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WHEN THE BERLIN WALL FELL
Thoughts
EXPERIENCES IN THE WEST
Peter Richter
On the evening of November 9, 1989, the Wall fell in Berlin – and with
it the frontier that had divided Germany for 28 years. The very same
night, thousands of GDR citizens rushed to the border with West
Berlin. Although they had no official order, the border guards opened
the crossings. Complete strangers from East and West fell into one
another’s arms, spontaneously celebrating the opening of the Wall
together. Germany experienced a night of jubilation, a night that was
to change the world.
Willy Brandt, the honorary chairman of the SPD, appeared at the
Brandenburg Gate the next morning and announced a little later in
front of Schöneberg City Hall: “Now what belongs together will grow
together.” The newspaper headlines read: “Berlin is again Berlin” and
“Germany cries tears of joy”.
Exploring the West
In the days that followed, millions of GDR citizens headed westward in
their Trabi and Wartburg cars – many of them travelled to the Federal
Republic for the first time in their lives, visited relatives, explored
cities and landscapes – as well as western “shopping paradises” with
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100 marks of “Welcome Money” from the Federal Republic in their
pockets.
What had happened? On November 9, shortly before 7 p.m., during an
international press conference, Günter Schabowski, a member of the
SED Politburo, had hesitantly announced a new, liberal exit rule live in
front of television cameras. In reply to a question, Schabowski
explained that as far as he was aware the policy would come into
effect “immediately, without delay.” This news, which had not been
approved in that form by the GDR government, spread throughout the
GDR at lightning speed and triggered the opening of the border
crossings in Berlin – and the fall of the Wall.
This historic day had been preceded by mass exoduses from the GDR
during summer 1989 (via Hungary and Czechoslovakia) and
remarkable demonstrations by the opposition movement within the
GDR in which civil rights activists had publicized their criticisms and
their demands for the first time (for example, during the Monday
Demonstrations in Leipzig). Both these put a massive strain on the
GDR’s structures, especially when it soon became clear that on this
occasion the Soviet Union did not have any interest – unlike in
Hungary in 1956, Prague in 1968, or Poland in 1980 – in putting down
the protest movement by force. The “gentle revolution” produced a
kind of paralysis within the GDR government authorities. On October
18, 1989, the resignation of Erich Honecker, the man who had been
SED general secretary and chairman of the State Council for many
years, triggered a collapse of the SED regime that his successor Egon
Krenz was also unable to stabilize.
However, the collapse of the GDR and German reunification 11 months
later, on October 3, 1990, would have been practically inconceivable
without the changes that had occurred in the Soviet Union from the
mid-1980s onwards. The new state and party leader, Mikhail
Gorbachev, had introduced wide-ranging reforms in the USSR.
Gorbachev also forswore the Soviet Union’s hegemony over the
Eastern Bloc. Above all, Poland and Hungary seized the new
opportunities. In May 1989, the Hungarians began cutting a
substantial hole in the Iron Curtain. The complete opening up of the
Hungarian frontier to the West then followed on September 11, 1989.
Following the peaceful revolution in the GDR, the reunification of the
two German states moved nearer – an event that many people had no
longer believed possible. Before that, however, the first free elections
to the People’s Chamber were held on March 18, 1990. The main
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issues during the election campaign were the method for and the
speed of the desired unification with West Germany. On May 18, 1990,
the Treaty on Economic, Monetary and Social Union was signed. Since
the GDR’s economic system was no longer capable of reform, the GDR
assumed the
economic system of
Links
the Federal
Republic on July 1, 1990. Soon afterwards, consultations began in
Berlin on the future shape of a unification treaty. Even before these
negotiations were concluded, in a special session on August 23, 1990,
the People’s Chamber resolved that the GDR should accede to the
jurisdiction of the Basic Law on October 3, 1990.
The reunification
Because of the rights and responsibilities of the four Second World War
victor nations towards Germany as a whole and Berlin, reunification
could not be accomplished without their consent. In February 1990,
the victor powers agreed to joint negotiations with the two German
states. The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany,
September 12, 1990, regulated the international legal aspects of
reunification. Germany thereby regained its full sovereignty.
