What are ten years of Ramelow compared to the appearance of Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia? The good woman did not limit herself to handing out ten-cent pieces to the needy and placing half-empty Coke Zero cans next to wastepaper baskets, no, she was observed carrying out activities that were considered degrading. She personally cared for sick people who sought help. In 1226, the German Landgravine had a hospital built below the Wartburg (Eisenach), where she cared for those who were most seriously ill. Whether lepers or cripples, she was simply close to the people.

And Bodo, the ex-Landgrave? What does he have to offer compared to the Thuringian Landgravine? Well, he is considered the "Twitter King" and the state leader who looked at his cell phone the most in the local state parliament. Did he read it? 26.4 percent of Thuringians did not vote. That's the same as in Saxony (25.6 percent). Taking non-voters into account, the traffic light parties together received 7.5 percent (Saxony: 9.4 percent). And because after ten long years of socialism (ahem) under Ramelow, the alternatives had been completely exhausted, they simply voted for the self-proclaimed "alternative." Sounds logical. At least for my father (89), who can't find any clothes, household goods or specialist doctors in his small Thuringian town. For him, the "Wessi Ramelow" is to blame, and then I have to hear my father's favorite joke again: "An Ostrogoth hits a resident of the Western Roman Empire. With a spear in the heart." Almost 35 years after the collapse, nothing is forgiven and nothing is forgotten there!

The mood in the green heart of Germany can also be sensed in the following statement by the venerable hikers on the Rennsteig: "Since we became West, there are hardly any echoes in the mountains." In other words, people have long been speechless. If we ignore Berlin, its suburbs and small areas like Leipzig or the crazy "state capitals," Germany and the Middle East are a completely torn, neglected, devastated country whose inhabitants look back on their lives with shame and try to somehow get by. You have to see these towns and villages! And the disinformation agencies MDR, NDR and RBB put a lot of effort into their borderline idiotic magic. The rest of the opinion-making is "regulated" by the market (newspapers, magazines) anyway, which means that East Germans, according to a study from 2021, only buy large German national daily newspapers in homeopathic doses (Süddeutsche Zeitung 2.5 percent of total circulation, FAZ 3.4 percent). Which is not surprising if you can't get your hands on a copy in which the only things you can read about East Germany are keywords like "right-wing radicalism," "Stasi," "doping," "democratic deficit," "GDR mismanagement," and "unjust regime."

East Germans are not concerned with the AfD, they are concerned with a deep-seated frustration, a helplessness, a lack of perspective. Fear is not a good advisor either. After almost 35 years, most people in the East have understood that the West is alien and hostile to them, from the very beginning, but it rules! At the same time, people are ashamed of having been so naive in 1990, of having messed things up themselves by throwing the fatherland into the jaws of a monster. Shame and rebellion, that is East Germany. But what unites us with West Germany is the lack of a socialist alternative.