Tag Archives: History

Valentine’s Day – A Marketing Scam or a Day Filled with Love?

By Veronika M. Heinrich

Valentine’s Day Card from 1876

When­ev­er I talk to peo­ple about Valentine’s Day, I get some sort of hate­ful response. It’s only about mon­ey. You’re forced to buy some­thing for your sig­nif­i­cant oth­er or they’ll be mad. It’s more roman­tic to show your love every day in small ges­tures rather than doing so only one day a year. And it’s all just a devi­ous plan of the indus­try, try­ing to sell heart-shaped food, flow­ers, and oth­er fes­tive nonsense.

Is that the truth or can Valentine’s Day be some­thing more? As a fan of spread­ing love and appre­ci­a­tion, I want to inves­ti­gate this fur­ther. What are the roots of Valentine’s Day? And how can we escape all this neg­a­tiv­i­ty and make it an enjoy­able day?

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Iron Curtain, Please

By Michael Lederer

One man’s trash is another’s treasure.

Vladimir the Small, as his­to­ry is sure to remem­ber him, has pulled the iron cur­tain off the trash pile and ordered it rehung. His secu­ri­ty blan­ket. Thir­ty years exposed to West­ern ideas of choice – enough of that. Obe­di­ence or destruc­tion, enough choice for his people.

The good old days.

Pho­to Cred­it: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989

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Getting Germany Back on Track

By Markus Ziener

The Mar­shall Plan has become syn­ony­mous for mas­sive help, for bring­ing about a her­cu­la­neum task and hav­ing a coun­try rise again from the ash­es. Orig­i­nal­ly designed to help Europe get back on track after the dev­as­ta­tions of World War II, it has a much broad­er mean­ing today. In dis­cus­sions about how to rebuild Ukraine at some point in the future, there’s again talk of the need for a Mar­shall Plan. How­ev­er, it’s worth­while to take a step back and look at what the orig­i­nal Mar­shall Plan was all about.

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The Reviews Are In: Babylon Berlin Sets the Scene for Unusually Visionary Television, Intercontinentally

By Hannah Quinque

CC BY-SA 4.0, Lear 21

Grant­ed, Baby­lon Berlin has at its dis­po­si­tion all the means nec­es­sary to become a true block­buster. But it isn’t every day the view­er gets to expe­ri­ence just how phe­nom­e­nal­ly a big bud­get can be spent on a TV series – with­out com­pro­mis­es between bom­bas­tic mon­tages and cin­e­matog­ra­phy for lovers, between fast-paced sto­ry devel­op­ment and cred­i­bly com­plex char­ac­ters, that is.

For Baby­lon Berlin, pro­duced in Ger­many by Ger­man pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies, the com­mit­ment to an unflinch­ing and unre­served depic­tion of a nation on the verge of fas­cism pays off. As a bit of an inside tip, the show’s spec­tac­u­lar efforts are appre­ci­at­ed far beyond its coun­try of ori­gin, as demon­strat­ed by almost exclu­sive­ly glow­ing U.S. reviews.

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A New Millennium?

By Michael Lederer

“MCU035” by maxxtraf­fic is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Jan­u­ary 1, 2000. Not just a new cen­tu­ry, but a new mil­len­ni­um. Spot­less, for the briefest moment, though far from emp­ty. Arriv­ing so brim­ful of promise and hope. “What will it be like?” we won­dered, star­ing almost child-like at the clock as it approached the new era. A brand-new, unopened, ready-to-use mil­len­ni­um! And this time, with all we’d learned over past mil­len­nia, we would get things right.

Knock on wood.

 

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“Do they have traffic lights in Ireland?”

By Deidre Hutchison

“Do they have traf­fic lights in Ire­land?” This was a naive ques­tion posed to my cousin on a vis­it to the Unit­ed States in the 1980s. To my pre-teen intel­lect, this was the kind of insult that demon­strat­ed the height of Amer­i­can igno­rance my friends and I so often scoffed at. There was laugh­ter at such a ludi­crous concept.

The image of Ire­land as back­ward bor­dered on com­i­cal and more often, irri­tat­ing. After all, we were a nation with a deep his­to­ry and a rich cul­ture with lit­er­ary giants like James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and W.B. Yeats. Musi­cal­ly, we boast­ed the renowned tal­ent of every­thing from The Dublin­ers and Thin Lizzy to the glob­al phe­nom­e­non of U2. In our minds, we might be a small island, but we were extreme­ly proud and accomplished.

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