by Peter Löcke //
The last columns were about the propaganda of an insignificant gentleman. His next advertising campaign wants to tell 84 stories in the fear-inducing Relotius style. Consternation porn designed at the designer's desk to get people on the needle for the fourth, fifth or sixth time. I have taken the criticism of giving this person too much space to heart. This column is therefore a call for a counter-campaign.
84 beautiful stories! Hope instead of fear. Love instead of Lauterbach. Real stories from life instead of a storyline based on a predetermined script. I would like to make a start.
Yesterday I received an email from a former friend. We had fallen out over a year ago. The reason at the time? He thought it was okay that I wouldn't be allowed to go shopping at some point because I didn't want to be vaccinated. After all, he said, Germany had domestic authority. After all, I would just have to show solidarity. What I replied to him at the time was neither fit for print nor appropriate for young people. He apologized in yesterday's email. He apologized sincerely, deeply ashamed, he didn't sugarcoat it. The message was personal, so I won't go into any more detail. This apology was a sign of greatness and strength for me. Now all I need is my own greatness to forgive him. For me, this email has closed a wound. Another beautiful story?
Last week I took the train late at night. Local transport. Only a short distance, so the compartment was deserted. The "mouth-nose protection" only served as a neck decoration. A ticket inspector came into the compartment and approached me. Expecting a vociferous Blockwart speech and too tired for an argument in which I was legally on the short end of the stick, I wanted to pull up the mask as a precaution. After the conductor realized that we were among ourselves, he beat me to it. "You can throw that fucking rag in the garbage can for all I care. Have a nice journey." He smiled.
For reasons of discretion, I have to tell the third beautiful story vaguely. A general practitioner paid a home visit to two elderly people over 60 who are very close to me. The visit was not primarily about coronavirus. On the way out, however, the doctor was asked whether they really needed to be vaccinated again soon. The titer, the antibodies in the blood, had been checked. Everything was in the green zone. The old GP looked over his shoulder before replying: "Don't fucking do it."
Little anecdotes from my little life. Not worthy of a novel. Not recorded by a TV camera or a smartphone. I don't have a budget in the tens of millions to disseminate my experiences. Perhaps I will still succeed in creating a collection of beautiful stories. Of stories big and small. Here in the club of clear words. Why do I think this is important?
"If you look into an abyss for a long time, the abyss will also look into you."
Friedrich Nietzsche is said to have said this. When I open the daily newspaper, turn on the television, watch the various live tickers of horror, observe the madness and behavior of many of my fellow human beings, Nietzsche's aphorism comes to mind. I do not want to become what I perceive and study every day. I do not want to become an abyss. Away from the abyss! Towards the beautiful stories! The stories that give hope in a supposedly bleak time. Perhaps some readers feel like me.
My wife is more emotionally intelligent than I am. One of her favorite sentences is "Everything you look at with love is beautiful." Perhaps I should have done more literary work with Christian Morgenstern and less with Nietzsche. Whether small anecdotes or great stories - what beautiful, loving things have you experienced recently as a reader? What gives you courage? What gives you hope? Perhaps a counter-campaign, a collection of 84 beautiful stories, will succeed. That is ambitious. There will probably be fewer. But every single story will be genuine. Without a budget, without a script. But from the heart.
If you like: Tell your story!
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
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15 Responses
A little story from my dental practice:
I have been a dentist for 35 years and have never worked with a mask, but with magnifying glasses. Apart from maybe 5 days or an operation, I've never been ill in that time. In 2021, I had myself vaccinated under pressure from friends from another specialty. The argument was horror stories about Long Covid and the blocked path to my mother in the retirement home. 1st, 2nd, 3rd vaccination. I was ill and unable to work for about 2 months in 2021.
In my practice, the motto has always been "you are welcome to take the rag off", right from the start....
In those two and a half years, I had about five patients who were outraged by it. All the others have
I immediately took off my mask and said "Thank God".
My clientele consists mainly of employers, self-employed people with small companies and very hard-working and committed employees who have felt the pain of the "pandemic" policy. The mainstream is making us sick in the head with the conglomerate of politics. Frank Sinatra already sang I did it my way. I would like to see much more of this attitude from people. Please think for yourself and don't let the mainstream media think for you. Then we can move forward again in Germany and, thank you for that and your attention in the club of clear words....