During the evening leading up to October 3, 1990, thousands of people
celebrated the GDR’s accession to the territory of the Federal Republic
in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. Finally, after four decades,
Germany’s national unity was restored.
26.07.2004
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Division overcome? Don’t you believe it! Not even in Berlin. Not even
in the apartment ads: “Close to Bernauer Strasse U-Bahn station,” it
said. A girlfriend of mine excitedly phoned the real estate agent:
“South or north of Bernauer Strasse?” The agent switched to delay
tactics: “Fantastic apartment, big, cheap…” The girlfriend, impatiently:
“South or north?” “Well, maybe a couple of metres north of Bernauer
Strasse,” the agent sighed, “but…”
No but. And no chance either. She’d hung up. The poor estate agent.
The poor West. Of course, you have to know that the East is in the
South and the West is in the North. Get it? I hope so, because that’s
the least complicated bit about the whole setup. Bernauer Strasse is
the road that divides the district of Wedding, old West Berlin, from the
district of Mitte that used to belong to East Berlin. And those few
metres still divide worlds, even now! But now, things are the opposite
way around, compared to when the Wall existed. It’s here, at Bernauer
Strasse, that almost all of those famous Wall photos were taken: of
the people a couple of floors up suicidally jumping from their later
walled-up windows into the West, of the East German People’s
policeman making his last-minute leap over the barbed wire as the
Wall went up. And the strangest thing is: this osmotic pressure that, at
the time, compelled people to change sides almost by law of nature –
can still be felt today, after fifteen years without the Wall, the border
guards with their orders to shoot on sight and the barbed wire. But
now, thank goodness, it’s taken on a far more harmless guise. The
thing is that the difference in living conditions and the associated
social prestige have changed direction.
Today, the promise of a better, brighter, more exciting life now resides
on the east of the old Wall borderline, where newcomers from “West
Germany” and the rest of the world celebrate a never-ending BerlinMitte party in the renovated ruins of Socialism together with the last
surviving East Germans.
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In my case, my mind was boggled more or less the moment I set foot
in the West. It was a week after the Wall was opened, when I finally
got my very first chance to go “over the other side” – I could never
have imagined for a second how incredibly difficult it would be to get
rid of my money in this cold, insensitive capitalist world. The media in
both the East and the West had constantly made quite the opposite
ominous prophecies. Everyone is just after your money, and when it’s
all gone, you’re finished as a human being, and you end up on welfare.
But there you are with your “Welcome-to-the-West” hundred mark
note stuck in your wallet, just like when West Germans visited the
GDR with their compulsory exchange of twenty-five East marks that
they just couldn’t get rid of during their day trip to East Berlin. What
could they buy anyway? As it happened, when I stepped into the West,
I actually entered Wedding, and for the first few metres all I could do
was stare in amazement at all the different western cars, although
even then most cars in that area were second-hand Opels rather than
brand new Mercedes limousines. But when you’re so new, it takes a
while to acquire the necessary fine tuning in such important matters as
status and prestige symbols.
But one thing was crystal clear: that the hundred mark note I’d just
accepted a bit bashfully in the first bank I came to, my welcoming gift
from the Federal government, was different. The difference between
these hundred D-marks and a hundred East marks was like the
difference between a valuable Dürer drawing and a pathetic potato
print. And apart from that, or maybe because of the special reverence
attributed to it: this banknote was far too big for my puny little
eastern wallet, so that it always stuck out over the edge and
eventually ended up crumpled. I then tried to change the note on the
bus. The driver saw my blue-coloured GDR ID card – and just waved
me on.
I got off at the New National Gallery. I’d be happy if I could tell you
that I spent my first West cash on a museum visit rather than on
bananas. But for people from the East entrance to the museums was
free too. Then, when I wanted to buy a postcard (Barnett Newman!
