Observing Hermann...

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag (Happy Birthday), Israel! They’re doing their sixtieth this Thursday, you see. But don’t ever ask for help from us if the going ever gets any tougher than it already is. Military-wise, we mean. We won’t be there any more for you then than we aren’t there now for anybody else out there when the going gets tough, wherever that might be, despite our official foreign policy of explicitly stating otherwise.



Or at least that’s what most Germans think, if you want to believe the latest greatest survey out there. A mere 13 percent of Germans asked would be in favour of providing Israel with military support were that country to come under attack, again, for instance.

The young and the restless-type Germans in particular could particularly care less when it comes to what might happen to the Jewish state, too. A whopping 65 percent of those surveyed below the age of 40 do not believe that Germany has a “special responsibility” towards Israel because of its history.

That results like these seem to make Chancellor Merkel’s ritual recitation of this official “special relationship”, this “cornerstone of German policy since the days of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer”, ring hollow at best, like it has with all the Chancellors before here, well, who cares? She’s just attending a birthday party, after all, everybody here is thinking. And if push ever comes to shove we can always apologize for our official change of heart later.

Eine schöne Bescherung, oder?

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Or thick as a briquette, at least. These thieves here, I mean. As if the rather disrespectful Umgang (dealings) with Lenin’s image (no, not John’s) as witnessed in yesterday’s video presentation had not been enough, souvenir-hunting burglars have broken into former East Berlin’s former Stasi headquarters and stolen one of his rare portraits, a functioning GDR telephone (also very rare), a Soviet ice hockey stick and an important communist coal briquette.



Well, I assume that it must have been important. Otherwise they wouldn’t have stolen it. It did have “30 years GDR” imprinted on it, after all. But just imagine how valuable the briquette with the “40 years GDR” imprinted on it must have been? That one’s probably been stolen long ago. And okay, East Berlin is, genau genommen (to be exact), still in East Berlin, only different. I stand corrected.

Now I know that the Stasi folks were all secret police and Volk-oppressor types before their wall came tumbling down and they became more openly politically active in the PDS, I mean Left party and all, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t disrespect their memory any more than absolutely necessary. Everybody knows you should respect the dead and let bygones be bygones and all that, especially in East Berlin. But Laurel and Hardy here obviously didn’t get it.

Therefore my appeal: Whoever you clowns are out there, please bring back the Lenin portrait and the briquette, now. Keep the telephone and ice hockey stick if you want, but bring back the other stuff. This has a lot of sentimental value for whole brigades of non-sentimental types out there, wherever they may now be. This is your history, too. You no good thieving imperialist vermin.

It’s all about political dissent, not about being politically decent.

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Proving yet again that you can be a smart and politically-aware German intellectual type and still not have the slightest idea what the Berlin Wall was, photographer Kai Wiedenhoefer and his Left and Green Party supporters in Berlin’s Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district will be exhibiting an exhibition which will equate the West Bank “Wall” with the Berlin one. This exhibitionism will be taking place on the eastern walls of the East Side Gallery, itself a wall, the largest remaining section of the Berlin Wall, get it? Am I going too fast?



That he doesn’t know why the Israelis have built the wall in the West Bank is perfectly understandable (he doesn’t want to understand, that would only make him sad), and that the US Americans only want to oppress Mexico by building the one along their border to that country is an established establishment fact (Canada is next, by the way), and that there are many, many, many much more such walls out there of this nature than he or his friends or most of the rest of us are even aware of is also understandable (hmmm, makes you wonder why he picked out Israel, doesn't it?), but die Mauer itself? He really doesn’t know why it was built? I’ll give him a little hint: It was built to keep people in.

But to be fair, Herr Wiedenhoefer has explained why he is so concerned and why an exhibition like this is so absolutely positively necessary right now. “The UN said border walls are illegal,” he said in an interview. “People need to take notice of this.” Well there we have it. Now if the UN ever gets around to making suicide bombings and illegal immigration and all that other nasty stuff some of us insist upon relating to illegal border walls like this illegal, too, well, that will be a great leap forward for mankind or something. Think of all the exhibitions we will be able to do then.

“We don’t need no education.”

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What’s wrong with everybody in Berlin these days? First tons of folks on the right side of the political spectrum fail to show up on election day and effectively sell Tempelhof down the river - and nobody even has the decency to jammern (moan) or meckern (gripe) about it later – and now the folks on the left side spit in the eye of on an age-old Berlin tradition and refuse to senselessly riot and burn in the streets during Walpurgis Night, and this despite the recent renaming of a downtown street in Rudi Dutschke Straße, in their honor, so-to-speak.



No respect, I tell ya. Whatever happened to civil courage when it comes to grassroots referendums and the lack of it when it comes to mindless mob rule, however fleeting? Freedom and free-for-alls aren’t free, people. We, I mean you, must earn them and deserve them again and again or something. We all expect you to keep (or break) the promise of liberty and democracy where those before you have failed (or haven’t) and never forget that taxation without representation is like giving somebody the choice between liberty or death and that the British are still coming, too, but not here, of course.

