Latest news with #Prussia
Washington Post
16 hours ago
- General
- Washington Post
He was a pioneer of gay and trans medicine. Then the Nazis took power.
The Nazis called him 'the most repulsive of all Jewish monsters.' One savvy American publicist called him 'The Einstein of Sex.' He was world-famous for his claims that every human being mixes feminine and masculine traits; that all forms of sexual desire and gender identification are natural; and that race is a social construct. He was Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneer of gay and trans medicine in Germany in the first decades of the 20th century, and two new books resurrect his life and work, arguing that he has been largely, and wrongly, forgotten. Hirschfeld, or Magnus, as journalist Daniel Brook familiarly refers to him in his jaunty new biography, 'The Einstein of Sex,' was a crucial figure in the history of queer rights, and one of the most important voices in helping to establish the permissive, sexually fluid culture of Weimar Berlin. He was born into a society of strict norms and prohibitions. Prussia in the 19th century understood sexuality in starkly binary terms, and anything that wasn't 'normalsexuell' was against the law, as outlined in a notorious statute known as Paragraph 175. Hirschfeld, whose father was a prosperous doctor, was in some sense destined for medicine. He recognized his own homosexuality early in life, and that awareness propelled his conviction that homosexuality was innate and, as such, could not be cured and should not be punished. Yet even after he received his medical degree, he identified more with the journalists and writers in his milieu than with his fellow doctors. He would put all his talents to good use: At his Institute for Sexual Science, founded in 1919, he treated patients who did not conform to strict German notions of sexuality; he created and sold early sex hormones, and even provided surgical options for those wishing to transition. Hirschfeld believed that masculine and feminine traits can mix together in countless ways in a single person (he estimated more than 43 million possible varieties). He fought, for a while with some success, for the recognition of this fact. It was his writing for a wider public that brought him renown. He caused waves as early as 1896, anonymously publishing a pamphlet, 'Sappho and Socrates,' that disputed the notion that homosexuality is caused by childhood trauma. (Sigmund Freud's 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality' espoused this theory of trauma's influence; Hirschfeld and Freud regarded each other as opponents.) By the time Hirschfeld published 'Berlin's Third Sex' — a term he was ambivalent about — in 1904, he was writing under his own name and offered readers a detailed tour of his adopted city. If one wanted a true picture of Berlin, he argued, 'one could scarcely ignore the impact of homosexuality, which has fundamentally influenced both the shading of this picture in detail and the character of the whole.' As Hirschfeld's fame grew, so did his vulnerability. He was attacked by right-wing soldiers in 1920, stoned on the street and injured so badly — his skull was fractured — that the New York Times reported him dead. But gradually, he and his colleagues at the Institute for Sexual Science did make change. Brook vividly depicts the way in which the city of Berlin itself — then experiencing explosive growth, and less tied to tradition than other Northern European capitals — provided a conducive blueprint for the kind of sexual freedoms that flourished in the wake of World War I. When Christopher Isherwood, then a young unknown, came to Berlin from England, he did so because 'Berlin meant boys.' Fittingly, he roomed in an annex attached to Hirschfeld's institute. Brook succeeds in bringing his subject to fresh life, including a description of Hirschfeld's world travels in 1930, which he undertook to lecture and research. Embarking on that trip, Hirschfeld might have suspected that he would never live in Germany again. The shadow of Nazism had already fallen when he left. By the time he got back to Europe, his native country was under the thrall of Adolf Hitler, whose movement despised everything Hirschfeld stood for. With his young Chinese lover, Tao Li, in tow, Hirschfeld ultimately settled in France for the final few years of his life. Where Brook traces the story through the more traditional form of biography, and engagingly so, Brandy Schillace takes a different tack in 'The Intermediaries,' widening and deepening the social context of Hirschfeld's life and work. Schillace, a medical historian, braids Hirschfeld's work with the scientific and political backdrop against which he operated. Schillace's writing about the new field of what would be called endocrinology is especially vibrant. In 1849, the German scientist Arnold Adolph Berthold became interested in rooster testicles. In his lab, he removed some of them entirely; in other birds, he unhooked the glands from the fibers connecting them to the nervous system and relocated them to the roosters' stomachs. In the castrated roosters, no secondary sexual characteristics developed. But for those whose testes had simply been moved, the glands reimplanted, and the birds displayed all the usual signs of sexual development. Berthold concluded that the powerful glands did not need the animal's nervous system to function; they seemed to emit blood-borne 'messengers' that continued to work with or without the input of the brain. These messengers would, a few decades later, be named hormones. Berthold's work laid the foundation for a story about what is 'biological,' and