Tag Archives: Life

A very German day

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November 9, 1848

Robert Blum is executed in Vienna. One of the more prominent members of the Frankfurt National Assembly, he was in Vienna to observe how the Austrians dealt with the revolutionary forces. Not objective at all, he spoke to the revolutionaries and even took part in street fights. His diplomatic immunity was ignored. His death ultimately marks the end of the 1848 revolution.

November 9, 1918

The first day of the German republic. The Kaiser abdicates (not quite voluntarily) and flees the country, Friedrich Ebert becomes Reichkanzler. It’s the culmination of the German revolution.

November 9, 1923

Hitler’s march to the Feldherrnhalle. His coup fails, Hitler is sentenced to five years imprisonment.

November 9, 1938

Kristallnacht.

November 9, 1989

The Wall falls.

Tragedy, terror, and glory. It’s not just any day for Germans.
(Via Die Zeit)

The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg Gotha

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A week after Queen Elisabeth II’s fourth state visit to Germany The Times is stunned that Germans hailed her as one of them (story including statements by the inevitable Nazi), while The Independent takes its readers on a detailed journey through time, attempting to uncover the exact extent to which the Windsors may in fact still be the Saxe-Coburg Gothas (links via Viewropa). Reassuring note to British readers: there’s no need to burn your 1918-1945-1966 t-shirt 😉

Anti-Americanism?

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2000 British readers of the Radio Times voted Homer Simpson for President. The cartoon character tops a list of several fictional TV characters, which UK tellly viewers would prefer as US president. According to the BBC, “The West Wing’s” “real” fictional US President, Josiah Bartlet, polled second, only slightly ahead of radio therapist Frasier (link via Pulpmovies blog).

While it is true that executing such a poll is utterly bizarre in itself, I must applaud those interviewed for assembling such a supreme cast for a fictional replay of the 2004 Presidential race. British humour at its best.

Naturally, the German ZDF television is not quite as subtle: The title of tonight’s feature about the President and the Senator was only slightly biased: “Cowboy vs. Gentleman.” Just another example of what Christoph Amend wrote about in last week’s “Die Zeit” (in German) – Fernsehweh (impossible to translate, the word means something like “it hurts to watch what is actually broadcast given our desire to watch something better” – true, German can be very concise at times).

What You Look For Is What You Get?

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Ok, I’m feeling in a wicked mood today, so how about something really controversial (just for a change). It’s now as near to official as we’re going to get it that Sadam Hussein wasn’t making any serious advance towards the development of WMDs.

So, this being the case, what exactly is going on in Iraq?
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Seen the Sri Lankan National Men’s Handball Team?

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According to Sri Lankan authorities (and as reported in the German newspaper whose web site could really be better organized), there isn’t one. That didn’t stop 23 men — or maybe 25, accounts vary — from organizing a three-week tour through Bavaria, getting German visas, traveling to Wittislingen (an apparently charming place of about 1000 inhabitants), training for competition against the locals and playing a game in what looked like Sri Lankan uniforms. After Wittislingen, they were supposed to play in Dasing, Landshut, Eggenfelden, Karlsfeld, Schlei?heim and Freising. But at the first game, something didn’t seem right. The team was terrible. According to one account, they even asked the referee no to apply the rules so stringently, or they might never score.

After the game, the team and its coaches went back to their quarters at a local orchestral hall. Then they went … somewhere. At first, the good people of Wittislingen thought the team had gone on one of their regular runs through the woods, part of their athletic regimen. But they didn’t come back. No one has seen any of them for days.

There was, by all accounts, a very polite letter thanking everyone for their hospitality and saying the team had gone to France. But who knows?

So. Anyone seen the Sri Lankan men’s handball team?

Update: According to the most recent press reports, they have likely gone to Italy, where there is apparently a reasonably large Sri Lankan community, most of whom work in the shadow economy.

Our deaf, schizophrenic uncle S.

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William Pfaff, a writer who wrote about European-American relations and the challenges of perceived unchallenged US global leadership well before the Iraq induced and war-blogged “transatlantic rift”, may have indeed listened to Carly Simon when he wrote his not too favorable review of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s election year foreign policy summary “The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership” for the latest issue of the New York Review of Books.

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Great minds etc

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Steve Bell’s If… cartoon in the Guardian today (and presumably for the rest of the week) is a little tale called For A Fistful Of Euros. However, it’s about the arguments over policy towards the Euro between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, rather than an expose of us.

While the Guardian does make Bell’s editorial cartoons available over the web, If… doesn’t seem to be available. If anyone does know where it may be available online, then please let us know!

Minding the parking meters

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The Czech press digest Fleet Sheet puts out a free email bulletin with blog-like observations on Czech culture, business and politics. Though it’s sometimes a bit off base, it’s worth looking at to get a sense of the scene in Prague. Today’s…

Why does Prague airport have expensive self-service parking machines, when the CR is a mecca for low wages?… It’s still possible to get shoes or a broken TV repaired in the CR, but the march toward the European welfare state will soon raise taxes and wage costs so high that it’ll be cheaper to throw out the old shoes and buy new ones. Premier Spidla told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that reconciling the costs of modernizing the welfare state and the impact on common people is a European-wide problem without a solution. If the European welfare model collapses, he said, so will the EU itself. Then Czechs could go back to minding the parking lot.

An interesting statement with wide implications, although I’m not exactly sure there’s such a strong connection between parking meters, broken televisions, and the European welfare state.

Thoughts on Establishment

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Not having been educated in Europe, I can’t contribute to the thread on religious education. But I want to thank Nick for putting it up, and everyone else for their comments on it. One of my pet peeves is how American arguments about religious education, and “establishment” issues in general (as they are usually described in the U.S., following the language of the First Amendment), seem to me at least to be trapped in a very narrow (judicially dictated, for the most part) box. I’m not a theocrat, but I suspect that, had America’s historical experience with religious-civic partnerships been different, we perhaps might more easily be able to relate to both the benefits, and the costs, of the sort of (I think highly admirable) experiences with religious education that many of you are describing. Anyway, your thoughts prompt me to excerpt here a post from my own blog from last September; specifically, a quote from Stanley Hauerwas, that expresses my views of the matter pretty succinctly…
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