An unexpected letter to Erich Honecker: The story of a captain who asks himself « Did I overthrown Erich Honecker? »

« Did I overthrow Erich Honecker? », Lukas Braak, formerly absolutely lines-up captain, asks himself on a long journey in the GDR when the SED leader returned on October 13, 1989 after he wrote a personal letter for a conversation two days beforehand.

In this perhaps not so serious question, Lukas Braak’s own critical argument ultimately culminates, whose idealistic dreams at the time, however, were largely evaporated under the real -existing socialism due to their own painful experiences.

The highly qualified sailor and popular training officer was able to enjoy a privileged lifestyle and thus also a greater freedom for years – perhaps with a reason for his somewhat blue -eyed view of the regime – but then falls in favor because of a limited « west contacts ». Since the now “state enemy” does not have the necessary “requirements” in the opinion of the SED bon aus and is also supposed to represent a “endangerment of the youngsters”, he loses his job without notice at the age of 46 and is no longer allowed to publish in a local newspaper.

The Stasi creates a file about him and it is constantly monitored. The trigger for this paranoid witch hunt is a visit to his mother, who had left him back with his father at the time of the Second World War to emigrate to the USA. Then there was one in the eyes of the Stasi suspects, as short and ultimately completely irrelevant conversation of his wife Inge, a glowing socialist, with a West German fellow traveler. Accordingly, nothing really happened, even if state security evaluates it differently. In Lukas Braak and his family, the sentence « Dictatorships suffer from paranoia », which he snapped somewhere, is uninterruptory!

« Captain on a large ride ends up in the cowshed »

Unfortunately, the protagonist and his wife recognize too late that they were too good -faith, trusting, honest and naive all years. The formerly well -respected folk comment has to reorient himself professionally, and from then on he works as an unqualified agricultural worker in a state -owned LPG, where he milking cows and mucosing stables. However, his wife Inge, who has also become unemployed, breaks down completely on the situation. At her tragic end, Lukas Braak stated in horror: « The party murdered my wife! »

However, his uncomfortable resilience and certainly also a certain naivety do not make him complete the hope, and in the steadfast-hopeful belief in a possible reform of the real socialism, he then writes the letter mentioned above to Erich Honecker …

The story « Doswidanja, Comrade » is not a fictional story, and the (originally cited) letter to Honecker was actually written. A former classmate Margret Steckels, later captain on a long journey and training officer, had given the Batty-Weber-Laureatin (born in Mecklenburg in 1934 and emigrated from the GDR in 1955). In the form of an inner monologue, the author reviews the tragic history of the protagonist in her unmistakable, highly concentrated-laconic and expressive precision and metaphoric, fluently written language on 92 pages. Margret Steckel combines Lukas Braak’s bitter personal fate in an implicitly exemplary way with a universal decoration of political injustice regimes.

A certainly highly topical topic, especially due to the worrying, anti -democratic developments worldwide, in which freedom, humanity, truthfulness and reason are often left behind … a book worth reading!