Falling Again

I tried liveblogging the Wall celebration in Berlin last night (on Facebook) and there were some technical glitches. So here, in a more coherent form, is what I thought.

The “dominoes” set up between Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate were large rectangular boxes painted like those art projects in various cities — cows in Chicago, hearts in San Francisco, bears in Berlin — but with some reference to East and West or to freedom:

Their topple was disappointing, partly because Bon Jovi played a completely useless song in front of the Brandenburg Gate beforehand. But then I was soaked and cranky. And I may be congenitally unfit to appreciate Bon Jovi.

It was strange to be in a crowd that Dmitry Medvedev addressed live, in Russian, over a number of large digital screens. That could also be down to an inborn prejudice or two.

The man on the screen here is Berlin’s mayor, Klaus Wowereit, but you get the idea. There was something pompous and eerily nationalistic about the whole party. Germans can be excused because it was a 20th anniversary, I suppose, but they really shouldn’t be in the habit of celebrating like this on November 9, which is also the anniversary of Kristallnacht (and Kaiser Wilhelm’s abdication, and Hitler’s first attempt to do away with the Weimar Republic).

But Angela Merkel gave a good speech. She was strident about the uses of freedom without being German-triumphant. She mentioned Kristallnacht and gave credit to the right people — East Germans for walking out on Communism, and Gorbachev, by name, for his policies. But not Reagan! Keep in mind that Merkel’s a conservative, one of those eastern-born Europeans who supposedly idolize Reagan and Thatcher for their staunch stance against the Soviet Union. She was careful with her history.

I went away feeling the Wall doesn’t need to fall every year, symbolically, to commemorate the end of Communism. That night in 1989 was a brilliant moment, a bloodless elegy for a murderous century in German and European history, but there’s no compelling evidence yet that the next hundred years will be better. And when the thirtieth anniversary arrives, in 2019, the Wall will have been gone for two years longer than it ever stood on earth. I hope Germany can somehow shift the big street party to October 3, the anniversary of reunification, so the memory of Kristallnacht won’t be overshadowed.

     posted 10 November 2009 by Michael Scott Moore

  1. I like your thoughts on this, Mike.

    — Na    Nov 11, 04:34 am    #

  2. You can see from my blog that I had a more upbeat reaction to the whole thing. The secret, I think, was not planting myself somewhere for hours, as I could see that was going to be a sufferance that involved, not particularly in this order: 5°C rain, claustrophobia and Bon Jovi. Hurray, I was Mauer Mobbing when Bon Jovi played! I quite liked the dominoes exactly for the homey, art-project feel they gave. After all, history can be thought of as nothing more than the sum of each of our own little memories.

    — Katchita    Nov 11, 12:22 pm    #

  3. Oh, the dominoes were fine. I was just describing them. But the music was unfortunate.

    — Mike    Nov 11, 02:44 pm    #