squirm

Berliners are better than their reputation

or at least that's what Herr Doktor Goebbels proposed during a 1935 speech on this day at the Tempelhof Airfield. Hey, fuck you too Joe!

continuing our series of annoying quizzes

check yourself before you wreck yourself - or at least your chances of german citizenship....

drat

foiled again!

188 years ago

8 out of 10

that was my score. take yer chances at the national geographic's geography bee...

crumpets

and coffee saturday at a villa in berlin-dahlem. here i would meet my first actual anglicans - they seemed almost normal! of great interest was the vacant lot next door at number 24. a hillock of clay and a dozen small rosebushes huddled together providing the only evidence that the lot had once been the site of a luxurious villa, home to swedish chanson and film star zarah leander. the following day found us wandering through friedrichshagen, marvelling at the lakefront villas before venturing into the waterworks museum, which provided a look into the murky history of berlin's water systems. afterwards by tram and ferry to a late lunch in rahnsdorf where, at twilight, mosquitoes the size of small birds emerge from the pines.

in preparation for the celebration

of his 112th birthday this weekend, ernst udet's grave has been gussied up a bit. new white gravel, potted flowers, a grave candle, and a new plaque honor the earthbound flying ace. until yesterday the ivy had crept tastefully over the grave but it's now been pushed back with a rather tacky green plastic border. they say graves are more for the living than the dead and of course there is no accounting for taste...but still....

gusow - mittelpunkt der welt

the chill april clouds parted just enough yesterday to allow for a expedition into the brandenburgensian hinterlands. destination - schloss neuhardenberg to hear two dresdeners, durs grünbein and ingo schulze, read from their work and discuss the beginnings of their ink stained careers as part of renatus deckert's program 'wie menschen zum schreiben kommen' which follows his recent anthology 'das erste buch. schriftsteller über ihr literarisches debüt'. a bit thick for my blood but since ingo is a friend of a friend (and i had heard him read last year with günter grass at the adk) it seemed like a fine excuse to venture out amidst the pines. reaching the platform at berlin-lichtenberg i was heartened to see a rather new talent train operated by neb (the niederbarnimer eisenbahn). a welcome change from the old db regional bahn line. the sleek bombardier talent is quite comfortable, with plenty of space for bicycles, and boasts internet access, potable yet inexpensive coffee, a friendly staff, and large windows to watch the countryside roll by. running hourly between berlin-lichtenberg and kostryn at the border the talent makes wandering the mark brandenburg easier than ever.

debarking at seelow-gusow we pedalled over to schloss gusow to see old fieldmarshall derfflinger's digs. fontane remarks that schloss gusow is not architecturally significant but i would note that it does have a sort of disheveled charm, mostly due to the prussian history museum the current owners have installed in the rooms and the rangy park behind it, which would be quite at home in an edward gorey tale. in the dim stuffy rooms which comprise the museum the local history as it pertains to brandenburg, prussia and germany is illustrated by an assortment of books, furniture, and paintings, as well as busts and other objects - but most importantly by dozens of dioramas castles, battles, citizens and soldiers all rendered in tin. the museum's caretaker (and i suspect, its curator), initially gruff and suspicious, grew friendly and animated as soon as we paid the three and a half euro entrance fee. he then instructed us as to gusow's pivotal spot in world history - specifically its role in the destruction of three great empires. apparently the goths, vandals and assorted 'germanic tribesman' that brought down rome were quite enamored of the area and used it as a base for their attacks on the empire. later napoleon would convene three hundred thousand troops here for his march to moscow - of whom only eight thousand would return. finally the last great battle against hitler's empire - misnamed the battle of seelow heights - was actually decided here in gusow since, the russian armor being unable to climb the steep hills, bersarin instructed them to advance along the rail lines, the same lines we had just ridden out from berlin! truly the center of the world, we shall have to keep our eyes peeled to see how gusow brings the american and nascent chinese empires to their knees.

Sheer Art Attack

today for my mittagspause i pedalled down turmstrasse to the Galerie Nord in order to check out their controversial ZoG-Surrend exhibition of work by danish political provocateurs surrend.org, which reopened this month. It had originally been closed in response to vague stone throwing threats by from even more vague 'muslim groups' six local youths who objected to the appearance of the ka'aba in one of their political posters. surrend artists are expert at making "fun of the world’s powerful men and crazy ideological conflicts" and in this collection direct their graphic attentions toward bush, putin, israel, iran, burma, and the npd (one poster suggests giving a german state to the sinti as reparations). i hadn't been in the gallery for thirty seconds and was still getting my bearings when a woman suddenly begin screaming at the top of her lungs, delivering her judgement that it was a "filthy nazi exhibition". a staff member approached her to confer and another helpfully held out an informative brochure but it soon became obvious that, not only had she had missed the point of the exhibition, but she was also a bit unbalanced. eventually - to a chorus of raised eyebrows - she was escorted from the building, and stood outside bellowing her criticisms for the benefit of passersby...i suppose satiric irony is not everyone's forté...

