked when he read in the Badische Zeitung that churches are transformed into large beer bars in the States. In Freiburg, the Luther Church, situated near the university's clinical buildings, was recently deconsecrated too ... to become a lecture hall for the medical faculty. The future multi-functional auditorium will have 460 seats.

Luther Church in Freiburg (©Joergens.mi/Wikipedia)

Back to the beer churches. Instead of an altar, you will find a brewing kettle, and beer will be served instead of wine. Names for the beers have been easy to find since the Middle Ages; the best beers are brewed by monks. Subsequently, you will find the Pious Monk dark lager, Organ Pipe pale ale, and Celestial Gold on tap or in bottles at those booming Beer and Bible Bars. Note the quadruple alliteration.

In Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the Church Brew Works in Pittsburgh are housed in a former church building. While we read in Genesis 2:2, "And on the seventh day God came to the end of all his work, and on the seventh day he took his rest from all the work which he had done," the Pittsburg brewers completed, "On the eighth-day man created beer."

Church naves with large stained glass windows
are hard to make into condominiums (©Dake Kang/AP)

In Cincinnati, Ohio, the Taft's Ale House opened in the 167-year-old St. Paul's Evangelical Protestant Church with a "blessing of the beers" by a Catholic priest, Rev. John Kroeger. Eyes cast upward, he said, "God of all creation, you gift us with friends, food, and drink. Bless these kegs and every keg that will be brewed here. Bless all those freshened here and all those gathered in the days, months, and years to come! Amen." 

It proves that Beer is ecumenical.

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Fire and Fury

At the beginning of the year, Red Baron learned about a whistleblowing book by Michael Wolff reporting from inside the White House. The book Fire and Fury was to be published on January 7, but when I looked on Amazon, it was available in Germany only on January 9.

Somewhat angry, I browsed the Apple store on January 5, and there it was, Fire and Fury, ready for download. What had happened? The Little Brown publishing house had advanced the delivery by two days, fearing an injunction that President Trump's lawyers were preparing forbidding publishing the book.

Some people hate e-books, but they have several advantages. They do not need precious space on your bookshelf, let you read the book in parallel, synchronized on multiple devices, and allow the marking and annotation of text and the looking up of unknown expressions in online dictionaries. Wolff writes a demanding style, using a vocabulary sometimes strange to me.

In the States, Michael Wolff writes for a few newspapers and published a 2008 biography about the Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch titled: The Man Who Owns the News. In the U.S., Murdoch owns the 20th Century Fox studios, the television network Fox, and the influential Wall Street Journal.

Michael Wolff had already accompanied Donald Trump during the election campaign and writes, "Shortly after January 20, I took something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing of the White House. Since then, I have conducted more than 200 interviews. "


The first Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft Stammtisch of 2018 was on Wednesday this week, and I presented Wolff's book to a considerable audience.

The Transition
Almost no one in the Republican camp had counted on Trump's victory. When they moved into the White House, the electoral team was stunned and inexperienced. So Kellyanne Conway, Trump's election campaign manager, coined the term "alternative facts." At the same time, she had intended to say, "The president has other information," which is also a peculiar way of describing Trump's fixation on the size of the crowd present at his inauguration on the Mall in Washington.

Wolff's book then reveals that it had been Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon who was behind those hasty Executive Orders restricting the entry of citizens from some Arab states.

The ultra-right, all-right activist and Breitbart TV maker Steve Bannon tried, until his dismissal in July 2017, to turn America morally and politically back into the good old 1960s. As the chief strategist, he often had the president's ear if the latter had not listened to Jarvanka — an artificial word formed from the names of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka.

Trumpism
It turned out that the president had no long-term strategy except to "Make America great again." Often the last person to see Trump influenced his opinion. As Wolff knows: "It was one of the key elements of Bannon's understanding of Trump: the last person Trump spoke to ended up with enormous influence." So the chief strategist was permanently present in the White House; sometimes, he slept a few hours on a couch.

There are the long nocturnal phone calls, the evening cheeseburger, the three television screens, and the morning tweets in the bedroom that determine POTUS's daily routine, "If he was not having his six-thirty dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls — the phone was his actual contact point with the world — to a small group of friends. "And so, "Trump would brag that Murdoch was always calling him; Murdoch, for his part, would complain that he couldn't get Trump off the phone. "

And then there was Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, rather than being a personnel manager, playing the role of a prime minister in the White House, taking care of the president's day.

As in any organization, there are power struggles and intrigues in the White House too. Here the main front line ran between the right-wing Bannon/Priebus and the liberal Jarvanka. It would need an intelligent boss smoothing the waves and knowing the game of divide et impera.

The Media
Wolff writes that Trump is not interested in politics. In a televised expert meeting of Republicans and Democrats on new bipartite immigration law, Potus said, when it came to the legalization of the Dreamers illegally residing in the States, "I'll sign anything you guys will come up with," but later rejected a hastily elaborated draft bill submitted to him.

It was unique that such a special meeting in the White House took place in front of live television cameras, but "The president's most pressing concern was his media reputation. "As Wolff knows, "The media treat him like no other president had ever been treated."

