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We Were the New Era

November 23, 2018/in Translation, Translation, Winter-Spring 2019 / by Andreas Baum, translated by Catherine Venner

[translated fiction]

Right at the beginning, at that very first meeting in the park, there were twelve of us, half of which I didn’t even know.

There, upon that gentle slope behind the house, you could hear the fountains splashing and the trams squealing down Kastanienallee. It was the end of June and rather hot. I’d already decided I was going to keep a low profile. If it had been up to me, we would have semi-legally occupied a couple of flats dotted around several blocks in Prenzlauer Berg in the former Soviet sector. I already had the key to one of them: the flat next door to Frank Wohlgemut, who everyone just called “Pebbles” because he came from a coastal town in East Germany. He’d been in two of my courses since the start of the semester. The Wall had fallen, Pebbles was able to study in the West and we were on the verge of becoming friends. One day, he brought me the key. His neighbours had fled via Hungary in mid ’89, less than nine months ago. “You just put your name on the door and transfer three months rent, three times 46 marks. Then you go to the housing authority with the bank receipt and they’ll give you the lease.” I’d already been out drinking with Pebbles in his neighbourhood a couple of nights and he’d shown me the best bars, not just the ones on Kollwitzplatz that everyone knew, but also the ones beyond Dimtroffstraße that the Wessis never found.

The flat that Pebbles had sorted for me was huge; two large rooms separated by the kitchen with the loo on the lower landing. And anyway, the remaining neighbours would be glad if someone moved in. Just as I was telling the others in the park about this flat with the high ceilings and describing the sound the floorboards made when you trod on them, Rachel butted in and said, “Well, I was thinking of something a bit different. Just two rooms separated by the kitchen. You couldn’t even put up a long table.”

Rachel always cut a fine figure when she spoke at meetings and I reckon that all the boys secretly fancied her. Anyway, nobody contradicted her. And strangely enough, the women generally agreed on certain points. My suggestion of several inconspicuous quasi-legal flats in Pebbles’s artists’ district was off the table immediately. Kerstin grumbled a bit but remained seated.

Then a guy wearing large, garish glasses got up and told us of a complete house in Friedrichshain, just behind Mainzer Straße where nine houses had been occupied for months. There was so much space for making music: in the basement, in the attic or in the yard. For years, he had been forced to stagger from sub-let to sub-sub-let in West-Berlin and until now he’d only ever been able to dream of practice space for his band, a band that admittedly was yet to be formed. However, we would have to be quick; the building was in a good location, not too far from Frankfurter Tor. The whole rear house was empty with space for ten to twenty people, maybe even more.

I thought that sounded good, even if I wasn’t exactly sure where it was. But then Nele got up, “No way! Everyone will think we’re in league with the Mainzer Straße lot. And we need to get along with our neighbours, right from the beginning.”

Kerstin agreed with her. “We just need to be as far away as possible from Mainzer Straße.” And so, that was also no longer an option.

“We’ll just have to see what we can find around here,” Rachel was now saying, “From Rosenthaler Platz it’s just a fifteen-minute underground ride to Kreuzberg 36.”

The two autonomists from Kreuzberg thought that was way too far and that we might as well just move to Wedding. They muttered something about the “arse end of nowhere” and left without saying goodbye. The wannabe musician with the garish glasses ran after them, and the group would have broken up if Rachel hadn’t spoken up again. “As it happens, we saw a house that would actually be quite good for us. Pretty close to here, and there’s really enough space for everyone.”

It was only later that I understood later how big our house actually was. At first, we only wanted one of the rear houses. To enter, we passed through two hallways. On the right-hand side of the first courtyard there was an abandoned cinema. A remnant from when people still went out on Rosenthaler Platz, but now empty, vacant and dismal.

“People still live in the front house,” said Nele as we crept in, and that still doesn’t appear the least bit strange to me. The second house was dark and empty while the second courtyard revealed a shed where carriages had once been kept and whose external walls were still adorned with iron rings used to tether cows and horses.

It was a strange feeling going up the stairs for the first time. Wenzel had brought a box of tools with him so he drilled out the lock and inserted a new cylinder before we even looked to see if the rooms were suitable. Then we wandered wide-eyed through the rooms, which looked as if their occupants has only popped out. The gas ovens in the kitchen still had bits of food burnt on them and towels had been placed in front of draughty windows. The doors bore the names of people who were now living elsewhere but were maybe still here in their old homes in their dreams. The floorboards were painted a dark blood red and earth-coloured paper covered the walls. We could feel where its edges had been pasted over each other and ancient newspapers with out-dated advertisements had been used as underlay. Wenzel went through the rooms holding a voltage tester to the exposed cables and the plugs beside the doors. It flashed briefly, just for a second, and then extinguished again. “That’s residual current. Leakage current,” he said knowledgeably and headed into the next room.

