East Germany

Utopia gone wrong: identity and history intersect in Jenny Erpenbeck’s haunting new novel

Retrieved on: 
Monday, October 2, 2023

It is about chance encounters and finding one’s place in a world on the cusp of disintegration.

Key Points: 
  • It is about chance encounters and finding one’s place in a world on the cusp of disintegration.
  • Review: Kairos – Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann (Granta) Its title is one of two ancient Greek words for time.
  • Where chronos refers to linear time, kairos refers to the most propitious time for an action or argument.
  • Erpenbeck’s novel starts with its protagonist Katharina going through two boxes of papers that belonged to Hans, her former lover.
  • He feels nostalgic for his childhood – a childhood marked by his ignorance of history.

The burden of the past

    • It is clear that the previous inhabitants of their house had to leave rather quickly.
    • Six-year-old Hans doesn’t realise they have been given the house of a Jewish family, but the reader cannot help but make this assumption.
    • This is part of the purity and innocence he finds so desirable in her, physically and emotionally.
    • It aptly summarises the paradoxical relationship of partitioned and reunified Germany with its Nazi past, which is both distant and omnipresent, almost tangible but not quite.
    • After Katharina interns at a theatre in Frankfurt, Hans becomes convinced she has had an affair with a colleague named Vadim.

The mirror

    • This is emphasised in the novel through the idea of reflection and the recurring image of the mirror.
    • When Katharina visits her family in Cologne, West Germany, she has the following thought:
      Each time Katharina is in the bathroom, she walks up to the mirror in the door, and each time she thinks, it’s not Hans’s mirror.
    • Each time Katharina is in the bathroom, she walks up to the mirror in the door, and each time she thinks, it’s not Hans’s mirror.
    • Her almost final sentence is: “If only I’d known then that I was your mirror image.” As Hans’s mirror image, Katharina sees herself on some level as a collaborator and potentially a traitor for adapting her East German identity after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Berlin blockade 75 years on: how Russian occupation tactics in Ukraine echo Soviet actions in East Germany

Retrieved on: 
Friday, June 23, 2023

A Soviet blockade of the three western sectors of Berlin started on June 24 1948.

Key Points: 
  • A Soviet blockade of the three western sectors of Berlin started on June 24 1948.
  • For a short period immediately after the end of the war in May 1945, cooperation between the victorious powers administered the city and its residents jointly.
  • From June 26, the western allies landed flight after flight to sustain the city in the face of Soviet pressure.
  • And in relation to today’s Ukraine, this Russian policy is once again on display.

Similar occupation tactics

    • The Soviet military administration in Germany had overall control of the eastern occupation zone, as well as east Berlin.
    • On July 1 1945, a local police force was established in east Berlin and the Soviet occupation zone.
    • This was a similar tactic to the occupied territories of Ukraine from 2014, where the Russians quickly installed local political puppets that are loyal to Moscow.
    • It was aimed at indoctrinating the young with Soviet propaganda – similar to the Kremlin’s introduction of the Russian school curriculum in the occupied territories of Ukraine in the summer of 2022.

An unwinnable war for Russia

    • No matter how hard today’s Russia might try to break the will of Ukraine and its allies, any occupation may not be permanent.
    • It took almost half a century for the eastern part of Germany to be liberated from Soviet domination.
    • The lesson from the Berlin airlift must, hopefully, be that any Russian victory will ultimately be pyrrhic and temporary.

Change in Caverion's Group Management Board: Manfred Simmet appointed as a transitional Head of Caverion's Division Germany

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, January 19, 2021

HELSINKI, Jan. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Manfred Simmet (born 1966, Engineer) has been appointed as a transitional Head of Caverion's Division Germany as of 19 January 2021.

Key Points: 
  • HELSINKI, Jan. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Manfred Simmet (born 1966, Engineer) has been appointed as a transitional Head of Caverion's Division Germany as of 19 January 2021.
  • He will also continue in his current position as the Head of Caverion's Division Austria and a member of the Group Management Board of Caverion Corporation.
  • Frank Krause, the previous Head of Caverion's Division Germany, has been leading the division for two years and the German Services business for three years prior to that.
  • Manfred Simmet has successfully executed profitable growth for project business while gradually increasing the services business in Austria.

International Best-selling Shantaram Author Gregory David Roberts Releases Debut Single 'Drive All Night'

Retrieved on: 
Monday, September 14, 2020

LONDON, Sept. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Gregory David Roberts (GDR), the critically acclaimed author, songwriter and artist releases his first single, Drive All Night, on September 18, 2020, available on all streaming platforms, taken from his debut album Love&Faith.

Key Points: 
  • LONDON, Sept. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Gregory David Roberts (GDR), the critically acclaimed author, songwriter and artist releases his first single, Drive All Night, on September 18, 2020, available on all streaming platforms, taken from his debut album Love&Faith.
  • Gregory David Roberts is best known for Shantaram, the best-selling novel, which sold over 6 million copies worldwide and was hailed a 'masterpiece'.
  • Drive All Night, takes you on a musical journey of love, heartache and a desire to escape the sorrow of unrequited love.
  • GDR said, "Music saved me, it inspired me in the midst of suffering, to keep going and never give up!"

International Best-selling Shantaram Author Gregory David Roberts Releases Debut Single 'Drive All Night'

Retrieved on: 
Monday, September 14, 2020

Chris Blackwell, Founder of Island Records

Key Points: 
  • Chris Blackwell, Founder of Island Records
    LONDON, Sept. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Gregory David Roberts (GDR), the critically acclaimed author, songwriter and artist releases his first single, Drive All Night, on September 18, 2020, available on all streaming platforms, taken from his debut album Love&Faith.
  • Gregory David Roberts is best known for Shantaram, the best-selling novel, which sold over 6 million copies worldwide and was hailed a 'masterpiece'.
  • Drive All Night, takes you on a musical journey of love, heartache and a desire to escape the sorrow of unrequited love.
  • GDR said, "Music saved me, it inspired me in the midst of suffering, to keep going and never give up!"

30 Years After Berlin Wall, German East Up to Western Economic Standards

Retrieved on: 
Friday, November 8, 2019

Much has been made of economic inequalities between western and eastern Germany, but the data suggests that the two halves of Germany have reached comparability, if not parity.

Key Points: 
  • Much has been made of economic inequalities between western and eastern Germany, but the data suggests that the two halves of Germany have reached comparability, if not parity.
  • Government statistics put per-capita GDP in the east at 70 percent of that in the west (or 75 percent if all of Berlin is included).
  • "East German cities like Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Jena are fantastic places to do business," says Jrgen Friedrich.
  • Monies previously earmarked only for the formerly communist east will become available to any German regions, eastern or western, in need of special economic development aid as of 2020.

AM BestTV: Germany’s Life Sector Burdened by Product Commitments and Reserving, Says AM Best Financial Analyst

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Seydoux highlighted a few of the main drivers for AM Bests negative outlook on Germanys life insurance sector.

Key Points: 
  • Seydoux highlighted a few of the main drivers for AM Bests negative outlook on Germanys life insurance sector.
  • AM Best expects these players to remain reliant on the traditional products with interest rate guarantees that currently are costly.
  • Seydoux also addressed the balance sheet strength of Germanys life insurers.
  • Despite Storms, Outlook for Germanys Non-Life Sector Stable, Says AM Best Financial Analyst: Konstantin Langowski, financial analyst, AM Best, said despite a slight deterioration of the combined ratio for Germanys non-life industry in 2018, the overall sector's financial condition still supports a stable market segment outlook: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=germannonlife419 .