This time I’ll let Bertolt tell the stories. He was so good with words anyway. Much better than I. But I’ll do the legwork. I’ll take the pictures. This is no mean feat. Because Bertolt’s stories are sad ones. And I have to do him and my subjects justice. I know that no much has changed since his time. So these will not be pretty pictures. Most of them are ‘uncomfortable’. But to quote Bertolt “Sometimes it's more important to be human, than to have good taste”.
“When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.”
“What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?”
“Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.”
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”
“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”
“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”
“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.”
“First of all, they came to take the gypsies
and I was happy because they pilfered.
Then they came to take the Jews and I said nothing,
because they were unpleasant to me.
Then they came to take homosexuals,
and I was relieved, because they were annoying me.
Then they came to take the Communists,
and I said nothing because I was not a Communist.
One day they came to take me,
and there was nobody left to protest.”
“For once you must try not to shirk the facts:
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.”
“Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.”
“He who fights, can lose.
He who doesn't fight, has already lost.”
“For there is a gulf between the top and bottom, wider than between the high Himalaya and the sea and what goes on at the top is not known at the bottom nor on top what goes on at the bottom and top and bottom have two languages…”
“Happy is the people who need no heroes.”
“To those who does not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.”
“What kind of times are these, when
To talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?”
“Poverty makes you wise but it's a curse.”
“Alas, we who wanted kindness, could not be kind ourselves.”
“Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”
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