it accidentally happened that i was in berlin during the commemoration of the berlin wall or "anti-fascist protection wall" (western / eastern version). and it makes wonder why there is hardly any of my favourite blogs mentioning it, resp. mentioning it as "wall blahs" ("mauergefasel") at the utmost.

here in austria the development of a software product is more sensational although austria was one of the first countries to pick up the gdr refugees in 1989. but also the german bloggers remain silent, even those i would have bet they would write a little anecdote.

e.g. this one i was told by dr seltsam: in those trembling sixties, the german minister of defense, franz-josef strauß, planned to bomb an eastern-german city with a "pre-emptive nuclear first strike" (that was a common terminology at that time). sounds like nonsense, but i was reassured it is to be found in strauß's autobiography.

strauß needed the approval of the usa to produce and control nuclear weapons in germany. because some us-american cia hotspurs considered the idea interesting and contacted strauß to aks him which city he was thinking of, the german chancellor konrad adenauer and the president of the states john f. kennedy, both knew that they are coping with maniacs. so kennedy decided to urge the russian president chrustschow to solve this problem and to abandon the menacing war.

the solution was that lethal bolchevist stronghold that divided "berlin (west)" and "the democratic berlin" and it should endure 28 years until the people of eastern-germany left their doter government behind (another story).

if it is very likely that things happened like that? who knows. fact is, the times of being on the run is over. at the moment, the view is quite one-sided. but just as the successors of the eastern-german regime cannot escape its legacy and responsibility, the western world will have to face history once again one day.

"keine atempause geschichte wird gemacht es geht voran." – fehlfarben, "ein jahr (es geht voran)".

my father escaped from east-berlin shortly before the wall was built but already at a time when caught refugees ended their lifes in prison.