Friday 6 August 2010

New TV Portal

It looks like ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL are cooperating on an new online portal which will allow users to watch a big selection of TV programmes and films without cost. For a German language report on these plans go to Private TV-Sender verbünden sich im Netz which is a report by stern.de

Diving for Pearls

OK, if you are interested in diving for pearls you've probably come to the wrong place. I want to draw attention to an interesting German language site with plenty of treasures for the culturally minded. Perlentaucher.de describes itself as Online Kulturmagazin mit Presseschauen, Rezension, Autorenliste, Feuillton.


Their Links page includes access to a very comprehensive links listing of just about every publisher on the web. I have found some offering free e-books to download. They also list by country the most important Zeitungen, Zeitschrifte und Internetmagazine, Buchkritiken und Literaturmagazine.

Monday 2 August 2010

The Potsdam Declaration

A few years ago I visited Cecilienhof in Potsdam and was able to see the rooms layed out as they were for the meetings for the Tripartite Conference which led to the Potsdam Declaration. The Conference ended 65 years ago today. There were nine meetings between 17 and 25 July and then a break while the results of the British general election were declared. On July 28 Clement Attlee returned to the Conference as Prime Minister, accompanied by the new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ernest Bevin. The Conference and the earlier one at Yalta shaped the course of post war history in Europe, particularly the eastern part, for four decades.

For material in German on das Potsdamer Abkommen or die Potsdamer Konferenz see http://www.kalenderblatt.de/index.php?what=thmanu&lang=de&manu_id=221&sdt=20100802 or the website of  the "Deutschen Historischen Museums"

Sunday 1 August 2010

The quick brown fox

If you have ever tried to learn to touch type you have probably come across the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" which uses all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet. Listening to a German podcast this morning I discovered there is a German word for this. Es ist ein Pangramm. Ein Satz, der alle Buchstaben des Alphabets enthält. I expect it's pangramme in English - confusing as the German plural is Pangramme. Both pan and gramm come from Greek words.

Although the podcast gave some German examples I wasn't bright enough to note them down. It was before my second coffee of the day! So Wikipedia to the rescue - I looked up Pangramm and there they were, including Pangramme mit äöü und ß