Part of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Reunion show featured two massive marionettes, the Big Giant, a deep-sea diver, and his niece, the Little Giantess. The storyline of the performance has the two separated by a wall, thrown up by “land and sea monsters”. The Big Giant has just returned from a long and difficult – but successful – expedition to destroy the wall, and now the two are walking the streets of Berlin, seeking each other after many years apart.
I was writing today an academic paper, on the economic effects of the reunification of Germany, and how West Germany has never truly recovered from taking on the burden of economically developing the East. At first I thought the theorem was interesting, then I had to throw some cold water on my face, to realize that, it’s shameful putting a price on peace. And there you go celebrating the reunification, when a random academic is contemning it twenty years past.