Ich Will Silvaner

I had to look into the diary to be sure that it was only one week ago when we gathered in the Lorenzkirche (Ger., Eng.) in Nuremberg to say farewell to our friend M.B. The pastor said she had expected perhaps 25 souls to turn up, in the end there were more than sixty people in the church and at the following get-together – that of course took place at her favourite spot, the Kaffehaus in the local library (Ger.), her second living-room. I came home late, a bit tipsy.
On Monday the festivities for the Tag der deutschen Einheit, or German Unity Day (Ger., Eng.) took place in Dresden. And of course the “concerned citizens” showed up in all their brutal stupidity, this time top brass could not ignore them. Only one reporter described that the “concerned citizens” not only yelled and hollered at the main political figures of Germany, chancellor, federal president and head of parliament, but also made very tasteful “Affengeräusche”, imitations of ape-sounds (“Ugh ugh ugh !”) when people of colour went over the red carpet towards the main events – GOd, who cares about them nigger ambassadors ?
Nevertheless the Ministerpräsident of Saxony, the host of this event and head honcho of the uncivilised masses over there, later described  the whole ceremony as “well done” & “gelungen”, successful. Maybe he’s glad that Merkel was not hit with a bottle.
One has to accept that racism and neo-nazism has reached a certain part of the German society. I think around 20 percent of the population is more or less openly racist and fascist – that is the average : There are areas in the East of Germany that are nowadays totally brown. Notably in Mecklenburg and Saxony.
This is depressing – I never thought that it would come back. But I am a product of the old Western Germany, a state and a society that do not exist anymore, I was socialised and educated there. Those who yell, march and bomb are young, mostly of East-German origin and today stand in a tradition : They continue what their parents started 25 years ago when they burned houses of refugees, of course with the “niggers” and “Fidschis” still inside.
Today it is the “Arabic” migrant – it is absolutely pointless to start to argument and explain that these humans are not necessarily of Arabic origin or of Muslim faith – for them it’s all the same : Simple explanations rule ! The people of Turkish origin I know do look a bit concerned. It is only a question of time until the first mosque is burned down.
All this nonsense is depressing : the brutality ; the stupidity ; the sheer impertinence of those liars & manipulators who gain political capital from the idiocy of stupid people ; the Verbrechervisagen who all of a sudden show up in German parliaments, from local to the federal level. Of course we see a new nationalism in the whole of Europe, a very dangerous development. BTW those states of the “Vishegrad Group” (Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic & notorious Hungary, Ger., Eng.) came up with a new word for cherry picking – they now speak of “flexible Solidarität”, flexible solidarity, what means nothing else but that they take what they like (mostly cash) and refute what they dislike, for example refugees. Because they have “principles” you know, like “holy” “nation” “first” or such crap.
But it cost you only three hundred thousand Euro to become a Hungarian citizen, of the “holy” “nation” : If you invest in this shithole of a country they throw their lousy passport at you. So much for “principles” …
This is not very uplifting, all in all.
I drove my kids around, at least some useful activity, and it pays the rent. Other things happened over the last ten days, mostly nice and positive. But I could not drag meself together and come up with a Sunday Music – the first time since … don’t know when I started this, and I am sorry for this breach or disruption of a long run. I like continuity.
Right now I should do some household chores, but frankly can’t be arsed to do this, Monday’s another day, eh ?!
I find it consoling or comforting to see beauty in the wounderful autumn lights early in the morning, when I drive into the rising sun, and in the late afternoon, when I drive West. All the human stupidity, all the brutality will one day be gone, done away with, there is a chance for development towards the ideal, the enlightened humane human being. And all the beauty I see reminds me of the limitedness of my own existence, the mortality of everything that is. It is autumn, and everything has a blue edge.
Rory GALLAGHER, I’m Not Awake Yet, just so.

