Dialog International

Angela Merkel Believes in God

Is this a big deal? Here in the United States we are used to our politicians wearing their religion on their sleeves. And even though belief in God is diminishing among Americans - as it is everywhere else in the West - it would be nearly impossible for a confessed atheist to achieve higher office here. 

But things are different in Germany.  Germans are for the most part much more reserved about professing their faith, and Angela Merkel comes from eastern Germany - the most atheistic region on the planet (although her father was a Lutheran pastor).

In any event, here is Angela Merkel on her video podcast making an impassioned statement of faith:

 

For non-German speakers, here is a good article from Global Post on Angela Merkel and religion:         

But it was Merkel’s statements on a podcast broadcast on her website earlier this month that Resing said revealed the most about her personal views.

“I am a member of the Evangelical Church,” she told a young theology student. “I believe in God, and religion is also my constant companion, and actually has been my entire life.”

“I find it very liberating that as a Christian, one can make mistakes,” she added. “That one knows there is something higher than just human beings, and that we are also called on to shape the world in responsibility for others. This is a framework for my life, which I consider very important.”

Such statements from politicians may be commonplace in the United States, but not in Germany, where personal religious beliefs are largely kept under wraps.

The article also mentions a 2009 meeting between Angela Merkel and Barack Obama where the president and chancellor prayed together in the Dresden Frauenkirche.

Is the chancellor looking to put the "C" back in the CDU ahead of the national elections?

Neo-Nazis now in control of the Burschenschaften (student fraternities)

Fraternities at American colleges and universities are, for the most part, non-political drinking and partying clubs.  Not so in Germany.  The Burschenschaften  - or student duelling clubs - have a long tradition of ultra-nationalist extremism dating back to the 19th century.  Along the way they have adopted the racial ideology espoused by the Nazis and today seek to remain a pure "Aryan" organization: 

The antiquated world of Germany's student duelling clubs faced disintegration after nearly half of their members threatened to quit their national umbrella organisation because of row about Nazi-style "Aryan" identity cards and a decision to label an opponent of Adolf Hitler a "traitor".

Germany has more than a hundred conservative and liberal-nationalist student duelling clubs or Burschenschaften. They claim an almost exclusively male following of about 10,000. Members wear 19th century uniforms, and take part in torch-lit processions, ritualised fencing and beer drinking competitions.

The Ariernachweis or "Aryan Certificate" was required by all public sector employees in Nazi Germany beginning in 1933.  To obtain the Nachweis one had to present 7 birth certificates (employee, parents and grandparents) proving racially-pure German heritage.  This is what the Burschenschaften want to require of all members. 

Just as disturbing as the embrace of Nazi ideology is Burschenschaften's revisionist understanding of history.  One of the student leaders - Norbert Weidner - published a letter recently accusing the great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer - who was executed by the Nazis in 1945 - of treason (Landesverrat).  You can read the entire letter (pdf warning) here. For Norbert Weidner, Bonhoeffer's sentence and execution was "legally justified."

Rein juristisch halte ich die Verurteilung für gerechtfertigt. … wenn ich den Verrat in Kriegszeiten beurteile, der dazu führt, daß Deutsche an der Front zu Tausenden hingemetzelt werden, ist ein solches Urteil nachvollziehbar. Auf Landesverrat hat zu allen Zeiten und vor allem während des Krieges im schlimmsten Fall der Tod gestanden, ganz gleich, welche Staatsform regierte.

(From a purely legal standpoint I consider the conviction justified.  When I condemn treason in times of war - treason that results in the slaughter of thousands of German on the front, then such a verdict is understandable. Treason against one's country has always - but especially in wartime - been a capital crime - regardless which type of government was in power.)

Why should we care about about a bunch of right-wing students wearing funny hats?  The Burschenschaftler may be relatively small in numbers, but they are well-connected in government and business.  The groups are a highly effective networking engine. When I worked at Deutsche Bank in the 1980s and 1990s I encountered a number of managers who got their positions through their membership in a Burschenschaft. 

