The Wall and us

Photography by Leo Kuroyanagi

William Allen reflects on the evolving symbolism of the Berlin Wall, thirty years after its fall.

Our recollection of history is a peculiarity, shot through with glimpses and flashes, soundbites and snapshots, of the great events which have formed what we are. In the vitriol of President Raegan’s 1987 speechmaking, “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”, we see the foreshadowing of democracy in East Germany, just as the die was cast for Julius Caesar in 49 BC – “alea iacta est!” – casting itself a far greater pall over the prospects of a future Empire. This is no coincidence. Huge moments form bold, concise sayings and memories which resound and are surprisingly remembered and cherished, in a culture like ours which is often characterised as joyously liquid, ephemeral, and transient.

The Berlin Wall is a symbolic summing up of that which went wrong in the 20th century. In its razing and destruction, it has become for us today not just a portal into our troubled history, but a universal beacon of hope. It proves, in a quirkily biblical fashion, that nations both rise and fall. While the soundbites are built into our collective memory, the reality of a divided state, or the recollection of living a divided political life, is not altogether familiar. Paradigms of symbolic history might live on in anniversaries, commemorations, even memorabilia, toeing the line of the meaningful, and edging into the beginnings of ephemera – they do not answer the questions of “why” and “how”, questions which best prepare us for a dizzying future of social conflict, radicalism, and troubling political tensions. The true lessons of the Wall are sought out when prying deeper: uncovering the Germany behind the Wall, and the social activism which subdued it.

I came into contact with the Berlin Wall, not in the textbook or podcast, but tangibly, when I last visited Germany in June. Nothing prepares you for “reliving” a history viscerally: it cannot be censured, it cannot be hidden away, redacted or adjusted. It comes into the senses immediately, to be reviled, or adored, or rejected. Many of the established churches in Europe have developed programmes of information and spiritual exchange, which see young and old people experiencing worship, but also, and importantly, cultural memory. And so, as a budding, perhaps green, young Anglican, I fell into this scheme – and what was an act of “volunteering”, became an insight into the history of the accoutrements of the Wall itself.

Boundaries not only inhibit but conceal. East Berliners existed in a fundamentally different way to the democracies of the West. We are, no matter the size of our experience, familiar with the notion of intersecting cultures and communities – London breathes and indulges this culture. Yet nothing seems so hostile as a hidden virulent world existing “over the fence” from the comfort and safety of one’s home. The German Diplomatic Republic (GDR) was a stunted republic, a troubled place that wilfully lived in the long shadow of the Wall – a Wall that was not a fortress, nor shield, but a perimeter to prevent escape. The Wall took prisoners.

You can visit museums near Alexanderplatz, a district which was previously incorporated into East Berlin, which exemplify the culture of GDR, as one of propaganda, and fear. Here soundbites of history live on, harrowing us in their stridency. Living “tangible” history shocks yet further – the quiet terror of the Stasi worn in the walls of Berlin-Hohenschönhausen is as chilling as the memoria of Holocaust atrocities, and the brutality of Nazism. In such places, where one can still touch the very walls, see the rails, see the interrogator’s desk – and so forth, there is a sense of experiencing a microcosm of a larger, deprived culture of wrongness. Wrong, not for some dramatic portrait of evil, but for a seething resentment of the human joy and freedom, which we, measure for measure, enjoy today.

And so, with the Berlin Wall up and operating, Stasi officers drove in spasmodic, confusing patterns around their portion of the city, their vans concealing unsuspecting suspects and convicts – free to deprive Berliners of their greatest liberties. Stasi had a file on almost everyone – church ministers were no exception, nor philanthropists. The perennial temptation is to see the operation of the GDR as a tired, undedicated dictatorship, in the wake of the arch-evil of Hitler’s regime. But it serves as a reminder of the quiet way in which freedom is deprived, with a final legacy of decades of deprivation which Germans have now to comprehend, evaluate, and endure.

What are the “why” and “how” answers, which help us now, in light of the symbol of the Berlin Wall’s rise and fall? German resolve, to do better, to unify, is certainly a role model which can inspire our generation to hone social activism for just causes. The Berlin Wall didn’t fall “inevitably”, but resolutely, through men and women throwing themselves into the dirt, in a sort of unkempt glory, as they defied the barrier to freedom. That German idealism can live again, in the epoch of today – though it demands that we squeeze out a part of our own cultural nonchalance and focus on the issues, the “soundbites and snapshots”, that are, in a somehow cliched way, worth fighting for.

As for “why?” – there is no nation that monopolises conflict. There are walls, and boundaries thrown into corners of our collective and personal lives. We know this. The Berlin Wall, and its history, focusses that reality, gives it urgency. But it is a three-dimensional symbol not just representative of oppression, but of the cycle of rising and falling, which is the gift (or curse) of our very human history. Perhaps the Berlin Wall, then, like the spiritual mottos I pronounced while in Berlin this summer past, is a token of hope. Of a hope that leads us into action, leads us into solidarity always, with those who not only cherish but openly love the social freedoms which, over centuries, we have happily secured.