Alan Nothnagle
- Location
- Berlin, Germany
- Birthday
- May 04
- Company
- InterpretBerlin.com
- Bio
- I am a freelance writer, YA author, and interpreter based in Berlin.
MY RECENT POSTS
- Hitler's food taster breaks
her silence after 68 years
April 08, 2013 08:31PM - The school did nothing: A
teenager talks about bullying
February 15, 2013 06:23PM - Friends with benefits: Talking
Quakerism with Claus Bernet
February 06, 2013 10:35AM - Berlin, Europe's surprising
comedy capital
February 06, 2013 07:52AM - German plagiarism scandal
claims cabinet-level victim
February 05, 2013 08:06PM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “"legions of emotionally
astute and creatively adroit
people
whose
distinctiv…”
April 19, 2013 02:35PM - “This is a great story,
Marilyn, and it really takes
me back
to those heady,
scary…”
April 19, 2013 12:38PM - “I can understand why
this incident would still
stick in your
craw three
decades l…”
April 12, 2013 09:04AM - “@Don
Any truth to
that, or is it "one of those
things"?”
April 10, 2013 06:38PM - “The Our Salon version of
this article contains the
following
paragraph, which I
c…”
April 10, 2013 10:01AM
Alan Nothnagle's Links
Margot Wölk finally tells her story
IF YOU’RE ANYTHING LIKE me, the twentieth century, with all its blessings and horrors, seems like a long time ago. Even if – like me – you experienced your entire youth and more within it, and both yo… Read full post »
The school did nothing: A teenager talks about bullying
BULLYING SEEMS TO BE on everyone’s minds these days. Most people seem to have experienced it at some point in their school years, and still bear the scars today, and some experience it vicariously - and helplessly - through their own school-aged children. But what does it feel li
… Read full post »
Historian and social worker Claus Bernet
IN AN ERA WHERE the mainline churches are losing their appeal and fundamentalism is growing increasingly authoritarian, alternative forms of religion are becoming more attractive to many spiritual seekers. One counter-cultural religious movement, the R… Read full post »
An interview with stand-up artist James Harris
English stand-up comedian James Harris moved to Berlin in 2004 and is a rising star in the city’s English-language comedy scene. I caught up with him a while back at the Café Chagall near my office in central Berlin to… Read full post »
German plagiarism scandal claims cabinet-level victim
German education minister "Dr." Annette Schavan
THOSE OF US WHO always assumed that the German fixation on academic titles was based on a lie have been rubbing our hands ever since Baron “Dr.” Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg was revealed as an intellectu/… Read full post »
Es gibt tatsächlich so etwas wie eine Tesserung...
Madeleine L’Engles Jugendklassiker „Die Zeitfalte“ erscheint wieder auf Deutsch
Die amerikanische Autorin Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) (Photo: Wiki Commons)
„Wenn man etwas in Worte fasst, führt es zu so vielen anderen Gedanken…“ (The S… Read full post »
IT’S NOT EXACTLY BREAKING news that the Swiss government’s carefully cultivated image as a defender of liberty and human rights against the evil Nazis is about as solid as a wedge of bubbly Emmental cheese. Financial shenanigans, including the squirreling away/… Read full post »
Plagiarizing "Black Baron" gets the boot from Dartmouth
I don't get no respect: Baron Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg (Source: wiki commons)
POOR BARON GUTTENBERG JUST can’t get an even break these days. When the high-flying German defense minister and apparent chancellor-in-waiting got busted in 2011 for having plagiar… Read full post »
Bitter harvest: Experts defuse a World War II aerial bomb in Koblenz, Germany, in 2011, requiring the evacuation of 45,000 residents (Source: wiki)
A PARTICULARLY MESSY BUREAUCRATIC tangle in the western German town of Duisburg is giving a new meaning to the famous “ticking bomb s… Read full post »
Catholic abuse hotline opens up Pandora's box
"A spirituality of crime":
Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier
(Source: wiki)
REGULAR READERS OF MY blog know that I am an outspoken critic of the German Catholic Church’s handling of its ongoing pedophile abuse scandal. As horrific as the crime is, the coverup is much w… Read full post »
Would Berlin's last Catholic please switch off the lights?
St. Hedwig Cathedral, seat
of the Archdiocese of Berlin
(Source: wiki)
AS OF LAST YEAR, the “Red List” of the International Union of the Conservation of Nature identified 3,947 species as “critically endangered.” May I modestly propose that Berlin’s Catholics… Read full post »
David Bowie's new single celebrates a vision of Berlin
Memory lane: The apartment house at Hauptstraße 155, Berlin-Schöneberg, the former home of Davie Bowie and Iggy Pop. Bowie wrote his Berlin-themed song "Heroes" during this period.