See also Germany's Burschenschaften and the Dream of Racial Purity

German reporter goes underground at Patrick Henry College - America's Madrassa

Amrai Coen, a writer for Die Zeit, wanted to visit Patrick Henry College, but the college administration refused her visit since the school had "bad experiences with foreign journalists."  Undeterred, Amrai posed as a prospective student and showed up on campus on "Visitor's Day".  Her piece on her experience that day provides a rare inside glimpse of life at America's Madrassa, 

Nearly all of the students at Patrick Henry College have been home-schooled by ultra-conservative evangelical Christian parents.  At Patrick Henry these young people can complete their christo-fascist indoctrination before joining right-wing think tanks and media groups in Washington.  Students are taught to kneel before images of Jesus and Ronald Reagan; they attend lecturess on how America can waterboard its way to global dominance. Professors are dismissed if they actually teach science, since students are taught that the earth is only 6000 years old and baby Jesus frolicked with dinosaurs. 

Das College hat eine Mission: Amerika vor dem Untergang retten. Vor dem Abgrund, dem entgegen Barack Obama das Land in ihren Augen in den vergangenen vier Jahren gelenkt hat. Junge, konservative Christen sind die Soldaten in diesem Krieg. Am Patrick Henry College werden sie ausgebildet, um eines Tages an der Front zu kämpfen – als Politiker, Filmemacher oder Unternehmer sollen sie die amerikanische Gesellschaft zurückerobern. Manche von ihnen haben Yale und Harvard verschmäht, um hier zu studieren.

(The college has one mission: to save America from its downfall, from the abyss into which Barack Obama has steered the country in the past four years. Young conservative Christians are the soldiers in this wa. At Patrick Henry College they will be trained to fight one day on the front - as politicians, filmmakers, or entrepreneurs they will win back American society.  Some have rejected Harvard or Yale in order to study here.) 

 Amrai Coen points out the irony of kids who grew up isolated from American society want to be come political activists.

Könnten diese Studenten wirklich eines Tages Amerika regieren, frage ich mich nach ein paar Stunden und vielen Gesprächen auf dem Campus. Die meisten von ihnen kennen nur ihr Wohnzimmer als Klassenraum, nur ihre Geschwister als Mitschüler. Ausgerechnet diese jungen Leute wollen in die Politik, wollen einen Beruf ergreifen, der mit sozialer Verantwortung zu tun hat, wollen Entscheidungen treffen, die das Leben von Millionen Menschen bestimmen.

(Could these students really govern America some day? I ask myself after a few hours and many conversations on campus.  Most of them have only experienced their own living rooms as their classroom and their siblings as classmates. And these are the students who want to into politics, to pursue a career that is involved in social responsibility, to make decisions that impact the lives of millions of people.) 

She sees the students as mostly naive or just misguided.  I see something rather more sinister: as the college puts on its Web site, the school is engaged in a war on secular society and seeks to overturn the separation of church and state which is at the core of the American experience:

"But when such a government 1) commands disobedience to God, 2) enjoins the right and duty of human beings to worship God, 3) denies other God-ordained rights by extreme oppression and tyranny, or 4) "when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object (tyranny), evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism" it is the right and duty of godly men and women "to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security." Importantly, this action must be taken in accordance with God's laws and in submission to other legitimate authorities, anarchy being as illegitimate as tyranny."

Stop writing, please!

Georg Diez has a good piece in Der Spiegel about writers who need to think about calling it quits.  Diez takes note of the American novelist Philip Roth's decision to stop writing books and believes that a number of other writers should follow Roth's example.

Specifically, Diez mentions Günter Grass (in particular, Grass needs to stop writing bad poetry), Martin Walser, Uwe Tellkamp, and Martin Mosebach. 

In truth, very few wrtiers can sustain greatness over a long career.  The number of writers who we wish had written more (Wolfgang Koeppen comes to mind, or perhaps Werner Bräunig) is far outweighed by writers whose creative powers diminish over time but persist in putting out book after book (Christa Wolf is just one example).  Exceptions to this literary phenomenon are few and far between (Thomas Mann, to be sure, or Philip Roth's late rival John Updike). 

Whom would you add to Diez's list? 

I would immediately add Elfriede Jelinek (we get it already: men are sadists, America is evil, and Austria belongs to the seventh circle of Hell.

