David Hecht reports.

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With his departure, the USSR dissolved, and the first socialist state was consigned to the dustbin of history.
It was the end of an ideology, and an empire. (Watch the Soviet flag lowered for the last time.)

Andrey Grachev retired from politics the day after Mikhail Gorbachev did. His final assignment, as Gorbachev’s press secretary, was to tell the international press corps that the Soviet Union was no more.

“Somebody compared my role in those days to a character in the medieval theater, who’s switching off the light once the play is over,” Grachev recalled.

There are lots of theories for the Soviet Union’s sudden demise. But how does an insider like Andrey Grachev explain it?

“I think it died from inside,” he said, and not as a result of external pressures or enemies.

Grachev said he thinks the times of greatest conflict, the Second World War and the Cold War, actually strengthened the Soviet state.

“The most dangerous phases for the regime were the periods of detente, of peaceful co-existence, the periods when the external threat could not be used as the justification for the persecution of dissidents and the internal opposition,” Grachev said.

The Soviet Union’s chief vulnerability, he added, was a structural one; it was a huge, multi-ethnic empire.

“The great historic paradox of the Bolshevik Revolution was that when most world empires were breaking up, it was this new project, the communist project, with its international message, which amazingly helped the former Russian Empire to survive in the form of a new, rejuvenated, revolutionary state. A common motherland for all the nations, with most of the oppressed nations participating in the struggle against the Czarist regime.”

The Bolsheviks were the first Marxist party ever to seize state power. They promised to build a worker’s paradise, and a common motherland for all of Russia’s national and ethnic minorities. But by the l930s, the dictatorship of the proletariat had turned into the dictatorship of Josef Stalin, and the Soviet state came to resemble the vast, imperial system it had overthrown.

“It was a very rigid structure, which could be kept together mostly by force and coercion,” Grachev said.
It also barricaded itself and its citizens from the rest of the world.

Even so, the Soviet regime had some staggering achievements. It transformed Russia from a mostly peasant society to a modern industrial state; it vanquished Hitler’s armies during World War II; and it became a world leader in science.

On April 14, l961, Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin became the first man to orbit the earth. There was world news coverage of Gagarin being greeted by Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev.

Four years earlier, the Soviets had launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. It was the height of the Cold War, and the beginning of the space race.

Soviet leaders poured money into space and military programs. By the early l980s, the Soviet Union had more tanks, troops and nuclear weapons than any other nation on earth.

“The Soviet Union was competitive in one sector, which was this military economy,” Grachev said, “but at the price of destroying the rest of the economy and the standard of living of most of the population.”

When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party in l985, the Soviet economy was in a state of near collapse.

“He realized something had to be done. We can no longer live like this’ was a common line,” said Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow.

“A common word that people used to describe the period of late stagnation was ‘marasmus.’ And it was merazum in Russian. Because the system was in a state of degradation, and everybody saw it.” Lipman said.

It was an economy of shortages; Soviet citizens spent hours standing in line for basic necessities. The gap between the official communist rhetoric and reality was a mile wide.

“The ideology that had been part and parcel of the system early on, after all it was an ideological empire, this ideology had grown hollow, and become hypocritical.”

Gorbachev tried to rescue the system by allowing private enterprise and ending the communist party’s monopoly on power. He also vowed to slash military spending, and end the Cold War.

But then in June of l987, President Ronald Reagan stood in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, and dared him to do even more. He famously urged Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall.”

Two years later, Gorbachev allowed that to happen.

In an interview on Russian television earlier this year, Gorbachev said he knew he was doing the right thing by letting the Eastern Europe satellites go. But it was still hard.

“And it was so moving because he admitted it,” according to political analyst Masha Lipman. “He as a person who inherited this huge empire felt that there was something very wrong about them suddenly setting free of us. I mean we are the boss, we are the master, we are at the center of this universe. But he let them go.”

Andrey Grachev in the backyard of his dacha outside Moscow. (Photo: Brigid McCarthy)

Andrey Grachev said that during his last months in power, Gorbachev was trying to transform the USSR into a voluntary federation.