"His enemies were out to get him. Worse, the system was rigged against him. The bureaucratic swamp, intelligence agencies, unfair courts, and lying media lined up against him. This was, for his senior staff, a reliable topic of conversation with him: the possible martyrdom of Donald Trump,"

Here Trump is paranoid as Wolff describes the president's feelings, "The media were sore losers and hated him for winning, they spread total lies, 100 percent made-up things, totally untrue, for instance, the cover of Time magazine — which, Trump reminded his listeners, he had been on more than anyone in history. "

"The cover showed Steve Bannon, a good guy, saying he was the real president. ‚How much influence do you think Steve Bannon has over me? 'Trump demanded and repeated the question, and then repeated the answer, ‚Zero! Zero!'"

More Challenges
The president's collaborators had more challenges; as Wolff reports, "Everyone was translating a set of Trump's desires and urges into a program, a process that required a lot of guesswork. It was, said Deputy Chief of Staff Katie Walsh, 'like trying to figure out what a child wants.' But making suggestions was deeply complicated. Here was, arguably, the central issue of the Trump presidency ... he didn't process information in any conventional sense — or, in a way, he didn't process it at all."

"Trump didn't read. He didn't really even skim. If it was printed, it might as well not exist. Some believed that, for all practical purposes, he was no more than semiliterate ... Some thought him dyslexic; certainly, his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn't read because he just didn't have to and that this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was postliterate — total television."

"But not only didn't he read, but he also didn't listen. He preferred to be the person talking. And he trusted his own expertise — no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else's. What's more, he had an extremely short attention span, even when he thought you were worthy of attention."

Obamacare
And then there was the failure in the appeal of Obamacare, "Trump wanted to break things, he wanted a Republican Congress to give him bills to sign, and he wanted the love and respect of New York machers and socialites."

Obamacare was the acid test for the Trump administration, "It was Bannon who held the line, insisting, sternly, that Obamacare was a litmus Republican issue, and that holding a majority in Congress, they could not face Republican voters without having made good on the Republican catechism of repeal. Repeal, in Bannon's view, what the pledge and repeal would be the most satisfying, even cathartic, result."

On the other hand, the Republican speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, knew that he would succeed with his majority only sticking to a "repeal and replace" approach. In fact, Trump, now indifferent to everything, had, during the election campaign, offered voters better health insurance than Obamacare.

Then, as the various attempts in Congress failed to abolish and replace Obamacare, "Bannon was careful to take a back seat in the debate. Later, he just said, 'I hung back on health care because it's not my thing.'"

Foreign policy
Steve Bannon behaved differently when the Trump government was challenged in the field of foreign policy: "At the beginning of April, Bashar al-Assad's government, once again defying international law, had used chemical weapons at Khan Sheikhoun. There was a video documenting the attack and substantial agreement among intelligence agencies about Assad's responsibility. Barack Obama had failed to act when confronted with a Syrian chemical attack, and now Trump could. The downside was small; it would be a contained response. And it had the added advantage of seeming to stand up to the Russians, Assad's effective partners in Syria, which would score a political point at home."

"Chief Strategist Bannon's approach was very much it was not our mess, and judging by all recent evidence, no good would come of trying to help clean it up. That effort would cost military lives with no military reward. Bannon believed in the need for a radical shift in foreign policy and proposed a new doctrine: Fuck 'em. This iron-fisted isolationism appealed to the president's transactional self: What was in it for us (or for him)? "

"To son-in-law Kushner, it seemed obvious that the president was more annoyed about having to think about the attack than by the attack itself."

Checks and Balances
Let us have confidence. "At the heart of the U.S. Constitution is a system of checks and balances that was established primarily to guard against the concentration of power in an executive branch that might tend toward royalism. The founders of the American experiment wanted to prevent a repeat of the monarchical abuses of King George III, against which their constituents had risen in the revolution." To this day, these checks and balances have prevented Trump did not get out of hand.

Trump's narcissism, however, continues. About his State of the Union speech, he twittered, "Thank you for all the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history ... "

©CNN

Fake news! Obama had 48 million viewers in 2010, G. W. Bush holds the record with 62 million in 2003, while POTUS came in only in seventh place.

Last week in Ohio, while stock prices fell through the floor, Potus said, "I am not braggadocios," although two days before, he had bragged that he was the cause of the booming stock market.

My presentation stimulated an exciting discussion that, however, diverged into present German politics. While I was partly listening to the arguments thrown around, I became possessed by the idea: Will Donald Trump permanently damage the position of the U. S. presidency through his behavior? Will this result in the fact that future American presidents will have less authority? We shall see.

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First Collisions

Red Baron is an alumnus now. I reached the status last weekend, not at the University of Munich, from which I graduated, but at CERN, where I spent 32 years of my professional life until my retirement. I participated in the First Collisions jamboree, which was held at CERN. So it was natural that, when I arrived, my former office was the first place to visit.

The isotope chart behind the desk was still there, as well as the pinboard. Instead of the one clumsy tube monitor I had, there are now two (!) flat screens on the desktop. I also noticed that the small wooden bookshelf behind my chair, where I kept my reference books, is still in use.

