randform

In a comment to my previous post I was asked wether I “want back GDR”.

here my answer:

I don’t want to have the former GDR back.

But I think the bad deeds of e.g. the STASI are not automatically correlated to every GDR-feature. Like e.g. the GDR had a very good waste-management (sero-system) which was neglected in the west (images) for no good reason.

The former GDR was not – as it claimed with its name – a german democratic state. I visited the GDR rather often (most of my relatives lived in East Berlin) and in fact GDR-authorities were threatening me already as a ten year old for my political opinions (but thats another story).

People who were opposing the official politics were suppressed, where the methods ranged from occupational ban to imprisonment (and sometimes execution – according to Wikipedia there were 164 death penalties made to the order of the STASI).

Although torture was forbidden in the GDR (here an excerpt of the GDR constitution) some methods of the STASI, like sleep deprivation could be called psychological torture. Also the conditions within prisons (here a panorama tourr through the STASI-prison in Berlin-Hohenschoenhausen) could be seen as torture like in particular the socalled water cells which were cells without a window and no furniture and 2 cm water on the floor. As a torture not as immediate life-threatening as waterboarding but still scary and cruel.

we are back from a strenous berlin visit. and just in case someone wonders why i am not answering my email – there is still no internet over here in munich. i am currently in an internet coffeeshop. there seems to be a technical problem.

one of the big problems of former gdr businesses was that customers complaints were mostly disregarded. This was taken as one of the major arguments for privatizing also westgerman state-owned businesses like the postal and the telecom services.

funnily this morning when asking where we could leave our complaints or ask we were told that there is no custumer service.

We managed our relocation. I overstrained my right hand a bit and had eye problems due to the dust, but finally everything got squeezed into the appartment so that we could hurry to Berlin in order to see relatives and solve some other problems.

The bad thing about germand appartments is that they usually have no built-in closets, so you have to move around all these big armoires (or live out of a suitcase).

We were lucky to find two rather antique closets, which you can carry in parts. One closet was in an attic and covered with cobwebs. The printed letters on its back indicate that it had been under a US Army Requisition Demand right after the war. Seems after it came back from the army the owner didnt like it too much anymore – given its abandonned situation in the attic.

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