I’m disappointed in y’all, Berlin. I don’t want this to happen (or not happen) again. Wake up and smell the coffee and start taking responsibility (or not) for your actions. And go out and get a job. But not today.

Geht doch arbeiten!

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This discussion about lifting the ban on Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Germany, I mean. And although it’s nothing new when foreigners like me are dismayed about the fact that Mr. Psycho Man’s manifesto is still unavailable here (at least not openly and through the “proper” channels), I vaguely remember having read parts of it once in high school, by the way, it is a bit out of the ordinary when German historians openly push for its republication, now, or even now, or especially now, before the copyright lapses in 2015, that is.



Of course not even these guys are prepared to hand the rag over to their countrymen pur (straight), on the rocks, no chaser, so-to-speak. Germans being Germans and used to experts telling them what and how and sometimes even when to think (mischief makers here, German or otherwise, regularly criticize this pronounced German tendency to Bevormundung or paternalism), these said historian guys want to bring out a special high-speed and highly annotated version of Mein Kampf so they can make absolutely sure that any German reading it knows at all times that this is a very bad book indeed. I mean, we don’t want to cause any misunderstandings and get everybody all riled up again, now do we?

But I don’t know if this is such a sound idea. And not because the Germans who might read the book already know quite well what the deal is. My concern is this thing is already some 700 pages long as it is and by annotating it, well, this could even add more insult to the already grievous injury it is. I mean, if you’re going to take the effort to publish something like Mein Kampf, you don’t have to make it unreadable, it already is.

Is this annotation stuff maybe just some kind of a clever backdoor ban all over again or something? Or maybe these guys are just on LSD. Whoah. The colors.

Da muss man jetzt schon kämpfen, um überhaupt weiter zu lesen.

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It was democracy in action again yesterday in Berlin, and it all went terribly wrong. Well, in my view it did. We all know that a government is only as good as the people who elect it (or vote it out of office), but if anybody ever had any doubts about referendums, well, here we have it. The same holds true for them, too.



Let’s do the numbers: Although opinion polls before the vote indicated that 60 percent of Berlin’s population was in favor of keeping Tempelhof open, only a mere 21 percent of those eligible even took the trouble to vote. Unfortunately, a 25 percent turnout was the minimum needed for the referendum to pass, the first such referendum in Berlin’s history, by the way.

But hey, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just the end of a century-old chapter of heroic aviation history and the “Mother of all airports” (Sir Norman Foster). And who knows? Maybe something good will come out of this, other than all the cool new graffiti we’ll be able to enjoy on Tempelhof's walls starting this October, I mean.

New ideas are being sought for what to do with the monstrous facility, after all. I just hope nobody suggests putting any of these new ideas up to a vote.

If it wasn’t for disinterest, I wouldn’t have no interest at all.

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Anyway, I had this strange dream last night. It went something like this:

Hermann: Now, you've got to listen to me! Do you have any idea what you'd have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we'd both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn't that true, Louie?

Louie (the shady French cop working in Berlin for some inexplicable reason): I’m afraid Mayor Wowereit would insist.

Tempelhof airport: You’re saying this only to make me go.

Hermann: I'm saying it because it's true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor, whoever that is. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that last Tempelhof plane leaves the ground and you're not on it with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

Tempelhof airport: But what about us?

Hermann: We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we lost it until you came to Casablanca, wherever that is. We got it back last night.

Tempelhof airport: When I said I would never leave you.

Hermann: And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Tempelhof, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of four million people and the Mother of all Airports don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you kid.

A kiss is just a kiss.

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Tired of continually being asked “Where was the wall?” by all of those countless tourists who come to visit the city every year, a Berlin company called Mauerguide has “like had it totally up to here” or something and will start handing out hand-sized minicomputers next week which will show these annoying Quälgeister (nuisances) just where the damned thing stood already.



They’ll be handing them out for a hefty fee, of course, but this being a way cool and high-speed new economy type technology, everybody will understand and shell out the bucks, they hope.

Linked to global positioning satellites, these handy little Handy-like devices (a cell phone is called a Handy here) will show anyone with a need to know not only where the infamous Cold War monstrosity once stood (practically all of it is gone today, that’s why everybody keeps asking), they will virtually be able to take a virtual tour along the near 100 miles of virtual thing. Which, of course, virtually no one with any sense will do.

It’s not a bad idea as far as gadgets go, I guess. But while they’re at it, why don’t they offer a plug-in virtual guide to other frequently asked about location stuff? You know, like a Hitler’s bunker or forgotten tunnels module, or a “Doesn’t Heidi Klum live here anywhere?” unit. Who knows? Before too long they might even offer a “Where was old Tempelhof airport?” plug-in.

“After fifty feet, run into the Sony Center. Then turn right.”

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