9:45 a.m. - 2004-09-18
This post is Hasselhoff-frei
I've gotten into the habit of using this journal to recount my every boring move, so today I'll do something different. This is part of a post I made to an email list for exchange students.
In the 1989-90 school year, I went to Germany on a scholarship that's funded jointly by the US Congress and the German Bundestag. You might remember that 1989 was the year the Berlin Wall came down. I was there. In Germany, anyway. I did visit Berlin, but it was 4 months later.
Anyway, there was recently a survey taken among Germans, and it was found that 1 in 5 Germans would rather have the Wall rebuilt. There's a discussion in the email list about this survey, and here are my two Pfennig:
Regarding the arrival of the Berlin Wall: I was told the story so many times, but I still can't fathom what it must have been like for the families who were split for decades because the Wall "popped up" that one day.
My host father in my second family had a relative (cousin, I think) that he hadn't seen since before the Wall went up. Couldn't call, couldn't write...just because his house was on the other side of this arbitrary line.
Another observation about being an exchange student in Germany during the year the Wall came down - and it could just be because I was young and naive, but here's how things panned out:
1. When I was in grade school, the pastor at my parish told a story about how he'd visited behind the Iron Curtain. He was closely monitored the entire time, and could go nowhere without an escort. Everything he did was questioned and watched.
2. My aunt was a missionary behind the Iron Curtain. She had to assume a false name ("Natalie"), and later told me that her tampons were confiscated because someone thought they could be bombs. This is where I start thinking something's gotta give.
3. 1988-89 I take (and barely pass) European History while I'm applying for the CBYX scholarship. I quickly find that it's awfully hard to keep track of how many times the borders for all these countries have changed.
3b. At some point, we get to the chapter about the Wall being built and Germany being divided. Keeping in mind that the whole year so far has been an ever-changing list of wars, overthrown governments, new countries, and new borders, the thought forms in the back of my mind that no matter how terrible it is, it's temporary.
4. I get to Germany, the Wall comes down, and while I'm caught up in the celebration and absorbing the history of what's been going on in the East, I'm not 'surprised enough' for my host family. I never said, "I knew this was gonna happen," but I do remember getting into an argument with my host sisters regarding how much longer the people in the East would have put up with the way they were being treated.
Again, I'm not saying I predicted the fall of the Mauer - far from it. I didn't put any thought to whether I'd see it come down in my lifetime. I had simply accepted that things in Europe change shape more often than not. And mind you, I wasn't fully aware of just how oppressed the people in the East actually were. I learned all of that afterwards.
So yeah, it was an incredibly amazing feat to manage a peaceful reunification, especially considering the violence that built it. And during what could just as easily have been another bloody revolution, I *so* took my safety for granted, sitting just two or three hundred miles away from it all. Like I said, that's probably just because I was 17 and invincible in my own head.
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