Now, it was important that no one else got in ahead of us. So the same afternoon, we submitted an official letter to the porter of Berlin’s municipal authority and got a stamp to confirm its receipt.

“…we hereby inform you that we, the Collective for Renewal, have actively taken the rear house building of No. 5 Badstübnerstraße into our care. We have begun establishing a centre for communication and culture, and have begun remedying the worst damage using our own means…Respectfully yours.”

Johnny, who handled our correspondence from the very first day, wanted to sign off with, with socialist greetings. However, Kerstin, the only one of us from East Germany and who’d only come to West Berlin with her mother in the early eighties, thought it was pure nonsense that only a clueless West German could think up. “The pretentious language gives you guys away as Wessis straight away,” she said and added that in East Germany only the authorities sent socialist greetings and then only in printed letters, and since the Wall had come down, they no longer sent any such greetings at all.

Someone had to sign it with their real name and give an address in East Germany. As none of us were able to, Johnny did it. His grandparents had a house in Buckow, Brandenburg. Although his part of the family were no longer on speaking terms with the branch who’d defected in the sixties and Johnny had never seen the house before, not even a photo, the surname at least could be checked: Johannes Elder, Buckow/Mark.

It didn’t worry us, not even for a second, that on paper our house belonged to someone else. Not just our house, but the whole of East Germany, lay before us as if someone had just discarded it. Ownerless belongings were strewn everywhere. At the border crossing on Chausseestraße, a full building had been abandoned and in the following weeks, we and the other squatters plundered the sinks, the windows, the water pipes, the plugs, the door handles and even the doors, all under the noses of the border guards who waved the cars through on Chauseestraße. Checks were only carried out for the sake of appearance and the guards pretended they didn’t see us. There was something defiant in their disregard: the cold anger that they were no longer feared and that all efforts to put up this border and to keep it closed amounted to nothing. The old rules were obsolete and the new ones were not yet in force.

On the first night, we all slept in sleeping bags on our camping mats in flat at the top of the house on the fourth floor. When it eventually got dark, we lit candles, drew in even closer together and told stories of our many travels. Rachel had been to Portugal where she had eaten cod in oily tomato sauce every day, Kerstin had been in the South of France during the grape harvest and Wenzel had even been to Indonesia. In El Salvador I had watched rats balance over me on wooden beams and Nele had found meteorites on a long desert walk through Algeria. After darkness fell, we could see the stars between the neighbouring houses, and even though we had secretly already chosen our rooms, on this first night we all stayed together in one room. Some of us had brought camping stoves with us. We couldn’t have guessed that the ovens in the kitchens would work and all you had to do was to turn on the gas tap. We made powdered soup from a packet, softened white bread in it and ate it all from tinware and enamel plates, washing it down with some East German beer out of green bottles, which Wenzel had brought with him.

We spoke in hushed voices, watched the bats flying round the corners of the yard at breakneck speed and stayed up until four in the morning, when the trams could be heard creaking over Rosenthaler Platz, always stalling in the same spot and then continuing with a loud whirr. As we were eventually dropping off to sleep, Rachel lay noticeably close to me and ensured that there was enough distance to Kerstin’s sleeping bag that she’d positioned across the door to the staircase.

 

 

