Germany – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Insuring Amsterdam

Stiltsville in various Germans. With a filthy joke, and several less filthy ones.

There’s so much brilliant German shit on YouTube

Was: How pleased I am to find both the Zarah Leander and the Nina Hagen versions of “Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder gescheh’n” on the line.

Paintings by Yefim Ladizhinsky of street organs accompanying shows

A guy winding a handle isn’t much to look at, so it was cool to find this site dedicated to Yefim Ladizhinsky (1911-82), whose work I really like, and who shows Odessa organ-grinders working with other performers. Re Spectacle (organist bottom left) he writes: A street-organ is a musical chest the size of a small…

All the world’s a barrel organ

From Wikipedia’s entry for Reinhard Heydrich, president of the forerunner of Interpol and architect of the Holocaust: On 2 June, during a visit with Himmler, Heydrich reconciled himself with his fate by reciting a part of one of his father’s operas: “The world is just a barrel-organ which the Lord God turns Himself. We all…

With Ibex in free-fall, La Vanguardia announces European bail-out

But we were hoping that there would be rather more than 99 euromillions.

Another kit maker

€1500, apparently way cheaper than these guys. They also do turnkey. Is there some mechanical problem causing uneven rhythm, or is the grinder having difficulties?

Mysterious Zaragoza nights

Between-wars texts about Zaragoza by Germans who appear never to have visited the place.

Sausage sourcing as an index of international cultural and political orientation

The cases of Spain and Holland.

Much more than a dog: the excellent Frankfurt 2001 bar near the SEAT flats in <a href=

Barcelona's Zona Franca" title="Much more than a dog: the excellent Frankfurt 2001 bar near the SEAT flats in Barcelona's Zona Franca" />

Rehabilitation of Hitler’s “traitors”

German and Spanish approaches to rehabilitation of what may or may not have been anti-fascists.

Ben Shahn’s maypole

Something puzzling me on V-E Day on May 8 last week: no one seems to have noticed that Ben Shahn‘s Liberation is a French maypole scene. I believe from the MOMA@NY blurb that it draws on a Cartier-Bresson image, but if it’s a maypole it must surely be celebrating the end of the war in…