PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S RECENT statement of support for gay marriage in the United States is touching off an avalanche of advocacy for equal marriage rights throughout Europe as well. No, nobody died and made him emperor. But his high-level announcement might just expedite a con… Read full post »

Setting a bad example to students?
German education minister (Dr.) Annette Schavan
(Source: Wiki)

THE WAGES OF SIN is death, the Good Book tells us, and the wages of plagiarism is now increasingly disgrace/… Read full post »

It seems the Catholic Church has been doing a better job of
protecting the guilty than the innocent in recent decades
(Image source: Bode Museum, Berlin)

THE DEEPER WE DIG into the recent history of the Catholic Church, the more sordid is the image that presents itself to us. And like the… Read full post »

How a Hollywood blockbuster blasted a century’s worth of reactionary pieties straight out of the water

JAMES CAMERON’S TITANIC IS back in cinemas this month, now in a 3D makeover, to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the mighty ship’s sinking on April 15, 1/… Read full post »

 
"Thoughts are free," the Pirates say, echoing
the old German freedom song. But they are finding that
it's not quite as simple as that

FOR A POLITICAL PARTY claiming to embody the spirit of a new, hip generation, Germany’s Pirates just can't seem to steer out of the wake of the… Read full post »

 
Germany's new first couple,
Joachim Gauck and Daniela Schadt

IF YOU WANT TO get a feel for the profound differences between Old Europe and the New America, you need look no further than the current pseudo-controversy surrounding the private life of Germany's designated new Federal Preside… Read full post »

 
Joachim Gauck (born 1940)

THAT SURE DIDN'T TAKE long. The ink under Christian Wulff's resignation had barely dried before a circle of top-level Christian Democrats, Free Democrats, Social Democrats, and Greens met yesterday to nominate a new Federal President of Germany. Their choic… Read full post »

 
Germany's former First Couple,
Christian and Bettina Wulff

MY NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR IS moving out the same week I’m moving in. There’s nothing remarkable about that, particularly when the neighbor in question happens to be the Federal President of Germany and has been abso… Read full post »

 
Not enough whipped cream?

Click to watch

DISGRACED GERMAN DEFENSE MINISTER (Dr.) Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, who once seemed to be on the fast track to the chancellorship,  has suffered many humiliations since losing his job and his budding career last spring over a plagiaris… Read full post »

 
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-98)
Click to hear recording

BACK WHEN I WAS a history grad student in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a notion circulating among many (tenured) historians that all the real research into the recent past had already been done and now the thing t… Read full post »

THRILLER AUTHOR TOM SNEYDERS has experienced far more than most of us can ever conceive of attempting. He has been a soldier, military trainer, political prisoner, champion weightlifter, businessman, world traveler, and action-adventure writer. I caught up with him in his home outside… Read full post »

Benno Ohnesorg was shot on June 2, 1967

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER, AS Alice would say. Perhaps the most poisonous cold case of postwar German history, namely the shooting death of student Benno Ohnesorg at the hands of a Berlin plainclothes police officer during a demonstration against th… Read full post »

Is Wikipedia replacing the Bible as the source of all wisdom?

I DON'T NORMALLY GO to The Guardian for laughs, but I sure got a chuckle a couple of days ago when I read how the Vatican has been caught with its trousers around the ankles for some sloppy/… Read full post »

Demonstrators at Bellevue Palace (Source: FAZ)

There was a whiff of Baghdad in the nippy Berlin air yesterday as some 300 surly citizens trudged over to Bellevue Palace to wave their shoes at Federal President Christian Wulff's window. How did they ever come up with such a bizarre… Read full post »

AS LIFE SPANS LENGTHEN, the problems of long-distance caregiving and elder exploitation are growing too. I recently discussed these matters with life coach Sandy Weiner, who has not only a professional but also a highly personal interest in the subject. (This picks up on a previous… Read full post »

...but how does he compare with America's candidates in 2012? 

President Wulff may be moving too

MY GIRLFRIEND AND I are moving to a new flat at the end of this month and it’s located dead-center between the palace of Germany’s Federal President and one of Berlin&rsquo… Read full post »

Johannes Heesters on the stage in Holland (1923)

I SUSPECT THAT BEING named the world's oldest man or woman is a dubious honor, not only because the distinction is so fleeting, but because, thanks to modern medicine and hygiene, there are now more and more centenarians in the world,… Read full post »

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 spontaneou… Read full post »

 
"We believe in the Christ Child":
Original logo of pro-christkind.org

IT WOULD BE MISLEADING to speak of a German war on Santa Claus, since there is probably no figure more popular among ordinary Germans than the Weihnachtsmann, increasingly known just as Santa. You can find him eve/… Read full post »

  
With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William 
of Brandenburg introduced Berlin's tradition of tolerance

EVER SINCE FREDERICK WILLIAM, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, invited thousands of French Huguenots to settle in his territories following the revocation of… Read full post »

 
Click image for trailer

WHEN I FIRST HEARD that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson were teaming up to produce The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, I felt both excitement and foreboding. Finally my favorite adventure comic book set from childhood (and later years as well)/… Read full post »

 
I admire it, but I don't want it.

1. iPhones
Although it is undoubtedly the most remarkable piece of hand-held engineering ever developed, I simply have no use for the iPhone. On the few occasions when I've had to fiddle with one, I became claustrophobic trying to maneuver around its/… Read full post »