Annaberg-Buchholz in Saxony

29 March 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  10 minutes

© Devilsanddust/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Devilsanddust/cc-by-sa-3.0

Annaberg-Buchholz is a town in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. Lying in the Ore Mountains, it is the capital of the district of Erzgebirgskreis. The previously heavily forested upper Ore Mountains were settled in the 12th and 13th centuries by Franconian farmers. Frohnau, Geyersdorf, and Kleinrückerswalde—all now part of present-day town—are all attested from 1397. The most well-known personalities associated with Annaberg-Buchholz include Adam Riese, the “father of modern arithmetic”.   read more…

30 years German unity

2 October 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

Tag der Deutschen Einheit Potsdam 2020 © miteinander-brandenburg.de

Tag der Deutschen Einheit Potsdam 2020 © miteinander-brandenburg.de

The German Unity Day (German: Tag der Deutschen Einheit) is the National Day of Germany, celebrated on 3 October as a public holiday. It commemorates the anniversary of German reunification in 1990 when the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) were unified, so that for the first time since 1945 there existed a single German state. The German Unity Day on 3 October has been the German National Holiday since 1990, when the reunification was formally completed. An alternative choice to commemorate the reunification could have been the day the Berlin Wall came down: 9 November 1989, which coincided with the anniversary of the proclamation of the German Republic in 1918, and the defeat of Hitler’s first coup in 1923. However, 9 November was also the anniversary of the first large-scale Nazi-led pogroms against Jews in 1938 (Kristallnacht), so the day was considered inappropriate as a national holiday. (November 9 in German history.) Therefore, 3 October 1990, the day of the formal reunification, was chosen instead and replaced the “Day of German Unity” on 17 June, the national holiday of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1954.   read more…

The European Union: Real Estate and Demography

25 May 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, Editorial, EU blog post series, European Union, Living, Working, Building Reading Time:  467 minutes

(Latest update: 22 August 2022) First, there is not THE real estate market – not national and certainly not international. In fact, the market situation is very fragmented due to the general conditions, in other words, many individual markets, collectively referred to as “the market”. Metropolitan Area A faces different challenges than Metropolitan Area B and Metropolitan Area C can not even understand what A and B are talking about. Where there is comparability, is the housing situation in the “affordable segment” in urban centers in all western EU states, the US and Canada. This is where the call for the state, which should intervene regulatively, quickly becomes louder. In free market economies, however, this is on the one hand not wanted and therefore on the other hand, only limited possible. That’s pretty okay, because the market is inherently profit-oriented and that’s just what it will stay, otherwise investment incentives for new construction would sooner or later be completely absent. The “rental price brake” (Mietpreisbremse) exemplifies the problem. At the same time, more and more social housing is being let out of the rental price brake without replacement investment being made. In the following, single aspects are examined in more detail using the example of Germany, whereby the scenarios also apply to other western countries such as the EU states, the US, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, but also, e.g., to Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul in South Korea, Tel Aviv in Israel and other emerging metropolitan regions around the world.   read more…

The Marco Polo

1 October 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Cruise Ships, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  13 minutes

Sailing yacht and Marco Polo in Tallinn Bay © Pjotr Mahhonin/cc-by-sa-4.0

Sailing yacht and Marco Polo in Tallinn Bay © Pjotr Mahhonin/cc-by-sa-4.0

MS Marco Polo is a cruise ship owned by the Global Maritime Group under charter to UK-based Cruise & Maritime Voyages, having been previously operated by Transocean Tours. She was built as an ocean liner in 1965 by Mathias-Thesen Werft as Aleksandr Pushkin for the Soviet Union‘s Baltic Shipping Company. After major alterations and additions, the ship sailed as Marco Polo for Orient Lines from 1993 to 2008.   read more…

