there seems to be a little social group that seeks fun, and mostly youth, and beauty, which is so elitist, that it is going extinct – the happy few. being in the possession of a german passport, it nowadays seems that it is impossible to be happy: money is scarce, and if you are not already in possession of it, the ways to get it are blocked by a five million workforce inexplicably out of it. this leads to very intense battles in the working environment, where people one considered friends are suddenly turning into enemies, lovers become haters, bosses tyrants and mothers goddesses – the only ones who always lend and understand. there are many examples of mothers in this country, who adopt their elderly, unemployed sons and daughters again, even when they haven´t been able to make a living. fathers tend to be less understanding (and i am not alluding to mine), since they usually have done their share of hard work and want to rest, knowing that their offspring is able to fend for themselves. but nobody in germany in the eighties prepared my generation for the catastrophic decline in public spending, for the vicissitudes and vices the globalisation has in its wake, for the shere impossibility of finding a job even with the best of qualifications. the teachings i personally got in school, for example, now seem to me like a bunch of lies, told by idiots – didn´t they see it coming, did the pedagogues not see that the social paradise which they were surfing would turn into a vortex of utter bestiality, a house for the poor? was the trauma of two lost wars and the extinction of a better part of our own intelligentia, not to speak of the concentration camps, so deep, that they were blind to the simple fact that germany, the wonderful wirtschaftswunderland, was already in deep trouble? I can even now hear the optimism which which generations of chancellors spilt tons of sand into the eyes of their voters: adenauer, who, i understand from his biography, knew for a fact that our pension system would collapse in no time, leaving his own grandchildren penniless, and without hope? was not kohl aware that the falling wall in berlin would ruin our economy? on 3. of october i congratulated a dear friend of mine from thuringia on his freedom. i was happy that we did not have to shoot at each other in the case of a cold war. i was happy to be in his intellectual presence. i delighted in our discussions – i fell in love with the thought that we were brothers, german brothers, who after a long time of separation could embrace each other, have a glass and shatter the hours together, laughing our heads of. even for the cost of 3 000000000 euro (and counting) or any sum – who knows the real costs of unification – it was worth it. and then it dawned on me what we were: the happy few.

a very influential friend of mine, one of the ladies you meet in castles on a sunny morning, told me on her first visit to germany, how friendly, polite and open the germans are. she was a little surprised, since here family had to flee nazism and many did not survive. she was in a state of doubt before she came: would she be endangered? would she see the ghosts of her people, the gespenst that roamed europe? i tried to do my best and was to my usual behaviour, charming and lovely as best as i could and we had a wonderful lunch, surrounded by some of the most illustrious journalists in the country, the noblest men of our highest nobility, the creme de la creme, and i was very proud to be in her presence – though i knew that not far away my people were desperately trying to make a living, unseen, unheard, behind castle walls and unknowing of the art treasures of happier times. i again was with the happy few, and suddenly i felt depressed. i felt like on a sinking ship, where everyone knew that we were going to die and stayed in the first class, smoking and chatting away. i felt like a nobleman in a revolution hours before the block, like a lover of elisabeth I. in disgrace and at her majesty´s pleasure – one nod of her head and mine would come off.

it is my belief that in the face of danger one should be arrogant to it, one must be proud and optimistic, one has the duty of setting an example – it is what makes us civil and refined. i have been threatened, robbed and burglarised several times lately, and i fell a pity for those criminals, because they seem to be little oliver twists or the hungarian children shortly after the war, whom countess karolyi

the countess karolyi
saw to be not bad, but desperate. they had taken everything from her only fourty years before, had driven her and her beloved husband, count michael, prime minister for one year of the first free republic, into exile, penniless, under threat of political murder – but she did not yield.
and if i see one lesson in my own greatgrandmothers memoirs, a prussian lady´s telling tale, the stories she reputedly told and are retold by my grandmother and mother, it is her grace´s grace in spite of all the brutes in the world. for men are not bad, they are weak.

i fear i turn into a patriot not only in old age but at the end of these lines – a fallen grandee, surrounded by desperate men who steal from each other. i am trembling with anger at the sight of our best paid managers being to corrupt to be true, of volkswagen-chairmen robbing their employees through spending sprees on whores and prostitutes, living of poor womens despair. i shudder at the thought of a crumbling society where the rich get richer and the poor are forgotten like in a victorian play. it is no play. it is the country where i was once a happy toddler, where i wanted to see my sons grow up and prosper, my friends happy, my family safe – and my country is robbed by the forces of the market, besieged by third world workers, corrupted by incompetent politicians and cunning businessmen. i play with the thought of going into exile, of taking my fortune out of it before it is gone completely into the pockets of madmen, of telephone companies and their unstable bonds, stupid and expensive banks and lethargic waiters. i think of a castle in switzerland, a refuge for my loved ones – the happy few.

Saturday, October 15, 2005, 17:40