Dear Mr. Löcke,
Very nice, this suggestion. When I had to appear in the local court a few months ago, it was about (in my opinion unjustified) monetary claims, I prepared myself for hours with a mask. Masks are compulsory in court - of course.
The assessor was already sitting in the waiting area at 10 to 10, wearing a green mask. I sat down three seats away and took off my mask. A few minutes later, he took his off too. Then the lawyer for the other side appeared wearing an FFP2 mask, gave us a wide berth and sat down as far away as possible. She kept her mask on but didn't say anything. My lawyer appeared with a mask under his chin.
Then the hearing room was opened from the inside, the judge was nowhere to be seen, the defendants sat down, the opposing counsel, still wearing a mask, on the opposite side. The judge emerged from his side room, files in one hand and a face cloth in the other, which had certainly been used many times, and took a raised seat behind his barrier. He placed the rag next to his files.
Not a word was said about the mask issue. Only the opposing lawyer kept her FFP2 on for about 10 minutes; when she had to make a longer statement, she took it off. Then she briefly reached for it - and left it there.
The negotiations lasted 2 hours without masks and were very controversial. At the end, everyone kept their distance. In the anteroom, in the stairwell, everyone put on their masks and walked past the doorman in his glass box, "protected" in accordance with regulations.
I like to go shopping at 7 in the morning, when Lidl is already open. Then I start working from home at 7:30...
I regularly see an elderly man there looking for returnable bottles in the returnable bottle shop. What he then buys in the store are the simple things in life, often including items reduced by 30%. Sometimes he also goes shopping with his wife; it's a loving relationship between the two of them. Then he doesn't look for returnable bottles.
We always greet each other when we see each other in the markets, there's a kind of familiarity between us, we smile at each other in the aisles.
It makes me wonder how this country has got to the point of marginalizing such people...
Should I give him a voucher? I believe that this acceptance for each other would then no longer exist and he could be robbed of his dignity.
Mr. Löcke, because it's you, because I like you and this idea, and because I also want to counter the gene therapy apologists and pharmaceutical representatives, court reporters and generally the whole woke self-proclaimed better people of the Green Left, including the supposedly "free" and "Christian" block parties and their history-forgotten followers and claque:
Spain. Gran Canaria. Mid-October. 27 degrees, clear. Departure day [crap!] The transfer bus is half-filled with tourists from Central and Northern Europe. Do you recognize the Germans? They are wearing ill-fitting FDP2 masks (without any Spanish regulations, which fortunately only apply on "public" buses). Well, except for my family and me. We talk to the people with faces. They come from Nijmegen, Tønder and a suburb of Poznan. Europe has its advantages and many nice people live there.
At the Hotel Barbacan in Playa del Inglés on Avda. de Tirajana, a couple gets on the bus. She immediately covers her face, quicker than an Iranian woman when the religious police are on the rampage. She, a few centimeters taller, looks at him angrily and somehow fearfully. He takes a disheveled piece of cloth from his winter jacket, probably from the outward journey two weeks ago. At that moment, he looks at me. I shake my head discreetly. His shred of obedience goes into the bus driver's waste bin. Now he looks taller than her.
It's a wonderful idea to give yourself the gift of beautiful anecdotes. In the difficult times we are currently living in, we can try to see the light and brightness. It can be very enriching and lost confidence can be regained.
" Confidence makes wings grow " ( Else Pannek )
Confidence is more than hope - it can give us the certainty that we will slowly see the light at the end of the tunnel again - no matter how long it takes and how difficult the path may be.
For almost 2 years now, I have been meeting upright people every Monday evening in my East Frisian district town. What began as an 'illegal' walk has now become an established demonstration for the restoration of basic rights in our country. I have made new friends and many enriching acquaintances. A broad spectrum of opinions leads us to discussions that would otherwise never have taken place. We practise tolerance. Everyone is welcome. We give each other support in this increasingly polarized world. Without these meetings and lively exchanges, many of us would have despaired in the past because we thought we were alone in our critical view of political developments in this country.
We have all learned to question everything critically. That is the good thing about this crisis. It has brought people together who would otherwise never have met. We will see what comes of it in the future.
My dad passed away recently. As he wasn't feeling well very quickly, we were allowed to visit him in his room at any time, even without a test. We were not allowed to wear masks in his room and the doctors didn't wear them when they spoke to us either. The ward doctor in charge also told us quite clearly that Mr. Lauterbach's gene therapy had done nothing. Only the senior physician was an advocate of masks. All the other doctors and nurses told us quite clearly that "it's time we made the virus what it is, a flu".
