In Actual Fact

Despite my general disapproval of the shops being closed on the Day Of German Re-Unification, I don’t want to imply the fall of the Berlin wall was A Bad Thing. I’m still somewhat surprised however that the Linke.PDS still managed to attain 8.7% of the vote in the recent elections. Don’t you remember what some of these people did? Have you forgotten how many people were killed for trying to leave the country? How the Stasi monitored everybody? How your career could be ruined if you hadn’t been a member of the FDJ as a child? How people were encouraged to inform upon their own family members? How if you were an 82 year-old and made an extremely trivial dissenting comment at a party conference rally, you’d be dragged out by a mob of security thugs and prevented from re-entering under anti-terrorist legislation? Oh wait, that last one was a different authoritarian party, but the man was originally from Germany.
The party that gave the orders to shoot people might have changed its name from the SED to the PDS and the PDS might have joined up with a Western German whose heart beats on the left (but God knows for how much longer, bearing in mind how much extra weight he’s carrying around with him), but the majority of PDS members were members of the SED.
However, you live in a democracy (now) and you can vote for (just about) anyone you want to. One of the reasons I’m bringing this up is not just the date, but after watching the behaviour of one my neighbours with whom I recently ate dinner. He’s 40 and grew up in Dresden, as did his wife. And those first 25 years of his life have coloured how he acts and talks. Despite the fact that there is no Stasi anymore, he was guarded when he talked, or added caveats to sentences. For example, when I was perusing his ridiculously large and varied DVD collection, I asked him what his favourite films were. “Tom Clancy adaptations.” he said, before quickly adding, “even though they are somewhat ideologically unsound”. He did this all the time; correcting himself, worrying about what he’d just said. You should have heard him try to twist out of having said “I love the idea of America, of living there”. Fifteen years after he was able to do so without the risk of being killed for trying.

German Phrase For Today: “Nach der Gefangenenkartei der DDR saßen zwischen 1950 und 1989 insgesamt 700 000 Personen ein (nicht mitgerechnet die Insassen von Untersuchungshaftanstalten der Stasi und von Armee-Gefängnissen), von ihnen sind rund 2500 eines gewaltsamen Todes (ohne Todesurteil!) gestorben.”
Song playing as this was published: Selig - “Ist Es Wichtig?”