Not always does a suicide draw such a lot of attention as in this case. The man was famous all around europe, at least in the soccer scene. His name: Robert Enke. Born in the east german town of Jena, he was to be the youngest goalkeeper in a german premier league (1. Bundesliga) team. Later he went on to barcelona and Istanbul before returning to germany, where he joined Hannover 96. He played 7 times with the national team and was well-known to everybody in germany.

Now he has set an end to his life. He committed suicide by a train-crash. He was 32 and left behind his wife and his daughter, who was adopted by the couple. Enke suffered from depressions since 2004 but refused to be treated in a hospital. He didn't want to have his problems spread out to the public, he denied to have psychic problems. His medical practitioner said he appeared stable to him.

Germany is appalled by the fatality. To a funeral procession in Hannover came 30.000 Attendants. The german national soccer team canceled its next game because of the tragedy. Unfortunately he is not the first soccer star suffering from depressions. Earlier as Robert Enke was the case of supertalent Sebastian Deisler, who broke down under the burdens of injuries and starhype. At age 27 Deisler retreated and disappeared totally from the public stage. Years later he was able to speak about his life and he wrote a book "Back to life". Maybe this reading could have helped the poor Robert Enke to overcome his suicide thoughts. Now it's to late. I dedicate this following picture respectfully to the family of Robert Enke.

No matter how good a certain Wikipedia-article may be, all in all it's a great source of knowledge. You can easily spent three hours by following any interesting link. For example you could start with one Nobel-Prize-Winner, maybe Richard Feynman. From that article on you find many persons related to Feynman, many links to his theories, and this leads to other persons and other theories. Or to diseases people suffered from. In the end you find out that wounds which are badly infected and necrotic can be purified by maggots. WOW, this must be a wonderful feeling!

The day when Martin Luther hammered his 95 theses up on the door of the church in Wittenberg is now a public holiday in germany. At least in those federal states where the protestant church has a majority. But may it be as revolutionary as can be what he did - the protestant church in germany is on an anticlimactic way. All the leaders, the bishops and bureaucrats have only politics in mind. Martin Luther would rotate in his tomb if he knew what irrelevant thoughts are maintained by the protestant leaders. They are concerned by atomic energy as well as genetic engineering, by the fight against rightists as well as humbling before the islam.

I attended a major church of the next biggest town around, Zwickau (100'000 inh.), on reformation day, october, 31. A organ concert was performed, and I like that instrument very much. But the audience was so little that the 60 people got lost inside the huge, voluminous church hall. In addition it were only the senior citizens. I could no see anybody under age 55. You can figure out that this church is not very lively with so few visitors on this public holiday.

Anyway, M. Luther has done what he must have done. His work was great and is part of the german identity (he translated the bible into german and created a big amount of new words therefore). What he also did: he married a former nun, Katharina von Bora. And guess how he called her?? "Mein Herr Käte" - "my lord Cate". This is funny, indeed, isn't it?