But once it became clear he would not use force — or fear — to keep the USSR together, the whole structure imploded.

“After all one of the elements of keeping together this huge historic and geographic reality was fear,” according to Andrey Grachev.

But the USSR wasn’t just destroyed by the forces of nationalism. The collapse of communism unleashed something even more powerful: greed and lawlessness.

Perhaps that’s what Gorbachev was warning about in his farewell address to the nation on Christmas Day of l991, when he said that Soviet society had acquired political and spiritual freedom, but that it had yet to come to grips with that achievement.

“People in this country are ceasing to be citizens of a great power,” Gorbachev added.

In the end, the collapse of the Soviet Union turned out to be a great misfortune for most of the population, said Boris Kapustin, a visiting professor of ethics and politics at Yale University

“We are increasingly becoming a third world in any respect,” he said, citing declines in science, education and health. “This is not just an economic disaster; it’s a cultural disaster as well.”

Valery Solovei, a professor of history at Moscow State Institute for International Relations, thinks this might explain the current protests against the Putin regime.

“The Russians hate the authorities,” Solovei said.

He said he doesn’t think most Russians want a return to Soviet socialism, but they’d like to have a functioning state.
“They want to have normal health care, which they’re willing to pay for. But even for money, they can’t receive anything. Even very rich people can’t receive normal health care or education for their children,” he said. “It means that the social system doesn’t work now, and the authorities don’t function either. The Russians see it and this is a problem.”

In other words, it’s not over yet.

Twenty years later, the Soviet Union is still collapsing.

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• Program 2 – Part 2

An international crew of researchers emerged from a windowless space module in Moscow on Friday.

They took part in an experiment to simulate the long flight to Mars.

French researcher Romain Charles was pale but smiling: “After 520 days of motionless trip, we are proud today to prove that humans can go to Mars.”

They didn’t actually go to Mars but did you know that the first known map of Mars dates back to around 1840?

That’s when two German astronomers made drawings of the surface of the red planet based on years of telescope observations.

1840 map of Mars created by German astronomers Johann Heinrich Mädler and Wilhelm Beer.

So here’s the question: Where was their observatory?

Today this spot is inside Berlin’s biggest park.

Answer: the Tiergarten. Back in the 1830′s it was where German astronomers peered at Mars through their telescope and drew the first ever maps of Mars.

Berlin's Tiergarten (Photo: Plomberje/Flickr)

A crowd of well-dressed men and women lines up to get into GI Disco, a popular club night held at a posh bar in Berlin. But before they can dance, clubbers have to get past the guy at the door, former U.S. military policeman Smiley Baldwin.
Baldwin said when he’s manning the door, he often doesn’t let the younger people in. “It’s not because I don’t like them. The fact is they wouldn’t get it.”

What they wouldn’t “get” is the music history that GI Disco documents.

Baldwin served in Germany during the 1980s and 90s, when there were hundreds of thousands of American soldiers stationed there. He got together with two Berlin deejays to start this monthly club night.

GI Disco celebrates the music that American soldiers brought to Germany in the ’80s and ’90s, like hip hop, disco boogie and new jack swing.

“The dance music was being brought by the black guys,” Baldwin said. “These guys were partying and just rocking the house. When I got to Berlin, I was going out from Sunday to Sunday.”

American soldiers had the edgiest music in Germany because they brought all of their records with them from the U.S., said Daniel Best, one of the deejays at GI Disco. Best is an American who grew up near a base in Stuttgart. He said spent a lot of his teenage years at the GI clubs.

“It was German women, American soldiers, and us,” he said, laughing. “The music aficionados, you know, the music nerds were there.”

Best said the GI clubs brought local Germans into contact with a mix of music — and people. Many locals attracted to the GI club scene were looking for a dance floor where they felt accepted.

“The children of the people who came here to work –Turkish, Greek, Yugoslavian, Italian, Portuguese people — also went to these clubs,” Best said. “Children of mixed-race parents were looking culturally for a home and they would go there as well.”