therefore 'natural,' in the body. And in Germany, 'natural' meant 'good.' If the mind/brain had nothing to do with the secretions that controlled sexual development, then sexuality was simply a biological fact: innate, natural and good. Schillace's book can have an academic density that is usefully, powerfully dispersed when she invokes one of Hirschfeld's most consequential patients, Dora Richter. Born in 1892 and assigned male, the future Dora — or Dorchen, as Hirschfeld would affectionately call her — grew up in an isolated mountain village far from cosmopolitan Berlin. From the time she was small, she wanted to wear the same dresses as her sisters. Where Daniel Brook offers a snapshot of Dora in 'The Einstein of Sex,' Schillace uses her case as one strand stretching almost the full length of her narrative, following Dora through years of disguise and heartbreak, rejection and abuse. Dora's efforts to live as a woman left her vulnerable to unspeakable violence and extortion. She fell in love again and again, with varying results. She identified as a woman who loved men, not as a homosexual. This alone made her case a revelation for Hirschfeld, by the time he met her. In 1931, at the Institute for Sexual Science, Dora became the world's first patient to receive gender-affirming surgery. She lived another 35 years with the body she had always wanted, and had government paperwork certifying her preferred name and gender. As for Hirschfeld, the final years of his life were marked by exile and defeat. In 1933, he sat in a Paris movie theater and watched a newsreel showing a bust of his own head being marched into a Nazi bonfire (being bronze, it did not burn). Stormtroopers had seized tens of thousands of files from his institute, amassed over a lifetime of research, all destined for the flames. Some of those files contained intimate details of Nazi Party members who were decidedly not normalsexuell themselves. His life's work destroyed, Hirschfeld never managed to finish his magnum opus, a tract on race and sexuality around the world, based on his extensive travels. He died on his 67th birthday. A century later, it is an astounding tragedy that his life's great battles remain all too modern. Casey Schwartz, a Book World contributing writer, is the author of 'Attention: A Love Story.' Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin By Daniel Brook. W.W. Norton. 303 pp. $32.99 A Weimar Story By Brandy Schillace. W.W. Norton. 340 pp. $31.99
Telegraph
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
We are witnessing the death of American democracy
Contrary to general belief, Weimar democracy did not die when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933. It died the year before under Franz von Papen, a national conservative with social-Darwinist views and a visceral hatred of liberal modernist 'filth' in all its forms. One of his first actions was to end execution by the guillotine – deemed too Jacobin – and return to the ancient Prussian practice of death by the axe. Von Papen exploited a street clash between Communist Red Front dockers and Nazi Brownshirts on Prussian territory to carry out a constitutional coup against the elected Social Democrat government of Prussia, by far the biggest and most important of Germany's self-governing states. He seized control of policing and state security on the pretext that the Social Democrats were failing to uphold law and order. Historian Sir Richard Evans says this Preußenschlag (Prussian coup) of July 1932 was the critical moment in inter-war Germany, opening the door for much that followed. What Donald Trump has done by activating the California National Guard against the protest of the governor, and then bringing in US Marines – both of which his critics argue are unconstitutional – is a very light version of Preußenschlag, but in some ways it is worse. The street protests in Los Angeles were the result of his own theatrical stunt. You could be forgiven for thinking he deliberately provoked the alleged 'rebellion' in order to set this precedent. One can see now why Trump moved so fast to purge the top echelons of the US defence department, including the three judge advocates general. These officials rule on whether military orders are legal, and when they should be disobeyed. They are legally independent by Congressional statute. Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, told us why they had been sacked: it was to stop them posing any 'roadblocks to orders given by the commander-in-chief'. Did Trump mean it when he told his generals to 'just shoot' American protesters during the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020? We may find out. He also fired the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and others deemed symbols of 'diversity, equity, and inclusion', although one might suspect another motive. An earlier chairman – General Mark Milley – refused to ratify the Putsch of Jan 6 2021, and therefore stopped it stone dead. 