Are we standing at the gates of hell?
Poet and thinker Hans-Eckardt Wenzel on the moral compass of our time. At a moment when the threats of past decades barely register in our everyday consciousness, Wenzel warns of a dangerous detachment from reality. In this conversation, he examines what he calls the “apocalyptic blindness” of a society that believes it’s living in paradise while standing at the edge of the abyss.
Wenzel breaks down the mechanisms of alienation he sees at work — from our slow habituation to the unthinkable, to the coarsening of language, to what he calls the “theatricalization of politics.” He takes a hard look at the role of elites, whose disconnection from reality, in his view, puts the survival of humanity as a species at risk.
His most striking points touch on:
- The disappearance of dialogue — why war is the perfect monologue, and how the death of real conversation is eroding society from within.
- The power of language — how thought-taboos and what he calls the “destruction of realistic art” are stripping us of the intellectual tools we’d need just to name the crisis we’re in.
- The lesson of the East — what the collapse of East Germany can teach us about how political systems tip over — and why, this time, there’s no safety net waiting to catch us.
Wenzel’s analysis is a plea for a return to the human, and a warning to perceive reality without ideological filters. Regardless of where you come from: the perspective of an artist who lived the rupture between East and West firsthand offers essential grounding for an honest debate.
“Hope can also be a trap that blocks our view of the catastrophe. We have to call things by their name to break their power over us.”
Watch the full conversation on Patrik Baab’s channel here:
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