Switch to Desktop Site  Herta Mueller: No nostalgia for
Communism  (Read article summary)  Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters
(Read caption) German writer Herta Mueller gestures as she gives
interviews after a news conference in Berlin on Thursday.  About
these ads  There are hints of “Ost-algia” in the air these days
in Germany. One in seven German wants the Wall back, according
to a recent poll published in Stern magazine. Many feel they
were better off when the country was divided. They are bitter
about high taxes and millions of dollars of their money poured
into rebuilding the formerly communist east over the past two
decades. And all that for what? For an eastern region that’s
depleting itself demographically, and where unemployment is
twice as high as in western Germany.  But lost in those
statistics is the reality of oppression.  This year’s literature
Nobel Prize is bringing that reality to the surface. German
novelist Herta Mueller gives voice to key themes of the
oppression, dictatorship, and exile that do