Friday Five, "Stasiland" and purple...

Good morning,

it's time again for Willy Nilly Friday Five and Five on Friday.

I

Today only one photo, it's helichrysum italicum, the colors are edited.

I have it in my garden.

You can use it as a spice or only enjoy it's smell.

II

I just make a purple color mood in my blog,

please visit the main site to see the colors.

III

Since yesterday the bad rainy cold seems finally over.

15th of may is the traditional opening day for public swimming pools, 

but in last weks I've often thought, they can open for ice skating...

IV

I've just finished the book "Stasiland" by Anna Funder.

I read about it by Tanya and bought it in German translation.

The Australian Journalist was in Berlin 1995 and 2000 and followed the feeds 

of security org. "Stasi" in the former GDR. 

She spook with some victims and security men and wrote their stories.

I grew up here in Stasiland and I found some parallels to my own life, 

even if the described victims were more extreme cases. 

But she did a good research and this was exactly how it was: our alldays life!

Maybe, that all sound horrible for outsiders, but it was for us litterally a normal life.

We have suffered many things, but not only that.

We knew nothing else, nothing better ...

The feeling was always there: to be careful and not to trust anyone. A kind of grunting.

And at the latest, when you got constantly open letters, 

it became a sense of a duffle threat, of isolation.

I think that was wanted. 

That were really dark years and I have certain evidence 

that the collapse of the GDR saved me from the worst.

Some things in the book were new for me: The report of a woman about torture cells 
in prisons (and the author could look at it herself). 

We did not known about the camouflaged prisoner transports.

The channel under the border in Berlin was a legend - I haven't known,
 that it has really exist.

And often I've wondered, what was happened with one of our music bands

 - it is written in this book too.

There was always a heavy prison sentence for attempted flight or 

help to flight (or for the unproved accusation of it).

 But there were many people who were not to be blamed for, and who tried to live 

a normally honestly life. Frequently, however, these people were also

 in the sights of the security forces, simply because they were too independent,

too little adapted. And often they were placed in psychiatric institutions,

  treated with medicines, from which they were detrimental for the rest of theirlife.

Anna Funder writes nothing about this - it would fill a second book ...

The collapse of the GDR, the unification of Germany, 

was a salvation for us Eastern-Germans and for me personally too.

But it was not only a good end: economic structures were smashed, 

too fast came the unemployment and poverty for many families.

Today many people have a dependency on offices to get the most necessary money 

to live (the payment for jobs is often very-very small!) and I sometimes wonder 

what is more degrading: the control of personal letters at that time 

or the total control by the authorities today - 

every bank account statement is copied and kept in the office - -

Now I'm retired, but in my working life I've often watched, 

that the former security men had strong networks, their

structures were not really smashed and they help another to the well-paid jobs. 

While the former victims often worked for pittance.

And again are those up, who were up earlier!

Well, they die out slowly, but it works still into the next generation.

Writing this is perhaps not politically correct, 

but it is my opinion through my own experience.

For many people here the liberation was not really freedom, 

because it's now a freedom of capital. 

- What sense makes for you an open border,

 when you never have the money for a railway ticket?

And, what I would even to say, who reads this book in an always free State, 

may regret us and may find it all terrible.

But I think, KGB in Soviet Union, Securitate in Romania and all the other 

bad conditions in North Korea and dictatorships all over the world 

are certainly worse and made more victims. 

That is the true being of dictatorships, 

the eastern part of Germany was more a "human" country, despite of that all.

V

At last a random page from my journals, just for colormood.

Have a nice weekend.

Fast Blog