Geography Archives: Germany

In German elections—like the coming ones, as always on a Sunday—all you have to do is present the registration paper mailed to every citizen, then make crosses on a paper  ballot. No trouble with the boss, no missing work, long lines or quarrels about fraud or discrimination.  It sounds easy.

Until 1989 that terrible Berlin Wall angered many an East German. The small part of Germany it helped preserve for 28 years was always the butt of anger, sarcasm, vituperation and resistance in one form or another.

The works of Walter Benjamin confuse the majority of his readers, but this does not need to continue.

Esther Bejarano’s death hits hard, leaving a painful gap in Germany’s anti-fascist scene. Most media and many politicians voiced their praise and mourning—after almost totally ignoring her in life and attacking and trying to squelch organizations she was active in, as an avowed Communist.

After legally receiving a Christmas gift of 24,000 euros from her party, Annalena Baerbock somehow neglected to report it in her tax returns. No big deal, some might think, but after the scandals about Christian Democrats nobly enriching themselves when purchasing face-masks, and two far bigger scandals hanging over the head of the Social Democrats’ chancellor candidate Scholz (currently still Finance Minister), the squeaky clean reputation of the Greens had been a major asset. No longer!

Don’t speak ill of the dead, they say, but if I were to choose candidates for a Hall of Evil Fame, I’d have to ignore such advice; the late Donald Rumsfeld would be close to the top of my list.

A week ago Saxony-Anhalt voted! The media prediction – a neck-and-neck race – was cock-eyed! But outside Sachsen-Anhalt (in German), did anyone really give a damn? Yes, some did!

More than 100 years after her murder by counterrevolutionary soldiers during the German Revolution of 1918-1919, Rosa Luxemburg continues to demand attention.

“The Israeli warplanes bombed many different places in my area with more than 40 consecutive missiles, without issuing the prior warnings they used to issue in the past three wars. The sound of the bombing and shelling was so terrifying that I cannot describe it.”

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news to the American Greens, but if they haven’t been following the evolution of Greens in Europe, especially Germany, they are in for an unpleasant surprise. The Greens are now practically the most warlike party in Europe.

A full generation has elapsed since the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed in late 1991. Two years earlier, in 1989, the communist states of Eastern Europe dissolved, with the first salvo fired when Hungary opened its border.

The Green party was at first an iconoclastic bunch, leftish, even radical. Its deputies, often women, showed up in the Bundestag knitting or even wearing woolen sweaters, shocking the conservatives. But its radicals grew older; many got rewarding professional jobs; its fundamentalist wing (“fundis“) lost out to the pragmatic “realos“ (realists). The Green retreat has continued ever since.

The German Democratic Republic (DDR) was a socialist state founded in 1949 as a democratic, antifascist reaction to the Second World War. It redistributed land, socialised the means of production, and collectivised the agricultural system.

Germany, once viewed as an exaggerated model of exactitude and discipline, is currently in a muddle.

Surprise, surprise! Things worked out quite differently than expected at the congress of the LINKE, the left-wing party.

The 2014 coup is now called with masterly irony in Wikipedia “The Revolution of Dignity.” That is a Big Lie even Josef Goebbels would have envied.

The U.S.-American night-mare, tight-lipped and pouting, was finally forced to gallop off to its luxurious stable in Florida. Almost every European joined in “Hurrah!” cheers as it watched him go!

At a time when peasant masses in the country are engaged in a valiant struggle for the repeal of the Central government’s three infamous laws, and have laid peaceful siege to Delhi, braving rains and bitter cold, it is worth recalling Friedrich Engels’ study of the peasant war in Germany in 1525, that also celebrated its outstanding leader Thomas Muenzer. Such a recall becomes necessary for another reason.

Maas underscored that Berlin “does not need to talk about European sovereignty if that is understood as us (Germany) doing everything in future the way Washington wants.”

The survival of polar bears, we know, is sadly threatened. The survival of a more colorful bear species seems assured. HARIBO (an acronym of HAns RIegel BOnn), which makes those little “gold bears” sweets, was founded in a laundry room in 1920.