Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Retrospect and Prospect

Here I will pause my blog activity for a minute for an assessment following 300 posts written from 2010 to today and honored by 90000 page views. I presented some statistics about his blogs in the past and commented on the results.

All-time page views January 2015
Comparing the previous statistics with the present results shows that the five most visited posts have kept their position. The only change is that the post-Nuclear Power to Save the World made it into the top ten, pushing Waldsterben out. Does this mean that the German woods are no longer doomed? We shall see.

For me, there is one mystery. What is it that my readers find so fascinating about a silly quarrel over the "real" golden color of the German flag presented in January 2013? I tried to find out what became of the dispute and failed. Nevertheless, Red Baron identified the man as the retired publisher Christof Müller-Wirth. He complained and wrote a letter to our federal president stating that "yellow" is historical amnesia and unconstitutional.

On May 5, 2014, the city of Homburg awarded Christof the Wirth-Medal for his work on the history of the German Revolution in 1848/49. The medal is named after his great-great-great-grandfather Johann Georg August Wirth, who, with Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer, organized the Hambach Festival in 1832.

Lord Mayor Karlheinz Schöner (left) awards Homburg's Wirth-Medal
to Dr. Christof  Müller-Wirth (right). The painting in the back shows
his ancestor Johann Georg August Wirth (©City of Homburg)

Still yellow! In February 2014, the Chinese interpreted the "yellow" in the German flag as a synonym for pornography or the sex industry. The government actually used all three colors for its propaganda: Black = fight corruption, red = sing revolutionary songs, yellow = abolish sex work.

©dpa
Dissidents started to interpret the three colors their way: Black = the top is corrupt, red = the middle class bleeds to death, and yellow = the lower class is suitable for sex work. To avoid any future abuse of the German colors, it would indeed be better if the "yellow" was "golden."

Where do I go from here? Be assured I am not running out of topics. History, as you know, is always on my mind, but I still have to finish the 1000 pages of The Dreamwalkers to write about my appreciation of the book.

In the meantime, enjoy two more pictures from my old book of fairy tales.

Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty)
Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood)
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