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About border experiences and my border history
Columne “Port Woling” 2013-04
The people of Central Germany in particular are characterized by the time of German division. This time is particularly part of people living on the former border. Hardly a house in border regions of the former GDR, in which at least one member had something to do with the border troops - and if they were only professional or business connections. You had to manage and live.
The worst chapter of this period was certainly the violent expulsion of whole families from the border area. These → forced resettlements from the restricted area, especially in large-scale police operations in 1952 and 1961, fell along the demarcation line of about 12,000 inhabitants. There was also comparable experience in my family - the flight and violent expulsion of more than 3.6 million Silesians from the Silesian regions east of the Neisse in the wake of the Second World War.
The following is a contribution to the not easy topic of “borders, soldiers, soldiers, values and history”. The article reflects, in particular, personal experiences. The subject just moves me all my life.
A frontier and soldier about the history
A human - born a few weeks before the Wall was built in 1961 - was a working child. Someone called me lumpen proletarians - no problem and rather an honor. I recently buried my father. The “Little Trumpeter’s Song” accompanied him. We are the next generation that will go. Am I going to meet my father again? Until then, I still have a lot to process and shape. I just want the time for it. Do I have you? No - I’ll take it.
As a former professional soldier of the frontier groups of the GDR from 1980 to 1990, as a commander, who saw his responsibility as a job not only as a job, but also as an officer and persecuted person in his own army, Immense war strikes as protective, but also as a very thoughtful person I attach a special importance to the story - since I can think. She works in me every day. And I draw from her and look forward.
My concern with the following ideas is not a glorification of history and the support of the unteachable. As a former soldier and military, I would like to recall values - positive and negative, which may be important in our history, present and future.
To understand the past - even your own - means to grow personally and to be able to consciously shape the morning in the humanistic sense. Everything else is only vague and idealistic in the attempt to get out of the animal kingdom by mutual obscurity of human and social grievances.
Our actions are decisive. The past of each one is a valuable life experience. What is more important, however, is how one now stands - and more importantly, what one intends to do in the future. Search in the past. The result of experience and knowledge are views. What is crucial, however, is to change the world today with small steps.
Broken - some once valuable companion and man went by us during and after these military years. It was the soul that soon broke it, when I saw this fate again and again. I soon broke the same way. The family was my salvation and the comrades. Not a few friends have gone this way. Why? Because we suddenly found ourselves in a completely different world? In a civilian world in which suddenly some important values were no longer important to us?
After the army time, many of us also experienced larger, new, almost unimaginable strengths. Where others would go, we came here. We build on it. Our many years in the Army have enabled us to change and actively shape. Curiosity has always preceded us. It was and is our guide in the jungle of ignorance.
Soldier’s past of us Long-running - why am I talking about this? I was and am one of you. In whatever degree of service does this matter? At any rate, I am now a. D. (out of service), and have dignifiedly and honorablely held my rank as captain. But we also know soldiers do not die - they go there. The many years have irrevocably shaped us. Nothing and no one in the world can delete, in the way you just delete a data store.
No one can speak for other members of the armed forces, not for border guards, not for soldiers of the National Army or the Bundeswehr, not for members of other armed elite units, and not for members of other armies. We know, however, that the deep specificity of their duties with the weapon in their hands leaves soldiers always boundaries. They experience that not only is the command the measure of things, but man is also supernaturally demanded in particular.
The curse of all soldiers - they must act - faster than the thought or only the pure instinct allows. And that is precisely what requires special mechanisms of cooperation, special principles of soldiership and of the troops.
The soldier’s fate - one can not grasp it individually. The other life has not been lived. So we talk less about others. Let us think more about ourselves, ultimately by our being, to give the other good here - if only it is our experience, the experience and the experience. In this secular sense we live without expectations for others.
Memory. Whenever our comrades are commemorating, we also think of the murderers murdered in this land, murdered, murdered soldiers, assassinated freethinkers, assassins of other nationalities. And we still see so much blindness in our society before occult persons, groups and media who sow again the poison of dictatorship, deadly extremism, terror and murders. And we see a former Federal President who stepped up any form of sincerity with boots, and still won all the military honors.
