N-OST!-ALGIA (English Flaneur-Essay Nr. 10)

Titus David Hamdorf (Berlin, Germany, 2023)

Not what we experience, but how we feel, 

what we experience determines our destiny. 

(Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach) 

Not far from Strausberger Platz in Berlin-Friedrichshain, East Germany, on what was then the place of execution, Thomas Kohlhase was killed in 1540. The same Michael Kohlhaas who fought to the last for moral justice in Heinrich von Kleist's 1808 novella. The site was redesigned and built on in the 1950s after being completely destroyed in the Second World War. A few years before the Wall was built. The wide avenue of the former Stalin Avenue, designed for marches and politically representative celebrations, not only served to enhance the reputation of the Democratic Republic as a state power. Flanked by buildings in the splendid style of Socialist Classicism and with a view of the landmark opened in 1969, the television reporting tower 32, it was above all a popular and exclusive promenade for the people. It was apparently in no way inferior to Unter den Linden, the big margistrale in the center of Berlin. So if you listen today to one of the citizens of the former GDR talk about their personal experiences along today's Karl-Marx-Allee, you will be struck by the unmistakable splendor of a somehow intact world in which apparently not a dry eye was left in the house. No, when it came to the remarkable popular participation in consumption and culture, there was nothing lacking: cafés and clubs, bookshops, cinemas, galleries, butchers and snack bars, hairdressers, upmarket restaurants, even special shopping facilities for children, expectant mothers, workers... Yes, there is still something of the euphoria of the ideal upheaval in these descriptions. The firm belief in the real realization of the humane and social theory of Marx and Engels is also still clearly perceptible. Socialism would not repeat mistakes in historie and would form mature people. It would be just and solidary in community, not only always ready to keep the peace, but even capable of doing so in solidarity with this mega-brother Russia. Anyone who thought differently or did not conform was of course declared an enemy of the state.

It's no longer nice to stroll around there. At least whole stretches along the draughty cold or roaring hot streets continue to die. There have long been other places to saunter, shop or go out that are more attractive. Even the sentimental loyalty of some people to the area cannot soften the unchecked infirmity of old sensory structures. Even if they keep returning there full of hope, as if they were looking for the best part of life that they thought had been lost or stolen. And often in exactly the same place. Cut off from their homeland in this way, visitors to old places see anything new that dares to intrude there as a capital betrayal of their deepest desires or goals. Consequently, they must distrust even the smallest changes, which accordingly cannot bring anything good.

Conjuring up the sunken, the past as golden, better, purer is certainly a general characteristic of human beings, who are more deeply rooted in memory than in the present the longer they are alive. In fact, the imposition of the strange development of other generations and their realities, which is becoming increasingly difficult to comprehend, is almost unbearable. Perhaps only if the wealth of personal experience, the testimony of the past - secretly and quietly cherished - is held up as far superior. Seen in this light, nostalgia would be an all too human and individual effort to deny, even to oneself, one's own growing inability to cope in the current world.

However, if this naturally senile process of glossing over and personal transfiguration is reinforced by an entire group with similar experiences, the act of repression as such is likely to develop a collective dynamic. And all the more so due to an overwhelming external disturbance - as in the case of the events of the reunification of the two German states. The last chance to rekindle a spark of the extinguished solidarity lies immediately and exclusively in a unanimously backward-looking herd view.

It may well be that I will never understand why certain people absolutely want the surveillance state back, even a leader like Hitler or Stalin. But I am reluctantly beginning to understand why presumably historically proven facts are denied in favor of personal experience. After all, what else would be left of the meaning of one's own existence, apart from the lamentation of current inadequacy? And on an admittedly eroded foundation of lifelong errors?

Translation from German to English with DeepL.com