‘Communist Timewarp’ Found in Germany.

In what could be a scene straight from Wolfgang Becker’s hit film ‘Goodbye Lenin!’ (2003), an architect surveying buildings in the (formerly East German) city of Leipzig opened the door to a flat to discover it had apparently lain untouched since the 1980s.

Mark Aretz, seemingly the first vistor to the flat in over twenty years, was surveying the site for renovations and has described how he opened the door and stepped back into a ‘veritable East German timewarp’, where the kitchen was stocked with old GDR grocery brands, communist-era Juwel cigarettes and Kristall vodka. A calender hanging on the wall was turned to August 1988 – around fifteen months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The full story is yet to unfold, but letters found in the flat suggest that the occupant was a man aged 24 who was in some trouble with the East German authorities. It also seems that whatever his reason for leaving, it was sudden – a bag of shrivelled bread rolls lay open on the kitchen table.

The Berliner Morgenpost have published a feature on the recent discovery – the article is in German, but also includes a series of fascinating photos of the flat:

http://www.morgenpost.de/vermischtes/article1022103/Verlassene_DDR_Wohnung_in_Leipzig_entdeckt.html

No Russian Missiles in Kaliningrad?

Independent Russian news agency Interfax today claimed that Russia are suspending plans to place missiles in  Kaliningrad, in what would have been the first deployment of offensive missiles inside Europe since the end of the Cold War. While the news has not yet received official confirmation, Interfax cited sources from the Russian General Staff in Moscow to support their scoop.

If true, the move undoubtedly comes in response to recent hints from Washington suggesting that the Obama administration may be reconsidering plans to establish a US missile defence shield in Eastern Europe. The controversial plan, developed by the Bush administration, would have involved the installation of ten interceptor missiles at a military base in Poland and construction of a radar station in the Czech Republic. Although the Bush administration had claimed that the purpose of the shield was to counter the long-range threat from ‘rogue states’ such as Iran and North Korea, there was strong Russian opposition to the plans, who perceived the system was a threat to their own security. Despite some serious Russian sabre rattling, the US went ahead and signed preliminary deals with both the Czech and Polish governments last year, stating their aim to ensure a fully operational defence shield was in place by 2013. This caused a dramatic cooling in both Russian-US and Russian-Polish relations, and in response to the US deal, Russian President Dimitri Medvedev announced in November 2008 that Russia would place their own missiles in their Baltic enclave Kaliningrad, in order to ‘neutralise the threat from the US’, sparking fears of a new cold war.

The Obama administration are now said to be reviewing this policy however, and a spokesman recently stated that there was ‘no  commitment’ to the immediate deployment of the missile defence system in East Europe. Obama and Medvedev spoke on the telephone on Monday (26 January) and apparently discussed ‘cooperation and coordination in dealing with common challenges’. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also expressed that he was ‘cautiously optimistic’ about  the potential for improved US-Russian relations. While it’s unlikely that Russia and America will ever be the best of friends, assuming the Russian decision to hang-fire on the installation of missiles in Kalingrad is confirmed, it is, as US ambassador to NATO Kurt Volkner stated earlier today ‘a very positive step forwards’.

The feelgood factor: could the recent change in US administration lead to improved relations with Russia?

The Auschwitz Debate.

Yesterday (27 January) was Holocaust Memorial Day here in the UK. Sixty four years on from the day when Red Army arrived at the gates of the Auschwitz death camp to liberate the remaining inhabitants, a number of commemorative services were held across the country. There are fears however, that one of the best known and most widely visited Holocaust monuments may not survive as a testament for future generations. Auschwitz Birkenau, the Polish death camp built by the Nazis in 1941 as a leading part of their ‘final solution’ is facing a cash crisis, with site spokesman Pawel Sawicki estimating that around $100 million is needed to carry out essential conservation work if the site is to survive as a monument to the past:

Train tracks mark the entrance into Auschwitz-Birkenau, the 'death camp' where most of the 1.1 million victims of the camp complex were murdered.