Then we find answers in experienced and values that we have lived as soldiers: What does people share? Indifference. What unites people? Camaraderie. What separates people? Different scales. What causes people? Dogmas and ignorance. What unites us? The longing. What keeps us together? The sharing. What makes us live? The diversity. What makes us invincible? Our willingness to learn and flexibility.
The summary of my military career: be a believer without belonging to a religion. Believe in the truth, at the risk of your downfall. Be an able soldier, but detest an army. Fear and act fearlessly. Be realistic and try the impossible! Be brave enough to keep going forward without resisting resistance. Soldiers do not struggle for ideas - they have them, assess the situation and make decisions. The soldier’s life has brought her to life every day in the most difficult situations.
What does soldier matter? Does it matter in which army you served? Does it matter where rank or rank of service was served? Is there any contempt? Do we have to take our heads? Can we rediscover and change the world in a new civilized quality?
Many questions - some of which are behind me. Was every officer in my former army an officer with a real sense of honor? No! Why is there a command to use the shotgun? For deterrence and shooting - as in every army! Can a flag be played twice? No! Can you fight for a better society within an army? Yes! What does it mean for comrades to spy on their own comrades on behalf of secret services and defamate them? Criminal Calling! What does flag curses mean? Cowardice, the fight on the spot and the forfeited right to wear shoulder pieces. Do I have too little tolerance here? Certainly not when I am ready to talk about the past face to face and not to wage war.
Let us not forget the other soldiers, the conscientious objectors, the late soldiers or the soldiers who were forced to do their duty. I would not like to judge further on the exercise of this non-military service. Everyone who is concerned has to do this for himself. It is true that many a consistent representative deserves the highest recognition due to his direct straightforwardness and sincerity, which is not characteristic of many people.
Severe decisions in the army era - I remember. What if the people march? What if your military unit is to march against this people? Everyone was faced with this question. Not everyone shared this. I found hard answers for myself all alone.
Calumny - I also remember, that in their own army they had been spied me for years by alleged fellow-comrades, and had been defamed in the most severe form. You had to turn off somehow. Let’s not forget - unloaded unofficial among us soldiers had this filthy job - maybe every tenth. My political attitude to peace and real progress did not fit into the prescription of the military-political commanders. My attitude has always been: “Nobody can prescribe anything - only one has to make a decision in life and make a decision about it.”
I had learned this attitude from my Silesian father early on. One had to pursue me as an officer, if I was not already convertible. My price for freedom of thought was high. I decided that it would cost that. And - at that time it was really down to the lowest human level, my life and my own family members.
Persecuted in his own army, which was served unconditionally - schizophrenia. The former unofficial and handlanders live partly still today among us, in my place of residence, in my proximity, partly also in a responsible position, and can scarcely return my gaze. They are not worth talking about. That would not be my way. Only, some have not left his wrong work from then until today. They forget their work is immortalized in historical documents.
Today, the military experience is particularly shaped by my military view. No army of the world, no politically Primate civil minister, no general in the world, no soldier in the world, no weapon in the world, nothing can free mankind from the whips and collateral consequences of wars. There will NEVER be military winners. In this sense, wars are most useless. Political victories from wars? Unmoral desire, as it can not be greater. In the present and in the future wars put even human existence at play. This lies in the nature of the irrevocable destructive power of weapon systems.
“If the superiors curse the war, the orders to convoke them have already been issued” (1935, Bertolt Brecht).
Warriors - who are they? We know this from the experience of military history and our own. Let’s never let it go. This knowledge I had at the latest 1989/1990 at the most bitter experiences in the so-called Vor- und Wendezeit. At that time, I declined, on my own request, a further career offered to me. It had something to do with the flag, but also with my inner conflicts and experiences.
Yes - I was a borderer in an army at a global and explosive seam and at 23 years already an officer. There is still a lot of people in his teaching today. The previous officer’s training had taught me a lot of military history and military craftsmanship, including Clausewitz to Scharnhorst, strategies and doctrine, tactics of the units, attacking and defending, enlightenment and disarmed operations, enemy structures and equipment, weapons of all calibers, protection against ABC weapons, armored combat , Combat techniques, special jumps, leadership from the group to the regiment, topography and communications, material assurance, psychology, economy and society. You never forget.
Along the boundaries of the big gunslinger, the path has also led me there, but also to places of unimaginable horror. I think, above all, the horror must be mediated. This is the only chance that our history will not be repeated in the middle of Europe.