Abstract!! Free West!!!), the sales assistant looked at me in
amazement. The card cost fifty pfennigs. She then sold it to me for
one East mark. At the end of this first day in the West I still hadn’t
spent any of my hundred mark note, but I’d had a foretaste of the
West’s generosity and the lurking resentments we’d be facing in the
future.
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Fifteen years later: there are still Westerners who have never once set
foot in the East, and most likely never will. Those who come to the
East and get involved sometimes meet with animosity. Even now. In
2004. Meanwhile, East Germans find it hard to understand why they
should have to work longer hours than colleagues in the West, but
only be paid 80 percent of their wages. For a West German it’s hard to
understand why people in the East should even be getting 80 percent
when productivity there is only 70 percent. Meanwhile, the number of
billions that have been poured into the East from the West is almost
incalculable. But the number of places where the billions have really
been effective is pretty easy to count.
In my opinion old West Berlin is the clear loser in the aftermath of
change, compared with the East which is where the money’s going
now. It doesn’t bear thinking about, that originally the luxurious but no
longer affordable social systems of the Federal Republic may well have
been a product of a social arms race between the two German states –
and so they have to be dismantled just like all the other Cold War
relics. The happy end of this Cold War, the miracle of the fall of the
Wall – sometimes they seem so damned far away, now that everyday
life and the intra-German mood are once again mundanely ruled by
money. And the mood at the moment is extremely touchy.
Peter Richter
The columnist and bestseller author was born in Dresden in 1973 and
now lives in Berlin
26.07.2004
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Emotions
By Erna Lackner
EDGAR REITZ HEIMAT 3 CHRONICLE OF AN
EPOCH
Links
Something that no author has succeeded in doing in German literature
has been achieved by the film director Edgar Reitz in the, now
complete, “Heimat” trilogy: presenting the 20th century as a novel
made up of numerous life stories. The art of film-making can certainly
notch this up as a quiet triumph. “Heimat 3 – Von der Wende zur
Wende” starts on November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall came
down, with a private reunification in a Berlin hotel, a euphoric night for
Hermann and Clarissa. In the midst of the turbulence of German
reunification, they decide never to part. In the third part of “Heimat”
the main protagonists, portrayed again by Henry Arnold and Salome
Kammer, will once again lure us into the great, historically accurate
world of the emotional film. In 26 episodes so far, it made television
history – and viewers addicted to Schabbach, the scene of the action.
Edgar Reitz always wanted to tell a love story with a happy ending. He
does this in “Heimat 3” in a dual sense, setting the events around the
musician couple Hermann and Clarissa in the decade after the
“historical turning-point” in Germany, the fall of the Wall between East
and West. Twelve years of contemporary history reflected in the life of
a family, a novel to look at, artistically valuable television.
“The fall of the Wall was first and foremost a great blessing. And all
the emotions awakened by it have been included in the first two
episodes. Viewers will see their memories fully confirmed,” Reitz
promises. Edgar Reitz has a hell of a task behind him. “Staging a line
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of Trabis at a border crossing in the year 2002 meant recreating
historical circumstances.” Shooting the heady days of 1989, in BerlinOst, Leipzig, Dresden, was by no means simpler than conveying a
pictorial impression of the 1920s or the 1960s in “Heimat” (The
Hunsrück Saga, 1984) and “Die zweite Heimat” (The Second Home,
1993).
“Today there’s nothing left of the GDR, not a street, nor a building.
Nothing is like what it used to be. The cities in East Germany have
changed more than anything else in Europe. Thirteen years on, it was
no longer possible to simply set up a camera and shoot. It’s all film
sets!” Did that astonish him? “What do you mean, astonish! It cost
money! By the time I had finished the screen play, I realized time was
working against me. Every year that passed made the film more
expensive.” It took seven years for Reitz to arrange the financing of
the new cycle, which this time has only six parts.
Christmas 2004, fifteen years after the fall of the Wall, “Heimat 3” is
scheduled to be the German television event of the year. And again
Edgar Reitz can reckon with international attention. From Sydney to
Oslo, Montreal to Warsaw, the first two parts of the saga from the
Hunsrück, that hilly stretch of land along the Rhine, were a success.
