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Seen from the West, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc marked the victorious end of the Cold War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall signified the failure of Communist ideals and utopias. The bankruptcy of any economic system that rejected profit motives could be seen in the parade of Trabis, those icon…

A manor house in East Prussia, paid for by the military salary of the absent owner, an officer. Inside, a Chekhovian personage — the lady of the manor, a languorous Berlin beauty — along with her twelve-year-old son Peter, his tutor, an elderly aunt who oversees the household, two Ukrainian maidser…

[...] feeling and desire lead both characters to cross a border. And feeling and desire are, after all, the signs that someone is alive. Never more alive than in the face of death.

When it comes to willing — or the formulation of a wish to will — dictators have an advantage over democratic countries. In Europe, we can agree on what we don’t want, at least not here in our own countries: war, poverty, torture. But what we do want is a question that requires more consideration. …

Fallada is not only the man who writes the forbidden postcards, he is also each person who finds them, who is too afraid to pass them on. He is not only the man who risks his life, but also the man who fails. Fallada clearly knows his way around the dreary apartments of the alcoholics he describes,…