Category: german

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A Town in Austria Is so Sick of Nazis Visiting Hitler’s Birthplace That They’re Turning It into a Police Station

In a small town in Austria on the border of Germany sits a structure with a notorious past. It was here, in a nondescript building downtown called the Braunau am Inn, that Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889.

The building has been used as a school and a library over the years, but it has also been a magnet for neo-Nazis who view it as a shrine to Hitler. People have been coming since all the way back in the 1940s just after World War II ended, when Austrian and German veterans would flock to the house on Hitler’s birthday.

In 1972, the interior ministry of Austria took over the main lease from the family that owned the building so that the government could eventually have the final say about what the building would be used for. In 1984, the Austrian government tried to acquire the building outright from Gerlinde Pommer, who had sole possession of the building, but she refused to sell. Pommer also refused to renovate the structure so the government could not find a good tenant for the property.

Finally, in 2017, the Austrian government seized the building from Pommer and the dispute ended. Authorities have decided to turn Hitler’s birthplace into a police station to hopefully deter neo-Nazis from visiting the site.

In 1989, a stone was put in place in front of the building that reads, “For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism. Millions dead are a warning.”

There will be an international architectural competition to redesign the building for its future police tenants.

Wolfgang Peschorn, the interior minister of Austria, said, “The future use of the house by the police should send an unmistakable signal that the role of this building as a memorial to the Nazis been permanently revoked.”

And it’s about time.

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A German Town Came up with a Genius Plan to Deprive a Neo-Nazi Music Festival of Beer

This might be the best story of 2019… so far.

Recently, a neo-Nazi rock festival took place in the small town of Ostritz, Germany. Attendees descended on the small town of just over 2,000 people for the Sword and Shield (SS) music festival to do what neo-Nazis do: get drunk, listen to terrible music, and find like-minded boneheads to act like idiots with.

But the far-right folks were in for a surprise when they found out that a court had recently ruled that no alcohol was to be served or consumed at the event due to the fear of potential violence.

Police kept an eye on the festival to make sure that the ban was upheld.

But the best part?

Locals even chipped in and bought more than 100 crates of beer to really make sure that the far-right festival attendees wouldn’t have any brewskies for the weekend.

Hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

A local activist named George Salditt said,

“The plan was devised a week in advance. We wanted to dry the Nazis out.

We thought, if an alcohol ban is coming, we’ll empty the shelves at the local supermarket.”

An estimated 2,000 people also gathered for anti-racist demonstrations in Ostritz during the weekend as well. An estimated 500-600 people attended the Sword and Shield festival and were outnumbered not only by protesters but also by police, who numbered roughly 1,400.

The mayor of Ostritz, Marion Prange, said,

“There are people here in Ostritz who do not tolerate the event, who stand for different values and who try to be role models,” Prange said.

Now this is what I call teamwork, and this is what I call community.

Cheers!

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12 Uniquely German Illnesses That We Have No Word For

I’ve always had a secret desire to learn German, because it seems like an extremely descriptive language.

Sure, even a simple recipe for cake can sound like you’re summoning the devil because of how harsh German sounds to the ear, but you’ve got to hand it to them for coming up with words to describe things most of us would never think of.

#1. Zivilisationskrankheit

Image Credit: Pixabay

This “civilization sickness” is a blanket term that can encompass any illness brought on by living in the modern world (anxiety, carpal tunnel, type 2 diabetes, etc).

#2. Kreislaufzusammenbruch

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This is a super long word that technically means “circulatory collapse” but actually means “feeling woozy.” That’s it.

#3. Ichschmerz

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Like the term above, but to describe dissatisfaction with yourself rather than the world.

#4. Fernweh

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If you’ve got the opposite of homesickness – a longing for travel or wanderlust – this is the word for you.

#5. Föhnkrankheit

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A föhn is a wind that cools air as it draws up one side of a mountain, then warms as it compresses coming down the other side. The winds are believed to cause headaches and other feelings of illness.

#6. Putzfimmel

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Putzen means “to clean” and fimmel is a mania or obsession. You can put them together, and even though people go through it elsewhere, in Germany it’s a common occurrence (possibly because it’s fun to say).

#7. Lebensmüdigkeit

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Despair or world-weariness, but literally “life tiredness,” Germans use it to describe people taking stupid chances with their own life.

#8. Werthersfieber

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Werther, the main character in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, is a lovesick lad whose affections ultimately go unrequited (after which he decides to commit suicide). Now, the term translates to “Werther’s fever” and is used to describe a miserable crush.

#9. Zeitkrankheit

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It means “time sickness” or “illness of the times” and is used to describe whatever backward mindset and/or practices are attached to a particular era.

#10. Torschlusspanik

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This “gate closing panic” describes the anxiety that comes with the awareness that your opportunities wane as the years of your life slip by and the “gates close” forever. Uplifting, right?

#11. Hörsturz

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You can actually only contact hörsturz in Germany, because the sudden, stress-related hearing loss pretty much only happens there. Or so they say.

#12. Weltschmerz

Image Credit: Pixabay

It means “world pain” and is a sadness brought on by the reality that the world will never be as you wish it.

Isn’t language fun?

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