Art helps us ponder the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here, hammers and sickles are buried in a slice of Berlin Wall concrete. Enlarge photo |
Thinking “Hitler” back in the 1930s, this little girl sings, “You really gotta hold on me.” Sadly, the hateful power of Nazism is not entirely dead. Enlarge photo |
The Berlin Wall fell twenty years ago. Tourists seem to care more than locals. I asked how the East Berliners have integrated into the Western ways of united Germany. Local friends told me the East Berliners were a people educated not to ask questions, not to control their destiny, and to pride themselves in manual labor.
While Westerners lived with non-Germans, Eastern Berlin didn’t live with foreigners. With freedom, the least trained among them found themselves competing at the low end of the workforce with Turks and other immigrants. Their fear of foreigners and their own lack of economic hope and opportunity make the less-educated, working-class Germans from the former East more skinheady–more prone to cling to racism and support far-right-wing political parties.
While neo-Nazis are a tiny fringe in Germany, there is a smoldering fascist element in German society. I was told it’s led (Lyndon LaRouche-style) by older men who spearhead young movements via websites and music. Neo-Nazis listen to hateful music with forbidden themes by forbidden bands. These jackbooted punk-style bands have nostalgic, patriotic names like “Rheingold” and sing patriotic themed tunes that evoke the 1930s.
In Germany, there is freedom of speech…except against Jews. Children can tell Norwegian jokes all they want. But if they say racist things against Jews, they can actually get their parents in legal trouble. Germans are dealing aggressively with their fascist ghosts. While there are rowdy skinhead gatherings on Hitler’s April 20 birthday, there are almost always much larger counter-demonstrations at the same time, effectively drowning out the neo-hate.
A friend told me that because they grew up not allowed to travel, former East Germans are the ones who “travel like hell.” While West Berliners holiday elsewhere in Germany or in the Netherlands, people from the DDR (East Germany) travel to places farther away, like Egypt.
The importance of being free to travel is a recurring theme in my travels this year. The citizens of the former Yugoslavia fondly remember how they were always free to travel. They were free to travel because they always came back, and they always came back because they were free to travel. Citizens of the DDR risked their lives to escape the country that wouldn’t let them leave. Now they “travel like hell.”