Kalle Kuts also spent a lot of time hanging around these clubs in the ’80s. Now Kuts is a popular Berlin deejay. He spins records with Daniel Best at the GI Disco night. Kuts and Best came up with the idea for GI Disco while they were playing a club together. They both started pulling out some of their old-time hip-hop favorites, like “Paid in Full.”

“I can remember hearing it for the first time at a GI club in Berlin where the deejay was making a 10 or 15 minute version out of it, scratching it, cutting it, with the instrumental even rapping on top, and I knew this is really new music and this is a really new style of deejaying.”

Baldwin takes a break from the door to check out the scene. Baldwin said seeing all of these people together, Germans, Americans, the children of Germans and Americans, is the positive outcome of a troubled time. Before the wall came down in 1989, Berlin was a divided city, but a lot of people did come together on the dance floor.

“That’s a part of history that probably won’t end up in a book,” Baldwin said. “Nobody’s going to write about that.”
Maybe not yet, but they’ll definitely dance to it.

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On Sunday Germany’s little known Pirate Party took nearly 9 percent of the vote in the Berlin state elections – an astounding outcome that surprised not only election observers, but Pirate Party leaders themselves. All of its 15 candidates are now part of the Berlin state government. The youngest one just turned 19.

The party’s base is male software engineers and one of its key goals is expanding the Internet and taking down the many sites in Germany that are controlled and not accessible to the public. But as Miriam Widman reports, the Pirates have more than geek appeal.

A pirate party campaign ad sounds fairly calm and cool, but it is more than a bit shocking. It shows a cop smoking a joint – after marijuana is legalized, of course. And there are two dads holding hands in a park, pushing a stroller.

It all appealed to 48-year-old salesman Thomas Blasik . Though he admits a major reason he voted for the Pirates is that he couldn’t stand the other parties.

“Way earlier I voted for the Greens. And what came out of that,” Blasik said. “We have a Green Foreign Minister. And what does he do? He gets together with you Americans who descend on Afghanistan.”

Blasik is referring to Germany’s former Green Party Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who trumpeted environmental causes, but also supported sending troops to Afghanistan. Voting data shows that the Greens lost thousands of votes to the Pirates.

A campaign commercial of the Pirate Party

But while Blasik complained about Green Party politics, he hasn’t actually voted for them, or any other party, in something like 20 years. As a Pirate Party voter, he is not alone. More than 21,000 votes for the party came from people who hadn’t voted at all in the last five years.

At the Pirate Party headquarters a day after the big victory, there were a lot of empty beer bottles. Newly elected Heiko Herberg, a 24-year-old law student, is the second youngest member of Berlin’s state government. He said the Pirates are big on transparency and plan to tell all when they get into the government.

“We will leak everything that happens there,” Herberg said. “We will show everything that happens in politics. No more closed doors. We will make politics for the people and not over the people.”

“That’s a nice idea,” said retired Free University political science professor Nils Diederich. But Berlin state government meetings are already open to the public and the press. And he said he wonders who would really want to see all the stuff the Pirates would release?

“Most of the committees are not very interesting, which is why the press doesn’t report them,” he said. “But please – go ahead – put everything out there. The only thing that will result is an unbelievable amount of information garbage. But sometimes you can find valuable stuff in the garbage.”

Another Pirate Party idea is to tax all Berliners and tourists to pay for free public transportation. Professor Diederich said that would be an absolute no go legally.

“No matter how nice it sounds, I don’t think this idea doable,” Diederich said. “Raising an extra tax will be exceptionally difficult because municipalities only have limited jurisdiction when it comes to tax law.”

He said it is the federal government that is responsible for transportation and consumer taxes, and that people who don’t take public transport would challenge it in court and win.

Diederich said he also doesn’t think the Pirates have much appeal beyond Germany’s biggest cities, which are not many.

Whether the Pirates have staying power or are just a momentary protest vote will play out over the next couple years. The Party has just two years before Germany’s federal elections to show its stuff.

