Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.12.2015, Page 24

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PB The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 17 — 2015DESIGNMU IC
Is it 2015 or is it 1935? When I moved to
Berlin seventeen years ago, I was 25 years
old and I couldn’t understand why older
Germans were still talking about World
War II. It felt as if it had happened such a
long time ago—as if World War II was FAR
away, and that it would NEVER happen
again, and that talking about it was SO
boring. The year was 1999. Now at age 42,
I find myself growing worried about the
youth of Europe, and I think in a comical
way: “I sound like a German grandfather.”
Meanwhile, a third and fourth generation
of people who have never known war at
their doorstep is coming to prominence in
Western and Northern Europe.
Everything recurs in cycles. My feeling
is that we are currently treading a danger-
ous part of one such cycle: The ignorant
part. And nobody talks about it, because
it is old-fashioned. So I am trying to do
something experimental, I am attempt-
ing a brave step—I want to talk about war
preparations… weird, no? I would never
have even thought about doing this, let’s
say, seven years ago.
Now, let’s look at things in perspective.
Today, those of you who were born in the
year 1980 are 35 years old. You can feel
how long that is. Now, let’s go back an-
other 35 years, from the year 1980, count-
ing backwards… 1980, 1979, 1978, 1977…
etc. After venturing 35 years backwards in
time, we find ourselves in 1945. The time
that passed between the end of World War
II, 1945, and your birth in 1980 is as long as
the time you have been alive.
Is that a long time? No. Is that a sur-
prise? Probably yes, to many, I guess many
haven’t thought about it. The great wars of
Western Europe were here YESTERDAY,
and they reside not in some foggy, grainy,
black and white “far away past,” no mat-
ter how they might come across in archival
film footage. These wars are still very much
alive, and they remain active components
in our current lives. Still, we act as if it will
never happen again (or: as if it had never
happened in the first place, is perhaps a
better way to put it). That is dangerous.
I am not talking about building walls,
or creating an Icelandic army. I am not
pro-war, and I am not pro-army. We have
to take a stand, be aware and act to curtail
the growing likelihood of war. Rather than
staying silent and waiting for other nations
and other people to determine our fate,
we must discern how we may contribute?
WAKE UP!
We blame the USA and Western soci-
ety at large for bad warfare. We want them
to abandon weaponry, even as we have
spent decades living under their helm and
protection. We all want to be kind, and we
think that we can have peace WITHOUT
preparing for it. That mode of thought is
dangerous. And ignorance is bliss, until
shit hits the fan.
Maybe my viewpoint is affected by 17
years in Berlin. The crazy old people in
Germany have desperately tried to warn
their nation’s youth. After all, old people
are just young people in older bodies—
they are like us, they are 30-year-olds in
80-year-old bodies, they are "one of us.”
My German friends' mothers and fathers
were raised in the Hitler Youth, or their
mothers and fathers were. Does that tell
you something? They were brainwashed
at an early age. Many of my friends have
grandparents who were Nazis, or victims
of war. Can you imagine if your grand-
mothers and grandfathers had experi-
enced that—how that might influence your
life? Through their experiences, the war
would still be active. Traumas pass on
from generation to generation. Thought
patterns, social behaviours, etc., are inher-
ited.
We live in 2015, but when I observe
all the happy people dressed up in H&M,
clutching their iPhones as they exit the
Berlin U-Bahn, they look exactly like the
relaxed, happy people you see in black
and white photographs from pre-war Ber-
lin, 1935. Those people were full of hope,
they could never have imagined what that
the coming years would bring…
I get an eerie feeling, realizing this in
an intuitive way. Some bells are ringing.
For sure.
Let’s hope that nothing bad will hap-
pen on our doorstep, and let’s hope that
war will come to an end in the world. I will
close this short message with a sentence
that dates back to the 4th or 5th century
AD: “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” This is a
Latin adage that simply translates to: "If
you want peace, prepare for war.”
Picture & text by Egill Sæbjörnsson
A STRANGE
MESSAGE FROM
“BLOOMING BERLIN”
(formerly “Berlin
in ruins”)