After the Berlin Wall: Putting Two Germanys Back Together Again
Christopher Hilton
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0750950757
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Documenting an incredible unification in the history of Europe, this account examines the merging of East and West Germany following the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1990. Describing how a totalitarian, atheist, and communist system was married with a democratic, Christian, and capitalist one, this study explores relevant questions such as How did this marriage affect the everyday life of ordinary Germans? How did combining two telephone systems, postal services, hospitals, industry, and railways work? and How were women’s rights, welfare, arts, and housing affected? Spotlighting how this consolidation was never forewarned and how no country had ever tried joining two completely opposite systems before, this investigation presents a fascinating chronicle told through the words of the people who lived through it.
watched Western TV just like everybody else. It’s tempting to represent totalitarian regimes as monoliths when they are, of course, full of human beings just like you and I. For a fascinating portrait of exactly this see Mary Fulbrook’s masterly The People’s State. The point about extremism I am trying to make is a subtly different one. The GDR was able to act without reference to its own citizens; and the government – lacking a proper mandate from the ballot box – took for itself powers which
East Berlin there weren’t many of those compromises, perhaps only this one. The Catholic Church in the East was much weaker than in the rest of Germany because, as we have seen, the East was more Protestant than Catholic. ‘This is very important to know,’ Dr Althausen said. ‘The West was industrial and Catholic; the East was agricultural and Protestant.’ He was born in today’s Poland, 40km beyond the Oder river. It was a little village. My childhood was very good. All the bombing and other
was imprisoned, transported to the Ukraine and he died there. We had gone to a Berlin suburb. I was sixteen and I tried to attend school but it was a little bit difficult so I worked on a farm as long as possible – to the end of 1945 I was a farmer’s boy. I was cautious because the Russians were always on the lookout for men who might have been soldiers in the German army. I got through that period and started my schooling again in January 1946. I finished in September and had the opportunity to
Stasi. His Ostpolitik proved controversial at home but won him the Nobel Peace Prize. 6. Some estimates suggest a third of the GDR land area was under government (or if you prefer communal) ownership. 7. The role of landownership in the transformation process in East German cities. Illustrated by the case study of the inner city of Dresden by Dorothea Wiktorin in www.wlu.ca/viessmann/html_pages/series_online.htm. 8. Ibid. 9. ‘Volkseigentum [people’s property] refers to property, mostly of an
to forget all about politics and ideology. ‘But taking into account the general shortage of goods, life was far from idyllic. People were always hunting down scarce goods, but they learned to live with it. They bartered, worked after hours, or participated in illicit trading. Many withdrew into themselves. The dacha became a symbol of the way of life in the GDR. ‘There was an inevitable gap between what people thought and what they said. They were afraid that they might attract attention to