The answer is Berlin. It is a city where you might come across traveling journeymen, the modern equivalent of medieval era artisans wearing floppy black hats, bell-bottomed pants and black vests with skinny ties. The old-fashioned outfit is part of the centuries old tradition according to which hundreds of German craftsmen each year hit the road to train with masters in Germany and around the world. Caitlan Carroll reports from Berlin.

A new archive of East German punk has opened in Berlin. It documents the music, the art, and the little known persecution of punk rockers. The archive is located in a suitably down-beat area of the former East Berlin.

It’s unlikely you’ve heard of this district. So just to throw you a bone, here’s an outrageous clue. It sounds like the name of a delicious Japanese breadcrumb.

… and the answer is Pankow, a borough of Berlin, Germany and now the location of a new punk rock archives. Anchor Lisa Mullins finds out more from Reuters reporter Kalina Oroschakoff.

Germans reenact the US civil war (Photo: Caitlan Carroll)

On a warm spring morning about 50 miles north of Berlin, Union troops and their Confederate rivals prepare for battle. They are camped out for the weekend at a Wild West theme park in Templin.

About 60 people, mostly Germans, are dressed head to toe in 1860s-period clothing. Women wear hoop skirts. The men are in handmade uniforms with lots of colorful piping and brass buttons. A few young soldiers swing their bayonets.
“I’m a simple soldier, a private,” said Tobias Melchurs.

Melchurs, 21, is a business student. But this weekend, he is fighting on the side of the North in two battles — the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the first battle of Bull Run.

Melchurs belongs to one of the several German groups that engage in American Civil War reenactments about once a month.

Like many of the participants here, Melchurs feels a personal connection to the war.

“There were about 200,000 who had German roots that fought in the Civil War,” Melchurs said. “I think it is important for our history.”

Every person I speak with mentions this number: 200,000. Many of the participants actually model their characters in the reenactments after one of these German immigrant soldiers. They say it helps them feel closer to the history.

But a lot of the bloodier and more tragic parts of the war seem glossed over – like the punishing number of deaths and the issue of slavery. Ute Frevert, a historian, and head of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, said this sometimes happens when people try to re-live history.

“It is more about fantasies,” Frevert said. “That’s fair enough; life needs fantasies.”

And Frevert pointed out that the fantasy of war is not often indulged in Germany. After World War II, any talk of military glory became socially taboo here.

“As a German I have to be hesitant in the post-1945 culture, because wars are not something that Germans are used to finding fascinating and kind of exciting and appealing,” she said.

So for those at the reenactment, it is appealing that the U.S. Civil War took place in another country, in another time. It is safer, even romantic. A lot of fantasies have built up around the Confederacy, thanks to the movie, “Gone with the Wind;” it is a staple of German popular culture.

On the other side of camp, the Confederate soldiers are busy preparing for the battle. More people want to be on the Confederate side, so the Union troops sometimes have to recruit local reenactors from the American Revolutionary War.
Chris McLarren plays a confederate captain from Texas. He is actually an American. He said the Germans are totally immersed in the history.

“The Germans like to do things 110 percent sometimes,” McLarren said. “They are perfectionists in many ways and they want to do this the way it was then.”

Beyond the history, these events also provide something else — camaraderie. Young private Tobias Melchurs said people at school think he is weird to do this. On the weekend, though, he is just one of the guys.

“The battle is one thing, but we all enjoy it to sit at the fire in the evening or late at night,” Melchurs said. “Brothers in arms, yes?”

As we talk, the battle starts. Guns and cannons fire and smoke fills the air.

For these Confederate and Union reenactors, playing war is a safe game in a country that can’t help, but remember.

