The Kinder of Hoy

Hoyerweda is a relatively small, once industrial town in Saxony, then a pearl of the industralization progress of the former DDR. Brigitte Reimann made the town famous as she, alongside with other authors at the time, went there and wrote several literary imbued reports that were published in the media at the time. I personally keep at high esteem such reports, because put aside the ideological passion, it turned the interest on people and their story, introducing a new style of journalism that nurtured a lot my own writing. It is a genre that deserves more consideration and appreciation, in my opinion.

Once communism was dismantled and Germany reunited, Hoyerweda, as many other densely industrialized places, went through several crisis: identity but especially economic crisis. Actually those two crisis, and many other who followed, were intermingled and outsourced each other. In 1991, several riots ignited by far right individuals and entities put the relatively unknown city - including within Germany - on a newly set up map of extremism and xenophobia, often afterwards associated with this part of the country - Saxony.

Grit Lemke, author, documentarist and film director, went back in time and collected various testimonies of people born and bred, or settling in Hoyerweda at certain moments of time, including former immigrants from ´friendly´ communist countries like Vietnam and Angola. Structured on historical stages, she collected an impressive amount of oral histories shedding light not only on the personal experiences, but in perspective, offers a global outlook on German history, particularly during the communist times.

For historians of recent history with a focus on the history of mentalities, this method although may be lengthly in time - including as establishing a level of trust with the subjects is needed in advance of starting the project - and requiring a considerable amount of resources, it is one of the best, in my opinion, for illustrating sudden social and political changes. Through personal testimonies the attentive and experienced eye of the researcher can figure out so many small details that may further help to reconstruct an era, one small piece at a time.

Kinder von Hoy is a recommended read to anyone looking to understand communist and post-communist Germany, by hearing the voices of first hand subjects of history. I would continue this year to explore more about this specific history that decades after the unification remains very much present in the structure of mentalities in the former Eastern but also Western Germany.

Rating: 5 stars

Reconciling Ugliness

 

In a first post-colonial critical approach on the Western standards of beauty within the German intellectual realm, from a multi-disciplinary perspective, Hässlichkeit (Ugliness, in my free translation) by Afghani-German artist and essayist Moshtari Hilal is an important contribution to the discourse on power games within the beauty industry.

What do we have in mind when we, as women, we are looking ourselves into the mirror? What do we see there? And, more specifically, who do we see there? In most cases, there are some given society standards and expectations that we take into consideration. We see ourselves and the other through those mindsets and we want to emulate in order to not disappoint, to feel desired and desirable, also from a social point of view. It is also a personal account of the reconciliation with the own body, reclaiming the own identity and unicity.

Moshtari´s journey through the perceptions and representations of the body in the Western culture - documented with philosophical, artistic and anthropological sources - reveals the mechanisms of acception and rejection, mediated by the body representation. The author is reflecting on her - and her family - direct experiences in perceiving the feminine body in the Western/White/European realm. 

There are many topics that may have deserved an extended and relatively more in-depth analysis, including in the larger context of the beauty industry, such as the case of beauty surgeries explicitly about the illusion of extended youth - but this book is definitely a great start if you want to evaluate the beauty standards from an ethnic/minority-focused perspective.

Delightfully, the book also contains illustrations - graphic and photography - by the author, an example of how this type of intellectual writing can be done in an artistically creative way.

Rating: 4 stars

´Africa Is Not a Country´

No matter which part of the Globe are you coming from, your region and/or country is marked by stereotypes. Human mind needs concepts - simplified often - in order to put the world into a certain pertainable order. More often we need to figure out the other(s) rather than really understanding them. Geography, conflictual histories, distorted media reports are influencing our way to figure out the world around it, to simplify it in an equally distorted way.

Africa - which is definitely not a country - is by far one of the most stereotypes-ridden part of the world. As VICE journalist Dipo Faloyin in his debut book - that I had access to in audiobookformat, in the lecture of the author - shows through different approaches - governance, history, artifacts looting, literary but particularly film representations - Africa - no nuances and even reliable knowledge considered. 