revenge is a dish

best served cold and with klezmer accompaniment....

the roots of fascism

finally revealed....a romanticism stripped of its mystery and reduced to a pastel shaded, kitsch sentimentalism...

the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

most of us have no choice as to when we are born. the date arrives and out we pop like a bun freshly browned in the oven. this leaves us in the vulnerable position of sharing a birthday with the high and the low. so one can imagine my feelings upon realizing this morning that i share my special day with the unwholesome erwin kemna - treasurer of that most boorish of german political parties, the npd. but yet the stain spreads! it turns out that herr kemna is also suspected of embezzling almost a million clams from party coffers, having made a long series of transfers from party accounts to the account of his gift boutique in ladbergen! or perhaps this is only an unfortunate mistake and the npd was merely purchasing large numbers of diminutive hummel führer figurines for the party faithful....

payback is a bitch

Who will stop the Danish - Ukrainian conspiracy against Germany?

A map from a Ukraine Cognita tourist brochure in last Thursday's WSJ Europe Edition.

The Mystery

of the Bundeswehr's spectacular toilet paper usage has been solved.....

Too Much Information

this weekend. to wit

- 19th century french paintings from the met
- jim jones and the peoples temple
- piranesi's views of rome
- uli richter's fashion from berlin
- georg cantor driven mad by contemplating infinity
- eine armee gretchen
- the love letter of a portuguese nun

i can only begin to imagine what devil's brew these are cooking up in my delicate psyche....

goodbye scythians

yesterday, after spending the afternoon pacing a black mare around the riding hall and musing over the bulky sculptures of henry moore, we spent an hour or two wandering through the gropius bau's exhibition "Under the Sign of the Golden Griffin - The Royal Tombs of the Scythians" gawking at the golden treasures. a far flung empire of horse riding wanderers, the scythians roamed the steppes from central europe to eastern asia centuries before the rise of christianity, warring against each other and the peoples that bordered their extensive realm. as my psyche is being trampled beneath hooves in preparation for my trip to transylvania next week, i noted with interest the close relationship between these nomadic tribes and their steeds, many of which were found buried in elaborate graves, complete with golden bridles and elaborate headgear. even the star of the exhibit - a scythian warrior mummified by burial in ice for a thousand years - was not without an equestrian tribute, as he had an ornate tribal image of a horse tattooed over his right shoulder. today is the exhibit's final day, it will be pulled down on tuesday (in part by my good friend Ulf who helped build it back in July), so if you didn't get a chance to see it - well, you're shit out of luck.

give a fella a hand wouldja pal?

Took a jaunt up to Wismar over the weekend in preparation for the longer trek through the Carpathians next month. Not on horseback this time, but with Deutsche Bahn, taking advantage of the very reasonably priced 'Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket'. Drag up to four of your friends out on a daytrip to a remote village for only thirty three euros! The Carpathian connection stems from the filming of Nosferatu (both Murnau's and Herzog's), which used the medieval harbor town as a backdrop for the Vampyre's nocturnal mischief. The day was spent between the town's renowned brick churches, medieval market square, and eating ice cream by the harbor while watching sailing ships (with real sails no less!) ply the narrow channel. The city museum also made for a bit of edutainment when, upon lifting the white cotton light protection covering one of the vitrines, we were confronted with this pair of severed hands! Once belonging to a sixteenth century murder victim, insult was added to injury when the hands were presented to the judge to establish a case against the accused murderer. Perhaps it was felt that if the accused were truly guilty he would be inspired to confess to his murderous deed when the mummified fingers pointed toward the dock!

T.G.I.F.

the workweek was hell!

my new neighbor

Herr Worrmann lived next door at Wolliner Strasse 3. This new Stolperstein just appeared in front of his old building. I wonder if he and Herr Holzheim spoke in the stairwell, or had a drink together to discuss the worsening times.

project for a new amerikan century

in an interview with Deutsche Welle published on the anniversary of his father's attempted assassination of Hitler Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg had this to say:

What is the significance, in your opinion, of the events of July 20 for Germany and the world -- and for you personally?

I don't want to draw any lessons for the German people or the whole world. But perhaps you can say one thing. If you feel a sense of moral duty then you have to act upon that. This isn't a political issue. It also isn't about whether you are a democrat or not. It's a question of morality. If you have the opportunity to do something about it, can you allow a people to be governed by criminals -- even if they have been elected by the people?

