{"id":10647,"date":"2021-12-31T06:26:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T06:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/?page_id=10647"},"modified":"2021-12-31T06:29:30","modified_gmt":"2021-12-31T06:29:30","slug":"translated-excerpt-magician-magdalena-parys","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/translated-excerpt-magician-magdalena-parys\/","title":{"rendered":"Translated Excerpt – MAGICIAN – Magdalena Parys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n<\/div>\n\n

MAGICIAN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Magdalena Parys<\/strong><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ever since the children had gone to college abroad, Christian Schlangenberger’s wife seemed calmer, and for a few months he\u2019d had a new, young mistress called Felicia. These were long-awaited changes, but they weren\u2019t the most essential. The most significant event of the past year was that, in February, more than 5.8 kilometres of files at the Stasi Records Office, some 20 million pages of A4, had been annulled. They\u2019d disappeared.<\/h5>\n
He ran through that sentence in his mind once again: 5.8, nearly 6 kilometres of files had disappeared from the Stasi Records Office. The biggest success of his life, the wisest move he\u2019d ever made, like a chess move, checkmate, files gone. If they\u2019d awarded Oscars for that sort of real-life role, he\u2019d have swept the board, for production, screenplay, direction and lead performance. He had planned this move extremely carefully, spreading it over a five-year period, and without involving anyone from outside. The entire operation had been run for him by Frank Derbach, a close and trusted friend, who felt he was doing a favour for a party colleague, the originator and sponsor of this unprecedented operation. He wouldn\u2019t have done it for just anyone. Just for him.<\/h5>\n
Apart from the months following the fall of the wall, when the security service agents had tried to destroy part of the archive, this was the first incidence of files being eliminated on such a major scale. While the first attempt had been frustrated, thanks to the involvement of outraged citizens of the former GDR, the second, 20 years later, had taken place without much more than a flicker of interest from anyone at all \u2013 5.8 kilometres of files were officially deemed to be dispensable, needlessly occupying clerical time. So the files vanished. Schlangenberger hadn\u2019t had much trouble selling the idea that they were dispensable to the few representatives of the media who were interested in the matter. Of course he knew that not everything could be hidden. In so-called democracies, hiding things never produced the best result. Success depended on whether it could be packaged nicely.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/h5>\n
– Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones<\/strong><\/h6>\n
<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MAGICIAN Magdalena Parys     Ever since the c   …\u66f4\u591a\u5185\u5bb9<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10647"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10649,"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10647\/revisions\/10649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}