On the non-fiction side I can think of any number of writers who should stop: Thilo Sarrazin had his 15 minutes of fame and can stop writing books.  Eva Herman and Udo Ulfkotte never should have picked up a pen to begin with.

Which American writers should follow Roth's advice?  The list is endless:  Tom Wolfe, T. C. Boyle, Barbara Kingsolver, etc

Will Germans finally warm to Ayn Rand?

Ayn Rand has become the philospher for the Republican Party in the US. Her novel Atlas Shrugged continues to sell well more than 30 years after her death.  Randian philosophy is the cornerstone of Republican standard-bearer Paul Ryan's budget, which rewards the wealthy "job creators" and punishes the loser "takers" or "moochers."  Ryan distributes copies of Atlas Shrugged to his staff so that they, too, can become indoctrinated with Ayn Rand's radical libertarian vision.

Ayn Rand never really caught on in Germany, and the German translation of Atlas Shrugged has been out of print for years.  But all of that has now changed thanks to the efforts of a young insurance executive in Munich - Kai John.  John believes the time is ripe for an Ayn Rand revolution in Germany: 

The plot of Ayn Rand’s controversial 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged couldn’t be more relevant to Germany as the European financial crisis unfolds—or so contends a young Munich executive, Kai John, who has published a new translation of the libertarian classic. In the novel, the brightest and most productive citizens (i.e. the Germans!) deeply resent having to support the weaker members of society and rebel, leaving society in tatters, a fate that could befall the Continent if Angela Merkel and the German parliament refuse to bolster the European Union’s straggling economies. A series of bailouts has left John, 36, a vice president at a multinational financial services company, feeling like Rand’s hero, John Galt: “The time is here to make Germans aware that collectivism has its limits.”

John invested his life savings to acquiring the German rights to the book, commissioning a new translations, and self-publishing 5000 copies.  The first printing has now sold out, and John is looking to print more. John wisely used Rand's working title for the novel - The Strike - for the new German verson.

While Germans are (re)discovering their "inner John Galt", thanks to Kai John's enthusiasm and efforts, Americans have turned their back on Ayn Rand, and soundly rejected Paul Ryan and the philosophy of greed at the ballot box.  A recently-released film version of Atlas Shrugged was a miserable failure at the box office. 

Der Untergang .... von Mitt Romney

Team Romney ....er, Hitler ... get the election results on November 6.....

Frankfurter Rundschau close to the end - crisis in print media hits Germany

I had been hopeful that the slow death of print newspapers would bypass Germany. Germany has a number of quality newspapers that have a national circulation.  For the most part, German newspaper publishers have not been saddled with unsustainable levels of debt by private equity (Heuschrecke) investors/owners (witness the Los Angeles Times or the Chicago Tribute).  The Frankfurter Rundschau had a number of talented editors and writers, and I often linked to its insightful op/ed pieces.  But in this day and age, talent and quality are not enough:

APSI. Druck und Verlagshaus Frankfurt am Main GmbH, the publisher of German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau, has submitted a statement on the newspaper's bankruptcy to the court of first instance, Spiegel magazine reported, citing the court's spokesperson.

Frankfurter Rundschau is an influential newspaper which generally supports Germany's Social-Democratic Party. It has been published since 1945. Its circulation amounts to more than 160,000 issues.

German, Brzilian and French publishers have been aggressively fighting Google News and other Internet aggregators that pose a threat to their business model:

There’s a large boycott under way in Brazil, punishing legislation is gaining momentum in Germany, and there is talk of a similar effort in France.

You wouldn’t know it by speaking to Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman. He takes the challenges to Google News seriously — he just returned from talks with President François Hollande of France — but he sounded sanguine on a phone call from Chicago.

“We had some good discussions, and I would expect that we will reach some kind of agreement by the end of the year,” he said.

Don’t expect that agreement to acknowledge the principle of so-called ancillary copyright, which has been pushed in Germany and elsewhere. It suggests that Google and others should pay for featuring headlines and the first few lines of an article, while Google asserts that this constitutes fair use.

In France and Germany, publishers have found willing partners in their national governments as they try to put the squeeze on Google.

