Word: germanism
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Maybe Willis is so convincing playing working stiffs because he comes from that background. His father William was a career soldier and a welder, his mother, Marlene, a German girl William met while stationed abroad. Bruce grew up in South Jersey, skipped college to study acting and supported himself with real jobs: security guard, private investigator, tending bar in the Village and SoHo. (He also pursued a singing career as his alter-ego Bruno - an addiction he continued to indulge.) Willis has nothing of the adolescent in his persona, perhaps because he was in his 30s before anybody noticed...
...unlikely event that Germans dump their popular Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in the country's election on Sept. 27, what would be the legacy of her four years in power? One key achievement, according to Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, is the Lisbon Treaty, which was designed to reform and streamline the workings of the European Union. "Without Merkel's involvement, and the role played by Germany, there would be no Lisbon Treaty now," Perthes says. But if that's the cornerstone of Merkel's foreign policy, she could see her legacy crumble less...
...negotiations and sanctions to bring recalcitrant countries like Iran back into constructive dialogue. Just don't look to Berlin for big ideas or robust new approaches to international problems. "There has been a passive consensus on foreign policy issues," says Jan Techau, director of the Europe Program at the German Council on Foreign Relations. "But that passivity is inappropriate now, as Germany faces increasing demands from NATO - for example, burden-sharing in Afghanistan and on the general discussion about the future of NATO." (See pictures of the Berlin Wall...
...Dresden, www.bautzner-strasse-dresden.de, the still forbidding former city headquarters of the Stasi, the D.D.R.'s pervasive ministry of state security. Or take a look at Leipzig's Museum Runde Ecke, www. runde-ecke-leipzig.de, another Stasi base that is now an authentically preserved museum filled with examples of how East German society was controlled. They are enough to cure any misplaced notion of the D.D.R. as a place where life was badly dressed but somehow simpler and more virtuous. "I sympathize with the idea of Ostalgie," says Irmtraut Hollitzer of the citizens' committee that established the Museum Runde Ecke. "But the Stasi museum...
...cities during what will be a reflective few weeks. As memories of the old regime fade, there has naturally been an attempt to re-evaluate the D.D.R.'s legacy. In recent years, films like 2003's Good Bye Lenin!, a wry telling of reunification's effects on an East German family, have captured the imaginations of fashionable urbanites. Others have professed an occasionally ironic love for old East German aesthetics - communist-era branding, old Wartburg and Trabant cars, and vintage Praktika cameras. Rather less flippantly, the current recession has prompted mostly elderly diehards to recall the days of secure employment...