Berlin and the Summit:
BRANDT, WILLY
EXCLUSIVE: By Willy Brandt Berlin and the Summit West Berlin’s Mayor says city ‘will not offer itself as sacrifice to empty assurances’ BERLIN SOVIET ASSAULTS against West Berlin are always...
...No propaganda screen can hide the fact that the Eastern sector of Berlin was brutally torn from the jurisdiction of the city government in violation of four-power agreements which had decreed the democratic election of that very government...
...By acting as though West Berlin were the real problem, Communists hope to divert attention from Berlin as a whole...
...Though they seized power in the Soviet sector 12 years ago, though the city has two kinds of money, two Mayors and a border running through the very heart of the town, Berlin still has a kind of unity which East German Communist party chief Walter Ulbricht dares not touch...
...What is the term “peaceful coexistence” really worth if it is declared meaningless for Berlin, a city where the great powers have had to learn to live side by side in peace, and where, since the blockade, they have at least managed to do so with a certain amount of mutual consideration...
...Every year dozens are arrested and scores deprived of the right to work...
...I am chairman of the Social Democratic party (SPD) in all Berlin...
...This unique city is admirably suited for testing and developing those binding “rules of the game” which must be worked out if peaceful coexistence is to become more than a hollow phrase, a principle which free men can trust...
...It has retained a degree of normality which he, by himself, cannot suspend...
...Out of respect for Berlin’s four-power status, Federal Republic military legislation has not been applied in West Berlin and not a single Bundeswehr soldier is stationed here...
...For nowhere else has peaceful competition between rival systems been practiced with such telling effect as here in Berlin, and nowhere else has Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s alleged sympathy for peaceful coexistence and competition been put to a better test...
...By throwing overboard the original four-power agreements that apply to the whole city, one million Berliners living in the Soviet sector would be betrayed...
...It is prepared to support any plan which can really guarantee that peace will never be endangered in, or because of, Berlin...
...Moreover, we are relying on the Western powers at the summit conference...
...but in living side-by-side the great powers have been compelled to develop a certain degree of mutual consideration...
...Berlin refuses to offer itself as an object of sacrifice to empty assurances of good will...
...Over one million East Berliners come and go as they please...
...Finally, as long as the four-power status and the original rights of the Western powers are upheld, other Berlin agreements—based on these principles or going beyond them— are indeed conceivable...
...they are of vital interest to the entire free world...
...But no one can stop their chairman from visiting them in their shabby headquarters, and no one dares deprive the SPD of its right to exist, however barely, in East Berlin...
...Without four-power status these distinctions would vanish in a haze of self-deception about Soviet aggression...
...By making it seem that Berlin’s present status is an acute cause for unrest and anxiety in our divided country, the Soviet Union seeks to hide the genuine danger and the true abnormality reflected in this divided city...
...Berlin is a lie-detector for testing the hollowness of phrases and verbal assurances...
...Communists have been able to divide Berlin only up to a certain point...
...Since 1946, the Communists have never been able to break the spirit of SPD members in the Soviet sector, and there are many thousands of them...
...The obligations that ensue from the four-power status and the obligation of the victors to conclude a peace treaty with a united democratic Germany are assurances that the basic problem can and will be solved by peaceful means...
...They should be trial agreements for a fixed period of time, agreements which might improve present conditions...
...The right to self-determination exists for all Berliners and for all Germans...
...Any Berliner can attend concerts and theaters in the whole city...
...Berlin is safe because it has experienced the trustworthiness of every Western guarantee...
...there are no free elections in which they may participate...
...The Senate of Berlin has made numerous proposals to normalize the situation here by eliminating the technical absurdities resulting from the city’s division, proposals to safeguard the lifelines connecting Berlin and the Federal Republic...
...A four-power status for this city exists, and this fact has a most tangible human and political significance for all Berliners...
...We do not understand how the Soviet Union can peddle self-determination in Africa and Asia while denying us this very same right in West Berlin, including our right to have close connections with the Federal Republic...
...Any activities by United Nations observers—suggested by the Western powers in Geneva—must be applied to the whole city...
...Nothing would be left of them, neither the freedom of movement nor the opportunity to compare, neither the means to prefer nor the right to choose...
...This may be one good reason for considering Berlin a suitable testing ground for new principles and possible agreements, But to do so the lie-detector must be heeded, not dismantled...
