The Bright Side of the Doom is now called Once Upon a Time in Germany, a prequel to 1984, The 18-Year-Old Who Wrote a Note and Disappeared. It is about the boy’s father, whose approach to life is completely different from his son’s.

Born at the beginning of the Third Reich and educated during the Second World War, he completes his studies in the first workers’ and farmers’ state by learning, working and performing hard. 👉 https://j4b.me/doom

Having been married three times and divorced twice, and being the father of four children, he dedicates himself to pursuing a career and earning a decent living–refusing to allow himself to be corrupted by adverse circumstances. 👉 https://j4b.me/doom

In this book, he recounts with clarity and precise language how an apparently ordinary life works beyond the Wall. Until the day his son returns from the future. 👉 https://j4b.me/doom

The story is based on events that the author himself experienced. In 2024, he opens a box full of notes, letters and documents from his past. He uses them to reconstruct a diary, which he types into his blog in real time. 👉 https://j4b.me/1984

+++ Born in the wrong place at the wrong time +++ Pursuing a forbidden goal at 18 +++ Endured in court what is unbearable +++ Eating shit behind bars +++ Everything done right in the end

This diary tells the story of how a young adult surpasses himself and simply does his own thing against all odds. Now available in bookshops. 👉 https://j4b.me/1984

1984. Apple introduces the Macintosh, the Olympic Games are held in Sarajevo and Los Angeles, Richard Weizsäcker becomes German president, France wins the European Soccer Championship, seat belts become mandatory, and Tetris takes the world by storm.

Of course, I know nothing about this on Saturday, February 11, 1984, because I've been in jail for 36 days.

No newspapers. No television. No radio. Two letters. A book. And a visit from the prosecutor – that's all the information I have from the outside world.

What I also don't know at that time, 40 years ago, is that less than two years later, I will be sitting at an Apple Macintosh at the Bénédict Language and Business School in Wuppertal, writing my first computer programs.

But until then, a lot of poison will flow from the Saale into the Elbe.

There are still 30 days to go until my trial on March 12. Another eight until the verdict becomes final on March 20.

Plus 51 days before I am transported as a prisoner to Magdeburg and from there to Halle on the banks of the river Saale.

I will have to endure 81 days and nights in the Halle youth detention center, known in prison slang as “Frohe Zukunft” (Happy Future).

There, my pretrial detention in Greifswald will remind me of a closed youth hostel for adults with slightly stricter rules—that's how drastically the situation has changed.

Shortly before things really get dicey, I am transported to Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz), where I am treated with kid gloves by the Stasi for 14 days.

On August 15, I see lawyer Vogel for the first and only time at close range. Then the miracle happens.

Today I would have been released from the "Frohe Zukunft" (Happy Future, the name of the district in Halle where the youth prison is located) back to the East.

Fortunately, my escape plan worked.

I was spared 52 precious days. These are seven weeks and three days in which my metamorphosis from “Zoni” to “Bundi” began.

“Bundis” is what we teenagers in the East called the people in the West. Teenagers in the West referred to us as “Zonis” when they talked about us behind closed doors.

On August 15, 1984, two buses full of prisoners landed at the emergency reception center in Gießen in Hesse. There we received plenty of food, good pocket money, aphrodisiac toiletries and cozy accommodation.

The older ones, who had been in the army or had suspicious occupations, had to answer questions by the BND. We young people were quickly waved through after a few formalities.

A few days later, Harald and I took the Intercity train to another refugee camp in Unna-Massen in North Rhine-Westphalia. From a phone booth, I called Aunt Erika in Wuppertal for the first time.

She was pleasantly surprised and unusually affectionate. “Yes, come over – then we'll see.” I'm curious to see what comes of it.

In Wuppertal-Elberfeld, I got off a slow train and onto the suspension railway to Wuppertal-Barmen. Everything looks exactly like the postcards that are stuck in Grandma Frieda's kitchen cupboard (see Tuesday, January 17).

I registered with the authorities, got a provisional ID and a comfortable place to stay in a well-kept residential home on Bramdelle. Then I went to the employment office.

Uncle Werner and my cousin Karin came to visit in an Audi 100. It looked exactly like the spaceship I hitchhiked in from Michendorf to Potsdam in the spring of 1983 (see Thursday, January 12).