Later, I met my last Division Leader from Austria and three of my former collaborators from Germany, Italy, and France, all of whom were smiling. With all the other long-retired Belgians, British, Danish, Dutch, Norwegians, Swedish, Swiss, and one of the first physicists from Slovakia (not retired) I recruited at CERN, my group was truly European not forgetting those many visiting colleagues from China, Japan, Russia, and the United States.

I hurried to the Main Auditorium and arrived just in time to listen to CERN’s Director-General Fabiola Gianotti welcoming the assembled alumni. She started with a slide showing the Large Hadron Collider and the location of the four underground experiments in the Canton of Geneva and the Pays de Gex of France. Note the snow-covered Alps beyond Lake Geneva in the background.

The age structure at CERN presented by the DG really astonished me, for I was retired, i.e., I had to leave at age 65. Today, the official retirement age is 67. So it was comforting to see that, beyond the age of 82, professional life at CERN finally seems to end.

Back to high-energy particle physics.

The lab still lives on the discovery of the Higgs boson, with its mass now precisely determined at 125 GeV, plus or minus 0.25 GeV, but many questions in physics remain unanswered, and some problems still need to be solved. Why is there more matter than antimatter in the universe, and what did the plasma look like in the time slot before 10 µsec after the Big Bang?

To investigate those questions further, particle physicists ask for more powerful accelerators. The quest for higher particle energies leads to new R&D (research and development) at CERN.

Note the plans for a Compact Linear Collider in the Pays de Gex. But above all, the Future Circular Collider should fit into the given landscape. Why? The official reason is that the LHC will serve as an injector to the FCC, or is the region around the Lake, between the Jura Mountains and the Alps, so beautiful and attractive?

The DG showed her last slide:

And thanks to the CERN management for sponsoring the successful event, the first of its kind and likely to be followed by others.

The weekend's activity was so dense; there is more to report. Stay tuned for some nostalgic notes (what else?) in a future blog.

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Inside Fry's Triple Combination

On Monday evening Professor Earl E. Fry of Brigham Young University in Utah spoke about "Trans-Atlantic Drift and Global Shift; Can the United States and Europe compete in a Rapidly Changing World." At the beginning of his talk, Professor Fry appealed to the audience's sympathy by mentioning his German ancestors, who possibly had been Swiss instead. There is a known Frey Chocolate in Switzerland, albeit with an "e."

Here are some of the slides Professor Fry showed and discussed:

The content of his slide on "The Challenges Facing the Trans-Atlantic Region" confirms the global shift. However, the high economic growth in Asia and other emerging markets is due to the backlog of demand in developing countries. Professor Fry's worries about the non-proliferation of western values like human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and capitalism are justified, although capitalism may not be the best export article. This is hard to accept for the devoted capitalist Fry.

On his slide "Lament for America Thesis," Professor Fry harped on his triple combination of globalization and rapid technology going in parallel with creative destruction. Indeed globalization lowered the percentage of the U. S. in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) on a global scale from 40% in 1967 to only 15,5% in 2015, i.e., to the value of the year 1900.

Creative destruction brings down once-thriving crafts and industries, replacing them with the outcome of new technologies. Digital photography brought to its knees once mighty "analog" Kodak, and coal miners were jobless with cleaner energy sources taking over. It does not help that POTUS, in yesterday's State of the Union message, touted, "We have ended the war on American energy, and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal." Yes, I know the slogan "Black is beautiful," but clean coal is fake coal.

The slide "America's 15 Domestic Fault Lines" lists problem areas in the States, most of which are also valid in the European Union (EU). So the explosion of entitlements and benefits is a severe problem in Germany, where state governments and the federal government kick down the road financing of acquired pension rights for their civil servants.

That the costs for health care will have only one direction: Going up, Red Baron wrote before. Although I knew that health care in the States is expensive, I did not realize that costs are more than twice as high in the US, i.e., 17% versus 8%, as in the EU.

Lacking education, a deteriorating infrastructure, and growing separatism are common problems. Whereas in Germany, federalism is considered an achievement, European countries with relatively strong central governments face separatist movements, i.e., North and South in Italy, Corsica in France, Catalonia in Spain, and Scotland in the United Kingdom.

The slide on "U. S. Government Debt" is frightening for me, but Professor Fry is optimistic about the US economy going strong.

Indeed, on the slide "If US States Were Nations 2016," the fact that the State of California alone has the economic strength of the UK is astonishing.

Professor Fry's last two slides, "America's Economic Strengths," are optimistically summarizing the solid economic positions of the United States.

At the end of the talk, I had many questions but held back, asking only, "Recently, the US has lowered the corporate tax considerably. Consequently, President Trump invited European firms to invest in America at the recent Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Where will they find a skilled workforce when the present unemployment rate is as low as 4% in the States?"

Professor Fry corrected, "It is not only the low corporate tax but also the cheap energy that will attract investors," and continued, "The problem of the missing workforce can be solved by immigration." Mhm, I had many more questions, but others in the audience wanted to get their queries in too.

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