The Frankfurt line

“So many lucid texts and observations on the Perspectives and Reflections site and so many precise diagnoses of the illnesses that destroyed the country’s organism in which so many authors were born all lead to a question of how is it possible that these voices—many also continuously heard during the collapse of Yugoslavia—could not stop all the tragedies that occurred?”

The Frankfurt line has represented the line up to which the coffee-mania has spread over Europe like a contagious disease in the last three decades of the 18th Century after the Turkish siege of Vienna. Because the ritual of drinking coffee was exercised in society, it represented a danger to the standardized arrangements of European cities, especially in Germany. The propaganda that later ignited the French revolution could already be felt in the European air.

An edict was officially decreed in Darmstadt in Frankfurt on 12 September 1766 forbidding poor people to drink coffee. If this law were to be violated, one month in jail as well as forced labor would follow. The governments of German cities managed to maintain peace and protect themselves from revolutionary movements spreading throughout Europe (especially after the French revolution) by establishing the Frankfurt line.

For almost five moths now, a text written by someone from our region is lights up the www.maribor2012.info website in the section 'Perspectives and reflections' daily. The topics differ. The views are unusual. I have gotten used to checking the website from Maribor everyday before examining all the printed media; an interesting text usually awaits. Some sort of virtual territory has been established in a short period of time and I am experiencing its existence in completely concrete dimensions. It reminds me of an oil platform, a piece of artificial land in the middle of a limitless ocean because explanations for many events, occurrences, enigmas and phenomena, that are the common denominator for our region and beyond, are pulled with mental effort out from the depths of the bone marrow. These stories are important for the past and for the present. So many authors from different generations in one place, formed into different culture matrixes. What they all have in common is the basic attitude towards tolerance. What a transfusion of intellect into the everyday life. A promotion of being normal. A critical stance that does not leave uncovered even one piece of reality where corrupted politicians are unfortunately successfully performing their magic tricks. The reason why they are successful is that today's global trend is to subordinate to the lowest demands of the subjects, to besot, to court the masses that are given votes to prolong their mandates. And it doesn't make any difference, at least in Serbia and also in other parts of the region, who will govern tomorrow: politicians these days are, generally speaking, shapeless creatures, just like human fish without color, no blood type, without any illusions, concentrated only on the material profit.

So many lucid texts and observations on the Perspectives and Reflections site and so many precise diagnoses of the illnesses that destroyed the country's organism in which so many authors were born all lead to a question of how is it possible that these voices-many also continuously heard during the collapse of Yugoslavia-could not stop all the tragedies that occurred?

How is it possible that stupidity holds together so good, that it is so convincing, that it always offers a shield to evil, while it's devastating the walls of History just like an avalanche? A Frankfurt line that could maybe stop the forces of demolition and destruction that are rampaging in spite of all the peace edicts does not exist. Experience teaches us that common sense is powerless in these situations. The intellect is isolated. The normality is gone from public life. But it always starts in the same way: with the prosecution of the other and the different. It does not matter whether you are a Jew, a communist, a member of the LGBT community or a Roma. When the mechanism is started, Brescia is shooting and a big industry emerges. The industry of courtship, lies and stereotypes, relativization of moral principles, and ethnic principles. The on-call service men working in state institutions, from universities and institutes, are justifying the actions of the government. The famous past that must be conquered is often on the menu. Corrupted journalists are making people stupid by making a selection of supposedly interesting topics as they are ordered by the centers of power.

A wall is being put up, a Frankfurt line against common sense. An individual, confused and scared, is looking around and searching for an anchoring point that is outside this crazy reality, an anchoring point in which the structure of the yesterday's world would be preserved. These times, possible anywhere and anytime, are easier to survive and without as many consequences, if there is a source of normality somewhere near. A place where the intellect has not yet dried up.

In the mean time, we can, with some exaggeration, imagine a Dutch historian at the beginning of the twenty-third century, an expert for European websites at the beginning of the third millennium uncovering that nearly 200 years ago a Slovenian website registered in Maribor existed where artists and intellectuals from the region were gathering to publicly discuss tolerance, equality and pacifism. By analyzing this site and it utopic character considering the context of Europe's development at that time, the Dutch historian would announce that European society needed two more centuries to become aware of the inevability of dictatorship as the fairest and most successful social order. The phenomenon of the Slovenian website at the beginning of the twenty-first century would be called 'a Maribor fantasy'.