I was just going through my files and found this letter to the editor I wrote about a year ago. It was never published. I'll translate it into English below:

Es ist schon ein genialer Schachzug, in dem Moment, wo es um Moral und Ethik geht, die Kinder im Namen der Integration nach der Konfession ihrer Eltern zu trennen. Ich schlage vor, nach dem gleichen Muster in anderen wichtigen, integrationsrelevanten Fächern zu verfahren. Wie wäre es mit parteigebundener, also sozialdemokratischer und hristdemokraticher, Gemeinschaftskunde? Die Kinder liberaler, grüner, bibeltreuer, republikanischer, nationaler und linker Eltern hätten frei. Kinder von Eltern ohne Stimmrecht könnten zweimal die Woche in Mitbürgerkunde unterrichtet werden.

Translation:

It is a brilliant move to separate kids according to the religious beliefs of their parents at the very moment when the subject matter is ethics and morals and to do so in the name of integration. I propose approaching other subjects which are relevant to integration the same way. How about having civics taught according to the party affiliation of children's parents - social democratic and Christian democratic civics classes? The children of liberals, greens, Bible-party, republican, nationalist and leftist parents could have study hall for an hour. The children of non-citizens could have two hours per week of instruction in "Mitbürger-studies" ("Mitbürger" is a German word meant to sound inclusive, but has in recent decades come to imply those who are among us as citizens, but not really citizens, not really part of the community).

I just took a short vacation to the region around Straubing, Bavaria. We stayed out in a rural area, but made several trips into Straubing and to nearby sites. We spent some time at the Gäubodener Volksfest, the second-largest Bavarian festival (after the Oktoberfest, of course). I noticed some things during our trip:

- Bavaria is emptier and more rural than I expected. I have the strong impression that it is much less densely populated than the area I live in now. The map didn't have as much on it. The distances between cities seemed greater while driving. Some of the villages were very small.

- Bavarians are friendly. This is a trait they seem to share with the "Moselaner." The impression might have to do with it being a tourist area, but the places I have lived in in Baden-Württemberg have also been tourist destinations, and they don't do well by comparison in this category.

- Bavarians weigh more. While my wife insisted that there were many thin people in the crowds as well, I noticed more obesity or at least more people who seemed to have more pounds than they needed walking about. This might be a universal trait among rural areas in industrialized countries, however. Inland, rural areas have more overweight people than California in the U.S., for example.

Check out http://www.rentagerman.de/, a great service. You can have a German come to your house and explain race relations in America to you or distract the women with his charming little glasses.

I have to rant on advertizing techniques again. I recently got a letter from Kurt Günther, apparently the CEO of the "Günther" state lottery of the Norddeutsche Klassenlotterie. It was a large envelope full of all kinds of information about participating in the lottery. It was almost all based on creating the impression that I was an especially-selected "winner" and making it look especially important and "official."

Creating an "official" impression:

• The envelope had a sticker on it labeled "Prüf- und Kontroll-Abschnitt" with a code number, a signature from an inspector, registration, a box checked to "respond quickly" and another to "open immediately." The sticker, however, is obviously not connected with the post office or any official duty. It is just part of the gimmick.
• One of the papers inside the envelope is called "official documentation" and includes official-looking stamps "confirmed" and "state lottery collection", a signature, a section on the state winnings guarantee printed in such a way as to make it appear that information pertaining only to me had been filled into certain spaces.
• On the letter and on the "official documentation" I am reminded that several German states guarantee that I will be paid (if I win).

Creating the impression that I am special:

• My name is inserted into the text in various places to create a personal impression.
• The letter informs me that I have been nominated from among 236 recommended names as an "potentially win-entitled"
• There is a small envelope inside that resembles the non-see-through envelopes used by employers to inform their employees of earnings or credit-card companies use to mail their customers their PINs. It contains my "personal proof of entitlement" with the winnings categories that have been allotted to me. The letter recommends that I choose to participate in categories 9 and 10 if it turns out that I am entitled. If, says the letter, it should be the case that I am entitled to participate in all the win categories, then "You are among the few who have the free choice of lottery ticket from among all the categories and should answer immediately. Honestly: It has never been more exciting to win." I open the small envelope and discover - oh joy! - I am entitled in ALL TEN categories! Hurray! The document inside also has an "entitlement number" just for me: 2815.

