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With midnight always in one’s heart
November 2015 - Germany

Our friend and comrade has been in prison for over 4
months now and is currently being held in “Untersuchungshaft” in Germany. Our comrade is being charged
with bank robbery, the investigation is closed and the
case will now be brought in front of a court that will
decide on further prosecution. Here are a few words
that reached us from the dungeons.
With midnight always in one’s heart,
And twilight in one’s cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
Than the sound of a brazen bell.
After having been arrested and taken to prison in a
small border town somewhere in South-Eastern Europe,
and having had the “pleasure” of spending three weeks
in its state-hotels, I now find myself in the claws of the
German state. At the moment of writing I still do not
know when I will be free again; no “official” accusation
has been sent, no court date has been set. In theory,
“U-haft” can take up to six months – depending on the
wishes and whims of prosecutors and judges however this period can be extended. So far i have not been
wrecking my head over it too much. The insecurity of
not knowing what will happen next, or when, is one of
the more difficult things in this situation, but i refuse to

torture myself with questions that for now remain unanswerable. Whatever is to come, I will face it with my
head held high.
The circumstances under which i am held here I suppose could be pronounced “harsh” (no phone calls, all
communication with the outside world subjected to voyeuristic interference- the prosecutor reading all letters
to and fro, visits always in the presence of a screw and
overzealous criminal police) but then again, i would not
expect any different from those i consider my enemies.
For that they are, and among them the friendlier faces of
oppression: the priests, the therapists, the social workers, … (someone once rightly remarked how only two
kinds of people enter prison: those who can leave again
voluntarily, and those who cannot.) And when the incessant imposed control, discipline, and “re-socialisation”
fail to succeed, self-flagellation is never far. No need
for pacification or control when all possible critique is
transformed into a mea culpa, when the prevailing idea
among those locked up is that one is in prison because
one did something “wrong”, is “guilty” of something and
now has to pay the price for it.
I do not want to enter a discourse that speaks in terms
of innocence and guilt, for the juxtaposition at stake is
not between these two “categories” formulated in the
language of domination, the language of law; a language
absolutely antagonistic to my own. It is, simplistic put,

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