Observing Hermann...

The 56^th annual Berlinale Film Festival is beginning on the 9^th of February so don’t even think about telling me later that you hadn’t been warned.

Whereas Hollywood openly and shamelessly insists upon entertaining us at all costs whatever the cost and therefore must cater to our niedrige Instinkte (lower instincts) and is always right on the money with this formula and always manages to find that very broad lowest common denominator (i.e. us), the Europeans, being Europeans, sind was Besseres (are something better) and have long ago engaged in this dubious intellectual complicity to produce highly-political, Euro-centric and therefore politically correct and crappy films that nobody wants to see.

As the head honcho film boss culture vulture at the Berlinale Dieter Kosslick said recently about this year’s program in an interview with Die Welt : “They are almost all near-reality and political films. Drugs, sickness, globalization etc. are among the themes. But that is a world-wide trend at the moment, as you know, and ER doctor George Clooney is currently out on the road to clear up these matters in the United States.”

Huh? What does that mean? But thank goodness it’s Dr. Ross, is all I can say. I wouldn’t want that goofy Dr. Green trying to clear up important (not) cultural questions like this with American society. And yes, they still watch ER here.

And to make matters even worse, they are going to be showing tons of German films at the Berlinale this year (55 of them in all). Why that should be surprising at a German state-subsdized film festival held in Germany is itself surprising, I suppose, but they generally don’t like to show German films here. Apparently not even Germans can watch German films anymore.

But, then again, this being a political festival and all, it appears that this is now the proper time for the natives to address this very important cultural issue. 

55 Deutsche Filme? Hintereinander? Ohne mich.

Comments in German more than welcome, wenn ihr wollt. 

Germany is freezing at the moment, but if you live in one of these so-called Passivhäuser you’re warm as bug in a rug and hardly have to pay anything for your heating, either.

The family in this article spends about $60 a year (as in 365 days) to keep their small home (114 square meters) warm. No joke.

The science behind this gets egghead pretty quick (it utilizes the warmth of the human body, for instance) but it doesn’t cost the world to get your house isolated properly and set up with this technology.

Okay, you would have to make a rather big one-time investment of about $150 to $200 per square meter, but that’s it. Those awful heating bills would then be history. Strangely, this hasn't caught on here to the degree that you would expect. Nobody wants to pay that much out front, it seems.

Lieber passiv warm als aktiv Pleite.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Ich bitte darum!

A few irate readers (Hermann and Will were among them) were, well, irate about that recent post on Heidi Klum and “Germany’s Next Topmodel” and I’ve been asked to apologize.

I didn’t mean to be bad, honest. I just figured that a post about the German economic model was way past due and that it had probably never ever been done before and that all of you folks out there would be fascinated by such a topic and, well, I guess I didn't know what had gotten into me.

So, I’m sorry. In all the excitement I somehow completely forgot to enter the link to all of those gorgeous German girls I had been writing about, you see. So here it is!

And believe me, dear reader, this will never happen again.

Und talentiert sind sie auch noch!

Deutsche Kommentare, bitte!

Just in time for the Holocaust memorial service that was held in the Bundestag yesterday: A court in Frankfurt has determined that Jews are not allowed to call other Jews (who used to be good buddies, by the way) bad names here. Or at least not certain kinds of bad names. They can only be sort of bad.

Specifically, the publicist Henryk M. Broder is not allowed to call Abraham Melzer and Hajo Meyer “capacities for applied Judaism phobia” or to claim that they fill a hole in anti-Semitism with “brown filth”. He may, however, call them two Jews who “did the Adolf for the people of Leipzig ”.

Whew. I’m sure glad that that’s finally been cleared up. Could these guys be maybe a little, well, high-strung or something? I mean, jeez, what do you call fellow Jews who didn’t even used to be your buds?

“Jewish folklore” hin oder her (one way or the other), that’s certainly not what I would call good Christian behavior you guys.

So was sagt man aber nicht. Oder wenigstens nicht so laut.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar! 

Angst and despair have reached such a level in this country that the natives have now enlisted Heidi Klum to cast a new one - a new German model, that is.

As you may or may not know, the so-called German model is an economic term used to describe post-war (West) Germany’s way of using innovative industrial relations, close relationships between financial and industrial sectors and vocational training to cultivate what was for many years economic prosperity. The unions are organized at an industry level and co-exist with so-called “work councils” at plant and company levels; these unions are still relatively strong but are generally reluctant to strike. Vocational training, with an emphasis upon specialized apprenticeships, is still required for a large number of occupations here and contributes to a certain degree of rigidity and Germany's famous bureaucracy.

At any rate, none of this seems to work anymore and Ms. Klum, a famous German model herself, now appears to have become the figurehead of a popular movement to cast (metaphorically speaking, of course) “Germany’s next Topmodel”.

In this show (as I have been told because I would never watch anything like this personally of course), tons of gorgeous German women parade around in front of some dorky jury and the girls who don’t get picked start heulen (crying) and the hottest ones win to come back for the next round.

It is a radical new method, for sure, but in this troubling era of increasing globalization, an open mind and a little flexibility is the least we can expect.

