Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens' News Blog 33 2024

A very good morning on the first day after the Olympics in Paris – the whole thing is really over now, but that hasn't meant 14 days of peace in the world. In Gaza and Israel, the fighting continues. Russia is still bombing Ukraine and is striving for a peace dictated by the aggressor, which Michael Kretschmer, the Prime Minister of Saxony, is latently supporting in order to ward off the machinations of AfD and BSW, who would like to see the aggressor on the winners' podium. In eastern Germany, trust in the former socialist brother nation is still deep-rooted. The horrific conditions in the buildings that were occupied by Russian soldiers when they left the country in 1990 have been forgotten. The GDR's liberation army doctrine is still having an effect. The only difference is that today it is murderous gangs in uniform - and if they are not stopped in Ukraine, they will soon be back in Poland and the former territory of the GDR, the Great Russian idea is alive. Unfortunately, so is the German small-mindedness.

Back to the Olympics: the medal table is ranked by the number of gold medals – the USA and China are equal on this count, although the USA managed 126 medals and China "only" 91. The host country France came in with 64 medals. In the DACH region, Germany leads with 33 medals, followed by Switzerland with 8 and Austria with 5. Now the discussion about competitive sports and the will to perform is starting. Germany jogs and does yoga, but when it comes to promoting performance and the will to perform, well, that's another story. The ranking by medals per capita is not that bad, by the way: Australia 0.5 million inhabitants per medal, Switzerland 1.0 million, Austria 1.8 million, Germany 2.5 million, USA 4.5 million and China needs 13.3 million inhabitants to win a medal. The days when amateurs dominated the Olympic scene are long gone. If we now compare the funding of sport per inhabitant, what do we find? - But that's a topic for the sports and business editors to get to grips with.

The same applies to culture, by the way, and it depends very much on what you count as culture. For example, should radio and television stations be included as part of the creative industry?
Let's leave that - Kasper König, one of the great museum directors and exhibition organisers in Germany, died last Saturday. Our thoughts are with his family.

Olafur Eliasson created church windows in Greifswald that are worth a trip. But you shouldn't go there on a Sunday, because that's when St. Nikolai Church is more likely to be closed than open. So it's better to stay for two days and visit the exhibition dedicated to Caspar David Friedrich in his birthplace from next week. But not on a Monday, because that's when the museum is closed. It's a real pain with the 5-day week.

With this in mind, we wish you all a good start to the summer week and hope you will continue to favour us
Stephan Zilkens and the team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Cologne and Solothurn