Childhood memories of life in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This was not an ordinary traffic jam.
Little did I know about its historic significance and its emotional charge, sitting next to my little sister in the backseat of my parents' Trabant which they were very proud of after having been on a waiting list for a car for over eight years.
On that day in mid-November 1989, we were four of many thousands who patiently waited in an enormous tailback moving slowly towards 'the border' which for the past 40 years cut right through the country, dividing it into two very different Germanies. A border at which, unknown to the common citizen, mines and bombs lay underground, ready to be triggered by the Stasi (the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) Ministry for State Security) in case of an invasion by the enemy. Now this 'enemy' was represented by people lining the roadside, cheering us on, shaking hands, and reaching bananas and oranges — absolute rarities for the ordinary GDR citizen — into our car.
The border crossing we used that day had been opened hastily in a mix of utter excitement and somewhat disbelief just a few days earlier. The old road was sporadically patched up to make it drivable again after decades of deliberate neglect, enabling what just weeks earlier was thought to be unachievable: the reconnection of families, friends, lovers who — back in 1961 — were brutally separated without any sense for humanity when the post-war East-West German border was shut tight. So here I was, crossing what until a few days ago had been the most heavily-guarded border in the world — and at the same time a border which I had never heard about until the day it fell.
I bore … witness to the falling of my communist country without the need for civil war
Neither did I know about the events leading up to this historic occurrence: the Peaceful Revolution with its Monday demonstrations which were passionately run under the 'Keine Gewalt!' ('No violence!') mantra all across the GDR in the previous few months, or the loosening of border controls within the Soviet Bloc leading to thousands of East German tourists flooding West German embassies. Growing up in this GDR defined by communist surveillance, control, and doctrine, there was me, blissfully unaware of any politics at all. Why was that? 'A protective shield' was the first answer going through my head many years later. But who was this shield meant to protect? Us children? Or our parents and wider family who might have got into trouble if their children had mentioned at school what the adults talked about at the weekends? My parents' answer was less politically charged: 'Because you were just eight. One doesn't talk about politics with eight-year-olds'. And that was that.
I am glad that I remember the traffic jam. That I bore (blissfully unaware) witness to the falling of my communist country without the need for civil war, and that I was able to walk the path which led to a reunited Germany. What stays with me is the picture of people reaching exotic fruit into our car, but never in the 30 years since have I sat back and contemplated what that moment, that week, and the following months must have meant for my parents.
How do you start digesting all those impressions and emotions after decades of controlled thinking within a streamlined society? How do you plan your next step when your future has never been so unknown? A future which until just days ago was written in stone for you by your government — your career path, your regulated mail, even your summer holiday destination.
Many decided to leave, flee into the West in fear that this border would soon be closed again. What must people have experienced that made them cut all ties and leave everything behind within days, if not hours, of Günter Schabowski clumsily announcing that the GDR's border would be open for all travellers with immediate effect? Isn't that usually what people do to flee war zones, oppression, or famine? And what made my parents stay while so many others didn't? What went through the heads of these two people who, in their early 30s, had only just started their professional careers, which were now at risk of dissolving into nothing within the course of weeks?
They, like the rest of my wider family, were and still are grateful for the change — 'Die Wende' — which impacted our lives so fundamentally. They embraced the endless opportunities which they suddenly faced. While the GDR state continued to exist after 9 November 1989, the economically driven mindset of West Germany reacted quickly to the newly opened border, allowing East German residents to exchange their (worthless) GDR currency at very generous rates, creating a spending power ready for the new shops and supermarkets which popped up like mushrooms all over Eastern German cities and towns. With them came an unimaginable freedom of choice, shelves filled with colours, smells, and flavours of the widest variety. While their eight-year-old child was fascinated by shop windows now remaining lit after sunset, my parents took full advantage of the new world which — literally — threw its gates wide open for them.
This plurality of change swept across an entire nation like a tsunami
At the same time, uncertainty overshadowed most of what they did during the weeks and months following November 1989. Suddenly their truth wasn't true anymore and their identity was starting to erode. Products which they had consumed for decades disappeared from the shop floors and their professional qualifications were at risk of becoming meaningless. So many jobs around them became redundant — the GDR was good at inventing jobs for the sake of full employment — while they were among the lucky ones offered the opportunity to start from scratch, albeit under new laws which hadn't quite been implemented yet. Most importantly, under an economic mindset which couldn’t have been further removed from what they grew up with.
Moving from a state where unemployment didn't exist and where academic skills counted for very little, most of the GDR's citizens were thrown into the big sea with three options:
My parents were not among those. They chose option 2 and decided to swim. For months without end. Their eight-year-old child thought it was fun to meet mum and aunties in their new shiny office for dinner evening after evening and eat takeaway pizza together. At that time I didn't realised the serious nature of their long working hours as newly self-employed lawyers, studying the new law day and night for months, never losing the energy or willingness to keep swimming.
This plurality of change swept across an entire nation like a tsunami without an early warning system. Yes, people had demonstrated for change. But they could not have anticipated the full implications of what was to come. When they shouted 'Wir sind das Volk' ('We are the people'), which is the core definition of democracy, they asked for change within the run-down GDR. They demanded the end of dictatorship politics, not an uncoordinated introduction of an alien market economy.
So when a clear (albeit limiting) structure was suddenly gone without time to prepare for the next step, lots of people struggled with the change, and some still do 30 years on. It is hard for me to imagine why one would hang on to this kind of past for so long, reminding their neighbours and friends regularly that not all was bad in the GDR. But then again, my family was made of swimmers, of determined people who were hit by this seismic change at the right point in their lives. They were willing and able to adapt, and they were also lucky in many ways that they were not (or not for long) among the one in four people who lost their job, their career, their perspective, and often also their identity as part of this German reunification process. A sacrifice worth paying?
