NPR has a show every Friday called science Friday. I thought I might start something similar, but a little broader than just science. For example, I've started reading a book called, The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century. But today I thought I would give some final reflections on the city of Munich as I experienced it in the Fall of 2011.
Any number of words and adjectives might immediately come to mind: Bavarian, artistic, historical, beer, catholic, cultured, scientific, expensive, bursting with people and foreigners, uncrowded for a big city. But the peril of such words and phrases is always close at hand. A place has a past--things happened there, people wandered through there--but it is not inevitable that the past determine the future, at least not as far as conceptions are concerned.
And designations like this are often at best majority reports. At worst they are individual impressions or the perceptions of those with the power to communicate their points of view. There were Germans here who despised Hitler in the 40's, Germans who went to Dachau. University students who were beheaded. They just weren't the ones calling the shots at the time... literally.
So Munich is in Bavaria, and Bavaria is typically conservative. But Munich is full of foreigners like myself as well. Sometimes I have wondered how many actual Bavarians have handed me those precious baguettes, Schokocroissants, and Kirchtaschen. It's not unfriendly for a big city. I've experienced both friendly and unfriendly. I've both had someone switch into Bavarian dialect to give me a hard time, and I've had a hard time getting away from an enthusiastic Elvis fan on a tram.
I loved the Pinakotheken, the art museums. Munich is full of art from the Greeks to Cy Twombly, but I met a very educated German fellow here who has never visited them. The buildings are marvelous; the churches are everywhere, and they are all magnificent. I am glad for the penchant the Bavarians of the past had to build them. They are beautiful... and unused, and no doubt a less than helpful use of money the many centuries during which Bavaria was in horrible debt.
Munich is a great place to live if you have a good job, like big cities, and have the leisure to enjoy soccer ("football"), art, opera, history, ballet, theater, and like to reflect on culture and the meaning of life. It's a good place to put a scientific research company. It's a nice place to visit if you like Oktoberfest and Fasching. It has great public transportation, great suburbs, and plenty of reasonably priced restaurants to fill your stomach with every form of pig intestine imaginable.
It is a place like no other place I've visited on earth.
Showing posts with label Deutschland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deutschland. Show all posts
Friday, January 13, 2012
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Visit to Dachau
Went to Dachau with the family yesterday. Third time I've visited but had a guide this time. I shouldn't be surprised that a people could do such things. After all, it still goes on around the world today. It could happen anywhere under the right conditions--economic despair, someone who comes along and makes you feel special as a nation, someone who feeds your insecurity about all the foreigners around, a need to bring order to society and squelch rampant liberalism.
Then a communist burns down parliament. There's a declaration of martial law. Camps are set up to remove the lawless from the flow of society, to re-educate those who can be re-educated and put the rest to work. The sadists who are always present in society gravitate to such camps. Doctors do experiments on criminal guinea pigs for the benefit of the troops.
No modern society is so evolved that it could not happen again anywhere.
Then a communist burns down parliament. There's a declaration of martial law. Camps are set up to remove the lawless from the flow of society, to re-educate those who can be re-educated and put the rest to work. The sadists who are always present in society gravitate to such camps. Doctors do experiments on criminal guinea pigs for the benefit of the troops.
No modern society is so evolved that it could not happen again anywhere.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Afternoon at the Museum...
Yesterday afternoon we checked another thing off our "do before leaving Munich" list. We went to the Deutsches Museum, which is full of actual planes, boats, submarines, space craft, etc. You could actually climb into a lot of them. I would have loved it as a child.
Maybe it's because I'm a little stressed in general but I was thoroughly depressed by the time I left for several reasons. Here are just a few:
1. My kids won't be going/didn't go on field trips to anything like this from Justice/McCullough, or Marion High School.
2. The vast majority of American kids don't care about this sort of stuff... meaning America has no future in the world.
3. The accumulated knowledge this museum represents is way beyond anything I know... and I mean pick any point in time from some 1800 ship to the 1960 jet to the 1980's space craft.
Just thought I'd cheer everyone up on a Monday morning. ;-)
Maybe it's because I'm a little stressed in general but I was thoroughly depressed by the time I left for several reasons. Here are just a few:
1. My kids won't be going/didn't go on field trips to anything like this from Justice/McCullough, or Marion High School.
2. The vast majority of American kids don't care about this sort of stuff... meaning America has no future in the world.
3. The accumulated knowledge this museum represents is way beyond anything I know... and I mean pick any point in time from some 1800 ship to the 1960 jet to the 1980's space craft.
