BERLIN — Since its founding, the Berlin State Opera has lived through a monarchy, two republics and two dictatorships.
Two dictatorships within living memory have left their mark on Germans.
The effect that living under two dictatorships has had on Baselitz is key to understanding him.
In the course of his life, Greece underwent two world wars and two civil wars, four depositions of monarchs, eight coups and four dictatorships.
So pally are the two dictatorships that Myanmar seems to have tolerated another outrageous, if less catastrophic, North Korean breach of its sovereignty.
This is a crude moment, but otherwise the filmmakers succeed in finding an appropriate and tricky moral balance as they take sides in a fight between two dictatorships.
But that was before two dictatorships -- the Third Reich and East German Communism -- bequeathed it the muddled minds and fallen factories where irrational rancor tends to stir.
This attack was the fruit of the unexpected agreement signed between the two dictatorships in the early hours of 24 August 1939.
To Germans, who remember two dictatorships in one long lifetime, that is heroism.So it is not surprising that many Germans are now pleading with Angela Merkel, the chancellor, to grant Mr Snowden asylum.
The hope is that the overthrow of the two dictatorships will lead to more bilateral trade opportunities, liberalized economic practices, increased transparency and better regulation, bolstering growth in both countries.
