Category Archives: History

The greatness of America is that […] we have always met Lincoln’s challenge to embrace the “better angels of our nature.“

The Atlantic: ‘We Are Living Through a Battle for the Soul of This Nation’. By John Biden. “The former vice president calls on Americans to do what President Trump has not.”

“Today we have an American president who has publicly proclaimed a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and Klansmen and those who would oppose their venom and hate.

We have an American president who has emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort and support.

This is a moment for this nation to declare what the president can’t with any clarity, consistency, or conviction: There is no place for these hate groups in America. Hatred of blacks, Jews, immigrants—all who are seen as “the other“ —won’t be accepted or tolerated or given safe harbor anywhere in this nation.
[…]
You, me, and the citizens of this country carry a special burden in 2017. We have to do what our president has not. We have to uphold America’s values. We have to do what he will not. We have to defend our Constitution. We have to remember our kids are watching. We have to show the world America is still a beacon of light.

Joined together, we are more than 300 million strong. Joined together, we will win this battle for our soul. Because if there’s one thing I know about the American people, it’s this: When it has mattered most, they have never let this nation down.”

Traveling to the USA alone at age 13, in 1908

Forward: My Hero Grandmother Who Escaped An Arranged Marriage. By Laurie Gwen Shapiro.

“When I was nine, I joined my mother Jeanette Meiselman Shapiro to conduct an oral history of my grandmother’s dramatic escape from an arranged marriage — a thesis project for Mom’s 1970s feminism class at Pace University, where she had returned to school to finish her degree.

Not long ago, while reading a current story about girls forced to marry young for religious reasons, I felt renewed rage and pride at how daring my grandmother had been at the turn of the last century. My mother died nine years ago and only recently, when I was cleaning out a closet, did I dig up her yellowed notes on her mother’s escape and early life in America. Not everything was familiar, as I had been asked to leave the room for the more sensitive conversations. With the aid of the Internet and more oral interviews from remaining family, I’ve kept going where my mother left off.”

Link via MetaFilter.

“How can it be that in 2017, the President of the United States […] could not or would not bring himself to condemn Americans who marched under the flag of the Third Reich?”

History News Network, Raw Story: A professor of German history explains the true horror of Trump’s response to Charlottesville.

“It isn’t often that historians get to see their work gain such relevance in the present. And for those of us who study the history of hatred, bigotry, and the evils of Nazi Germany, the prospect of such relevance is most uncomfortable. If my work has taught me anything, it’s the importance of keeping the boundaries of one’s moral universe as wide as possible. In the early twentieth century, too many Germans pushed too many others beyond the boundaries of their moral universe—beyond the borders of the German racial community—where their fate was at best no longer of any concern to them, at worst, they represented an existential threat.

When that happens, the horrors committed under the swastika flag become possible. How safe are we today? How extensive are the boundaries of our own moral universe—each and every one of us? Those who marched in Charlottesville under Hitler’s flag and the President who chose not to condemn them revealed the boundaries of their moral universe to be sadly and frighteningly small. The flag that flew on that horrible day—with that symbol of ultimate evil at its heart—should remind us all just where such a limited sense of fellow feeling can lead.”

Aaron Numbers

“One reason why many mathematicians really like baseball: At the base of it, if you watch it on television, it’s a fairly boring game. It’s slow-moving, and it’s filled with numbers.”

Numberphile: Aaron Numbers. “A story of baseball, number theory, and serendipity. […] Featuring Carl Pomerance from the Department of Mathematics at Dartmouth College.”

Link via MetaFilter.

Heute ist Helmut Kohl gestorben

Die Zeit: Reaktionen zum Tod Helmut Kohls: “Ich bin ganz persönlich dankbar, dass es ihn gegeben hat”. “Helmut Kohls Tod ist nicht nur in Deutschland mit Trauer und Bestürzung aufgenommen worden. Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel würdigte ihn als “Glücksfall für uns Deutsche”.”

“Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel (CDU) erreichte die Nachricht vom Tod Helmut Kohls in Rom auf der Fahrt zum Vatikan. Die sichtlich betroffene Kanzlerin änderte sofort ihr Programm und würdigte Kohl am Abend als “Glücksfall für uns Deutsche”. Merkel, die in Ostdeutschland aufgewachsen ist, hob ihre ganz persönliche Verbundenheit mit seinem Wirken hervor: “Helmut Kohl hat auch meinen Lebensweg entscheidend verändert.” Durch ihn habe sie ein Leben in Freiheit führen und das Leben in der Diktatur verlassen können. “

The Economist Obituary: Germany’s helmsman: Helmut Kohl died on June 16th, aged 87. “The former German chancellor piloted his country and Europe through unification.”

“He was just 15 when the war ended. The first Americans he met gave him sweets. Had the war gone on longer, he would have been fighting them.

Helmut Kohl was always conscious of his good luck in having missed all that — die Gnade der späten Geburt, the mercy of a late birth, was how he put it to the Israeli Knesset in 1984. In that sense he was Germany’s first truly post-war politician. His predecessors were all personally burdened by its history: Konrad Adenauer was a political prisoner under Hitler; Ludwig Erhard risked persecution; Kurt Kiesinger was a Nazi Party member; Willy Brandt was in Swedish exile, and Helmut Schmidt fought on the eastern front.”