Dinner with Wolfgang Welsch
Posted by | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 24-05-2005
DEM 0,00. That’s the amount of money that the unified German republic gave out to the Stasi’s victims, including those who spent years behind bars for trying to leave the country or for saying or doing things considered politically dangerous. Contrast that with the pensions enjoyed today by former “civil servants” of the East German Communist Dictatorship. Frau Honecker, I imagine, lives large in Chile, a real Pensionistin enjoying her last years.
These sad facts came up over dinner tonight in Vienna, where I was pleased to be sitting with Wolfgang Welsch and his friend. Mr. Welsch is spending a few days in Vienna and was nice to enough to e-mail beforehand so we could meet up. We had a very interesting conversation — how could you not, with a man who has had such experiences?
Keep your fingers crossed for him as he approaches publishers with a new book about the DDR. Better yet, if you have contacts in the publishing world, either in Germany or elsewhere, put in a good word for him. It’s particularly distressing for me that such an interesting, exciting and historically signficant first-hand account of the DDR as his “Ich war Staatsfeind Nr. 1″ is not in English. (If you can read German and you haven’t read it yet, then do so!)
Mr. Welsch has also just started out with his own website at http://www.wolfgang-welsch.com. You can reach him there at his “Contact” page. Go give him the good news that you know a publisher in the US who is interested in his book! (You do, don’t you?)
One of the highlights of the night for me was that he was wearing a stars-and-stripes ribbon pin on his shirt. Let me tell you, you don’t ever see that in Vienna! And the other highlight was getting him to sign my copy of his book. I shall proudly display it.
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