Alexander Starritt

Dreams that fade and die

issue 24 November 2012

The Dutch writer, Cees Nooteboom, was living in West Berlin in 1989 when the gates opened and the Wall finally came down. At the time he wrote a series of essays about what was happening around him, which were published to great acclaim in Germany and form the first part of Roads to Berlin.

He describes a revolution taking place on his doorstep, but there is no shooting in the streets. He goes to the theatre and museums as normal, but his German friends feel at every instant that they are making history, as though all actions and words have become denser and more lasting. It’s an apposite feeling in a city where, as he says, the past feels at home.

Most strikingly, the placards held up by demonstrators are loaned to a museum even while the demonstrations are in progress, so that people can immediately view how their present might become their future.

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