Blog in English

In May 1945, the Wehrmacht surrendered. Else Marie Pade was interned in Frøslev prison camp near Flensburg at the time. As a composer, she was a pioneer of concrete electronic music. Pade would have celebrated her 100th birthday this year. My poem Copenhagen was written in her honor.

„Once you have seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.“ That’s from Don DeLillo’s book „White Noise“. Where I live, this part of DeLillo’s fiction has come true.

More than 5,000 people attended a demonstration in my small hometown Husum on this Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27). It was one of many demonstrations all over the state of Schleswig-Holstein and in Germany.

The Hamburg Holocaust survivor was born in 1933 to a Jewish father. Decades after Allied bombers began destroying Hamburg in July 1943, he campaigned to preserve the St. Nikolai church tower as the central anti-war memorial in Hamburg.

Ella Nilova runs the Jewish youth education center J-ArtEck. In the midst of the Ukraine War, she organizes youth exchange programs. Important is a worldwide Jewish-Ukrainian art movement from the 20th century: the Culture League.

25th anniversary of the EU Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. On March 2, this was debated in the Bundestag. As a journalist, I accompanied the representatives of the Frisians, Danes, Sorbs and Romani people.

To increase pressure on the Iranian regime, activist Daniela Sepehri asks politicians and public figures to sponsor political prisoners in Iran.

On the 138th anniversary of the Congo Conference, where Europeans once forcefully divided Africa among themselves, the African Black Community in Berlin is campaigning for a memorial.

In front of the Russian embassy in Berlin, I meet a Russian tank that Ukrainians have destroyed during the war. I speak with people who have organized the protest. Thousands shout „Russia is a terrorist state“. The Brandenburg Gate shines in Ukrainian colors.

On the eve of the start of the war in Ukraine a year ago, I visit the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin. Here, eyewitness reports are read.