"BERLIN – Walking down a cobbled Berlin street clad in the black brass-buttoned jacket and top hat typical of German chimney sweeps, Timo Stahl is mobbed by people wanting to shake his hand.
"It happens all the time – chimney sweeps are said to bring luck," says Stahl, extending his hand and chatting jovially with a mother and her child.
But that luck is not rubbing off on the sweeps of Deutschland.
On Jan. 1, following years of pressure from the European Union, the German government broke up the chimney sweep monopoly that has existed here since the Middle Ages. The edict brushed aside a system rooted in the professional guilds formed in Europe centuries ago.".......................