Germany 2019 is defined by lots of things that result directly from the 1989 events. Its people are free to live and work wherever they like, the border is long gone and the nation is united. That at least is true in theory. In reality, people work where they can and sadly this is more commonly in the western parts of Germany, resulting in many young people having left the East for a better life further west or south. If you've made it there you've achieved something. It isn't quite as black and white as that, of course, and I am not in a position to comment on this topic professionally enough. But you don't have to be a professional to notice that recent upsurge in right-wing political movements is heavily concentrated in the former GDR parts of Germany where the economic infrastructure is still weak, where tourism is sparse (despite there being some beautiful countryside and lovely historic towns which are well worth a visit!), where broadband internet is still wishful thinking for many rural areas, and where unemployment rates are as high as 25 per cent.
But despite all that, Germany 2019 is a country of wealth, social welfare, security, and equality. A modern and fair society, which — most importantly — is run as a constitutional democracy. With the reunification of the two Germanies on 3 October 1990, 16 million people were able to enter a truly democratically run state after decades of the 'Feind ist, wer anders denkt' ('the enemy is he who thinks differently') mantra of the surveillance state that called itself a democratic republic, but was nothing but dictatorship.
The GDR had controlled, surveilled, and secretly influenced many of its citizens' moves through 100,000 official and around 200,000 unofficial members of the Stasi. A whole nation was under suspicion and more than 100 kilometres of paperwork was confiscated from the various Stasi offices during the months following November 1989.
Many of the unofficial Stasi members did not join voluntarily, but were blackmailed into this position in return for the safety and wellbeing of their families, or to enable them to take the career path of their choice. Two of these were friends of my family, their double life unbeknown to us at the time. One of them was able to become a lawyer in return for informing on fellow students who had planned to flee the country. The other was a local church minister who we believe joined the spying network in return for his children being admitted to higher education — a privilege often denied to the clergy.
an equal number of boys and girls had to be sent to secondary education
None of the Stasi's doings were regulated through law. Citizens' futures were often at the mercy of individual officers, and the happiness of the individual was secondary to the needs of the GDR society in order to maximise communist efficiencies. This resulted in school children being talked into career paths according to what was needed in the local area, and essentially becoming instruments of the state.
My mum's own story was that of four girls in her class reaching top marks in their final primary education exams. Two of those four were my mum and her twin sister. All wished to go into secondary education to later enable them to go to university. Unfortunately, the rule was that an equal number of boys and girls had to be sent to secondary education and in the absence of sufficiently qualified boys, the decision was made to move only two of the girls forward. My grandparents had to choose one of their girls, which my grandfather refused to do — his twins would not be separated! He challenged the system, went beyond boundaries and eventually arranged for them to study over 100 kilometres away from home at a boarding school. And even then it was only possible due to the head teacher's intrigue at the prospect of twin girls, something the school hadn't seen in years.
When the twins were ready to study at university the same happened again, with one allocated a place in Berlin and the other a place in Leipzig. Needless to say my grandfather did not agree and again, purely due to the quirkiness of having twins attempting the same career path, the selection panel agreed to take both. My mum's whole professional career was at the mercy of an individual's mood and personal preferences. Twice.
It is rather remarkable that I grew up blissfully unaware of any state control whatsoever. When I asked my parents why they and other members of my family did not join our local Monday demonstrations in autumn 1989, they said that they didn't see a need. Yes, they were unhappy with many things in their lives. The inability to purchase good quality jeans, coffee, citrus fruit, and soap bars. The limitation of holiday destinations, or the fact that they had to be careful about political statements in public. But none of this, they explained, was bad enough to make them live an unhappy life. They adjusted to the situation just as 2019 Germans adjust to paying high taxes or receiving low pensions. It frustrates you, but it doesn't turn you into a rebel.
'But didn't you say you were over the moon when the wall came down?' I asked. 'Yes of course we were!' they replied. Their lack of willingness to actively demonstrate against the political regime did not mean that they weren't fed up with the way their country was run. So when that famous press conference on 9 November 1989 resulted in the spontaneous opening of the Berlin Wall, my parents were as excited and baffled and overwhelmed with joy as all their colleagues, friends, and family around them.
While everyone knew that change was needed, and needed soon, none of them could have predicted the events that were unfolding around them — more or less by mistake. With the softening of travel regulations in the Soviet Bloc, especially at the Hungarian-Austrian border, it had become difficult for the GDR government to control limitations on travel for its people. The Central Committee of the SED ('Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands', which was the only active political party in this one-party-state) agreed to reform their international travel policy, doing away with lengthy and complicated travel application processes. This was agreed by the committee in the late afternoon of Thursday 9 November 1989 and was proposed to come into action on the following day, to allow for border control staff to be prepared for the change.
However, Günter Schabowski, the committee's press spokesperson, was not present when this decision was made, so was hastily handed a written summary of the plans for an upcoming live press conference at 6pm that night. Schabowski was so badly prepared that he miscommunicated the plan in a way which led to the press proclaiming that the GDR was opening its borders with immediate effect. With people flooding to the Berlin checkpoints in their thousands within minutes of the announcement, the SED Committee understood that it was too late to reverse anything. The border control staff — utterly underprepared und uninformed — decided to not resist the crowd. Weeks of peaceful demonstrations were followed by a peaceful tearing down of that wall which since 1961 had symbolised dictatorship, total control, grief, despair, and the tensions of the Cold War.
Why I don't remember a single bit of the excitement that went through my family that day and week will always remain a mystery to me. So I will cherish my own 'border memory' — that of the traffic jam and the smiling faces of strangers reaching exotic fruit through the windows of our car, while we were patiently queuing to cross a piece of road that symbolised an enormously precious newly found freedom.