Just thought I'd cheer everyone up on a Monday morning. ;-)
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Merkel's bailouts...
Two headlines caught my eye today in one German newspaper: "Hopefully, they know what they are doing" and "The Germans are becoming fewer and fewer." I think I mentioned about a month ago that because Germans don't have much more than one child a couple, their share of Germany is in decline. I don't think I ever posted a reflection on American immigration by way of Germany's issues, but I've found being here helpful in conceptualizing similar issues in America.
The main talk of the town, of course, is the German Chancellor's (Angela Merkel) attempt to hold the Euro and EU together by forgiving a substantial portion of Greece's debt. Greece is hopeless financially, but the sense of the EU's leadership is that it will be less catastrophic on Europe's banks to write off some of their debt than it would be to let Greece fail. In return, economic problem states in the EU like Greece will have to become more capitalistic.
I was reminded of the GM, Chrysler bail-outs in America--of course much less problematic. They've paid their money back. The US taxpayer lost nothing in the end. In return, 1000s of people kept their jobs, countless companies (even beyond GM and Chrysler) stayed in business, and the US economy was spared the domino failure effect their failure would have caused. It seems to me like it was a good thing.
We'll see what happens here, where there will be no pay back, and there is always the fear that no amount of money could save the situation.
The main talk of the town, of course, is the German Chancellor's (Angela Merkel) attempt to hold the Euro and EU together by forgiving a substantial portion of Greece's debt. Greece is hopeless financially, but the sense of the EU's leadership is that it will be less catastrophic on Europe's banks to write off some of their debt than it would be to let Greece fail. In return, economic problem states in the EU like Greece will have to become more capitalistic.
I was reminded of the GM, Chrysler bail-outs in America--of course much less problematic. They've paid their money back. The US taxpayer lost nothing in the end. In return, 1000s of people kept their jobs, countless companies (even beyond GM and Chrysler) stayed in business, and the US economy was spared the domino failure effect their failure would have caused. It seems to me like it was a good thing.
We'll see what happens here, where there will be no pay back, and there is always the fear that no amount of money could save the situation.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Top 10 clues you might be German
10. You have an uncontrollable urge to take your dog with you into restaurants.
9. You've never even seen the other people who live in the same house with you.
8. You find yourself putting your glass, plastic, and leftover food into separate trash bags.
7. Your kids get excited about liver and cheese sandwiches.
6. You take your own grocery bags with you to the store.
5. You know the names of fifteen different kinds of salami.
4. You find yourself sweeping your neighbor's sidewalk in disgust on Saturday morning because it's dusty.
3. You leave a tip next to the toilet in public restrooms for whoever cleans the bathroom.
2. You can't bring yourself to jay walk, even when nothing's coming and you're going to miss your train.
1. You can do things with the insides of a pig that no one else could imagine.
9. You've never even seen the other people who live in the same house with you.
8. You find yourself putting your glass, plastic, and leftover food into separate trash bags.
7. Your kids get excited about liver and cheese sandwiches.
6. You take your own grocery bags with you to the store.
5. You know the names of fifteen different kinds of salami.
4. You find yourself sweeping your neighbor's sidewalk in disgust on Saturday morning because it's dusty.
3. You leave a tip next to the toilet in public restrooms for whoever cleans the bathroom.
2. You can't bring yourself to jay walk, even when nothing's coming and you're going to miss your train.
1. You can do things with the insides of a pig that no one else could imagine.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Germany and Paradigms of Society
This is potentially for a textbox in the philosophy chapter called "Living Together in Society."
____________
The history of Germany these last two hundred years is an excellent example of how the self-understanding of a society can change dramatically in a rather short period of time. If we turn back to the year 1800, what we now call Germany was part of a collection of around 300 relatively independent states spread out over present day Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, etc (the Holy Roman Empire).
The almost one city countries of Luxembourg and Lichtenstein in Europe are left overs from that period. Interestingly, even today the German cities of Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen have a somewhat independent "city-state" status that no other German cities have. These small states are artifacts of an age when rule was very much localized and city-oriented under kings and king-like rulers.
