No. The photo was taken (not by me) in the summer of 1965 in West-Germany. Is this then a kind of re-enactment of a World War II scenario? Again, no. This is personal, and the man in uniform is me. This is the story: when I was drafted (conscripted to military service) – something I seriously disliked, I chose an alternative route open to me at the time, namely joining the police force for 18 months. The field uniform is that of the Federal Border Guard (Bundesgrenzschutz). I knew that it too was somewhat militarised, but I was shocked to find that parts of the equipment, the helmets for example, were still WWII material – some even with engraved swastikas. Worse, among the marching songs were some suspiciously close to Nazi hymnology. At that time, the Federal Border Guard had not yet arrived in the West, so to speak. There was too much continuity with the past. However, the fact that I did not fit in became a trigger for me, later on as a scholar, to explore that dark period of the European past.
Posted by Werner Ustorf on 2020-08-13 12:34:51
Tagged: , Past , History , Present , Continuity , Germany , Nazism , Bundesgrenzschutz , Biography