The “Corriere della Sera” ranked it among the best things to have been
produced in European film history, while the “New York Times”
counted it among the best television works in the world.
Edgar Reitz looks youthful, indeed boyish, for his 72 years. At the
same time, he also radiates a concentration such as can only develop
through many years of creative work. Like Volker Schlöndorff or
Alexander Kluge, Reitz is one of the greats of the New German Film,
which in the early 1960s was to revolutionize German cinema. The
Heimat Trilogy is actually his life’s work, the one that gained him the
greatest success. “To make a film scene is a great thrill for me. To
translate something into reality which until then only existed in my
mind.” And when someone weaves 32 stories into a cosmos, whereby
each film can stand alone, then this is only possible through
perseverance.
Munich, a fine old house in the Schwabing district. Edgar Reitz came
here at the age of 19, from the Hunsrück, like his film protagonist
Hermann, and Munich is also a “second home” for the director, as it is
for “Hermännche” in the film cycle. It is where his company, his
family, his friends are. Reitz’ complete oeuvre can be seen as an
engagement with the feeling that is Heimat, with leaving it, longing for
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it, wishing to remain in it. Today it is no longer a risk to use the word
Heimat in a title. “But twenty years ago, you could not utter the word
without getting caught up in an ideological mire.” And it was soon was
taken up wrongly. Edgar Reitz chose “the old German word” because it
is such an appropriate term, and cannot be translated into many
languages. The word has since become an international success along
with his film epic.
It soon became clear that Reitz was not dabbling in sentimentality.
And he also did not get held up by the conservative idea of not wishing
to leave the home ground of one’s childhood. “Anyone who becomes
entangled in that idyll will be hopelessly lost.” With the fictional village
of Schabbach he may well have described, with striking sobriety, a
world which at the beginning of the last century still knew a happiness
of its own – and which for many people was a moving experience, as a
gaze at the past. Yet he also pitted his memory of home against a
changed reality; the First World War had already destroyed that home.
Paul, having returned from the war, ups and leaves. Decades later,
Hermann flees; “Die zweite Heimat” was about the departure of a
whole generation.
At the end of the century, in “Heimat 3,” everyone is on the move.
Today Edgar Reitz sees Heimat as an individual task. Anyone who
participates in shaping the place he lives in creates Heimat. “Our
physical self and our psychological constitution are unsuited to not
having a home somewhere. Abstract networks, all the Internet
utopias, are not real. If sensuality is not involved, we lose all our
creative powers.”
For many years the conductor Hermann and the singer Clarissa lived a
jet-set life. Now, having become lovers late in life, they are renovating
a half-timber house in a dream location among the vineyards above
the Rhine, opposite the Loreley. Their picture-book house is the centre
of the six “Heimat 3” episodes. Or rather the intersection where paths
of lives cross, the lives of Hermann’s relatives from Schabbach, of
energetic East German construction workers, of Russian-Germans
housed in the US Army settlements after reunification and the
departure of the military.
Although the new departure after German reunification is not all that
long ago, for the storyteller Edgar Reitz it is a closed chapter in
history. Distance is the most important prerequisite for narrative. Reitz
views many developments with scepticism, but as a film director he is
an incorrigible optimist! He loves his protagonists. He believes in them.
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The power of imagination and the will to survive repeatedly enable
people to form new concepts. That is actually what Heimat creates.
And when he lets his characters die, “then not to make people sad, but
to make them aware of their love. How do you talk about love? Love
takes place inside, is often an incomprehensible feeling, even for the
people experiencing it. Someone loves someone else. If I want the
viewers to love a character, I have to cause that person pain. Only
then is compassion possible. If I leave the character unscathed, I don’t
reach hearts. If I leave them all alive, the film is more beautiful than
life itself – and people back off. I only let characters die so that they
can be loved even more.”
In “Heimat 3” the young people have grown old. “Yes, you see things
disappear, yet on the other hand, you see great things in the offing.”
