30 years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Three weeks ago I was looking for a present for dad, and as a late thought I considered Gert Dietrich’s Cultural History of East Germany (Kulturgeschichte der DDR) a good idea, albeit an expensive one, perhaps a joint present for us all. So I went to Göttingen’s best academic bookshop, which happens to be located down the road from the publishing house where the book was made. I couldn’t find it on their shelves and asked for it. Their response: it’s “too exotic” for them to have it on stock. East German matters are “too exotic” some 60km from the old border, I get it. You wonder why I feel at home in Africa, kkkkkkkk! Have a happy anniversary next year, you re-united Germany!
At the border between the Federal Republic of Germany (the West) and the German Democratic Republic (the East) a couple of weeks after the Fall of the Wall in November 1989. A few weeks earlier we would have been shot there, or would have stepped on a mine, or be immobilized by some specially-trained dog – they had it all. They? – “our” border control units …