Each chapter brings more context to the topic and it helps to understand the many aspects of the topic, even by someone less familiar with the issue. Particularly for academics with a focus on disrepresented areas - such as ´Balkans´, ´Eastern Europe´ and the ´Middle East´ it offers a flexible framework of identification and research. When the region is used for describe specific countries, the same simpleminded sin is repeated over and over again.

The book is informed and relies on various specific examples and what is how a book talking about stereotypes should include. Only through examples one can really understand the differences. Personally, although I am explosed to different information about countries like Ghana or Nigeria, I was largely not familiar with specific ongoing ´success stories´ in Rwanda or the women-driven projects, including in the field of governance, in Tanzania.

Personally, I would have expect more representativity, including in the countries once within the French colonial power. A rather newly mentioned colonial power, Germany, is though deeply and sharply analysed, which is already an important contribution to the general debate about colonialism.

This book is recommended both to academics and journalists, for both the content and the format. Hopefully, there will be more such books dedicated to various countries from the African continent and elsewehere as well.

Rating: 4 stars 

The Feminist Revolution of Iran

 

A revolution doesn´t happen over night but once it happens, it changes the face of the world for ever. The predominantly women-lead movement in Iran manifested to the eyes of the Western world one year ago, during the protests ignited by the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman of Kurdish origin, beated to death by the so-called ´Morality Police´. The regime of the mullahs, who is oppressing Iran for over four decades and keps their population hostage, reacted in full strength, with the desperate scream of a wounded animal that is supposed to die anyway: young people were murdered, tortured and imprisoned. Western ´independent´ journalists trained to support the ´liberals´ aiming for a diluted still theocratic republic, were keen to (des)´inform´ that the ´Morality police´ was abolished and women are freely abandoning the hijab without any consequences, although informed people shared the pressure put on banks, taxi drivers or store owners to refuse serving uncovered women.

Despite the spin of media intoxication, not all journalists of Iranian origin fall for the lures of the mullah servants. Germany, for instance, do have a steady Iranian immigration, dating from before of the Revolution, mostly people committed to refuse theocratic tendencies, no matter how coherent their desire for ´reformation´. The last year protests brought to the forefront journalists, especially women, with good information from inside the country and a strong voice for offering an informed view on the events in Iran. Tehran-born Gilda Sahebi is one of them and I had the chance to listen to her during an event organised this year on the occasion of the Berlin Literature Festival dedicated to the ongoing mentality changes in Iran.

Her book, Unser Schwert ist Liebe - Our Sword is Love, in my own translation - (the title of a song by currently imprisoned rapper Toomaj Salehi) - is an account of the most important events of the last years, with a special focus on the Woman Life Freedom movement. The information cover not only the chain of events and the most important milestones, but also features - anonymously, for obvious security reasons - testimonies of people direclty involved in various segments of the movement, including testimonies of doctors, ethnic and sexual minorities. The book is more than a simple journalistic report, it may help tremendously historians and political scientists to understand the outcome of the movement and eventually to trace its evolution in the months and years to come. 

I hope someone will have the inspiration to translate this book into English or French or any other foreign languages. It adds important information to the nascent literature regarding the democratic movement in Iran, that hopefully soon I will present more on my blog.

Children of Nazis by Tania Crasnianski

After the terrific testimonies from The Real Odessa and the previous revelations about Nazi billionaires I was curious to find out more information about the personal and political genealogies of representatives of the German elites during WWII. 

I cannot remember any reliable information - article or books - that was actually published by German authors living in Germany on this topic. I will try to find out more about this topic and probably dedicate a full article on this topic later on. The topic however is not completely absent and books like Children of Nazis by Tania Crasnianski, following the biographies of eight offsprings of Third Reich elites is eye opening, as it displays not only attitudes but social structures allowing them to perpetuate, supporting children of Nazis to benefit of support structures and sometimes protection too. 

