Monday, Apr 04, 2005
Germans are divided, without a wall
By Peter Beaumont
The Berlin Wall is now a few fragmented relics, monuments and museums at iconic points such as Checkpoint Charlie, but the divide it represented remains firmly lodged in German minds.
BEFORE THE Wall came down, Gerd Glanze was an entertainer in East Berlin, telling risky jokes about life under Communism. Occasionally the feared secret police would wave a warning finger at him, when the jokes became too politically charged. Then he would find new ways of mixing "the fire and pepper."
These days Mr. Glanze runs the souvenir stall at Eastside Gallery, the longest surviving section of the Wall, in an industrial hinterland close to Ostbahnhof station and the neo-gothic bridge spanning the River Spree.
Once a malevolent partition dividing families and lovers, now the Wall that cut Germany in half is a muralled tourist attraction where Mr. Glanze sells wall chippings, toy Trabant cars and T-shirts.
The Wall is now a few fragmented relics, monuments and museums at iconic points such as Checkpoint Charlie but the divide it represented remains firmly lodged in German minds. Last week a poll commissioned by Berlin Free University reported that — 16 years after the Wall came down, 15 years after political reunification that cost $1.5 trillion and wrecked Europe's largest economy — a quarter of former West Germans and half as many easterners would like the Wall back.
The east-west divisions are defined by history, economics and psychology; by education and job opportunities; even by marriage. Prejudice persists between Ossis (easterners) and Wessis (westerners). Ossis — facing high unemployment and low wages — feel like second-class citizens in new Germany. The Wessis begrudge the bill for the faltering reunification that has poisoned their economy.
The depth of the split was revealed, a decade into reunification when the Berliner Kurier newspaper reported that of 15,000 marriages in Berlin, only 400 were "mixed" — one spouse from the west and one from the east. Few who have studied the implications of Germany's split personality have any reason to believe it has changed much in the past few years.
At his stall, Mr. Glanze is scathing about those who wish the Wall back. "They are stupid. It is the older generation. For the young people it is not a topic. But there are people for whom a border still exists. I heard a taxi driver the other day say that he had never been into east Berlin and would never cross the border."
Sascha Seipel is a west Berliner, and a victim of Germany's struggling economy. He worked as a sound engineer until six years ago when he was laid off. These days he makes a living — like his father — as a taxi driver. As he drives, he points out the monuments of Berlin's tumultuous history: the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate.
While Mr. Seipel is happy to go anywhere in Berlin, he admits there is distaste among many for the east. "The Wall still exists in people's minds. When I cross the city I say I am going over to the east. It does not mean anything to me. But when a lot of westerners say that they don't mean it in a nice way."
Oskar Niedermayer, a political scientist at Berlin Free University, was one of the authors of last week's poll. "I was not surprised by the figures," he said. "All of our studies have indicated to us that the friction between east and west is not decreasing. I think we perhaps underestimated the difficulties created by four decades of very different socialisation for the two societies, especially in the east, combined with the reality that has followed."
But there are a few signs of hope. The Allensbacher Institute has been measuring Germany's mood since 1947. Thomas Petersen of the institute believes that as Germany approaches the anniversary of reunification on July 1, a new generation is ready to break with the past. "What we are seeing is the development of a value gap between young East Germans and their parents. It is exactly what we started to see 15 years after the end of Nazism, and also around the same after General Franco's death in Spain. People under 30 in the east now have more `western attitudes' than west Germany."
The Berlin Wall may yet finally fall.
-- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Copyright © 2005, The Hindu.