2023-06-16 19:06:28
What is really important? What touches us today – and will not go away tomorrow? It’s the things that have moved us since human existence: happiness, love, family, partnership, time, stress, loneliness, farewell, grief.
BILD columnist Louis Hagen*, coming from a German-Jewish family, sought answers to the eternal questions of mankind from poets, thinkers and researchers. And found a few answers that are amazingly simple – and yet can enrich our lives.
★★★
Birth, marriage, death – there are days that burn into our lives and stay there. For me, this includes June 17, 1953, the day of the popular uprising in the GDR.
It’s his 70th anniversary. For decades it was our public holiday, the Day of German Unity. At least 55 people died. Seven death sentences were carried out by Soviet military tribunals and East German courts.
BILD columnist Louis Hagen
I had just started elementary school during those fateful weeks in June. We lived in West Berlin. My parents said: “In the east, Russian tanks are shooting at people.”
There was something menacing about a six-year-old tot, even if there was no immediate danger. It was the time of the foreign soldiers in Berlin, with us it was the Americans, they often gave me chocolate, I loved it. In the other part of Berlin it was the Russians who were feared.
There was no wall yet, the borders in Berlin were often barely visible. People came together no matter where they lived. “There’s nothing we can do, we put candles in the window,” my father said. “This is to show that we are thinking of you.” That’s what happened. On this day, on the next few days – also with the neighbors.
Candles flickered on many windows. A symbol of freedom. That’s how I felt it, that’s how I still see it. Just a small sign, but a memorial for the day that touches the hearts of millions of people.
I believe it to this day: Sometimes a little thing is enough to show: I’m thinking of you, I’m thinking of you. For example a candle.
* Louis Hagen (76) was a member of the BILD editor-in-chief for 13 years and is now a consultant at the communications agency WMP. His texts have also been published as a book and are available at koehler-mittel-shop.de.
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