Happy Birthday Amerika

one wouldn't guess it to look at me, antiamerican nihilist that i am, but as a wee child i was a very patriotic fellow. i suspect that the absence of my father prompted me to take the fathers' of the land of my birth as my very own. each evening as i tucked myself into my faux colonial style bed (do i remember bed clothes of red, white and blue?) i was observed by the kindly yet firm visages of george washington (as channeled by gilbert stuart) and abraham lincoln, whose portraits hung on either side of my diminutive bier. there was also a nameless roman centurion in the mix, these 8x11's having been purchased from my elementary school book buying program, the arrival of whose catalog was a highlight of my month. independence day at this time always meant a walk past the 7/11 and the post office to the local chevrolet dealer for a day of hot dogs, popcorn and soda. in the evening i would be forced to expend a treasured collection of fireworks, whose brilliant showers of sparks i would have rehearsed in the days since the purchase of the varicolored fountains, whistlers, sparklers and lowly snakes. in years to come i would encounter more facets of the fourth - rock against reagan, weed, the rockets red glare of acid and cops on horseback and astride motorcycles harassing the freedom loving folk (this was well before protest cages, extraordinary rendition and abu ghraib made a laughing stock of american ideals) and ever so gently my childhood patriotism was dissolved in the vast mirror seas of our military-industrial-entertainment-surveillance society.

WWII - the way it really was

meanwhile on the eastern front

today was a special day for Ernst Udet! He was honored by the Veterans Association of Luftwaffe Fighter-Wing III, which was named after him subsequent to his suicide in 1941. Cycling by his grave this morning i couldn't help but stop to admire the fine floral arrangement presented to the earthbound aviator... carry on Ernst!

speaking of german aviation innovations

my first bike here in berlin was a spiffy metallic blue number with Condor painted in large silver letters along the frame.  i picked it up at the turkish flea market at moritzplatz after engaging in a token bit of bargaining with the father and son sales team.  since blue is certainly not my color i soon had good friend ulf paint the bike black, but still enjoyed the thought that my bike was a distant relation of the Condor Legion, the german 'volunteer' squadrons which supported the falange in the spanish civil war despite the public position of neutrality and the signing of a non-intervention pact.  this participation allowed the air crews involved to gain valuable combat experience and the air command to develop their theories of strategic bombing not to mention give warm fuzzies to Hitler and Franco as both dreamed of the best way to take advantage of the other's good will. Meanwhile, on this night seventy years ago, the germand and italian air commanders began Operation Rügen - the terror bombing of Guernica.  the near total destruction of the basque city and accompanying civilian casualties were the beginning of a new type of warfare in which military air power would be used in an attempt to terrorize and demoralize the enemy's civilian population.  The incendiary bombs generated a firestorm and three quarters of the city's buildings were destroyed and hundreds killed or injured. It wasn't until two days later that an account of the bombing would reach the media resulting in worldwide condemnation (and Picasso's largest painting to date).  Guernica was a historical turning point and foreshadows such horrors as Coventry, Dresden, Hiroshima, Cambodia and even the attacks on the world trade center.  gee, i think i am even more pleased than before over my bike's new paint job....

stayed up late

reading Spengler and watching video girls attempt to seduce me with obscene suggestions involving my telephone. the decline of the west indeed..... in the section 'what is world history' i came across this quote from goethe which speaks to a particular illness of mine, my constant craving for a programme of action - "what is important in life is life, and not a result of life"

into the ether

now that the axis of the seasons has turned, and we return to face our father sun, my morning commute is again on two wheels. riding through invaliden friedhof each morning i hail the buried flying ace with a hearty 'Morgen Ernst!' rudely he has not, as of yet, returned my greeting....

lost weekend

despite the sunny weather saturday found me in darkness. sitting in our tiny lichtlblick kino watching peter lorre's singular directorial effort der verlorene (the lost one). the film, made upon his return to germany in 1951, opens with Lorre as Dr. Neumeister, a physician in a displaced persons camp who is suddenly joined by one Nowak, an associate from his wartime past. as the two men reacquaint themselves in the canteen that evening, we learn the truth about the doctor, his associate and their shared dark past. the film is a meditation on murder, seeing, silence and the burial of truth beneath opportunism - themes which would also haunt it's release and subsequent disappearance (after a short ten day run) from german cinemas. the film's relentless confrontation of historical horror was unacceptable in the germany of 1951 which, on the verge of its miraculous postwar economic recovery, could not bear the sight of its recent crimes. lorre, silenced in his homeland, went back to hollywood where he would live until his death in 1964.

   the next day we left before noon to ride out the the grunewald. in preparation for a planned trek this autumn through the transylvanian countryside i am training to ride (horses, that is). the riding association of uncle tom's cabin (don't ask) has a riding school and so we went out to make the proper arrangements. afterwards, having noted it on the map of riding trails taped to the door of the barn, we decided to bicycle through the grunewald to the selbstmord friedhof (suicide's graveyard) - who could resist? though setting off in a general northwesterly direction, we soon became turned around and lost among the dense network of walking, riding and cycling trails running through the forest. and we weren't the only ones - as we stopped to ask directions from the other cyclists and wanderers we would often as not be asked the same questions - where had we come from? what was down the next fork or over the next ridge? the woods were full of the desperately lost and disoriented - i think i even spied a group of east prussian refugees still fleeing the advancing russians sixty years later. and one can also imagine the looks of horror we received inquiring for directions to the suicide's graveyard... luckily we soon ran into a orchestra conductor out for a constitutional with the faithful hound and young 'protege'. he closed his eyes and waved an invisible baton, directing us through the forest to the banks of the havel where he indicated we could find a map for the remainder of the journey.

