einheit, zipfelbund

With a quarter-century of Germany unity being observed this weekend (and importantly, we’ve been afforded many reminders to reflect on the meaning and the different stages of the reunification process that led up to this formalised recognition), it seems especially poignant that this anniversary come at time when Germany is preoccupied with a refugee-crisis, which although of a different character, does revisit many of the same challenges.

Twenty-five years on, the West is portrayed as a gracious wrecking ball, welcoming their oppressed neighbours back into the fold, and though the exodus was not as overwhelming nor exotic, I am sure that there was a modicum of fear that these Germans, a whole generation cut-off from the free and democratic world, from the West’s perspective, might bring the same wrack and ruin that ushered in the dissolution of the Soviets. These East Germans, a trickle at first of brave souls escaping subjugation had become a regular deluge, had grown up with different conventions, atheist and conservative, and for many the clash of cultures still has not been resolved. Ossi und Wessi. Those are the same reservations that confront Germany and Europe presently. The observance was cemented in 1990, a little short of one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall in order to avoid Schicksaltag (the Fateful Day) already overloaded with meaning, but keeping the events linked—even in unlinking the dates—does allow the memory to reach back further to a time that witnessed an even larger refugee crisis not only perpetrated by the German people but one wherein they were also migrants. German citizens were exiled not only from new acquired lands but also from territories associated with German settlement for generations, like Gdansk, Kaliningrad and Prague and faced many challenges integrating into the metropolitan society. What do you think? What lessons ought to be taken away from this Day of Reunification?

5x5

alba amicorum: the Dutch friend books of the seventeenth century, via the Presurfer

optotype: via Kottke’s extensive archive of Quick Links, a gorgeous history of eye chart typography

percival lowell’s canals: NASA confirms that briny water is flowing on Mars presently

magic kingdom: Banksy’s Dismaland will be deconstructed and repurposed to house refugees in the Jungle Camp in Calais

legacy system: Norwegian government pressures its physicians to give up their beloved, reliable floppy discs

fungiculture

Spargelzeit (Asparagus season) with all its fanfare and focus is a distant memory by now but one up-side to the change of seasons and the cool and damp days ahead is the advent of Mushroom Time. Pfifferlinge, a savoury scalloped fungus found on tree trunks, is my favourite—celebrated with just as much intensity, and while any foraging for these gourmet delicacies, such work is best left to seasoned experts, many keeping the faithful locations of the appearance of this heritage fruiting a secret guarded as well as that for a prized vintner, since there are many more varieties that are deadly poisonous than edible. This time of year, many restaurants adjust their menus—Tageskarte, Speisekarte—to showcase this time-honoured mania.

umbrage

This season was quite nicely bookended by two astronomical events, I thought, what with the partial eclipse of the Sun—for those of us in Central Europe—just as the weather was beginning to wax comfortable and the Blood Super Moon just as the daylights and temperature begins to turn. I was not able to capture either event that I witnessed too terribly well and did not do justice to the Moon coloured red and by no means lost in the pre-dawn horizon but I did like the airplane flying in its direction and of course most things are better imparted first-hand and every one of us will be treated to privileged spectacles, however the rarity, I’m sure.

world citizen

Perhaps a global crisis can only be solved by becoming more cosmopolitan, as this interesting article from Quartz suggests.
Faced with a comparable refugee situation in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution when all Russian expatriate were summarily stripped of their citizenship and made stateless—nearly a million diaspora and growing to include former residents of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations became the competent issuing authority for travel documents, realising that no one place could hope to absorb all the displaced. Bearers of the these passports, which were the laudable idea of Norwegian explorer Fritjof Nansen, included shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, artist Marc Chagall, author Vladimir Nabokov and composers Igor Stravinski and Sergei Rakhmaninov as well as hundreds of thousands of other souls, which entitled them to travel internationally and settle as appropriately. Such an elegant solution may need to be reinstated, with the reluctance national authorities have demonstrated for legitimising an undocumented refugee and much preferring to keep them in transit and making migrants seek out the help of smugglers rather than official channels and discard whatever official identity papers that they might have and preclude their chances of having a homeland to return to one day. Mindful that there is no place like Utopia, what do you think? Could such a scheme work again?