At the end of September, 2001, I participated in a symposium at Dümitz, a town on the railway line between Berlin and Hamburg on the eastern banks of the Elbe. Prior to 1944 it had been a romantic little borough; later it ended up in the Eastern Sector, directly up against the Iron Curtain and as far away as possible from any centre of culture or business. It was said that you could sometimes still hear wartime soldier songs being sung in the picturesque little tavern next to the former brewery in which the symposium was held. One day I walked up the ramp to the railway bridge which had never been rebuilt after American forces had blown it up in 1944. Here I found a humble plaque in the tall grass with the following text:
Vor der Brücke gab es einen Gedanke
Nach der Brücke gib´s ihn immer noch