My Christmas Message for 2023

 On Christmas, Politics & Society

Now the countdown has begun again: 14 days until Christmas. Many in our street have begun illuminating their house, decking the inside and outside with lavish decorations as if they needed to be visible from space, and of course the first christmas-themed sweets were already purchasable in late summer. All of this made me wonder again about how little the whole eve actually mattered amidst this ludicrous pomp. In Germany, we've got the famous skit movie entitled „Weihnachten bei Hoppenstedts”, where said pomp is being ridiculed, but as always, the best comedy is based on at least a grain of truth.

Wort zum Sonntag – KW 48

Wort zum Sonntag, den 01. Dezember 2019

Es scheint wohl so, als ob diesen Dezember ein letztes Mal der 13. auf einen Freitag fallen wird, doch darum soll es nicht gehen: Vielmehr hat einmal mehr eine deutsche Zeitschrift für Politik und Kultur die Frage nach Ausdrücken wie den Negerkuss oder das Zigeunerschnitzel aufgeworfen (exklusiv für Abonnenten, wohlgemerkt), wobei der Aufschrei darob nicht länger als einen Tag anhielt. Dennoch möchte ich noch einmal darüber schreiben, weil ansonsten wieder die AfD auf dem Plan stünde. Dabei sollte die Frage an sich eine ganz offensichtliche sein, ebenso wie ihre Antwort.

“Open your eyes, you fools!”

Jeffrey Epstein's ghost breaks into public impeachment hearing, exclaims that he didn't commit suicide but was murdered in a hidden Clinton operation

Stupefying everyone in the room, out of the sudden, the ghost of late financier and multiple sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein breaks into the open-door hearing during former ambassador to Ukraine Maria Yovanovitch's testimony on Trump's foreign interference with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate into Democratic contestant Joe Biden to explain that he in fact didn't commit suicide but was a victim of a top-secret Clinton contract assassination to not get them into any hot water.

Nach Landtagswahlen in Sachsen: Leipzig erklärt Unabhängigkeit vom Freistaate

„Wir wollen nicht länger mit den Faschisten gleichgesetzt werden”

LEIPZIG (dpö) – Es war seit jeher abzusehen, und nunmehr bewahrheitete es sich in Form einer Verzweiflungsaktion. Am heutigen Tage händigte man dem noch-Ministerpräsidenten Sachsens, Michael Kretschmer (CDU), eine von Burkhard Jung (SPD) unterzeichnete und von den Bürgern Leipzigs verfasste Unabhängigkeitserklärung, die ihre Autonomie vom Freistaate Sachsen besiegeln soll. Trotz zahlreicher Proteste von außerhalb der 560.000 Einwohner zählenden Stadt sieht man sich dazu imminent genötigt, sich abzukapseln vom immer feindseliger anmutendem Bundesland.

Sunday Message – 2019, Calendar Week 32

Sunday Message for 11th August 2019

Another time, a mass shooting took place in the US, and for another time, people had to die because madmen carried their guns to public places and pulled the trigger. For another time, the nation is drowned in dismay, anger, incomprehension why something like this could happen; why nobody prevented this shooting, why the government didn't enact to prevent these people from dying as innocents. And for another time, people are divided between partisan lines on the question how it could be prevented. But this time, something is different–this time, Trump is the president, so the division becomes stronger and viler. 

Kerouac and the Beatniks

The Beat Culture and Jack Kerouac's
«On the Road»

Jack Kerouac’s “spontaneous novel” “On The Road» is renown as the most influential novel on the Beat Generation of the 1950’s, as a compass for many youngsters of this time, comparable to a Holy Script of who they were. This was only possible because Kerouac him-self was part of this culture, of this “movement.” As he wrote himself, he was travelling for a long time, not continuously writing on this book but only from time to time, not intending to finish it anytime soon. The writing process was a slow one, slowly but steady. What often goes unseen, on the other hand, is the diverse depiction of the zeitgeist in different regards – Kerouac’s protagonists Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty usually stop by in cities to visit clubs where various musicians jammed together, although they also coincidentally, but not seldom, happen to attend jam sessions with famous musicians of their time, musicians who obtained broad acclaim for having shaped Jazz music fundamentally.