...We know our relations cannot be disturbed or clouded, for we have never been disappointed by our Western friends...
...If that is truly what Khrushchev wants, why then has he created a West Berlin problem and heeded Machiavelli’s warning to tyrants: “Whoever becomes the ruler of a free city and does not destroy it can expect to be destroyed by it . . . so long as the inhabitants are not separated or dispersed...
...What is more, in the course of any year millions of our countrymen from the Soviet zone surrounding Berlin manage to visit friends and meet relatives in the Western part of the city...
...Such a defeat would be morally intolerable...
...We cannot behave as though it would mean anything else, as though this Soviet-created “West Berlin problem” were real...
...When the synod convenes in the Soviet sector of Berlin, nothing can prevent the Mayor of West Berlin from attending its opening services in the Marien-kirche...
...The degree of normality which all Berlin still possesses derives from its four-power status, which has not only protected the population but also has exerted a pacifying and stabilizing influence on the entire city...
...Yet, in open violation of all four-power agreements, East Berlin has been incorporated in all the monumental militarization and armament-production programs of Walter Ulbricht’s satellite regime...
...The Soviet Union cannot convincingly suggest means to relax tensions by continually creating Berlin crises, or by slipping out of obligations in order to let Walter Ulbricht do the same thing...
...The Communists would certainly be encouraged to liquidate whatever freedom might remain...
...Berlin is passionately anxious to contribute to a relaxation of international tensions...
...They have a right to stroll along the Stalin Allee, just as East Berliners are free to drink their afternoon coffee at a sidewalk cafe on the Kurfurstendamm...
...However, this is only half the story...
...Unfortunately, mutually binding “rules of the game” were never agreed to...
...But the real problem which must one day be solved—that of a decapitated and divided Germany—is most evident in Berlin as a whole, the capital of Germany...
...Every now and then, too, West Berliners like to compare their own prices with those of articles in Communist show-windows...
...Four-power status also provides a tangible measure of liberty and opportunity to Berliners in the Soviet sector...
...EXCLUSIVE: By Willy Brandt Berlin and the Summit West Berlin’s Mayor says city ‘will not offer itself as sacrifice to empty assurances’ BERLIN SOVIET ASSAULTS against West Berlin are always diversions...
...Yet no West Berliner can visit Potsdam, Dresden or Leipzig...
...Our relations are based on the firmest foundations: common experience, strong sympathy and understanding, and mutual interest...
...Any new agreement limited to West Berlin might transform a sector boundary into a state frontier and totally incorporate part of the city into the Soviet satellite zone...
...Also, any agreement which might be reached must be acceptable to the people of Berlin...
...To abandon the four-power status today would mean nothing else...
...Both the SPD and the Communist Socialist Unity party (SED) are permitted by the four occupation powers to function in the whole city...
...That is why we in Berlin feel, first and foremost, that at the summit conference the West must reject any agreement which would replace this city’s four-power status or abrogate the Western powers’ original rights here...
...Even if West Berliners were formally assured of their liberties, how long would they last...
...the East sector of the city is still part of Berlin and different from the rest of the Soviet zone...
...Enforcing the original four-power agreements in Berlin would reduce tensions: discarding the four-power status would have the opposite effect...
...Any attempt to reach an agreement on West Berlin only would spell surrender and defeat...
...There is no “West Berlin problem...
...They are not allowed to hold public meetings...
...The Soviets cannot be conceded rights in West Berlin which the Western powers are denied in the Eastern sector...
...That is possible only if four-power status is retained in Berlin...
...We see no reason for qualifying our confidence in this respect...
...In various ways our whole city lives by virtue of the four-power status and not only are the Western powers’ rights to remain in Berlin connected with this, but their presence constitutes a guarantee to West Berliners that they can continue to live and prosper as free men...
...It is foolhardy to think that such distinctions are important only to Berliners and Germans...
...The presence of the four powers sets certain peaceful limitations to rivalry...
...It is impossible to experiment in Berlin safely or fairly on the basis of a capitulation by the Western powers...
...Hence Berlin is not divided in an essential sense...
...The Protestant church is the last German institution which exercises jurisdiction in both parts of the divided country...
...Every foreign visitor to West Berlin knows he can safely enter another world simply by walking or driving through the Brandenburg Gate: He is still in Berlin...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 20
