TV Images and Sugar-Plum Fairies: Berlin In Sight!

Remembering November 9, 2009 When I finally pedalled my old bike into the courtyard of the all-male Bergstrasse dormitory it seemed as if the whole building was pressed around the small television set up in the basement community room. Everyone was intensely focused on the set and my questions posed in fluent but less than perfect German were met with impatient hushes.  [...]

The Fall of the Fall of the Wall

Remembering November 9, 1989 I had just turned 20 and was spending my junior year abroad in Heidelberg, Germany.  West Germany that is.  The wall in Berlin was still standing and the Germanies were divided by hundreds of miles of barbed-wire fence and watchtowers.  Heidelberg, nestled in the Neckar valley not far from Mannheim and [...]

Thillo Sarrazin’s Comments Spark Debate on Immigrants in Berlin/Germany

The controversial comments this week by Bundesbank (German Central Bank) executive member, Thillo Sarrazin, have sparked a debate in Germany which now must transcend the obvious charges of racism and xenophobia.  While Sarrazin’s comments absolutely betray his less than noble feelings towards Arabs and Turks living in Germany (they “constantly produce little girls in headscarves”), the issue of how German society [...]

President Obama! Consider German Health Care

Take Germany, for example. As President Obama tries to convince the American public that his health care plan will work, I wonder why he has not considered (at least publicly) the German model of how a quasi-national health care system can work. As NPR’s Morning Edition reported, most German patients were happy with their health care. I have some [...]

Mature Democracy in the Heart of Europe. Germany’s Bundestag is 60 Today!

  On September 7, 1949 the Federal Republic of Germany began the business of governing a democratic society from its new capital in Bonn in the heart of Europe.  Germany was divided and the ravages of war were still apparent to everyone, but with a new constitution (das Grundgesetz) and a spirit of hope, Germans [...]