Autor: Jan von Duhn
Deutsche Version der Kurzbiografie folgt hier ab März 2016.
Über Jan von Duhn: He was born in Potsdam/East Germany into a family of (art) historians, descendants from several lines of German tradition. One of these lines was Jewish, his Grandfather, who’s name he ist still bearing as a civil person. And so the Shoa was present in his life untill today: His grandfather had emigrated since 1934 to the UK, his uncle had been shot by the Nazis, who sacked the family fortune. (Even in 2015 ongoing compensation claims against Germany!) – Other relatives had ended in Auschwitz. His mother had survived in a bohemian hide, while her sister had managed in 1943 to flee to Sweden.
Jan’s Grandmother on the other hand had moved already in 1932 in a mansion, which later accommodated the ‘POTSDAM MUSEUM’. During communist rule she was active as an expert for the service of monument care, as a cultural journalist and as a town photographer. Also his mother took photos and at that time wrote under pseudonym for Western newspapers about the situation under Russian occupation. As a small child Jan accompanied them in the surroundings of Potsdam – sometimes a fairy tale world in a long sleep.
However, because of their published GDR criticism both women were arrested by the state security and sentenced at a political trial. Meanwhile he spent three years in an orphanage. When his mother returned they had to leave for West Germany.
At arrival it was a cultural shock for the boy and he retained difficulties with social integration. Nevertheless, he visited grammar-schools. First in Offenburg, then in Frankfurt, where he got to know the left „counter-culture“. His socialisation in this anti-authoritarian environment was of lasting influence to him. During later university studies of psychology and politics – living at the margin of the same milieu – he started to write irregular contributions for cultural magazines and for the Berlin ‚taz’ newspaper. In those years he was involved with alternative projects, where young people tried to detect a new morality and a united social mind. He also came to know some politicians, who started a career in the Green party, although a few years ago they had supported left terrorism. This bigoted schizophrenia was repelling and destroyed a many honest spirits in the alternative scene of Germany. For that he emigrated 1986 to Switzerland. Still he felt as a participant of an international peace-movement, which wanted to free social relations from profit orientation and to humanise capitalism. Now he encountered Swiss activists, who at some instants gained for alternative goals a lot of popular support; for instance with a campaign for the abolition of the Swiss army with an outstanding result of 36% approval at a national referendum in 1989.
In the novel‚ SWISS-MADE TIME!’, Duhn relates some experiences of that period, when he had become in Bern a collaborator in the office of the national Student Union. He describes, what he learned there from an inside angle about the spirit of Swiss politics. Also by his girl-friend from a historical family he gained a profound insight into a very discrete mentality that had consciously taken advantage of the peculiar „Swiss neutrality“. Means in order to profit from the “iron curtain” between East and West a true support for democracy and Human Rights in other countries had never taken place with the international activities of the Swiss in spite of all verbalism. … On account of an acquaintance with left deputes, who were about to uncover the supervision of the nation by a political police and thus released a state crisis in 1990 with the „Fichenaffäre“, he reached in areas within the system, where usually a critical foreigner never is been admitted. Autumn 1989 he suddenly found himself on a job of the confederate Ministry of Justice. In that moment of history it was crucial to arrange more of a Swiss support in favour of the „GDR turn“. – However, this facet of contemporary history has never been examined up to now.
In relation to a many bizarre observations Duh
