A mixed feeling, something in between physical fear and aristocratic despice is inevitable, when one lives in fragile Venice and a menacing brutal monster enters the Canal Grande, offering the narrow strees and the delicate mosaics that pave its churches and palaces to the newly enriched masses of global tourism.
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Is Germany part of the West?
For about 70 years, Germany has stressed its belonging to the West. But since 2014 this, in a long term perspective, has been put in doubt. Surprisingly, by the German weekly "Der Spiegel".
The only reason my German grandfather survived as a Russian prisoner of war was that he had a beautiful singing voice. He had been drafted into the Volkssturm militia in 1944, during the final phase of the war in which the Nazi party recruited most able-bodied males into the armed forces, regardless of their age. […]
Germany: the Discordant Nation
An historical tragedy, the whole centuries-old tragedy of the German nation, stems from its being historical out of step with the other great nations of Western Europe. And this temporal mismatch has in its turn arisen from basic uncertainty over the space it occupies. The difficulties that mark the coexistence of Germany with its European […]