Archive for September 2013

German Election 2013: 3. Structural Considerations

The german reunification is now on its way for almost a quarter of a century. One might think that by now, it might be hard to find the artificial division as a result from WWII, as structural features resulting from centuries of common history might be overruling what was a 40 year political intermezzo. Not […]

German Election 2013: 2. Long & short term prognosis

As long as the final results are not yet published by the “Bundeswahlleiter”, I was curious to see how accurate the institutes did forecast the election result. Obviously the last polls were quite a bit off from the final results, and even the initial projections from the first counted voting districts were not too accurate. […]

“Here’s to the crazy ones,…”

Today, Marcel Reich-Ranicki aged 93, died in Frankfurt, Germany. Having survived the Warsaw Ghetto and loosing all his family in German concentration camps, it was all but reasonable to stay in post war Germany and believe in the culture of the “nation of poets and philosophers”. He did, and he did not stop to tell us how […]