In the spring, when we were not yet adults, everyone was talking about the reunification.
My old grandmother had gone to Bad Saarow on the Scharmützelsee for a cure. After all, she had already gone through a number of changes: October Revolution, Weimar Republic, Third Reich, West, East, Wall. The Brandenburg forests were still teeming with the military: the Soviet armed forces in Germany were sitting in their ammunition bunkers, the NVA (Eastgerman army) had established their military medical academy at lake Scharmützelsee (Scharmützel means battle, as if the name says it all). Here, my grandmother was cured; the next turning point should no longer stir her heart. To sweeten her six weeks, my parents and their children went on a flying visit to Bad Saarow on a sunny Sunday. We were sitting comfortably (after all, German Gemütlichkeit also existed in the East) drinking coffee together when the large window panes facing the park suddenly began to rattle and the coffee conjured up circular vibration waves on its surface. The first coffee drinkers were already tearing themselves from their chairs, facing the terrace windows. Curiously, we went outside and saw a fat military helicopter sinking under noise and wind onto the gentle green meadow of the park. At some point, the door opened, a little ladder clipped onto the Brandenburg floor, bodyguards secured the terrain and the over-fed Chancellor tumbled out onto the gentle green meadow with a little man in his luggage. The hundred-year-old oaks awoke from their midday rest, their leaves stormed in the whirlwind and peered good-naturedly at what was happening below them. Helmut Kohl dashed into the group of the curious with a broad grin that exposed the baring teeth of a wolf, reached out with his right hand, pointed in the direction of the helicopter tail on which the national emblem of the Federal Republic was emblazoned and shouted smugly at us under the noise of the aircraft: "That will soon be your eagle too!" Günther Krause, almost completely covered by the Chancellor's back, smiled briefly at the dirty game that from now on should also determine his life: the game about greed, power and ignorance.
Then everything went very quickly: the competing eastern industry is switched off by the Treuhand (Mrs. Breuel has the social upheavals left behind with the Grand Cross of Merit with a star and shoulder ribbon), the West German administrative dictatorship comes to the East with a bush allowance and solves the antiquated dictate of the SED-Politburo. Nudist beach is being replaced by dog bathing beaches, Faustan® (Valium) in combination with Nordhäuser Doppelkorn superseded with E’s, papers, speed, grass and dope. The alcohol offer is becoming more diverse. The party spills over the industrial facilities of former socialist production. The sensitive interplay of two opposing news systems gives way to monotheistic reporting for which the citizen pay their GEZ flat rate (Broadcasting contribution to finance the public broadcasters in Germany). A new class in the Marxist sense is growing up that calls itself "political elite". With the transfer of Friedrich II from Marburg back to Sanssouci in the grave of his favorite pooch, nationalistic-militaristic blood swells back to Prussia. The youth in the East, who have already been left behind, are being swallowed up by Southwest Germans, and the first big riot between left and right on August 17, 1991 in Potsdam was fueled by fraternities.
The friars of the Balley Brandenburg (Johanniter) ride sublime back to the eastern territories, grabbing what they had left behind after the last war: the headquater of the order in Potsdam shines in new splendor. The Jewish Claims Conference does its share in the east for real Nazi victims as well as for manipulated résumés. This time the Federal German state does not pay for the German debt as it did in 1952 (Luxembourg Agreement), but the recent owners, who had made habitable houses out of war ruins, have to pay for supposedly Jewish previous owners as well as for war refugees who have already been compensated, and will even have their apartments taken away from them as if the last 40 years had not existed. The streets of the big cities are filled with homeless people.
Pegida and AfD (right-wing parties) flutter in the east wind, but the established parties neither understand their own senescence nor do they recognize their mistakes in joining the GDR to the Federal Republic. They swing the media club instead, without looking for real solutions. An ignorant flare before doom.
Maybe we should top Hartz IV up with a follow-up claim conference. That would only boost consumption, strengthen the market economy and do even more damage to the climate. So we stay whining Ossis (East-Germaners), puffing on our last cigarette, continue to eat cheap pork meat from the big slaughterhouses and look forward to helping the pharmaceutical industry complex to generate new dividends from gout, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases or Covid19. If only we had traveled to the top of the world and practiced meditation, but we didn't have the money to do that.
The eagle that Kohl once praised was already there in Brandenburg, not only in his coat of arms but also as an occasional brooding sea eagle. With the subsequent depopulation in northeast Germany, the predicted blooming landscapes emerged in the east, which was very beneficial for the eagle's breeding events.
In the meantime, we have grown up, muddle our way through life and remain the bride Mr. Krause sold.
Dr. Marcus Schuetz
biologist & writer