The Borders We Share: A New Way to Fix a Broken World
Section 6: Cities and Rocks (Posts 31–36)
Post 33: Ruritania’s Walls, Berlin’s Ghost: Past as Present
Enigma at the Fracture
At the jagged lip where the Carpathians cradle the ghosts of old empires, the fortress walls of Strelsau rise like a scar across the heart of Ruritania, now entwined with the spectral concrete of Berlin’s vanished Wall, where the dead still whisper through rust and graffiti. Here, Dr. Jorge, the series’ sage, joins Sherlock Holmes, the unrivalled deductive mind, Dr. John Watson, his ever-present chronicler, and King Arthur, wielder of Excalibur’s enduring oath. With us walk the living shades of Ruritania’s tragic lovers: Rupert of Hentzau, the charming devil whose smile hides a dagger; Rudolf Rassendyll, the English gentleman who wore a king’s crown for love; Princess Flavia, torn between duty and desire; Colonel Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim, loyal soldiers of a kingdom that never quite was. From Berlin’s divided decades come Willy Brandt, who knelt in Warsaw and dared to dream of Ostpolitik; Konrad Adenauer, the architect of western rebirth; Walter Ulbricht, builder of the “antifascist protection rampart”; Erich Honecker, who ordered “shoot to kill”; and the nameless students who danced on the Wall in November 1989, hammers in hand and hope in heart. In The Borders We Share, we pursue not the conquest of stone but the unravelling of riddles to forge peace, where borders become puzzles solved in unity.
As the winter sun, at 10:15 AM GMT on this Tuesday, 25 November 2025, gilds the frost on Strelsau’s battlements and ignites the graffiti scars of Berlin’s East Side Gallery, we delve into the labyrinth of memory and division, where yesterday’s walls might crack open to reveal a harmony etched in granite and concrete.
This series has traversed multiversal realms: from Sherwood’s glades to Jerusalem’s golden stones, from Gibraltar’s rock to Laputa’s floating crags, from Oz’s emerald illusions to the limestone of the Holy Land. Post 33, the third stride in Section 6: Cities and Rocks, descends from sacred heights to the profane fractures of Europe’s twentieth-century soul—two cities where walls were built to separate peoples and then torn down, only to leave invisible barriers that still bleed when the wind turns cold.The city’s pulse throbs with ours. Beyond territory lies a saga carved in granite and concrete: Ruritanian prisoners whispering through castle dungeons, Berliners tunnelling beneath Checkpoint Charlie, lovers parted by barbed wire, Ossis who lost factories overnight, Wessis who paid the solidarity surcharge for thirty-five years, children who grew up believing the other side was the enemy—all vying for the soul of the stones. Ruritania and Berlin present a theatre where history and memory collide, where the past’s riddles guide us toward a future that refuses to repeat itself. This enigma beckons you, reader, to join Holmes, Watson, Arthur, Rassendyll, Flavia, Rupert of Hentzau, Brandt, and me on this frozen quest, where each gust unveils a clue to peace, a possibility for Ruritania’s walls and Berlin’s ghost to stand as cracked-open kin.
Descent Through Granite Corridors and Concrete Scars
Ruritania—Anthony Hope’s invention made eternal by a century of retelling—spans the imagined borderlands between Bohemia and the Balkans, its capital Strelsau a city of baroque palaces, sudden revolutions, and a castle whose dungeons have swallowed more secrets than any real fortress in Mitteleuropa. Berlin, brutally real, still carries the 155-kilometre scar where the Wall stood from 13 August 1961 to 9 November 1989, claiming at least 140 lives at the death strip and dividing a nation for twenty-eight years, two months, and twenty-seven days. My Sovereignty Conflicts (2017) reads both as classic triadic sovereignty conflicts: two claimants (East/West, Crown/Republic, Germanic north/Slavic south) locked over a populated third territory whose people refuse to be reduced to pawns on someone else’s chessboard.
The Berlin Wall fell, yet thirty-six years on, eastern salaries remain 18 % lower than western ones (Destatis 2025), pension disparities fuel resentment, and AfD strongholds bloom precisely where the death strip once lay. In Ruritania, the constitutional crisis triggered by the death of the childless King Rudolf V in early 2025 has reopened old ethnic fault-lines; Strelsau’s old town is barricaded once again, and Rupert of Hentzau’s spiritual heirs parade in black-and-scarlet uniforms, chanting for the restoration of the Elphberg dynasty. Holmes and Watson walk the death-strip-turned-bike-path in Berlin and the castle dungeons of Strelsau with the same measured tread they once used in Gibraltar’s tunnels, applying the shared-sovereignty principles I set out in Sovereignty Conflicts (2017): egalitarian consensus, efficiency, fair input-to-output ratio, and the equilibrium proviso that obliges the strong to raise the weak.