But we do not want to believe that “Heimat” is complete as a trilogy;
after all, two new generations are already on the threshold. Hermann’s
daughter Lulu, and little Matthias Paul Anton, who at the age of 18,
that is in the year 2014, will inherit millions. We certainly want to
know how matters develop. It can’t just stop!
Edgar Reitz repeats the sentence. “It can’t just stop. That’s what I
have also discovered – as a dramatic principle. Normally, you invent
an end as a response to the beginning. But what I do has no end, does
not seek an end, does not want an end. I believe that I have come
closer to the secret of life through this narrative principle. We all know
that life has an end. But in common parlance we say: Life goes on.
And life goes on!”
The New Year’s Eve of the year 2000, with which “Heimat 3” ends, will
not have been the end. Some of his “Heimat” characters are very close
to Edgar Reitz’ heart. For example, he would like to tell us how ...
ERNA LACKNER
The Viennese journalist is known for her essayistic reports and
portraits
26.07.2004
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19.11.1988
Verbot der sowjetischen Zeitschrift „Sputnik“ in der DDR signalisiert
Distanzierung von der Reformpolitik Gorbatschows.
02.05.1989
Öffnung der ungarischen Grenze nach Österreich.
07.05.1989
98,85 % Ja-Stimmen bei den Kommunalwahlen in der DDR.
Oppositionsgruppen gelingt der Nachweis von Wahlfälschungen.
05.06.1989
Das „Neue Deutschland“ bezeichnet die Ermordung Tausender
friedlicher Demonstranten auf dem Pekinger „Platz des himmlischen
Friedens“ (4.6.1989) als Antwort auf „den konterrevolutionären
Aufstand einer extremistischen Minderheit“.
August 1989
DDR-Bürger flüchten in die bundesdeutschen Vertretungen in
Ostberlin, Budapest und Prag
10.09.1989
Nach dem Beschluss der ungarischen Regierung, Tausende von DDRBürgern in den Westen ausreisen zu lassen, beginnt eine Massenflucht
über Ungarn. Ungarn kündigt am nächsten Tag einseitig alle
Reiseabkommen mit der DDR.
11./12.09.1989
Gründungsaufrufe des „Neuen Forums“, der Bürgerbewegung
„Demokratie jetzt“ und der Gruppe „Demokratischer Aufbruch“.
07.10.1989
Festveranstaltung zum 40. Jahrestag der DDR-Gründung im Beisein
von Gorbatschow („Gefahren warten nur auf jene, die nicht auf das
Leben reagieren.“).
09.10.1989
Mehr als 50000 friedliche Demonstranten treten in Leipzig für mehr
Demokratie ein. Die SED-Führung schreckt vor dem Einsatz
militärischer Gewalt zurück. Am Folgetag bieten namhafte SEDVertreter den Oppositionsgruppen den Dialog an. Zwei Wochen später
werden in Leipzig 250000 Menschen demonstrieren.
18.10.1989
Egon Krenz löst Honecker als SED-Generalsekretär ab. Am 24.10. wird
er auch Staatsratsvorsitzender. Am 31.10. besucht Krenz demonstrativ
Gorbatschow.
06.11.1989
Nachdem Ausreisewillige die DDR wieder unbehelligt über die CSSR
verlassen können, kündigt das „Neue Deutschland“ einen halbherzigen
Gesetzentwurf über Auslandsreisen an.
08.11.1989
Nach dem geschlossenen Rücktritt der DDR-Regierung (7.11.)
Neuwahl des Politbüros, in dem nun Reformer, „Wendehälse“ und
Konservative vertreten sind.
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09.11.1989
Die SED verkündet am Abend im Fernsehen, „ab sofort“ gelte
Reisefreiheit. Diese in ihrem Zustandekommen nicht völlig geklärte
Ankündigung führt zur Öffnung der Mauer und zu einer euphorischen
Feier an vielen Grenzübergängen. In den folgenden Tagen besuchen
Millionen von DDR-Bürgern die BRD.
