The Ruins of Nostalgia 6

First someone invented a word designating nostalgia for life in East Germany:

Ostalgie. Then someone else made a movie called Ostalgie. Then other people

opened an Ostalgie-themed hotel where guests could stay in rooms with faded

pink patterned wallpaper and orange phones with a special button for

Volkspolizei. Of the people, for the people, by the people. De Gaulle said a

country does not have friends, it has interests. And maybe a population does not

have people, it has interests. And sometimes maybe even people do not have

friends, they have interests. The Volkspolizei seemed the dream of a people who

would discipline themselves and never need to peer into the mirror and say: fuck

the police. But long after the Volkspolizei’s demise, when six hundred

policepeople enforced the eviction of eleven anarchists from a squatted building

on Brunnenstrasse whose billionaire needed it back, what button was there to

push? Curtains hung in the windows; the rent was paid; the Umsonst Laden on

the ground floor saw influx and outflux of stuff without influx and outflux of

cash; “Wir bleiben alle” read the façade.   *   No one knows where the anarchists

are now, the Umsonst Laden melted away like smudged snow in spring, and the

building stood empty for years, only a few pigeons nesting in the fetid splendors

of the ruins of nostalgia.