Who ruled what was more a matter of inheritance and marriage than a bounded area of land. For example, the king of England in the 1700s and early 1800s was also the ruler of Hanover in Germany. Governance thus was less about where a place was as who its ruler was. Marriage was a way of unifying kingdoms. Catherine the Great of Russia (1729-96) was German, as is the current ruling family of England.
Meanwhile, in 1800 there were other forces going on in the world that were also working in Germany. Both France and America had seen revolutions that strongly pushed the right of the "common man" to govern himself (literally) without kings in charge, a fairly new idea in history, even if the Greeks had briefly explored it a couple millennia ago. At this same time, the German Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) apparently invented the word "nationalism" and argued that a people's identity grows best out of its geography and language (not its rulers). He urged people living in the Holy Roman Empire to stop speaking French and speak their more natural language: German.
Herder's fairly innocuous ideas on history had an immense impact on German history through others who built on his ideas. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) made his Addresses to the German Nation in which he pointedly made it clear that the French and the Jews were not German and did not belong. They did not trace their ancestry and language to the Germanic peoples mentioned as far back as the second century in the Roman historian Tacitus. Of course, those tribes had long since moved on. What we are seeing here is the invention of the German "nation" as a social construct.
The Brothers Grimm began to write down German folk tales that were meant to reveal authentic German identity. This was the era of Romanticism (see chap. 14), and in part it played itself out in Germany with music like that of Richard Wagner (1813-83), who celebrated an idealized (i.e., socially constructed) German past. Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) spoke of a zeitgeist, a "spirit of the age" that can reach a critical mass when a people comes to determine its place in history (see chap. 15). These forces climaxed of course in Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945) attempt to reunify all the areas he believed were German into a single people, as well as to expunge these lands of those he did not consider to be truly German.
The period since Hitler has of course been a rocky one for Germany. After World War 2, Germany was divided into two countries, east and west, with the east under the control of communist Russia as part of what was called the "Soviet Union." Two quite different understandings of society pervaded east and west. The west adopted the democratic structures of the West and prospered. The east adopted a modified version of Karl Marx's (1818-83) understanding of history (see chap. 15), where the end goal of society is for all property to be held in common.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, the two parts were reunified in 1990. All of Germany is now a democracy and one of the key players in the European Union, a collection of a couple dozen countries in Europe. Nevertheless, this situation is no doubt creating a new sense of identity for Germany, complicated not only by the fragments of so many different earlier perspectives but by a massive immigration from the east that will soon take over the population of the country.
____________
The history of Germany these last two hundred years is an excellent example of how the self-understanding of a society can change dramatically in a rather short period of time. If we turn back to the year 1800, what we now call Germany was part of a collection of around 300 relatively independent states spread out over present day Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, etc (the Holy Roman Empire).
The almost one city countries of Luxembourg and Lichtenstein in Europe are left overs from that period. Interestingly, even today the German cities of Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen have a somewhat independent "city-state" status that no other German cities have. These small states are artifacts of an age when rule was very much localized and city-oriented under kings and king-like rulers.
Who ruled what was more a matter of inheritance and marriage than a bounded area of land. For example, the king of England in the 1700s and early 1800s was also the ruler of Hanover in Germany. Governance thus was less about where a place was as who its ruler was. Marriage was a way of unifying kingdoms. Catherine the Great of Russia (1729-96) was German, as is the current ruling family of England.
Meanwhile, in 1800 there were other forces going on in the world that were also working in Germany. Both France and America had seen revolutions that strongly pushed the right of the "common man" to govern himself (literally) without kings in charge, a fairly new idea in history, even if the Greeks had briefly explored it a couple millennia ago. At this same time, the German Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) apparently invented the word "nationalism" and argued that a people's identity grows best out of its geography and language (not its rulers). He urged people living in the Holy Roman Empire to stop speaking French and speak their more natural language: German.
Herder's fairly innocuous ideas on history had an immense impact on German history through others who built on his ideas. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) made his Addresses to the German Nation in which he pointedly made it clear that the French and the Jews were not German and did not belong. They did not trace their ancestry and language to the Germanic peoples mentioned as far back as the second century in the Roman historian Tacitus. Of course, those tribes had long since moved on. What we are seeing here is the invention of the German "nation" as a social construct.
The Brothers Grimm began to write down German folk tales that were meant to reveal authentic German identity. This was the era of Romanticism (see chap. 14), and in part it played itself out in Germany with music like that of Richard Wagner (1813-83), who celebrated an idealized (i.e., socially constructed) German past. Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) spoke of a zeitgeist, a "spirit of the age" that can reach a critical mass when a people comes to determine its place in history (see chap. 15). These forces climaxed of course in Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945) attempt to reunify all the areas he believed were German into a single people, as well as to expunge these lands of those he did not consider to be truly German.