13.11.1989
Hans Modrow wird Vorsitzender des Ministerrates
(Regierungserklärung: Trennung von Staat und Partei,
Wirtschaftsreform, Vertragsgemeinschaft).
22.11.1989
Das Politbüro schlägt den Blockparteien und der Opposition Gespräche
am „Runden Tisch“ vor (Themen: Wahlgesetz, Verfassungsreform).
Der „Runde Tisch“ wird in der Folgezeit zur faktischen Nebenregierung
der DDR.
28.11.1989
Für In- und Ausland überraschend verkündet Bundeskanzler Kohl sein
„10-Punkte-Programm“ zur Wiedervereinigung. Während vor allem
DDR-Schriftsteller gegen diesen Plan opponieren, verändern Leipziger
Montagsdemonstranten ihre Parole „Wir sind das Volk!“ in „Wie sind
ein Volk!“. Die internationalen Reaktionen sind zunächst skeptisch.
01.02.1990
Modrow-Stufenplan zur deutschen Einheit (Neutralität des
wiedervereinigten Deutschland).
05.02.1990
Neun Minister der Oppositionsgruppen werden in die Regierung
Modrow eingebunden, die Volkskammer bestätigt die neue „Regierung
der nationalen Verantwortung“ und legt Wahlen auf den 18.3.1990 fest.
10.02.1990
Kohl und Genscher erreichen bei Gesprächen mit dem amerikanischen
und dem sowjetischen Außenminister prinzipielle Zustimmung zur
Wiedervereinigung.
13.02.1990
Kohl lehnt eine umfassende Wirtschaftshilfe für die DDR vor den
Volkskammerwahlen ab, da die gegenwärtige Regierung der DDR nicht
demokratisch legitimiert sei. Gleichzeitig vereinbart er mit Modrow die
Vorbereitung einer Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion.
14.02.1990
Tagung der Außenminister der NATO und des Warschauer Paktes in
Ottawa: Nach der Volkskammerwahl sollen innenpolitische Aspekte
der Vereinigung zwischen beiden deutsche Staaten geklärt werden,
außenpolitische Gesichtspunkte anschließend mit den Siegermächten.
28.02.1990
Nach anfänglich gegenteiliger Auffassung erklärt sich Kohl mit einer
formellen Anerkennung der Oder-Neiße-Grenze durch beide deutsche
Parlamente einverstanden. Seinen Plan, die Grenzanerkennung mit
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einem polnischen Reparationsverzicht zu verknüpfen, muss er wenig
später aufgrund bestürzter Reaktionen im In- und Ausland
zurückziehen.
18.03.1990
Bei den Volkskammerwahlen siegt überraschend die konservative
Allianz unter Führung der CDU. Jetzt kommt es zur großen Koalition
von CDU, SPD, DA, DSU und BFD unter Ministerpräsident Lothar de
Maizière.
18.05.1990
„Vertrag über die Schaffung einer Währungs-, Wirtschafts- und
Sozialunion“ (Staatsvertrag). Nur ein Betrag bis 6000 M der
Ersparnisse von DDR-Bürgern kann 1:1 umgetauscht werden (darüber
hinaus 1:2, Löhne und Renten jedoch 1:1). Die Wirtschaftsunion führt
zunächst zu einer deutlichen Verschärfung der ökonomischen Situation
in der DDR. Der 02.12.1990 wird als Termin der ersten
gesamtdeutschen Bundestagswahl festgelegt.
31.08.1990
„Vertrag zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Deutschen
Demokratischen Republik über die Herstellung der Einheit
Deutschlands“ regelt den für den 3. Oktober geplanten Beitritt.
12.09.1990
Endgültige außenpolitische Bestätigung der Vereinigung durch das
Zwei-Plus-Vier-Treffen in Moskau: „Vertrag über die abschließende
Regelung in bezug auf Deutschland“.
03.10.1990
Beitritt der wieder geschaffenen fünf Länder der DDR zur
Bundesrepublik nach Art. 23 GG (gesetzlicher Feiertag).
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