SPRACHGEWALT: 2 reviews

Aachener Nachrichten:

 

„Sprachgewalt“ ist ein spannendes, hochinteressantes Plädoyer für einen kritischen Blick auf unseren Sprachgebrauch.“   

 

„Die 28 Einzelanalysen des Buches sind durchweg von sehr hoher Qualität.“

 

Here's a link.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ):

 

„Das von Ranan herausgegebene Buch ist in diesen Zeiten [...] ein wichtiges Werk.“

 

„Ein Leitfaden für differenzierte politische Sprache.“   

 

„Hilft dabei, die Diskurse hinter der Sprache zu verstehen.“

To buy: At any bookstore and by mail-order here.

Afghanistan I

Photos of refugees and their misery can regularly be seen on TV. And tragically, there is nothing new about them anymore. One almost gets used to them. And yet, something about the latest photographic reports showing Afghans trying to flee their country, clambering on to the airport gates and attempting to board the remaining flights, reminds me of our own history: Jews who hopelessly tried to flee Germany, no country willing to take them in, as they were left to be killed.

Afghanistan II

Many of us were truly delighted and relieved, last year, when Biden won the elections. The hopes were high, very high. Recent days are a stark reminder that US Republicans and Democrats are not that far apart. There is indeed a great difference between Biden’s and Trump’s administrations: Decision making seems to be much more matter of fact and the language used is no longer gutter language. But when it comes to business, Biden now simply completed a process that was started by Trump.  

Back in London

I have finally made it back to London - Despite being fully vaccinated and coming from what the UK defines as a “green” country, I had to undergo a Covid Test before flying out and book (and pay!) for a further test, to be taken on the second day after my arrival in the UK. BUT no quarantine!

 

BA in Munich asked for proof of vaccination. I don’t know whether big brother is meanwhile so high-tech that Heathrow know all about arriving passengers or whether immigration authorities are simply inefficient? However, at Heathrow nobody wanted to see any proof of my Corona status.

 

Not so highly developed is the BA Terminal 5 at Heathrow. With passenger numbers still on the floor, compared to pre-Corona volumes, I would have expected a very fast turnaround. Not so. Our luggage arrived almost 1½ hours after we landed. I spent almost the same amount of time flying to London, as I did waiting for the luggage. Only a few luggage belts were in use. Most were empty. Our luggage belt served three(!) additional flights at the same time, including one from a Corona “red” country. The area was crowded.  

 

 

Salt Beef to fight off Corona?

Most of the shoppers at my London supermarket were not wearing masks. Perhaps, I should not have been surprised: Here we are only asked kindly to do so but there is no obligation.
 

The Jewish restaurant Reubens has a better idea:

 

A glowing review of SPRACHGEWALT on Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Here’s a link.

 

The reviewer’s response to the question, who he would recommend the book to:

 

"To you, to me, in fact to anyone who either tunes in to or wants to follow political and public discourse. [...] I'm going to put it relatively near the front of the shelf..." 

 

“Ihnen, mir, eigentlich jeden der sich in  der öffentlichen Diskussion, in der politischen Diskussion entweder einschaltet, oder sie verfolgen will. […] Ich werde es relativ weit vorne im Regal einsortieren…”  

 

Hier und in jeder Buchhandlung erhaltbar. 

 

Salzburg mishandling Mozart (yet again)

The city, which badly treated Mozart during his lifetime, proudly promotes and makes a lot of money of its most famous son. Why the hell, do they continue to mishandle him posthumously?

 

This year’s Salzburg Festival main new opera production was Don Giovanni. On one hand, it promised Romeo Castellucci, who directed a wonderful production of Salome, two years ago. On the other hand, the festival managers chose the ridiculous Greco-Russian swan, Teodor Currentzis, as conductor. This should have sufficed to put me off. Indeed, I long hesitated before going. I did go and have only myself to blame.