'We don't take an oath to a king, or to a tyrant or dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution,' he said. Trump is attacking California on several fronts at once, shrewdly judging that Governor Gavin Newsom is the perfect foil. He is stripping the state of its powers under the Clean Power Act to impose tougher pollution rules than federal levels. He has signed an order blocking California's plan to phase out petrol cars by 2035, and another stopping it capping nitrogen oxide emissions. He now is threatening to withhold federal disaster aid for wildfires. Trump called him 'Governor Newscum' and added in his inimitable style: 'You know, hatred is never a good thing in politics. When you don't like somebody, you don't respect somebody, it's harder for that person to get money if you're on top.' Forgive me for sounding jaundiced, but decades ago I covered the Republican crusade under Speaker Newt Gingrich to restore states rights and check the usurpations of federal power. Gingrich and his party are now egging on the federal military occupation of states that stand in Trump's way. James Carville, veteran Democratic strategist and Clinton-fixer, says the Democrats should bide their time and 'play possum', betting that Trump will self-destruct under the contradictions of his own policies. The bond markets will do the job for them. Congress will drop back into Democrat hands like a ripe fruit in the 2026 mid-terms. I never expected to find myself impugning the ruthless Mr Carville for credulous naivety. Declaration of interest: he once carried out a black ops campaign against me personally from an office in the White House, which I no doubt deserved, all is forgiven anyway. Playing possum is what the German Social Democrats did in the early 1930s. Reading the first two volumes of Sir Richard Evans's magisterial trilogy, The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power, I am struck again and again by the refusal of the moderate middle to face up to what was happening. They had a touching faith that the courts would save them. But the judges were ideologically captured, or frightened, or did what most human beings do in turbulent times: they pre-emptively adapted to keep their families out of trouble. The Social Democrats made another fatal error. They assumed that Hitler's eccentric mish-mash of economic policies would lead quickly to a crisis, greatly underestimating the lift from neo-Keynesian rearmament, so like Trump's gargantuan deficits. American democracy has much deeper roots but the imminent bombing of Iran by the US air force gives pause for thought. There may be excellent reasons to knock out Iran's nuclear capability, though doing in this way, flippantly, like a power-drunk despot, conflating non-proliferation with regime change, drives the final nail in the coffin of Western moral credibility. That said, polls suggest that almost 80pc of Americans would applaud the destruction of the Fordow nuclear site, and most would support cutting off the head of the serpent in Tehran. Trump might face a Maga revolt on the edges but the larger bounce in popularity would let him steam roll opposition to his tariff war, his climate war, and his 'beautiful big bill' – a giant transfer of income from poor to rich. I don't believe Steven Bannon's warning that intervention will 'tear the country apart', unless the bombing mission goes awry. The strongman glow will open the window further for Trump's takeover of the deep state. He has already fired the heads of the FBI's intelligence, counterterrorism, criminal investigations, as well as the heads of the Washington and New York offices. He has purged the justice department, now run by a Lord High Executioner from The Mikado, openly touting an enemies list of 'conspirators'. He has forced private law firms to bend the knee. He has put in a loyalist in charge of the CIA, who inconveniently reported in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. But that was then, when Trump stood for America First, and staying out of forever wars was policy. He has fired the head of the eaves-dropping National Security Agency and its top officials. He has purged the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who is independent by law, like the chairman of the Federal Reserve. America in 2025 is obviously not Germany in 1932. The Weimar republic was already a cauldron of political violence. That year was the worst of the Great Depression. The country was seething with rage over the cultivated myths of the 1918 'stab in the back' and the Carthaginian peace of Versailles. It is even less like Germany in 1933 when the Nazis used their three cabinet seats to take over the Prussian and federal interior ministries. Within five months the Social Democrats leadership was dead, or in Dachau, or in exile. All rival parties were shut down. No independent newspaper survived. Every organisation from the labour unions, to male choirs, sports teams and beekeeper clubs came under Nazi control. But it is not the same America that was my home for long stretches of the late 20th century. Over the last few days alone: a Democratic US senator was manhandled to the floor, handcuffed and dragged away for asking a question; the Democrat comptroller of New York was seized and handcuffed by masked federal agents after demanding to see a judicial warrant; a Democratic state legislator in Minnesota was murdered with her husband at home, and a state senator was shot and badly wounded, both by an assassin with a hit list of 45 officials. Judges have so far issued more than 60 rulings that curb or restrain Trump's legal overreach. A shocking number have either been threatened, directly or through their families, or face calls for impeachment. 'Our constitutional system depends on judges who can make decisions free from threats and intimidation,' warned judge Robert Conrad, director of the administrative office of the US courts, in testimony to Congress. To no avail: the House judiciary committee shrugged it off, more or less blaming the victims. The drift of events was disturbing even before Iran offered Trump a fresh gift from Mars. I fear that many more lines in the sand will be crossed in the heady aftermath of a surgical video war on the Ayatollah, if that is where we are headed. Play possum if you want. Trump will eat your lunch.
