Category Archives: History

Nostalgia grips city, no vaccination in sight

October 23, 2009 By in History Tags: 1 Comment

Swine flu was gestern (yesterday). With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall rapidly approaching, residents of Berlin are now being faced with a much more formidable viral infection: Cold War Nostalgia.

Nostalgia pure.

It’s infected hundreds of thousands here already, quite some time ago actually, and although it tends to strike harder at those living in the so-called “East”, it can hit anyone at anytime, even non-German types like you, whoever you are.

And it’s gotten much worse these days too. Or at least I have to assume as much, having read that article up there.

“It’s hard to believe that on one side of the wall there were Mercedes, and on the other side this.”

Waiting for Godot

October 21, 2009 By in History Tags: 1 Comment

Obama in Berlin? That was then, this is now.

He'll be here soon, I know he'll be.

“Nobody should get too hung up over President Obama’s decision, reported by Der Spiegel over the weekend, to cancel plans to attend next month’s 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germany’s reunited capital has already served his purposes; why should he serve its?”

“Barack is Too Busy”

Real women wanted

October 6, 2009 By in History Tags: 1 Comment

Sometimes it takes a real man to make a real decision like this: Editor-in-chief Andreas Leberts has announced that starting next year, Brigitte, Germany’s most popular women’s magazine, will ban those skinny professional model types from its pages in favor of “real women”, whoever and wherever they are.

Back to nature or something.

This decision is seen as an attempt to combat an unhealthy standard of unhealthy looking thin and flat I mean thin beauty and could also be seen as being the first step toward finally turning Brigitte into the men’s magazine it deserves to be.

Brigitte isst wieder.

Hitler more than a wussy

September 29, 2009 By in History Tags: Leave a comment

American researchers have set the scientific world and everybody else in an uproar by determining that Adolf Hitler’s bullet-punctured skull fragment actually belonged to a woman, thus making the evil Nazi dictator one of those herself.

Her Hitler!

“This explains a lot of those bizarre hysterical outbreaks of his, I mean hers,” one researcher said. “And that half-ass mustache. And being a vegetarian. Like it all fits together now or something.”

“Ist der Schädel überhaupt echt?”

I thought they’d never leave

September 28, 2009 By in History Tags: Leave a comment

The SPD.

The woman in the middle.

“The SPD’s decline exemplifies the crisis for Europe’s once-mighty center-left parties, which are in disarray in the U.K., France, Italy, Poland and other countries amid divisions over how to balance social protections and business freedoms in an era of rising global competition.”

“The SPD is paying a heavy price for its own boldness in trimming Germany’s welfare state and partially deregulating the labor market under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Those pragmatic moves lost the SPD many of its traditional working-class voters, and have left the party deeply split between centrists and left-wing traditionalists.”

“The voters have decided and the result is a bitter day for German Social Democracy.”

It’s all in how you say it

August 14, 2009 By in History Tags: 1 Comment

And only if you say it in English, of course. A German court has ruled that bad Nazi words, although still bad, are not nearly as bad if they are translated to English first and then said “there”, so-to-speak, making them legal, sort of, but just barely. There is a certain logic here, of course. Please tell me once you find it.

Mein Cramp

Meanwhile… Elsewhere in the English-speaking world… A signed copy of Mein Kampf (signed by you-know-who) was sold in England for a record $35000.

The guy who bought it was a Russian, however, which makes this okay, I think. If a Russian who can’t read German buys a bad German book signed by you-know-who in England then you could take the whole thing to court (here in Germany) and nobody would really much care, I think.

“In memory of our time together in prison in Landsberg.”

The Berlin Wall of Wilshire Boulevard

August 12, 2009 By in History Tags: Leave a comment

Hey, somebody’s got to do it, I guess. And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I’ve been told.

Wilshire Boulevard

“In what government and arts officials are calling the most ambitious commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany, a symbolic re-creation of the wall that once separated East and West Berlin will be erected across Wilshire Boulevard in November.

The Wall Project, painted by professional and amateur artists, will close Sunday afternoon traffic on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares for three hours on Nov. 8 beginning at 3 p.m… It will be made up of two parts: The “Wall Across Wilshire” will have as its adjunct the “Wall Along Wilshire — Eastside Gallery West,” which will have a somewhat longer life in front of the 5900 Wilshire Blvd. building, remaining in place from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14.”

The location is “highly symbolic,” said Justinian Jampol, president and founder of the Wende Museum. “It connects downtown to the ocean, those two cultural anchors to the city.

Crime finally does pay

August 7, 2009 By in History Tags: Leave a comment

Dangerous communist East German movies are still being released to this very day. Dangerous to Communism, I mean.

You can run, but you can't hide.

“While the GDR, we learn, has the lowest crime statistics in the world, Wolkenheim (literally Cloudland – suggesting a place that has no connection with reality), the town where Holms is stationed, boasts the lowest crime statistics in the GDR. Even the disappearance of a pet rabbit causes him excitement – he hopes it has been taken hostage – until he discovers it has merely escaped to a nearby lettuce patch. So, when Holms’ drinking acquaintance Pinkas hatches a plan to snatch a monument from the plinth in the main square and flog it to an antiques dealer, Holms seizes the opportunity to make his mark – and of course, discovers love in the process.”

This comic film (Hands Up Or I’ll Shoot), which gently mocks the premise that crime ceases to exist in a fully fledged communist state, was banned in 1966 by the regime’s thought police, who were unhappy with its ironic criticism of the system. It has now been dusted off and put on general release for the first time, to the delight of German cinemagoers – who have made much of the fact that this is the last remaining banned film from the old East Germany.