The period since Hitler has of course been a rocky one for Germany. After World War 2, Germany was divided into two countries, east and west, with the east under the control of communist Russia as part of what was called the "Soviet Union." Two quite different understandings of society pervaded east and west. The west adopted the democratic structures of the West and prospered. The east adopted a modified version of Karl Marx's (1818-83) understanding of history (see chap. 15), where the end goal of society is for all property to be held in common.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, the two parts were reunified in 1990. All of Germany is now a democracy and one of the key players in the European Union, a collection of a couple dozen countries in Europe. Nevertheless, this situation is no doubt creating a new sense of identity for Germany, complicated not only by the fragments of so many different earlier perspectives but by a massive immigration from the east that will soon take over the population of the country.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Martin Luther vs. Communism
I tried to think of an interesting title to go with our side trips on the way home from Berlin to Wittenberg and Leipzig yesterday. Wittenberg is the city where Luther taught and in 1537 nailed 95 arguments on the door of the cathedral, setting into motion what would become the birth of Protestantism.
As is often the case, he could not have imagined the effect that invitation to debate would have on history. When my children asked, "What's Protestantism?" I scarcely knew what to say. It's a massive amount of reality right now. It's all the churches everywhere in Marion except for one. It's a massive amount of history.
Another piece of history is in Wittenberg too. That's the fact that from 1945 to 1990 this town was in East Germany. From 1961 to 1989 this place was divided from the rest of the world by a fence. You pass buildings that look like no one has done anything with them since WW2. You pass a massive chemical plant.
We only drove partially into Leipzig. I wanted to see this formerly east German city where Heisenburg (physics, early 1900s) and Lessing (theology and literature, 1700s) taught. This is the city where Goethe (1700s, poet, writer), and philosophers Leibniz (1700s) and Nietzsche (1800s) studied. A lot of it now looks like driving down mid-city Adams street in Marion, with abandoned factories.
What does it do to a person to grow up under that kind of communism. You can take the person out of the wall, but can you truly take the wall out of the person? And even if your children grow up without the wall, it will affect the way you raise them, your attitudes toward how to behave.
My guess would be that most east Germans are probably not bubbling over with friendliness and a drive to help you when you are in need. One lady in Wittenberg was perfectly helpful with directions when asked. Another at their version of Sams Club in Leipzig was not.
I thought of the legalism that pervaded the Wesleyan Church in the mid-1900s. Even after we stopped dressing like that, it arguably has an effect. Maybe you put that legalism into how you dress as a professional now or maybe you go anti-legalism and become a rebel. Maybe you just transfer your legalism to the next issue--so now you're legalistic about drinking or apply it to a rigid sense of justice in your politics or in your grading.
I wondered whether I would find more leniency with the speed limit in east Germany or west?
As is often the case, he could not have imagined the effect that invitation to debate would have on history. When my children asked, "What's Protestantism?" I scarcely knew what to say. It's a massive amount of reality right now. It's all the churches everywhere in Marion except for one. It's a massive amount of history.
Another piece of history is in Wittenberg too. That's the fact that from 1945 to 1990 this town was in East Germany. From 1961 to 1989 this place was divided from the rest of the world by a fence. You pass buildings that look like no one has done anything with them since WW2. You pass a massive chemical plant.
We only drove partially into Leipzig. I wanted to see this formerly east German city where Heisenburg (physics, early 1900s) and Lessing (theology and literature, 1700s) taught. This is the city where Goethe (1700s, poet, writer), and philosophers Leibniz (1700s) and Nietzsche (1800s) studied. A lot of it now looks like driving down mid-city Adams street in Marion, with abandoned factories.
What does it do to a person to grow up under that kind of communism. You can take the person out of the wall, but can you truly take the wall out of the person? And even if your children grow up without the wall, it will affect the way you raise them, your attitudes toward how to behave.
My guess would be that most east Germans are probably not bubbling over with friendliness and a drive to help you when you are in need. One lady in Wittenberg was perfectly helpful with directions when asked. Another at their version of Sams Club in Leipzig was not.
