Берлинские истории журнал покажет наш

Рубрика «дезайн», любименькая:

Или вот еще милота: искали своего катера (то есть котяру) и нашли благодаря соседям через неделю 🥹 Повесили полоску с апдейтом, чтобы все могли выдохнуть ❤️‍🩹

Сходила на открытые чтения отрывка из книжки Arbeit на книжном фестивале в центре города. Вообще говоря, на фестивале в нескольких палатках целый день (вчера, и сегодня будут) авторы давали интервью, отвечали на вопросы — и да, читали вслух отрывки из своих книг. Я попыталась вспомнить, видела ли такое в России. Но, кажется, только в связи со стихами — обычно публичные выступления авторов это скорее дискуссии, а тут одна авторка захватывающего жанрового романа сидела 50 минут и с выражением читала, а публика сидела и спокойно слушала, не залезая в телефоны. В этом есть что-то такое трогательное и ламповое. Германия то и дело относит меня эмоционально в доинтернетное детство, от чего становится уютно и безопасно.

Sometimes the term Ostalgie is used in a way which seems to want to cut down the subject. Do you think, here in Germany, that some people don’t want to engage? That they’re holding something within themselves they don’t want to look at? The interesting thing about this kind of melancholy or disappointment is that it has different sides. As Easterners, we are people that experienced a fundamental collapse of a system. This meant being afraid of losing a job, not being able to pay rent, being forced to leave home. For many people, it was too many new things, too suddenly. They didn’t expect that; they had expected to be able go to Mallorca. And they were able to do that, but it was only one half of the truth. The collapse of a system is an interesting experience because it gives you a deep distrust in structures of any system. When you see that in five minutes everything can stop working, it’s a basic experience that reaches far beyond than just the loss of socialism. In this sense, you even miss the bad things. You’ve lost the software of how to deal with things, what to do, and what it’s better to leave alone. Even in the West you have these blind spots: you’re free, but you won’t really use your freedom in every moment. You can say what you like, but you might not be honest. You know the rules of the system you grew up in. From one moment to the next, all our accumulated knowledge was no longer of use. People who wanted to build a better socialism opened the door, but what entered was something entirely different. Our present moment became history, as did the possible futures we had envisioned.

Из интервью с Дженни: In your essay Homesick for Sadness you point out that, for you, Berlin wasn’t divided in two. You’d never known the city as anything other than what it was. Was there any sense, back then, that you were living in a strange situation? As a child, you take things as given. There are places you won’t see, or you’ll only see later. When I got a bit older, I heard the sound of a construction site in West Berlin while I was in East Berlin. That was strange because it was so close. It was like we shared the sound but not the present. But we were used to hearing the West Berlin subway going underneath. Perhaps we got used to the strangeness, which is a good basis for becoming a writer. Another essay At the Ends of the Earth describes playing among the ruins of the Museumsinsel as a child. There seemed to be a sense of freedom in these abandoned places.   There were many undefined places, which was nice. It’s where something can grow. If everything is set and finished, there’s nothing left to do, not for fantasy or for playing. These were places which could be used in an unforeseen way.  Was there an immediate sense with reunification that the time of experimentation was over? You could see it in every aspect. We just had to learn how the Bundesrepublik was organised, to understand how to make a living, how to keep a job, how to pay the rent, which all of a sudden started exploding. It was very clear that we had to fit into a system we hadn’t invented. For the first eight weeks after the fall of the wall we felt that we had the power, but then when we saw the direction it was going, we realised we were going to be the stupid ones again. In November it was like “we are making a revolution”. By February, it was clear the whole state would collapse and would soon be gone. And with the elections: the native inhabitants of the east didn’t know what they meant. The first free elections were supposed to be in June, then they put the date earlier, in March, so the newly founded parties wouldn’t have a chance to reach anyone. They didn’t have basic devices like photocopiers or posters. Before we could even think about it, the CDU took over. They knew how to do it: what an election means, what the consequences are. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when the people thought ok, now we’ll choose the Christian Democratic Union in order to quickly become Westerners. You wrote about how integration with the West made people in the East see themselves with new eyes. Suddenly you noticed that the East German actresses often had crooked teeth. No one had thought about it before. Another detail we noticed in the years after reunification: if some East German actress was on a talk show, she would speak in a Berlin accent. They were able to speak Hochdeutsch, but in normal life, as a private person invited on a show, they would all speak with a regular person with a Berlin accent. Even my father. He’s a philosopher, he’s very well educated. It wasn’t not a question of education; it was a choice based on respect for the working class. As if to say: “we are equal”. This wasn’t ordered from above. It was like it was hip to be normal. Do you feel that you’re more successful internationally, especially in the English-speaking world, than in Germany. My feeling is there’s a real, serious interest from the English-speaking world to understand. How did it feel, the reunification? The questions are not formally put, but they’re real questions. I couldn’t believe how much interest there was for the essays [Not a Novel, 2020]. My publishing house told me they sent the essays to 80 journalists in Germany and there was only one review. One. And that was written by a journalist I know. She’s a friend. Maybe, Germans don’t like to read essays. Okay. But perhaps they’re also a bit tired of listening to East German stories. I can see it also within myself. It’s much easier for me to invite a foreign journalist to my house than a German journalist. The distance is bigger and it makes it easier to be intimate.