Berlin was the nerve center of the Cold War. As you have seen the resolution of these high-stress zone? Berlin was not only a natural room confrontation of the cold war, but was fed, it was a place of financial injections and subsidies, it has invested in self-images, enemy descriptions, Drohformeln, speech habits, in symbolism and mythologizing, there was a well-equipped exhibition space of their own superiority. Intellectuals and artists in this showcase of the West can live quite comfortable and privileged.
The Pergamon Museum must have been in this situation, but a tremendous discovery.
Yes, I've never been there before. After immigration, I felt as part of the West and did not know what it is all in the east. Now I was fascinated by the incredible artistic quality, it was like a ghost of the 19 Century. Everything was like in the 19 Century, and I thought that socialism as such, apart from the new modernist prefabricated buildings, a huge cooling chamber for the culture ... was stored in frozen form. What there was to see had already rotten something, and it was clear that this would, which was obtained disintegrate very quickly. I will not forget.
I still remember another strange incident that seems surreal. That was the next day. I had actually come to work with Ilya Kabakov. We went to East Berlin, were at the Friedrichstrasse, as a man, Russian, probably a deserter, definitely someone who wanted to run away, came to us and asked in Russian: "How to get from here to West Berlin? "Kabakov has told him. The Russians have listened, made a break and then asked again: "How to get from here to West Berlin" Kabakov has explained to him again. After a short pause, he asked a third time, whereupon I said: "Ilya, so now it's enough. . Let's go "Suddenly, the Russians looked at me as if struck by lightning and said," But you speak in Russian - I was thinking the whole time, you speak in German, "He was so confused that he did not. has understood that we have not spoken in German, but in his own language. For me it was like a metaphor of this historic State.
a confusion as to its own localization.
Yes, as Hamlet says, and Derrida, who plays in Marx's ghosts, so that the time is actually interrupted, you are in for a moment during a break in the deadlock, before it all begins again to move . As with a film in which one takes a break, because the film units are damaged, the film suddenly stops, then runs again, because it has repaired the machine. One has the feeling that ghosts haunt into, in this pause between a first and a movie second, which begins to run when the machine begins to run again.
One is even in this break stumbled, but who can continue to run the movies then?
At some point, people started to work again. In the moment when you understand that you need a breakfast, dinner, a work is, as a reminder that you need something, and then dissolves the solidification.
Did you at that time an idea of what would develop from this stage? 25 years ago you could visit the Taj Mahal in India freely, meditate, lie in the park and, today one stands in a tourist line, pay admission, everything is controlled, calculated, commercialized. In the GDR had much time equally dismissed as time-economy foreign .
Everything was relieved of economics, because ultimately they had the freedom of the common property, one owned anything and everything. We had this free walk. They had endless reserves of time. Then quickly everything was privatized and restructured and organized and limited, and this freedom and this solidarity disintegrated. The people had a great solidarity - that one felt in Eastern Germany as in Eastern Europe generally for a while, a sense of shared fate. Not so in the West, where everyone is convinced that his fate was that of the other independent. Although it was dissatisfied with the fate, had rebelled against this fate, we shared in a long time with other socialist countries, both the fate and the revolt. This customization and the feeling of having been left alone in the world and nothing to join with others, have had to internalize it, and you do not know the extent to which people have learned that when you see that they are still cling to ethnicity, nationalism, where they would know by now that all this does not help. First, people have believed in the East that the West is essentially something that resembles their own state, only just richer. People have not understood that this wealth is there, but produced by the fact that it is in the West is enslaved and forced thousands more relentless is to work through and work more to exploit or oppress leave, as in the socialist East. The main problem of socialism was that he was not sufficiently exploited the people. That is why the socialist countries were not so rich.
"non-exploited" in the sense that not enough capital was accumulated ...
It was not enough capital to accumulate, because they did not work. Most people have worked little. Many have been sleeping during working hours or half breakfast, drank coffee purchased. They were not forced to work systematically, not even in their working hours. In the West, in turn, can survive only those who work not only in his working hours but also outside these hours. The people suffered under socialism, not even under extreme poverty or material need to have food, they had a reasonable health care, they could in Eastern Europe also move. But they suffered a deprivation of aesthetic qualities and consumptive diversity, ie the variety of options with regard to products, consumption and travel opportunities.
What were your perceptions are the main reasons for the revolt, it was more of the material or the need for freedom?
Even under socialism could consider the other people feel and be satisfied, thus both materially and spiritually. Freud also taught that the small differences have greater significance for people can be as large differences. Hierarchies also occurred in Eastern European countries, there was jealousy, competition or pleasure, that one has something the other did not. All of these base instincts were satisfied. What has not been satisfied, was the desire to travel, you felt like a prison, had detained the feeling to be. And that is contrary to human nature. Nobody understands why we must take that step and a second also suddenly stopped. This was not explained. One had the feeling that one can not compare with others because you do not know how they live, and because they do not know how to live themselves. It was cut off, it was assumed that one of something that could be an occasion, was isolated arbitrary, this is not a good feeling.
Somewhere at the beginning of Leviathan Thomas Hobbes reflects the word freedom. He says many thought that true freedom is the freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience. But all was not right, true freedom is the freedom of movement of the human body in space. We are ultimately all materialists, and the spiritual truth is not enough. Only when we can move freely, feel we free ourselves. materialistic view is the difference between freedom and consumption is not so great. In both cases, it's about to move through the world in one form or another. Thinking is not enough, Pure Imagination also is not enough.
A fictitious interview but emblematic of our seminar "Berliner views" for the treatment situation of the post in Berlin.
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