Einstein is a special case. He actively revoked his German citizenship long before the Nazis’ rise to power and became a Suisse citizen. Later, of course he became a US citizen (I don’t know if he kept his Suisse citizenship).
Cite? I saw some reports that he enjoyed watching sumo wrestling on TV, but none that he was an actual sumo wrestler.
Yes, but when have you ever heard anyone refer to Einstein as someone Swiss?
And it’s by no means limited to either Einstein or Kissinger but if I mention my friend Jadwiga you’ll like just say “who?” because you never heard of her. Trust me, though, in the US you are what your ancestors were, and you can be a fully accepted citizen AND still referred as “that person from X”.
I just saw that Ed Asner is 90 years old and he is also pretty heavy(kind of always has been).
I have yet to see an overweight 100 year old, though…
For those that don’t know the name he is most well known for playing General Burkhalter on Hogan’s Heroes.
It is correct that German law follows the jus sanguinis rather than jus soli principle, which means you need German parents, rather than birth on German territory, to obtain German citizenship by birth. But Kissinger’s parents were Germans (actually a family established in Germany for many generations), so he was born a German citizen. Of Jewish faith, yes, but a German by nationality nonetheless. The two were not mutually exclusive at that time; they were made mutually exclusive by the Nazis in 1935, when Kissinger was 12 years old. Kissinger could have reclaimed German citizenship after the War, when the 1935 racial laws were repealed, but chose not to do so, so as of now, he is (only) an American citizen. But saying that he was born Jewish rather than German is utter nonsense.
Isn’t this getting a bit off topic?
I know that Einstein was a naturalized Swiss citizen. I saw his naturalization certificate. It is on display in a small Einstein museum in Bern where he lived while working at the patent office. But that doesn’t answer the question about Kissinger. He might or might not have been German; it depends only on whether his father was. Which depends only on whether his paternal grandfather was, which depends only on… It makes me wonder where German citizenship originated. Was it simply bestowed on all residents when Germany was put together?
I understand that Germany didn’t have any naturalization process until recent years.
Admittedly. But I think a statement that claims that being German and being Jewish are mutually exclusive should not stand uncontradicted.
The Bismarck Empire that was put together in 1871 indeed linked German citizenship to the citizenship of its component states: You were a German citizen if you had the citizenship of any of its individual states, and these states remained in charge of adopting their own laws on the matter. It was kind of European Union citizenship today. It wasn’t until 1913 that imperial (i.e., federal) legislation harmonising citizenship for all of Germany was adopted, and even then the concept of state citizenship remained in place; the law harmonised the processes for acquiring state citizenship but did not unify all these state citizenships into one (it also created the new category of direct German citizenship whereby you could be a citizen of the Reich without being a citizen of a state; but the was meant mostly for the Germans in the colonies, while the vast majority of those living in Germany proper retained their citizenship of whatever state they were from). It was during Nazi rule that legislation did away with all these state-based citizenships and merged them into one citizenship for all of Germany. That conceptual change was not undone when present-day democratic Germany was set up in 1949, so now there exists only German citizenship, not separate citizenship in the states; but the racial criteria from the Nazi rule which deprived Jews of German citizenship were, of course, revoked.
Coincidentally, just a few days ago I stumbled across my paternal grandfather’s naturalisation certificate from the 1920s, when he - a native Bavarian - was granted citizenship in Württemberg, a neighbouring German state.
That is not true. The process of getting naturalised might have been more cumbersome in the past than it is now, but as a notion of turning an alien into a citizen, the idea of naturalisation has long existed in German law.
[Moderating]
How the heck did we get from obesity and lifespan to German citizenship laws? If you want to discuss that, start a new thread for it.
Ernest Borgnine was not massive, but he was pretty fat and he lived to be 95.
When an interviewer asked him about his secret to longevity, he said, “I masturbate every day.”
So there you go. If you’re old and fat, start spanking the monkey.
Guess I’ll live forever then.
Googling pictures of “Henry Kissinger 2019”, he looks pretty hunched AND overweight, if you ask me.
Mr. Kissinger looks to me like he has lost some weight, but is still quite obese. Compare to this slightly older photo.
Is their score determined by their weight at its lifetime peak, on their 100th birthday, or upon their death? I assume option 2.