In the East-West Context, From German Experiences / Gerhard Rein (World Peace Convention 2018, International Symposium, Speaker 1)

World Peace Convention 2018,  International Symposium, Speaker 1.

Incheon Harbor Park Hotel, Grand Ballroom(2F)

29. Oct. 2018

In the East-West Context, From German Experiences

Gerhard Rein

  

1. [Speaker1] Gerhard Rein.pdf

한글문서 보러가기

The German people first surrendered in 1933 to the enemy. Workers, little bourgeois, scientists, businessmen, artists, theologians, professors of all kind capitulated to a nationalistic, rassist, antisemitic movement and his Führer: Adolf Hitler. That was the enemy and, make no mistake, the majority of Germans liked Hitler. That was our disaster. Hitler promised an empire that should exist for thousand years. It ended after twelve years. It lead to the Second World war with millions of woman, men and children dead. In 1945 came the second capitulation. The Germans were freed by Russian, and American and British and French soldiers. The 8th of Mai 1945 was not a defeat. It was, in my mind, a liberation. A liberation from the enemy within. For that liberation we had to pay a high price.

 

Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, divided Germany in zones. The American, the British, the French zone builded together what we later called WestGermany and then the Federal Republic of Germany. The Russian zone became EastGermany and then the Democratic Republik of Germany, the GDR. Germany was divided. One people, two states. As a result of a World War, that Germany was guilty of.

 

Under the rules of the Western Allies West Germany developed as a more or less liberal society, with freedom of the press, freedom of movement, freedom of business, freedom of education. West Germany prospered in relatively few years after the war into a kind of rich country. East Germany, under the rule of the Sowjetunion, could enjoy a social minded government, but not freedom of the press, no freedom of movement, no freedom of business. As result of that hundredthousands, maybe a million women, men and children left the GDR. Good educated, skilled doctors, engineers, laborers. The border between East and West was more or less open. But the heavy losses of manpower had a terrible damaging effect on the whole structure of the economy. In 1961 the GDR government built the Berlin Wall. And a barbed wire with heavely armed patrols from north to south of the country, from the Baltic Sea down to Tschecheslowakia. Suddenly families with roots in East and West were divided. From 1963 on Westgermans (nickname: Wessis) could visit family and friends and stay for some days with Eastgermans (nickname: Ossis), but that was not possible vice versa. Normally a border should protect the own citizens. This border had another function. It was directed against the own people, against the Ossis.

  

Barbed wire and wall existed for 28 years. Still people tried to flee the East. More than thousend woman and men and children were shot dead from the own border police between 1961 and 1989. But 16 million human beeings started to arrange their lifes in the GDR. There were the followers of the socialist system, that appeared in the first decade quite stalinistic. There was a State Security that controlled and observed almost everybody. There was a silent majority, who did not forget, that Russian tanks ended brutally a workers uproar in 1953, so they did not dare to try it again. The economic system had workplaces for almost everyone. There was no unemployment. The payment was low. Nobody could get rich in the GDR. Under the shadow of an autoritarian quasi one-party-state people lived and worked and married and divorced. Normal family life. They went on holidays, but off course only to other easteuropean countries under Sowjet rule, like Hungary or Tchecheslowakia or Bulgaria.

Theodor Adorno, a quite famous German social philosopher, once remarked:

„There is no right life in the wrong one“ . But people in EastGermany experienced good and bad days, solidarity with friends, common understanding, love and disappointment. There was right life in a wrong system. And there were, against all odds, in the GDR circle of friends, who were not satisfied with a political system, that tried to tell them what to think, what to do, how to behave.

 

Westgermany went another way. It became part of the so called Free World. A capitalistic society with free Trade Unions, different independent political parties, free elections. With great influence of big industry on government. After the disaster of Nazi- Germany the development of WestGermany was often described as a kind of miracle. The Wessis explored the World. They could get very rich. They even won World Soccer Championships.

 

But with the beginning of the 1980er years we saw the upcoming of a meaningful peace movement in both Gernan states. A nuclear rearmament threatened the world, and there was protest against American rearmament as well as protest against Russian rearmament. Hundred of thousands were on the streets in Bonn, WestGermany, and hundreds in East- Berlin, where it was difficult and dangerous to protest.

 

Often christians were the initiators of the protest. 

In the Federal Republic of Germany the protestant churches were part and parcel of the establishment. Due to a church tax system the churches in the West were rich and had ways to influence politics, the public debate on moral and ethical questions.

 

In the German Democratic Republic the protestant churches were poor. They had no influence at all. The political system declared atheismus as his ideal. But the churches in the GDR were the only public organisations who had a kind of independence.

So in their churches, their meetinghalls, the nonconformists, critical young people, intellectuals, the rest of a civic society, even if not beeing christian, could come together, find a place. They could discuss their problems, and they were not forced to pray.

Germany was divided and the protestant churches had to decide officially to end their united organisation as well. Both were part of the ecumenical movement. The rich church in WestGermany helped financially the poor sisters and brothers in the East a lot, but the christian Wessis envied the christian Ossis. Why? Because: in the circles of the World Council of Churches in Geneva the christians from the GDR were the darlings of the ecumenical movement for quite some time. They were poor, but sexy. Their way to survive as christians in a socialist, atheistic surrounding was interesting. Their theologians were often creative and challenging. For christians in the GDR the ecumenical movement was the bridge to the world, a new horizon. On this stage there was more than the East- West conflict at home.

