Norman Ohler: evaluation

Transcript context

…Could you speak to the nature of the motivation for the drug use in Berlin at the time? Was it rebellion? Was it a way to deal with the difficult economic depression? Was it just the natural thing that young people do to explore themselves, to understand the world, to develop their culture? What do we understand about drug use there? All of these factors come together. But it was the first time in modern history, in Germany at least, that there was no emperor. Before that, Kaiser Wilhelm, everything was very strict, you know? You had to… You couldn’t go crazy, you know, as a young person. You couldn’t be a young person. But now in the Weimar Republic in the ’20s, you could. No one stopped you, so people went crazy. That’s what made Berlin into the city that it still somehow is. And maybe later we’ll talk about contemporary Berlin. It kind of… It still has that vibe, you know? That’s why people still come to Berlin. Drugs are cheap, you can move however you want, there’s no authority. So that created a rift between the Nazis in Munich, and they always hated Berlin and what was going on in Berlin. So, for example, Goebbels, the later propaganda minister, he called the situation in Berlin the “hated asphalt reality of Berlin. ” He hated that. And when the Nazis then were able to take power in 1933, one of the first things they did was to really prosecute people who were taking drugs, because they wanted to, you know, bring everyone back into the fold. And I think that’s… You asked what was the reason for people taking so many drugs. They were accessible, they were cheap, but I think the most important thing is that they let you find yourself, maybe, or lose yourself, you know? Also possible, you know? Can we also focus attention there, because you have a connection to this place, Berlin, and this part of the world. Can you just briefly speak to that so we can contextualize even deeper the personal aspect of this? Because you understand the music of the people, the land, its history. There’s something you can only really understand if you’ve been there and you’ve taken it in. And we’ll return to this topic in multiple contexts, but in this particular way, as one human being who writes about this place, what’s your own story?…

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