A flyer in the door of the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood of Berlin says "Nuclear Power? - No Thanks."(Photo: Susan Stone)

Anchor Lisa Mullins talks to reporter Susan Stone in Berlin about the news that Germany will phase out its nuclear power plants by 2022. Download MP3

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: The coalition government in Germany today announced a reversal of its policy on nuclear energy.  Just last year the Germans decided to extend the life of the country’s 17 nuclear power stations.  Well, today the government said it will phase them out by 2022.  The decision makes Germany the biggest industrial power to pledge to give up nuclear energy. Reporter Susan Stone is in Berlin.  Why is this happening in Germany now?  Is it a direct result of what has happened to the Fukushima plant in Japan?

Susan Stone: Well, that certainly has played a major role.  You know, in March Chancellor Marco put the entire energy strategy of the country under review, recommending that the country’s seven oldest nuclear reactors be shutdown for inspections. And you know, at that time the magazine Der Spiegel wrote, it says ‘If the Pope were suddenly advocating the use of birth control pills’ and now we have this really striking decision.

Mullins: Well, that’s really quite a comparison.  Why the big change in policy and how’s it being greeted?

Stone: Well people were quite disappointed when she did make that previous recommendation when there was a further dedication to nuclear power in the country.  So this has come as quite a surprise.  There are other issues going on as well, certainly political.  Her party has suffered some election losses and one could draw some conclusions from that as well.

Mullins: Nuclear power as you’re suggesting there is not very popular in Germany.

Stone: No, it’s not.  One of the things that I’ve noticed quite a bit is a large number of anti nuclear stickers and flyers.  There’s a sort of sun logo with a raised fist, with the words [speaking German], which is ‘nuclear power, no thanks.’ You know, people seem to see the nuclear issue here almost as a moral issue.  It’s just not healthy, it’s dangerous, so we shouldn’t have it.

Mullins: And at the same time though Germany gets something like 23% of its power from nuclear reactors, so what’s it gonna do if it’s planning on closing down all it’s nuclear power plants in 11 years?

Stone: That is the very important question.  Certainly renewables are very popular here.  There’s been a lot of focus on that.  There’s projects for wind power, solar power, geothermal, and the government subsidies have really helped growth in that, especially in the area of solar. But there’s also discussion about cutting solar subsidies, so that’s adding a bit of a problem to the whole discussion now.  One of the other recommendations is to cut overall energy consumption which is quite difficult all together.  And finally, the solution could include importing power from other countries that may have been produced by nuclear energy, and that has its own set of dilemmas.

Mullins: I wonder if you can contrast what’s happening now in Germany then with what’s happening here in the United States because people of course, both there and here, are concerned about Fukushima in Japan, but nobody in the U.S. is announcing a phase out of nuclear energy here.  Why do you think the difference exists?

Stone: There’s really one word for that answer and that’s Chernobyl.  Since I’ve been here I’ve heard stories of Germans who remember being afraid that they’d have deformed children because they stood out in the rain after Chernobyl.  And they didn’t know the risks.  Or they were just terrified, they’d fed their children milk or eaten vegetables from the farmer’s market and they didn’t know they weren’t supposed to. There is a very deep mistrust because of how Chernobyl was handled and the lack of information that was given to people. And this is especially true in East Germany where they were initially told that there was no risk, and in fact many people didn’t learn the true nature of the catastrophe until after reunification.  So many Germans have already lived through one nuclear disaster and they think it could happen again.

Mullins: Well, Chernobyl was felt in Germany and well beyond obviously, but in the United States we had Three Mile Island, the two were very different.  But is there something that goes beyond that example?

Stone: You know it’s been 25 years and yet there are still stories coming out about radioactive mushrooms and radioactive wild boars in Bavarian forests.  But on the other hand perhaps it’s not that cut and dry you know, France and Poland both faced risks from Chernobyl, and yet both are still embracing nuclear energy.

Mullins: All right, thank you very much, speaking to us from Berlin, reporter Susan Stone.  Thanks.

Stone: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The spurs and stars will be out on Sunday at the 46th annual Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas. Alongside the country music-loving Americans at the event, a number of Germans will also be in town for the awards show.

Every year, German tour companies run trips to the CMA. That’s because Germany is home to a dedicated country music audience. In Germany, country bands play to sold out arenas. Fans who want a dose of twang can visit honkytonk bars decorated with cattle horns and rodeo saddles.