Children may not be taken responsible for the deeds of their parents, but the problem occurs when those are actually proudly perpetuating the criminal mindsets of their parents. This book also shows that the actual discussion about the Nazi past is far from being over in Germany.

The material used is impressive but limited to the eight examples studied in the book. Diplomatically, it avoids to hurry up to general conclusions but at least it may offer an useful mentality pattern.

Children of Nazis is a recommended read for anyone interested in elites in post-totalitarian regimes. It may offer as inspiration and guidance to follow up similar personal and professional pathways in other countries that had to cope with the perpetrators of a traumatic past.

Rating: 4 stars

About Cults

Understanding cults cannot go separately from trying to understand the societies and their fears that produced them. The phenomenon is far from new and there are many discussions regarding its  definition and various categorizations. However, when it comes to leaders, the main character threats are usually the same: mostly male, narcissist, manipulating their female followers and luring them into open relationships and sexual slavery.

The books Cults by Max Culter with Kevin Conley, based on a popular podcasts with the same name, offers to the reader a diverse overview of various such movements, mostly created in the 1970s in the North American realm, many inspired by liberation hippie movements. Mostly focused on events and biographic information about the leaders, the book can be used as a reference for anyone interested in the psychology of cults. 

Importantly, it takes into account also less known cults, such as the Narcosatanists, NXIVM or Heaven´s Gate, but definitely it does leave unaccounted many others. Clearly, there is a need of more research and classification work for offering an even better view over such phenomena. 

A recommended read to anthropologists, historians and psychologists. Cults are offering insights about the intimate wishes at the society level, although in extreme form. Understanding them may only make the social reading in general much easier and predictable.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The Story of The Real Odessa

 

The stories of how notorious war criminals like Mengele and Eichmann comfortably escaped Europe and enjoyed freedom - just for a limited amount of time though, in the case of Eichmann - are well known but the extent of the networks that helped those who commited serious crimes against humanity from all over the world during WWII survive is horrendous. It´s awe and horror that you experience while reading the well documented The Real Odessa. How Nazi Criminals Escaped Europe by Argentinian journalist Uki Goñi.

What it´s revealing in this case is the combination of factors that helped those criminals to escape: from the lack of knowledge among the Allies about who their prisoners were and thus, letting them escape, to the diplomatic support they got for getting fake passports after the war to the open support the Vatican offered to various fugitives. The Cold War and the rivalities between the US and the Soviet Union were at play as well, hence the help some former Nazis - of all colours from Germany to Eastern Europe - received. Argentina, their most important hub after the war - another one is the Middle East with countries like Syria or Egypt equally helping them to settle in exchange of their military and scientific knowledge - is still coping with the consequences of the decision of Juan Peron to support the settlement of war criminals: the young generation and intellectuals were tortured by the military junta whose methods were inspired by those applied in various concentration camps (The Middle East, nurtured by the same anti-democratic and antisemitic ideology missed more than once the chance of a real revival and the wellbeing of their citizens).

Goñi describes the most notorious such examples tracing the routes, sources of revenue and supporters. Thus, one can perfectly understand what social categories and political entities were part of the system, why they decided to be part of the network and what were the expected results. It is a very dark side of the Cold War that costed dearly democracy - as in the case of Afghanistan, but at a different extent. It may explain why nowadays, we keep talking about the ideologies of the righ and why in many places in this world - including Germany, the IIIrd Reich remains such popular: the perpetrators of the ideology were never discontinued, they kept spreading their mindset.

The pathways opened by Uki Goñi in his book and previous researches do however give a reason for hope: with so many open archives - Red Cross (a generous provider of fake passports for Nazi fugitives), the Vatican, various articles and public information - the role of the researchers is to continue revealing more and more information and exposing the culprits. Democracy is an everyday fight.

Rating: 5 stars