ulbricht tour bird 2023

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Hello to all our friends near and far. Near and far is exactly right in this case as the reason for this publication are our trips to collectors around the globe. For some years now these trips have involved the presentation of a special event piece. This is a nutcracker that can only be purchased in the shops visited by the Ulbrichts for signings. So far it is tradtional to have a new bird every year.

2023: Osprey

Why a bird? 

Christian Ulbricht`s father, Otto, was so happy on the birth of his first son that he created a nutcracker for the occasion. This nutcracker, for the first time, was in the shape of a bird, and he gave it as a gift to his wife called Welly. In 1997 the successful story for the special event piece began with the "wood pecker" which since then has been followed by a new model each year.

In order to have a complete overview of each individual model, we have listed them according to the year of appearance.

Ulbricht Signing Event Tour Birds

Osprey - 2023 Tour Bird New for 2023! model: 32-477 price: $149.95

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Ulbricht Signing @ The Nutcracker Museum

2023, november 12 @ 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm.

The Nutcracker Museum and gift shop is one of three chosen locations in the US to be honored with visits by the Steffen Ulbricht of Holzkunst Christian Ulbricht, Germany’s foremost producer of Nutcrackers when their annual “Tour Bird”, the “Osprey” is introduced. The “Osprey” will be especially popular with northwest collectors as many have watched these birds with fascination as they have dived for prey in nearby rivers and lakes. We will have a limited number of the Osprey which sells for $149.95, so order early. Steffen Ulbricht, designer of the Osprey, and 4th generation of the Ulbright dynasty will be present on November 12 from 1:00 to 3:00 at the Nutcracker Museum to introduce this 25th edition of the Tour Bird Series. He will be accompanied by his father, Gunther Ulbricht, current manager of the firm. They will sign your Ulbricht purchase from the gift shop. If you cannot attend, you can order online and have your purchases held for the signing event, after which we will ship to you.  CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE ONLINE

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Walter Ulbricht: A Communist Biography (1973)

• Two Germanies (1961-1989)
• Consolidation of Division
• Source (32/33)

On the occasion of Walter Ulbricht’s death, a West German journalist examines his political development, his decisive role in the postwar history of the GDR, his relationship to the Soviet Union, and his downfall. The article makes clear that the GDR’s Soviet partners played a central role both in his rise and fall.

• Ernst-Otto Maetzke

A State Purges Its Organizer: On the Death of Walter Ulbricht

It’s not insignificant that high school students in both parts of Germany know spot-on jokes about Walter Ulbricht: the now-deceased eighty-year-old left just as profound a mark as did Konrad Adenauer on the political consciousness of Germans after the Second World War. And he was able to do this although even his most dispassionate critics ascribed to him all the qualities that normally stand in the way of political success: he was dry, boring, pale, not well connected, unimaginative, unattractive.

The Red Soul of Thuringia

He grew up in modest circumstances in an unprosperous Leipzig milieu; as a fifteen-year-old carpenter’s apprentice, he was already part of the organized class struggle in the Socialist Workers’ Youth Organization. He had firm views, which he never rethought and which therefore shielded him from an intellectual upheaval, a questioning of everything, a metanoia. By today’s standards, he was slow to start utilizing the potential within him—it was not until the second half of the third decade of his life that he did so. Between 1920 and 1921, Walter Ulbricht must have come to realize that successful political action is not a matter of activity but organization. The Communist Party of Germany [ Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands or KPD], still young at the time, offered him the perfect testing ground for this possibly still unconscious general truth: it let him build up the party district in Thuringia. Ulbricht soon became the “red soul of Thuringia,” party congress delegate, participant in the 4 th Comintern [1] World Congress in Moscow.

This is how he came to know Lenin—at least by sight—who is said to have patted him on the shoulder; in his old age, he told this to Lenin’s heirs, who no longer knew him personally. In 1924, during a period when the KPD was banned, the Central Committee of the Communist International (Comintern) “discovered” him through Dimitri Manuilsky, who recruited talent in Germany. After attending the Lenin School in Moscow and completing a brief apprenticeship in the organizational department of the Comintern, he rose to greater glory as a recognized org[anization] specialist. “Comrade Cell,” as Ulbricht came to be known, and Wilhelm Pieck reorganized the German section of the Comintern, the KPD, according to the operational-cell [ Betriebszelle ] organizational model and on the basis of Stalinist cadre principles.

