“Return of Mental Borders”: A Diary of COVID-19 Closures between Kehl, Germany, and Strasbourg, France

This paper retraces the author’s personal experience of the COVID-19 lockdown from March to July 2020 at the Franco-German border from a threefold perspective: that of a cross-border worker living in Kehl, Germany, and working in Strasbourg, France; that of a Franco-German citizen with a family and children of both French and German nationality; and that of a researcher specialized in border studies. The paper deals with national re-bordering policies and their direct personal and psychological consequences for borderlanders, and also questions whether such measures are adequate to contain the pandemic, especially in a context of European Union integration which is based on the principle of a “Europe without borders”.

Ontische1 und pragmatische Fragen zur mittelalterlichen Textsorte Testament aus textlinguistischer Perspektive

In my contribution it’s about testaments made by german citizen of Cracow. The material is based on texts of last wills of people representing a minority of citizen of Cracow, the patrician families. The tastators where drawn dealer and trademans, which also pushing the development of the region. The texttype testament often marginalized by linguistics. I aske in opposite of this from the perspective of ontology and pragmatism: What is the deeper linguistic structure of this relative formalized text-type. I show in my analysis the texts of a last will include not only declarative (resp. indirect declarative) acts of speech but also a variety of assertive and directive elements. I don’t want to decide the justice of an act of speech but I have a catalogue of repetitive facultative phrases and combine this with particular narrations of certain paragraphs of testaments. This element not only refers to the private sphere of the tastators (conflicts or emotions) but uncover the social, educational and in part religious attitude of the testators. And so at least fully developed testaments let understood as selfreports.

Kekuatan Mengikat Order Mahkamah Internasional pada Kasus Karl LaGrand

Abstract—This study discusses the strength of binding orders from the International Court of Justice for countries in dispute. Orders from the International Court of Justice are often violated, because they are considered to have no binding power and no harsh sanctions. The international court has issued an order to stop the execution of the death penalty for Karl LaGrand, a German citizen living in the United States. However, the United States still carried out the execution to Karl LaGrand. This study uses a juridical-normative method which is studied through a statute approach and a conceptual approach to achieve results. The results of the study show that orders from the International Court of Justice have binding power because the order is a decision of the International Court of Justice that must be implemented and obeyed by the disputing country. Keywords: order, bindingforce, internationalcourt of justice Abstrak—Penelitian ini membahas tentang kekuatan mengikat order dari Mahkamah Internasional bagi negara yang bersengketa. Order dari Mahkamah Internasional sering kali di langgar, karena dianggap tidak memiliki kekuatan mengikat dan tidak ada sanksi yang keras. Mahkamah internasioal telah mengeluarkan order untuk menghentikan eksekusi pidana mati bagi Karl LaGrand yang merupakan seorang warga negara Jerman yang tinggal di Amerika Serikat. Namun eksekusi mati tetap dilaksanakan oleh Amerika Serikat kepada Karl LaGrand. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode yuridis-normatif yang dikaji melalui statute approach dan conceptual approach untuk mencapai hasil. Hasil kajian menunjukan bahwa order dari Mahkamah Internasional memiliki kekuatan mengikat karena order merupakan putusan Mahkamah Internasional yang harus dilaksanakan dan dipatuhi oleh negara yang bersengketa. Kata kunci: order, kekuatan mengikat, mahkamah internasional

“Cemetery=Civilization”: Circus Wols, World War II, and the Collapse of Humanism

Circus Wols is a multimedia spectacle conceived by Wols during World War II at the Camp des Milles where he was interned between May and October 1940. As a German citizen, the artist was considered an enemy of France and Circus helped him bear the harsh conditions of his imprisonment. Wols envisioned a show of high intellectual and aesthetic value that would employ advanced technology but remain accessible to the masses. As such, it is comparable to a utopian avant-garde total artwork. However, through its assumed incompletion and fragmentation, Circus Wols destabilized the ambitions of the avant-garde and modernism; it even went further, rejecting anthropocentrism. Shortly after his liberation from the camp, Wols began to claim that his art should not be considered a human creation. Prefigured by Circus Wols, the artist’s dismissal of European humanism as a valid social and cultural paradigm only grew after the war. His stance is best understood in relation to the contemporaneous notion of “abhumanism”, first theorized by playwright Jacques Audiberti, and embraced by Wols’s close friend, artist and poet Camille Bryen. The article argues that approaching Wols through the lens of abhumanism highlights the pressing historical concerns of his work, which, associated with post-war Parisian Abstraction, is usually depoliticized.