The American Western Saloon in Berlin draws a big crowd for line dancing most nights. Duded-up men in cowboy hats and women in shiny boots shuffle across the floor to the sounds of Alan Jackson.

Marion Freier, who runs the saloon with her partner Frank Lange, said Germans are huge country music fans.

“In every little tiny village in every corner of Germany, there is either a saloon or a bar that offers country music live,” Freier said.

The German author Karl May is responsible for a lot of the interest in the American West. May wrote extremely popular books back at the turn of the 20th century about a fictional Apache chief named Winnetou and his German immigrant sidekick “Old Shatterhand.” These books fostered a yearning for a wild and untamed America, and for some, a love for country music.

Tall shots of Whiskey

A good place to get a taste of that is at the annual Country Music meeting in Berlin. For three nights, bands from the United States to Sweden play originals and covers of country music songs. Professional line dancers take to the floor and Jack Daniels, a sponsor, pours tall shots of whiskey.

“You can buy everything that has to do with country or America here at the country music meeting,” said Marion Freier, who helped coordinate the event that is part concert-part shopping mall.

Booths line the conference center. It’s a little bit of the good, the bad and the schlocky. There are hot pink cowboy boots, confederate flags, and rhinestone-studded shirts.

Sandwiched between all of this is the tourism table for Mississippi and Tennessee. Sonja Koellemann, who works for the Tennessee Tourism Board, hands out materials and runs through some of the highlights. She mentions Elvis Presley, Graceland, Nashville, and the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Andrea Muller leafs through a brochure. She’s already traveled to the south of the United States, to Tennessee and Mississippi, and she’s thinking about going again.

Where the west began

“It is the roots of the pioneers. It is where they all started,” Muller said. “It is where the west began. You have the music. You have the Blue Ridge Parkway.”

Andy and Matt Thompson, who live in Nashville, are here at the country music meeting, performing as “the Thompson Brothers.” Andy Thompson said he doesn’t think it’s that odd to show up in Berlin and see a bunch of Germans dressed like cowboys and cowgirls.

“It’s pretty fun,” Thompson said. “The line dancing is probably a little bigger here than it is in the US right now. But I guess it’s pretty similar.”

There is one big difference between playing in the US and Germany, he said: “I think the German beer makes you play different over here — maybe faster.”

Fast or slow, it’s a rhythm that makes German hearts beat a little faster, and it’s a sound they are willing to travel miles and spend money to chase after.

At the height of the Cold War, in 1987, Ronald Reagan famously urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”

He was referring to the Berlin Wall, right next to the Brandenburg gate.

Two years later the Berlin wall came down. But in the German capital today, there are few signs of Reagan’s historic statement or the man himself for that matter.

Berlin has streets named after prominent Americans like Benjamin Franklin, John Foster Dulles, and Frank Zappa.

John F. Kennedy has a plaza, an institute, a school to his name, not to mention a private museum at the Brandenburg Gate. But there is no reference to Ronald Reagan there.

Some Berliners think there should be some commemoration of America’s 40th president, but Berlin Senate spokesman Günter Kolodziej said there is simply no room.

Günter Kolodziej (Photo: Susan Stone)

Kolodziej pointed out that Ronald Reagan was made an honorary citizen in 1992, along with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev — the highest honor the city can bestow.

“Of course, Berlin reveres Mr. Reagan,” Kolodziej said. “I believe that Berlin has recognized him, and that his spirit remains present in the city.”

Left-wing Senate

It is not just a question of space. There is a policy now in Berlin to name streets after women to make up for the gender imbalance.

Martin Lindner (photo: Susan Stone)

“The real background is that there is a pretty left-wing Senate,” said Lindner, a member of the free market, pro-business FDP.

He has been campaigning in vain for several years to have a street named after the Republican president. Lindner blamed political in-fighting and lukewarm feelings about Reagan in the former east for holding things up.

“I have learned in politics naming streets is one of the most emotional things you can do,” Lindner said.

