1. Was it treason?
In a book about the bombing of Dresden I recently saw a photo of Edward VIII showing a model of the Zwinger to the local Gauleiter a year after his abdication as king.
He then gave a speech praising the regime's treatment of the working class before continuing on to Berlin to meet Adolf Hitler.
There are, I thought, more scandalous tales in the long history of the United Kingdom than those spilled by Prince Harry in his autobiography ('Reserve') due out next week.
"Der Hofverrat" is the title of the new SPIEGEL.
You can get the issue digitally here and from Saturday at the kiosk.
Certainly, there was a fight between brothers.
Of course, his father Charles likes sarcastic jokes.
Yes, cocaine was tried.
In general, all that glitters is not gold, especially not in large families.
So far, this is the stuff gossip magazines are made of.
"Up there" happens, representative of what happens everywhere.
However, the British monarchy is a very old company which – like all old companies – has to assert itself in the modern age.
And a prince swerves, falls out of character and presents himself confrontationally as a modern man in front of a conservative background.
It's a story about feuding brothers, missing mothers, sadistic fathers, evil stepmothers - and an institution that officially presides over 2.5 billion people with the Commonwealth.
In the SPIEGEL cover story, all aspects of a drama are illuminated, which is a tad too complex even for a series like »The Crown« - because it tells of private trauma as well as of international complications, of racism and entrepreneurship, of Hollywood and London.
In that sense, the release of Prince Harry's book isn't the end of the story.
Just the finale of this season.
Read the new SPIEGEL cover story here: The Court Treason
And read more about the parallels between Prince Harry and King Edward VIII here: Royale Exiteers
2. Are tanks getting heavier?
The infantry fighting vehicle, as the unfit person has to explain to the conscientious objector, is primarily used to transport infantry to the combat zone.
This distinguishes the German Marder from the cannon destroyer, the rocket destroyer, the tank mortar, the medical tank, the pure transport tank, the anti-aircraft tank or the command tank for air defense.
Experts are asked not to pin me down to the technical terms.
For example, there is still the French armored reconnaissance vehicle AMX-10 RC, which definitely wants to do more than "just have a look" and whose delivery to the Ukraine apparently "moves", as it is so nicely called, into the "debate" (Robert Habeck). also brought deliveries of heavier weapons to Ukraine.
There are said to be 40 martens, plus the Patriot anti-aircraft system, and … oh, this is where the heart of the luxury pacifist gets heavy.
Because
actually
one does not want to be familiar with such things at all,
actually
these dead man things are "ugh", actually one would like to have nothing to do with it.
Enlarge image
Minister Habeck, rocket launcher model at the Berlin trade fair in June 2022
Photo:
Florian Boillot / SZ Photo
This probably also applies to Olaf Scholz, who is now accused of lacking leadership because of his hesitation.
Basically, however, the position of the federal government with regard to arms deliveries can be summed up with a »Well, no, it doesn't have to be, except maybe if it has to be and our friends start!«.
Which, seen in a historical context, is not an entirely irresponsible attitude.
Incidentally, heavier – also in a symbolic sense – than the marten is the Leopard 2 main battle tank. Here it is a Grüner with the dreaded Schwarbelpanzer Anton Hofreiter, who is already demanding its delivery and does not show any cuffs: “I would wish that, as the main manufacturing country of Leopard 2, we will start a European initiative for the delivery of Leopard 2 and together with Europe we will see what we can deliver to Ukraine so that they can liberate the occupied territories".
Read more about controversial arms exports here: How the Greens are becoming the hope of the arms industry
And: Tank trio for the Ukraine - what Marder, Bradley and AMX can do
And here is more news and background information on the war in Ukraine:
The marten is coming – and the call for the leopard is getting louder: for a
long time Chancellor Olaf Scholz resisted sending German armored personnel carriers to Ukraine.
Now the country should get it.
Is the German no to main battle tanks now also falling?
