Archiv der Kategorie: English

18|05|07: Vienna images by Charles W. Cushman

By chance, I came across an image on Facebook which was taken on the day of my birth, May 7, 1964, showing shops on the busy Kärntner Straße close to my parents‘ flat in the centre of Vienna. The photographer was the American Charles W. Cushman. A quick research led me to his photo collection which, today, is part of the Indiana University Archives. The colour images taken on and around my birthday constitute a random selection with no connection to me or my family. Weiterlesen →

18|03|24: A last chance for EUSJA

Two years ago I was elected Honorary Secretary of the European Union of Science Journalists‘ Associations (EUSJA). It was an honour to serve in this function, a pleasure it was not. Together with my colleagues on the board Jens Degget, Marina Hužvárová and Antonio Calvo Roy, and with auditor Kaiainders Sempler, we were faced with the most serious threat to the union so far. My contribution to ease and hopefully solve this challenge was to draft and negotiate the new constitution which was passed at the General Assembly in Madrid on 24 March 2018. On the web page of the Austrian association I explained the essentials of the new constitution in German. On my departure from the board I left the delegates the following farewell note.   Weiterlesen →

18|02|15: Minerva Mary Beard

I love the classicist Mary Beard. And I advise everyone else to do so too. While studying history at The Open University a fellow inmate of A219 summoned all her courage and contacted Beard over Facebook to tell her that we had spent weeks with her writings, loathing and loving them, and were now revising for our TMA 04. The night before the deadline Beard contacted our learning group to wish us luck. Minerva herself had spoken and blessed us. The Guardian rightly dedicated a long read to her. One telling excerpt: „The (EU) referendum then, should not be treated as the final word, she said, but as a straw vote. ‚Sure, say we want to leave, but you can only in the end say we are going to leave when we know what it means. Otherwise,‘ she said, ‚it’s just wanking in the dark.‘ Thinking I had misheard, I asked her to repeat. ‚Wanking in the dark,‘ repeated Beard, at volume.“ 

17|11|27: The Art of Flying

The flight of a starling flock at dusk, know as a murmuration, is one of nature’s most beguiling sights. Blurring the line between the individual and the group, murmurations involve synchronised swooping patterns to ward off predators and exchange information in a manner that’s still something of a mystery to scientists. This two-minute excerpt from the Dutch filmmaker Jan van Ijken’s short documentary The Art of Flying follows a spectacular aerial performance from a massive, shape-shifting starling flock over an open field in the Netherlands.

Source: Aeon, Nov 24, 2017. 

17|11|24: „Wo Ferien noch Ferien sind“

 „Wo Ferien noch Ferien sind“ – „Where vacation is still vacation“ was possibly the most popular slogan my father Günter P.F. Lehmann devised, supported by the daringly psychodelically designed claim „I like Niederösterreich“. The province of Lower Austria was one of the more important customers of his advertising agency „Wilkens & Lehmann“, which he had founded in Vienna in the early 1960s with partners from Hamburg (Wilkens) and for some time from London (Pemberton). „Wilkens & Lehmann“ was sold shortly after the death of my father in March 1979 and then dissolved. Eventually I will spend more time on my father’s company which appears to represent Vienna’s 60s and 70s version of „Mad Men“. The samples found by chance in the picture archive of the Austrian National Library seem to corroborate this assumption.

Badefreuden
Sport
Gastlichkeit
Urlaubsschilling
16094535
Kinderfreundlich
16094553
Gut gelegen

[Show as slideshow]