Birkenau, the largest camp in the Auschwitz complex, where most of its estimated 1.1 million victims were murdered, was never designed to last long term and a little under seventy years of exposure to the elements (including a succession of harsh Polish winters) has left the surviving infastructure of the camp in a badly dilapidated condition. Sawicki warns that inability to secure the necessary funds to shore up the remaining buildings and establish a long term conservation strategy for the camp means it will be forced to close to the public in a few years time. This would be a big deal – listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, in 2008 alone 1.13million people from all around the world visited the Auschwitz complex.

Lest we forget? The entrance gate to Auschwitz, with its infamous declaration that 'Arbeit Macht Frei' ('Work Makes Free') still causes a shiver to run through many of the millions of contemporary visitors as they pass beneath it.

These visitors generate little income however and between 1992-2008 the Polish government have funded 94% of the basic running costs of keeping Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau open to public visitors. Calls have now been raised for the international community to shoulder the bulk of the costs required to implement a long term conservation plan for the future of the site, with a spokesmen from the Polish Ministry of Culture and Heritage stating that every nation had ‘an inaliable duty’ to protect and conserve Auschwitz.

These recent disclosures have reignited the debate over the future of Auschwitz. While some agree that Auschwitz must be conserved for future generations, others feel that the site should be left to decay. The BBC published an interesting article which explored both sides of this argument (link provided below). In the piece, historian Robert Jan Van Pelt believes that once the last camp survivor dies Auschwitz should be left to crumble and be reclaimed by nature, while former Polish Foreign Minister (and former Auschwitz inmate) Wladyslaw Bartoszewski argues that the camp should be preserved to bear witness to the fate of its victims for future generations.

You can read both opinions in full here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7827534.stm

This is an interesting debate, and one where I can see merit on both sides. I can certainly see the point Van Pelt is making when he states that ‘a visit to Auschwitz can teach little to those who were not actually there’, and that when the last survivor has gone the camp will simply be an echo of the past, filled with ‘memories of memories’. I completely agree that a present-day visitor to the Auschwitz complex can’t possibly come close to imagining what it was like to actually be there, but speaking as a historian who has previously visited the camp, it did make the holocaust feel more ‘real’ to me than any of the books I’ve read or the images I’ve seen. A visit to Auschwitz is a memorable, sobering experience, even for someone like me who has no personal connection to the camps, so I would have to agree with Bartoszewski when he says that ‘even after the people are gone, the stones will still cry out’.

So, assuming Auschwitz is to be saved, where should the money come from? Do the international community have a financial  responsibility to ensure the site is preserved in the longer term? I would argue yes. Thanotourism will always be something of a grey area, and while the Polish tourist industry does undoubtably benefit from those travelling to visit Auschwitz, certainly it would be wrong to view the site as a tourist trap to profit from, a way of making money. There is a danger that this could happen if conservation funding is not forthcoming from outside Poland. But, for me at least, visiting Auschwitz did not have the same kind of ‘touristy feel’ as visiting the castle in Krakow, or the nearby salt mine in Wieliczka. It was an entirely different experience and one that I would hope is shared by most of the other visitors to the site each year.

Czech Artist Courts Controversy.

Czech artist David Černý (recently dubbed the ‘enfant terrible’ of the Czech art world by the BBC’s Rob Cameron) has courted fresh controversy with his most recent exhibit entitled ‘Entropa’, a play on ‘Evropa’ (the Czech word for ‘Europe’) and ‘Entropy’ meaning ‘disorder’.  Installed in the EU Council headquarters in Brussels, and unveiled on 12 January to celebrate the Czech Republic’s assumption of the EU Presidency from 1st January 2009, it wasn’t long before the 16 metre square, seven tonne framework raised not only eyebrows, but also indignation and anger.