Death and killing - we learned - and not just defending. I’ve been thinking too much, too soon. This reflection gnaws properly on the substance. More than ever, I ask today:
“What right do people have to kill people?”
Even the Koran and the Bible teach, “You shall not kill.” Do we need the religions to negate this claim in practice at all times? But the pure difference between action from instinct and intelligence should give us an answer and stand out from the animal kingdom. I wonder why the crime of advertising for children is still being waged for wars all over the world, even here - why → 17-year-old children warriors are objects of desire.
Health consequences of the military time for me - who cares today? The fact that the body and the mind suffered enormously from it, and health consequences ensued, nobody wants to know today - certainly no legal successor like the Bundeswehr.
It was my way - commander and frontier, after I originally wanted to study philosophy. I was already in my pocket for admission to the Taschkent studies in 1980. Not everything in life is deliberately decided. Many things are simply directed and changed by very specific circumstances. We sometimes overlook the fact that the wind does not determine the direction. We can put the sails ourselves.
Nevertheless, my personal military history was closely followed by well-known philosophers and historians, such as Epicurus, Schopenhauer, Marx, or Nietzsche. The role, the whole contents, and the sacred writings of different religions, I then opened up as a proven atheist - just out of respect for the other believers and in my search for answers and universal human ideas.
Wars and religions - a special theme. Even soldiers often have dignitaries in their ranks. Today, I ask the religions to discuss the following: Where is the head of the family, the father, who orders a billboard to his squabbling disciples of every religion and asks them: Without the other, each one of you is nothing! Proclaim the common commandment: ‘Thou shalt seek to understand others. First learn Humanly, then other languages and then sharing.”
A borderer - the word hides more. It was my claim - at the time, as today. A single experience is like a puzzle piece. The parts give a picture. Nothing was in vain. All of this gives your tree of life, an irreplaceable potential for you. Strength arises from cohesion and cohesion. Step by step, it goes forward. The key - the next step. This is followed by another step. Not the end is the claim. Taking the road in dignity is the goal of the soldier.
And nothing and no one in the world can judge me if he has not worn my boots. The unteachable man can also take this away from me. And nothing and no one can take us from former military to the important experiences, the knowledge and the deep humanity of real comrades - things that have accompanied us on the way to the present existence.
The other side of members of different armies I have also met today - in many encounters - among other things by the German armed forces, who, as a troop leader in cooperation with Russian soldiers in the middle of Europe in the former Yugoslavia flew the grenade splinters around the ears of the soldier, in many battles The American soldier, who had been fighting in Kuwait, lost from the soldiers, who had some strange political and economic interests somewhere in the world, from many former commanders of the National People’s Army, Hopeful promises made by many soldiers left alone with the most severe mental trauma.
A speech says: “Talking is silver, silence is gold.” I think: “Gold awakens only animal instincts. Speaking, however, is the beginning and the end of the human, inner-filled life.” In this sense, time limits in the soldier’s life have their right to exist because they contain a lot of historical conversation and future potential.
Imagine that we all face the same dilemma. Imagine, however, that we are also enriched by the same values. Imagine that not the army, but the flag of these values is always held up. Imagine that this comradeship and humanity overcome all boundaries. Really believe and know - this can be a former, true, honorable soldier.
My dream - I am allowed to derive from history into the future:
I see virtues of the soldier in a humanistic quantum religio for all people, who can clutter everything together permanently and conflict-free - in a new human evolutionary stage of the mind. Combined with fundamentally new economic approaches and solutions in a future access society that would be available to all people, a way of peaceful coexistence of all religions and beliefs would be an economic, political, religious, ideological and ethical-moral solution.
Sharing in networks of different forms would be the focus, not ownership. Property slows down in mobility. The world is global and interstellar. Communication is no longer a question of necessary local locations or possession, like churches, but a question of access, culture and technology independent of time and space.
Together, we build networks of services, resources and experiences. Together these networks are used. We are not talking about utopia, but approaches which are beginning to develop in practice today - see, for example, the Internet and new intelligent, decentralized energy networks called the Smart Grid.
For the first time, this path could lead to a world-wide, lasting de-escalation. If this path is denied, I see only the chance of the destruction of human civilization due to the fatal destruction of new technologies in the wrong hands.
