The Fall of the Berlin Wall - Essay Example

The Fall of the Berlin Wall Introduction: Artifacts There is a very persuasive argument for the continuing memory of the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989.This argument is the abundance of artifacts: people do not collect such a lot of useless material objects in vain. The wall pieces are being sold and exhibited in the museums no less intensively than the pieces of lava from the Vesuvius Mount. One of the examples is a brick in a beautiful glass frame that had been presented to Jim Walker, Mayor of Croydon, in 1991 by some schoolchildren from East Berlin on their visit to Croydon; then, this piece of history found its place in the Croydon Museum and Heritage Service collection1. Another inspiring memorial collection is the catalogue of the Wall postcards2. The theme is present even in popular movies such as Good Bye Lenin!: in one of the episodes, the protagonist tries to find “these exact Soviet cucumbers” for his mother who lives in her memories about GDR3. This trend of missing the atmosphere of Eastern Germany has acquired a common name ‘Ostalgia’ that has also been the name of the exhibition of “the work of more than fifty artists from twenty countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics”4 once. It is difficult to ignore such conspicuous numbers of artifacts. What, then, is witnessed by all these silent bricks and gloomy postcards? The fall of the Berlin Wall was not merely a local event: it marked a significant transition in the world history. Before the analysis of the wall’s significance, it is important to describe how everything happened. The Wall Falling With the ‘Ostalgic’ sentiment for small and beautiful things in mind, it might be surprising how fierce Berliners once attacked the wall. In November of 1989, when the checkpoints of the borderline were opened, people started climbing the wall from both east and west sides, often behaving violently: they threw the stones and bottles on the wall’s guards, cried out, and smashed the wall with sledgehammers and jackhammers5. At the same time, the atmosphere was cheerful, with street art, jokes, and family reunions6. The overall impression of the event is aptly described by Taylor: “It will be followed by the biggest, wildest street party the world has ever seen”7. All the sources list November 9-10, 1989, as the date of the wall falling: however, technically, this was not true. As one of the reporters of the time observed, “Physically the Berlin wall still stands. But its capacity to divide a country and a Continent seems at an end”8. These are the dates when Politburo opened the borders and followed by the opening of the Brandeburg Gate on December, 229. But even those dates are, in a sense, inaccurate: long before the opening of the border between the Communist (GDR) and democratic Germany (FRG), there was a strong movement of civil disobedience on both sides of the city. Interestingly, in FRG, it was often located in… churches: the activists for civil rights, free media and elections, gay rights, and anti-nuclear movement, used to gather in Berlin churches10. The movement was clearly divided into those who wanted the opening of the wall for more mobility and so-called ‘here-stayers’ who struggled for the better political climate in their country11. East Germans were inclined to stay and change their government, like it happened in Poland and Croatia (the countries that had been first to destroy the Iron curtain)12. One of the most influential groups in the Eastern part was the ‘New Forum’ formed in September and supported by prominent German intellectuals that demanded the free open dialogue between the government and the people13. Gorbachov started to feel the loss of control; Erich Honecker, the head of the DDR (Eastern) Politburo, provided the strict non-crossing politics and was replaced with Egon Krenz on 17 October14. This was Krenz’s order to open the checkpoints that was quickly transmitted by media on 9 November and provoked an unprecedented reaction15. But even Krenz did not seem reliable enough and was soon replaced with yet another person, Hans Modrow, who tried to save the socialist government for the cost of the reforms, but with no result: on 23 September, Eastern and Western Germany were united to be soon joined by Berlin16. Reasons for the Controversy In brief, in 1989, Berlin was long since divided between the main victors in World War II: the eastern part went to the USSR, the western ha to be run by the representatives of Great Britain, France, and the US17. The governments were strikingly different, which later resulted in considerable economic disproportion18. The socialist regime had given most of the Germans social protection with the emphasis upon family and values; the economy was regulated mostly by state, so the unemployment and other dole payments were high, but there was deficit for some goods, and most of the citizens were neither poor nor rich, with strictly regulated level of income19. This all, with added censorship, was comparatively inattractive for Eastern Germans, so they moved actively to the Western part of Berlin: the first 15 years after the war were the period when approximately 3 million of Germans left the Eastern part in favor for the Western one20. In order to prevent this workforce migration, the Soviet government initiated the building of the guarded barbed-wire wall (1961)21. Some historians believe that this measure was not only protective but also imperialistic: the USSR might have sought control over East Germany, which is proven by the fact that despite