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This essay is an outcome of the pandemic, which in 2020 pushed me to reorient a sabbatical to studies of German legal culture. It combines an autobiographical background in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s with a longstanding interest in legal history, legal pluralism, legal culture, and gender and law. These fields are addressed from different angles, which demonstrate considerable changes of political and legal systems and cultures in German (speaking) areas. Within the last half century, a culture of silence and shame has attempted to come to terms with a patriarchal past, while also combining political cultures and economies from two parts of Germany, which merged a generation ago, and are still very diverse.

This article discusses historical and symbolic perceptions and representations of justice. In a Western context justice has for millennia been depicted as female and for a long period also as divine. In this article these symbols are interconnected with changing, complex and pluralist understandings of beauty, health and justice. Both justice and beauty are related, as are beauty and health. Beauty has a historical value, and is used for political, commercial, health, artistic and many other purposes. Ideals of beauty and attempts to live up to them can be damaging – historically especially for women. Beauty has been considered unjust, but it may also contribute to fairness, justice and wellbeing. Globalisations and technology have led to pluralisation and uncertainty about what is just, beautiful, and healthy, but they have in no way made these values obsolete.

This essay is an attempt to bring together experiences and research by the author related to the fields of gender, the Arctic, especially Greenland, and China. Comparison of these very divergent and different parts of the world in scale, population and size of the economy as well as legal and normative cultures is hardly possible. Nonetheless a gendered – and personal – perspective reveal similarities in development especially in relation to rapid social change, urbanization, globalization and climate and environmental challenges. The use of the essay as a genre has seemed to me particularly apt for this purpose of looking for links and similarities.

This chapter takes the multiculturalization of the legal auditoria as a starting point, and starts out with a historical overview from the perspective of the University of Copenhagen. Due to lack of studies in the field, it is to a large degree based on the personal experience of the author in teaching multicultural classes (international and Erasmus students as well as immigrant Muslim students in Denmark and elsewhere) and comparing ‘extraordinary places’ such as Africa, Greenland, and China. At least at the Faculty of Law of the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), internationalization and globalization may have led to a decreased interest in comparative law among ordinary students, while it has at the same time brought new differences into the classroom. Comparative law has been linked to legal culture in (parts of) the Nordic area, and the contextual approach and a need for a more flexible methodology has been emphasized. The growth of students with an immigrant background and an experience with Muslim legal culture(s) is clearly felt at UCPH in the twenty-first century, and it might give rise to new legal and comparative questions and demands, which are at present unmet, as well as to sensitivities, which have been felt in politics and (symbolic) laws. The article suggests that a ‘pop up’ approach to concrete comparative issues, fields and topics may be one amongst other ways to secure future interest in comparative law amongst students.

Amphiphilic polycations are an alternative to biocides but also toxic to mammalian cells. Antimicrobially active hydrophilic polycations based on 1,4-dibromo-2-butene and tetramethyl-1,3-propanediamine named PBI are not hemotoxic for porcine red blood cells with a hemocytotoxicity (HC50) of more than 40,000 μg · mL(-1). They are quickly killing bacterial cells at their MIC (minimal inhibitory concentration). The highest found selectivity HC50 /MIC is more than 20,000 for S. epidermidis. Investigations on sequentially prepared PBIs with defined molecular weight Mn and tailored end groups revealed that there is a dependence of antimicrobial activity and selectivity on Mn and nature of the end groups.

Amphiphilic polycations are an alternative to biocides but also toxic to mammalian cells. Antimicrobially active hydrophilic polycations based on 1,4-dibromo-2-butene and tetramethyl-1,3-propanediamine named PBI are not hemotoxic for porcine red blood cells with a hemocytotoxicity (HC50) of more than 40,000 μg · mL(-1). They are quickly killing bacterial cells at their MIC (minimal inhibitory concentration). The highest found selectivity HC50 /MIC is more than 20,000 for S. epidermidis. Investigations on sequentially prepared PBIs with defined molecular weight Mn and tailored end groups revealed that there is a dependence of antimicrobial activity and selectivity on Mn and nature of the end groups.