The Kyffhäuser Monument

6 April 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  8 minutes

© Burghof Kyffhäuser/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Burghof Kyffhäuser/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Kyffhäuser Monument (German: Kyffhäuserdenkmal), also known as Barbarossa Monument (Barbarossadenkmal), is an Emperor William monument within the Kyffhäuser mountain range in Thuringia. It was erected in 1890–96 at the site of medieval Kyffhausen Castle near Bad Frankenhausen. The Kyffhäuser Monument is the third-largest monument in Germany, after the Monument to the Battle of the Nations (Völkerschlachtdenkmal) commemorating the 1813 Battle of Leipzig and the Emperor William Monument at Porta Westfalica, both of which also were designed by architect Bruno Schmitz (1858–1916).   read more…

Oranienbaum Palace in Saxony-Anhalt

6 December 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  9 minutes

Oranienbaum Palace © Michael Sander/cc-by-sa-3.0

Oranienbaum Palace © Michael Sander/cc-by-sa-3.0

Oranienbaum Palace is located in the town of Oranienbaum-Wörlitz in Saxony-Anhalt. It belongs to the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm. The castle, which is located in the district Oranienbaum, is located east of Dessau-Roßlau, only a few kilometers from the Wörlitzer Park. Oranienbaum Castle is one of four castles named after the House of Orange in Germany. They were built for four sisters, German rulers, who were born to the House of Orange. Besides Oranienbaum there are Oranienstein Palace near Diez and Oranienburg Palace in Oranienburg. The fourth, Oranienhof Palace near Bad Kreuznach, does not exist anymore. The former Dutch Queen Beatrix is patron of the restoration of the castle Oranienbaum. In 2004 and 2012 Beatrix visited Oranienbaum and visited the castle.   read more…

Theme Week Potsdam – Cecilienhof Palace

13 November 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Berlin, Hotels, Museums, Exhibitions, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  14 minutes

© Gryffindor

© Gryffindor

Cecilienhof Palace is a palace in Potsdam, Brandenburg built from 1914 to 1917 in the layout of an English Tudor manor house. Cecilienhof was the last palace built by the House of Hohenzollern that ruled the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire until the end of World War I. Cecilienhof has been part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. Cecilienhof is located in the northern part of the large New Garden park, close to the shore of the Jungfernsee lake. The park was laid out from 1787 at the behest of King Frederick William II of Prussia, modelled on the Wörlitz Park in Anhalt-Dessau. Frederick William II also had the Marmorpalais (Marble Palace) built within the Neuer Garten, the first Brandenburg palace in the Neoclassical style erected according to plans designed by Carl von Gontard and Carl Gotthard Langhans, which was finished in 1793. Other structures within the park close to Schloss Cecilienhof include an orangery, an artificial grotto (Muschelgrotte), the “Gothic Library”, and the Dairy in the New Garden, also constructed for King Frederick William II. The park was largely redesigned as an English landscape garden according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné from 1816 onwards, with lines of sight to nearby Pfaueninsel, Glienicke Palace, Babelsberg Palace, and the Church of the Redeemer.   read more…

Rheinsberg Palace in Brandenburg

10 November 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  9 minutes

Rheinsberg Palace on Lake Grienerik/Pelz-cc-by-sa-3.0

Rheinsberg Palace on Lake Grienerik/Pelz-cc-by-sa-3.0

Rheinsberg Palace lies in the municipality of Rheinsberg, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of Berlin in the German district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin. The palace on the eastern shore of the Grienericksee is a classic example of the so-called Frederician Rococo architecture style and served as a basis for Sanssouci Palace. The palace rose to literary fame when it was described by Theodor Fontane in his book Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg (“Walks through the March of Brandenburg“) and by Kurt Tucholsky in his Rheinsberg. Ein Bilderbuch für Verliebte (“Rheinsberg. A Picture Book for Those in Love”). Until expropriation in 1945, Rheinsberg Palace was owned by the House of Hohenzollern.   read more…

The German Federal Election 2017

29 September 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Editorial, European Union Reading Time:  25 minutes

The electoral participation in the Bundestag election in 2017 was 76.2%, and again increased by just under 5% compared to 2013 with 71.5%. The electoral participation has now risen for the third time in a row, which in principle is a very good signal. People are more and more interested in politics and realize that it is “about something”. Parties who could reach the 5% hurdle to enter the Bundestag are:

  read more…

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