Wir waren die neue Zeit

Ganz am Anfang, beim ersten Treffen im Park, waren wir zwölf, und ich kannte nicht mal die Hälfte der Leute.
Da war der sanfte Hügel hinterm Haus, die Wasserspiele rauschten, auf der Kastanienallee quietschten die Straßenbahnen, es war Ende Juni und ziemlich heiß. Ich war ganz entschieden dafür, unauffällig zu bleiben. Wenn es nach mir gegangen wäre, hätten wir im Prenzlauer Berg ein paar Schwarzwohnungen besetzt, verteilt auf mehrere Häuser. Zu einer hatte ich den Schlüssel, die Nachbarwohnung von Frank Wohlgemut, den alle nur Küste nannten, weil er aus Rostock war, und der seit dem Semesteranfang in zweien meiner Kurse saß. Die Mauer war weg, Küste konnte im Westen studieren, und wir waren gerade dabei, Freunde zu werden. Eines Tages hatte er mir den Schlüssel mitgebracht, seine Nachbarn waren Mitte 89 über Ungarn raus, keine neun Monate war das her. «Du klebst deinen Namen an die Tür und überweist drei Monatsmieten, drei mal 46 Mark. Mit dem Beleg gehst du zum Amt, die geben dir den Vertrag.» Ich hatte ein paar Abende mit Küste in seinem Viertel gesoffen, und er hatte mir die wichtigen Kneipen gezeigt, nicht nur die eine am Kollwitzplatz, die alle kannten, sondern auch die in den Straßen jenseits der Dimitroff, die die Wessis niemals fanden.
Die Wohnung, die Küste mir klargemacht hatte, war riesig. Zwei große Zimmer, die Küche dazwischen, das Klo eine halbe Treppe tiefer, und die übrig gebliebenen Nachbarn waren froh, wenn einer reinging. Gerade als ich dabei war, den anderen im Park den Stuck unter den hohen Decken zu beschreiben und das Geräusch, das entstand, wenn man auf den Dielen hin und her lief, fiel Rachel mir ins Wort und sagte: «Also das habe ich mir anders vorgestellt. Zwei Zimmer nur, und die Küche dazwischen, da kann man ja nicht mal einen langen Tisch aufstellen.»
Rachel machte eine ziemlich gute Figur, wenn sie vor Versammlungen sprach, und ich vermute, dass die Jungs alle heimlich in sie verknallt waren, es hat ihr jedenfalls keiner widersprochen. Und die Frauen schienen sich über bestimmte Punkte rätselhaft einig zu sein. Mein Vorschlag mit den vielen unauffälligen Schwarzwohnungen im Künstlerkiez hatte sich sofort erledigt. Kerstin maulte noch ein bisschen rum, blieb aber sitzen.
Dann stand ein Typ mit großer bunter Brille auf und erzählte von einem ganzen Haus im Friedrichshain, gleich hinter der Mainzer Straße, in der seit Monaten neun Häuser besetzt waren, und wie viel Platz dort sei, um Musik zu machen, in den Kellern, auf dem Dachboden oder im Hof. Seit Jahren sei er gezwungen, in Westberlin von Untermietvertrag zu Unter-Untermietvertrag zu hopsen, und von einem Proberaum für seine Band könne er bisher nur träumen, für eine Band, die freilich noch zu gründen sei; und wir müssten schnell sein, das Haus sei gut gelegen, nicht allzu weit entfernt vom Frankfurter Tor. Das ganze Hinterhaus sei frei, Platz für zehn bis zwanzig Leute, vielleicht mehr.
Für mich klang das gut, auch wenn ich nicht wusste, wo genau das sein sollte, dann aber stand Nele auf und sagte: «Auf keinen Fall. Da geraten wir gleich in Verdacht, mit den Leuten aus der Mainzer Straße unter einer Decke zu stecken. Und wir sollten uns von Anfang an mit den Nachbarn gutstellen.»
Kerstin stimmte ihr zu. «Bloß möglichst weit weg von der Mainzer Straße.» Und damit war auch das keine Option mehr.
«Wir müssen hier in der Gegend suchen», sagte nun Rachel, «vom U-Bahnhof Rosenthaler Platz aus sind wir in fünfzehn Minuten in 36.»
Zwei Autonome vom Heinrichplatz fanden das entschieden zu weit, moserten irgendwas von «Arsch der Welt» und dass man dann ja gleich in den Wedding ziehen könne, und gingen, ohne sich zu verabschieden. Der Musiker mit der bunten Brille lief ihnen hinterher, und die Versammlung hätte sich fast aufgelöst, als Rachel noch einmal laut wurde. «Wir haben ganz zufällig ein Haus gesehen, das gar nicht so schlecht wäre für uns», rief sie. «Ziemlich nah von hier, und es gibt wirklich Platz für alle.»
Wie groß unser Haus wirklich war, habe ich erst viel später verstanden. Zuerst ging es ja nur um eins der Hinterhäuser. Wir mussten durch zwei Toreinfahrten laufen. Im ersten Hof auf der rechten Seite war ein verlassenes Kino aus der Zeit, als man am Rosenthaler Platz noch ausging, jetzt leer und hohl und düster.