I thought of the legalism that pervaded the Wesleyan Church in the mid-1900s. Even after we stopped dressing like that, it arguably has an effect. Maybe you put that legalism into how you dress as a professional now or maybe you go anti-legalism and become a rebel. Maybe you just transfer your legalism to the next issue--so now you're legalistic about drinking or apply it to a rigid sense of justice in your politics or in your grading.
I wondered whether I would find more leniency with the speed limit in east Germany or west?
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Berlin: A Torturous History
Quick trip to Berlin in a roundabout trip home from orientation. What a torturous history this city has had! I can't think of any other city with quite so dramatic a past in the last 100 years.
Reichstag
This building from which Hitler ruled was practically a vacant lot when I first visited in 1995, not long after the wall came down. This was the place where the Soviet soldier famously planted the Russian flag in 1945.
1946
today
Church of Remembrance
These remains of the original Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche are currently hidden under restoration, but they are a reminder of the relentless bombing we did of Germany until Hitler was finally defeated. I asked a friend yesterday where the bunker was where he committed suicide and I guess it is kept a secret so that no one will make it into a shrine. What a complete loser Hitler was, this man that ran the German people--not even really his people since he was Austrian--into the ground.
Berlin Wall
As if getting bombed to bits wasn't enough punishment for the citizens of Berlin, they were then divided into east and west by the Russians until finally the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. There's a line in the road now that runs in front of the Brandenburg Gate where the wall and the beginning of No Man's Land used to be. The wall came down of course in 1989.
Alexanderplatz
One of the most bustling places in town now is the Alexanderplatz in what was formerly East Berlin. I saw that they are now line jumping from the top of the Park City Hotel where we stayed last time for several days in 2004. The Eastern part of the city is now far more integrated into the city than when I first visited in 1995. Unification was in 1990.
So ruled by Hitler, bombed to bits by the Allies, divided by the Russians, unified again in 1990. I don't think even Jerusalem can claim such a torturous history these last seventy years.
Reichstag
This building from which Hitler ruled was practically a vacant lot when I first visited in 1995, not long after the wall came down. This was the place where the Soviet soldier famously planted the Russian flag in 1945.
Church of Remembrance
These remains of the original Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche are currently hidden under restoration, but they are a reminder of the relentless bombing we did of Germany until Hitler was finally defeated. I asked a friend yesterday where the bunker was where he committed suicide and I guess it is kept a secret so that no one will make it into a shrine. What a complete loser Hitler was, this man that ran the German people--not even really his people since he was Austrian--into the ground.
Berlin Wall
As if getting bombed to bits wasn't enough punishment for the citizens of Berlin, they were then divided into east and west by the Russians until finally the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. There's a line in the road now that runs in front of the Brandenburg Gate where the wall and the beginning of No Man's Land used to be. The wall came down of course in 1989.
Alexanderplatz
One of the most bustling places in town now is the Alexanderplatz in what was formerly East Berlin. I saw that they are now line jumping from the top of the Park City Hotel where we stayed last time for several days in 2004. The Eastern part of the city is now far more integrated into the city than when I first visited in 1995. Unification was in 1990.
So ruled by Hitler, bombed to bits by the Allies, divided by the Russians, unified again in 1990. I don't think even Jerusalem can claim such a torturous history these last seventy years.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
State of the German Nation...
I spent a day of orientation here in Göttingen. The afternoon was about what's going on right now in German politics and such. Very interesting. The Fulbrighters here are not a uniform group and so there were various fairly obvious hints at different political positions in the room. I continue to consider myself a centrist, although if I were a German I suspect they would consider me somewhat right of center.
You might find the rundown interesting. Here they have 20% sales tax. 43% of the Gross Domestic Product is in the state sector, which I think means that almost half of the jobs (in terms of money) are state related (of course university professors are usually employees of the state here--and students go to university for free). The large taxes thus come back in free education and free health care. Parents of unmarried children under 25 also get 6000 Euros per child back from their taxes. The population is declining, so this is also partly meant to motivate having children.
The leader of the session this morning mentioned that most Germans do not want less taxes as long as Germany has such high debt. They also feel a sense of corporate responsibility that everyone have health care, although they also recognize the importance of motivating individuals to work rather than live off the system (the leader suggested there are perhaps a million people in Germany who are content simply to live off the social safety net).
