Аусвайс (Аusweis)

[matrixmann]

Ein netter Aspekt über die "Wiedervereinigung", den man wissen sollte: Abschlüsse, die nicht anerkannt werden, Geburtsurkunden, die nicht anerkannt werden - nur, weil dort ein Stempel mit Hammer, Zirkel und Ährenkranz drauf ist. Als hätten es sich die Leute aussuchen können, in welchem von beiden Staaten sie geboren werden.
Da weiß man schon gleich, dass man nur annektiert wurde.


A nice aspect about the German reunification that everyone should know: Graduations and degrees that don't get acknowledged, birth certificates that don't get acknowledged - only because there's a stamp depicturing hammer, dividers and garland of corn* on it. (*Note: It seems like there's no proper translation for "Hammer, Zirkel und Ährenkranz", so I took it word by word. As such it means the symbol in the flag of the GDR that distinguished the black, yellow and red German flag of that German state from the flag of West Germany, which can be found in the same colors, but blank in that middle space or with the black federal eagle instead.)
As if the people could have chosen which one of both states they were born in.
Such aspects let you know right away that haven't been reunified, but you have been annexed.

Comments

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

Aren't you so young that this wouldn't effect you though? You said you're the youngest on quirkytizzy's board.

I've seen some people in San Francisco that had certifications that were Canadian or something and were denied things. I was probably turned down to grad school because I only applied to San Francisco State around 2000 and there was the first tech boom in Silicon Valley, so a bunch of people with English major wanted to get Masters in the same field I did and they wanted to just be able to apply to tech companies as someone who had their masters and I wanted to be a professor. So, there were hundreds of applications and the ambitious people that wanted the most money had better applications than I did even though I knew more about literature than they did.

[matrixmann]

Doesn't matter if it affects me or not. It affects all people in the East which are older than 26 - and that's quite a bunch. And not only that, it also affects all people who married in GDR times, who got qualification certificates then, all people which had been born then and want to marry nowadays.
If you live in the East these days, you got the lesser amount of problems as they are somehow accepted there (only case where it's not I heard is when you want to get married these days, but your birth certificate is from GDR times, you need to get a certificate of ancestry then in the town where you were born in).
But, I even had teachers telling me that - if they graduated in the GDR, they can work in their jobs when they keep being in the East, Bavaria e. g. wouldn't accept them. They'd regard them as invalid.
So I have already heard enough stories of other people with lesser degrees where qualifications were not recognized in the West German system.

Nice reunification, isn't it?

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

Why 26 years old? Didn't the reunification happen in 1989.
I agree that it doesn't matter if it effects you or not. I just thought maybe you had a Ph.D. or something that was invalidated.

[matrixmann]

Because the GDR didn't end until 1990.
If you are born in 1989, even after the opening of the wall in Berlin, you still have one of the old birth certificates.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

That's amazing. Was the education though good in Eastern Germany? Or they consider that Western degree is better? I would say, in my opinion, American education system really sucks. Well, the Soviet education system was comprehensive, meaning everyone studied all the subjects for 10 years: algebra, physics, chemistry, biology, history , literature, geography, etc. Then you can get a specific degree in the field you are interested and you get deeper into a subject. I really think it was beneficial in the sense of making people smarter generally speaking not only in some narrow field.

But yes, you are right it does not sound like reunification. Although everywhere in the world they BS people how eastern Germans are so happy now.

[matrixmann]

I never heard anyone curse about the quality in education in the GDR if received it. The only people who maybe do this is that kind of people which hated every grain of sand in the GDR.
Rather it is that people curse about this system whenever they encounter what they do to you in it - in that way that the quality is lower, you learn things later (e. g. higher classes) than when you learned them in the GDR system.

That's why I put up such stories because I have encountered it already often enough, especially when October 3rd comes up. People internationally just totally speak the indoctrination of Western history writing and I as a listening and understanding entity could jump in their faces because that is so much bullshit. You know, and I don't even personally have do with that anymore, it's just only what I get to hear through other people and what I find out through research about topics. I don't identify myself as an East German, I'm just only a German. But even I need to take a side in those things because I find that are a lot things which aren't in the right position. It is factually not correct what gets spread.

