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Re: [xmca] Berlin Wall

Post script: And to make thinks more worrisome, I just checked the source of the video and so it seems the video was published in You Tube by a Neo-Nazi, this version at least. But again, german colleagues may want to clarify. I came in touch with the video because it was mentioned in the Chilean radio. I found interesting they did not mention the source. Internet is a booby trapped symbolic territory and makes historical truth increasingly elusive for an uninformed audience. How will the youth relate to this and to historical truth? 
Alas! This is more than nauseating. That is why I wanted poetry.
DP



On Nov 10, 2009, at 12:51 AM, David Preiss wrote:


And maybe not with the older generations either.
Check this very recent video of Margot Honecker in Chile, which took refuge here along Eric Honecker as a result of misunderstood reciprocity because of DDR solidarity with Chilean exiles. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUJ92C-AKfQ&feature=player_embedded
This video was reported in the Chilean radio. In addition to sing some old DDR songs, according to the radio hosts she showed no regret but maybe the german speaking colleagues at XMCA may want to translate and correct me if they were inexact.
Alas, we not only welcomed nazis in Colonia Dignidad but also old Stasi patriarchs. Interestingly, some of those chilean exiles in the DDR have produced many testimonials about what it meant to them living their exile in a dictatorship of the opposite sign and how it ended up eroding what was left of their idealism, after the Coup. 

On Nov 10, 2009, at 12:33 AM, mike cole wrote:


thanks for the memories, bruce.
I assume that there is no possibility of communicating with next generations 
about this. And so it has always been? Or are there some
optimists out there who can recount counter-examples? I hope.
mike
On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Bruce Robinson <bruce@brucerob.eu> wrote:
Interestingly, tonight I went to a seminar on the fall of the wall and what has happened since with five German speakers. One, an interesting character called Gerd Koenen related that he was working with an American NBC news team. He said that when the news came that the border gates had been opened in Berlin, the Americans instantly believed it, while the Germans were extremely sceptical and their news teams didn't appear on the streets until a bit later. He also spoke about the different attitudes, with the Americans thinking something like 'Hurray, we knew we beat communism one day'. Several of the speakers talked about how far apart the two lots of Germans had grown 
over the 40 years of the GDR.
I was in Berlin at New Year 89-90 (as I was in 88-9 and 90-91) and managed to get hauled up onto a bit of the wall just behind the Brandenburg Gate. I also took a photo of a smiling young East German border guard looking through a hole in the wall and talking to the people on the Western side. There was also a clear presence of dissident slogans and organisations in the exhibition area under the Fernsehturm on the Alexanderplatz. An amazing atmosphere but also a feeling that nobody was really in control of what would happen next, which led to the initiative falling to those who seemed 
to provide the most immediate solution.

Bruce R
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Whitson" <twhitson@UDel.Edu> 
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 10:05 PM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Berlin Wall


I just saw a brief TV clip, which got me wondering:
I don't know this in any scientific way, but I would not be surprised if people in the USA are under an impression that the Berlin Wall came down 
because of Ronald Reagan.


On Mon, 9 Nov 2009, David Preiss wrote:

Dear colleagues
Does anybody know of a good poem to remember the (fall of the) Berlin 
Wall?

And / or the Stasi and the damage of / to the human soul?

I was looking for some but was unable to find.

20 years is too early, maybe?

Or, beyond the fireworks, did we already forget?

David Preiss
ddpreiss@me.com
http://web.mac.com/ddpreiss/

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Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK  DE  19716

twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________

"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
               -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)

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David Preiss
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