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Sunday Music

I feel a bit blue. The weekend that was, simply was. Tomorrow is another day, start of another week, end of this month soon, things will be better. No doubt about it.
What will not be better in foreseeable future is the state of the German society, especially its stance towards refugees / asylum seekers. The events in notorious Saxony over this weekend are just the tip of the iceberg. I think it is the toxic heritage of the former socialist societies, societies because it is all the same in Eastern Germany, Poland, the former Tschechoslowakei, Hungary. I do not understand it, but I think I can tell the symptoms.
Back in last summer, early autumn, when it became clear that a large trek of people was on its way towards Europe from the Middle East, conferences were held, there was a kind of “key” how many people what state should accept etc. : The Eastern states simply & blankly refused to accept any refugees. Exactly those blokes who now fence and wall their national borders.
Last week it was in the news that one million of asylum seekers came to Germany last year – and boy I heard a lot of crap from some co-workers about that. It is the total number. Even conservative estimations state that one-third of these people are coming from the Balkans and have no chance of any refugee status what-so-ever, and are sent back at once, or when the paper-work is done. Leaves us with – six-hundred-fifty-thousand ?
Reduce those guys from Northern Africa who were already crooks in their homelands and come here for a happy crook experience – again, conservative estimations said this would be a tenth of the total amount, leaves us with roughly five-hundred-thousand people. This is btw the number the responsible authority gave out as to be expected for this year 2016. From toddler to old man, all included : And about these people is not yet decided, so the real number is just somewhere behind the horizon.
Those heads of the states mentioned above, the Vishegrad-group as they are called after the place where they gather, do not only refuse to follow along the lines of European solidarity, they also happily do things within their states that are alarming and appalling. They simply are working on reducing democratic institutions to rubble and turning their states into what can be called “Demokraturen”.
One of the first actions of the new Polish gouvernement was to make the secretary of justice the highest attorney of state. This may sound innocent, but by this they simply kicked out one of the most basic democratic principles, the separations of powers : Now the man who “makes” the law is the one who also runs the institutions that enforce this law. It goes without further mention that they also reached out for the highest judges.
The Poles follow the Hungarian blueprint. Let’s not forget that gulyash-Putin Orban is successfully running his antidemocratic course with substantial support of the openly fascist Fidesz-movement. Openly fascist as in marching through Budapest in uniform-like outfits, openly fascist as in threatening Jewish people (not only intellectuals), and any other “un-Hungarian” person – definitions are open, as in what Goering said : “Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich !” / “I decide who’s Jewish !” Yoh.
Besides this we saw something very interesting in the last weeks. There was a report in the news that a girl would have been raped & killed by “migrants”, a girl coming from a Russian-German family. And all of a sudden demonstrations were held by “Russendeutsche” in small-to-middle-towns all over the place. Each & single not very large, perhaps four hundred people max., but from North to South they came together, marched silently to the local “Rathaus”, holding up their paper signs reading “We want safety !”
Do not get me started about the whole idea behind those people who are called “Russlanddeutsche”. But what is amazing is the fact that they are usually the most silent and quiet group in the prospect of the populace. They usually drink their vodka, live quietly, visit their markets where they can buy products from Russia they miss, and look astonished and ashamed on their drunk offspring. Yes – I am not very objective here. The point is that a usually very silent & carefree part of the population all of a sudden is organised and shows up in public as force. And yes, they are voters too.
The news of the child-victim can be traced back to a news-outfit in Moscow, you know where all those free & independent news organisations roam. Even the Sowjet Russian secretary of Foreign Affairs mentioned the case, and brought it up on the agenda in bi-lateral discussions. Of course the whole thing was a canard.
So they showed what they can, what they are capable of. Someone thinks that it is a good idea to de-stabilise this society, or, to put it better, it would be a good time to start activities that could lead to a inner-German social crisis, or aggravate what is already brewing – look at Saxony, where the brown mob rules the streets & they burn houses, neat occasion to add a little fuel to the flames.
It was a mistake to expand the European Union towards the East, the Balkans are not Europe. The Balkans start somewhere behind Vienna.

So, here, some music, at last, after all this blah. Of course I thought about linking Tom Robinson’s Power in the Darkness – originally from 1978, everything changes and still stays the same – but actually I feel more inclined to Rory’s power :
Rory GALLAGHER, Crest of a Wave, loud hard and funny from 1974, more than a generation ago – hope you enjoy it !