Laugh, as I once was in a heated discussion about this topic, somebody asked me if I assisted in this - meaning, if I had been with the Stasi, so I talk like this end defend the Berlin Wall (I think it was about this). - Yeah, such things people get upon when they totally believe this Western history writing. There's nothing known about the real circumstances of all of this.
And not only internationally - what do you guess how much propaganda "the GDR was crap" you need to listen to in German media, the worse the Federal Republic is off now? Even lots and lots of Germans know nothing real about the history of all of this. They don't even get to hear in school, if the teacher doesn't think it's important.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

I kind of guessed it and actually knew from some statistics, that people in Eastern Germany now after comparing the socialism and the capitalism, would choose the first. At least more than the half, I even remember the data being about around 70%. But I wonder from your point of view, do you see and hear people wishing they were still in the socialist system?

I mean, I know the propaganda. Don't get me wrong, I know lots of dumb Russian who wouldn't and their argument is that now they have lots of different stuff available for consumers. But the thing is most of the stuff is low quality, toxic or not affordable. but they still are so blinded by the all that glitz and remember only perestroika when the economy was intentionally sabotaged and people had to stand in line to buy something.I don't know myself much of what it was like before 90s but I can judge how my parents lived and the remnants of educational system and healthcare before it was totally converted into crap.

[matrixmann]

I do hear these wishes. Saying, maybe it might be different from area to area; it's a matter of what you lost and what you gained.
If you go around asking in those areas where the factories were closed and sold for pennies and the promised jobs never came, in the 90s just one ABM after another, you gonna find for sure very much support for the GDR the system - the more the longer it has been ago that it had been closed down.

The stuff available for consume - that's just one of the big baits to distract the people and corrupt them to support the capitalism. If they got a lot - to make them think they've made it life.
It's pretty much a psychological question. That base capitalism works a lot on. Not easy to see for people which got no skills in it.
On another hand, it's also a question of world-relevant knowledge. Knowing how these consumer goods chains work, where things come from. That's something that's pretty hard to understand for a lot of people.
Literally, they're not only not aware of it, but they didn't even hear anywhere in their lifetime that the consumer goods the West offers only exist because of the exploitation of one half of the world. If you paid a fair price for that work, a lot of things would be indescribeably expensive. Even charity donations are not going to change anything on that because it's a whole thought-out infrastructure. A system - which has no core, which has no real ending and no real beginning. And if you want to help it's just more than only donating money. E. G. why do children in Africa work in mines and dig out metal ore instead of going to school? Because poverty and social conventions urge them to do this. If you are 8 or 9, you're considered able to earn something for the family in these areas. Close the mine and you take away a source of income for these families. It's not that easily done.

I don't know how you can explain this or what you wanna call this... It's like people are that emotionally responding, they only live in their emotions, they have no real rational mind additionally to their emotions. They're like... children you can distract pretty easily from one thing.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

It is really sad that they go away with exploiting people and people do not even resist because their home country is way worse. That is why they like immigrants and seasonal workers. They can pay them pennies and still it is more than they would make at home. Plus, they would not revolve because they cannot unite, they do not speak the language, don't know other workers. The only thing is that sometimes philistines have to join the army of poor because in this society the second you become vulnerable you are on your own.

Another aspect is we are social creatures and we have to interact and depend on one another so in some ways sooner or later everyone will have to be affected.

[matrixmann]

In that way I even agree with the fair-weather-leftists if they come to the recognition: Capitalism achieved it, through the splitting of family structures, through this working here, working there, driving a hundred kilometers to work per day (!), they made it to destroy a person's support network and by that the core of every organized resistance that could possibly rebel against them.
Additionally, by the minority trench wars that have been exported from America and that have been turned into the aggressive direction of imposing minority advantage rights, recently, they established a thinking in peoples' heads commonly to perceive their differences much more than what they all have in common, and by that they also get it to separate them as a large group, as citizens, and that they jump in each others' faces over literally nothing.
They fail to perceive in their minds they're all people living in one and the same area, that they go to the same factories to work and to the same shops to buy their daily needs.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

True but you can't turn the course of how the society develops. Historical dialectical materialism. Sooner or later we will have to move to a new social formation. I can't see anyone objecting against a fair world without people exploiting other people. How simple it is yet propaganda made them think it is utopia. Yeah, right.

