[Unam Sanctam]

the home of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran minister, who during World War II was a central figure in the Protestant church's struggle against Nazism

A bit misleading, as the vast majority of German Protestants supported Hitler, but then I guess if Pope Pius XII can be falsely accused of being "Hitler's Pope", I guess any sort of distortion of the truth is acceptable nowadays.

[upsdriver]

“In spring 2005, the Rev. Carol Solovitz, pastor of Zumbro Lutheran”

Must be ELCA Lutherans. You won’t find woman pastors in the conservative LCMS(Missouri Synod) or the WELS(Wisc. Synod)

[Conservative til I die]

Interesting story that has almost nothing to do with anything. I'm German on my mother's side. My recently deceased grandmother, as much as she didn't really live the Catholic life, loved to talk to me in her later years about Germany and Catholicism, being that I had learned German in school and was such an outspoken Catholic around the house.

Her father was a Lutheran, her mother a Catholic. She told me how much he wished he could convert to Catholicism. He did apparently, later in his life when he was ill. She never explained what the hold up was, but I guess it was probably family pressures.

I always wished she opened up about her life in Germany, as she had such interesting things to tell, living through the bombing campaigns during WW2, seeing Hitler at a parade, and some of the darker stuff like how the Nazis requisitioned her father's favorite German Shepherds, having the crosses in her school taken down with portraits of Hitler being put up in her place, Jewish neighbors disappearing, one of her brothers dying in combat, her sister being a Communist and always being taken to the Burgermeister and reprimanded, half her family living behind the Wall in East Germany (I loved when they finally visited us and we took them to the WTC, the Bronx Zoo, West Point, the Empire State Building, my cousin going to bars with us, getting a kick out of riding in my other cousin's Trans-Am), raising her 5 kids alone in NY while learning English. Interestingly, I recently found out my grandfather was and is a German Jew.

That's my little non sequitir.

[RightWhale]

When I hear ‘study German roots’ I think of Husserl, Hegel, and especially the firebrand Heidegger who traced etymology of German words for the presently hidden original meaning.