Becoming a Berliner

Originally uploaded by hlyg

The bullying of one of my children has begun again and it has kept me wondering how children start thinking of insulting skin color. I still can't believe this is happening so young, but then when I think about how often my kids repeat what they hear from me, I worry that these children have heard these ideas from somewhere else, "Brown people stink." Where does that come from? Is it merely the majority picking on the minority, as bullying often happens? Or is this learned?

Ironically, the following day, I was, for the very first time in my decade here in Germany, handed a pamphlet from a political party! Campaign workers normally eager to hand out information about their candidates always pull back their hands when they see me. Sometimes they actually seem sorry about it but retreat nonetheless. But as I recently walked down this busy street a person from the SPD handed me a brochure!

I couldn't believe it? Do I finally look like I might belong? That I have an interest in this community? That I can read?!

Then I looked at the information and it was a brochure about education and an invitation to a discussion about improving schools. The catchy phrases about success in life beginning with a good education was not new to me. My kids weren't with me but maybe I just look like a mother?

Now, if I could just send my children to school to get this great public education without worrying that they'll be bullied because of what they look like.

Then maybe it won't feel like we're spinning in a vicious circle.

True Colors

Bundesverteidigungsminister zu Guttenberg bei Winfried Parchent in Eckersdorf
Originally uploaded by hartmut-koschyk

There's just nothing like a good political scandal to get the circulation going in minus 15 degree weather.

For those of you on the other side of the Atlantic, Germany's Minister of Defense had his doctoral title revoked (after a long week of speculation and accusations) because he plagarized a considerable portion of his dissertation. I couldn't help but think back to the Monica Lewinsky Affair.

At first, when a journalist discovered major similarities to an article and Guttenberg's dissertation and proposed that the thesis wasn't completely kosher, Guttenberg said, "Oh, well, that accusation is abstruse." Really, abstruse?

It wasn't a definitive "I did not copy my dissertation," as in "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," it was an answer to buy him some time before the Scheisse really hit the fan. And it did. With each day, passages that Guttenberg copied (without citation) kept turning up.

By the weekend it was clear that Guttenberg, a very charismatic, popular politician here in Germany had lied. It got so bad that he even told the university to take back his title, which they finally did yesterday, after Guttenberg was given a proper grilling in the parliament. The opposition called him twenty different kinds of a liar and demanded that Chancellor Angela Merkel fire him.

So should the man lose his job because he cheated, big time, on his dissertation? A politician who lied? What? Unbelievable! Unprecedented. . .

I remember the embarrassing details that unraveled in the Lewinsky affair. The dress, the cigar. I still cringe when I think about it. But I never thought Clinton should be impeached over it even though he did lie under oath. The whole situation was such a cheap Republican trick and made Americans look like prudish fools wasting tax payer dollars over a blow job. It was easy, especially for us liberals, to place the focus on putting someone's personal business on display so that he was forced to lie to save his dignity. Still, he did lie, no doubt about that (and many Americans felt deceived by him). Clinton should have taken the "abstruse" route, if you ask me.

But Guttenberg didn't just get caught with his pants down, he perpetuated a lie over a period of seven years in which he repeatedly chose the sloppy route. All he had to do was cite the sources and he could have copied all he wanted. All is fair in academia as long as it is cited!

But the baron has escaped many a scandal in the past and has floated on his entitlement and probably won't lose his job over this, either. It has already been proven, on both sides of the pond, that moral standards for politicians and bankers are simply different. Oddly, this doesn't seem to bother a country that usually backs up the underdog? Guttenberg's popularity ratings haven't been changed by this?

As one young German plagarist, a certain Helene Hegemann, a teenie authoress who copied pages from another novel into hers said last year, once she was busted, "There is no such thing as originality only authenticity."

I couldn't think of a more fitting explanation.

Flammable Schlammable: Part 3

bitzi ☂ ion-bogdan dumitrescu

For those of you who've read this blog from the beginning, you know that I, like many Americans, have an admittedly irrational fear of fire. This has changed quite a bit since I've lived here, partially because Berlin gets so dark in the winter and it's nice to have a lit candle to bring some cheer into a somber afternoon. Even Christmas is no longer associated with anxious anticipation of a child on fire. My kids now know not to get too close to the tree with real candles on it and I know not to put on synthetic sweaters during the holiday season!

But tolerance can be tested. I integrated myself into this candle loving culture and thought that I could handle almost any flammable situation with grace and calm. Then this happened.

I'm sitting in the waiting room of a tutor's office while my son practices his writing with her.

It's the first session and I can hear them introducing themselves, getting acquainted and so forth. And I can hear from my son's voice that he likes the tutor, a nice warm person with a tender voice.