"Olaf Scholz is certainly not a tank chancellor":
Olaf Scholz has announced that he will support Ukraine with Marder tanks.
Reactions range from "relief" to "half-hearted help."
Demands for further deliveries are already getting loud.
The overview.
Find all the latest developments on the war in Ukraine here: The News Update
3. Small States in the Cold War?
The Thirty Years' War is a ridiculously complicated and eventful affair, not only because of its length of 30 years.
I studied historical accounts by Herfried Münkler and by Golo Mann, after that I knew a little more, but I still haven't fully understood it to this day.
My colleagues Alexander Kühn and Anton Rainer have now taken on a comparable major malaise – the presentation of public broadcasting.
A multi-headed bureaucracy monster, blind on countless eyes, paralyzed in every limb.
[M] THE MIRROR;
Photos: Photodisc/Getty Images;
Patricia Neligan / SWR;
ARD Design;
Thorsten Jander / ARD;
Helmut Biess / rbb;
Alamy / mauritius images;
Ben Knabe / WDR;
Hendrik Lüders / NDR;
Christopher Arnold / ARD
Kühn and Rainer studied for months, talked to directors and informants, and even went "where it hurts," such as to a paralyzing geriatric meeting of the SWR Broadcasting Council in Mainz.
A curious chamber play alone the history of the interview that the outgoing ARD director Tom Buhrow and his designated successor, "Professor Doctor" Kai Gniffke from SWR gave SPIEGEL in December.
Sometimes both are available in a double pack, sometimes neither of the two, sometimes a Gniffke is a solo option, sometimes Buhrow, then only Buhrow, categorically, before Gniffke joins in for a short time - the conversation then turned out to be rather frosty.
It's about the bizarre effects of a federalism that extends to the ordering of the moderators of joint magazines and has no end to it, that the broadcasting houses do not grant each other the ratings - or a joint media library would be conceivable.
All of this before the notorious Byzantine management style of the former local ruler Patricia Schlesinger (RBB) and, as it turns out, also her predecessor Dagmar Reim.
One could almost find this muddled chaos funny if the public broadcasters weren't so important for the society in which we all live.
At least the Swedes have held back until now.
Read the full story here: In All Hostility
What else is important today
»Reich citizen« Heinrich XIII.
Prince Reuss wanted to buy land from the federal government for one million euros:
The contract had already been notarized: According to SPIEGEL information, the main suspect in the terror proceedings against a radical "Reich Citizens" group secured almost 400 hectares of forest from the state.
Climate activists disrupt the FDP's Epiphany meeting:
At its Epiphany meeting, the FDP received unwanted visitors: climate activists interrupted the speech by party leader Lindner.
He countered - and also commented on the tank deliveries to Ukraine.
Kenyan LGBTQ activist apparently brutally killed:
Edwin Chiloba campaigned for the rights of queer people in Kenya.
Now he has been found dead.
The circumstances surrounding the apparent crime are shocking.
Daniel Barenboim resigns as general music director:
At the turn of the year he made his comeback at the conductor's desk of the Berlin State Opera - while sitting.
Now Daniel Barenboim has to admit that he can no longer work as general music director.
My favorite story today: Running the gauntlet of an imposter
Republican MP George Santos, a staunch partisan of Donald Trump, could actually be having the time of a lifetime, freshly sworn in.
In fact, the man is currently going through hell - for telling lies upon lies about his life so far.
His mother was not a financial manager but a cleaning lady.
She didn't die in the 9/11 attacks, but long after.
His grandparents are not victims of the Holocaust.
His alleged employers - Citigroup and Goldman Sachs - had never heard of him.
He is not a Jew but a Catholic.
And so on.
Santos symbolizes an America where scammers "get away with it" (anything) all the way to the top.
But now, at the top, in Washington, everything is falling at his feet.
And Santos seems to think things are about to settle down.
