1.
Germany's neighboring countries, the EU and business people are upset about the border controls - from a scientific point of view, they are probably correct
When Latin is spoken in German politics, the difficulties in understanding are usually the first to come.
It's not just because many people don't understand Latin.
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert spoke today of an »ultima ratio«.
With this beautiful expression he defended the decision of the rulers to introduce stricter controls at the borders with the Czech Republic and the Austrian state of Tyrol.
Many people doubt that this is really a »last resort«, which the Latin phrase is supposed to express, a decision born of great need for lack of alternatives to prevent the introduction of more dangerous variants of the coronavirus from neighboring countries.
Business representatives, for example, who see the movement of goods and supplies to German companies at risk.
But above all politicians from Vienna, Prague and Brussels.
Icon: enlarge Photo: Matthias Balk / dpa
Officials of the federal police and the Bavarian border police have been checking traffic since Sunday - and even today they sent back thousands of people wishing to enter the country who did not fall under the more or less urgent exception regulations.
Already at the weekend there was criticism from the EU of the
German isolation.
On Sunday evening, the German ambassador in Vienna was invited to a meeting at the Austrian Foreign Ministry.
Today a confidante of President Emmanuel Macron called the German special way of demarcation a "hard decision".
From a scientific point of view, foreclosure is probably sensible, but not too effective.
Will the
British and South African virus variants
, which are currently less common in Germany than in the Czech Republic and Tyrol,
actually spread a little more slowly because of the border closings?
I asked my colleague Christoph Seidler from our science department how sensible he thinks going it alone in Berlin.
“Last spring, I dealt with the question of what sense border closings have in the pandemic,” says Christoph.
“At that time the conclusion was: not a particularly big one.
But things could possibly be different now - precisely because the dangerous virus variants are still geographically very differently distributed. "
On the other hand, how severe is the international annoyance and economic damage?
Economists warn, freight forwarders are appalled.
Nevertheless: »Scio nescio«, nothing specific is not known (actually: I know that I know nothing), would have probably said the German politician Franz Josef Strauss, a great Latin friend from Bavaria.
Strauss (1915 to 1988), who was foolishly proud of his literary education, claimed: "A politician who wants to be a good speaker will always say something that people don't understand."
Read the full story here: How sensible are border closings?
2.
The border protection agency Frontex, which supposedly defends Europe's external borders, is obviously guilty of serious human rights violations - lawyers now want to bring Frontex boss Fabrice Leggeri to the European Court of Justice
For around a decade and a half, the EU member states have been employing an
agency
named
Frontex
to "monitor" the external borders and coasts of the community area, as it is euphemistically called in bureaucratic German.
The French
Fabrice Leggieri has been the
head of the agency
since 2015
.
Icon: enlargePhoto: Virginia Mayo / AP
My colleagues Giorgos Christides, Steffen Lüdke and Maximilian Popp report that a group of lawyers now want to cite Leggieri to the European Court of Justice - because of Frontex's involvement in
human rights violations
off the coast of Greece.
Frontex is complicit in the Greek policy of exposing vulnerable migrants to the sea, argues one of the lawyers.
Since May 2020, DER SPIEGEL has been tracing how the Greek coast guard stopped boats carrying refugees in the Aegean Sea, destroyed the engines and exposed migrants to the sea - either in the dinghies themselves or on inflatable life rafts.
Often the people are rescued hours later by the Turkish coast guard.
In addition to men and women, children are also exposed.
According to research, Frontex units were in the vicinity or involved in at least seven of the so-called pushbacks, which are illegal.
The lawyers have written to Leggeri asking to end the mission in the Aegean Sea.
If he doesn't, they want to go to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
If there should be a court case, the lawyers hope that this could lead to Leggeri's dismissal.
Icon: enlarge Photo: Emrah Gurel / AP
"Frontex is now being examined by almost every EU institution with a corresponding mandate," says my colleague Steffen Lüdke.
“The European Parliament alone has been dealing with the allegations for four months.
So far, Fabrice Leggeri has always avoided specific questions.
He won't get away with it in the long run. "
Some critics of the European policy of isolationism towards refugees speak of an undeclared war that the EU has been waging for years on its external borders against unwanted immigrants.
Willy Brandt (1913 to 1992), who was otherwise rather sparing with Latin quotations, once said: »War is not the ultima ratio, as many claim.
It is the ultima irratio. «One can understand this theorem without a large Latinum.
Read the full story here: Lawyers want to bring Frontex boss Leggeri to court
3.
Many carnivalists mourned on Rose Monday because of the canceled parades, but a tiny bit of fun was also allowed in Corona times
For people like me who grew up far away from Cologne, Mainz and Düsseldorf, the customs and habits of the Germans living there at
Carnival time
have always been puzzling and fascinating.
This year I naturally regretted the friends of organized cheerfulness because they were neither allowed to throw camels nor catch them because of Corona.
My colleague Christian Parth reports that the German economy is allegedly losing 1.5 billion euros as a result of the carnival cancellation.
And he quotes Wolfgang Niedecken from Cologne, singer of the band BAP, with the sentence: "I can sympathize with the phantom pain of people whose highest holiday is Rose Monday and who look forward to the carnival season all year round."