 

Currentzis has made a habit of co-opting external pieces of music and inserting them into existing compositions. Spoiling other composers’ productions must be the limit of his creativity. A few years ago, he did it with Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito. He did it again with this year’s Don Giovanni.

 

The soloists, chosen by Currentzis for Don Giovanni were a mixed bunch. Michael Spyres was a wonderful Don Ottavio and Federica Lombardi a very good Donna Elvira. Davide Luciano in the title role and Vito Priante as Leporello are names to be forgotten.

 

But even mediocre soloists get enthusiastic applause from the easy-to-please Salzburg Festival audience. Their applause gets especially jubilant after popular arias, which even the musically uneducated recognise.

 

Currentzis has successfully marketed himself and enjoys loads of groupies, such as the woman, who sat behind me, who had never seen or heard Don Giovanni before. She travelled especially from Hamburg only because of “wonderful” Currentzis. He is an “in” conductor, a crowd-puller and the opera houses, in all likelihood, will continue to court and fête him. If it were up to me, I would send him back to Siberia, where he started his career.  

Salzburg mishandling Mozart (part II)

Mozart’s Great Mass in C-Minor is annually performed as part of the Salzburg Festival. The venue is Salzburg’s Church of St. Peter’s Abbey, the church, for which Mozart had composed the Mass.

 

Mozart never completed this work, no Agnus Dei and parts of the Credo are missing. Over the years, various attempts were made to complete the Mass. What Salzburg did this year, however, is an outrage. As complementary pieces, they interspersed the original movements of the Great Mass with various Bruckner as well as some Schubert sequences.  

 

It was beautifully sung and played but the injection of alien material was artistically scandalous. Elated and exhilarated by Mozart, one’s attention flopped when the music moved to Bruckner or Schubert.

 

The putti, in front of my chair, however, seemed to take it in their stride. 

 

The Queen – No revolution

 

It is unrealistic to expect the privileged to voluntarily forego their privileges. They very rarely do. Occasional examples such as King Lear have proven sceptics to be right. Not even the Bill Gates and Warren Buffets of this world, who have passed astounding parts of their wealth to charitable foundations, have concluded that the system that enables them to amass such wealth is sick and requires repair, not even that it needs tweaking. And yet, revolution is not likely. The cleverly designed social-democrat structures in Western countries and the bloody experience with Communism disarm the incentive to revolt.

 

The Queen is no exception. Why should she? But amazingly, generation after generation of public servants and politicians furtively collaborate and are instrumental in the Queen’s effort at increasing her own wealth.

 

The latest revelation is that the Queen’s courtiers successfully lobbied to exempt Balmoral, her private property in Scotland, from a law that was designed to cut carbon emissions through the construction of heat pipelines. Why grant the Queen exemptions, which other property owners do not enjoy?

 

It turns out that, by convention, the Queen as well as the Prince of Wales are asked for their consent before laws that may have a bearing on their interests are discussed by parliament. The Prince of Wales for example, has successfully acted to prevent his tenants from enjoying the rights granted by law to tenants of non-royal estates.  

 

The Queen has been at it for years. She is income-tax exempt and only started paying tax “voluntarily” in 1992 and she is still exempt from inheritance tax.

 

The time is long-overdue for all these privileges to be done away with. There is no justification for them. More than that, politicians should finally learn that they are public servants and not the Queen’s.

Germans and their shoes

Some people fetishize shoes. Others just have overflowing collections of them. Former Philippines First Lady, Imelda Marcos, who denied rumours that she owned 3000 pairs of shoes, owned up to 1060 such pairs.

 

In Germany, I have come across a rather schizophrenic relationship, which some Germans have with their shoes. Having worn them all day, they leave their shoes outside their own apartments, in the common parts of the buildings, in which they live. Evidently, they find their own – lovingly and expensively purchased – shoes either too smelly or too dirty to bring into their own flat. It is often quite disgusting.

 

Here’s what I was greeted with on a recent visit to a colleague’s house in Berlin. (Not the colleague’s but an adjacent flat)