A great number of changes have gone into effect in recent years. They are tending to abolish the old system that sent budding auto mechanics to loser school. They have broken their college system down into something the rest of the world can understand (with bachelor's and master's degrees). They are ramping up how much work university students are expected to do (it used to be very leisurely indeed, taking up to 7 or 8 years). Younger age schools are increasingly going to a full day as opposed to the old half day and come home at 1 to mama.
Obama enjoys a 75% approval rating in Europe in general in terms of his foreign policy (80 something percent in Germany). While many Germans don't want to bail out Greece (much as many Americans opposed the TARP bailouts), the leader of the presentation thought it was inevitable that the EU would navigate a way through the crisis, for the sake of an EU that eventually was something like the United States of Europe. His hunch was that much of the debt in places like Greece, Italy, and Spain would be forgiven in return from some budgetary control and restructuring of their economic system.
I was not aware that I was coming at such an interesting time of change in Germany. Just this past summer, Germany did away with compulsory military service. Just this past summer, Germany switched from 9 year higher school (13 grades) to 8 years (12 grades like ours).
There are of course all the usual German funnities. They are massively into recycling (e.g., paper, organic, the rest) and we have three trash cans to separate things. But the truth is, the city people have sophisticated machines that separate it anyway. All the stuff from the houses is poured together in the truck. ;-) It's just a cultural reminder (and profit to the people who sell the different cans) to have individual households continue to separate.
Pets are taxed, but are allowed in restaurants. There was a court ruling that stated that noise was a natural phenomenon from children. It is thus against the law to complain too much about how loud children are. Interesting comments on how views on balanced budgets and debt levels relate to growing economies. It was mentioned that Japanese debt is 200% of GDP... and that the Yen continues to grow in value. ;-)
It would be nice if people in countries like the US could go abroad to places like England and Germany for a bit. Germans who resent America usually soften when they come to the States and see what it's really like. By the same token, I suspect a lot of popular feeling in America on a host of issues would soften if we just got out a little bit more.
You might find the rundown interesting. Here they have 20% sales tax. 43% of the Gross Domestic Product is in the state sector, which I think means that almost half of the jobs (in terms of money) are state related (of course university professors are usually employees of the state here--and students go to university for free). The large taxes thus come back in free education and free health care. Parents of unmarried children under 25 also get 6000 Euros per child back from their taxes. The population is declining, so this is also partly meant to motivate having children.
The leader of the session this morning mentioned that most Germans do not want less taxes as long as Germany has such high debt. They also feel a sense of corporate responsibility that everyone have health care, although they also recognize the importance of motivating individuals to work rather than live off the system (the leader suggested there are perhaps a million people in Germany who are content simply to live off the social safety net).
A great number of changes have gone into effect in recent years. They are tending to abolish the old system that sent budding auto mechanics to loser school. They have broken their college system down into something the rest of the world can understand (with bachelor's and master's degrees). They are ramping up how much work university students are expected to do (it used to be very leisurely indeed, taking up to 7 or 8 years). Younger age schools are increasingly going to a full day as opposed to the old half day and come home at 1 to mama.
Obama enjoys a 75% approval rating in Europe in general in terms of his foreign policy (80 something percent in Germany). While many Germans don't want to bail out Greece (much as many Americans opposed the TARP bailouts), the leader of the presentation thought it was inevitable that the EU would navigate a way through the crisis, for the sake of an EU that eventually was something like the United States of Europe. His hunch was that much of the debt in places like Greece, Italy, and Spain would be forgiven in return from some budgetary control and restructuring of their economic system.
I was not aware that I was coming at such an interesting time of change in Germany. Just this past summer, Germany did away with compulsory military service. Just this past summer, Germany switched from 9 year higher school (13 grades) to 8 years (12 grades like ours).
There are of course all the usual German funnities. They are massively into recycling (e.g., paper, organic, the rest) and we have three trash cans to separate things. But the truth is, the city people have sophisticated machines that separate it anyway. All the stuff from the houses is poured together in the truck. ;-) It's just a cultural reminder (and profit to the people who sell the different cans) to have individual households continue to separate.
