Fotograf Magazine

Maybe it would have been nice, if the Iron Curtain hadn’t sprung up on the Elbe River. Rather it could have been farther away – maybe even as far as Santiago de Compostela. In 1945, the Soviet army simply would not have stopped in the middle of Germany – and the middle of the way, but it would have marched briskly on, into the sunset, setting up satellite states as it went along: The Socialist Republic of France, The People’s Democratic Republic of Italy, The United Socialist Republic of Great Britain and Ireland. An entire Europe made up of socialist countries! Why not? At least we would have all been in the same boat, wobbling along on rusty oars – and today we could join the Belgians or the citizens of Liechtenstein in overcoming our post-communist traumas and cultivate a nostalgia for the small joys of the COMECON.