NewsChannel 8 | The Fall of the Berlin Wall 20 Years Later

Beverly Kirk Blog

Monday October 05, 2009 at 10:32 am

The Fall of the Berlin Wall 20 Years Later

category: International Issues

On November 9, 2009, Germany will mark 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the start of the process that would reunify the country. Remarkably, not that much remains of the physical Wall that divided East and West Berlin literally and West Germany and NATO from the old Soviet Bloc figuratively. On a bus tour, the guide specifically pointed out the sections still standing, noting that ironically there is now an aggressive effort to “save” these parts of the Wall for history’s sake… so that no one would forget that it actually stood and divided the city. She showed us old pictures illustrating what the areas around the Wall used to look like since today much of it is home to businesses, restaurants and lots of people moving freely about. Potsdamer Platz, not far from the old Checkpoint Charlie, is a vibrant commercial center where there was, at least on the day I visited, a huge ad on the side of a building touting the goods at well known department store, H&M. In many areas of the city, all that remains to indicate where the Wall once stood is a double row of stones that line the path the Wall once took.

But, what about the melding of minds and people, two decades after those incredible pictures of people climbing and tearing down that Wall? The tour guide said Germans often reference time by what happened before or after “wende”, which translated means “the turning” or the change from two countries to back to one. A recurring theme heard from various quarters indicate that while the country is whole again, divisions remain. The West remains more prosperous than the East where unemployment is often dramatically higher. In the Saxony region home to Dresden and Freiburg, the overall unemployment rate is 16 percent. And as high as it seems, it’s one of the lowest unemployment rates in the former East. (In Berlin, it’s 18 percent according to the tour guide.) The German government has poured money into the former East, and officials there say still more is needed. However, the eastern areas are getting less and less funding every year and by 2019, payments from the central government to help build the former East up to the standards of the West will end per the reunification agreement. There are bright spots in terms of industry in the former East. I mentioned the Solar World facility and Volkwagen’s Transparent Factory in my previous blog, plus there are biotech and IT firms located in the region employing thousands of people.

One of the government officials our group spoke with here believes it may take another 20 years to solve completely the problems of East-West integration. And while economic integration is one challenge, the social divide is another but in a completely different manner. A full 65 percent of Germans in the West have never ventured into the former East according to officials here. It also appears many people from the East, especially the women, moved West post “wende” and never looked back,. Officials here lament the loss of population. They expect that by 2020, the population of the former East could be down to some three million because of out migration. The people who are left are often older and lack the educational advantages of those raised in the West, or are young males who stayed behind as young women migrated West. There are concerns about extremism among those young males, but the nationalist NPD party is getting far less than 5 percent support (the amount needed for a seat in Parliament) from voters nationally now, even though it does enjoy some support in parts of the former East. Also worrisome for at least one official who spoke with our group: the lack of large numbers of young families with young children in the former East, which is key to building vibrant communities.

One area where there seems to be no split is in the realm of political integration. There is a well-functioning public sector in the former East just as there is in the West. We met several people who had grown up in the West but now hold political positions in the former East and vice versa. While there may be some political parties that have more support in one region or another, it appears that the major parties compete well in both the former East and the West. I saw signs for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party and the newly defeated Social Democrats (SPD) in just about equal amounts whether we were in Dresden, Freiburg, Frankfort, or Berlin. Officials here say there is also no split among young Germans who primarily know about the country’s former division via history books, which means there’s a good chance the concerns about East-West integration will eventually be a thing of the past… just like the Wall itself.

posted by Beverly Kirk