A new book examines the record of the small denominations under Hitler

 
Christianity in the Third Reich:
Blessed are the collaborators...?

THERE IS NO END of books examining the relationship between Germany’s semi-established Catholic and Protestant Churches and the Naz… Read full post »

Any minute now... Read full post »

 
Where's Waldo?

Dear Readers,

In view of tomorrow's Rapture, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your kind and loyal support over the years. As of tomorrow, I will continue to blog for selected readers at my new blog, "Lost in the Clouds," at www.open.heaven.com.… Read full post »

Why Hitler's "Colossus of Prora" may still contain lessons for us today

 
The "Sea Resort of the 20,000":

Model of the Prora complex with Great Hall at the top

THE GERMANS HAVE AN expression for it: “ripe for the island.” And around this time last year, str… Read full post »

 
You are so busted!
Ex-German defense minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg
(Source: wiki)

IT’S A BLACK DAY for Germany’s Black Baron, former Defense Minister (Dr.) Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg. Four months after a left-wing scholar in Bremen reviewed Baron Guttenberg’s… Read full post »

When it comes to food, weirdness is always relative 

 
"Boy eggs" are a popular Chinese picker-upper

DID YOU EVER WONDER how China got its remarkable edge in math and industry? If you believe some Chinese entrepreneurs, the answer may have to do with an ancie… Read full post »

 
Guttenberg's Grand Tattoo - click here to watch

READERS OF MY BLOG may already have figured out that I am not a particularly ecstatic fan of disgraced German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who resigned in a hurry last week over revelations about his fraudulent d… Read full post »

 
Ready to rumble:
Representative Peter T. King (R-NY)

WITH REPRESENTATIVE PETER KING'S Muslim radicalization hearings opening this week and with anti-Muslim sentiment reaching a fever pitch in the United States, it could be enlightening to look across the Atlantic and see how other Western… Read full post »

 
A rare pro-Guttenberg demonstrator on Saturday:
"Come back! Germany needs you!
"We believe in you!"

LAST WEEK BERLINERS WITNESSED the bizarre spectacle of hundreds of peeved grad students converging on the defense ministry waving shoes. Their goal: to drive disgraced defense ministe… Read full post »

 
Why do they hate us?:
The scene at Frankfurt Airport yesterday
(Source: spiegel.de)

GERMANY’S NEWLY APPOINTED INTERIOR minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, didn’t exactly begin his new position on a harmonious note today.  In his first press conference he said: “Th/… Read full post »

 
Germany's "Shoe Revolution":
Angry grad students take to the streets of Berlin on February
26 to demonstrate against the lying baron's cavalier attitude
toward footnotes and intellectual property
(Source: Berliner Morgenpost)

THERE WAS A WHIFF – but only a whiff – of North… Read full post »

 
(Dr.) Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg readies himself
for "storms of steel" over a fraudulent academic title

CALL ME OLD-FASHIONED, but I can still remember a time when “role models” actually had to have taken some sort of risk or at least achieved something in life through… Read full post »

 
German and other NATO troops are defending
precisely what in Afghanistan? (Aside
from themselves, that is)

IN THE MIDST OF the potentially devastating scandal surrounding German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's doctoral degree, and renewed deadly attacks on Bundeswehr and othe/… Read full post »

Will a "dodgy dissertation" take down Germany's conservative golden boy?

 
Baron Guttenberg is finding Afghanistan to be
a much friendlier environment than Germany these days

YOU MIGHT BE EXCUSED for thinking that German defense minister Baron Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenber… Read full post »

 
German producer, director, and
screenwriter Bernd Eichinger

THE SAYING GOES THAT the best German movies deal with German topics. There is no better proof of this truism than the career of Germany’s top producer, Bernd Eichinger, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack in Los… Read full post »

 
The bishop and the bodyguard:
Getting people excited about Jesus

JUST WHEN GERMAN CATHOLICS thought it was safe to go back to church, ex-Bishop Walter Mixa has announced his gratuitous return to public life. Last year, the feisty Bavarian dominated the headlines for months, both for his h… Read full post »

 
"The only way to be happy is
for everyone to be made equal."

YESTERDAY I POSTED AN essay about the current Huckleberry Finn controversy and the urge to censor books reflecting "unpleasant facts," touching off an interesting discussion. But others have said it all much better than I ever c/… Read full post »

 
Slapping a fig leaf on David doesn't change
the facts of the matter

“The long memory is the most radical idea in America.”

--U. Utah Phillips

THIS WEEK BOTH SALON and Open Salon have been abuzz with articles and letters discussing the plan by a Montgomery-/… Read full post »

 
Saint Boniface felling the pagan Donar Oak (8th century):
Pope Benedict will have to work even harder if
he wants to turn German Catholicism around

IN A CANDID MOMENT, Jesus Christ once told his followers: “A prophet has no honor in his own country.” What was true for th… Read full post »

 
Baron Guttenberg is hoping that his proposed
Ronald-Reagan-Straße will give him a shortcut
to the Federal Chancellery
(Source: wiki)

GERMAN DEFENSE MINISTER KARL-Theodor zu Guttenberg wants to dedicate a major street or square in Berlin to former president Ronald Reagan, of all… Read full post »

 
Openleaks logo
(Source: DN )

WITH ITS FOUNDER, JULIAN Assange, cooling his heels in a British prison on rape charges, and with politicians the world over calling for the movement’s destruction (a young hacker has already been arrested in the Netherlands), you have to won… Read full post »

 
Swatting the fly:
World War I-era caricature
(Click to enlarge)

SOMETIMES TIMING IS EVERYTHING. Today, just hours after embattled Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange was arrested on a dodgy rape charge in London, and with the possibility looming that the US government will att… Read full post »

 
Guilty until proven guilty:
Is Julian Assange "only" a terrorist
or is he a rapist too?

IN A REAL-LIFE drama worthy of a Stieg Larsson novel, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is facing two radically different but interlinked charges: “treason” against the USA (or, if you prefer… Read full post »

 
Congolese-born Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo
wants Tintin out of the bookshops

TINTIN, THE WORLD’S BEST known and most peripatetic boy reporter, is back in a Belgian courtroom this week. The charge: egregious, unrelenting racism over a period of eighty years. A decision is expected early… Read full post »

 
The now ex-Lutheran pastor Einar Gelius
presenting his new book in Oslo last month
(Source: side2.no)

I NEVER THOUGHT I’D live to see the day, but in a recent interview the Pope finally conceded that condoms just might be permissible under certain conditions – in this case, wh… Read full post »