Free Republic

On this date in 1666, the pastor Andreas Koch suffered the pains of standing up against witch hunts in his town of Lemgo: Koch himself was beheaded as a wizard. Lemgo recorded a busy witch-hunt record with an estimated 250 cases in the 16th and 17th centuries. But the bulk of those cases came surprisingly late — from 1653 to 1681, the period after the Thirty Years’ War witch-smelling acme. As we’ve seen before in these grim annals, elites were not safe from the Hexenverfolgung; this, perhaps, is the reason that even we latter-day seculars still have such a visceral...

Brexit, The Protestant Reformation and The Treaty of Westphalia February 10, 2020 - Steve Matthews “There’s a historic battle going on now across the West, in Europe, America and elsewhere. It is globalism against populism. And you may loath populism, but I tell you a funny thing, it’s becoming very popular.” Nigel Farage As of January 31, 2020, Great Britain is no longer part of the European Union (EU). Britain’s success in parting ways with the EU, what is commonly called Brexit, short for British Exit from the EU, is the culmination of nearly 30 years of work by Britons...

Murderous millennial preachers and prophets take over the German city of Munster after Martin Luther unleashes a Pandora’s Box of religious anarchy with the Protestant Reformation.

In the 1990s, political theorists, historians and more than a few political leaders debated this question: Had "transnational forces" associated with globalization made the sovereign nation-state a dysfunctional and potentially dangerous political structure? The 21st-century's revival of Great Power competition -- competition between powerful states that value their sovereignty -- indicates borders still matter. The U.S. and communist China are quite powerful. China's disrespect for borders is fundamental to its clash in the South China Sea. As the century's third decade approaches, evidence abounds that transnational forces have not rendered nation-states impotent. The 1990s debates, however, weren't intellectual fearmongering. Pervasive...

German archaeologists have unearthed "sensational" evidence of a lost Roman camp that formed a vital part of the frontier protecting Rome's empire against the Germanic hordes. Historians believe the camp, once home to an estimated 1,000 legionaries and located on the River Lippe near the town of Olfen, may well have been served as a key base for the Roman General Drusus, who waged a long and bloody war against the tribes that once inhabited what is now western Germany. The find comes 100 years after the discovery of a bronze Roman helmet near Olfen indicated the presence of ancient...

State prosecutors in the Ruhr city of Wuppertal said on Tuesday that they have brought charges against notorious Islamic fundamentalist Sven Lau, who was behind a short-lived “Sharia police” vigilante force in the city. Lau, 34, is accused—with nine others—of infractions against the law on freedom of assembly over the group of high-vis-vest-wearing Islamists who declared that they would patrol the streets to police morals last September. […] “Sharia law is not tolerated on German soil,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said at the time. The western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is widely regarded as a hotspot for fundamentalist...

Spiraling levels of violent crime perpetrated by immigrants from the Middle East and the Balkans are turning parts of Duisburg, a key German industrial city, into “areas of lawlessness”—areas that are becoming de facto “no-go” zones for police, according to a confidential police report that was leaked to the German news magazine Der Spiegel. The report, produced by the police headquarters of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany (and also the state with the largest Muslim population in Germany), warns that the government is losing control over problem neighborhoods and that the ability of police to maintain public...

Lecturers at Bonn University had set up a mock archaeological dig at a building site on campus to teach hopeful historians digging techniques. What they did not expect to find were the 2,000-year-old foundations of a building, nestled into the dense, clayish mud. While the initial discovery was made in March, it was only in the past fortnight that the team realised the foundations were from a temple from the Roman era, the floor of which was scattered with broken pottery dating as far back as 800 BC. The building, which could have been part of a wealthy country estate,...