ROCK AGAINST THE WALL
Anatol Lieven reports
on the riots in East and West Berlin
Berlin ONE should really add the two birthdays of the two Berlins together and make it 1,500 years, so rigidly have the celebra- tions been kept apart. In the past few weeks, however, they have achieved a curious symmetry thanks to the youth protests in East and West. Both sets of protesters were in their way banging their heads against the Wall that divides them.
Much more obviously of course in the case of the East Berliners. The immediate cause of their riot was absurd enough — a move by the police to stop them listening to the capitalist-imperialist-revanchist melodies of David Bowie floating across from 'over there' (Driiben, as the Berliners on both sides say). This kind of absurdity is the very stuff of Berlin life. It is absurd that it is easy for citizens of the four 'protecting powers' to get from one part of the city to the other and very difficult for the Berlin- ers themselves; absurd that Britain, France and America should still technically rule over part of West Germany; absurd that over the years dozens of people should have been machine-gunned trying to make the equivalent of the passage between Marble Arch and Oxford Street.
Absurd it may be, but wicked too; and every time the Germans seem to have settled down and accepted their divided state, the absurdity and wickedness of it jumps up and hits them in the face again. There are in fact some grounds for thinking that otherwise division might come to seem natural. The generation that was cut off from its closest relatives is beginning to die out. Opinion polls in West Germany show that a large majority do not believe in the
possibility of re-unification — which is, admittedly, not the same as not wanting To them, however, the Wall is like a permanent reproach to their complacency- The West German President, Richard von Weizsacker, has summed it up in words deliberately designed to appeal not just to a West German but also a West European consensus: 'The German ques- tion will remain open as long as the Brandenburg Gate remains shut.' Wet?: sacker, a Christian Democrat, has himself tried to promote better relations with the East. So, for obvious reasons, have a succession of Governing Mayors of East Berlin, the most famous example being Willy Brandt.
The present Mayor, Eberhard DiepgeO, has also been caught by the logic of his situation. Despite the opposition of his party, the Christian Democrats, and of the Western protecting powers, he wished to attend the celebrations in the East. After a long game of invitation and counter- invitation, the East Germans finally block- ed the idea. Britain, France and America for their part had been concerned by the implications for the 'Four Power Agree- ment' with Russia which by regulating the status of the city supposedly prevents future Berlin crises.
They did not try to veto the visit, as legally they could have done. In West Germany, however, it is deeply, if silently, resented that the Allies should have any say at all in such a German matter. Things like this help explain the anti-Allied out- bursts on the German Right in connection with the abolition of intermediate nuclear missiles, which they felt had been negoti- ated over the Germans' heads.
As for the East German regime, its spokesmen sometimes point out that the nation-state is more the exception that the rule in the modern world. India and most of Africa consist of states containing many different nationalities. The Arab world, and in a way Spanish America, have no `nationality' and many states. None of these systems however has a Berlin unless they were to count Beirut. In recent years they have been making efforts to 'normalise' the East German situation by a new appeal to German history, and especially to the `Prussian progressive tradition'. Frederick the Great and General Scharnhorst are back on their Pedestals. In East Berlin there has been a rush to restore old monuments in time for the birthday. The churches, so long de- liberately left in ruins, have particularly benefited. On the surface, no doubts about the East German identity are permitted to show. In all the signposts 'over these' one reads 'Berlin, capital of the German Democratic Republic'. But as Eberhard Diepgen has neatly pointed out, how often do the French have to put up signposts saying 'Paris, capital of France'? As for the East German population, after the border was closed in 1963 they settled down to work with the grim deter- mination of the inhabitants of a bleakish boarding school (in German Internat). Heaven knows, in East Germany there are enough school prefects, school bullies, school prigs and school swots to keep everyone in order. The atmosphere has been called Wilhelmine rather than social- ist — full of the fussy heel-clicking obei- sance to authority of pre-1914 Germany. The standard of living is high by the low standards of Eastern Europe, and there is job security for those not on the Party's black-list.
This is played up by the regime as a contrast to the unemployment-ridden West, whose television programmes never- theless exert their siren appeal every even- ing, with the connivance of the authorities, who have even arranged for cable trans- mission of West German television to those parts of East Germany not able to receive it direct: the new opium of the People.
Two things strike the visitor: the militar- isation of every bit of society that the state can manageably militarise (once again, shades of the old Germany!) and the appalling level of environmental pollution, which has killed the rivers, is killing the trees, and will presumably also kill the People, more slowly; enough to make a Green blanch. The Greens, however, pre- fer not to look too closely across the Wall. Nor does the rest of the West German Further Left. There is no odder spectacle than that of the West Berlin revolutionaries of the later 1960s, only five years after the Wall was built, rioting against capitalist imperialism as if everything East of Berlin — Kreuz- berg was as remote as Tartary. Nonethe- less, the Wall has influenced them crucial- ly: the repulsive nature of the grey tyranny `over there' has deprived them of one left-wing focus of loyalty as surely as the Social Democrats' compromise with the West German 'system' has deprived them of another. The Baader-Meinhof terrorists are one product of their resulting dis- orientation. The Greens are another, more constructive one.
All these forces tend to blame the division of Germany on the Americans; so the riots against Reagan's visit were also in part a form of protest against the Wall. An unrecognised nationalism — 'One day. Germany may heal the world' — is in fact deeply sunk in Green thinking. When they do think realistically of East-West relations it is of West and East Germany 'growing closer together'. That, however, will be difficult. Both are firmly set in their own blocs and economic systems. Another essential difference is summed up in the East German regime's public reaction to their own riots, 300 yards from the Bran- denburg Gate. They said they hadn't hap- pened. No wonder the East Berlin demon- strators called upon Gorbachev and glas- nost: this is the sort of thing that gets censorship a bad name.
Previous page