the internal difficulties, the Union made the GDR dependent upon its product supplies in 1960s22. The border had strong suppressive connotations from the very beginning, and this did not become easier when hundreds of people were killed either crossing the border or on their guard there23. The Meaning of the Wall The very fact of division was painful for Berliners: the city has been the imperial capital since 187124. The separation of it meant the separation of the core of national identity, which is especially significant because the country had been dispersed also before the formation of empire. In addition, this division was openly regarded as the way to punish Germans for their (willing or, for some, unwilling) participation in the inhumane war. The wall was the symbol of control over them and a painful reminder about the alienation from their own families – and, in a sense, from mankind (by being associated with Nazi crimes)25. Less symbolically loaded, but perhaps even more significant was the fact that the wall maintenance required plenty of human and material resources that could have otherwise been spent on the social and economic growth. The monetary cost of the Berlin Wall was 400 million Ostmarks; and 38 million more had o spent on the improvements of the wall per year26. 239 escape casualties are estimated for the period from 1961 to 198927; among the guards, there were at least 29 deaths, part of which might have been suicides28. The men guarding the wall were, in a sense, the loss of workforce which the USSR was trying to prevent: they could have been employed in other sectors, not even mentioning their abandoned families29. The painful paradox of serving merciless, inhumane, health-destroying mechanism was so immensely described in the Western Modernist novels that historians even mention Kafka’s wall metaphors30. And it was terrible (though not a coincidence) that this traumatic literary fantasy had parallels in real life experience. Last but not least, the border was ideological. It separated friends and families, and not only physically but also by some choice, either the one that they consciously made or the one that had been forcefully assigned to them31. Actually, this was not the choice between black Communism and white Democracy: it was between two major groups of actors in the Cold War32. That is, for Germans, the end of the wall was the end of this (often forced) participation in the struggle of imperial forces and resulting alienation; for the world, it was the first sign of the end of the prolonged controversy causing losses of lives, technical, and environmental resources. Routines Life in Berlin in Cold War times was very peculiar. Firstly, it was characterized by a serious generation gap in politics: the generation growing into adulthood within the decade after the Wall was built had no experience of any other kind of society. As one East German woman born around 1950 would say after 1989, she had not realized before the fall of the Wall that the place she lived in was so shabby, so grey, or its air so polluted33. The life of youth was very different in two parts of Berlin. In the Eastern part of the city, young Berliners were educated in the military-like schools and prosecuted for identification with any subculture like punks; in the Western part, the freedom was so much that young people spent their free time in protesting against the rights violations in the far countries while enjoying comfortable Western lifestyle34. Conclusion: What Remains Nowadays, the Berlin Wall is a part of history: more than 1km of it serves as the background for galleries and a 214m part has been reconstructed for the historical purposes35. The event was neither tragic nor actually fortunate: it was the happiness of escaping the greater evil, the end of the human-made problem. This is the way Berliners keep memory of it: one of the factors of the endless diversity of the city, with its Western liberalism rich and welfare and at the same time rich Leftist environment and orientation on communal living. Surprisingly, the long hated symbol of alienation has gained the significance of a uniting factor. Bibliography Chicco, Matthew and Oliver Schnabel. “The Berlin Wall: Cold War Symbol of a World”, 2011. Retrieved November 27, 2012 from people.hofstra.edu/ Good Bye Lenin! Dir. by Wolfgang Becker . X-Filme Creative Pool, Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), ARTE, 2003. Major, Patrick. Behind the Berlin Wall: East Germany and the Frontiers of Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Ostalgia: The 07/06/11 - 10/02/11 Exhibition. New Exhibitions Museum, 2011. Retrieved November 27, 2012 from http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/ostalgia Piece of the Berlin Wall, 1991. London: Croydon Museum and Heritage Service. Retrieved November 27, 2012 from http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/cmhs-t-135-b. Rottman, Gordon L. The Berlin Wall and the Intra-German Border 1961-89. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2008. Taylor, Frederick. The Berlin Wall: a World Divided, 1961-89. Harper-Collins e-books. Retrieved November 27, 2012 from http://gen.lib.rus.ec/. W. Berliner-Mauer, Postcards of the Berlin Wall. 2003. Collecting Pages. Retrieved November 27, 2012 from http://www.webring.org/hub?ring=theberlinwallweb;id=2;ac=%40%03yaiUIL%B2%BF%A8%9A%D0%DE%B4%BE%A4%E4%C7%DD%8Bpf5GJK%2F%249%04%19%18%1E%FC%F6%EF%89%C2%DE%EA%8D%BC%91%81%9El%5BwLF%1B;go. Williams, Brian. The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 10 November 1989. London: Cherrytree Books, 2007. Read More