The European Union is disintegrating – but leaving is not the answer The first German word I ever learned was Siemens. It was emblazoned on our sturdy 1950s fridge, our washing machine, the vacuum cleaner – on almost every appliance in my family’s home in Athens. The reason for my parents’ peculiar loyalty to the German brand was my uncle Panayiotis, who was Siemens’ general manager in Greece from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s. A Germanophile electrical engineer and a fluent speaker of Goethe’s language, Panayiotis had convinced his younger sister – my mother – to take up the study of German; she even planned to spend a year in Hamburg to take up a Goethe Institute scholarship in the summer of 1967. My enduring memory is the crackling sound of a radio hidden under a red blanket in the middle of the living room Related: Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist In the exciting, bleak years of my childhood, Germany featured in my imagination as a dear friend, a land of democrats Related: Can two leftwing gurus save Europe? Chronicles by Thomas Piketty; And the Weak Suffer What They Must? by Yanis Varoufakis – review The EU’s very existence depends on Britain staying in Continue reading...
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