 

Around 1987 the new sowjet leader Michal Gorbatschow started to explain his vision of glasnost and perestroika. An unexpected new openess and transparancy. The satelite states of the Sowjetunion got more responsibility for their own political agenda. The state of Hungary opened his border to the west.

Over night thousands of most young families left their homes in the GDR and rushed to Hungary. They hoped for a better life in the west. They left behind their little cars, their friends, their workplace, everything, for good. At the railwaystations in the GDR people were waiting for trains from Budapest and Prag into the west. They shouted:

„We want out, we want out“. And there were counter- demonstrations of young people as well. They shouted: „ We will stay, we will stay“. They hoped, they could help to change the GDR into a democratic socialist state. Into a democratic alternative to the Federal Republic of Germany. A chaotic historical situation.

This new movement, to leave the GDR via Hungary some observers described as Flight to Paradise. It helped, in a strange way, to sharpen the inner-GDR debate about the future of EastGermany.

 

Out of this melange it is not so surprising that some theologians, some christian peace groups, some protestant churches in EastGermany played a decisive role in a peaceful revolution that led to the end of the GDR. I called it a protestant revolution. The first aim of the demonstrators was a better GDR. But then, with more and more demonstration in almost every city in the GDR the unification of Germany came into sight. It did not happen through decisions on a world stage. Not through majority vote. It happened from the bottom, initiated by a minority. The protest marches against the GDR -state in 1989 all started in protestant churches.

     

At the end eightythousand peaceful demonstrators assembled in Leipzig. They shouted: „We are the people“. The Sowjetunion did not intervene. The GDR-regime collided and gave up.

 

On November 9th, 1989, the wall in Berlin came down. Fireworks all over.

The 8 -year old daughter of good friends in East- Berlin was not in a festive mood.  She told me: „ I just lost my homeland“. For millions of Ossis the first free election since 1933 came in March 1990. The winner of this election in March 1990 were not the brave new democratic movements, who headed the protestant revolution, not the women and men, who built alternative emancipatory ecological, anti- nuclear peace groups, women rights groups in the GDR. The winner were the big old parties from the west, who came like colonialist on the territory of EastGermany and they won it all.

The majority of the Ossis obviously thought, the Wessis knew better about money, about economy, about everything. It was not a flight to paradise, it was an expulsion into paradise, a women journalist in East- Berlin wrote.

 

There was no border anymore between West- an EastGermany.

 

As a journalist from the West, reporting about the GDR, I crossed the border almost every day. From 1982 up to the very end of the GDR in 1990. Paul Tillich, a German-American theologian and philosopher, one of my secret heroes, wrote: „ The place of the boundary is the most fruitful place for knowledge“. The boundary between homeland and foreign places, between religion and culture, between socialism and capitalism.

 

Germany is one again. Since 28 years now. Are we united?

 

If you travel through EastGermany today you will find intact streets. The due to socialism rotten old cities are rebuilt or reconstracted and in a wonderful shape.

 

If you read the latest official report of the German government about the state of the union you will find descriptions of positive tendancies: the standard of living in the East comes closer to the standard of living in the West. Payment for comparable jobs are not on the same level, but they come nearer to each other. Unemployment in the East is higher than in the West.

The transformation process is ongoing, but attractive and better paid jobs you still will find in the western part of Germany.There is a solidarity tax in favour of the development of the eastern territories, but it will end next year. Pension funds in the East still have to struggle to come to the same level as in the West. Once we spoke about the GDR as the most industrialised state in Eastern Europe.

 

But after the unifikation in 1990 the economicwise strong companies from the West took over and destroyed industrial structures in the East. To rebuild them is the most important task today. But there are quite big obstacles. One of the problems: young skilled people, more women than men, still leave the East. Living standards, better paid jobs, a more relaxed athmospere are an attractive alternative. 

There is not one company in EastGermany noted in the DAX- 30 Index. And only one of the many Germanys big industrial companies has it central office in EastGermany.

 

But I would like to leave these official datas. Germany at least is united, isnt it?

 

No, it is not. Germany is still divided. It is mentally divided. Ossis against Wessis, Wessis against Ossis. 40 years GDR- system had an impact on people. Not only the impact of a kind of imprisonment. The smell of the country. The experience of solidarity with friends. The equal common poorness. The creative life in underground- papers. Poets and writers in the country, who were not allowed to publish their work. So they got famous by rumour and their poems or fiction were photocopied and distributed secretly. The dissident fluidum in peace groups within the churches.

Any tendency of nostalgia, of myth-building about the GDR is heavely critisised.

The GDR was dictatorial after all, but there is a kind of melancholia with people, who did know, that the West is not the paradise. Who experienced that „ foreigners“ alias - Wessis got around 80% percent of the top jobs in universities, business, state services after the unification. That left wounds, disappointments, depression. The former Russian zone is today a „zone of vulnerability“, as one EastGerman political analyst stated.

 

So some Ossis are thinking, we have to tell the GDR- story, our story, anew, to avoid that our identity is destroyed. This, as a Wessi, I really understand very well.

 

But out of the massive disappointment about political developments, especially anxiety about the refugee- politic of the central government, the high number of migrants coming to Germany, people in the East are turning away from the democratic parties and turn to the right and right extremists. That is quite dangerous. We know that this is a phenomenen in a lot of countries these days, but in Germany, with our history, a new nationalism, a new racism, a new antisemitism has signs, has shadows, of a new, old enemy within.

 

So, to no surprise, to find out what really went wrong, and how we could heal the wounds, theire are voices in Germany who ask for a truth and reconciliation process.