   our conductor also remarked that the cemetery was no longer known as the selbstmord friedhof nor the alternate name of friedhof der namenlosen (graveyard of the nameless) but was now officially designated the friedhof grunewald-forst (graveyard of the grunewald forest). the old names reflect the history of the cemetery, which was founded by the local foresters as a burial ground for the bodies that they pulled from the river, whose currents had the habit of dropping the floaters from the big city here along the reeds. since suicide is a mortal sin, the local churches refused the dead entry into the their churchyards and the woodsmen provided this ground in the stillness of the forest as a final resting place for these tortured souls. as the years progressed it became a resting place not only for the suicides and unknown dead of faust's metropolis but also for those who preferred to rest in eternity untroubled by the petty badgerings of religious faith.

   as promised, after a bit more wandering through the forest we found ourselves on the banks of the havel. the warm sun had brought innumerable families to the water's edge where their children were busy harassing the local waterfowl and being repayed in kind. finding the promised map we soon determined that we were several kilometers southwest of the cemetery. given our propensity for misdirecting ourselves we thought it best to ride north along the havel - keep the river on your right (or in this case left) and all that. the next few kilometers found us dodging butterflies, toddlers, teens and ancients along the bike path until we reached schildhorn where we paused for refreshment before heading back up into the forest.

   leaving the waters edge and riding up into treeline, the lowering sun reddened the trunks of the pines. before long, a clue we were headed in the right direction. a wooden sign pointing down the trail and announcing in large letters 'zum friedhof'. heeding, we found ourselves a moment later at the gate of the graveyard. as we wandered between the plots, we spied a small stone with a pair of names, upon which rested a bottle of wine, a lantern and several pebbles. it was the grave of one margarete päffgen and her daughter christa - better known as NICO. singer-songwriter, fashion model, actress, keyboard player and warhol superstar, NICO was buried here with her mother after her sudden death in ibiza in 1988. funny really, as we have been listening to NICO quite a bit lately after reading simon reynolds writing about her in the guardian. her two albums the marble index and desertshore are to be rereleased together this year as the frozen borderline. siren of the lost, NICO was our youthful companion of many a dark and delirious night and we've even a vague memory of seeing her once in concert. our recall of the evening a bit dim, the main thrust being that she was extraordinarily late to come on stage.

   leaving the chelsea girl and onward through the graveyard - past the final resting places of the nameless fished out of the river, the unknown soldiers, the russian war prisoners of wwi, lost beloved parents and the children who perished on christmas eve. all of them buried here in the middle of this pine expanse beneath the dome of the sky. as the hour was growing late and the woods were darkening we left to make our way back into the city, the low wall of the graveyard disappearing behind the pale screen of the pines reaching heavenwards from the sandy hills....

the gift that keeps on giving

WWII - the big one - is never, ever over, over here - the latest news: norwegian war babies are appealing to the european court of human rights, claiming they deserve compensation for abuse suffered since the end of the war. (one notes that Anni-Frid Lyngstad of Abba is a war child - which would make the swedish supergroup one of the nazis much feared vengeance weapons). in other news, those rascally german catholic bishops (thinking, perhaps, of Archbishop Orsenigo) are having fun putting their feet in each other's mouths. During a trip to israel one compared the west bank's 'separation barrier' to the berlin wall, while another compared ramallah to the warsaw ghetto. of course the outrage poured in from the expected sources. more outrage was to be found in the east after erika steinbach, head of the german league of expellees, compared the intransigence of the polish government over the question of building a memorial center to german wartime expellees to the extremism of the german far right parties (which are still hungering for those prewar borders). while the SPD and the CDU made the expected tut-tutting noises, green party secretary volker beck hopped on the bandwagon stating "the League of Polish Families, which supplies the culture minister, has neo-Nazi traits". one might also note the overwhelming catholicism of the polish conservatives. this skirmish comes on the heels of sunday's broadcast on ARD of 'die flucht' - a two part drama recounting the flight of a fictional "countess Lena of Mahlenberg" together with the other 14 million ethnic germans before the advancing russian troops. needless to say discussions of german suffering at the end of the war always make the poles a bit nervous. perhaps what we need is a strong leader who can lead us out of this endless nattering and arguing....someone who can act as a sort of guide during these troubled times.....

for god's sake

not the belgians too?

ear of squirm: (Radio Nova) 's (Radio Nova) -

Happy New Year!

but please party responsibly - we don't want a repeat of last year - waking up in the Paris Morgue in the year 1883!

let it be known far and wide across the land!

