Think back on your most memorable road trip. Quite a few, actually, when living in Windhoek Namibia: The first three years from 1988 we travelled around 10 weeks into the Namib and National Parks annually and slept on our Landrover with a roof top tent, we had imported from Germany by container, awesome experiences, indeed! Credit phb
Successful Life“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” Bob Dylan Maria Ines with me | Credit phb Credit phb
When studying in Berlin around 1974, I bought the Penguin Classic I found now in a Camp Kitchen along my Camping Trip Northern Rivers area in New South Wales in Australia before Xmas 2025. One of the best US books ever written, for sure. True Crime Genre and Podcasts were not even at the Horizon. And I am glad I found a copy of Moby Dick as well. Nothing like reading when camping in Australia. By the way: The Place to be, if not in Berlin. In Cold Blood: The Birth of True Crime Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) remains the definitive work that created the true crime genre—a “nonfiction novel” that reads with the psychological depth of fiction while maintaining journalistic rigor. The Achievement Capote spent six years researching the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in rural Kansas, conducting over 8,000 pages of interviews. His breakthrough was treating real events with novelistic techniques: shifting perspectives, building suspense, and developing the killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock as complex characters rather than monsters. The result transforms crime reporting into literature. Enduring Power The book’s strength lies in its moral ambiguity. Capote neither romanticizes nor demonizes the murderers, instead revealing how circumstance, psychology, and choice intersect tragically. His depiction of small-town America shattered by random violence captured something essential about American anxiety in the post-war era—a theme that resonates even…
This site is known to Learners of German around the world … Linked More than The Language only: Culture and Landeskunde Menschen in Deutschland News and Background Infos. Credit phb
There are places and there are really good places: One of the best for us is this one here with real Camping like 50 years ago named Lodge. But it is in fact an old Dairy Farm, the second wave of taking the land after logging … Very cool up here at 900 m above Sea Level, which is called Coffs Harbour Coastline and Northern Rivers in NSW. In OZ, of course😎 and not in the USA. And the beautiful but overcrowded South Pacific Ocean Coastline between Sydney and Brisbane. One of our annual 18 nights Loops from the Gold Coast since we both retired. View from my Fire Place 👌 Credit phb Published by Peter H Bloecker, retired Director of Studies (North Germany).
Timber Harvested | History of NSW Australia Image Credit: Richmond River Historical Society, Website Dream of a Magnificent Tree | Credit phb Camping at Richmond River | Credit phb This post is about the History of the Richmond River area west of Evans Head and Woodburn. Camping 2 nights at Coraki at the Richmond River, I have time for some research what this area looked like when industrialized from 1860 on and what happened to the local tribes there and the river area, now mostly used for Sugar Cane production. The Drogher Aggie and Timber Raft on the Richmond River What This Image Reveals This remarkable photograph captures a moment in the industrial transformation of the Richmond River valley, likely from the late 19th or early 20th century. At first glance, it appears to be a simple documentary image of timber transport, but closer examination reveals the mechanics and scale of an industry that would devastate one of Australia’s largest subtropical rainforests within a single human lifetime. The Raft Itself: In the foreground, we see an “immense raft” of squared timber logs—probably 30-40 visible in this section alone, though the full raft likely extended much further. These are pine logs, not the prized red cedar that drew the first timber-getters to the Richmond in 1842, a telling detail: by the time photography became common enough to document this scene, the cedar…
Credit phb Next to Max Frisch one of the authors I wish to recommend for young readers and Teachers and Learners of the German Language and Culture. Inspector Bärlach, dying of cancer and with only a year to live, investigates the murder of his colleague Schmied in a rural area near Bern. The case leads to the wealthy industrialist Gastmann, whom Bärlach has suspected of numerous crimes for forty years but never been able to prove guilty. The investigation reveals that Schmied was actually working undercover on Bärlach's orders to gather evidence against Gastmann. The ambitious young Lieutenant Tschanz becomes Bärlach's assistant, but the dying inspector gradually realizes that Tschanz himself murdered Schmied out of jealousy over a woman. Rather than arrest Tschanz through conventional means, Bärlach manipulates him into killing Gastmann, then allows Tschanz to believe he's gotten away with both murders - only to have him arrested at the novel's end. The title's meaning crystallizes: Tschanz becomes Bärlach's "hangman," the instrument of justice against Gastmann, even as he himself is guilty.Why It's So Masterfully WrittenDürrenmatt achieves something quite extraordinary here - he's written what appears to be a detective novel but is actually a profound meditation on justice, morality, and human nature. The crime plot becomes a vehicle for philosophical inquiry in the best Swiss tradition of skeptical humanism.The narrative structure is deceptively simple yet brilliantly constructed. Dürrenmatt inverts…