My Territorial Disputes (2020) adds the sociological fracture: Ossis and Wessis, Ruritanian Germans and Slavs, each nursing narratives of betrayal and triumph. Leader prestige still feeds on division—eastern German politicians win votes by decrying “Besserwisser” from the West; Ruritanian nationalists rally around the ghost of the Black Michael faction—yet exhaustion is growing. A 2025 Leipzig University survey found 61 % of eastern Germans and 68 % of western Germans now support a “solidarity rebalance” that would finally equalise pensions by 2030. In Strelsau, 57 % of citizens polled favour a Swiss-style cantonal federation over restoring the crown, and the youth movement “Flavia 2030” has surpassed royalist membership for the first time since the 1919 republic.
The Memory Enigma Unravelled
These disputes weave beyond stone into an intricate puzzle of memory and identity. Population sub-elements, as I detailed in 2017, render exclusive narratives impossible: ethnicity is hybrid (Pomeranian Germans who speak Sorbian, Berlin Turks who vote AfD), language flows in dialects that refuse purity, religion offers no homogeneity. In Berlin, the Wall is gone but its ghost lives in higher unemployment east of the old line, in gentrifying Prenzlauer Berg where former Ossis are priced out, in the quiet pride of those who still call the Ampelmännchen “our little man.” In Ruritania, Rudolf Rassendyll’s brief reign and Flavia’s broken heart are retold every Christmas, a reminder that duty once crushed personal freedom—yet today’s youth use it as a meme for federalism.
Historical arguments are neutralised behind the veil of ignorance: no one knows whether they will be born Ossi or Wessi, Strelsau German or Zenda Slav. Territorial Disputes (2020) explains why the wounds still bleed: prestige payoffs for politicians who weaponise memory remain high. Yet cracks appear. The 2025 “Mauerfall Plus 36” initiative—jointly funded by BMW and the eastern Länder—has created 40,000 new apprenticeships crossing the old line. In Ruritania, the newly released secret diary of the real King Rudolf V reveals he supported federalism before his death, shattering royalist myths and giving Flavia’s sacrifice a new meaning: she did not die for a crown, but for a country that could one day choose its own future.
A Chorus of Cracked Stone
Conquest seals memory; riddling cracks it open. In Berlin, the old death strip becomes a green belt of shared gardens where Thuringian apple trees grow beside Brandenburg cherries; solidarity-surcharge revenues finally equalise pensions by 2030 and fund maker-spaces in Cottbus, Leipzig, and Dresden. In Ruritania, the castle dungeons of Zenda are transformed into a truth-and-reconciliation museum where Germanic and Slavic schoolchildren co-curate exhibits about the 1905 uprising and the 1919 republic. The workable institutions I outlined in 2017 come alive: joint security (Bundeswehr and eastern state police train together under unified command), co-owned cultural resources (Goethe-Institut and Sorbian cultural centres share budgets and staff), compound executive (rotating federal presidency alternating east/west, north/south), legislative assembly of equal regional delegates, Higher Court with judges from every Land and every Ruritanian canton, veto rights on identity and language issues. Revenue funds flow transparently—forty percent initial share to the richer west/north, thirty percent to the poorer east/south, ten percent to minority languages and cultures, twenty percent locked for equilibrium investment until parity is reached, after which the fund becomes a permanent innovation endowment.
A Conclave of Riddlers
In a frost-rimed courtyard where Strelsau’s castle meets the Brandenburg Gate beneath a sky heavy with snow, the company gathers. Rupert of Hentzau, ever the devil’s advocate, lounges against a pillar with that dangerous smile; Rudolf Rassendyll stands grave and thoughtful, the weight of a borrowed crown still on his brow; Princess Flavia, regal even in memory, clasps Colonel Sapt’s arm. Willy Brandt lights a cigarette with trembling hands; Walter Ulbricht’s ghost scowls from the shadows; a young woman who danced on the Wall in 1989 holds a piece of concrete painted with a rainbow; Konrad Adenauer’s shade watches quietly from the steps of the Reichstag.
Brandt speaks first, voice rough with decades of cigarettes and hope: “We knelt in Warsaw because someone had to begin.” Rassendyll replies softly: “And I wore a crown that was not mine so that a kingdom might live.” Rupert laughs, low and dangerous: “All crowns are borrowed, cousin—some of us simply refuse to give them back.” Flavia’s voice cuts like winter steel: “Then let the people own the kingdom together, and no one need borrow or steal.”
I step forward, citing Sovereignty Conflicts (2017): “Egalitarian shared sovereignty—consensus, efficiency, equilibrium. The pre-requisites are already here: non-domination, basic liberties, a law of peoples that treats every region as equal.”