The rigor with which he did this has often been described. With equal rigor, as a “centrist” he cleverly stayed out of all internal party disputes and faction formations. If a vote taken during an internal party conflict would have exposed or labeled him too strongly, he waited it out, if need be, in the men’s room. The only thing that mattered was to keep hold of the reigns or to regain control of them quickly, to stay on good terms with Moscow, and to always be the most well-informed person around. He soon became head of the important Berlin-Brandenburg party district and, from 1928 on, served as a Communist representative in the Reichstag and thus held a very comfortable position, though not in the leadership. It suited him just fine that Thälmann, Pieck, Florin, Schubert, Schulte, and Scheer were at the forefront of party life.

During his Parisian exile, which started in the fall of 1933, he kept things much the same. Ulbricht managed to amass an information monopoly on party activities in Germany, and through tireless activity he outplayed the rest of the Communist émigré community—Thälmann had been taken out of the game by the National Socialists. His ability to anticipate and, as if it were a game, track and follow [policy] course changes became even more refined there: although the 7 th Comintern World Congress in 1935 invalidated all the principles of Communist alliance politics employed up to that point, Ulbricht was just as willing to participate in the “Antifascist People’s Front” as he had been to partake in the fanatic attack on Social Democrats as “social fascists” and “National Socialist lackeys.” But the short-lived German émigré People’s Front in Paris saw through him. To leftwing German socialist refugees, this instruction-bound “apparatchik” was repulsive. Heinrich Mann was famously outraged by him: “I cannot sit down at a table with a man who suddenly claims that the table we are sitting at is not a table at all but a duck pond, and who wants to force me to agree.”

Relocation to Moscow

But despite an apparent reprimand, confidence in him continued to grow at the Moscow headquarters. It even survived the Stalinist purges. Although there was “material” against him from the time of serious KPD infighting, it was not used. He continued to be permitted to return to Paris after being called to Moscow. And it was not that he merely survived, he also acted as an accomplice, especially in Spain, where he and André Marty fulfilled so-called cleansing functions at the end of 1936 and beginning of 1937, and where he, on behalf of Stalin, got the blood of German socialist Civil War fighters on his hands.

Not until 1938 did the native Leipziger permanently move from Paris to Moscow. His co-émigré Johannes R. Becher, who later became GDR minister of culture, supposedly said of him: “Comrade Ulbricht lives in Moscow on the banks of a river named Pleisse.” [2] One year later, another change of course, the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, occurred as elegantly and quickly as all those preceding it. The Soviet leadership’s absolute trust in Walter Ulbricht was expressed in its use of him during the German [military] attack in the summer of 1941. He was allowed to stay in Moscow to spread propaganda, at first against the invaders and later among prisoners of war. According to Moscow’s conception, the “National Committee for a Free Germany,” which was organized by Ulbricht exactly thirty years ago, was supposed to prepare a “truly German government” for the immediate postwar period.

In April 1945, he became the first to return from Moscow with his “Ulbricht Group,” and from that point on, he was considered the organizer of the Sovietization of the country east of the Elbe and, ultimately, of Germany’s division. But he was merely the instrument that, after many years of testing, had been judged best suited to both projects. According to Soviet opinion, any peace worthy of its name would have to initiate a restructuring process that would ensure the continued progress of the revolution. To that end, the so-called “old exploitative classes” would have to be stripped of all political and economic power, the “working class”—whatever that may be—would have to be forced to unite under Marxist-Leninist leadership, and the dictatorship of the proletariat would have to be established in the form of a people’s democracy. Ulbricht carried out this program within the time allotted.

In 1949, the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany was on the path to socialist build-up and under the complete control of a Stalinist cadre party of a new type. The execrable means that Walter Ulbricht employed as its governor have dug themselves so deeply into the German consciousness that nothing needs to be said about them here. Now one could play state with this zone.

The more weight the German “workers’ and farmers’ state” amassed—especially after it was walled in on August 13, 196—the more visible the change in Ulbricht, its creator and organizer, became. To be sure, the seventy-year-old Ulbricht, like GDR head of state Wilhelm Pieck before him, was certainly prone to a father-of-the-people demeanor as an old man. And certainly there was a growing political tendency in the Western part of Germany—whether out of fatigue, convenience, or masochism—to view Ulbricht in a more favorable light. But in addition to these factors, an objective change had taken hold of him. His views hadn’t changed but their point of reference had: the GDR state, which he felt he had created (even though his power had only been borrowed), had become more important to him than the Soviet “fatherland of the workers.”