Why? While the Czech government thought they had spent $ 500,000 USD commissioning a collaborative effort between artists drawn from all 27 countries depicted in the piece to celebrate and promote modern Europe, the end product transpired to be the work of Černý and a couple of Czech compatriots, who chose to ‘celebrate’ Europe by drawing on a number of popular cliches and crude prejudices to represent EU member states. As a result, France was depicted as ‘Greve!’ (a country ‘on strike’), Italy as a giant football field, Romania as a Dracula theme park and the UK found itself excluded from the European ‘map’ altogether, in a clear reference to its perceived Euroscepticism:

Czech it out! Cerny's contraversial art installation 'Entropa'

In a statement released shortly after the true nature of Entropa  was revealed, Černý said the following:

“Grotesque exaggeration and mystification are signs of Czech culture and the creation of false identities is one of the strategies of current arts … The work thus parodies socially committed art that balances on the brink of would-be controversial attacks on national characters and an innocent decoration of official spaces.We knew that the truth will be uncovered. Still before we wanted to find out whether Europe is capable of laughing at itself”

Some EU countries however, have failed to see the funny side. Bulgaria (depicted as a Turkish squat toilet) certainly don’t appear to be laughing. After expressing ‘profound indignation’ about their unflattering depiction,  the Bulgarian Government formally requested the immediate removal of their ‘country’ from the piece, resulting in ‘Bulgaria’ being covered over with a black shroud and somberly concealed from view from 20th January:

Toilet Humour? The Bulgarian Government demanded that the portion of the exhibit representing Bulgaria was covered over, after expressing outrage at their depiction as 'Europe's toilet'.

The Czechs aren’t laughing that much either.  Leading government  ministers claim to be outraged,  having been ‘misled’ about the nature of the piece and it’s origins. Czech President Vaclav Klaus initially pledged his support for the installation, but following the controversy generated after its unveiling, he moved quickly to distance himself from the scandal, claiming that Entropa was ‘neither funny nor good’ and offering a public apology to Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov.

Elsewhere however, the response to the scandal has been more muted. While some EU diplomats half-heartedly called for the removal of the Entropa exhibition, the  official launch went ahead on 15 January, and two weeks on from the initial furore it remains on view in the EC headquarters (minus Bulgaria). No other country have filed an official protest about their image, despite some depictions having the potential to prove equally controversial and detrimental. Germany, for example, is illustrated as a series of autobahns described as ‘resembling a swastika’:

Controversial? Germany as depicted by David Cerny.

So why aren’t the German government also clamouring in outrage? After all, if we’re dealing in national stereotypes, the Germans are all too frequently accused of humourlessness. It is interesting that those most offended by Entropa are among the newest members of the ‘European club’. Most of the former East European states who have joined the EU in recent years saw their accession to membership as a real turning point, a ‘return to Europe’ after the decades of communist rule. Perhaps this is an indication that these countries are still afraid they aren’t being taken seriously as ‘Europeans’, still having to prove their worth, and not yet secure enough in their post-communist identity to be able to shrug off such negative stereotypes. Bulgaria, who only joined the EU in January 2007, are still smarting after the recent European Commission decision to suspend almost EUR 500 million of their EU funding in July 2008, due to their failure to combat organised crime and corruption in line with EU accession requirements, while the Czech Republic are obviously anxious to be seen to be taking their first stint in the EU Presidency seriously.

Whenever art and politics combine there will be controversy, and the Entropa exhibition also raised another issue: that of censorship and freedom of speech.  Alexandr Vonda, Czech Deputy Prime Minister, while publically apologising for any offence caused by the exhibition, also defended the piece by claiming that ‘art is freedom of expression’ and that this demonstrates that ‘twenty years after the iron curtain, there is no place for censorship in the EU’.

You can see a video clip of Cerny explaining the inspiration behing Entropa courtesy of the BBC website here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7829453.stm

And Wikipedia have a full listing of the images used to represent each of the 27 countries, and their symbolism here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropa