"You could be right. Contrary to all public declarations and worldwide hopes, the situation is heading for a crisis once again. Everything seems possible, even the unthinkable. The tanks on Tiananmen Square, the massacre, the denunciations and the show trials might be more than a Far East manifestation. Reference has already been made to the first death sentences – the coming days will tell: it is possible that public executions will be held and broadcast on Chinese television and therefore worldwide. And the world fails to be in uproar. Yet again.
In the multi-ethnic worlds of an un-dogmatized Soviet Union, peoples have begun clashing against one another, likewise in Bulgaria. And despotic Romania builds a meters high barbed wire fence between themselves and their former socialist neighbors (where the refugee camps are filling up), who, on its part, has dismantled its forty-year border fortification to neutral, albeit capitalist Austria and is moving towards democracy. The first preliminary stages towards free elections have been realized in Poland too, the first achievements. But one’s own country isolates itself even further, clinging to diehard concepts, is once again talking of counterrevolution in brotherly lands, yet ultimately forms an alliance with small, old Stalinist Albania. A military pact crumbles.
Momentous changes on two continents – no, the possibility of it spreading like wildfire in the East really cannot be ruled out, despite Glasnost or Perestroika, even the hardest course is possible once again, any time and anywhere. Particularly in my own country. Especially owing to the Eurasian-wide transformation and the fear the powers have of it. No, the return of black lists and camps is really not that improbable.
You are right to worry about me – everything is possible and probably not. Not in this world and not in this age. The third European Middle Age cannot be ruled out. But that’s precisely why I cannot adopt your concerns. I refuse to be more careful in light of such probabilities – I won’t, particularly because of such probabilities!
After having finally succeeded at ridding myself of fear after decades of painful learning, I refuse to reinstall new fears – now more than ever. Fear is the worst advisor, it always has been, particularly now. Now, when the 'powers that be' are counting their days and feeling fearful themselves – having become the 'ill-advised', making one mistake after another, prisoners of their own system. And certainly, their mistakes could have tremendous consequences, even for me. But that is exactly why honorable characters are called for in situations such as these, now more than ever. And this is why: so that your, unfortunately not improbable fears, do not become a reality.
After thirty-six or forty years, now that the wallpaper is peeling off the walls, the plaster coming off in chunks, the roof full of leaks and the house about to collapse, now is the time to renovate and reconstruct, now at the very latest. Without worrying about falling from the ladder in this narrow, stuffy chamber inside the house of Europe. The time has come for a thorough airing!
Don’t worry about draughts please, don’t be frightened of colds or heat waves, don’t worry about stumbling blocks or danger of collapse! And don’t be scared of allergies and power struggles! Especially not now."
From "Das Mauer-Syndrom" ("The Wall Syndrome") a collection of short prose from 1961 to 1990
Jürgen Nagel (East Berlin)