The whole thing is almost like Iran, only the politicians and their lobby are keeping the farce going.
.... A wonderful idea.
One of my nice encounters recently was with a person who was pushing all his belongings in a shopping cart and wearing very tattered clothes. I see him often, he spends most of his time on a bench in our little park. There are many like him. But he always catches my eye because he has such a deep calm manner and a very warm aura.
I walked past him with my warm rolls in a bag in my arms.
I also like to sit down under a funny maple tree in this park, and so I did that day too, biting heartily into one of these warm, delicious rolls.
The man in question was sitting on the bench next door.
He looked over at me and said he was pleased that he was still meeting people who were taking their time.
I offered him something from my bag.
He was very pleased and thanked us, taking a bread roll.
Now the wind swept the leaves around us and we looked peacefully at the greenery around us.
The man smiled the whole time and this little moment gave me so much peace and joy.
...dear Mr. Löcke, the best thing about it now is to share it here.
And by the way, my favorite line from Nietzsche is "If time paused, it would be blue,"...isn't that wonderful?
That's a nice idea, but.......I don't have any stories like that to report from my immediate environment. In general, however, it has to be said that the mood among vaccinated people is changing. Wherever you look: Unvaccinated people have remained largely healthy over the last two years, apart from the usual minor colds, and vaccinated people have had coronavirus (or whatever it is) two or three times across the board, sometimes quite severely. Therefore, the tendency to have further spikes is low. Even the approaching (Lauterbach: particularly threatening) variant "Cerberus" - no really, you can exaggerate anything, take the piss - no longer makes people shiver. That's why they want to inject the stuff into very young children, into everything that isn't up to three on the trees.
As far as I know, the whole issue only exists in Germany and only for those who have lived here for a long time. The rest of the world doesn't give a damn.
So I have nothing nice to say in response to the horrible new vaccination ad.
Here are some of the problems that occurred in the immediate and immediate vicinity after vaccination: two eye vein thromboses in a small town, several leg vein thromboses in younger people, a 28-year-old woman who died of cardiac arrest after vaccination, numerous arthritic complaints in different age groups, sudden onset of cancer, sudden flash recurrences after surviving cancer, a vaccinator who died at the age of 52 and was previously completely healthy, changes in blood clotting factors, menstrual problems..., a vaccinating doctor who told his acquaintances that he no longer wanted to waste his time with unvaccinated people and who fell terminally ill with cancer immediately after being told this.
I hope I haven't spoiled the mood, but that's the way it is. Let's hope for the best for all of us!
Dear Mr. Löcke, there are many wonderful stories outside the journalistic bubble. I only allow myself to be drawn into this bubble for an hour a day because I have always been interested in politics. But real life takes place outside it. My political enlightenment awareness has also subsided noticeably over the last ten years because my more emotionally intelligent wife (LOL) has made me realize that it's pointless. You can't educate people who don't want to and can't. If you were to test the population daily for intelligence using a PCR test without cause, you would find that every second person has an IQ below one hundred, as this is "normally distributed". In other words, they are incapable of grasping complex problems. Quite apart from wanting to. Now to the nice stories.
I always enjoy reading Mr. von Dohnany's column in the Hamburger Abendblatt. What an intelligent man of integrity. I am pleased about the letter to the editor from the dock worker and trade unionist, who makes it clear to the many stupid letter writers who simply parrot something what it is really about. I am pleased about the clever and resistant Ms. Guerot, who defends her point of view with aplomb. I am happy about the resistance of the alternative media, which, despite the public-private partnership of Google, Facebook & Co, courageously resist censorship and the will to destroy. I am happy about my dermatologist and my internal medicine practice, which never joined in the coronavirus hysteria. I am happy that there are alternatives to a certain café on the Baltic Sea that was particularly loyal to the government ("because we can") and took part in every masked carnival. I am happy that the Italian next door, who was nonchalant about it, has now doubled his business. I'm happy for every craftsman and supermarket saleswoman who has survived a pandemic without a mask. And I'm most happy about our two grandchildren, aged three and five, with whom we've been out three times a week during the pandemic. Mostly without masks and, of course, without infection. I'm happy about the young mothers who came to the playground with us every afternoon for three years without wearing a mask. And I'm happy that the corona pandemic didn't affect us once. I'm happy about three wonderful vacations on Sylt and on the Baltic Sea during the pandemic. Always in mask-free times, with 100 people at the breakfast buffet and without infection. I'm looking forward to life. Apart from the madness of the conflict in Ukraine, which we Europeans have nothing to counter, and which reveals the total failure of the European peace project.
