ACTUALLY, THIS POSTER WAS created when the virtually unknown Christian Democratic politician Herman Van Rompuy was voted in as prime minister of Belgium in December of last year. Yesterday evening, over a private dinner in Brussels, he was surprisingly chosen as the chief representative… Read full post »

1,000 giant dominoes are lined up from the Reichstag
to Potsdamer Platz to recreate the fall of the Berlin Wall

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARIES ARE OFTEN melancholy affairs, no matter how happy and festive the occasion is. We can't help but think of how much time has passed and how few of our… Read full post »

 
The Brandenburg Gate on November 9, 1989

FOR AS LONG AS there have been calendars, specific dates have marked significant historical and spiritual events in their respective societies. The Americans celebrate their independence on the fourth of July, the French mark the storming of the… Read full post »

EVERY MORNING, ABOUT HALFWAY into my daily jog along… Read full post »

EVERYBODY HAS SEEN THE images, but how many have sat through the whole thing? In 1927, when Fritz Lang first unleashed his 204 minute-long studio-busting sci-fi thriller Metropolis onto a bewildered public, the answer was “precious few.” Set in the year 2000, it bombed alrea/… Read full post »

 
Dr. Martin Goldstein, alias "Dr. Sommer"

THE TERM “SEXUAL REVOLUTION” has become such a cliché in recent decades that it is hard to imagine that it ever had a tangible meaning. And yet, the transformation of global sexual mores that picked up steam in the 1960s… Read full post »

CHANCES ARE THAT IF you come from a small town you are sick and tired of always having to describe to people where it is located. But if you're lucky, you won't have to explain why it… Read full post »

A blogger called Andreas Fecke apparently liked my recent article on Youssou N'Dour so much that he immediately translated it into German and put it on his own blog (giving me all due credit). I am, of course, touched by this, and what better way to repay the compliment than by… Read full post »

 
"Home" at last:
The Bust of Nefertiti in Berlin's New Museum
(14th century BCE)

IT TOOK ONLY A few hours to obliterate Berlin's New Museum, the brightest jewel in the capital's proud crown of cultural heritage sites. British bombs blasted holes through its roof on the night of November 22… Read full post »

   
The Leipzig Monday Demonstration
of October 9, 1989

IT WAS ALEXIS DE Tocqueville who wrote that “The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.” While this observation clearly applied to Eastern Europe’s doomed communist governm… Read full post »

WHEN YOU'RE IN THE language biz, there usually isn't much to laugh about. Sure, your colleagues may tell you the odd joke about various bizarre interpreting and translating situations they've encountered, but mostly you simply spend your days processing other people's words. So on a day… Read full post »

  
Mercedes Sosa in 1980 

THE PEOPLE OF HER native Argentina called her “the voice of the voiceless ones.” For the rest of the world, she will always be known as the voice of South America.

The singer Mercedes Sosa was born in the northwestern Argentine town of San Mi… Read full post »

 
Fromms Act - the world's first brand-name latex condom

VIRTUALLY EVERYBODY USES THEM from time to time, but few people are aware of the uplifting and ultimately heart-breaking story that lies behind the world’s most widespread – if not always most loved – contraceptive… Read full post »

    
Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour

THE ARTIST WHOM ROLLING Stone Magazine has called “perhaps the most famous singer alive” is celebrating his fiftieth birthday today. Youssou N’Dour was born in Dakar, Senegal to pious Sufi Muslim parents on October 1, 195/… Read full post »

  
The makeshift refugee camp outside the West German
embassy in Prague, August-September 1989

PRAGUE MEANS MANY THINGS to many people. It is the site of the infamous “defenestration” of 1618, which marked the beginning of the Thirty Years War. It is the home of Alfons Mar… Read full post »

Were reports of Hitler's death "greatly exaggerated"?
Cover of Time Magazine, May 7, 1945

BACK WHEN I WAS growing up, Hitler sightings were a running joke, a semi-comical preview of the Elvis and Jacko sightings that haunt our tabloids today. I still have a vivid memory of one/… Read full post »

 
CDU leader Angela Merkel and FDP leader Guido
Westerwelle (source: Der Spiegel online)

THE VOTES ARE COUNTED, the champagne bottles stand empty, the tears of triumph and despair have been dried, and Europe's most populous country is awakening to a new political dawn.

After four years of… Read full post »

IT'S ELECTION DAY IN Germany, and even though I'm not allowed to vote, the country's saturation with election posters and slogans could drive anyone half crazy with expectation. Thank god it will all be over tonight.

Who would I vote for? I'd be tempted to go with the Greens for old… Read full post »

WHENEVER BERLIN’S POLICEMEN START wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying submachine guns, you can tell there’s trouble brewing. This time the reason is clear: On September 25, just two days before the parliamentary election, both al-Qaeda and the Taliban threatened Germany… Read full post »

 
Logo of the Swiss "Anti-Minaret Initiative"

SWITZERLAND OWES ITS INTERNATIONAL reputation to its watches, bank accounts, chocolate, and the Matterhorn, but now it is gaining a name for itself in another area as well: as a bulwark against Muslim expansion in Europe. On November 29 the… Read full post »

NOT LONG AGO, I posted a sort of photo essay on Europe’s most bizarre political posters. I had great fun researching it, and some of the posters still make me snicker today. But none of them provoke the belly laughs I get on my way to the office every morning. As/… Read full post »

A SPECTER IS HAUNTING Europe – the specter of pirates. First they raided the Spanish Main, then they boarded Hollywood. From there they have moved on to terrorize shipping along the Somali coast, and now they’re staking a claim on European politics. So break out the rum, ra… Read full post »

 
Would-be school assassin Georg R.

LAST THURSDAY I PUBLISHED an article in this space on a particularly vicious school attack that had just occurred in the picturesque Bavarian town of Ansbach. Eighteen year-old Georg R. entered his high school at 8:30 that morning  carrying an axe,… Read full post »

 
"I love you"
Dominik Brunner, 1959-2009

THE TERM “HERO” HAS been so grievously overused in recent years that we would all be hard-pressed to come up with a comprehensible definition for it. Nowadays it seems as if all you need to become a hero is just to be a passive victim… Read full post »

 
The "Gymnasium Carolinum" in Ansbach, Bavaria
(Source: BILD)

THE HEADLINE IS SICKENINGLY familiar. “Student attacks school,” the newspapers scream. Once again, violence has erupted on a German high school campus. Not for the first time – and surely not for the last.

Poli… Read full post »