#philip oltermann

[j-august]

But the poetry circles regularly attended by [Annegret] Gollin served a similar function to the set-up inside the Stasi: honey traps that allowed the state to attract creative or critical minds and observe them up close. The Stasi found these groups were most effective when run by people who made their students feel sheltered from the more obviously policed world: caring, sensitive men and women, substitute father or mother figures. Once the budding writers let their guard down, they were encouraged to open up about their literary tastes - information then passed straight on to the Stasi.

Philip Oltermann, The Stasi Poetry Circle

[j-august]

The charges against [Annegret] Gollin bring to mind a terrorist building home-made explosives, not a teenage girl jotting down her insecurities in her bedroom: 'In 1977, she made the decision to practice subversive agitation in written form. To achieve this aim, she made use of certain expertise she had acquired in a literature club in Neubrandenburg, and manufactured eleven inflammatory pamphlets in verse form. These were transferred from Post-it notes in her A5 format so-called literature book and circulated in early 1979.'

Philip Oltermann, The Stasi Poetry Circle

[j-august]

In the months following her arrest on 11 February 1980, [Annegret] Gollin was interviewed thirty-six times about her modest poetic output. Again and again the twenty-three-year-old was marched to an interrogation room and asked to interpret and explain her own poems. The police could see what her poerms said, but what did they mean?

Philip Oltermann, The Stasi Poetry Circle

[j-august]

Berger made a habit of referring to himself in the third person, as if he were writing small dramas with himself as the protagonist: 'Uwe Berger said', 'Uwe Berger rejected this', 'he conceded a point to Uwe Berger'. Uwe Berger became an institution, an organ of state, and by that logic any attack on Uwe Berger also became an assault on the legitimacy of the GDR. In July 1975, he submitted a note to the Stasi in which he complained about recent criticism of his poems from both East German authors and West German journalists: a review in the left-leaning Frankfurter Rundschau had dismissed his latest anthology as too solemnly lofty. Berger smelled a conspiracy, 'a coordinated approach' by Western capitalists and Eastern dissidents.

Philip Oltermann, The Stasi Poetry Circle

[j-august]

Memoirs usually start off with a life lesson. The lesson at the start of Uwe Berger's first memoir, Path into Autumn, published by Aufbau in 1987, is that power can be seductive even when it breaks your nose.

Philip Oltermann, The Stasi Poetry Circle

[j-august]

'An egotist / in love I am,' went one verse. 'Want you / to me mine / just mine / and hope never / to be nationalised'. Love poetry could be awkwardly at odds with a state that valued collective ownership over private property.

Philip Oltermann, The Stasi Poetry Circle

[j-august]

Outside the cafe, before we waved our goodbyes, Polinske said something to me that I couldn't quite make sense of at the time: 'The question mark at the end of a poem is worth a hundred times more than a full stop. I know that now, after thinking about it for a long time. But I didn't know that then.'

Philip Oltermann, The Stasi Poetry Circle

[rebatomblog]

No grades, no timetable

No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

”Pupils choose their own subjects and motivate themselves, an approach some say should be rolled out across Germany.

(…)

Set subjects are limited to maths, German, English and social studies, supplemented by more abstract courses such as “responsibility” and “challenge”. For challenge, students aged 12 to 14 are given €150 (£115) and sent on an adventure that they have to plan entirely by themselves. Some go kayaking; others work on a farm. Anton went trekking along England’s south coast. The philosophy behind these innovations is simple: as the requirements of the labour market are changing, and smartphones and the internet are transforming the ways in which young people process information, the school’s headteacher, Margret Rasfeld, argues, the most important skill a school can pass down to its students is the ability to motivate themselves.

(…)

“In education, you can only create change from the bottom – if the orders come from the top, schools will resist. Ministries are like giant oil tankers: it takes a long time to turn them around. What we need is lots of little speedboats to show you can do things differently.”

Read the full article from Philip Oltermann