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In this land

I have made myself sick with silence

In this land

I have wandered, lost

In this land

I hunkered down to see

What will become of me.

In this land

I held myself tight

So as not to scream.

—But I did scream, so loud

That this land howled back at me

As hideously

As it builds its houses.

In this land

I have been sown

Only my head sticks

Defiant, out of the earth

But one day it too will be mown

Making me, finally

Of this land.

I fold it and think of Charlie Weber, now of this land. And I think of Miriam, a maiden blowing smoke in her tower. Sometimes she can hear and smell them, but for now the beasts are all in their cages.

I walk home to the apartment from Rosenthaler Platz station. The park is alive, the light so bright it picks out people and their shadows in exaggerated 3-D. Sunbathers loll on the grass, some in trunks and some bare-bottomed. There are teenagers removing gum from their mouths to kiss, a sheepdog with a single forelock dyed green, an adolescent cripple in a baby pusher being taken for a stroll. People shake infants up and down to make them calm, and children spin on swings and roundabouts I never noticed were there.

Some Notes on Sources

p. 5 Historian Dr Klaus-Dietmar Henke says the ‘peaceful revolution’ of 1989 was ‘the only successful revolution in German history. The East Germans added one of the most splendid moments to the history of our country, to the very troubled way of our nation to find and to accept individual and political freedom as the main values.’ He also states that the number of files generated by the Stasi is about ‘the equivalent of all records produced in German history since the middle ages’.

‘Lifting the Lid on Oppression—the Stasi Files’ address to the International Bar Association, 26th Biennial Conference, Berlin 1996. Dr Henke was then head of the research department at the Stasi File Authority (Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik aka BstU).

p. 57 For figures on KGB agents in the Soviet Union, Gestapo personnel during the Nazi regime and Stasi employees and agents, see John O. Koehler, Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, Westview Press, Boulder CO, 1999, pp. 7–8.

pp. 57–58 On Erich Mielke’s life, see Jochen von Lang, Erich Mielke: Eine deutsche Karriere, Rohwolt, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1993; Koehler, pp. 33–72. For Mielke’s famous speech in parliament see Der Spiegel 46/1999 (15 November 1999), ‘Wende und Ende des SED-Staates (8)’, at http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel

This speech is also available at http://ddr-im-www.de/Geschichte/1989.htm

Mielke’s pronouncements on traitors and execution come from the television documentary Die Stasi-Rolle: Geschichten aus dem MfS by Stefan Aust, Katrin Klöcke, Gunther Latsch and Georg Mascolo, Spiegel TV, 1993.

p. 61 The GDR had the highest GDP per capita in the Eastern Bloc: Alexandra Ritchie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin, Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., New York, 1998, p. 755.

The Russian publication Sputnik, for example, was banned by the GDR authorities in November 1988: Informationen zur politischen Bildung, 1, Quartal, 1996, ‘Der Weg zur Einheit: Deutschland seit Mitte der Achtziger Jahre’, p. 15.

p. 62 The Stasi File Authority’s report on Stasi preparations for the incarceration of citizens on ‘Day X’ is ‘Vorbereitung auf den Tag X—Die Geplanten Isolierungslager des MfS’ by Thomas Auerbach and Wolf-Dieter Sailer, BstU, 1995.

p. 64 Honecker’s words were, ‘Den Sozialismus in seinem Lauf, wie man bei uns zu sagen pflegt, hält weder Ochs noch Esel auf,’ Erfurt, 14 August 1989, and again in his address to the parliament on 6 October 1989, the GDR’s fortieth anniversary: see ‘1989–40 Jahre DDR’ at http://ddr-imwww.de/Geschichte/1989.htm

See the same site for Gorbachev’s famous admonishment. For Honecker’s order to ‘nip the counter-revolutionaries in the bud’ see