«Das Vorderhaus ist noch bewohnt», sagte Nele, als wir uns reinschlichen, und mir ist das noch nicht im Geringsten komisch vorgekommen, das Querhaus dunkel und leer, im zweiten Hof die Remise, in der früher die Fuhrwerke abgestellt wurden, mit Eisenringen an den Außenwänden, um Kühe und Pferde anzubinden.
Es war ein komisches Gefühl, zum ersten Mal die Treppe raufzugehen. Wenzel hatte den Werkzeugkasten mitgebracht und bohrte das Schloss auf, er setzte gleich einen neuen Zylinder ein, bevor wir überhaupt schauten, ob die Zimmer zu gebrauchen waren. Dann liefen wir staunend durch die Räume, die aussahen, als seien sie gerade erst verlassen worden. Da waren angebrannte Ränder an den Gasherden in den Küchen, und zugige Fenster, vor die Frottéhandtücher gelegt worden waren. An den Türen standen die Namen von Menschen, die jetzt an anderen Orten wohnten und die in ihren Träumen vielleicht noch hier waren, in ihrem alten Zuhause. Auf den Dielen der stierblutrote Lack, erdfarbene Tapeten an den Wänden, wir konnten fühlen, wo die Kanten übereinandergeklebt worden waren, unter der untersten Schicht Zeitungspapier mit Anzeigen in Fraktur. Wenzel lief durch die Räume und hielt einen Phasenprüfer an die offenen Leitungen und in die Steckdosen neben den Türen, der kurz, für eine Sekunde nur, aufflackerte und dann wieder erlosch. «Das sind Restströme», sagte er fachkundig, «Kriechströme», und ging in den nächsten Raum.
Jetzt war es wichtig, dass uns keiner mehr zuvorkam. Deshalb gaben wir noch am selben Nachmittag die offizielle Inobhutnahme, so hieß das, beim Pförtner des Magistrats von Berlin ab und ließen uns den Empfang per Stempel bestätigen.
… teilen wir Ihnen mit, dass wir, das Kollektiv zur Erneuerung, die Gebäude im Hinterhaus der Badstübnerstraße 5 aktiv in Obhut genommen haben. Wir haben begonnen, ein Kommunikations- und Kulturzentrum aufzubauen und die ersten groben Schäden mit Eigenmitteln zu beseitigen … Hochachtungsvoll!
Johnny, der vom ersten Tag an die Schreibarbeiten übernahm, wollte erst mit sozialistischem Gruß unterzeichnen, Kerstin aber, die als Einzige aus der DDR kam und erst seit den frühen Achtzigern mit ihrer Mutter in Westberlin lebte, hielt das für blanken Unsinn und für eine Idee, auf die nur ahnungslose Wessis kommen konnten. «Dass ihr aus dem Westen seid, das merkt man sofort an der gekünstelten Sprache», sagte sie. Und in der DDR hätten nur die Behörden den sozialistischen Gruß verwendet, und auch nur in Vordrucken, und seit der Wende gar nicht mehr.
Eine Person musste unterzeichnen, mit Klarnamen und Adresse in der DDR. Weil das keiner von uns konnte, tat es Johnny, dessen Großeltern noch ein Haus in Buckow hatten. Sie waren zwar tief zerstritten und sprachen nicht mehr mit dem Teil der Familie, der in den Sechzigern die Seiten gewechselt hatte, aber zumindest der Nachname war überprüfbar, Johannes Elder, Buckow/Mark, auch wenn Johnny das Haus seiner Großeltern nicht mal von Fotos kannte.
Dass unser Haus auf dem Papier andere Besitzer hatte, hat uns nicht eine Sekunde lang beschäftigt. Nicht nur das Haus, der ganze Osten lag ja da, als hätte ihn jemand einfach so liegengelassen. Überall Sachen, die keinem gehörten, am Grenzübergang an der Chausseestraße stand ein ganzes Haus leer, das wir und die anderen Besetzer in den Wochen darauf plünderten, die Waschbecken, die Fenster, die Wasserrohre, die Steckdosen, die Türklinken, ganze Türen, alles unter den Augen der Grenztruppen, die auf der Chausseestraße die Autos durchwinkten, es wurde ja pro forma noch kontrolliert. Sie taten so, als sähen sie uns nicht, und in ihrer Nichtbeachtung lag etwas Trotziges, die kalte Wut darüber, dass sie nicht mehr gefürchtet wurden und dass alle Anstrengungen, diese Grenze aufzurichten und dichtzuhalten, umsonst gewesen waren. Die alten Spielregeln galten nicht mehr, und die neuen waren noch nicht in Kraft.
In der ersten Nacht legten wir uns alle in die oberste Wohnung im Vierten, auf mitgebrachte Isomatten und in Schlafsäcke, und als es endlich dunkel war, stellten wir Kerzen auf und rückten noch näher zusammen und erzählten von den vielen Reisen, die wir gemacht hatten. Rachel war in Portugal gewesen, wo sie jeden Tag Kabeljau in öliger Tomatensoße gegessen hatte, und Kerstin war zur Weinlese in Südfrankreich, Wenzel sogar in Indonesien gewesen. Ich hatte in El Salvador zugesehen, wie Ratten auf den Holzbalken über mir balancierten, und Nele hatte auf einer langen Wüstentour durch Algerien Meteoriten im Sand gefunden. Als es dunkel geworden war, konnten wir zwischen den Nachbarhäusern die Sterne sehen, und obwohl wir uns insgeheim schon Zimmer ausgesucht hatten, blieben wir in dieser ersten Nacht zusammen in einem
Raum. Einige hatten Campingkocher mitgebracht, wir konnten ja nicht ahnen, dass die Herde in den Küchen funktionierten, man musste nur den Gashahn aufdrehen, und wir kochten Tütensuppen und weichten Weißbrot darin ein und aßen das Ganze aus Blechgeschirren und emaillierten Tellern, dazu tranken wir Ostbier aus grünen Flaschen, das Wenzel mitgebracht hatte.
Und wir redeten leise, wir beobachteten die Fledermäuse, die halsbrecherische Kurven durch den Hof flogen, blieben auf, bis morgens um vier die Straßenbahn zu hören war, wie sie über den Rosenthaler Platz quietschte, immer an der gleichen Stelle stotterte und dann laut surrend weiterfuhr. Als wir so langsam endlich einschliefen, legte sich Rachel auffällig nah zu mir und achtete darauf, dass genügend Abstand blieb zu Kerstins Schlafsack, den die quer vor die Eingangstür zum Treppenhaus gelegt hatte.

