German Joys

Former Synagogue as Gas-Chamber

The Spanish artist Santiago Sierra parked 6 cars in front of a former synagogue in the city of Pulheim, near Cologne. Rubber tubes extend from the autos' exhaust pipes into a top window of the building, pumping carbon monoxide into the building.

Visitors can take a tour, one at a time. They must wear a gas-mask, and are escorted by a fireman. During the tour, they are shown a read-out documenting that the level of carbon monoxide would kill them without the gas-mask.

The installation is part of an 11-year series of Holocaust-related installations and shows in the former synagogue. Sierra says the point of the work is to undo the banalization and the trivialization of the Holocaust.

The FAZ describes (G) the reaction:

The journalist Ralph Giordano criticized the action as an "unparallelled piece of infamy."  "If Sierra had even the smallest inner contact to the world of the victims, he would have ababdoned these doings in Pulheim," said the Holocaust survivor.  The Central Council of Jews in Germany renewed its strong criticism: "This fictional and tasteless artistic spectacle not only violates the dignity of the victims of the Holocaust, but of the entire Jewish community," said General Secretary Stephan J. Kramer.

On the radio this morning, an elderly woman phoned the call-in show supporting the work. She was a Jewish holocaust survivor who had lost over 90 relatives to the Nazis. She said she found Sierra's installation to be a refreshingly blunt way to convey the reality of the Holocaust to a generation which knows it only from TV screens. She admired the way in which the State was brought into the work. Previously, it had herded people into rooms full of invisible, deadly gas. Now, it provides them with protection and escort, precisely to ensure their lives are spared.

Should Translators Go on Strike?

A recent Deutsche Welle article surveys the sorry state of German translators, who get between 14 and 22 Euro a page for some of the hardest (but most rewarding work) there is:

"Whoever says he can live off translating is either lying or doing an unprofessional job," Germany's best-known literary translator, Harry Rowohlt, once quoted a former editor of the Suhrkamp publishing house, Walter Boehlich.

***

"It's my main occupation," [Rowohlt] said. "But if I didn't travel around giving book readings or playing a homeless person on (the TV show) Lindenstrasse, I couldn't afford to be a translator."

Under a new 2002 German copyright law, translators are now entitled to a share of per-book royalties and subsidiary rights. Before, they generally just got a flat 18-20 Euro per page; if the book went on to become a bestseller in Germany, they got nothin'.

The Yugoslavian Matchstick Pimp and Other Characters

When you're confused by the world and need a place to turn, you don't go to some flashy bar full of young advertising executives. You go to your local Kneipe (bar), where the neighborhood's stories are made, told and cherished.

Last night, a friend and I visited one such place, just around the corner from where I live. It's tiny, there's no music, the decor strictly plastic, fibreboard and linoleum. The walls were pink and green, and decorated with posters of Marilyn Monroe and crooked-hanging fantasy landscapes that looked like Yes album covers.  When we decided to play some pool, the owner had to find a cue-ball for us. But he did.

Keynes' Totalitarianism-Ready Theory

John Maynard Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was translated into German in 1936. Keynes wrote a preface for the German edition, in which he noted that Germans had not been able to develop a satisfactory general theory of the economy. Thus must make them sad, Keynes mused: "After all, it is German to like a theory. How hungry and thirsty German economists must feel after having lived all these years without one!"

Happily, Keynes appeared on the scene with a fresh, piping-hot theory in his hands, and one that just happened to be well-suited to contemporary German conditions:

Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of the production and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire. The theory of the psychologi-cal laws relating consumption and saving, the influence of loan expenditure on prices and real wages, the part played by the rate of interest—these remain as necessary ingredients in our scheme of thought.

I make no deep, dark point about Keynes here, I just thought this was rather interesting...

Shiny Happy Germans, Hold Hands. Now!

"The German is friendly," says German Business and Technology Minister Michael Glos says, "he just has to show it."

Glos is worried about the upcoming 2006 soccer world championships. When the world comes to be "Germany's guest" will it leave thinking "golly, those Germans sure were nice," or "they have rods up their asses"? Glos (hardly renowned for cheerfulness himself) wants to use the world championship to dispel the image of the grumpy German. Which means Germans had better get pretty friggin' friendly, pretty friggin' fast.

Glos' comments provided another occasion for Germans to engage in their third-favorite hobby, navel-gazing speculation about What it Means to be German. The local public-radio call in show today hosted Heinz Gruene of the Rheingold Institute. Gruene (G) who doesn't look at all like a Nibelung, researches Germans' attitudes toward themselves, and provided expert input on the questions: Are we really that unfriendly? If so, why?

The callers were, as usual, well-spoken and thoughtful. They seemed to split about 50/50 on the question of whether Germans were really grumpy. Many returned from abroad only to be "slapped in the face" by rudeness when they returned to Germany. Others said it's all a relative thing; lots of the friendliness in other countries is fake and put-on (aufgesetzt), and Germans show friendliness by sincerity and politeness more than frothy good-cheer.

The Joke About the Construction Workers

International Womens' Day is around the corner. To combat the stereotype that women can't tell jokes, German radio's roving around the country asking women to tell their favorites.