Turning Headlines into Lies

This chapter criticises the Neue Freie Presse. Unlike its liberal colleagues in Berlin, it does not want to be taken by surprise. Being one of the old guard, it surrenders but never dies—surrendering even before the battle has begun. It was the Neue Freie Presse which assured its readers in print that “tranquillity and order prevail” in the Third Reich and that “every German citizen of the Jewish faith can go about his business” at any time and even after the exclusion of Jewish doctors and lawyers from public office. On the eve of the boycott, the Neue Freie Presse even printed the announcement by one firm that in their sphere of operations, there has been no incidence of persecutions against Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

Erbschaft- und Schenkungsteuer in Polen und in Deutschland. Konstruktionselemente der Steuer: Steuerpflicht, Besteuerungsgrundlage, Steuerbefreiungen, Stundung und Erlass der Steuer, Steuerklassen, Freibeträge, Instrumentalpflichten. Zweiter Teil

From the comparison of the structural elements of the tax structure, the Polish and German inheritance and donation tax acts, the following conclusions can be drawn: – the German law – unlike the Polish law – allows for the recognition of inheritance and donation tax paid by a German citizen abroad at the taxpayer’s request, – the German act provides for an earlier tax point in the case of acquisition by inheritance than in Poland – it is the moment of opening the inheritance, – German law does not provide for the institution of re-emergence of the tax obligation, – in the German act, there is no broad subjective exemption, as in the Polish one, and in the case of the acquisition of an enterprise (current assets), it does not always provide for a full exemption, and the conditions for the exemption are stricter than in the Polish one, – in the German Act on inheritance and donation tax in a different way, considering not only classification to the tax group, thresholds for tax-free amounts have been defined, – the exemption of pension assets is provided for in the German law, and not, as in the Polish solution, in the Personal Income Tax Act, – the German Act on Inheritance and Donation Tax provides for different legal institutions that do not exist in the Polish law, such as deferral or remission of tax, – instrumental obligations have been regulated differently in both acts, it seems that the German law is not as strict in this respect as the Polish one, and the tax declaration and tax declaration in the German act do not mean the same legal institutions as in the Polish act. Generally speaking, however, beneficial for taxpayers of inheritance and donation tax in Poland is a solution that covers all (in principle) cases of free acquisition of property and property rights.

Constantin Brunners Auffassung des Jüdischen

»Jewishness« and »Jewish identity«, two of the most controversial concepts inside and outside the Jewish community, are center stage in Constantin Brunner’s thinking. Although he regarded religion as »superstition«, he himself was deeply rooted in religious traditions and the issue of Jewishness plays an important part in all of his works. Brunner is concerned with all questions traditionally related to Jewishness: the question of race and ethnicity, of religion and the question of Jewishness as historical heritage. In contrast to some of his prominent contemporaries, Martin Buber for instance, Brunner does not link »Jewishness« to race or ethnic heritage, but to cultural tradition. In the »spirit of Judaism« he finds the roots of his own mystical and spiritual thinking. On the political and social level, Brunner rejects the concept of a Jewish nation. A fervent advocate of assimilation, he saw himself not as a »Jewish« but as a »German« citizen of Jewish descent.

Per scientiam ad iustitiam? Werk und Wirkung von Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935)

Magnus Hirschfeld was the trailblazer of modern sexology and he defined homosexuality as a variation in western sexual life - and no longer as a perversion or vice. Moreover, he campaigned for sexual liberation with petitions to the parliament, leaflets and even movies. He popularized terms that are still in use, such as »transsexualism« or »homosexuality«. But he also became an admirer of sexual eugenics. Lastly, he never achieved the decriminalization of homosexual desire and he also died without any successors. Throughout his life he saw himself as a German citizen. His Jewish background was more relevant to his enemies than to himself.

Arp, Hans/Jean (1886–1966)

Hans/Jean Arp is an Alsatian poet and artist, who was a founding member of Dada and an active participant in Constructivism and Surrealism. Arp grew up in Strasbourg speaking German, French, and Alsatian. He studied fine arts in Strasbourg, Weimar, and Paris, and even early in his career was active in international artistic and literary circles. In 1910, he co-founded the Moderne Bund and contributed to Der Blaue Reiter Almanach [The Blue Rider Almanac]. A German citizen, Arp successfully dodged the draft during World War I, finding refuge first in Paris and then in Zurich. At an exhibition that featured his embroideries, tapestries, and works on paper at the Tanner Gallery, he met Sophie Taeuber, who soon became a friend and collaborator and, in October 1922, his wife. Early in their friendship, her exploration of strict geometries led to a series of collaborative vertical-horizontal compositions in collage and embroidery that are among the earliest purely abstract works produced by European avant-gardes. In 1916, Arp joined Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, and others in launching Dada. Informed by mysticism and Eastern philosophies, Arp sought to transcend the boundedness of individual production by working with chance, thus deliberately relinquishing some control over the process of making.