Link Salad, the Two Germanys Edition
Some of what I've been reading
— Two Germanys - Sigrid MacRae, Harper’s, Apr. 2021
“When I asked how locals felt about the Russian memorial, Halbig was quiet for a minute. “Well,” he said simply, “it’s history.” His answer raised the question: What is history for anyway? How do we deal with it? Ignore it, rewrite it, erase it, or use it as a tool? Later, I learned about the 1990 agreement between the German Federal Republic and the Russian Federation guaranteeing the protection and maintenance of Russian graves. In the moment, though, Halbig’s answer felt right, a metaphorical talisman to carry with me.”
— A Degree of Light-Heartedness - Christopher Clark, London Review of Books, Feb. 20, 2025
“Like her siblings and peers, Merkel knew from an early age that the rules governing speech and behaviour were different outside her own network (though she didn’t always get it right). She understood that as children from church families, she and her siblings faced official discrimination. She chose quantum chemistry because its inner logic was immune to the political manipulations of the regime. Her father had told her what to do if she were ever approached by the Stasi: ‘All you have to do is say that you wouldn’t be able to keep it to yourself.’ She applied this advice when, as a student in Leipzig, she was approached by two Stasi operatives. Having listened to them set out the reasons she should consider working for them as an informant, she replied: ‘You know, I have been deeply affected by what we’ve discussed here. I’ll have to tell my husband right away ... I’m a communicative person, and I always have to tell other people what’s on my mind.’ That was the end of the contact. What is interesting about these early chapters is the absence of fear. She does not deny that there were victims of the regime. But her world was not the one imagined by the West German filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in The Lives of Others. Her relationship with the power of the regime was always – and perhaps this was true for many people in the GDR – oblique, ironic. The state, she says, had never managed to take from her ‘something that allowed me to live, to sense, to feel: a degree of light-heartedness’.”
Currently reading: Herscht 07769 - László Krasznahorkai
Currently listening: Like That - Sleep Token