Quite off topic from any real current events (ISISs offensive across Iraq, the World Cup, Bowe Bergdahl) or anything people are actually talking about. . . . I am, for a couple of projects, researching the late 20th century histories of spy craft and surveillance, and I happened across this 2007 Timothy Garton Ash piece in NYROB on the incredible movie about the East Germanys Stasi called The Lives of Others (watch it now!), and the last graf of his piece just kicked me in the gut. The Germany in which this film was produced, in the early years of the twenty-first century, is one of the most free and civilized countries on earth. In this Germany, human rights and civil liberties are today more jealously and effectively protected than (it pains me to say) in traditional homelands of liberty such as Britain and the United States. In this good land, the professionalism of its historians, the investigative skills of its journalists, the seriousness of its parliamentarians, the generosity of its funders, the idealism of its priests and moralists, the creative genius of its writers, and, yes, the brilliance of its filmmakers have all combined to cement in the world’s imagination the most indelible association of Germany with evil. Yet without these efforts, Germany would never have become such a good land. In all the annals of human culture, has there ever been a more paradoxical achievement? I think I shall root for Germany in the World Cup. nybooks/articles/archives/2007/may/31/the-stasi-on-our-minds/?pagination=false
Posted on: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:24:09 +0000