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The Real Victims of the Knights

When you are asked what you associate with Malta, it is probably the eight-pointed red cross of the Knights of St. John that comes to your mind first. Today, this symbol is also connected with health and medicine because of the Malteser Hilfsdienst which is well-established in Germany and provides a wide range of medical services. In former times, I always thought that it was a very nice symbol the knights had chosen, but during the preparations for the market, I got to know it from another perspective and after three hours of hard work fastening a huge paper cross to the ceiling in front of the Audimax, I wondered why they had to choose exactly a cross. In fact, we had a hard struggle with this holy symbol. Of course, this is a paradox in itself.

We didn't only use metres of adhesive tape; it also took us needles, pieces of string and wooden sticks. I am sure that nobody realized what complicated ideas we worked out to manage the problem.

We needed a good portion of courage, too, especially Cathy who climbed from the ladder on the table and from the table on the ladder without touching the floor. I thought this activity to be very dangerous and so I was lucky that I was allowed to help in another way, which was to thread the string through the eye of the needle.

However, when we had finished our fight, we felt relieved that we hadn´t been injured too much and that the red stuff on our hands was only paint and not blood.

Isabelle Klapheck