Peter Ludlow's "Moreton Bay History" – Eine Würdigung Peter Ludlow (Brisbane), Historiker und Freund, betrieb bis vor kurzem einen der bedeutendsten regionalen Geschichtsblogs Queenslands: "Moreton Bay History" (peterlud.wordpress.com). Altersbedingt wurde die Seite inzwischen eingestellt – ein Verlust für alle, die sich für die maritime, soziale und kulturelle Geschichte der Moreton Bay Region interessieren. Ein Lebenswerk der Lokalgeschichte Seit 1977 – dem Jahr, in dem ich meine Lehrtätigkeit in West-Berlin begann – widmete sich Peter Ludlow der Erforschung der Moreton Bay Geschichte. Sein besonderes Interesse galt Peel Island, jener kleinen Insel in der Moreton Bay, die als Quarantänestation und Leprakolonie diente. Aus dieser jahrzehntelangen Forschung entstanden grundlegende Werke: Peel Island: Paradise or Prison (1989) Exiles of Peel Island: Quarantine (1991) Exiles of Peel Island: Leprosy Queensland's German Connections Für meine eigene Arbeit als DaF-Berater (1998-2005) war besonders relevant: "Queensland's German Connections" (2012), das Ludlow zusammen mit Matthew Tesch und Robin Kleinschmidt verfasste. Dieses Werk dokumentiert die deutsche Einwanderungsgeschichte Queenslands – jene Siedler des 19. Jahrhunderts, deren Nachkommen die kulturelle Grundlage bildeten für die 1.000+ Deutschlehrer, die ich später unterstützen sollte. Ludlows historische Forschung zeigte, warum Deutsch in Queensland überhaupt eine Rolle spielte: Deutsche Siedlergemeinden, lutherische Kirchen, kulturelle Netzwerke, die sich über Generationen hielten. Maritime Geschichte und menschliche Geschichten Ludlows weitere Publikationen umfassten: The Port of Brisbane – Its People and its Personalities (2013) World War I Heroes of the Redlands (2015) Moreton…
About me This Site is about Private and Public Schools in Queensland. The Author Peter H Bloecker worked from 1998-2005 for Education Queensland in the LOTE Centre in the function of the German Language Advisor funded by the Goethe-Institut Munich and the Foreign Office in Berlin (AA). Example only. Example Anglican Boys’ College TSS TSS Campus Southport | Credit phb Credit phb Credit phb The Southport School and the Persistence of Educational Privilege: A Comparative Critique of Elite Secondary Education in Britain, Germany, and Australia The campus map of The Southport School spreads before the observer like a cartographic representation of educational aspiration rendered in brick, mortar, and carefully maintained playing fields. Founded in 1901 during the late colonial period when Queensland was barely forty years removed from its separation from New South Wales, TSS positioned itself from inception as an antipodean outpost of British public school traditions. The term “public school” in this context carries its peculiar English paradox, denoting institutions that are in fact highly private, selective, and expensive, serving as gatekeepers to social mobility while simultaneously functioning as mechanisms for its restriction. The architectural and institutional DNA of TSS derives directly from the Victorian reconfiguration of older British grammar schools, establishments that had existed since medieval and early modern periods as charitable foundations intended to provide classical education to promising boys regardless of economic circumstance. The nineteenth century…
Do you have a favorite place you have visited? Where is it? The True North of Germany in the hills of Holstein is the place I was born in Aug 1949. In fact the same day as Johann W von Goethe, who became my Star since I can think. Home is not where you decide to live, home means literally the place you were born. Why? The Mother of all good questions, indeed. Some people joke Home is where the Wine is, I cannot disagree more. Serious Jokers like myself rather state: Home is where your loved ones live, like wife and family. What happens then to expats like Thomas Mann, Bert Brecht and Walter Benjamin and Stephan Zweig? Good question, indeed .. It depends on the circumstances for sure. Are you forced to leave your home like many refugees? Jewish Germans left Germany after 1933. If they understood the political context and the writings on the walls. I am a fan of Banksy ... Some US citizens consider leaving the USA. Why? Another good questions. Many Germans have decided to live outside Germany and the EU? Why? For many reasons for sure. What worries me at present is the number of younger people considering to leave Europe for good ... Why? Another good question, indeed. Why do you live at the Gold Coast though born in Holstein north of Hamburg?…
The long summer vacations start in Australia after the first or second Dec week (Southern Hemispheres) plus Southern Cross. Funny to celebrate Christmas in the middle of summer, when Bavaria measures 1 m of snow or more. So in short and in Tees and Shorts: No ice and snow and not any central heating here at the Gold Coast, where houses are finished in less than one year. Only a bit of concrete and some Dachlatten, a bit of steel and Gips. The rest is decoration, more or less ... Wanna know more about retirement at the Gold Coast? Why not? The Mother of all questions, indeed.
This essay was written by Claude AI prompting different versions and after re-reading and re-editing the AI version, ready to be published on my Blogs on Higher Education. Target group teachers and academic learners of German and German Studies and Literature. Pls note at the end the date of latest update. Juli Zeh: Literary Voice and Podcast Pioneer in Contemporary German Culture Introduction: A Writer for Democratic Times Juli Zeh occupies a distinctive position in contemporary German culture as bestselling novelist, constitutional judge, and host of “Edle Federn,” one of Germany’s most significant literary podcasts. Born in Bonn in 1974, she has constructed a career that defies simple categorization, moving between fiction writing, constitutional adjudication, and public intellectual engagement with questions of democracy, civil liberties, and social cohesion. For those interested in German Studies and contemporary European intellectual life, Zeh represents both continuity with German traditions of engaged authorship and their adaptation to twenty-first-century media and political circumstances. Her novels explore tensions between individual freedom and collective demands, her constitutional work addresses fundamental questions of democratic governance, and her podcast creates sustained public conversation about literature’s role in contemporary society. This essay examines Zeh’s literary achievements and the innovative contribution of “Edle Federn” to German literary culture, arguing that together they demonstrate how serious intellectual discourse can adapt to digital media while maintaining depth, nuance, and commitment to literature as essential…