dark pages

The first time I came across - not through readings or narrations - terrorism and the humiliation of human beings in the Former German Democratic Republic, it was October of the year 2002, in Berlin.
In the "heart" of the city, at the Museum of Communication, the creepy exhibition “Open Secret" was presented. Many akward exhibits from that violent historical period, enforced in my eyes, the intervention of the famous Ministry of State Security- Known as Stasi- in the private life of the citizens: mechanisms of wire taping, steam machines with which they opened the correspondence of the suspects and torture methods upon the citizens who were against the subjection of the country.

Outside in the fresh air , all the magnificent statues of the city, the ultramodern buildings with the famous architectural signatures in Potsdamer Platz … had shrunk inside me. All of them were only human fabrications, some highlights from human misery, artificial goods of mankind capable, at any moment, of the worst. Unfortunately in the name of humanism and socialism!

The same feelings emerged watching the film “The Lives of Others” directed by Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck. The film set in East Berlin spanning from 1984 to around 1992. It tells the story of a Stasi officer who is assigned to watch a group of artists. The difficult daily life in the country, the suicides of the citizens, the red fascism and the white loneliness, create a great, profound movie, homage to our common dark, European history.

G.K. for J Alfred’s Song