Walls Come Tumbling Down

11. Day Twenty-one

I didn’t write the blog yesterday because I was just too busy having a life. The 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall was something to behold, Berlin style. Big pompous show at Brandenburg Gate with Thomas Gottschalk and a spectacular domino event plus fireworks, while the more hands-on activist types like me preferred to take part in the “Mauer Mob”. We recreated the Wall by standing in the rain flashing our torches and holding the traffic up. The more they honked and hooted, the more Wallish we felt. And when they were really fed up, we gave them permission to travel and down tumbled the Wall once again, everyone applauding.

We welcomed people crossing from East to West, just like back then. I remember me and my friend Bryan going to the Ku’damm on the day after the Wall came down and going up to people in fur coats to say “welcome to West Berlin”. Well, you know – British sense of humour.

And then there was the guy in the pub from the East that said he was never, ever ever going to go back to the East, didn’t matter what anyone said, never ever. And several hours later he got up, drunk as a skunk, knocked on the table and said he was going home.

Trabis left in the middle of the street with a long line of honking traffic behind, while the occupants ran out to look in the brightly lit shop windows. The excitement was contagious. But it was hard to believe we were watching history in the making.

And in the usual Berliner style, everyone started to moan as soon as the hangover set in. The banks were full because everyone from the East was collecting their 100 DM “welcome money”. The underground was jam packed. The streets stank from the smell of the Trabis. The first T-Shirt was printed with “ich will meine Mauer wieder haben” (I want my Wall back). Up until today there are Berliners that refuse to cross the by now invisible border, only marked by a double row of cobblestones for the observant.

Yesterday, after meeting with a group of IPPNW students in the cafe beneath the taz newspaper on Rudi-Dutschke-Straße (remember Rudi Dutschke? Student leader in 1968?), I cycled back along the old route of the Wall from Kreuzberg to Treptow, my favourite cycle route. Houses are springing up along the way, parks have been created, but a few spots are still wild.

And today, everyone was full of it. The city was bristling with history. I joined the 10th World Summit of the Nobel Peace Laureates in the Red Rathaus a little late because of treatment for my knee (put getting healthy first, that’s the new protocol), and walked into a session on the implications of the Fall of the Wall.

Muhammed Yunus is probably fantastically well known and I’m the only dumbo who had never heard him. But boy did I hear him today. By far the best speaker of the whole pack, this little guy from Bangladesh really wowed the audience with wisdom. His main message: don’t concentrate just on the possible, let’s go for the impossible and get it done. The impossible will happen anyway, like the Fall of the Wall. The power of individuals, the power of joy, brought it down. Where is the enemy? It is in your mind. Our home is on fire – what are we negotiating about? As an inhabitant of this home we have to decide to make it safer, not more dangerous. All crises are rooted in the same cause – greed. And so on. Much too much good stuff to recreate here in a short blog.

But the funniest bit was this: when Gorbachev got back from meeting the German President, he joined in the session and all of a sudden an argument with Lech Walesa got underway. Gorbachev was promoting the idea of a common security architecture for Europe, perhaps in the form of a European Security Council. And Walesa said, that if we had that, we would be recreating the Soviet Union, because Russia would be dictating to them. No, no, protested Gorbi – it would be a common project of all concerned including all states in NATO, Europe and Russia. But Walesa wasn’t having any of it. Maybe in 10 years time, when Russia had learnt to recognise the independence of states on its periphery that have achieved their liberty. Only then, when the consciousness in Russia has changed could we have common security.

There was more to the argument, but the main reason I mention it here is to show that we have still a lot of baggage from those Cold War years, a lot of underlying conflict that is preventing us from achieving a new kind of inclusive security.

And that baggage is also to be found here in Berlin itself. A full generational cycle is needed to overcome it. For many people, prejudice against the “Wessies” or “Ossies” abounds. Walesa spoke about levelling the economic playing field in Europe in order for it to become more united. The same is also still true in Berlin. With the gradual gentrification of more and more neighbourhoods in the East, the poorer people are being driven further out and those are generally East Berliners. The West is expanding and driving rents up. I too moved from Kreuzberg to Treptow to live what was once the Cultural House of the GDR. Only Wessies live in our house and just two of our nine children go to a school in the East. But that’s another story (and it is really time for bed, remember? Health before politics).