ConWatch: Week 1,803

Does Germany have a constitution yet?

Over here in Europe

Tucholsky, Kurt. “Bei uns in Europa.” … ganz anders, by Kurt Tucholsky, Berlin, Verlag Volk und Welt, 1957, p. 121.

From the land of Ford, 
you send us a pretty lousy human export:
Paris and Greece are overrun by your mediocre middle class,
    These tourists, loud and turgid,
    are spiritually putting their feet on the table,
    showing up irksome everywhere;
    and every second sentence begins with the words:
          "Over there in America ..."

Over there in America there are two kinds of law
(for poor and rich) — there is good and bad;
there are those and these: Lewis and Mencken,
and dollar-chasers, thinking in dollars.
    Over there in America there are Republicans
    and utterly judgmental Puritans.
    You have strength, youth, and silver —
    but you are not the measure of all things,
          over there in America.

Over here in Europe, the woman
is not a harem-wife without lower body —
over here in Europe, black skin is
not leprosy for which extr…