I'm about to settle down with a magazine and then I hear that sweet voice asking my son to light a match. . .

My heart starts jumping wildly in my chest. Did she really tell my too-young-to-be-lighting-a-match son to light a match? Did I mention that he tends to drop things? Here's what's going on in my head: "Open the door, Rose-Anne, get him out of there! Think of the skin graphs! His hair will never grow back!"

I breathe and try to imagine what's going on in there. Maybe she's holding his hands? She's probably pushed up his sleeves. . . . if I could just see in there?

Zsssssht. The sound breaks through my thoughts and then, then. . .

I hear them both giggle. "Good!" she says.

I breathe a sigh of relief. My son's beautiful face is not on fire but smiling.

Later, walking to the car, my son proudly looks up at me and says, "Mama, I lit a candle all by myself!"

"Yes, love," I say. "I heard."

"Can I do that at home?"

"No, dear. No, I don't think so."

Buschgirl Readings in Berlin!

I've been touring through some of the smallest and sweetest German towns but next week I'll be reading right here in the capital. If you live in our economically poor but culturally rich city, please stop by:


Wednesday, February 23 at Soho House at 20:00: Tor Str. 1 please email to register at info@dialoguebooks.org.

and

Sunday, February 27 at Rose Caleta at 19:00 Muskauerstr 9

(auf Deutsch und Englisch)

In the meantime, please stay tuned for an upcoming Flammable Schlammable post.

Happy Sunday!

No Comment: Negerli Kaffee

Are we really all the same?

Uniformity
Originally uploaded by Samantha T.

I have to admit that I've been writing quite a lot but not posting any of it because I'm starting to worry that I'm losing the "current". What I mean is, I'm starting to doubt this very basic idea I've had about people since college: That we are more alike than different.

Seriously, this was the underlying mentality that permeated my college seminars, whether in literature or political science. Studying at the beginning of the 1990s, the concept of sameness was the basis for a movement of politically correct behavior in colleges and workplaces in the United States. The main purpose was to reverse decades of discrimination against minorities by emphasizing that we all want the same things in life.

When I moved to Germany, this need was not yet apparent. Political correctness was never really pushed in Europe with the same intensity as in the US, partially because difference always came from the outside and not from within, as in a racially and culturally diverse country as the USA. Europe hopped aboard the PC train a bit later as their communities grew more culturally diverse. (There is still a huge resistance to gender or racial quotas here).

We all know how this ends, though. With every movement comes a reform or an opposition and the idea of all people having tons in common seems to be soaring high through the air from the deck from which it was thrown.

Take for example, politics. All of us at some point have been advised not to bring up politics at the dinner table because it could become "unpleasant". Not only can it become unpleasant it makes me wonder if we are all made up of the same stuff?

Last night I was at an SPD (social democrats) cultural event and Sigmar Gabriel, the party chairman said that democracies work best without violence, in societies without guns. Now this was a factual statement to my ears and not an opinion. It was probably given very little thought in that room. But travel across the Atlantic and that statement would be considered heresy in some places.

I recently saw a Facebook picture of an old high school acquaintance and she'd snapped her young kids with real guns in their hands. I don't just have a different opinion I think she's an irresponsible mother and I wouldn't let my kids play with hers. Yikes, I'd never thought I'd hear myself say something like that, but I feel in my gut that it is morally repugnant to give a child a real gun. The idea actually makes me sick.

Or take that the current political controversy in Germany now is how to revamp Hartz IV, welfare, because the Constitutional Court here ruled that the amount of money welfare recipients receive every month is neither dignified nor constitutional. Meanwhile, we've got a political party in the USA that doesn't think the government should require health care for all of its citizens, and goes so far as to deem universal healthcare unconstitutional. "We Germans just don't get that," a German political science professor told me. Of course he doesn't get it, it is a major difference in mentality.

This is what I'm talking about with the current. These differences are fundamental to our core values. If we took away the love of our families, dogs and cars, what would we all have left in common? Prosperity and quality of life have such different interpretations and they are not exactly superficial concepts.

Whether or not I choose to walk down a block or attend a political rally because I'm afraid I'll run into someone with a gun is not a tiny matter. Whether or not my government allows cows to be fed with hormones (not even talking about the organic vs. non organic matter here) is also not some insignificant point that has little to do with my everyday life.

Obviously there are plenty of other "liberal" Americans who think the way I do and our beliefs are so different from American "conservatives" I would almost venture to say that these beliefs trump our cultural connection. Or am I being pessimistic?

That's right, I'm stepping down from the soap box and questioning everything I've spent the last twenty years believing. Are we more alike than different or are we merely tolerating each other (in some cases quite badly)? And how much does culture play a role, if it all?

Power to the People!

Today in Cairo:





22 years ago in Berlin: