I remember the Berlin Wall from German radio – west and east – reporting its being built to keep citizens of the German Democratic Republic away from West German fleshpots. Like with the ‘Turkish Wall’ (Sayarer 2021) and like edifices around Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves on the Moroccan coast, the point of building walls...

Assuming its audience to be in the know about the significance of the date, the Danish TV series under this title seems to vindicate Lord Palmerston‘s bon mot (referred to in my earlier blog on ‘Territorialism Follies’) that the issue was beyond comprehension. Danish viewers in any case must have understood the message. Others at least learn about a nationalistic...

    Referring to Afghanistan, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell (2021) argued for comprehending the situation on the ground. Incomprehension is a feature also of our dealings with new member states. Rest assured, this is no defence of ’Orbàn & co’. However, instead of casting them all-too-often as targets of our enlightened messages, we...

No, this is not about renewing my all-too-brief acquaintance with Philadelphia at the occasion of some event at the university in the mid-2000s. Of course, I could not fail to visit Independence Hall, the site commemorating the famous Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution at what then was the Pennsylvania State House, now a...

  In postwar Vienna we used to listed to a satirical broadcast by the US occupying forces, waiting to hear: ‘When Harun al-Rashid roamed the streets in private…’, followed by something that had transpired during the week. Asking bystanders about the why and how, the caliph always received the same reply: ‘Stranger, you should know...

I remember the Berlin Wall from German radio – west and east – reporting its being built to keep citizens of the German Democratic Republic away from West German fleshpots. Like with the ‘Turkish Wall’ (Sayarer 2021) and like edifices around Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves on the Moroccan coast, the point of building walls...

The Rule of Law Report (European Commission 2021) challenging her country has not amused Hungarian Minister of Justice Judit Varga (2021). She defended her country’s unwillingness ‘…to allow the LGBT+ lobby into our schools and kindergartens….’ With the European Parliament having won its battle for a bigger voice at the Conference on the Future of...

I cannot complain about ‘The Poverty of Territorialism’ (Faludi 2018) not receiving enough attention. More than two years after its publication, there is another review in the French Journal Annales de Géographie. (https://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=AG_739_0178&download=1) It is by Yann Richard who has been instrumental also in getting an extended version of my paper given at Rennes in 2018...

My encounter with Frank Furedi (2018) came rather late in writing ‘The Poverty of Territorialism’ (Faludi 2018) when I noticed his defence of the position of what have once been ‘new member states’ and now a thorn in the flesh of such enthusiasts of European integration as still exist. New members have no wish to...

See here an astute comment from Slovenia at the occasion of the announcement of a ‘mini-Schengen’ for EU-hopeful Serbia and Albania (not Kosovo!) and North Macedonia still not admitted even to the waiting room of candidate status. Commentators from Bulgaria and Italy also agree: a ‘Balkan alliance’ outside the EU is in the making. Blame...

With my father born in Hungary and my mother in Austria, both before 1918, I am second-generation Austro-Hungarian. Born in Budàpest, I spoke German and Hungarian but have unlearned successively my German and eventually my Hungarian. That was after my mother, by then widowed, had taken me to Austria in 1946. Tainted by the seven...