Symbol of postwar Germany has settled in at Princeton

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, December, 2006 | by Chris Mondics

There is no advance staff whispering urgently into cell phones, no security or receptionist, as Joschka Fischer, clad in a tweed jacket, slips from his Princeton University office to greet visitors. Time was when Fischer, a former 1960s radical who battled riot police in the streets of Frankfurt, strode the world stage as German foreign minister and, briefly, U.N.

Security Council president. But that was then; this is now. Fischer abruptly resigned his seat in the German parliament last year after his governing coalition was voted out of power. He has come to quiet, leafy Princeton to write his memoirs and teach, and to drink deeply of American culture, far from the grand boulevards of Europe he once frequented. He remains a tough critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and is...