Postwall Germany Fall 2009

Friday, January 1, 2010

Christopher Caldwell on Muslim Integration: 'It's Much Better If Things Are Discussed Openly' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Meng Wins Stern Prize

http://www3.davidson.edu/cms/x38476.xml

Award From German Institute Recognizes History Professor Michael Meng's Outstanding Dissertation

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Eurozine - Places and strata of memory - Karl Schlögel Approaches to eastern Europe

Eurozine - Places and strata of memory - Karl Schlögel Approaches to eastern Europe
The idea of 1989 as an annus mirabilis in which everything changed is too crude, writes Karl Schlögel. Rather, it was the result of a long incubation period that took a very different course in each Eastern Bloc country. In a benchmark essay for the twentieth anniversary celebrations, Schlögel stresses the entanglements and ambiguities of postwar history and asks whether it is too soon to start talking of a "common European history".

Friday, December 11, 2009

Protest minaret in Switzerland | Geo Quiz | PRI's The World

Monday, December 7, 2009

Herta Müllers Nobel Prize Speech „Jedes Wort weiß etwas vom Teufelskreis“

Herta Müllers Nobelvorlesung: „Jedes Wort weiß etwas vom Teufelskreis“ - Autoren - Feuilleton - FAZ.NET

Herta Müller's Nobel speech in English and in German.

Every word knows something of a vicious circle

DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF was the question my mother asked me every morning, standing by the gate to our house, before I went out onto the street. I didn't have a handkerchief. And because I didn't, I would go back inside and get one. I never had a handkerchief because I would always wait for her question. The handkerchief was proof that my mother was looking after me in the morning. For the rest of the day I was on my own. The question DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF was an indirect display of affection. Anything more direct would have been embarrassing and not something the farmers practiced. Love disguised itself as a question. That was the only way it could be spoken: matter-of-factly, in the tone of a command, or the deft maneuvers used for work. The brusqueness of the voice even emphasized the tenderness. Every morning I went to the gate once without a handkerchief and a second time with a handkerchief. Only then would I go out onto the street, as if having the handkerchief meant having my mother there, too. . . .

Wolfgang Kraushaar: The starting gun for a student movement - signandsight

The news that Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a Stasi spy sheds new light on the birth of '68.

Gerd Koenen: The element of madness - signandsight

Gerd Koenen: The element of madness - signandsight

The element of madness

The history of German terrorism was also the story of the amour fou
between Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader. But this affair caused the
breakup of Ensslin's relationship with Bernward Vesper, who was also
the father of her child. Their letters, dating from 1968/69 while
Ensslin was in Stammheim, offer profound insights into the political
pathology of the time. By Gerd Koenen.