Holmes, breath fogging in the cold, deduces: “Pilot zone: Thuringia and Saxony jointly govern the old death-strip parks for five years. Transparent ledgers. Measurable trust. Extend to Strelsau’s old town if successful.” Watson adds: “Pensions equalised by 2030, apprenticeships doubled, cultural budgets merged.” Arthur lays Excalibur flat on the frost: “A round table in the old Reichstag—seats for every Land and every Ruritanian canton, no one higher than another.” Sapt growls approval; Fritz von Tarlenheim salutes; even Rupert of Hentzau lowers his sword a fraction, eyes gleaming with calculation rather than murder.
Discussion evolves. Adenauer insists on legal continuity; Ulbricht’s ghost demands worker protections; the 1989 dancer insists on youth quotas in the new assembly. Flavia proposes naming the federation after neither king nor republic, but after the river that runs through both Strelsau and Dresden. Plans are inscribed on parchment and concrete dust alike. Seeds of cracked peace take root.
Murmurs of the Cryptic Gale
A gale of cryptic doubt swirls through these streets, its howl as bitter as February wind off the Spree: “Memory divides what concrete could not—unity is a mirage on these stones!” AfD rallies still draw thousands where the Wall once stood; Ruritanian nationalists parade in black-and-scarlet, promising to restore the old order. Pension resentment, wage gaps, the lingering taste of Stasi files and Hentzau plots—each insists that the past is destiny, that some fractures never heal.Yet a clue pierces the storm. The 2025 solidarity rebalance has already begun transferring €18 billion eastward for infrastructure; young Berliners from Kreuzberg and Marzahn now code together in shared start-ups; in Strelsau, the federalist youth movement “Flavia 2030” has surpassed royalist membership for the first time. Exhaustion is cracking the stone from within—grandmothers in Cottbus who remember bread lines but want their grandchildren to know only open borders, veterans in Zenda who laid down rifles because they are tired of saluting ghosts. Territorial Disputes (2020) reminds us that prestige once paid leaders to keep the wounds open, but the payoff matrix has flipped: voters now punish those who traffic in yesterday’s grievances.
Peace is a riddle solved deeper than conquest, nurtured by guarantors who learned from Latin America’s ninety-two percent success rate. It grows in the small places first—a Thuringian garden where former Ossis and Wessis plant apple trees together, a Strelsau café where Germanic and Slavic students argue over football instead of flags, a transparent ledger that lets a pensioner in Görlitz and a hipster in Prenzlauer Berg see exactly where their taxes go. The gale still howls, but its voice is no longer the only sound: beneath it, the quiet scrape of Excalibur laid flat as a pledge, the measured tread of Holmes seeking evidence over ideology, the soft click of Watson’s pen recording trust—these are the murmurs of a cryptic gale beginning to change direction, carrying seeds of cracked peace across granite and concrete alike.
Why This Resonates in You
Ruritania’s walls and Berlin’s ghost thread into your essence. A grandmother’s tale of escape tunnels, a teenager’s first kiss across a fallen barrier, a heart still divided by memories you never lived. The Borders We Share beckons you to crack their legacy—memory, forgiveness, tomorrow—above the clash of stone. This is your enigma, an invitation to tend the wild bonds that unite us. Next Tuesday, Post 34 explores new cities and rocks. I’m Dr. Jorge (X: @DrJorge_World ), shaping these tales into a book you’ll cradle. Visit https://drjorge.world — join me from Strelsau’s battlements to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, sowing seeds for thriving stones. Together, we transmute granite and concrete into a symphony that echoes through the ages.
Trails to Wander:
• Sovereignty Conflicts (2017).
• Territorial Disputes (2020).
• Cosmopolitanism and State Sovereignty (2023).
• Territorial Disputes in the Americas (2025).
NOTE:
New posts every Tuesday.
PREVIOUS POSTS:
Post 32: Oz’s City, Jerusalem’s Stones: Emeralds vs. Faith
NEXT POSTS:
Section 6: Cities and Rocks (Posts 31–36)
34, Laputa’s Towers, Dubai’s Fringe: Sandstone Stakes
35, Utopia’s Gates, Hebron’s Split: Ideal Cities Clash
36, Holmes’ London, Belfast’s Line: Fog of Peace
AUTHOR’S SAMPLE PEER-REVIEWED ACADEMIC RESEARCH (FREE OPEN ACCESS):
State Sovereignty: Concept and Conceptions (OPEN ACCESS) (IJSL 2024)
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Tuesday 18th November 2025
Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez
X (formerly, Twitter): https://x.com/DrJorge_World
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