Too good to be true:

• The letter informs me that every second lottery number wins at least once, many win two or even three times.
• I have many chances to win, since many numbers stay in the game even after they win.
• "By mathematical calculation, using optimal number combinations, over the six win categories, Your chance of winning is 100% - at least 3 wins are guaranteed" Now, that looks good. But who is to say that my combination is "optimal"?
• But nowhere does it say that my "winnings" will exceed my investment. It is possible - indeed likely - that a payoff winning only some of my initial investment back.
• The potential winnings are a mix of muddy wording to not promise anything while making it sound like riches are just around the corner: jackpots of "up to" 16 million Euros, for example, and a "carefree life."

I take an active part. By having to choose one category or several to participate in, by having to paste the corresponding stickers onto the return formula, by filling out the bank order, etc. I take action to win. This increases the impression of individuality and gives the impression of taking some action on my own part. This is certainly better than the internet sites that hide the costs deep in the "terms of use" which most users unthinkingly check off. The price of the tickets is clearly marked on the stickers and ranges from 43 to 175 Euros.

If the lottery can only win over new participants by these methods, then that tells me that the population is on to them. A simple letter explaining the real odds of winning is obviously not enough, because the real chance of winning a real profit and getting the "carefree life" mentioned in the letter is probably too low with a profit margin for the lottery firm higher than in roulette - where the odds are intuitively visible. But the side effect is that advertizers must play to the gullible.

I recently read Bastian Sick's Der Dativ ist dem Genetiv sein Tod. It is good reading for those moments when you have short blocks of time - like on the stinker or in the bus. Even for a non-native speaker of German, it helps sharpen the reader's ear for faulty or inaccurate or unusual use of German. Some of it was familiar to me already - for example the use of the dative case instead of genetive, as referred to in the title (almost epidemic here in the Laendle), and the silly Americanisms creeping in all over, even when they are not accurate reflections of how Americans actually use the words being imported (Handy and just for fun being standard examples).

The book's effect really hit home over the past several days, however, as I began noticing examples from the book in real time. One chapter of the book is about the rampant use of -weise words as adjectives. Sure enough, on Monday night I heard a lecture in which the speaker mentioned a teilweise Detabuisierung (which, come to think of it, is also an example of the proliferation of -ierung nouns at the expense of verbs, another chapter in Sick's book). Then, yesterday, I heard someone on the radio say that some proposal was the optimalste Lösung to a problem. Ha! "optimal" is already as good as it gets. You can't make it into a superlative, or even a comparative for that matter. Either something is optimal or it isn't. Then, only a few minutes later, someone said, das muesste man sich realisieren and it was not in the context of verwirklichen or finishing, making real. It was meant just like Sick says - in the American sense of "realize" (sich bewusst machen, jmdm. bewusst werden). Sick hadn't warned me, however, that Germans were not only importing this English word, but were making it reflexive to boot. Das hatte mir wirklich gar nicht realisiert!

Read my take on German news coverage of the Saddam Hussein exectution over at the ProgBlog. The German coverage is an example of anti-Americanism. It is easier to repeat banal half-truths than to do a few minutes of simple library research.

A friend drew my attention to the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies on Johns Hopkins University. Go to their media room and sign up for their bi-monthly e-mail with essays on German politics and society. The current installment features articles on Germany in Afghanistan, writing by Henryk Broder (Hurra, wir kapitulieren!), articles on Germany's upcoming EU and G8 presidencies, and more. Looks like a great resource for anyone interested in Germany today.

Stefan over at germanimpressions.com has a list of ways to tease Germans. It reminded me of a story I like to tell to annoy Germans when I am confronted with the alledged lack of culture in the country of my birth.

I tell them about my senior year in high school when I spent a lot of time hanging out with foreign exchange students. They used to wax indignant about how little culture America has, the implication being that culture is a measure of how many dead novelists and composers a country has. Well, I was all very impressed with the depth and sincerity of European and Latin American culture. Then I came to Germany in 1988. What were the big songs on the radio? What were all these cultured Germans listening to? Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry, Be Happy (very German) and Klingeling, hier kommt der Eiermann (Very deep).

Certainly the taste of the masses should not be the final measure of "real" culture. That cuts both ways, of course.

Deutschlandfunk reported this morning that the "Plastinarium" has opened in Guben, Brandenburg. The Plastinarium is the brainchild of Gunther von Hagens. He takes human bodies and makes educational artwork out of them. His exhibition "Body Worlds" has been shown in several cities and caused some controversy. People bequeeth their bodies to von Hagens. He injects the corpses with a mixture of formaldihyde and plastic and poses them in various "life-like" positions, often with the skin off, showing various internal organs.

Now, in Guben, he is setting up a the "Plastinarium" factory to produce and display more "plastinate" figures.