By the way, I was writing in Russian about what you told me about work and education and GDR and it is so true. Amazing we thought the same thing. I was a stupid kid at the time and they showed us all these Hollywood movies on tv where everyone is so cool and they have houses with five bedrooms, three bathrooms with green lawns and cars and clothes. But forgot to mention mortgages, and totally unaffordable healthcare for profit, and unemployment, and homeless people. Lots of people I know consider themselves fooled.

[matrixmann]

No, one can't. But what you can do is telling it people straight in their faces how things are, so they maybe start to do something differently because they didn't realize before.
You know, often enough I encounter I think higher than most people do, they simply don't recognize. And even those who recognize, you can open up possibilities to them how they can do something differently than before. Sometimes they also recognize something, but their fail to find how they can break the cycle of habit.

Gosh, the same it was with people here (allegedly). Well, those which could watch Western TV secretly sometimes maybe were split over it, but those who couldn't also thought the grass is greener on the other side, judging by the tales others told you and what you could see when they imported stuff from the West.
When the own state TV did agitation against it, it always was considered as lies and state propaganda.
And when they realized what was the truth with the West, it was too late.

These days the media war exists again, but now it could end to the advantage to the Eastern media (RT, Sputniknews etc.) because Western media and propaganda acts that aggressively and obviously, it's not an art or skill to look right through it. It's recognizeable for way more people.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Well, Russia is a capitalist country, Putin serves capitalists interests. Maybe different group of capitalist but capitalists nonetheless so Russian media is no better than Western. Putin does not want socialism he uses Soviet rhetoric to keep popular. Like they suggest to have subotnik (it is when you work on Saturday for free to help clean something, like community work). The problem is in soviet times everything was a property of people and nobody gained any profit/ you basically work for yourself for the whole society. Now when everything is private somebody will gain profit and pocket it. But people feel nostalgia and do it to remember good old days.

[matrixmann]

Give you a different perspective: Putin may know, he can't step too far against the interests of the Russian capitalists or otherwise he's going to get a bullet in his head or he's going to face a coup - which the West would dearly like to assist in.
On another hand, he must have also recognized: You can only beat capitalists with capitalists. Old-school communists are too nice, they think too humane, while their opponents totally don't do this. You need to be like a shark in order to kill a shark. And still that point in time has not come that he could radically get rid of them. He's still in need of them.
The capitalists in the West are on the threshold of falling down, but only on the threshold - if the right input emerges to serve their interests they're on the upper part of the wave to surf again and all had been in vain for the next half century. And you can image which position Russia is going to be placed in in this game again...

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Damn, you are right about humane communists. But hopefully objective reality will force capitalists out of game all together. Or possibly they will ruin everything before it happens.

[matrixmann]

Let's say, if you're rid of the strength of the Western capitalistic block, the center where it started, you have your chance of letting society get changed again if people have enough of it because there's no-one to foster the idea anymore. The East has no centuries-long tradition of this inside their society, it's easiert to abandon, they only took it over as the West always said "until you don't tick like we do, we don't recognize anything of what you have achieved".

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

They quickly adapt and Russian capitalists are no better than western. Sometimes worse. Very cynical and lavish. If you choose between western and eastern it is like choosing between two candidates in election. No use. Change the whole system. Sooner or later it won't be able to exist.

[matrixmann]

Well, you then can put on a different order again and put them on the leash. And by that I don't mean continuing capitalism, I mean you show them what's their position in society that they can still move in and much more there's not to achieve anymore.
Let's say, like with state deteriorating powers. You can only harm them until a certain point because until that point they behave legally like every other citizen. But you can signalize from the position of the state "move further than this and try to make politics and you're off to jail!".
If they fear it enough to be punished heavily - if that's what it takes or how the thing can be get to work, then be it so.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

But they will control the politics and courts. They will establish rules not us. How is it possible to dictate the capitalists when they have a dictatorship? Meaning they have money and pay the government to run everything and the government and all its institutions will look after their interests.

