For the past month we’ve been watching old news reports and new documentaries of the events in Germany leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago today. It doesn’t seem very prominent in Munich but most everywhere else, especially near the former East/West border, everyone is talking about where they were and what their reaction was 20 years ago.
Other than the few documentaries I’ve seen, I’ve had little exposure to Iron Curtain history as it relates to Germany. I’ve never been to Berlin or Rostock, I’ve been once to the Czech Republic, and only this weekend was the first time I crossed the former inner border.
Of all the Germans I’ve met in Germany, a handful of them lived in the East before German reunification. Perhaps I didn’t have the right questions but most of them seemed indifferent to the abrupt change that occurred 20 years ago.
Although the most striking observations come from people around my age, those who were about 10-12 years old when the Wall fell. They see the German reunification as a sad event because now the environment and culture they knew growing up no longer exists.
All along I figured reunification was a good thing considering the number who died trying to the cross the border, the number of people waiting in line to get milk, the number of neighbors forced to spy upon each other,…
It never occurred to me that there would be a group of people grieving over a revolution that made sense for the German people. But I do feel for them. I can’t imaging having a kind of homesickness worse than my own. At least I have the opportunity to go back home and face some familiarity.
the East and the West
This weekend we left Munich for Philippsthal to visit a Kalisalt mine. To get there we drove on the B 84, which was formerly known as the Frankfurt-Leipziger street. The road was closed off between the DDR/BRD border for 33 years from 1956 to 1989. We drove out of Hesse (Hessen, formerly of West Germany) into Thuringia (Thüringen, formerly of East Germany) and back out again. In between these two German states, we saw one of the first prototypes of an observation tower in Buttlar.
Trees and brush are still cleared along the former border and still no houses can be seen for quite aways. The first thing my eyes wandered to were the busted windows. Anybody watching me?
I didn’t noticed the graffiti remnants, “ficken”, on the side of the tower at the time of the shot. Perhaps I was calculating the chances of stepping on an old anti-personnel mine as I wandered around the tower. Even though there are no traces of barbed-wire fencing or metal barriers, the tower holds an intimidating presence. If I had the means, my inclination would be to tear it down, immediately.
Which leads me to question, why does the tower still stand? Maybe it’s symbolic: Reunification is very much still in process.
Other links:
- Innerdeutsche Grenze – external link to border pictures
- Fall of the Berlin Wall – my thoughts 4 years ago
- Feiern: Bavarian-Czech Style – Reflections driving between German and Czech Republic
The West holds the aces. And they are called “Freedom”.
I passed the border to go transit to Berlin from the West by car for the very first time when I was 18. That was back in 1985. The border scarred the shit out of me. I had to follow a ‘Grenzbeamter’ into an office where the checked my passport for half an hour. Then they stripped me and later on my car. I was too afraid to protest. That was at the border with many people from the Bundesrepublik around so figure out what they did with their own people where no “Klassenfeind” was watching.
@Ingo I hate to think that if things had been more stable economically in the East, things could have been quite different today and your story would continue on both sides of the border.
Wonderful post, Heza. And thought provoking. I think it is good to leave remnants of separation out there. Reminders. Forgetting is not acceptable.
This false nostalgia for the DDR and Soviet-era is most particularly held by those who benefitted from the repressive regimes. Like my friend’s father-in-law, who had a dacha in East Berlin, held a high political position and still refuses to go to “West” Berlin, although he was a diplomatic traveler then and is a traveller now.
These people did not lose their homes, their culture, their lives (to a very large extent- what, 140+ people murdered?), their language, their communities.
That privilege was reserved for those who seem to have been forgotten on what should be the remembrance of Kristallnacht- the beginning of the murder and destruction of all those things, by Germans, watched by Germans who generally did not care.
Here in Germany, they lost just a bit of mental and financial security, but are in one of the most well-cared for societies in the world. I more understand the mass of Russians who ignorantly proclaim Stalin to be a hero- “because he helped Russia”, as the BBC quoted this morning, and are now being downtrodden by their nepotistic oligarchs.
From the few conversations I’ve had with 30′s to 40′s-aged folks who remember it, they mostly have positive feelings about the change.
There is always some nostalgia for things from childhood… like how *special* it was to have a banana in the East… something which is now commonplace and therefore loses its special feeling. I have the same feeling about ice cream with chocolate sauce, now that I can have it any time I want. When I was a kid, ice cream with Mom’s homemade chocolate sauce was something really *special* to me.
Thanks, you all, for stopping back after a long reprieve.
@A Free Man There’s a memorial just up the road at Point Alpha I think there’s plenty there not to forget and with people running around with similar stories to Ingo, how could we?
@G I don’t have a good grasp as for the reasons for the false nostalgia but I do see similarities in these people with folks who claim to be a part of ‘real’ America. I guess it’s not possible for everyone to be pragmatic.
@Dave It’s true. Some were skeptical, yet cautiously positive. One friend told me that he didn’t believe it until one morning 10 days after the Fall. He woke up to the sight of a Trabi caravan honking down the street in front of his house.
Having lived in east Berlin before reunification, I’m stunned by the number of Germans I meet who are largely ignorant of the concept of individual freedom.
Meaningful memories are something those below 40 will will never have, but the irony is that you don’t need those memories or even a past under communism’s yoke to get the object lesson of the capitulation of the DDR.