Change in Priorities

In the end, Ulbricht knew that a state is more than just an instrument to bring about socialist restructuring in the hands of a party determined to do it. He sensed that a state has a quality and dignity of its own, and that it demands its own loyalty. No one knows how cognizant he was of this realization during the last decade of his life, but it became increasingly clear that he acted in accordance with it. In his last major speech to the Central Committee, shortly before he was deposed, he hardly even mentioned the party and its so-called “leading role.” He spoke only of the “system” and its development. No wonder the director of the Karl Marx Party College threw her arms around the new party chief [Erich Honecker], who took it all back, on his first visit.

For Ulbricht, the chairman of the Council of State, the German Democratic Republic had become his primary task, ahead of serving the international Communist movement and its center in Moscow. Because this shift in priorities could not be tolerated—not because he was too old—he had to relinquish his power suddenly, overnight, shortly before a party congress. His successors treated him with disdain for another two years until he died. When the first GDR president died, his birth city of Guben received the sobriquet Wilhelm-Pieck-City. Leipzig will be spared a renaming.

Source: Ernst-Otto Maetzke, “Ein Staat läutert seinen Organisator,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 2, 1973. © All rights reserved. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH, Frankfurt.

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Home » Prices and Trans-Siberian Tickets » Trans-Siberian Railway Prices

Ticket prices for the Trans-Siberian Railway also depend on the current ruble exchange rate.

Is the Trans-Siberian Railway expensive?

Before starting on your Trans-Siberian Railway adventure you naturally want to know what the entire trip will cost. Although this sounds like a simple question, it is pretty difficult to answer. The Trans-Siberian Railway price of travel depends on the following factors:

• Which travel class do I want to use? The price for a first class ticket is about three times the price of a 3rd class ticket
• Am I willing to buy the tickets myself and assume responsibility for the organisation of the trip?
• How many stopovers do I want to make? The more breaks, the higher the total price.
• What sort of accommodation do I want? Will it be a luxury hotel or will a hostel dormitory be sufficient?
• What tours and excursions would I like to go on?
• What is the current exchange rate for rubles?

Basically, everything from a luxury to a budget holiday is available. If you buy yourself a 3rd Class nonstop ticket at the counter, a few hundred Euros will cover the price. All you will experience is a week on the Trans-Siberian train and will see nothing of the cities on the way. There is, however, any amount of room for upward expansion. Everyone makes different choices about which aspects they are willing to spend money on. I personally prefer to save money on accommodation and railcar class, visit as many cities and do as many trips as possible. To enable better classification of your travel expenses I have contrasted two typical traveler types. In the third column you can calculate the total cost of your own journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Please keep in mind that these are only rough estimations and not exact prices.

The all-in costs seem fairly high at first. However, they cover everything and it is quite a long journey taking four weeks. Many people forget to consider that when looking at the list. We should also deduct the running costs for food and leisure at home. I think most visitors to this page will classify themselves somewhere between the two categories, that is around the € 2,000 – € 2,500 range. When comparing these prices with other travel packages, you get the impression that it is hardly worthwhile travelling individually on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Please keep in mind that most packages last no more than 14 days and you are herded like cattle through the most beautiful locations.

If you spend less time on the Trans-Siberian Railway you will, of course, pay less. I chose this particular travel length because I prefer not to do things by halves. If you fulfill your dream of travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, enjoy it and don’t rush things. But it’s up to you, of course. Try playing around with the form a bit to find the appropriate price for your trip.

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Alan Jackson Is Touring Again With Last Call: One More for the Road Tour

"I'm going to give [fans] the best show I can," he said in a statement.

By Jessica Nicholson

Jessica Nicholson

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Alan Jackson

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Jackson continues to live with Charcot-Marie-Tooth, a chronic neuropathy condition he first revealed in 2021. The condition impacts one’s balance and ability to stand or walk without difficulty.

Tickets for all cities will go on sale Friday, June 7. VIP experiences will be offered (including a pre-show party presented by AJ’s Good Time Bar). One dollar from every ticket sold for the tour will be donated to CMT Research Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) that funds research, with each dollar being matched by a group of CMTRF donors.

See the full list of tour dates for Jackson’s Last Call: One More For the Road Tour below:

• Aug. 2: Boston, MA (TD Garden)
• Aug. 24: Grand Rapids, MI (Van Andel Arena)
• Sept. 28: Fayetteville, AR (Bud Walton Arena)
• Oct. 26: Kansas City, MO (T-Mobile Center)
• Nov. 16: Salt Lake City, UT (Delta Center)
• Jan. 18: Oklahoma City, OK (Paycom Center)
• Feb. 15: Fort Worth, TX (Dickies Arena)
• March 7: Orland, FL (Kia Center)
• April 26: Tampa, FL (Amalie Arena)
• May 17: Milwaukee, WI (Fiserv Forum)

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