I will soon again attain my rightful place - I will again be Kaiser!

and this morning

snow. granted, i woke late after a silent morning interrupted only by the yawning of cats. seeing a glaze on the roof of a house on the corner i assumed at first that the night air had simply occasioned the frost, but spying a bit closer i spotted the tiny snow specks drifting down from our refrigerated sky. and now it has begun to lay a thin blanket upon the autos, the heaps of dirt piled up by workers and the abandoned bicycles in the street, the snow gods having decided that the solstice and christmas are safely past and the winter can begin in earnest. it eases my heart which had begun to doubt the possibility of snow in this greenhouse world into which we have shut ourselves - pulling fast the door and listening for that doomladen 'click' - like a lone child trapping himself in a dead refrigerator thoughtlessly abandoned on the street.
a few days ago i thrilled to see Unheimliche Geschichten (Tales of the Macabre) at the Babylon. Richard Oswald's 1919 film adaption of five strange tales (authored by Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson among others) stars Conrad Veidt, Reinhold Schünzel and, most importantly, Anita Berber. I was especially excited to see the film since finishing Mel Gordon's biography of Berber and becoming better acquainted with this dark goddess of Berlin. Berber is presented as 'die Dirne' (the Harlot) in the film's introduction, her portrait hanging in an antiquariat between those of Veidt's 'der Tod' (Death) and Schünzel's 'der Teufel' (the Devil). At the stroke of midnight the portraits come alive, spring from out their frames and, after squirming about lasciviously, begin to read from the dusty volumes which are everywhere in the shop. The five stories which follow are tales of desire, madness and death. a man kills his wife, his crime only to be discovered by her lover, a mysterious lovely perishes of the plague, a man murders his friend for the attentions of a dancer, a mysterious club produces suicides in its members, and a baron is plagued by ghosts after importuning the delicate wife of a nobleman. Conrad Veidt is excellent as Death - his lank figure and skull like visage is bone chilling at first glance. Anita Berber is of course dreamy in this, her seventh film. She had already worked with Oswald several times and had played the lead in his film Prostitution. By 1919 she was the face of the erotic madness which was sweeping Berlin. Her naked dances were performed to acclaim (in the third tale of this film she is the dancer that drives men to murder, mad with desire, and we can witness her amazing talent), her scandalous personal habits were becoming legend, her life of drugs and drink had not yet taken its toll and her fame as an 'incarnation of the perverse' was growing night after night. Though in less than ten years she would be dead of tuberculosis, she was earning the lasting honors and fame which still attend to her memory and which still drive we humble imps of the perverse mad with dark desire...

Season's Greetings!

from old europe!

apparently

Tom Stephens is not the Ipswich Strangler - however magistrates have intimated that he will be tried and punished for his abominable crimes of posting 'bizarre' photos on his Myspace page! The relationship between Stephen Wright, charged with the five murders, and criminal cartoon mastermind Joe Barbera remains unclear...

for the children

a very special christmas message from a very special elf!

a bad month for bad men

first Rummy and now this! I certainly hope that the Turkmenistan detectives investigating Turkmenbashi's untimely demise check for traces of that Polonium 210 which is all the rage these days among a certain set. and they should also check his MySpace page for any favorite characters which might link him to that criminal cartoon mastermind Joe Barbera (he and Bill Hanna were often referred to as 'the young turks' of the satan controlled animation world) whose diabolical grasp stretches beyond the world of the living....

keeping up with the joneses

or in the case of this conference - the Ahmadinejads.

boarding a train to nowhere

after much arm twisting on the part of the government Deutsche Bahn has finally relented. The railway had previously refused to allow an exhibition detailing the deportations of jews during the NS regime to be mounted in its railway stations. DB chief Mehdorn had suggested that the stations were not the right venue for the topic, suggesting a museum would be better as the stations are too crowded and people are in to much of a hurry - thereby showing that he missed the goddamn point entirely. The exhibition follows a similar successful french project detailing the deportations of 11,000 french jewish children. Looks like DB is practicing a little Vergangenheitsbewältigung of its own....

on this day

in 1913, Kaiser Wilhelm II forbid officers in uniform from dancing the Tango. A mere thirty two years afterwards the Nuremberg Trials would begin - examining the crimes of some of those same military officers under the leadership of the psychotic lance corporal from Linz. Coincidence?

