Happy Birthday: Willy and Jochen.

Today would be the 100th birthday of Willy Brandt, who I happened to quote on Monday's Blip. He was the Mayor of Berlin when Kennedy visited in 1963 and made the famous "I am a Berliner" speech. Brandt was a great admirer of Kennedy's and indeed learnt from him how he should go about his goal of reuniting Germany. In turn, Brandt was hailed by the 68'ers as Germany's Kennedy and the person to get German politics rid of the remains of the Nazi era. Need to remember these were times when you virtually got clubbed by the police for playing a guitar in public, sex before marriage was almost a case for the courts. Germany was still in the hands of the hard line, (catholic) christian ultra conservative's. (Brandt had fled to Norway in 1933 after being on the Nazi hit list because of his socialist politics). This together with the international events of that era - revolutions in Cuba, China and Hungary, the anti Vietnam war movement - led to Brandt becoming Chancellor in 1969 one of his main themes being to reunite Germany, which included the famous 1970 kneeing in front of the war memorial in Poland and receiving the Nobel Prize for his Peace efforts. He was ironically forced out of office in 1974 after one of his ministers was revealed to be an East German spy. Luckily Brandt lived to see the Berlin Wall fall.

Quite impressive knowing about this history:
- I wasn't a 68'er still being at school but got "involved". I was at a strict religious boarding school (parents abroad) and on the morning of the annual Cadet Force inspection by some Brigadier from Sandringham, we (several 100 compulsory) found our uniforms & boots in the swimming pool. Caused quite a "do"!
- I didn't study contemporary history at school. We learnt proper history eg the bit from about 1450 - 1914 (when England/Britain was Great!). Everything before was embarrasing: Vikings, Danes, Frogs and kings with names like "Ethelred the Unready" or even another one who burnt cakes.

So whats all that got to do with the Blip? Well I forgot my Uncle Jochen's birthday on Monday. He was a true hands-on 68'er (got locked up in Heidelberg) and a fan of Willy Brandt's. Only today's news reminded me - will call tonight but for the moment "Happy Belated Birthday Jochen".

Still haven't got the link? Well the photo is of a 2014 wall planer calendar I received in the post on Monday, ideal for writing down Birthday's. I only got the calendar thanks to Blip! It's from a horse feed manufacturer which Angie came across at a horse show and won a 50 Euro voucher at their stand. They did a photo competition in summer for their 2014 calendar and I entered two of my Blip photos. They didn't make it to the 12 calendar finalists but were included on this runners up wall version. One is the second from top of the left side, the other on the top line in the center. The competion (over 1500 entries) was won by those getting the most "Likes" on Facebook. There was considerable negative reaction to the result! A 13 y.o. with 300 Facebook friends could easily win with an awful photo. Not suggesting mine was any better but I did see lots of submissions that were far more worthy of being published in the 12 photo full version.