On 13 April 2026, Beatrice Achterberg, an editor at the conservative publication NZZ Deutschland, titled her newsletter Der andere Blick am Morgen with the remark: “He moderates where he should decide, and lets things happen where he ought to lead – Merz is reminiscent of Angela Merkel.” Yes, we are being unfair to Friedrich Merz. Yet […]
A Political Thought Experiment for April 1st Taking advantage of the ambiguity that this date offers for all manner of news items, jokes and provocations, I would like to set out here a bold but logically compelling utopia. Hence this essay embraces a daring hypothesis, yet treats it with full seriousness: could Switzerland’s long experience […]
I frequently and arbitrarily come across posts like this one on LinkedIn … Jonny Resman, having a long and winding title / designation, claimed that “in a leaked draft of the U.S. National Security Strategy, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland were potential countries for U.S. coercion and influence, to make them leave the EU. The […]
Why Europe must complete its political formation in order to gain a voice as a respected power on the world stage, preserve its Enlightenment heritage, and possibly re-establish itself as a multinational federal state. As indicated in my recent Blog post “The Awakening of the Mosaic – An Inaugural Address” on 2026-02-06 besides the remnants […]
Last night I had a dream. I dreamed that I was listening to the inaugural address of the President of the United States of Europe to the European peoples sometime around 2029/2030. I woke up enthused and tried to piece together the fragments of my memory and fill in the rhetorical gaps. This is the […]
“My motto is cheerful pessimism. Since I can think politically, Germany has been going downhill. But on this long road down, there are still a number of beautiful days.” Jan Fleischhauer, former editor of Der Spiegel, is occasionally quoted as uttering this rather sobering statement. My reflexive inclination is to dismiss this melancholic resignation […]
Rarely have I felt so miserable that my suspicions were confirmed It looks like a grand plan – an insidious one from the European perspective, a genial one according to the Trump administration – but maybe even the latter’s tomb stone. “It’s official: Trump wants a weaker European Union” Ian Bremmer wrote on December 10, […]
Between the Right to Protection and Self-Assertion A Reflection on Flight, Persecution, Asylum, and Migration A Question Defining Our Time Hardly any issue is currently affecting Europe as much as the tension between flight, persecution, asylum, and migration. It evokes emotional reactions, divides societies, and puts the foundations of liberal democracies to the test. Anyone […]
In memory of Jane Goodall — and what she left behind for posterity “I would encourage every single organisation to consider the absurdity of unlimited economic development on a planet with finite natural resources. We can’t go on like this. We can’t push human population growth under the carpet.” — Jane Goodall When Jane Goodall left our physical […]
Friedrich Merz has won. He has achieved his personal goal. In all likelihood, he will become Germany’s tenth Chancellor with the second-worst election result in the history of the CDU/CSU. Angela Merkel already acknowledged his qualifications for this path during the launch of her memoir, “Freedom,” in December 2024 (zas-freiburg.de), when she attributed to him […]