I had always had good contact with my colleagues at the old company. We used to go out for dinner together once a month until everything was closed. We never heard from each other again, everyone was busy with their families. And then in January 2021, I suddenly got a mysterious message. How are you? And then praise for why this colleague always appreciated me so much, for having the courage to address things that were going wrong and for always having the backbone to stand by my opinion. My unequivocal answer: it's a con job. Relief at the other end of the communication and finally someone else to talk to freely. We have extended our contact to include private meetings with family, something that has never happened in the many years we have worked together.
Dear Mr. Löcke,
I dare to doubt that a friend has contacted you, because friendship is characterized, among other things, by standing by your side in difficult times. In my part of the world, they're called turncoats.
Now to my story. A dictatorship ends in 1989, all the followers are spared and live on happily, passing on their distorted ideology to their children and others. Now there are even more fascist Stasi followers. Only this time, the consequences of following along are wonderful: death, serious side effects and, in any case, a broken immune system.
Can I contribute a little story from today. This morning my printer went on strike here at home for private use. Even after several attempts to get the thing working using the driver, I still couldn't get it to work. I'm a user, not a geek and have no idea. In my desperation, I remembered my former employer from x years ago. I'll give the computer department a call, maybe they can send me someone. No sooner said than done. I called my former colleague Jörg who immediately put me through to the right person. A young man called Reschke. He said no, it's not possible to come by, we'll do it remotely. You download it now (he gave me the instructions over the phone) and then we'll have a look. It all took a moment and Reschke was chatty and not at all a freak like most people who you can't follow or feel totally retarded. Of course, we also touched on Corona, which I had recently and apologized afterwards that I couldn't come to the funeral of our former boss, precisely because of the infection. He then asked me, have you been vaccinated? When I said no and half apologetically said that I was still struggling with the after-effects of my operation, he said quite coolly, well, all that nonsense is just there to scare people and keep them in check anyway. We immediately agreed. He then said, take comfort, we all had corona here after the funeral. But we all thought it was half as bad. It has nothing to do with a killer virus. It's different, but I never feared for my life for a minute. But what makes me think is the fact that no matter who you talk to, the topic of corona and vaccination is always there. Sometimes you really feel your way and check whether you can reveal your personal thoughts about it. That's where the mass stupidity begins. All in all, my printer is working again thanks to Mr. Reschke (the driver was outdated and didn't fit Windows 11) it was a factual but also funny phone call and just in case, I now have the remote maintenance button on the desktop.
Since October '20 I have had this disease 3 times, the last time it was milder. I got vaccinated 3 times, but never again. After a year, my wife said: "Move out of the bedroom". (bad germs spread through the breath; due to the vaccination) I did it for two months. Then: "We can't live together like this any more." She planned and planned and then let it go. reason prevailed. Now we continue to live calmly; we are neither influenced nor misled by the "non-medical man", nor by others.the real reasons for the hysteria are quite different; political in nature.
Fortunately, it was never an option for my wife to accept these injections; she had been a hospital doctor all her professional life and had dealt with immune diseases. I was already very suspicious of the reports and measures from May 2020, so I looked more closely at the reported figures and PCR. I was still worried about the virus in February 2020 and had bought two FFP2/3 masks with an exhalation valve for my very elderly parents and advised them to wear them in crowded places.
The combination of my wife's knowledge of medicine and my experience with epidemiological studies gained in a completely different context led to a consensus in my assessment of the situation. I tended to be more optimistic, my wife more pessimistic due to her decades of experience under dictatorship. I expected resolute resistance from the judiciary; she had experienced the totalitarian state. She was right, the judiciary also failed.
When the compulsory vaccination law came up, we decided to move away from Germany. You can do that as a pensioner. We want to spend our last years in a relaxed environment, without the hustle and bustle, blockade mentality and fear of crazy ministers and police officers. Our visitors from Germany, all vaccinated up to and including the booster (and therefore often ill), wear their masks right up to the border. I don't know if our non-verbal indoctrination makes them think.