Speaking at a ceremony in Berlin to commemorate the events in 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev says his role was simply to ‘open a window’ for the GDR
IT IS the great running battle of modern German history: who brought down the Berlin Wall?
Was it the East German people who, led by civil rights groups, challenged the authorities with the slogan “We are the people”?
Or was it the achievement of great political figures who smoothed the way to a peaceful transition?
For 20 years there has been a stand-off between the two camps, with civil rights groups watching jealously as the politicians are courted in the media and at star-studded galas.
Thus the invitation from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, affiliated with the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), seemed like it was going to be one of those self-serving, back-slapping political events.
But Saturday’s event to honour the three statesmen at the helm in 1989 – Helmut Kohl, George Bush snr and Mikhail Gorbachev – turned into something else entirely.
The eldest of the three men, 85- year-old Bush, strode onto the stage of Berlin’s Friedrichstadt Palast looking fresh and happy, even winking at a woman in the front row, in plain sight of his wife, Barbara.
Gorbachev wore his familiar, glum poker face and gave a rambling address about how the US today under President Barack Obama needs its own perestroika.
Seeing Kohl was a shock. Some 18 months after a bad fall, the 79-year-old former chancellor is now in a wheelchair and is rarely seen at official events.
For 20 years these three men have been styled by the media and well-meaning observers as the heroes of 1989.
But after bathing in the applause at what is likely to be their last public appearance together, the three presented a united and modest front. Bush put the responsibility for the peaceful revolution of 1989 on the shoulders of the East German people, who “for too long had been deprived of their God-given rights”.
Gorbachev agreed.
“We don’t want to see attributed to us the achievements of others. The heroes were the people, that is what has to remain in the public memory,” he said, describing his own role as “merely opening a window for the GDR”.
If only Bärbel Bohley had been at the event to hear their words. Like few others, the 64-year-old Berliner was the face of the East German civil rights movement.
Born two weeks after the end of the second World War, she grew up playing in the charred ruins of the Reichstag and saw the Berlin Wall going up.
In 1986 she co-founded the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights, working outside existing church-affiliated structures to push for free elections and the right to travel.
Spied on, imprisoned and finally expelled from East Germany in 1988, she remained involved in the Neues Forum, a united front of civil rights groups.
It published a proclamation in September 1989 – signed by over 200,000 people – calling for wide-ranging reforms of East Germany and free, democratic elections.
Bohley and other civil rights campaigners were surprised by the fall of the wall and caught out by the dizzying speed of events that followed.
The Neues Forum eventually split over whether or not to keep pushing for a reformed GDR.
On the streets, people no longer chanted “We are the people” but “We are one people”.
And, after missing the fall of the wall during a state visit to Warsaw, Kohl won back the political initiative by conjuring up a 10-point plan for German unification just three weeks later.
The West German political parties moved in, the splintered civil rights groups were sidelined and Bohley made her now infamous remark: “We wanted freedom and what we got was the rule of law.”
Eventually the civil rights campaigners went their separate ways: many entered the established political parties – a Neues Forum splinter group, Bündnis 90, merged with the Green Party – but most simply disappeared into their daily lives.
They took with them their own heroic tale and a sixth sense for injustice that keeps German civil society on its toes.
Bohley moved to the Balkans for 12 years and returned to Germany in 2008. What’s her assessment of the united Germany? “In many cases we have the blossoming landscapes we were promised,” she says. “But the people are colder now, more individualistic. They have nice things on, but have empty faces.”
Still energetic, still campaigning, Bohley is anything but bitter about how things turned out after 1989. If anything, she blames campaigners’ own inexperience for not pushing for greater involvement in the unification deal and beyond.
Wolfgang Templin – beside Bohley one of best-known campaigners from 1989 – is proud, too, of what was achieved. But he shares Bohley’s regret that the campaigners fumbled on the finish line.
“We were too equable and naive in the 1990 talks,” says Templin, recalling his participation in the round table talks that negotiated East Germany’s accession into the federal republic.
“We were pushed too quickly by Bonn to reach a deal, and allowed too many of the old GDR cadres to have a very soft landing.
“Many of their former victims, meanwhile, are still living with the consequences of their persecution, often in piteous conditions.
“I wish we had been more consequential on pushing for justice on both sides.”
Back at the Friedrichstadt Palast, it’s the turn of Kohl to speak.
The consequences of his 2007 fall are clear as the wheelchair-bound “unification chancellor” struggles with words.
The air is charged with the emotional realisation that this may well be Kohl’s last public address.
Despite his articulation difficulties, he seems anxious to settle one outstanding account: who brought down the Berlin Wall?
“We found the right way. Together with the agreement of our neighbours we achieved unification together,” he says, slowly and thickly.
“In German history, there is not much reason to be proud. But from my time as chancellor, I have every reason to be proud of German unification.”
As an audience including Chancellor Angela Merkel fights back tears, Kohl adds a last thought: “I know now how heaven helped us.”