Ich glaube, ich fange auch gleich an, zu heulen.

Deutsche Kommentare? Ich bitte darum!

A particularly virulent German compound word has escaped from a high-security linguistic compound and is now terrifying the native public, which is only compounding the matter even more.

No sooner had a panel of five experts managed to safely isolate the term “Entlassungsproduktivität” as being the recipient of Germany’s Vocabulary Hall of  Shame 2005 (Unwort des Jahres) then was it able to outwit two or three sleeping security personnel and find it’s way back into mainstream media coverage.

A dangerous and highly toxic compound, Entlassungsproduktivität was formed using the nouns Entlassung (notice, as in letting someone go) and Produktivität (productivity) and refers to the increased productivity sometimes measured at companies that have just gone through a big round of lay-offs.

“I’d almost forgotten about the damned thing, too.” said Rainer Unsinn, a highly-respected language expert not directly involved in this particular incident. “And then these bozos have to go out there and fiddle around with it and let it out into the public again. Jeez. What a completely sucky word.”

Although the panel is quite experienced and has been choosing contemptible words like this for over fifteen years now (and always under the strictest of laboratory conditions), they obviously weren’t prepared for such a sensational escape.

When later asked for an explanation, the scientists just shuffled their feet and shrugged their shoulders and mumbled something about “that word” turning out to be more deceptively euphemistic than any one of them could have possibly reckoned with.

Und die Produktivität steigt und steigt.

Kommentare auch auf Deutsch, bitte!

German Foreign Minister Steinmeier has called together the next crises staff. Berlin is abuzz. Word is out that it’s going to be very tight over the next few weeks.

After the latest kidnapping of two native engineers in Iraq yesterday, it is becoming more and more probable that there may soon be no more potential German hostages left to kidnap in Iraq at all.

“There are only about 100 Germans left down there,” reported an unnamed source near the government (he lives in Kreuzberg). “So like, what happens when they’re all gone? I mean, they’ve budgeted for this and all haven’t they? Like, who gets the money then?”

Steinmeier is reportedly really, really upset this time as everybody in the world now knows that the German government cheerfully pays any amount deemed necessary by kidnappers to obtain the release of any German hostage anywhere and he is in a quandary and has even been seen pacing around in circles in his stylish office wondering out loud why on earth these German nationals keep getting kidnapped like this all the time by these awful people for goodness sakes gosh almighty.

Some now speculate that should the number of potential German hostages in Iraq reach 10 or less, plans are on the table for the German government to immediately begin with the payment of ransom for the release of other kidnapped nationalities, as well.

Wir müssen konsequent bleiben.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Ich bitte darum! 

According to his wife last week, the German fisherman who was caught in the Straits of Hormuz last November (he didn’t have a fishing license, I guess) was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

But now an Iranian government official says no, that’s not true yet, trust me, and the guy’s lawyer still hasn’t heard anything and the German Foreign Ministry erst recht nicht (they know absolutely nothing, of course) and now the case has become " mysterious ".

Mysterious, in this case, means that they haven’t quite agreed upon the price.

But it doesn’t always have to be money, you know. Maybe Germany can bring itself to lighten up a little bit with their recent “tough” talk about the coming Iranian atomic threat. Oh, they have already? Maybe Germany can force itself to come out publicly again for a negotiated settlement on this issue and take some pressure off Tehehran. Oh, they’ve already done that too, you say?

Well, then there’s certainly nothing mysterious about any of this. That’s straight up. This guy will be back home fishing in the Pfalz in no time.

Dieser Fisch war sooo groß!

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Ich bitte darum! 

While it’s still there, that is. The German History Museum has this way cool webcam pointing at the Palast der Republik ( Palace of the Republic ) and if you are so inclined, you can watch the thing being torn down. They are supposed to get started this month. But if you look close enough, you will also be able to “see” just how cold it is here right now so maybe they’ve changed their minds again. It’s real cold, folks (around -20 centigrade).

Mir ist k-k-kalt.

Deutsche Kommentare? Her damit! 

In what will absolutely positively be the last post I ever make about Susanne Osthoff (aka Osthoff of Arabia ) ever, I must report that she has now most definitely taken the Kuchen (cake). She’s much better than anyone imagined, it seems. Word came out this weekend that they found part of the ransom money on her, rolls of thousands of dollars in her pockets.

You know, it was part of the ransom money that was never paid. They checked the serial numbers on the bills in the meantime to find out for sure that it was in fact the same ransom money that was never paid and now they know for sure that it was, see?

Anyway, it looks like they went rummaging through her stuff while she was taking a shower at the German embassy right before she told them to shove it and that she wouldn’t be going home after all etc. blah, blah and then they found all this cash. That’s pretty rude, don’t you think? No, not the telling them to shove it part, the part about rummaging through her stuff.

I mean, that’s like a real invasion of privacy or something. Like when I have to read the reports about her in the news all the time.

I’m speechless. I mean, is she going to eat the cake now, too? And I can’t wait for the film to come out, either.

Sie wird sicherlich eine gute Erklärung dafür haben.

Deutsche Kommentare? Ich bitte darum!