Aww, bless.
Allow me to introduce a friend of mine, named Jens (pictured above at about 13 years of age, I imagine). Jens lives in the south-eastern corner of Germany, in the quiet, sleepy Mittelsachen town in which he was born, and just gets on with life in a modest, unassuming manner. However, had a couple of high-ranking decisions gone in a different direction, young Jens could now be immortal, the most popular man in Europe, yet simultaneously the most unpopular man in Germany.
If this seems somehow mutually exclusive, I shall explain.
Jens lived and worked, until quite recently, in London. We were regular football players, and it was from there that our friendship developed. One evening, during a post-match drinking session, the subject of the fall of Communism was discussed. As you may have discerned from the detail in the corner of the above photograph, young Jens was born in the Eastern side of the divided Germany, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. I was interested in knowing how the rapidly unfolding turn of events in late 1989 was perceived in the East, given the propaganda campaign waged between the so-called "free" West and the Soviet Bloc since the end of the Second World War.
It transpired that at the time, Jens was in the midst of his compulsory military service in the East German army, stationed near Leipzig (I think). As the trickle of movement from East to West through the hastily (and inadvertently) opened crossings in the Berlin Wall became a torrent, the appratchiks of the East German government panicked, and ordered the infantry (Jens included) to shoulder arms, mount the flatbed trucks, and be ready to travel to Berlin in order to put down the uprising, by force if necessary.
This fascinated me; this could have been a game-changing event, with far-reaching repercussions across the world. I asked him why the mobilization was not followed through with; Jens stated, blandly, that "the Generals simply told the Government that it was all over, that they were not prepared to go through with it". Thus, the Berlin Wall did tumble, but not before Mr. David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff had his little stab at immortality.
Which gave me cause to ponder... "what if"? What if the mobilization had, in fact, taken place, just at the moment that Mr. Hoff was reaching a crescendo atop Die Wende? Instead of almost being hit by a firecracker by an over-excited reveller, Mr. Hoff could well have been picked off, with clinical precision, by my good friend Jens and his trusty 7.62mm AK-47 assault rifle.
This should surely have made Jens about as popular with the Western half of Germany as a ginger stepson; however, the act would almost certainly have been applauded right across the rest of Western Europe, and most certainly within the United Kingdom, where we should have been spared the Baywatch buffoon's inane exhibitions on such televisual strands as "Britain's Got Talent". The footage of the incident would surely be the most-watched item, by some distance, ever, on the "YouTube".
We should also have been shared the shocking spectacle of Mr. Hoff making a complete and utter arse of himself whilst snacking on a cheeseburger. Which, to be honest, is actually terribly amusing.
However, back in the real world, Herr Krenz and his camp followers submitted to the will of the generals; the wall came down, Germany was reunified, and the nation became one big happy family again. And The Hoff lived to drink another day. And another. And another. Ad infinitum.
As for Jens... well, he put away his rifle and his uniform, and immersed himself in that "decadent Western culture" that the self-appointed guardians of DDR society had warned him about. See below.
Nice headwear, sir.
Do others feel that the imposition of The Berlin Wall would have been a small price to pay for the untimely demise of The Hoff, live and direct on ZDF?
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