B In a word “transit” falls to us (generation ford First, this dove-blue delivery van with which the butcher brought the Wiener sausages and the rolls, which the caretaker then sold in the big break for one twenty, when we still had German small change and not already French.
At that time there were still the transit highways through the GDR to West Berlin, where not only sausages and other goods were transported in the Ford Transit, but also people, not infrequently also unauthorized, but always only in the west. And of course the trigger word “Transit” always runs the sentence of our Latin teacher again, which he said preferentially, when once again one on the board absolutely failed in the Ablativus absolutus: Sic transit gloria mundi – so passes the glory of the world.
No glorious page
The rebirth of transit in various combinations of words – transit centers, transit zones, transit camps and so on – did not just call for the SPD ambiguous feelings, but also with us. We really did not need that too. Even the melee between Merkel and Seehofer according to the motto “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (in German about: Always firm on the nut, and if I have to resign) had let any rest joy in politics go out. It really was not a glorious page. So what should have happened?
Anyway: closed institutions, which one could have used in any case in Berlin and Munich quite well, could not be done with the SPD, why the coalition has now agreed on a “transit procedure”. “Transfer procedure” could not be taken because it would have sounded too much like transfer union and then the asylum compromise could have been called “debt relief for Italy”. First of all, however, a new name for the “axis of the willing” must urgently be found, because the ratio of the Axis powers Bavaria, Austria and Italy is only marginally better than that of their predecessor, Ende 43.
Now we can finally remember what the “regional disembarkation platforms” remind us, with the help of which EU illegal immigration across the Mediterranean: to the assembly sites for the Allied invading forces. At that time, entire armies moved from Algeria and Tunisia to Sicily and the Italian mainland. So here not really a happy, unencumbered choice of words. You can almost hear Gauland giggling in the cellar.
Are there really no terms for refugee institutions that do not remind you of Honecker and the zone, or even Hitler and Mussolini? How about “Annalenas Wellness Oase” or “Club Merkelterranée”? If you do not care so much about pull factors, you could call the reception facilities “Orbans Orcus” or “Weidel’s Bootcamp”. But how is there to be agreement in the EU, in the grand coalition, and, most difficult of all, between the CDU and CSU? That’s in the stars.
In the final stages of the heavenly career
Apropos: In astronomy, “transit” refers to the passage of a celestial body in front of a larger one – for example, when a planet, let’s call it HS 2, passes in front of its sun (AM 4) and darkens it, only slightly, but every time again. Thanks to this effect, you have already discovered pretty weird exoplanets, which you can also get on the track thanks to the “wobbly effect” (that really means so). In this way, hot gas giants in particular are found in tight orbits around their star, which can well argue that they have not themselves become the central star of the system, in defiance of the old promise “Per aspera ad astra”.
Between such celestial bodies there are interesting gravitational relationships that can take on dramatic proportions when both are in the final stages of their heavenly career and the sun is puffing up to a red giantess. Until this day of ultimate reckoning, the returning, shaded sun will find comfort: Transit umbra – manent opera.
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