Loukas (They/Them) 🏳️⚧️In a way this is great news, but also - dude. Were other cat names not available? https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/03/04/german-arms-manufacturer-rheinmetall-wants-to-build-a-tank-factory-in-ukraine/
If I was a German tank maker I would simply not name my latest project after a famous Nazi tank.
Tobias Merkendorf@Loukas well. It has to be a big cat. And Panther is basically a Leopard in black. Just ask the guys from marketing...
@t_mkdf jaguar! Jaguar was sitting right there!
@Loukas already reserved for a tank destroyer
@Loukas point is of course that they probably weren't ignorant of WW2 Panther and wanted to tap into the imagination of German armoured might.
@t_mkdf Germany: forget about our terrible past. Think about our terrible future.
@Loukas unofficial Motto of Germany.
German Lullaby
@t_mkdf that's startlingly similar to the English "ladybird ladybird fly away home, your house is burned down and your children all gone". But with more specific war crimes and Eastern frontier because Germany.
@Loukas "Pommernland is abgebrannt" is a reference to the 30 Years War and the Swedish "intervention"...
@t_mkdf fake news, false flag. We were just roasting our meatballs.
@Loukas yes, yes. That's why Gustav II Adolf is almost as fondly remembered in Catholic Germany as the other Adolf...
@t_mkdf even the Protestant towns eventually got sick of him, and the Swedes sacked them too.
@Loukas point is that it is 350 years... And "Bet, Kindchen, bet! Morgen kommt der Schwed" (pray, Child, pray! Tomorrow comes the Svede) is a rhyme still remembered (though a less than in the 80s; sectarianism was still more alive then).
@t_mkdf ah that's interesting how it is sectarianism that kept it alive. Did the Protestant Germans used to talk about Gustav Adolf like the Protestant Irish and Scots talk about William of Orange? To taunt their opponents.
@Loukas yeah. A protestant friend of mine made drunk a positive reference about him once. Growing up Catholic I didn't believe that such a thing was possible...
But it is a different than NI since no side did really win.
But mixed marriages were still fround opon in my grandparents generation.
@t_mkdf that's crazy! Is this division relevant in the former DDR as well?
@Loukas it is not. You have similar divisions in the Netherlands and especially Switzerland.
In NL, Switzerland and Germany there is a strong regional component to it.
It is not so relevant in the former DDR/GDR. One the one hand these regions were protestant. And on the other they are now irreligious. It nowadays works maybe as a further difference between GDR and western Germany.
@Loukas dealing with people from GDR always felt strange to me since they often had no religious background or cultural reference in this direction whatsoever.
This is in contrast to the community I was brought up in (dominantly Turkish and Polish, Catholics, Protestants and Muslim; even the Atheist had the same cultural references).
@t_mkdf now I'm wondering whether there are attempts by protestants, like evangelical or pentacostal ones, to 'reawaken' the ddr protestant tradition and claim them back as they are 'really' protestants in denial.
@Loukas there is a bible belt in Saxony. I believe it is evangelical Lutherans that stuck to their faith through communism. As far as I recall they play a role in the Saxon CDU.
There were probably some attempts at religious revival. But they weren't overly successful.
@t_mkdf you get USA-funded missionaries in the weirdest places. Maybe they aren't very successful in Germany because they can't offer much.
@Loukas Probably. They need to fill a niche and demand.
Jehovas Witnesses and some evangelicals were quite "successful" in some communities (I recall russo-Germans flocking to them in the late nineties). Latter Day Saints not so much (though they are quite visible sometimes).
@t_mkdf Jehovas Witnesses say you should not participate in society, vote or obey conscription, so I guess at least those who converted to that aren't supporting Putin...
@Loukas yes. And it seems a mixed picture with the others.
But I know only two personally. My colleague from work is against Putin. And the other one I don't know what her views are. Her german-German husband is into conspiracy theories though. So maybe.
@t_mkdf I can imagine there's a whole soup of tiny sects, Epoch Times, crystal healers and lizard believers involved in organizing the pro-Putin protests in Germany.
@Loukas yes. There are especially the Reichsbürger.
They can be encountered everywhere in Germany. But especially in the East and Bavaria.