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this and that

Some time ago I mentioned the architect Antti LOVAG and his “palace of bubbles” here. As I learned from this interesting article (only Ger. sorry) meanwhile a book is published about him: Pierre ROCHE: Antti Lovag. Habitologue. France Europe Editions, Nizza 2010. 98 S., € 25.–.  LOVAG, meanwhile 91, is still active and planning. For an English article about him go here.

I needed to hook up another computer to the web, a not too modern laptop, and it took hours to update things. Now I only have to make it start and shut down a bit faster and all will be fine; it’s the google machine. Very friendly people invited me to have a look into google+,  it’s a bit confusing at the beginning.

Now it’s correcting again – ah for the sake of it … for the vague promise of a bottle of Pálinka sometimes in August … friends …

I’m too blöd to write a thesis

I am afraid I have to admit here publically that I am dumb as shit.
I keep, wrapped in yellow sacks (pic) (nowadays called “Mix-Säcke”, ahh yes …) the copies I made from articles and source materials for my thesis in the early 90s and following years. I stored it on top of my bedroom closet when I moved in this small appartement. I have all the files I started still sitting on a hard drive built-in this computer, and hope that the upward compatibility still works – not something to be sure of thanks to Microschuft changing formats randomly now and then. I even had a lay-out of the text, a kind of roadmap what to use where.
But to produce such a text one needs time, and no disturbances. The idea that one can do this after the day’s work is nonsense: After whatever you do to make ends meet, you need a beer to unwind, you need to clean your kitchen, you want to be with somebody else, you do not sit down and dive deep into early 17th century literature, politics and social history to create a Lebensbild of your author.
All nonsense. Totally wrong approach. It goes much easier. Just upend your slipbox (nur den Zettelkasten umstülpen ), copy and paste the texts you collected – and Hurray this is it. This is what some people did, who reached high public positions here, in Germany and in Europe:
Herr zu Guttenberg was secretary of war: The University of Bayreuth abjudicated his title “doctor”.
The daughter of the former Ministerpräsident of Bavaria, Veronica Saß, has her title seized by the University of Konstanz.
Silvana Koch-Mehrin, ex-vice-president of the European parliament, stepped down from all political charges, while the University of Heidelberg is checking her thesis for plagiarizing – and they will find enough, that’s for sure.
All these honourable people simply ripped off: They simply copied and pasted, not only one or two sentences, Saß even went so far to copy a forty-page article into her work.
The prize for the most disgusting explanation  goes to zu Guttenberg, he declared, that the “pressure of his family” made him do it.

These people and their careers are just symptoms. I saw seminar works that were built to this muster, from people in the first or second semester. Normally we then had a nice conversation or discussion about the tools, about Handwerkszeug and how to use it – and about my interest in their thoughts, thoughts of their own.
Fuggidaboudit.
You do not need to think: Just copy.
Or as Karl KRAUS (Ger., Eng.) put it: Es genügt nicht, keine Gedanken zu haben. Man muss auch unfähig sein, sie auszudrücken.
(Roughly: It’s not enough to have no thoughts, you also must be unable to express them.)

The question here is: Who “examined” these works of genius? Who waved these people through the whole process of promotion ? Who decorated them with the holy title?
And besides the academic perturbations, these people are symptomatic for a whole generation of politicians, who absolutely lack any kind of virtue, modesty and honourableness: They are proofed beliers, thieveries and defrauders. They reached high positions, earned a lot of money and “took responsibility”, for whatever – what the heck!
Guttenberg was at the right position at the right time, he is very good in self-marketing, a political impersonator. Saß, ach forget it. Koch-Mehrin has the intellectual depth of a puddle, and – as Guttenberg – was transported into her position because of the proportional representation of the parties: One of the so-called “liberals” must be vice-president. And there was nobody else around: So – just do it Babe!

Something is wrong. In the academic practice, in politics, in the society. On  national (German) and European level. Liberty (whatever it is, at least a dangerous word) is replaced by whateverism. And we already see the weakest societies, as Hungary f.e., becoming an easy prey for the all so easy solutions. No wonder that John Paul II becomes a Saint.