Recently they happened a woman who came from a town near the border with the Netherlands, so her favorite was Dutch:

Three workers, a German, a Turk, and a Dutchman, are all eating lunch at a construction site.

The German opens his lunch-box. He takes out his sandwich and looks at it in disgust: "Scheisse! My wife made me a liverwurst sandwich again! I swear, if I get one more liverwurst sandwich, I'm going the jump off the next bridge."

The Turk opens up his lunch-box. "Bok! Lamb döner again!  I swear, if I get lamb again tomorrow, I'll jump off the bridge with you, Karl-Heinz."

The Dutchman opens up his lunch-box. "Pestpokken! Another Gouda sandwich! If that's in my lunchbox tomorrow, I'll join both of you."

The next day, all three open up their lunch-boxes. Again it's liverwurst, lamb döner, and gouda. True to their word, they all write a joint suicide note, go to the nearest bridge and jump off it.

At one of the funerals, the three widows meet each other. The Dutch widow says: "I guess I understand why your husbands did it what they did. The strange thing is, my husband always made his own sandwiches."

The Bach Business

American economist Brad Delong relates the main theme of a lecture he heard recently on Cultural Consumption and Identity in 18th Century Germany by Prof. Michael North (Professor of History Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University, Greifswald):

If, in the late eighteenth century (if you were rich--solidly bourgeois) you wanted to get the score of a piano sonata by [C]arl Philip Emmanuel Bach, it was easy: C.P.E. Bach sold subscriptions and partnered with publishers to make money off of selling scores. He was, among other things, an intellectual property entrepreneur. On the other hand if, in the middle of the eighteenth century, you wanted to get the score of one of Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concertos... you needed to know and be owed a favor by the Kapellmeister of some small princely state who knew and was owed a favor by the Kapellmeister of Frederick the Great and so had a copy of the score that could be recopied by hand. C.P.E. Bach was in lines of business that J.S. Bach was not.

Watch helplessly as German Engineers Un-pimp Your Ride

Too many boring policy monologues here recently, and too little joy.  So let me link to the lively new blog AngloFritz, which recently commented on and trackbacked to two German Joys posts.  [Good point about the recidivism, I'll look into that soon.  Which means more policy, of course.  Pour yourself a stiff drink.]

As I browsed with pleasure through the blog, I found a post linking to recent VW ads in which white-clad German engineers un-pimp, or rather ün-pimp, the rides of several troubled urban youths.  Watch and learn as Karl-Heinz drops some serious Ordnung on the unsuspecting Amis...

Crime, Innocence, and Therapy Part II

A while ago I wrote Part I of a few observations of the German legal system and criminology triggered by the German television documentary "Mask of Evil," which dealt with sex offenders.

By popular demand (err, one reader), here's Part II, which I've been noodling away at for a week or so.  Keep in mind, these are nothing more than undigested, off-the-top-of-my-head musings, which is what blogs are for.  I've also written academic articles on the subject, with footnotes and all, but I'll spare you those.

3.  Bad or Mad?

Once upon a time in the English-speaking world, many believed that violent crime was a symptom of social deprivation and mental illness. Once these things were eliminated, crime might gradually disappear. Therapy, not punishment, should be the goal of the legal system. Lady Wootton, a British reformer, argued in the late 1960s that advanced in psychiatry had shown there was no longer a clear distinction between mentally normal and mentally abnormal criminals.  The idea of mens rea, roughly that criminals should be punished because their crimes showed they had an "evil mind," she argued, had "withered away."

Similar arguments by American scholars, as well as the general live-and-let-live grooviness of the 1960s, softened American attitudes toward crime.  (In the late 1960s, for instance, almost half of all Americans believed the death penalty should be abolished). During this time, new rehabilitation and counseling programs were tried in American prisons.

The initial results were disappointing. "Nothing Works" was the title of a 1974 article in the conservative American magazine Public Interest, which purported to show that all these rehabilitation programs had done little to reduce recidivism (Rueckfall). Violent criminals might enjoy rehabilitation programs, but most seemed to return to a life of crime on release. The article was influential, even though many dispute its conclusions. Dissenters argue that the rehabilitation programs assessed "Nothing Works" and similar articles were underfunded and poorly-conceived. Thus, critics say, the global conclusions in "Nothing Works" were premature and unjustified.

Full Confidential Parliamentary Report leaked to New York Times

The New York Times features a story on the BND's assistance to the U.S. military during the invation of Iraq:

Starting in early 2003 and lasting through the American military invasion of Iraq, a German intelligence officer stationed in the office of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the American commander of the invasion, passed on to the United States information being gathered in Baghdad by two German intelligence officers operating there, a classified German review has found.

The German liaison officer made 25 reports to the Americans, answering 18 of 33 specific requests for information made by the United States during the first few months of the Iraq war in what was a systematic exchange between American intelligence officials and the Germans, according to the German report.

What's particularly interesting is how the New York Times got this story:

A public version of the parliamentary committee's report was released but much was left out, including the existence of a German officer in General Franks's office. A copy of the secret version of the parliamentary report was made available for viewing by a journalist in Germany to a New York Times reporter who read the text into a tape recorder so it could be transcribed and translated. The cover page had the seal of the German Parliament.