Tearing down walls
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Having grown up in East Germany and defected in 1979, I have a special connection with this symbol of oppression. To most of us living behind this wall it really seemed insurmountable. For starters, unlike the West Berlin side where people had free access to the wall, in the East you could not even get close to it. If you tried to approach it you would get shot. While the West has used the wall time and time again as a staging ground of political and cultural assaults on the oppressive East German and Soviet regime, in the East the government cleared entire buildings of occupants because of the close vicinity to the wall.
From Kennedy’s famous quote of “Ich bin ein Berliner” ( I am a Berliner), to Reagan’s challenge of “Mr. Gorbachev – tear down this wall ” even down to U2 performing concerts in Berlin singing about “scale these city walls” – no other symbol in modern times has stood for the oppressive regime fostered on the former Soviet Occupation Zone after WW2.
As much as I may think this anniversary is important, it only seems that way to a minority of people in the world. German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her recent visit to Washington DC invited US President Obama to the 20th Anniversary festivities. I am told he politely declined. The Berlin Wall doesnt rank that high on current political agendas anymore. In Obama’s defense, even within Germany itself I find an entire generation of kids having grown up after the fall of this wall who nowadays have next to no connection at all with it , nor with the former East German country. Many of these teenagers who are now the same age as my own daughter point to a distorted image being handed down by parents and relatives that are having a hard time adjusting to life in the competitive world of free economies. Many members of my generation are infected with nostalgia about the old system. Freqently you will hear descriptions like ” things weren’t really that bad. We all were in it together. Everybody had work and everybody had a roof over their head” – unfortunately, much like an Adult Survivor of Child Abuse will see the former abuse in less severe terms, these folks often see East Germany through rose colored glasses of nostalgia and don’t remember having to stand in line at stores to get something as simple as bread – or the fact that every other person you meet was likely to be an informant.
Yes life is different in a free society when your no longer told what to read, think or believe. But overall I much prefer it this way.
President Obama could not make it to the 20th anniversary, neither could President Reagan for obvious reasons – but U2 can ! Bono and his group are performing under the Brandenburg Gate in a massive concert being televised via MTV Germany. Good for him.
For many years after our defection I used to have nightmares about the Stasi finding us in the US and taking us back to East Germany. As I watched the wall coming down in 1989, almost ten years after we made it into the West, sitting in the comfort of my living room in Los Angeles I did not realize how much fear I had carried with me. It wasn’t until tears streamed down my face and I cheered for all the East Berliners crossing over into the West that I sensed a mighty feeling of relieve. A weight that I did not know had been there was lifted off my shoulders.
Thinking back 20 years, it still amazes me how profoundly an event that affected 15 million East German’s in the middle of Europe also affected one singular person thousands of miles West of the Berlin Wall. Even though I had been free “on paper” for ten years already, I felt a profound sense of freedom rolling over me as I saw wave after wave of East Germans pass into the West. I laughed, cried, and clapped my hands remembering the old saying ” Would the last person leaving East Germany please turn out the lights” .