My colleague Marc Pitzke followed the man's heels - capturing scenes that could serve as a template for either tragedy or comedy.
For example, if he tries to avoid the press through a side exit unnoticed, is discovered, flees through a tunnel into the basement, gets lost - and finally saves himself "in the pompous halls of the House of Representatives".
Where he finally bugs his "rebellious" party colleagues, who don't care who joins them.
It is a small cabinet and lesson about a political system that balances on the edge of moral self-abandonment.
Read the full story here: George Santos goes to Washington – and misbehaves right away
Also read: US Republicans in Crisis – One Party Destroys Itself
What we recommend today at SPIEGEL+
Why it still hasn't come to an end for the CSU boss:
For Markus Söder, the topic of candidacy for chancellor has been resolved - claims Markus Söder.
In the CSU, however, many are hoping for a second attempt by their chairman.
Are his claims credible?
What do you live on, Mr. Jeschke?
The co-founder of the »Last Generation«, Henning Jeschke, dropped out of college and was a full-time disruptor.
Here he criticizes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the federal government – and explains why he subordinates everything to the fight against the climate crisis.
Death awaits in the countryside:
exhausted doctors, overcrowded crematoria and fresh graves everywhere in the fields: While everyday life seems to be returning to China's metropolises, the coronavirus is hitting a completely unprepared rural population.
Who is Daley Blind and what does FC Bayern want with him?
Bayern have signed an experienced defender in Dutchman Daley Blind.
The almost 33-year-old brings with him a lot of international experience.
However, he is no longer the fastest.
Which is less important today
Enlarge image
Photo: David Niviere/Corbis/Getty Images
Charlene Lynette Grimaldi
, 44, Princess of Monaco, spent more money on beautiful clothes in 2022 than her 18 aristocratic competitors for the title, uh, the »Most wealthy clothing customers with a royal background«.
Because a paternalistic society does not, as is well known, tolerate women wearing the same piece of clothing several times, Charlène had to appear 105 times in the past year with new pieces of clothing - not counting underwear.
It is possible that Prince Albert II or Gucci gave her one or the other little hat.
In any case, the total value of what was worn is estimated at 750,000 euros by people who know something like that.
That's not really a lot of money.
Three quarters of a million, that's what a house on the outskirts of Bottrop costs,
a Bugatti Veyron with seats made of elephant foreskin or a garage parking space for this Bugatti in the pirate nest Monaco (rent, monthly).
Besides, the Princess's health hadn't been good for a long time, and now it's better again, you're not stuck in it and you don't read the Freizeit Revue either.
There, one has certainly never heard of the runner-up, a lady with the legendary name Maria-Olympia of Greece, from the widely ramified family of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
Mini concave mirror
Here you can find the whole concave mirror.
cartoon of the day
And on the weekend?
He has almost sold out the Waldbühne in Berlin, with ticket prices starting at 200 euros.
So there shouldn't be a few people who are blindly - not to say deaf - interested in Peter Gabriel.
It doesn't matter if he comes with new material, with an acoustic version of the old hits or "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway - On Ice".
The first single from the forthcoming album (»i/o«) with brand new songs is available today - the first harbinger of which, »Panopticom«, sounds suspiciously like the 80s.
The title, says Gabriel, refers to an "infinitely expandable and accessible data globe," the "Panopticom," with which "the world can better see itself" and also understand "what's really going on."
How this differs from this Internet, we will find out at the latest in the forest stage.
You can confidently take the time to listen to the approximately five minutes of »Panopticom« with three or four glasses of red wine.
Those in the know will recognize that Gabriel has once again rounded up “the boys”, ie drummer Manu Katché, guitarist David Rhodes and the baldest of world-class bassists, Tony Levin.
Friends of dignified airport music and BDS sympathizers will even identify Brian Eno on the keyboard.
A summit of solidity!
Okay, sarcasm aside.
Glad he's back.
Your Arno Frank wishes you a pleasant evening