The town of Guben appears to be generally happy about the opening. It promises to bring money and jobs. (This is the best account I have found onilne.) There were some protesters at the opening, however, and, at least on Deutschlandfunk, they got all the air time. The radio piece briefly described the opening and the displays on exhibition there. But the commentary was almost all negative. The narrator expressed serious concern that children were allowed in and that whole nursery school classes were visiting the exhibition, seeing the bodies. Childen under 6 are admitted for free, older children for half price. She did not explain why it might be a problem that children see dead people formed into art; it was just assumed that it is a problem and that child protection laws (Jugendschutz might need to be enforced.

The German Lutheran church is preparing legal action against von Hagens. No doubt they will be able to use that marvelously ambiguous phrase about human dignity in the German constitution ("Wuerde des Menschen") and general western discomfort with and taboos about death to at least cost him a legal battle. Some protesters outside the new factory were interviewed. Their arguments were all religious: We are dabbling with God's creation, we are supposed to go earth-to-earth, dust-to-dust, etc. A few of the protesters were from the local town and vowed to move away from Guben, the "corpse city" ("Leichenstadt") as the press is now calling it.

If the bodies were from executed prisoners or other victims - like the bodies in Graeberfeld X here in Tuebingen, there would be a problem. If the bodies of the people were identifiable to visitors, that might be a problem, depending on the consent given by the deceased. But that is not the case.

The media - and to a lesser degree perhaps von Hagens himself - seem to have no small degree of interest in hyping this thing, making it off to be some kind of freak show. The enthusiasm of the town and the streams of visitors to the "Body Worlds" exhibition shows that the German public seems more enlightened than the media who serves them.

Last night driving home I heard a ridiculous card reader - "Danielle" - on a local radio station (RadioTon. Her "readings" were obviously cold reads (she never gave any verifiable new information), but the moderator Joern Bastian and callers took her seriously. Apparently, this show is now going to be on every Sunday. As long as stuff like that gets air time and Bild continues to be the top-selling newspaper, Germans will have little reason to suspect they are more enlightened than
Americans.

It reminded me of another local radio station which routinely gives away enormous sums of money to people. They call a random number and if the person answers with the name of the radio station, "Hit radio anetenna 1" they get 50,000 Euros. They usually don't answer correctly and then the MC chats with them about how disappointed they are and what they would have done with the money.

Here's what I want to have happen:

Telephone rings. Someone answers:

Female voice: Schmidt, hallo?

Host: Guten morgen Frau Schmidt, this is HitRadio Antenna 1!

Female voice: Really? What?

Host: Yes, Frau Schmidt, this is Horst Schniedel, Hit Radio Antenna 1. That was the 50,000 Euro call.

Female voice: I don't understand.

Host: If you had answered the phone, "Hit Radio Antenne 1" you would have won 50,000 Euros!

Female voice: Why that? Why would anyone answer their phone that way?

Host: To win 50,000 Euros! Are you disappointed?

Female voice: I still don't get it. Why would someone win so much money just for answering the phone?

Host: It is our way of thanking our listeners for their...

Female voice: Oh, it's a shallow advertizing gimmick. You give away huge sums of ....

Host: You could have won thousands of Euros...

Female voice: No I couldn't have. I never answer the phone that way.

Host: But if you had, you could have...

Female voice: You don't understand. I don't listen to radio stations that waste my time and vast amounts of financial resources on stupid games.

Host: Well, our listeners are waiting to see who will win the...

Female voice: I simply can't imagine having so much money at my disposal and wasting it on such a stupid gimmick. Don't you have better things to spend your money on?

Host: It's part of the fun, Frau Schmidt. We're offering our listeners a once-in-a-lifetime...

Female voice: How about investing in young music talent if your show is about music? How about donating to a charity that the listeners vote on if your show is about giving away lots of money? How about...

Host: Danke, Frau Schmidt! Remember, listeners, every hour, 50,000 Euros for a random number! Keep your radios tuned to Hit Radio...

Female voice: That's the stupidist waste of money I've ever heard of...

CLICK

I must admit I would probably be too flustered and disappointed to react this way, but it is what they deserve. Considering these kinds of shows and what has been done with my words in my last three radio interviews, I am beginning to think that radio is no longer so much better than television than it once was, not even here in Germany, where we don't have the airwaves full of right-wing "talk."

It is, in a way, some indirect evidence of how conservative the media is, especially the private, for-profit media. Instead of talking about things that matter, they distract people with games. It is like the circus in ancient Rome and the lottery in 1984. It is not just entertainment, but entertainment that is politically innocuous while involving the public more directly - with the chance of life-changing participation - than simply showing some plot unfold.