Names make news. Last week these names made this news:
In East Germany, doddering Premier Wilhelm Pieck was roused early one morning by the reedy wailing of shawms (an obsolete sort of oboe) serenading him with a waltz beneath his bedroom window. The occasion: Puppet Pieck's 79th birthday, later marked by much handshaking with his fellow Communists, plus (to show his love for the proletariat and also for traditional good luck) a sooty clasp from a chimney sweep. Two days later, in Germany's free Western zone, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer also turned 79. After a public reception at the Bonn Chancellery, Widower Adenauer...