[matrixmann]

You don't understand...
I don't know I'm a fan of hard power, but I would consider it a matter of fact hard power of the state against the entities which also seek to get influence in your state, it will be a measure that keeps them at bay. Keeps them in a low position that they can't move much.
But, this can't be done by everybody as the highest statesman.
You'll need somebody who's as liked among the normal people, so that they, should the capitalists smell the rat and try to prevent it through a coup or assassination, come to the guarded communities and kill the bourgeoisie.
Say, the establishment wants to get rid of the statesman in the highest command which wants to touch their property, but it won't use them anything as when he's dead they unleash a mass mob onto themselves that they will never survive. That for, they need to let this highest statesman do what he wants to do and the only thing except for adaption they may be able to do is flee, getting abroad.

When America's influence and power is gone, they have a place to flee, but no real power to strengthen them to initiate a coup from abroad. - Which had been the case always before and wasn't taken into account.

Putin had that kind abilities to fit into that position; question only is if he will be wanting to or if not his age is going to get in between.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Ok, maybe you are right. I personally do not support Putin. I am truly against the whole class of capitalist. But we do not to agree on everything, right? Most important we agree on the main issues.
You know people are reposting your story, so your message about education, jobs, GDR will be spread. So thank you. I hope you didn't mind a generic picture of Berlin in my post?

And I will add you to my friends list, if you don't mind?

[matrixmann]

Er - being rich doesn't nessecarily make you be a capitalist. I know a lot of people it makes be, but it is not always the case.
Say, if I released a book and sold a million copies, it would also hand a bigger amount of money over to me. But, only from that, I wouldn't get upon the idea to buy golden water faucets.
Maybe I'd afford me some practical "luxury" which I couldn't do now, but I'd still be measuring prices in the shop like I'm used to. "3 Euros for that tiny bit? No, you're kidding. I'm not gonna pay this..."
It would simply be a practical help to me in life, otherwise - what in the world should I buy for all that money? It's all too much useless stuff that makes only a burden to you.

I'm getting the notifications when somebody mentions my username in a post, so I have track of this. (Makes you want to blush a little bit as sometimes it doesn't appear to me like I do much of significance.)

You can add me if you want, if you think it suits. Am I obligated to add back? (Only ask because some people only do this in mututal manner.)

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

You know I agree it doesn't make you a capitalist if you are rich. The capitalist is the one who pockets the surplus value, meaning exploiting people by buying their labour and underpaying. Here I totally agree with you.

No you should be proud of yourself. You can make a difference.

Ok, thanks I will add you to a friends list because this way I will be notified when you have new posts. And sure I would appreciate if you added mine.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

I have to mention though, that in discussions on your post that I translated I did not say anything about your position on Putin or anything, but I said that I disagree a little bit with you on this issue.

But people there are wondering if the next revolution will happen in Germany?

[matrixmann]

Revolution in Germany?

Well - how did my history teacher once put it very apt? "If revolution was a ticket for a train ride, the Germans would be the first to buy one."
Really, it is so.
Revolution happens last over here. Sad as it is.

I've also already written a few texts that have to do with the base of that, why that is so, a while ago, but I think most or all of them were done in German. And you know - in German, nobody listens to me and I'm supposedly a nazi...

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

I wish I knew German. May be I should start learning. Really? People have that stereotype that if you are German you are a nazi? Maybe stupid ones.

PS you history teacher is wise.

[matrixmann]

No, I hear that accusation mostly from Germans - directly or between the lines.
Just because I don't talk typical social democrat left.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Well what social democrat left turned into is not exactly what it was intended to be.

[matrixmann]

And because I know it doesn't make you be far-right if you're not unconditionally supportive of minority rights and refugees, because of that I don't take on that pair of boots.