{"id":142,"date":"2006-08-13T11:22:56","date_gmt":"2006-08-13T18:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/archives\/2006\/08\/13\/the-wall\/"},"modified":"2006-08-13T11:22:56","modified_gmt":"2006-08-13T18:22:56","slug":"the-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2006\/08\/the-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wall<\/a> was put up 45 years ago today, an event that seemed to define the Cold War. I lived in Ber\u00adlin for a few years, start\u00ading in 1988; to me the concept of a city belong\u00ading to West Ger\u00admany being in the middle of East Ger\u00admany sur\u00adroun\u00added by a sys\u00adtem of walls pur\u00adpose\u00adfully designed to make it easy to shoot people try\u00ading to cross was pro\u00adfoundly unnat\u00adur\u00adal. For those Ger\u00admans who\u2019d been born (as I had) since the build\u00ading of the Wall, it was nat\u00adur\u00adal, it was what they\u2019d always known. I remem\u00adber long dis\u00adcus\u00adsions with friends early in 1989, as the Com\u00admun\u00adist sys\u00adtems star\u00adted to wobble and crumble, wheth\u00ader and when East and West Ger\u00admany could become one again. As late as June 1989 it was\u00adn\u2019t at all some\u00adthing that people allowed them\u00adselves to believe in. Most people I talked to seemed to think the Allies (the US<\/span>, the Soviet Uni\u00adon, Great Bri\u00adtain, and France, the four \u201cwin\u00adning powers\u201d) would\u00adn\u2019t allow Ger\u00admany to ever again be a large, power\u00adful coun\u00adtry. And indeed it took a lot of dis\u00adcus\u00adsion before the four powers would allow the reuni\u00adfic\u00ada\u00adtion of Ger\u00admany, under the Two plus Four Con\u00adtract<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Wall evokes mixed emo\u00adtions. In the West it was, of course, seen as unam\u00adbigu\u00adously bad, stop\u00adping people leav\u00ading East Ger\u00admany and sep\u00adar\u00adat\u00ading fam\u00adil\u00adies. When I talked to some people from East Ger\u00admany around the time it fell (Novem\u00adber 9, 1989) they said at the time it was built the Wall was a neces\u00adsity to give their fledging state a chance of sur\u00adviv\u00adal. Too many hard-work\u00ading people with skills and ambi\u00adtion had left the coun\u00adtry and they needed to keep those who were left. Their view was that even\u00adtu\u00adally East Ger\u00admany would be a socially fair, pros\u00adper\u00adous coun\u00adtry, if only it could have a fair chance. And, from what I\u2019ve heard, in the dec\u00adade after the Wall was built, life did get bet\u00adter. Wal\u00adter Ulbricht<\/a>, the lead\u00ader of the coun\u00adtry at the time, was said to remain in touch with the people, to go to the pub with his mates, and to genu\u00adinely want what was best for his coun\u00adtry under the cir\u00adcum\u00adstances. Later on the polit\u00adic\u00adal lead\u00aders were more adept at liv\u00ading the good lives them\u00adselves than they were at pro\u00adcur\u00ading them for the rest of the pop\u00adu\u00adla\u00adtion, with their vil\u00adlas and parties with food and drink unob\u00adtain\u00adable by nor\u00admal people. I\u2019m not going to go into the eco\u00adnom\u00adic prob\u00adlems of East Ger\u00admany here, there were lots, but suf\u00adfice to say that by the end of the 1980s East Ger\u00admany was not pros\u00adper\u00adous. West Ger\u00admans and for\u00adeign\u00aders could vis\u00adit East Ber\u00adlin on exchange of 25 Deutschmark for 25 East Ger\u00adman Marks; this was deemed to be an entrance fee by many West\u00adern\u00aders and there was quite a debate about wheth\u00ader people should vis\u00adit or wheth\u00ader that money was just prop\u00adping up the East Ger\u00adman regime. But I digress.<\/p>\n

Many people ask why the West Ger\u00admans did\u00adn\u2019t just tear down the Wall? One reas\u00adon was that the Wall was built com\u00adpletely on East Ger\u00adman ter\u00adrit\u00adory, suf\u00adfi\u00adciently back from the leg\u00adal bor\u00adder that nobody could claim it encroached on any part of West Ger\u00admany or West Ber\u00adlin (which leg\u00adally had a dif\u00adfer\u00adent status to the rest of West Ger\u00admany). Anoth\u00ader was that even at the time I was in Ber\u00adlin, there was a def\u00adin\u00adite feel\u00ading of being occu\u00adpied. I worked at the Hahn-Meit\u00adner Insti\u00adtut<\/a> in Wannsee, near the south-west bor\u00adder of West Ber\u00adlin, in the Amer\u00adic\u00adan zone. It was not uncom\u00admon to see Amer\u00adic\u00adan sol\u00addiers in full battle gear with machine guns run\u00adning around the streets on some exer\u00adcise; they sel\u00addom bothered to learn any Ger\u00adman and I remem\u00adber being at a kebab stand watch\u00ading the Amer\u00adic\u00adan sol\u00addiers bark orders at the Turk\u00adish server\/cook in Amer\u00adic\u00adan Eng\u00adlish in such thick accents and so fast that I had dif\u00adfi\u00adculty under\u00adstand\u00ading them. Then there was the less defin\u00adable feel\u00ading of guilt, the feel\u00ading that this sep\u00adar\u00ada\u00adtion was some part of the pun\u00adish\u00adment that Ger\u00admans had to suf\u00adfer in order to atone (if only in part) for what had happened dur\u00ading the second World War.<\/p>\n

Most people in West Ber\u00adlin learned to live in the pres\u00adence of the Wall, although many could\u00adn\u2019t and fled to West Ger\u00admany. Many people died (Peter<\/a> Fechter<\/a> was the most fam\u00adous), many fam\u00adil\u00adies were ripped apart, for a Wall that was gone, along with the sys\u00adtem that cre\u00adated it, 30 years later. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wall was put up 45 years ago today, an event that seemed to define the Cold War. I lived in Ber\u00adlin for a few years, start\u00ading in 1988; to me the concept of a city belong\u00ading to West Ger\u00admany being in the middle of East Ger\u00admany sur\u00adroun\u00added by a sys\u00adtem of walls pur\u00adpose\u00adfully designed \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cThe Wall\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}