The director of the German Literature Archive in Marbach, Ulrich Raulff, thinks that if Schiller were alive today he would not be writing plays but blogging or twittering. He chose plays as the most media-effective form of expression of his day.

Der vor 250 Jahren geborene Dichter sei ganz gezielt “als Medienunternehmer in das damals wirkungsvollste und stärkste Medium reingegangen: ins Theater”, betonte der Schiller-Experte. “Von der Intensität, wie er dieses Medium erobert und nutzt, könnte man schon sagen, wäre zu erwarten, dass er heute vermutlich nicht Stückchen schreiben würde für Suhrkamps Theaterverlag, sondern nach einer anderen, stärkeren Maschine greifen würde.”

This reminds me the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller, which I enjoyed as a set book in my degree course. Could one imagine Goethe and Schiller exchanging letters today? But somehow I can’t see it as a text message exchange. Perhaps they would have blogged (despite Raulff’s view that Goethe was less modern than Schiller).

Tweeted by Markus Trapp of text+blog.

Paternoster videos:

University of Sheffield Arts Tower

Paternoster lift

Paternoster, a cyclic elevator

Riding the paternoster at Arbeitsamt Lichtenberg, Berlin

The Onion has a video report on why Franz Kafka Airport in Prague is named the world’s most alienating airport (via Die Zeit).

Another video, or at least audio: Marx / Engels correspondence reading – Harry Rowohlt as Marx and Gregor Gysi as Engels.

Just translated my shortest-ever German legal sentence: ‘Dies verwundert.’

This month, LLRX has an article on researching Australian law.

I went to LLRX.com looking for the article on researching French law. There are English guides to many legal systems there, although somewhat outdated since the project was discontinued a few years ago. And Claire Germain’s French law guide can be found in a newer (2004) version at Cornell (another of the great law sites).

World domain map – free to bloggers who blog it.

Neue Aktion für alle Blogger: Domain-Weltkarte gratis!

Before we worried about the Neue Mitte in Fürth (project to create gigantic shopping centre closing in a whole road as putative salvation of local shops), there was the new pedestrian zone.

There was a design, with partly curved stones I believe, and an invitation to tender produced no tenders!

After that the design was simplified.

Then the firm employed ordered stones from China, which did not come.

When the stones did come, there were big gaps between them such as to fell wearers of high heels.

The stones also cracked a bit, suggesting the harvest festival procession may have to change its route.

Horrible bronze street furniture was introduced, and the nice green ticket machine was carefully bronzed.

Shortly afterwards, the bronze rubbish bins were peed on by dogs, I presume, and began to go green.

They disappeared. So did the bronzed bum-freezing little seats designed to prevent large gatherings of non-natives. One or two are still there, but the one outside this building was replaced by a hole in the ground, carefully filled in with stones slightly different to the rest.

Today, in the sleet and snow, scaffolding was put up and a horrible bronzed pole with oval cross section rose. It appears that two such poles are to bear a light. This was the beginning:

After that, attempts to put the light on and erect the second pole seemed to fail. There was a lot of phoning and smoking. Eventually, the solitary pole was covered with a plastic bag:

The other pole was stowed away, and after some deliberation, and even a chat with the police, the crew departed, to warm up indoors if they’re lucky.

One can only hope the worst.