Pets are taxed, but are allowed in restaurants. There was a court ruling that stated that noise was a natural phenomenon from children. It is thus against the law to complain too much about how loud children are. Interesting comments on how views on balanced budgets and debt levels relate to growing economies. It was mentioned that Japanese debt is 200% of GDP... and that the Yen continues to grow in value. ;-)
It would be nice if people in countries like the US could go abroad to places like England and Germany for a bit. Germans who resent America usually soften when they come to the States and see what it's really like. By the same token, I suspect a lot of popular feeling in America on a host of issues would soften if we just got out a little bit more.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Göttingen
Today we drove a rented car from Munich to Göttingen. I haven't driven a stick in 6 years so that was fun, but you can't hardly go wrong with these new ones. Göttingen is where the Brothers Grimm taught, so the stories of Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty all come from this part of Germany.
For you history buffs, I learned some interesting things about Göttingen on a walking tour. First, I had long forgotten that the kings of the house of Hanover in England (George I, George II, the notorious George III who lost the colonies... to the present Queen Elizabeth) were also kings of this region of Hannover here. It was only because this region refused to have a woman, Queen Victoria, as their ruler when a male was available, that the relationship was severed in 1837 when she ascended to the throne of England.
The Grimm Brothers were two of a famous "Göttingen 7" who were removed from their professorships in that year when the new king cancelled a recent Constitution that had moved Hannover in a "liberal" direction by moving a good deal of power from the king to the Parliament. Ernst August 1 took the power back and dissolved that Parliament. Those 7 feisty professors who objected were dismissed, including the Grimm Brothers.
Göttingen and other university towns like Tübingen and Heidelberg were spared bombing in World War 2, so there are some buildings and houses here that go back to the 1200s. There is little industry here but it is clearly a university town.
A number of famous professors have taught at Göttingen over the years:
For you history buffs, I learned some interesting things about Göttingen on a walking tour. First, I had long forgotten that the kings of the house of Hanover in England (George I, George II, the notorious George III who lost the colonies... to the present Queen Elizabeth) were also kings of this region of Hannover here. It was only because this region refused to have a woman, Queen Victoria, as their ruler when a male was available, that the relationship was severed in 1837 when she ascended to the throne of England.
The Grimm Brothers were two of a famous "Göttingen 7" who were removed from their professorships in that year when the new king cancelled a recent Constitution that had moved Hannover in a "liberal" direction by moving a good deal of power from the king to the Parliament. Ernst August 1 took the power back and dissolved that Parliament. Those 7 feisty professors who objected were dismissed, including the Grimm Brothers.
Göttingen and other university towns like Tübingen and Heidelberg were spared bombing in World War 2, so there are some buildings and houses here that go back to the 1200s. There is little industry here but it is clearly a university town.
A number of famous professors have taught at Göttingen over the years:
- J. D. Michaelis (1770s): pioneer in the study of Semitic languages
- Ben Franklin--not a professor here, but visited here and had strong relations with Lichtenberg, who urged the university here to introduce experiments into their teaching of physics ;-)
- Albrecht Ritschl (1800s): primary figure in Liberal theology that reduced Jesus to his love ethic, wrote a completely "mirror reading" book on the historical Jesus (Albert Schweitzer massively undermined it)
- Julius Wellhausen (1800s): systematizer of JEDP as a theory for how the Pentateuch came together (no one would now accept his specifics, although sources behind the Pentateuch is the overwhelming consensus)
- Walter Bauer (1800s): did important work on second century Christianity and how the word "orthodoxy" is inappropriate for this period (still consensus)
- Karl Barth: professor here in the 1920s (the most significant theologian of the twentieth century, anywhere)
- Gerhard von Rad: famous post war OT scholar (one of the most important OT scholars of twentieth century, wrote a two volume OT theology)
- Ernst Käsemann: famous post war NT scholar (studied under Bultmann, started the second quest for the historical Jesus)
- Hans Conzelmann: famous NT scholar
- Gunther Bornkamm: famous NT scholar
- Joachim Jeremias: famous Jesus scholar who wrote Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus
Monday, September 19, 2011
Deutschland
After the better part of a tortuous week without internet, it seems like we have found our way. We'll see.
Many thanks to God for a safe and effective landing. We're in our flat, have figured out how to get around and which subway and trolley lines to use, were there for the start of Oktoberfest, have registered with the government, bought our shopping bags, and now have internet.
Now if we could just figure out why our Verizon phones don't get any signal ;-)
More to come...
Many thanks to God for a safe and effective landing. We're in our flat, have figured out how to get around and which subway and trolley lines to use, were there for the start of Oktoberfest, have registered with the government, bought our shopping bags, and now have internet.
Now if we could just figure out why our Verizon phones don't get any signal ;-)
More to come...
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