"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 »

ARE SOME RELIGIONS MORE bizarre than others, or are their eccentricities merely in the eye of the beholder? A recent scandal surrounding a sex cult in the Republic of Papua New Guinea puts this question to the test.

New Guinea goes bananas

According to an… Read full post »

IF YOU THOUGHT THE Scots had long since cornered the market on peculiar British dishes with their haggis - although the English with their infamous spotted dick are catching up fast - then you clearly haven't ever been to Cornwall.

Stargazy pie originated in the Cornish town of Mouseho… Read full post »

 
Seal of the German Democratic Republic (1949-89)

A COUPLE OF YEARS ago, I was struck by what I thought was a wonderful idea for a book. Over coffee and cake  in her tiny flat overlooking the Neisse River in Saxony, a relative of mine by marriage had just begun recounting her… Read full post »

 
Nazi soldier executing Polish civilians:
Was it all Britain's  fault...?

With the health care debate and the metastazation of the "Obama is Hitler" meme reaching a crescendo, I decided to repost my August 10 article on the fate of Africans and biracial people in the Third Reich. While I obviously don't expect a mere fact check like this to influence… Read full post »

ELECTION TIME IS ALWAYS silly season, but at least Europeans aren't afraid to let some of that silliness spill onto their election posters. In the following I've made another selection of placards from recent elections that are clever, silly, and sometimes downright bizarre. They each say s… Read full post »

 
Angela Merkel

ON SEPTEMBER 1, 2009, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders met in Gdansk, Poland, to commemorate the German invasion that began exactly seventy years before, touching off the Second World War in Europe. Merkel's speech received an extremely positive re… Read full post »

 
Hubris: German troops symbolically destroy a
Polish frontier barrier on September 1, 1939

THEY ATTACKED THE RADIO station at eight p.m. sharp. A half dozen German SS men dressed as Polish partisans stormed the broadcasting house beside the wooden radio tower near the Silesian town of Gl… Read full post »

 
"We have more to offer":
CDU candidate Vera Lengsfeld (right)
and Chancellor Angela Merkel

IN GERMANY, POLITICS HAS traditionally been a serious business. But this year, with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)  expected to continue its uninspiring grand coalition with… Read full post »

SOME FOOTNOTES OF HISTORY are just that: random scraps of trivia that may well form part of the historical record but are of no real interest to anyone besides genuine buffs. Who was Napoleon's podiatrist? Who cares? That is why it might at first sound like groping at the very… Read full post »

Downright diabolical:
Moritz Bleibtreu and Johanna Wokalek as
terrorist lovebirds Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin 

WAS WESTERN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY in the late 1960s and early 1970s really just inches away from a return to open fascism? The very notion sounds quaint today, even absurd. And… Read full post »

IT TAKES ONLY MINUTES to destroy a building. Sometimes it takes whole generations to build it back up again. Today it looks as if the Potsdam Stadtschloss is finally going to get its second chance.

After sixty-four years, it… Read full post »

THE PROTEST WAS INTENDED to be low-key. Graying victims of East Germany’s state-run doping program positioned themselves at the entrance to Berlin’s Olympic Stadium where they stood passing out thousands of purple cardboard “glasses” to spectators of the ongoing 1… Read full post »

SOME HONORS TAKE LONGER to arrive than others, but when they finally come, they are all the sweeter - and spicier - for the wait. This has been the strange fate of the currywurst, a simple dish for simple people that is celebrating its sixtieth birthday next month and has… Read full post »

Or why an insensitive election poster is giving the German left a bad case of the blues

IT SEEMED LIKE SUCH a clever idea. Why not poke fun at Germany’s traditional color-coded party spectrum and at the same time make a plea for cultural diversity and racial tolerance? Doesn't that sound… Read full post »

ON AUGUST 11, 1919, the job was done. A special delegation carried the new “Reich Constitution” to the desk of Reich President Friedrich Ebert for his signature. With a flourish of his pen, this saddle ma… Read full post »

…and why we still need them

Franz Tschakert and his "Woman of Glass" (1936)

SAY WHAT YOU LIKE about SS leader Heinrich Himmler, he sure had the well-being of his soldiers at heart. More than anything else, their physical happiness and sexual hygiene cost the diminutive Reichsfüh… Read full post »

Captured French colonial soldier undergoing an
SS-mandated "racial test" during World War II

IN A RECENT ESSAY, Salon editor Joan Walsh asks in dismay whether “our first black president [is] a ‘Nazi’?” After being exposed to the increasingly frantic political rhetoric/… Read full post »

CONRAD SCHUMANN AND Peter Leibing were two young men at the right place and at the right time. The elite border guard and the news photographer, both nineteen years old, had co… Read full post »

WORDS OF WISDOM, WORDS of strength.  In difficult times, when both lives and honor are at stake, people the world over rely on visionary leaders to remind us of why we must go on. America has been singularly blessed with philosophers and statesmen who knew how to express  lasting… Read full post »

Michael Jackson - was the King of Pop "Bad"
for the East German regime?

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO die first before you can receive the respect that was withheld from you while you were still breathing, and Michael Jackson is proving this every day. The outpouring of grief that… Read full post »

I DON'T RECALL ANYONE ever telling me there were goblins in our basement, but I knew they were there. Not that knowing this caused me any worry as long as the sun was shining. Our goblins only came out at night, and I doubt I ever went down… Read full post »