Twenty Years of the Berlin Wall
MCADAMS, A. JAMES
THE FOCUS IN EAST GERMANY Twenty Years of the Berlin Wall BY A. JAMES McADAMS Last month, the citizens of East Berlin marked the 20th anniversary of the wall that divides their city. For two...
...The freer life and prosperity offered by the West were shoved entirely out of reach...
...The "justifications" that the East Germans offer for their venerations are often little more than convenient fictions...
...And it will never be high enough to shut out all the "corrupting" forces, whether they emanate from the capitalist West or, to take the Polish example, from the Socialist East...
...Pankow went virtually unrecognized internationally, and it had difficulty establishing credibility domestically...
...Both Soviet Premier Nikta Krushchev and the GDR's head of state, Walter Ulbricht, conceded that the completed Wall was an "ugly thing" and a "defect...
...Lately, it has been hailed as a warning to the West of the likely outcome of superpower confrontations...
...But this population drain had been crippling the fledgling East German state...
...It was all too obviously a response to the fact that thousands of East Germans had been demonstrating their dissatisfaction with life under Communism by taking advantage of the previously easy crossing in to West Berlin...
...Then, because the Wall was too conspicuous to conceal and too much a product of Communist craftmanship to lament or decry, the East German regime was soon forced to come to terms with its creation...
...The leadership still frequently asserts its authority on this basis...
...In place of his dreams of a better existence under non-Communist rule, for the first time he was forced to take the country more seriously and accept that he had to make the best of the new circumstances...
...Such "threats" do not respond to guns, mortar and barbed wire...
...So it must have come as a surprise to some tourists watching the proceedings from the West that the leaders of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), far from merely having learned to live with this symbol, are neither embarrassed by it nor ashamed to praise it...
...From the moment the Wall started going up, his options were drastically reduced...
...Were it not for the presence of these pernicious elements in the city, according to the Communist version of history, few East Germans would have been enticed into leaving their homeland in the '50s...
...The press declared that the Wall added "clarity" where there had been confusion...
...In this sense, the Wall really has become the cornerstone of the Continent's current division into two rival blocs...
...The East Germans had recognized that every time they lost a talented, productive citizen, they slid that much closer to bankruptcy...
...The East Germans understandably champion the unhappy circumstance, using it to explain every twist and turn in East-West relations...
...Year after year the Wall's paramount position in East German society is affirmed...
...A. James McAdams a new contributor to The New Leader, is writing a book about the ruling elite of East Germany...
...To the GDR's leaders, the Wall also provided something that no Soviet decree or state consitution could ever give them -proof that their claim to sovereignty was legitimate...
...This is a state border, the border of a sovereign Socialist state, and it must be respected...
...Not even May 1 overshadows these anniversaries...
...They would have it that the Wall was erected on the eve of a huge asssault by Western troops: Only the valiant construction of this "anti-fascist protective barrier," or Schutzwall, as East German lore describes it, was enough to stop American tanks in their tracks and foil nato's plans for unleashing another world war...
...Thus it began celebrating the monstrosity and treating it as an object of national pride, as if it were a Statue of Liberty or an Arc de Triomphe...
...The Wall, they hoped, would change the country's fortunes...
...The Party newspaper, Neues Deutschland, in its 1970 salute, was not altogether wrong in saying: "The successes in the development of our economy and of our whole Socialist system prove how good and right it was to secure our border...
...Before August 1961, the GDR was constantly being denounced as a mere temporary appendage of the Soviet Union, a fictional creation that had no right to speak for those it ruled...
...But none of this deters the GDR's leaders from glorifying their crowning achievement...
...And by the mid-'60s it did indeed experience a minor Wirschaftswunder, or "economic miracle...
...When the Wall was built, the Allies had to make a hard choice between tolerating the structure or openly challenging East Germany's right to divide Berlin...
...The East German government is fond of contending, too, that putting up the Wall was actually a "blow for peace" in Europe, ostensibly because it showed the Western Allies once and for all "the limits of their powers...
...It may never be permanent enough to win the GDR the kind of international esteem its leaders aspire to...
...Some GDR tributes to the Wall, though, have been closer to reality...
...Without fail, every August 13 now huge parades entertain well-organized, flag waving crowds assembled on Unter den Linden to pay tribute to the edifice, and somber Party officials preach on the history and significance of their handiwork...
...But the new construction, it was felt, made clear that the GDR was here to stay, no matter what anyone else might say...
...The border of the GDR," Neues Deutschland proclaimed in its 1976 encomium to the Wall, "is not open to debate...
...One of East Germany's chief economic planners made no bones at the time about the benefits to the regime of sealing in the populace: "It is now clear to everyone in our Republic, including those who once vacillated and occasionally glanced toward West Germany, that their future lies here...
...That, in fact, was the burden of the address delivered by the GDR's current leader, Erich Honecker, at the 20th anniversary celebration of the Wall...
...Although the East Germans often harp on nato's supposed plans to undermine the GDR and penetrate the Warsaw Pact, this talk of limitation does contain at least a kernel of ironic truth...
...Ulbricht, and his security chief, Erich Honecker, finally turned to their Soviet allies for permission to seal the border out of desperation...
...In detente's better days, the barrier was exalted as a hallmark of world stability, the source of everything from salt to the Helsinki Conference...
...To be sure, in the days immediately after August 13, 1961, when the residents of East Berlin awoke to find barbed wire, heavily armed troops and teams of Volkspolizei?blocking their access to the Western sector, the official tone was hardly jubilant...
...For the moment, the presence of this grim symbol of Socialist purity, peace and sovereignty enables the East German government to avoid putting the population's loyalty to the test...
...The price paid for this by the average citizen, of course, was high...
...For two decades now, this infamous concrete barrier, with its steel girders, dog-runs, watch towers, tank traps and "death strips," has symbolized Communism in its worst, most brutal form...
...The Wall is further credited with halting the dangerous influx of "spies, smugglers and kidnappers" into East Berlin...
...The decision not to confront the GDR was crucial, for it was soon taken to be a sign of the West's tacit acceptance of the European status quo...
...There are restrictions, however, to what the Wall can do...
...The Schutzwall, moreover, preserves the best German traditions and "humanist" principles, while shutting out the tainted influence of "militarism and imperialism" still furthered by the " Hitler generals" in Bonn...
Vol. 64 • September 1981 • No. 18