Icon: enlargePhoto: Costa Belibasakis / Festival Committee Cologne Carnival
In view of such hardship, I was initially happy about the idea of Greenpeace activists to put a lonely "motif car" in front of Cologne Cathedral today.
The car showed the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU) with a fool's cap, how he brings down the church of Keyenberg with a huge brown coal excavator.
The village of Keyenberg is to give way to the Garzweiler opencast mine.
As a criticism of Laschet's inconsistent climate policy, the motif car representation is probably okay, as a joke it seems rather weak to me.
If I could summarize my modest amusement in a doctrine with a Latin phrase, it would have to read like this: In the German carnival, humor is principally a terra incognita.
Read the whole story here: "The Cologne soul suffers"
Carnival news: Street carnival did not start on time
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What else is important today
Two million people in Germany are freezing in their own four walls:
data from the Federal Statistical Office show that many people recently lacked the money to heat appropriately.
Who is most affected - and what it looks like in other European countries.
China is overtaking the USA as the EU's most important trading partner for the first time:
The booming Chinese business is helping the German economy through the corona crisis - and is more important for Europe than ever before.
Now the country has left the USA behind as the EU's most important trading partner.
Habeck calls for a cap on brokerage fees: is
the "ban party" coming back?
In the dispute over the meaning of single-family houses, the Greens came under fire.
Now party leader Habeck declares himself - and makes suggestions on how to save the overpriced housing market.
My favorite story today: Muhammad Ali's opponent
Icon: enlarge
Boxer and Ali opponent Buster Mathis: After his career, he loaded trucks
Photo: Michael Brennan / Iconic Images
"You don't grow from defeat," wrote Jan Philipp Reemtsma in his book about the
boxer Muhammad Ali
.
"You perish from defeat, and where you don't perish, you are deformed." That is a clever and great sentence.
And yet it proves to be only partially correct in the gorgeous interview that my colleague Benjamin Knaack conducted with the
photographer Michael Brennan
.
Brennan visited Muhammad Ali's former opponents in the ring.
It was research and manhunt work that lasted many years and was not only worthwhile in terms of photography.
“Unfortunately, many of them were beaten up old fighters,” Brennan reports.
"Some were in jail for assault, one had become a Mafia guy who was sentenced to life for murder."
But apparently there are also ex-opponents of perhaps the best boxer of all time who fared well.
"The more famous Ali later became, the more they became little celebrities in their surroundings," says Brennan.
"They went to work in the coal mine or somewhere else and could say: I boxed Ali." Sounds like a rather harmless deformation.
Read the full story here: »Unfortunately, many of them were beaten old fighters«
What we recommend today at SPIEGEL +
This is how your family life gets structure again:
Has the lockdown meander got hold of you?
Here the child and adolescent psychiatrist Filip Caby explains why structures are so important for families - and how you can find your rhythm again.
This left takes on the hardliners:
Because of its foreign policy, the left is not considered capable of governing.
One MP wants to change the party line.
The tattoo question:
Which tattoos are police officers allowed to wear visibly?
Officials fear a "taste police" because of a planned law.
A chief commissioner has turned to the Federal Constitutional Court.
Sesame, open yourself - automatically, please:
You know from mansions and expensive hotels that the door is opened as soon as you approach.
With smart locks, this should now be possible for everyone.
Theoretically.
Three systems in the test.
Which is not so important today
Icon: enlarge
»Jerusalema Challenge« by the police in the Märkischer Kreis, North Rhine-Westphalia
Lucrative dancing fun:
Kgaogelo Moagi alias Master KG
, 25, creator of the world hit »Jerusalema« from South Africa, can look forward to the hard-working money collectors from Warner Music.
The dancers who performed fun videos to his music as part of the so-called Jerusalema Challenge to cheer people up in times of pandemic, have to pay license fees.
In the videos one could marvel at, among other things, the hip-wobbling workforces of hospitals, companies, police stations and fire stations;
The North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior has apparently already paid for at least one of their police stations.
Since they are aware of the nature of the »Jerusalem Dance Challenge«, a spokeswoman for the music company promised: »Depending on the user, we offer different price categories for different uses, including purely symbolic amounts.«
Typo of the day
, corrected in the meantime: »During a field mission in 2006 on the ISS space station, the Russian Mikhail Tyurin shot an ultra-light golf ball into space;
a publicity for a golf outfitter. "
Cartoon of the day:
Carnival in Germany
Icon: enlarge Photo: Klaus Stuttmann
And tonight?
Icon: enlargePhoto:
Amazon Studios
A football game between Bavaria and Bielefeld, a television program largely trimmed for carnival - the Amazon Prime comedy "The Map of Tiny Perfect Things" could be a nice alternative.
In any case, my colleague Elisa von Hof finds the film about two teenagers and a day, which always turns out the same, refreshing and sensitive.
The hero is stuck in a time loop, true to the motto: And puberty greets every day.
According to Elisa, it is "about grief and the fact that you often cannot cope with it." Sounds like a highly interesting film for an audience that, because of the lockdown, often thinks they are in a time warp themselves.
A lovely evening.
Sincerely,
Wolfgang Höbel
Here you can order the "Lage am Abend" by email.