60 years from now our oil and gas reserves will have been used up. Also,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
has stated that a reduction of the energy use in private households to
30 % of the present level is one of the requirements to keep the carbon
dioxide concentration in the atmosphere at its present level.
Therefore, any heating system that relies on these has no future, much
like a "gas guzzler" automobile.
To get an impression of the beauty of this National Park, start on the
still quite awkward web site of the Tourismusverband
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and navigate to the page describing the "Mecklenburgische
Schweiz". Or look at some paintings
of our expressionist Emil
Nolde.
"I believe in the sacredness and dignity of the individual. I believe that all men derive the right to freedom equally from God. I pledge to resist aggression and tyranny wherever they appear on earth."
Sie läutete damals das erste Mal (CollegeRadio des Bayerischen Rundfunks). Daran wird im Deutschlandradio Kultur jeden Sonntag um 11:58 Uhr mit einer Übertragung erinnert.
To me this is a fascinating and colorful story about some rather relevant differences between the American and the German culture, e.g. the interpretation of human rights in the United States and how immensely satisfying it is to incorporate this practical, loving approach in our (German) lives. The author's view of our German culture has helped me assess the problematic sides of my background and set free a most welcome energy towards active participation in shaping my social environment.
I am confident that the "Princess" will gradually contribute to a change in general attitude towards, understanding of, and cooperation with the world in which we live - and thus with the New World as well..
Summary (German Summary)
Berlin 1922.
This is the rich backdrop of "A Princess in Berlin", a social novel
in the grand tradition of e.g. Theodor
Fontane in the Germany of the 19th century.
Into this feverish society comes Peter Ellis, a young American from
Philadelphia who was an ambulance driver on the Western Front. In Paris,
given a year by his Quaker family to
get over his shell shock, Peter encounters a former German officer, Christopher
Keith, whose life he saved at Verdun. Christoph is shepherding the young
Bobby von Waldstein, a family of Berlin bankers, once Jewish. At their
urging, Peter agrees to come to Berlin, to study painting. There Peter
is ushered into the Waldstein milieu, where he meets Max
Liebermann (who will in 1933 say "Ich kann garnicht soviel essen, wie
ich kotzen möchte!") (see also 1)
and Walther
Rathenau (see also 1,
2,),
then foreign minister of the German government. Princess Helena, a daughter
of the Waldstein family, is a good friend of his, and through her and her
brother, Peter realizes the sadness with which (the hated and despised
Jew) Rathenau tries to moderate politics and social life in Germany.
Peter lives part of his life in Neukölln, where he studies painting
with Fritz Falke, a former student of Liebermann, and with Fritz he experiences
the misery in Berlin, which the Quakers, and Susan
Boatwright in particular, try to alleviate (see also 1,
2
). Berthold Brecht's
songs in Kneipen (pubs) and on parties reveal the dark and dangerous side
of the German character, the "anger, bitterness, sullen and discontent"
(J.
Robert Oppenheimer about Germans in 1927).
Peter is dragged into attempts to sabotage the murder
of Rathenau, in the aftermath of which Helena and Christoph are murdered
and Peter hardly survives.
Pandemonium reigns in the capital of Germany after the Allied victory
in World War I and the fall of Kaiser Wilhelm
II (in the Weimar Republic).
The proletariat have swarmed out, waving the red banners of Communism;
private armies of unemployed, disaffected veterans - Freikorps-
roam the streets thrashing the Communists. An explosion of radical music,
theater, and art manifests the seething rancor and nervous energy of the
people. The most insane, paralyzing inflation the world has known makes
life a misery for the hungry, desperate populace (see also 1
). Although the flower of their kind lie buried in Flanders fields, a few
aristocratic families preserve their privileged, even exquisite lives:
boating parties at summer palaces, chamber music in great townhouses on
Sunday afternoons.