surfing the doom

   Friday morning passing through Invaliden Friedhof I remembered that it was the anniversary of Ernst Udet's suicide. Though it had slipped my mind I had entertained the idea of leaving flowers on the grave of the aerial joy boy gone bad and was touched to see that someone had placed a few white blossoms on his ivy covered resting place. A few minutes later, at the foot of the Putlitzbrucke (upon which the annual floral remembrances of Kristallnacht still adorn the Jewish Deportation Memorial), i was stopped by the cops who had set up a bicycle traffic stop. The kindly bearded man in green informed me that riding with headphones could get me a 15 euro fine and that i was riding on the bike path on the wrong side of the street. These Germans seem to have constructed a very complex and multidimensional set of bike path regulations, for the best of all concerned no doubt. After walking my bike to the other side of the street and riding out of sight i popped my headphones back in to listen final moments of BBC's The World Today.
   Saturday I made my way across town to purchase a new suitcase as i must fly down to Munich tomorrow. Finding the address of the Kofferhaus Witt on the Rimowa website i noted that they were founded in 1923. To be in business in Berlin, through three successive governments over the course of eighty three years they must be doing something right (or something terribly, terribly wrong...). After a friendly greeting, the opening and shutting of various suitcases and much goldilocking on my part, I finally left, my new Bolero Cabin Trolley by my side. Later that evening - Diamanda Galas at the Passionskirche - clad in black, her voice inhabited by the doomed souls of centuries, she presented her 'Songs of Exile' as the closing event of the international women musicians festival. While it has been years since i had last been exposed to her aural exorcisms and diabolic decibels she has lost none of her ability to raise hairs on the back of one's neck like a snake charmer and the darkened apse of the Passionskirche was the perfect setting for her mournful moans and satanic screeching.
   finally, yesterday i finally made it to see 'An Inconvenient Truth', Al Gore's cinematic presentation of his global warming slide show. While i am familiar with many of the factoids which made up the presentation, seeing them assembled in one place accompanied by the effective graphical representation of the statistical data proved to be quite disturbing. glad that my apartment is on the highest hill in Berlin and i know how to swim....that should allow for an extra couple of days before the final cataclysm....

the spy who went out with a cold

This morning I was surprised to hear that Markus Wolf died yesterday. The former head of the East German General Reconnaissance Administration (HVA) was responsible for running spies against the west and was once known as 'the man without a face' as western intelligence agencies were frustrated in their attempts to get a picture of the master spy. He was not invisible to me as i stood not three feet from him at the Berlinale in 2005!
But i do know what frustration is - i just found out about a Guy Maddin retrospective which has been running for the past week at Kino Arsenal and was frustrated to learn that i had missed a chance to see both 'Careful' and 'Tales from the Gimli Hospital'. not all is lost however, i still have the chance to enjoy 'Sissy Boy Slap Party'...

and now

the FBI is trying to get us to do their work for them!

marching ever onward towards our glorious destiny

"More than 50 million people were systematically murdered in the past 100 years -- the century of mass murder: From 1915 to 1923 Ottoman Turks slaughtered up to 1.5 million Armenians. In mid-century the Nazis liquidated six million Jews, three million Soviet POWs, two million Poles, and 400,000 other "undesirables". Mao Zedong killed 30 million Chinese, and the Soviet government murdered 20 million of its own people. In the 1970s the communist Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million of their fellow Cambodians. In the 1980s and early '90s Saddam Hussein's Baath Party killed 100,000 Kurds. Rwanda's Hutu-led military wiped out 800,000 members of the Tutsi minority in the 1990s. Now there is genocide in Sudan's Darfur region. In sheer numbers, these and other killings make the 20th century the bloodiest period in human history."

National Geographic, January 2006 (via MFDJ)

another year older and deeper in debt

it had to happen sometime - i got older! every year around this time the bony hand of fate reaches out and slides another marker across the table. to solemnly observe the occasion in my fashion i slept in late, later taking my trusty steed the bicycle out into the mark brandenburg. caught the regional line east at Berlin Lichtenberg and debarking a few kilometers short of poland (poland - ha - a historical fiction!) we pedalled our way through the village of Gusow, taking a right at the fork in the road overseen by the bust of Theodor Fontane. the day was sunny and the brandenburgensian landscape glorious yellows and orange bordering the yet green fields of various vegetations. arriving at Schloss Neuhardenberg we gobbled down a tasty potato soup before wandering through their current exhibition which consists of thousands of swinish collectibles. happy swine, wealthy swine, nazi swine, military swine, jewish swine, lucky swine, prussian swine and sexy swine. Smaller exhibitions took up the topics of the two hundred year history of Schloss Neuhardenberg, the Neuhardenberg family and fate of Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg (involved in the resistance, failed suicide attempt upon his arrest by the gestapo, survived Sachsenhausen, Schloss expropriated by the GDR, lived in Hessen until his death in 1958) as well as surviving works by Schinkel in poland (poland - ha - a historical fiction!). leaving Neuhardenberg the sun hung low above the plain. we found an old decommissioned bike path through the forest and back fields to Wulkow (the signage indicated it was no longer to be used but we were urged onward by an old man with a collie and old blue bicycle). darkness thickened in the rutted path between the pines and by the time we emerged onto the road to Trebnitz the stars were creeping into the sky. It should be noted that Trebnitz was once the home of Melchior von Pfuehl, a renowned alchemist and necromancer of the late 16th century. arriving breathless at the train platform (just past the stork's nest that crowns the chimney of the abandoned coke ovens) we found we had missed the train by minutes and would have to wait hours for the next departure west. the evening was growing colder and as i was without a jacket we made our way to a local kneipe - Gasthof zur Ostbahn - where the locals gave us the hairy eyeball but remained at a comfortable distance. Later aboard our train back the big city - we perused the pages of the eight volume set of Fontane's "Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg" which i had presented to myself as a birthday present... but wait, birthday not yet over...next episode - die Perversionen der Großstadt!

Mayhem in the A.M.

as mentioned previously, part of my morning commute carries me along the Spandauer Schiffahrtskanal which provides a route into Mitte for the tourist boats which ply the waters around the city center (this morning it was the diminutive Pirol making its way to its duty station), as well as the barges which work Berlin's waterways. The barges bring building materials, gravel and sand down from quarries and loading docks near the airport and as they return they remove the detritus of our ruined civilization (which currently includes the wreckage of the Palast der Republik). The path along the canal carries me through Invaliden Friedhof, the final resting place for many a german military man, and this damp october morning along the gravel path i spied the simple headstone of german wwi flying ace Ernst Udet. Udet is one of the legendary german flying aces of WWI, flying with the Red Baron at the dawn of aerial warfare. A dashing character, he would make films with Leni Riefenstahl before heading up the developmental wing of the Reich's Air Ministry. Eventually, driven to despair by military politics and despondent over his girlfriend, Udet committed suicide, shooting himself in the head while speaking with her on the telephone. As Udet predicted, his suicide was kept from the public, instead it was reported that he died a hero, testing a new experimental aircraft. I pedal onwards, in the nearby waters drift two swans through the cool morning mists, while the fishermen toss out their first lines of the day....

more tempests

in the german teapot.
   First off, Thomas Klippstein, the director of the Hotel Adlon (who was named "2006 hotel director of the year" by Impulse) is rejecting allegations that he worked as a Stasi informant. It seems that the concierge of the notorious Hotel Neptun was providing the Stasi with information regarding the hotel's many western guests. The concierge - codenamed 'Benjamin' - was, according to the DPA news agency, named 'Thomas Klippstein', born in 1962 and moved to Dresden in 1988. These facts also coincide with the biography of the Adlon's director. Klippstein issued an oddly worded press release reiterating the fact that a district judge had called for an injunction against these allegations saying "The court agreed with my lawyers, that media coverage about me was illegal and violated my rights,"...illegal perhaps, but incorrect? i am afraid i am forced to book my wealthy friends elsewhere!
   next up, more dust for the Gunter GraSS dust up. It seems that Herr Grass, in two recently uncovered letters, urged SPD politician Karl Schiller to admit he had been a member of the SA writing:

"Dear Karl Schiller, once more I would like to remind you of our discussion and ask you outright to speak openly at the next opportunity – and I mean publicly – about your political past during the Nazi era. ..... I would hope you would openly admit your mistake. That would be a relief for you, and at the same time it would have the beneficial effect of a cleansing rain."

looks like old Gunter was himself trying to stay out of the weather...

there

goes the neighborhood!. beginning in 2007 Romania and Bulgaria will be inside the tent pissing out - one hopes anyway...

what could be

more kitsch than bad art by adolf? fake bad art by adolf...

meanwhile back in the middle ages

the pope welcomes representatives of the Umma to Castle Gandolfo. it indicates the weak nature of the modern world that it will be no more than series of dull discussions in a chamber of hideously campy decor. gone are the glory days of the past when he would have had them walled up inside the castle fastness or trapped them inside an outbuilding to be burned to the ground as he enjoyed a grand supper, the wine sweetened by the shrieks of countless human torches. since the end of the inquisition the catholic church has been so b-o-r-i-n-g.....

goodnight sweetheart redux

this past weekend witnessed the death of that dragon lady Oriana Fallaci. That italian lady invited a lot of controversy recently with her polemics against not only islamic extremists but islam itself. She was also an icon of sexy seventies eurofeminist chic - what with her raven black hair, talonlike fingernails, ever present cigarette and a name which hinted of sodomy....

like a dead fish wrapped in newspaper

Ian Buruma laments the Gunter GraSS controversy and praises the new memoir in the New Yorker....but really, Ian, baby, that's SO last week!

the boys are back in town

a happy day indeed! today, in Dresden, three rabbis walked into a bar - no wait - that's another story.... three rabbis will be ordained after completing their studies at Abraham Geiger College. Daniel Alter, Malcolm Mattitiani, and Tomas Kucera are the first rabbis to be ordained in Germany since the last jewish seminary was closed in 1942. Tis a comforting fact - that flowers can grow on the ashes of history (given that our world seems bound upon history's pyre).

for whom the bell tolls

Joachim Fest, famed biographer of Adolf Hitler has died at age 79. From his memoirs, 'Ich nicht' (due out later this year)

"Very few people were so much fun to fight with as Ulrike Meinhoff, every time we met at a party, we'd go to a corner and talk politics."