A PRESENT-DAY VISITOR to Berlin, who had previously known the city only as the divided dream c… Read full post »
One down, twenty-six to go: Bishop Walter Mixa of Augsburg was forced to resign in 2010 following accusations of child beating and embezzlement
WHEN I FIRST STARTED blogging about the German Catholic sexual abuse scandal in this space a few years back, I did so with a feeli… Read full post »
Hitler's Club Med: The Colossus of Prora
Are you ready for a "power vacation"?
The "Sea Resort of the 20,000":
Model of the Prora holiday complex with Great Hall at the top
THE GERMANS HAVE AN expression for it: “ripe for the island.” And around this time last year, stressed from weeks of exhau
… Read full post »Is there still such a place as "East Germany"?
The Third Generation East bus in Schwedt/Oder
THE BERLIN WALL FELL twenty-three years ago and the Germans who once lived behind it have been struggling to fill the void it left behind ever since. Systemic underdevelopment, unemployment, crime, xenophobia, and depopulation have all come
… Read full post »The goblins in my basement
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
… Read full post »The Christmas Truce of 1914: An eyewitness writes home
A German and British soldier share a cigarette, Christmas 1914
ON CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914, the guns of war fell silent along many sections of the Western Front. Over one long night – and even into early January in some places – the German, French, and British soldiers spontaneo
… Read full post »Nazi sex gynoids, 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 bespectacled Reichsführer countless hours of precious sl
"The Tallow Candle": Hans Christian Andersen's lost tale
FINDING BURIED TREASURE ALWAYS entails an element of luck. But while modern metal-detecting and imaging technologies are revealing more and more lost wonders, sometimes simply heading to the library and getting some ink on your hands is all it takes.
That was the experience of a Danish schol
… Read full post »Catholic Church nixes "exorcist" soccer poster
Driving the devil out of the Palatines... (Source: HR)
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAS been ascribed many attributes over the centuries, but “has a sense of humor” has rarely been among them. This has been born out once again in the case of German soccer player Tim Heubach f… Read full post »
Kristallnacht averted: The pogrom of November 9, 1969
The burning New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse,
Berlin. Contrary to popular perceptions, the synagogue
wasn't
torched by the Nazis but rather by Allied bombers in 1943.
(Source: Museum of Tolerance)
THEY SAY A PICTURE is worth a thousand words, but sometimes
… Read full post »When jokes had teeth: Humor behind the "Iron Curtain"
Many people regard the German Democratic Republic as
something
of a joke today, but that nation's rich joke culture masked a bleak
reality
POLITICAL JOKES JUST HAVEN’T been the same since the demise of the old Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites. In totalitaria
… Read full post »
Berlin, where taxis sometimes double as erotic photo studios
PHOTOGRAPHY IS THE ART of the obvious. The trick is to come up with this obvious idea in the first place.
Sixty-seven year-old Berlin taxi driver and self-styled “woman whisperer” Hans-Jürgen Watzlawek
… Read full post »Remembering the great market of Aleppo
In the great souk of Aleppo. Sadly, this was the only photo we took inside the now destroyed market complex.
WHEN FOLLOWING THE NEWS in recent months about the slow agony of the Syrian people as they are being sliced to shawarma between the dual onslaughts of President Bashar… Read full post »
Intelligence report predicts epic fail in Afghanistan
"Defending our freedom at the Hindu Kush." A German
soldier does his part in Afghanistan. (Source:
Bundeswehr)
IF YOU HAVE BEEN suspecting that the Western governments’ prognoses for the ongoing armed occupation of Afghanistan are somewhat too rosy for belief, new confir… Read full post »
Alan Nothnagle's Favorites
Stathi Stathi
Bjorn Philip Beer
Raymond Roske
Shang Shan Ruo Shui
Spectrum Voice
Jaime FranchiUpdates
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Gen. Videla, Kissinger’s 'Operation Condor' Buddy, Dies
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Worst Since Watergate? Please
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A Morning at Fred Howard Park
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Why Federal Reserve Should Buy Gold,But Not Standard,as QET
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JURY "RETARDED" SAYS "GIRLS GONE WILD" FOUNDER JOE FRANCIS:
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What If Obama Were Small-Minded As Oklahoma's Senators?
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Training for a Buddhist Marathon
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John's Journal: May 22, 2013
Salon.com