Meanwhile, the Frankfurter Rundschau is putting on a brave face to its readers, insiting that "Es ist nicht das Ende der FR"(It's not over for the FR):  

Die Frankfurter Rundschau hat am 1. August 1945 die zweite Lizenz einer deutschen Tageszeitung nach dem Krieg bekommen, sie hat eine lange, stolze und wechselvolle Geschichte erlebt. Wir werden alles dafür tun, dass diese Geschichte weitergeht.

(On August 1, 1945 the FR received the second license after the war for a German daily.  It has a long, proud history, full of vicissitudes, and we will do everything to ensure that this history endures.)

Meanwhile there are reports that another quality German paper - the Financial Times Deutschland - close to bankruptcy. 

Ohne Mitt

A friend teaches German language at a local university and found this image quite useful to instruct beginner-level students in the use of prepostions. 

Yale Students Walk Out on Plagiarist Baron zu Guttenberg

This is funny.  Angela Merkel's favorite baron - Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg - showed up on the Yale campus this week to deliver a talk on "Myths of Transatlantic Relations,"  No doubt he thought that the students at Yale would be too dumb or ignorant to know about his shameful plagiarism episode in Germany.

But "Gutti" was in for a surprise: 

At the event, protesters began booing and heckling the former minister after Sophia Clementi ’14, executive director of the Yale International Relations Association — which organized the event — wrapped up her introduction of Guttenberg.

“You’re not welcome here!” some protesters shouted as they left.

Aaron Vanides GRD ’16, an American Ph.D. student in medieval studies and also a walkout participant, called Guttenberg “the scum of the academic Earth” and said Guttenberg should have been prevented from speaking “at a private university that claims to be very concerned with academic integrity.”

Another student complained "that not only (had) Mr.Guttenberg violated the basic rules of academic integrity, but it was his audacity that made the case so shocking: it was plagiarizing to an extent that I couldn't even believe when it when I first read about it(his dissertation mainly consisted of copy-paste of whole pages of books including the footnotes etc.)and his audacity of banalizing his actions when it first came out."

If this event at Yale was supposed to kick off zu Guttenberg's triumphant "comeback" to the political arena, it wasn't a very promising start.

I do hope he gets the same treatment - or worse - if he shows up on the Harvard campus.

Jeder wusste Bescheid / Everyone knew

Rena Jacob is blogger in Wertheim in southern Germany.  Her blog wider des vergessens ("against forgetting") catalogues some of the forgotten horrors of the 20th century and is well worth checking out.  A recent post deals with the subject I recently covered in my review of Peter Longerich's book Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!: 

Nachbarn, die sahen wie jüdische Bürger abgeholt wurden; sie wussten Bescheid. Mitarbeiter an Bahnhöfen, Schrankenwärter; sie wussten Bescheid. Polizisten, Beamte und Angestellte; jeder wusste, beziehungsweise konnte Bescheid wissen. Heerscharen von Bediensteten in Ministerien, Institutionen oder der Wehrmacht, vom Leiter bis zum Hausmeister, von der Chefsekretärin bis zur Putzfrau, jeder wusste Bescheid. Mitschüler, die ihre Freunde und Kameraden verloren; Lehrer, deren Schüler wegblieben; auch sie wussten Bescheid. All diese Menschen kommunizierten miteinander, auch wenn nicht alle über die Ausmaße des Grauens jener Zeit Bescheid wussten, Details wusste jeder. Die Konzentrationslager lagen unweit von Städten, und die Bürger wussten um diese Lager. Tötungsanstalten der Euthanasie lagen nicht im luftleeren Raum, die Bürger der umliegenden Dörfer hatten Ahnungen von den Geschehnissen. Die Kirchen, gleich welcher Konfession, sie wussten mehr als ihnen lieb war.

(Neighbors who watched as Jewish citizens were taken away; they knew. The workers in the train stations, the gate tenders; they knew. Police, officials, tne office workers; they all knew, or could have known. The civil servants in the ministries, institutions or the military, from the boss to the janitor, the executive secretary to the cleaning woman; everyone knew.  All of these people communicated with each other, even if they weren't aware of the full extent of the horror of those times; everyone knew some details. The concentration camps were situated close to the cities, and the citizens knew about them. The killing centers for euthanasia didn't exist in the thin air, the citizens in the surrounding villages could sense what was happening there.  The churches - no matter which denomination - they knew more than they wanted to."