Fest also had an amusing view on the recent Gunter GraSS dust-up

"In an interview with the German news weekly Der Spiegel, Fest accused Grass of having dealt "lightly" with his past while posing as a moral authority. "I wouldn't even want to buy a used car from this man," Fest said.

ear of squirm: Sven Vath's 06 - Breakthrough (Thomas Krome'S Breakthrough Mix)

meanwhile across the channel

it is the anniversary of both princess diana's fatal car accident and the death of 'Polly' Nichols, the first victim of jack the ripper. coincidence or something more?

once more with feeling

spent sunday evening out at the Waldbuehne, an open air theatre on the grounds of the Olympic Stadium designed after an amphitheatre in the ancient greek city of Epidaurus. It was here that the gymnastics competitions were held during the eleventh summer Olympics. Before settling into our seats to watch Max Raabe and his Palace Orchestra through a steady drizzle, we took a walk around the Olympic stadium to check out Karl Abiker's sculptures of the Discus Throwers and the Relay Racers, Josef Wackerle's Horse Tamers and the triumphalist architecture. The sky cooperated, providing fantastic perspectives which would have pleased the architects. Unfortunately the two Arno Breker sculptures (which caused such controversy during the world cup) are not located on the actual grounds of the stadium but are some distance away at Jahnplatz, an area which is not currently open to the public. and though the weather here has already turned towards the autumn, skies gone grey and drizzling, there was still a gaggle of young boys disporting themselves on the diving platforms.

what a long strange trip it's been

this week, for that most maligned of icons, the swastika. yesterday an eatery in mumbai conceded to changing its name from "Hitler's Cross" - along with its swastika logo - after protests by the local citizenry. The owners, initially refusing the name change, did not indicate how they expected to sell more vittels to the local office drones by adding the national socialist motif. Now appears a NYT story about the controversy surrounding the salvaging of nazi battleship Graf Spee off the coast of Montevideo. The pocket battleship, scuttled by its captain in 1940 to prevent it falling into british hands, is making headlines due to the recovery by salvage engineers of its cannon, rangefinder and the tailpiece, which features an eagle sitting atop, yes, you guessed it, a big ole nasty swastika! While a final resting place for the tailpiece has not yet been found (efforts are again bent on preventing it falling into the wrong hands - though this time those hands belong to neo-nazis rather than the british) the sixty year submerged swastika's ju-ju is still so powerful as to require it to be covered and "photographs be controlled". sigh...somehow i feel that if we believe we can combat the destructive impulses of humanity simply by hiding their symbols, the battle may already be lost, however be that as it may - onward into the breach!

better read than dead

the dull pain of my return from the too short vacation was partially alleviated by the appearance of a packet from Amazon. Inside my long delayed copy of Albrecht Haushofer's 'Moabit Sonnets', a collection of eighty short pieces penned from inside his cell in Moabit Prison (oddly enough quite near to my own prison/office!). Haushofer, imprisoned for years due to suspected complicity in the Stauffenberg plot, was finally released on April 23, 1945 as soviet troops neared the prison. His moment of freedom was brief however, as a group of SS men gathered Albrecht and other newly released prisoners in a vacant lot and executed them. His body was found by his brother three weeks later, with one hand beneath his coat still clutching the five sheets containing these poems. He was buried nearby and the sonnets were soon published by the allies (though my edition is from Norton) as a touchstone of german resistance to the nazis. This german military resistance is also a subject in Hans Hellmut Kirst's 'Night of the Generals' (which accompanied me back from the great satan). This first work I have read by Kirst was the source of the 1967 film starring Peter O'Toole and Donald Pleasence and sets the hunt for a sex killer against the backdrop of the nazi military machine and the resistance. This paperback edition was published to support the film and is a artifact of the he-man era of the mid to late sixties where the targeted demographic of Kirst's novels were the sort of men who might subscribe to Swank, and smoke Trues while chatting up stewardesses at the hotel bar over a scotch on the rocks... Meanwhile , not content with carrying only one historical krimi on the plane, I also purchased Furst's 'The Foreign Correspondent' to read over the atlantic. While the narrative and style is on a par with his earlier works this new book opens no new avenues but seems more a uninspired repetition of earlier motifs (the emigre, the woman, the shady intelligence operatives) - though this may be more a factor of my preference for the lost streets of eastern european cities rather then the arrondissements of Paris....

mean streets

yesterday marked the end of part II of Babylon's Stummfilmkonzerte (silent film concerts). This last film was an exceptional pleasure as it dates from the exact time period in which Hans Poelzig constructed the Babylon Kino and its surrounding apartment houses. Our pianist von Bothmer accompanied Carl Froehlich's 1928 film 'Zuflucht' (Refuge), a 'homecoming film' in which our handsome hero Martin (Francis Lede