We got to know each other and liked each other. At the nearest supermarket, Uncle Werner filled the trunk with food.

Over the weekend, I was invited to lunch at Kirbergweg, where they live in a small attic apartment.

Less than two weeks later, we organized a job on a farm just outside of Wuppertal through a personal contact at the fire station.

For 600 marks a month, free board and lodging, I could help with the harvest, which of course I did immediately.

However, this luck did not last long. The primitive accommodation in a converted shed under the roof was borderline.

Before breakfast, lunch and dinner, the old farmer prayed earnestly with his aged parents. Because I didn't, they would look at me grimly.

After the harvest, it was all about the cattle. Shoveling manure all day, milking cows and occasionally disposing of a dead calf. From five in the morning until late at night.

As soon as the farmer drove his tractor onto the fields and I was left to do all the dirty work alone, his old man would follow me around, threatening his crutch stick whenever something didn't suit him.

When the farmer caught me red-handed during one of my very rare breaks, he promptly said, “You think the roast pigeons would fly into your mouth?”

And so began the first end of the story of the 18-Year-Old set out to force his luck. That's it? For this shit I paid with jail!

In my desperation, I called Uncle Werner. He understood immediately. Without even a hint of reproach, he and his best buddy came to my aid that very same night.

We threw my belongings out of the attic window directly into the trunk of his spaceship and made off without saying a word.

The farmer looked after us in disbelief. He may have made the calculation without the servant. My uncle waved at him friendly. At the same time, he gave me an unmistakable wink, making it clear whose side he was on.

Man, that feels good. In the Zone, I would have been arrested for that and imprisoned again as a repeat offender under Article 249 (see Sunday, June 10).

Ifs, buts, and maybes – that zone is now way out there, across the border in the far east. To be continued.

The story is based on events that the author himself experienced. In 2024, he opens a box full of notes, letters, and documents from his past. He uses them to reconstruct a diary, which he types into his blog in real time.

+++ Born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

+++ Pursued a forbidden goal at 18.

+++ Endured the unbearable in court.

+++ Ate s*** behind bars.

+++ Did everything right in the end.

This diary tells the story of how a young adult surpasses himself and simply does his own thing against all odds.

Emotionally, I can well understand reviews that give the German translation of the English original by less than 3 stars. Rationally, I see it differently.

Although and precisely because I myself “emigrated” from this very country under adverse circumstances and have no sympathy whatsoever for Ostalgic glorification, unfortunate translations from English into German are no reason for me to devalue this book more harshly than it deserves.

For most people from the Western world with at best a rudimentary knowledge of the East, the English original should be a worthwhile summary of how things actually worked in this strange country.

Yes, there are misleading sentences, nuances of taste and inadequate examples that can lead to false conclusions.

But no, just because the author was a child at the fall of the Wall and her parents were more devoted to the imploding state than others, she shouldn’t have the right to write a bestseller about it that is worth discussing?

That’s as absurd as reducing the entire state apparatus to a few evil old white men in hats and the rest of the republic to silent heroes in constant opposition.

The whole system was much more complicated than can be described 100 percent politically correctly in a digestible reading.

If you want to know more, you have to dig deeper and read more books, of which there are unfortunately too few in the English-speaking world that would be worth translating into German.

While I would give the English original five stars, I can unfortunately only give the German translation four.

In too many passages, it takes too little account of the small but subtle differences in the perception of crude facts from the perspective of tens of thousands of East German dissidents who were disillusioned, intimidated, threatened, asocialized, persecuted, harassed, decomposed, imprisoned, ransomed or driven to suicide by the political system.

This is a lot of hard-to-digest material for at least an extended edition or a second volume in both English and German, which I would love to read just as much as the first, which cries out for a sequel.

Born at the beginning of the Third Reich and educated during the Second World War, he completes his studies in the first workers’ and farmers’ state by learning, working and performing hard.

Having been married three times and divorced twice, and being the father of four children, he dedicates himself to pursuing a career and earning a decent living–refusing to allow himself to be corrupted by adverse circumstances.

In this book, he recounts with clarity and precise language how an apparently ordinary life works beyond the Wall. Until the day his son returns from the future.

The Bright Side of the Doom is now available worldwide in bookstores as a hardcover, paperback, and e-book‼️ You can order it directly via this short link: https://j4b.me/doom