Asharq Al-Awsat
7 days ago
- Business
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Germany and Last Kaiser's Heirs Agree to Keep Treasures on Display
The heirs of the former Prussian monarchy and Germany's state-run cultural foundations on Friday announced a deal that will allow thousands of the family's treasures and artefacts to remain on public display. The agreement ends a century-old dispute between the state and the Hohenzollern family, descendants of the last German emperor and king of Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who abdicated after World War I. "After 100 years, we have amicably resolved a dispute dating back to the transition from the monarchy to the republic," said Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer, hailing the "historic success". The collection reportedly covers 27,000 objects including paintings, sculptures, coins, books and furniture. "Countless works of art that are of great importance to the history of Brandenburg, Prussia, and thus Germany will now be permanently accessible to the public and continue to form the centerpieces of our museums and palaces," said Weimer. Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia said in a statement that "it has always been my goal to permanently preserve our shared cultural heritage for art-loving citizens and to make it publicly accessible". "The solution now found provides an excellent basis for a new partnership between the state cultural foundations and my family." Under the agreement, previously disputed objects will be transferred to a non-profit Hohenzollern Art Heritage Foundation, with two thirds of the board made up of public sector representatives, and one third by the aristocratic family. The ancient House of Hohenzollern ruled the German Empire from its establishment in 1871 until Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate in 1918, going into exile after Germany's defeat in World War I. The Prussian royals were initially to be stripped of their properties, but a deal was later worked out under a 1926 law. The imperial family received millions of Deutschmarks and kept dozens of castles, villas and other properties, mainly in and around Berlin but also as far away as today's Namibia. However, after Nazi Germany's World War II defeat, Soviet occupation of eastern Germany and communist rule led to additional expropriations. The riches lost behind the Iron Curtain only came back into reach for the Hohenzollern family with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Under a 1994 law, people whose property was expropriated by the Soviets have a right to claim compensation, but only if they did not "lend considerable support" to the Nazi regime. The family fought for years to recover the treasures but dropped the bid in 2023 when a family representative acknowledged that Kaiser Wilhelm II "sympathized with the Nazis at times". The deal announced on Friday was sealed after the German Historical Museum Foundation gave its approval, following the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Prussian Castles and Gardens Foundation in Berlin-Brandenburg.
Phone Arena
29-05-2025
- Business
- Phone Arena
Top 5 phones to cure us of the awful Samsung, Apple brand loyalty
Brand loyalty is something I see no use of, so today's proclamation goes like this: "Smartphone users of the world, free yourselves!" Since I'm not born in Prussia in 1818 (hint: google Karl Marx's year and place of birth), I guess I should cut it out before this thing turns into an anti-corporate is, however, a use of talking about brand loyalty. Everybody knows (in theory, at least) how brand loyalty pays accustomed to it, one gets to know their phone in-depth and knows what to expect of the next model from the same brand. The transfer between the new and old phones is seamless, the interface is familiar, as are the features that are there to be relied upon year after there are cons to brand loyalty and I want to drag them into the light… and then, I will present to you several phones to cure you of your Samsung or Apple attachment. That's the OnePlus 13. | Image by PhoneArena As of 2025, brand loyalty numbers tell a really fascinating story – Apple's once-dominant grip on customer loyalty has shown signs of weakening. In 2023, an impressive 94% of iPhone owners stuck with Apple. That's to say virtually all iPhone users replaced their devices with another iPhone. This coincided with the launch of the iPhone 15 this loyalty rate dropped to 89% and has remained there, likely due to growing dissatisfaction and a perceived lack of innovation. Apple's AI efforts, including its Apple Intelligence initiative and delayed improvements to Siri, have faced criticism and underwhelmed users, to put it mildly. Meanwhile, Samsung's loyalty rate has improved, climbing from 68% in 2021 to 76% in 2025, (minus a slight dip in 2024, but it's