Category Archives: History

Fine Young Bureaucrats

May 6, 2010 By in History Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

The new “Topography of Terror” documentation center opened in town today.

Who exactly were the men who planned and administered the Nazi crimes?

The index cards cover an entire wall, several hundred of them in pink, beige or green, containing names, dates of birth and handwritten notes. They are the details of some of the 7,000 former employees of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the amalgamation of the feared SS paramilitary group and Gestapo secret police force — the men who worked at the very epicenter of the Nazi terror regime.

We surrender already!

April 21, 2010 By in History, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Just stop holding hands and singing We Shall Overcome!

Not even those rugged German army types can take this kind of abuse forever. After years of moaning and sniveling and peaceniking about saving the heath and health of the so-called “Bombodrom” in Kyritz-Ruppiner Heide near Berlin, the Bundeswehr has finally rolled over and decided to close down its infamous military training area.

It had been a shocking Vorgang (course of events) or something. They actually practiced dropping bombs here once, I think. Maybe twice. Fake bombs of course, but still. Damn, where is the Bundeswehr going to drop their fake bombs now?

Bundesverteidigungsminister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (CSU) erklärte in Berlin, die Bundeswehr löse diesen Standort mit seinen 80 Mitarbeitern vollständig auf.

Ossi ethnicity?

April 16, 2010 By in History, Home Cooking, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Well, it’s official now. Turned down for work in the German West because she hailed from the German East, a woman took the company to court on racial, or at least ethnic, discrimination charges – and lost.

No ethnic group, no tribal breaks here, Easties. Nice try though. If you are an Ossi (East German), you stay one. So like wake up and smell the Kaffee. Life’s a Schlampe and then you die. Get used to it already. You’re now just like the rest of us out there who aren’t like the rest of us out there, I mean you (out there). That’s life. Here’s a hanky. Blow your nose. Now go out and get a job in Friedrichshain or in Dresden or in some other awful place like that. OK, I’m finished.

Als Gabriele S. vor Monaten ihre Bewerbungsunterlagen zurückbekam, prangte neben dem Lebenslauf der handschriftliche Vermerk des Fensterbauers. “(-) Ossi!”. An mehreren Stellen stand “DDR”. Eine üble Diskriminierung?

Pakistan ist eben anders

March 19, 2010 By in Hate, History Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Pakistan is just different, you know. Than Germany, I mean.

I was at a the hairdresser, an elderly man who doesn’t resort to electric clippers. All he has is a creaky pair of scissors, a comb and aerosol with water. He did a neat job bit I wasn’t entirely happy.

I said: “I look like Hitler.”

He looked at me in the mirror, gave a satisfied smile and said: “Yes, yes, very nice.”

In the Islamic world, not just in Pakistan but right across from Iran to northern Africa, anti-Semitic sentiment of course plays a role.

665 million marks won’t buy you what it used to

March 11, 2010 By in History Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Especially when you find them strewn along the side of the A10 near Berlin, wrapped up in little aluminium packets.

And especially when you consider that nobody here pays with marks anymore. And especially so when they’re the old Reichsmark type issued between 1913 and 1923.

Maybe this was a foiled caper by those great poker tournament robbery robber guys. Maybe it wasn’t.

Hinweise auf den Besitzer des Geldes fanden sich nicht.

A language of ideas?

February 25, 2010 By in High Art, History Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

German? Whose idea was that? Keine Ahnung. A language of ideas maybe, but not of very much action.

Anyways, according to man-spricht-Deutsch-Guido Westerwelle, German “is the key to more than 350 German universities and colleges, to Europe’s largest economy. It grants access to German literature, music, philosophy, and science, to the wealth of great European cultural traditions and, not least, it is the key to realizing one’s own goals and ideas.”

That’s true, I guess. Sort of. But let’s be honest, Guido. German is also the key to more than 350 German universities and colleges that nobody wants to attend, it grants access to German literature that nobody wants to read anymore, to German music that, well OK (the old stuff was pretty good) and to German philosophy that’s not much more than high speed mysticism if you ask me (which you’re not). I don’t know what German science is so I’ll just assume that it’s really cool. And if you have to learn German just to know what your own goals and ideas are, then they’re probably not worth knowing in the first place. But maybe that’s just me.

“In Deutschland ist es üblich, dass man Deutsch spricht.”

Why are they booing?

February 19, 2010 By in Habitudes, High Art, History Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

And what are they booing?

The first movie? The big-budget remake with a message because it wasn’t low-budget enough (the movie, not the message)? History?

Or was this flick, like most of the other films that get shown here every year at the Berlin Film Festival, was it like, well, too political? Nah, that can’t be. What’s more political (or politically correct) than the Berlinale?

I know, maybe it was just another really lousy movie. I mean even by Berlinale standards lousy.

“Ein antisemitischer Film, wie wir ihn uns nur wünschen können.”

Iran paranoid about Google now too

February 12, 2010 By in Hi-tech, History, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Not unlike German fears about privacy when it comes to Google’s eerie Street-View technology – while gladly developing and using Street-View-type products of their own – Iran’s freely elected government sort of is also frightened about privacy when it comes to one of Google’s other creepy technologies: eMail (and that’s e for evil). And yeah, of course I know that Google didn’t invent eMail. But still.

The Iranian powers that be (or powers that is, if you prefer) are clearly concerned about privacy matters here; keeping their own damned privacy as private as inhumanly possible, that is. Otherwise, everybody out there knows what the hell they’re up to, get it?

So now following the German example, word is out that the Iranians are actually planning to introduce a new eMail technology of their own. It’s code name is MMail, I think (GMail war gestern). Or Mullah-Mail, if you prefer.

Es ist einer der populärsten E-Mail-Dienste in Iran – doch nun will die Regierung Googles GMail-Service offenbar sperren lassen. Laut einem Bericht des “Wall Street Journal” soll stattdessen ein eigenes Mail-System aufgebaut werden.