 

Translator’s Statement:

Berlin, summer 1990: the Wall has fallen, thousands of East Germans have fled to the West leaving complete apartment blocks and sometimes even whole streets abandoned while new inhabitants start to arrive in East Berlin; they are the squatters. Primarily from West Germany, the squatters set up their own communities to pursue their own political ideals, be that veganism or feminism. They reject the city council, which is struggling to form a government for reunified Berlin; they dispute the authority of the police and have established their own assembly to administer the occupied houses of East Berlin. The squatters themselves follow left-leaning ideologies and dispense self-administered justice should a Neo-Nazi, or even worse, an informant, cross their path.

This is the setting of Andreas Baum’s semi-autobiographic novel, “Wir waren die neue Zeit” (We were the new era). In this excerpt, we see the group, mainly consisting of students, take the decision to become squatters and go exploring in what appears to be the endless possibilities of empty East Berlin.

The topic and characters are slightly different to the majority of German books dealing with the post-Wall period for it does not examine how former citizens of the GDR came to terms with life in the capitalist society, but rather concentrates on a group of people who moved into the power-vacuum in order to create their own society. However, this group is no less important for the German squatters of this time were politically motivated and were not simply interested in living rent free. Some of their legacy is still present today.

 

Catherine Venner studied German and European studies at the University of Durham (England) and the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder (Germany). She has worked as a translator, primarily in the legal and commercial sector, for over eight years. She lived, studied, and worked in Berlin for seven years and has now returned to her hometown of Durham. Her translations have appeared in World Literature Today, No Man’s Land, and Brixton Review of Books.

Andreas Baum, born in 1967, grew up in Nairobi and Hesse, in Germany. He studied journalism and Latin-American Studies in Berlin and has written as a journalist for German newspapers, such as taz, Freitag, Lettre International, Deutschlandfunk, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and Frankfurter Rundschau. Since 2013, he is the culture editor and an author at Deutschlandradio Kultur. Wir waren die neue Zeit (We were the new era) is his first novel. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and another novel. He has received writing grants from two German cultural organisations.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png 0 0 Kristina Ortiz https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Kristina Ortiz2018-11-23 14:41:232019-06-09 17:01:56We Were the New Era

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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

How to Kill a Cat, or How to Prepare for CATastrophe

March 10, 2023/in Blog / Meghan McGuire
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The Night I Want to Remember

December 16, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Sanaz Tamjidi
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From Paper to the Page

November 18, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Annie Bartos
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Point Break & Top Gun Are More Than Homoerotic Action Movies

March 3, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Michaela Emerson
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Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

October 7, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

September 23, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Kirby Chen Mages
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

On Such a Full Sea Are We Now

March 17, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Jemma Leigh Roe
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The Russian Train

February 24, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Cammy Thomas
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Still Life

October 31, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Daniel J. Rortvedt
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

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