Category Archives: History

Well You Can Buy Christmas Goodies Here In September, Too

September 15, 2013 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hideology, High Art, Higher Education, History, Home Cooking, Hotness, Humor, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Go to any ALDI or LIDL these days if you don’t believe me (I prefer the Spekulatius myself).

Oktoberfest

So why should it surprise anybody that’s it’s October in September again already, too. Or nearly so. Prepare or be square.

Tip number 1: Go get your Lederhose NOW. Or a Dirndl, if your prefer. The same applies to the girls. Only after having put on one of these will you be able to celebrate the Oktoberfest in a really zünftig (hearty) fashion. And only after having put down two or three liters of Bier too, of course. But that goes without saying.

Nr. 1 – Das richtige Outfit: In Dirndl und Lederhosen feiert es sich einfach am zünftigsten. Diverse Online-Shops bieten eine große Auswahl für „Madln“ (=Mädels) und „Buam“ (=Jungs). Da aber beides perfekt sitzen soll, empfiehlt es sich, das Outfit vor Ort zu kaufen. Ein Tipp für die Damen: wird die Schleife der Dirndl-Schürze rechts gebunden, gilt Frau als vergeben, links bedeutet: „Ich bin noch zu haben.“

1,700 Affordable Homes To Be Built At Tempelhof Airport?

September 12, 2013 By in Heconomy, Helections, History, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Planned by Berlin’s city government? Shouldn’t they figure out how to build one affordable airport first?

Tempelhof

I dunno. I still like that Tempelhof mountain thingy plan the best.

Berg

Tempelhof, whose stone-clad terminal built by the Nazis in the 1930s, was closed to air traffic in 2008 and its main building is used for events including an annual beer festival. The airfield, which has two runways, has been turned into parkland where visitors jog, roller-blade on the tarmac and barbecue.

You Gotta Have Courage

September 11, 2013 By in Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, History, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

68 years after Adolf Hitlers’s death, Left party town councillors in the German city of Goslar have decided it is now time for the city to show its colors and some backbone and fearlessly strip the unpopular Nazi leader of his honorary citizenship.

Hitler

It’s civil courage like this that made Germany what it is today. Or something.

Some 4,000 German towns made Hitler an honorary citizen, and many have since stripped him of the title, some right after the war, while others did it only recently, such as the southern town of Trier in 2010.

A Pissed Off Germany Will Now Close This Here Listening Station

August 2, 2013 By in Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, History, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Teufelsberg

Among others. So there, Amerika.

Who cares that these things have either already been closed down for years or no longer serve any practical purpose anymore? The German government is now going to demonstratively cancel a Cold War-era surveillance pact with the United States and Britain following concerns about their alleged electronic eavesdropping in Germany.

And who cares that this is clearly a symbolic gesture and therefore has no practical consequences for intelligence cooperation between these countries? It’s election time.

“This is a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy.”

The details of Anglo-American snooping on German citizens remain unclear and confusing, but many Germans have already bought the “utterly senseless narrative”, as Hans-Peter Friedrich, Germany’s interior minister, lamented this week, that “thousands of Americans are sitting down reading our e-mails and listening to our phone calls”.

Here’s How You Dress For Success

July 30, 2013 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, High Art, History, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

If you have ever dreamed of being a startlingly effective secret policeman in a paranoid German Communist dystopia, I mean.

Stasi

The Stasi fashion collection was extensive. The agency sent thousands of spies into West Germany and had access to vast amounts of cash to buy western goods to equip agents with.

“For me, the banality of some of these pictures makes them even more repulsive.”

We Looted The Loot First

June 23, 2013 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, High Art, History, Home Cooking, Humor, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The grand opening of a joint German-Russian art exhibition in St Petersburg was spoiled on Friday when Moscow objected to Angela Merkel’s plan to use her speech to refer to hundreds of looted German works of art looted by Red Army soldiers after the war.

Art

The Germans claim that some 1 million looted objects are still missing, including the Treasure of Priamos, objects looted by the Germans in Troy under the direction of Heinrich Schliemann way back in 1873.

Moscow appears to be open to compromise, but only when the Russian artworks destroyed by German troops during World War II – estimated to be more than 110m books and publications following the plundering of 427 Soviet museums and 4,000 libraries – be returned, as well.

“This is a very touchy question for the societies of both countries. We need to look for solutions, rather than inflating the problem.”

The Next Failed Berlin Wall Analogy

June 21, 2013 By in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, History, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

This happens all the time (geez, this time it even happened in the Wall Street Journal).

Wall

People are always comparing the world’s famous and infamous walls (and there sure are a lot of them, aren’t there?) to that über-infamous Berlin one and, well, they just plain refuse to get it right. This time it’s the fence built along the border between the US and Mexico’s turn.

I’ll try and explain: The Berlin Wall was built to keep people in. You know, like a prison wall? The fence in question, as far as I understand it, is being built to keep people out. I know, that’s a feiner Unterschied (fine distinction) here, but it is an important one. And I just wanted to try to set the record straight, again.

The border-security fence in the Senate bill would be America’s Berlin Wall—a historic embarrassment.

Drink Your Fracking Beer Already

May 24, 2013 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Heconomy, Hideology, High Art, History, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Uh oh. Germans are suddenly worried about their Reinheitsgebot or “German Beer Purity Law” again. And Fracking, I mean.

Fracking

This has to do with the fact that fracking does not stick soley to the only ingredients that may be used in the production of beer: Water, barley and hops. As a matter of fact, I don’t even think that fracking uses barley and hops at all.

I’m interested in tradition, too, of course. But let’s face it, if you’re going to start quoting a 500-year-old “purity law,” quote it right: The law also set the price of beer at 1-2 Pfennig per Maß.

The Brauer-Bund beer association is worried that fracking for shale gas, which involves pumping water and chemicals at high pressure into the ground, could pollute water used for brewing and break a 500-year-old industry rule on water purity.

“Das Reinheitsgebot darf nicht beeinträchtigt werden. Es müssen alle Maßnahmen ergriffen werden, damit das Brauwasser geschützt wird.”