The Berlin Wall, before and after
Recently, I read in a German newspaper that the wall has been gone as long as it was actually there: 28 years, two months, and some twenty-odd days.
I also doubt that anybody who was here in Germany at that time could possibly forget it. For the Generation Xers, you could argue it was the key event, like World War II was to The Greatest Generation or the Moon Landing was to the Boomers. Personally, I recall working in a factory at that time, November 1989, as the decade was drawing to a close. I had just finished school and was interested in having a job and making money before going to college.
Only years before, the reunification of Germany seemed like a pipe dream, the iron curtain seemed sturdy, and impossible to melt down. Only once did I manage to make it to West Berlin, which required driving through the DDR, as it was called then, the German Democratic Republic, unter Erich Honecker. There was no joking with the officials back then. All you needed to do was drive, keep your head down, and haul ass as fast as you could and get to West Berlin in one piece. If something happened to you along the way, then you were more or less at the mercy of said officials, usually police or some state bureacrat who couldn't wait to drag you further into the quagmire you had just landed yourself in. People who crossed through the DDR made sure their cars were in perfect working condition.
The Berlin Wall itself was merely a symbol of the system itself, a landmark that was most representative of the ideological divide between east and west. The border itself was much longer and elaborate than that and ran all the way from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic and beyond. People constantly talked about the poor East Germans who would get shot trying to make a run for West Berlin, but there were at least as many people who would give their lives trying to cross the border in the more bucolic territories, like Thüringen or Saxony-Anhalt.
Although the Wall came down in November, the real fall of the Iron Curtain might have taken place before that, when the Hungarian government opened their borders with Austria, beginning September 11, 1989. That's when we in Germany knew things were really cooking.
The 9th of November itself was a Thursday, so I don't think we heard about it until the next day at work on Friday. The news was an absolute shock, although I'm not sure everybody was really as happy as they let on. In West Germany, it meant people would be sacrificing something. In fact, only months later we would be training new workers from the eastern countries in our factory. Here a couple of East Germans, a couple of Romanians, a Pole here and there.
Within years, our town would become flooded with people who couldn't wait to leave the east behind them. In fact, today there is a strong Russian contingency, irony of ironies. With this wave of immigrants came the naysayers who immediately demanded somebody build another wall.
In fact, at least half of all Germans today still feel there is a separation between East and West Germany, whether there is a wall or not. Eastern Germans certainly do, especially those who never left. What if it had never happened? I guess we'll never know. That's a different construction site (eine andere Baustelle), as the Germans would say.
I also doubt that anybody who was here in Germany at that time could possibly forget it. For the Generation Xers, you could argue it was the key event, like World War II was to The Greatest Generation or the Moon Landing was to the Boomers. Personally, I recall working in a factory at that time, November 1989, as the decade was drawing to a close. I had just finished school and was interested in having a job and making money before going to college.
Only years before, the reunification of Germany seemed like a pipe dream, the iron curtain seemed sturdy, and impossible to melt down. Only once did I manage to make it to West Berlin, which required driving through the DDR, as it was called then, the German Democratic Republic, unter Erich Honecker. There was no joking with the officials back then. All you needed to do was drive, keep your head down, and haul ass as fast as you could and get to West Berlin in one piece. If something happened to you along the way, then you were more or less at the mercy of said officials, usually police or some state bureacrat who couldn't wait to drag you further into the quagmire you had just landed yourself in. People who crossed through the DDR made sure their cars were in perfect working condition.
The Berlin Wall itself was merely a symbol of the system itself, a landmark that was most representative of the ideological divide between east and west. The border itself was much longer and elaborate than that and ran all the way from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic and beyond. People constantly talked about the poor East Germans who would get shot trying to make a run for West Berlin, but there were at least as many people who would give their lives trying to cross the border in the more bucolic territories, like Thüringen or Saxony-Anhalt.
Although the Wall came down in November, the real fall of the Iron Curtain might have taken place before that, when the Hungarian government opened their borders with Austria, beginning September 11, 1989. That's when we in Germany knew things were really cooking.
The 9th of November itself was a Thursday, so I don't think we heard about it until the next day at work on Friday. The news was an absolute shock, although I'm not sure everybody was really as happy as they let on. In West Germany, it meant people would be sacrificing something. In fact, only months later we would be training new workers from the eastern countries in our factory. Here a couple of East Germans, a couple of Romanians, a Pole here and there.
Within years, our town would become flooded with people who couldn't wait to leave the east behind them. In fact, today there is a strong Russian contingency, irony of ironies. With this wave of immigrants came the naysayers who immediately demanded somebody build another wall.
In fact, at least half of all Germans today still feel there is a separation between East and West Germany, whether there is a wall or not. Eastern Germans certainly do, especially those who never left. What if it had never happened? I guess we'll never know. That's a different construction site (eine andere Baustelle), as the Germans would say.
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