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Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, young people in Germany don’t give a lot of thought to what was once known as the GDR or East Germany. The communist state once carved out a large portion of their homeland, dividing it not just geographically, but also ideologically. But now few know much about a place that ceased to exist before they were even born. Though Germany was unified in 1990, much of the eastern part of the country still lags behind in unemployment, investment, and innovation. And while some teachers and parents would rather not dwell on a recent but painful past, others say remembering is the only way to move the whole country forward. Susan Stone reports from Berlin. Download MP3
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MARCO WERMAN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a speech today to a joint session of the US Congress. Merkel grew up in what was communist East Germany. Today she thanked US law makers for America’s support in the years leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. That happened 20 years ago next week. Now there’s a whole generation of German’s born after the wall came down and as Susan Stone reports from Berlin many young Germans know little about their country’s recent painful past.
SUSAN STONE: As the autumn sun sets a group of 15 and 16 year olds from the central western city of Selm have just about had their fill of history. Still they crowd around Hans-Michael Schulze, a guide at Berlin’s DDR Museum. The boys perk up when we get to the Trabant exhibit. Schulze tells them how long East Germans waited to get these cheap plastic polluting cars and why they were nearly the only autos available.
HANS-MICHAEL SCHULZE: [SPEAKING GERMAN]
TRANSLATOR: Giving a tour like this now, 20 years after the end of East Germany, well it’s really astounding how little is known.
STONE: The kids have the basics. They know there was a Berlin Wall and the Stasi, the secret police, but not much more. History teacher Nicole Abendroth is accompanying her class. East Germany is on the lesson plan for later in the year. She says the tenth graders don’t have much of connection to the former East.
NICOLE ABENDROTH: [SPEAKING GERMAN]
TRANSLATOR: I think in the end the DDR amounts to a feeling. What people experienced here essentially confined to their country and that is truly how to convey I have to admit. That’s why I think it’s important to come here. That the students really get a chance to get to know what it was like.
STONE: Across town at the Stasi Museum 18-year-old Kathrin Weiss and her classmates gasp and laugh as a guide describes the miles of files the Stasi kept on ordinary citizens. Weiss says she’s heard a bit about East Germany from her godmother who grew up there. It wasn’t so bad, her godmother told her. As long as you didn’t criticize the system you could have a normal family life just like in the West. But Kathrin is starting to question that.
KATHRIN WEISS: [SPEAKING GERMAN]
TRANSLATOR: It’s not right what she said but she probably just didn’t know. She never realized. She never noticed. And maybe, my God, when you’re not seriously confronted with it you don’t really deal with it. She grew up that way so she didn’t know anything else.
STONE: Kathrin is from Bavaria what was once part of West Germany. Students like her often know more about the former East than young people living in the region today. That’s according to the Stasi Museum’s Uwe Hillmer. He and colleagues at Berlin’s Free University spent three years interviewing students about this period. But Hillmer says it’s not just students who are uninformed.
UWE HILLMER: [SPEAKING GERMAN]
TRANSLATOR: The division of Germany in the post-war period is probably one of the most documented in history. But the reality is that the collective historical memory is at zero. And all these countless 20th anniversary events aren’t changing everything. We’re stuck at zero.
STONE: Not far from the Stasi Museum sit two teenagers, Robin and Robert, whose parents grew up in East Germany. Have they visited the Stasi Museum, the DDR Museum, or the Berlin Wall Memorial?
ROBIN AND ROBERT: [SPEAKING GERMAN]
STONE: The answer each time is no. And that’s not uncommon for young people in Berlin. Robert says he’d like to visit a museum with his father to give them a better venue for discussing this history than the car or the breakfast table. Robin hasn’t talked much about East Germany with his parents but he does remember this comment.
ROBIN: [SPEAKING GERMAN]
TRANSLATOR: My mother told me for example, it was a very socially-minded time. That there was work for everyone. Not like today where we have so many unemployed people just sitting around. Actually it wasn’t such a bad time. I think it was good.
STONE: These are troubling statements for some Germans who view it as a dangerous nostalgia. But they’re also legitimate memories that contribute to a national fabric of understanding says Leopold Gruen. Gruen is a Berlin-based film maker who grew up in East Germany, later married a West German woman, and had two kids. The fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification paved the way for his family.
LEOPOLD GRUEN: [SPEAKING GERMAN]
TRANSLATOR: For me the most important thing in relaying history is that you have to search for traces in your own biography, in your family. Then ultimately you have the chance to share the experience of history. Private histories are the tiles of the mosaic. They’re like the pieces of a puzzle that can somehow be put together.
STONE: As successive generations grow up and pass on complex histories to their own children, it’s important again in Germany not to forget the past. The hope is that in this anniversary year marking the fall of the Berlin Wall somehow the shadows of the past will illuminate Germany’s future. For The World I’m Susan Stone in Berlin.
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