insignificant). Its Galaxy AI features have generally been better received than Apple's recent offerings. Samsung still competes with brands like Google, Motorola, and low-cost Android manufacturers. This shift paints a rather juicy picture: more folks are ditching their usual dance partners and flirting with something new – particularly hopping from iOS over to many are probably ditching Apple for Samsung, as their phones are extremely popular, well-marketed and often capable. But… there's a whole galaxy of multicolored, buzzing, sizzling phones from the Far East that one should check before going down the same old beaten path of sticking with either Sammy or Cupertino. Come on, people, what happened to your adventurous spirit?! That's the OnePlus 13T. | Image by OnePlus These are not in any particular order, but are all worth checking closely – and if you happen to choose one of them, you won't regret it. Sure, some may not be sold in your local brick and mortar, some might even require you dealing with customs and overseas shipment. Customer service may not be available 24/7, but so what – the Internet is full of horror stories about Samsung and Apple not providing adequate services as without further ado: OnePlus 13: it's got a 6.8-inch magnificent OLED screen with a 1-120Hz local high refresh rate. Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset under the hood (the best Qualcomm you could get on a phone right now) and the option for 24 GB of RAM. Simply amazing, given its $900 price tag. OnePlus 13T (a.k.a OnePlus 13s): it's the same phone as the aforementioned, just smaller. If you're a fan of compact phones and big batteries, you'll be happy to learn that this 6.3-inch beast packs a 6,260 mAh capacity battery. Realme GT7 – Launching globally on May 27, this is a true flagship killer. It features MediaTek's new Dimensity 9400e processor, delivering high performance with a 2.45 million+ AnTuTu score and support for 120 FPS gaming. It also packs a large 7,000 mAh battery (!) and 120W fast charging. Samsung's 45W charging speeds should go kick rocks. Xiaomi 15 Ultra or Oppo Find X8 Ultra: if mobile photography is your thing, you should definitely check those monsters that both pack an 1-inch sensor for their main cameras. They both pack two separate zoom cameras (with periscope-type lens in Oppo's case), have large cameras, large batteries and top-shelf chipsets. Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Design – does anyone else in your friend circle rock a TRI-folding phone? No? I thought so. Well, tri-foldables are not merely an illusion, but a reality. The price is high, but you get what you pay for: a 10-inch screen that fits in your pocket and a 3.6mm thinness. True mobile innovation. Of course, this list is way longer than that, but I wanted to give you a little taste of what's out there and beyond the Apple, Samsung realm. That's the Huawei Mate XT. | Image by PhoneArena Consumers are beginning to realize that sticking with a familiar name often means paying more for marginal benefits. In many cases, these exotic brands from China deliver comparable (and better) camera systems, high-refresh-rate OLED displays, powerful chipsets, and jaw-dropping battery capacity up with your go-to phone brand isn't disloyal – it's smart. When consumers explore new options, it forces the big names to stop coasting and start innovating. Maybe that's why Samsung is offering 45W charging speeds for the Galaxy S25, instead of the 25W of the Galaxy S24. I know, it's still miles behind the Chinese 100W that are offered, but, hey, it's something. So skip the overpriced, uninspiring year-to-year updates and try something bold – you might be pleasantly surprised.
South China Morning Post
13-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Family of Germany's last emperor ends 99-year legal dispute over who owns art treasures
Thousands of cultural treasures from Germany's former Hohenzollern imperial family will remain on permanent display in museums in Berlin and Brandenburg, the country's new minister of state for culture, Wolfram Weimer, has announced.. After a dispute lasting almost 100 years, the descendants of the last German emperor have reached a landmark agreement with the federal government and with the states of Berlin and Brandenburg, he said. 'This agreement is a tremendous success for Germany as a cultural location and for the art-loving public,' Weimer said in Berlin. 'For a hundred years, there has been ongoing uncertainty about objects that are central to the art and collection history of Prussia and thus to German history as a whole.' German Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer. Photo: dpa The treasures include a portrait of Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg by painter Lucas Cranach the Elder and a table service for the Breslau City Palace acquired by Emperor Frederick II..