After Reagan died in 2004, Lindner proposed changing the name of the area near the city’s new train station, which was named after George Washington in 1932. “When people come by train to Berlin, they would arrive at the Ronald Reagan Place. Good idea!” Lindner said.

Tear down this wall

But the idea never took hold. Instead, one of the only places you find the “tear down this wall” line, along with a small photo taken during the 1987 speech, is in one of Berlin’s newest subway stations.

On a recent day, those passing through the station had mixed feelings about naming something in the city after Reagan. A few people supported it. But Gabriele Feltzger, who was born in 1945, said street names don’t tell the whole story.

“With 20 years of hindsight, when we see how everything turned out, maybe those in charge weren’t as clever as we always thought they were,” Feltzger said.

Her friend, Stephanie Prose was more concerned that a ceremonial street naming would be an empty gesture. “When we name places after well-known political figures who have done something for Berlin, we need to explain it on a sign or a plaque, explain why we should care.”

On Sunday, February 6th, there will be celebrations at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, CA, for the 100th anniversary of Reagan’s birth.

In the library, a piece of the Berlin Wall, decorated with a graffiti butterfly, holds a place of honor.

In Berlin, however, no movement on the issue of commemorating Ronald Reagan is expected until after the next local election, in September.

Jenny Erpenbeck's new book Visitation explores decades of German history.

Visitation, by Jenny Erpenbeck. Translation from the German by Susan Bernofsky, 151 pages, New Directions, $14.95

Reviewed by Christopher M. Ohge

That Jenny Erpenbeck’s latest novel, Visitation, is ambitious is unmistakable, for it is undeniably difficult and precisely crafted. Following in the footsteps of T.S. Eliot, who suggested that in such a difficult world we should appreciate and study difficult literature, I think it a moot point as to whether the novel ultimately succeeds in its being difficult.

Is it difficult for difficulty’s sake?  Or is the challenge created for an artistic purpose? After finishing this novel I have to admit my own ambivalence, not based on, admittedly, the book’s philosophical import, but because of the way it reads.

Better described as a series of vignettes, the novel initially plays at the edge of chaos, which makes it very hard to follow early on. This is not a book to read quickly for an entertaining plot, nor is it one to appreciate for its initial lucidity. Yet the frustration is often counterbalanced by a glimpse into the author’s pensive vision of history and nationhood. As we move through Visitation‘s multiple perspectives, captivating moments, examples of poetic prose, provide a cathartic payoff to slogging through the initial confusion.

Erpenbeck’s view of history is part of an intellectual tradition evoked by Samuel Johnson’s pithy line—“patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”—as well as that of German intellectuals who warned about the dangers of nationalism, from Goethe’s assertion “Patriotism ruins history” to Nietzsche’s condemnation of Wagner.

Jenny Erpenbeck -- She supplies a pensive vision of history and nationhood.

Germany’s citizens are sensitive to overt displays of national pride reinforced today by memories of nationalism-gone-wrong during the two World Wars. Keeping this caution in mind, Erpenbeck presents two inescapable verities: people—their dwellings, and the regimes that rule over them—come and go; nature transforms but remains. The title (Heimsuchung) also suggests some uneasiness; in German it also means “infestation” or “plague” upon something. What exactly is being visited upon, and is the visitation connoting an infestation?

Set at what one character aptly calls “this one particular bit of earth located not terribly far from Berlin” in a single modest house located on a lake in the Brandenburg woods (note: to the east of Berlin). An intriguing prologue about how the lake was formed over tens of thousands of years from glaciers provides a prehistoric frame for the main story, which begins sometime in the early 20th century and follows generations of dwellers in the house who experience major changes from Nazi Germany to the end of the GDR. Each chapter jumps back and forth through time, focusing on a particular perspective, individual or collective, such as a single person (like The Gardener) or a small family (Wealthy Farmer and his Children).

The premise is promising, but the first third of the book seems like erratic, abstract episodes with underdeveloped characters about whom we care very little. Paragraphs jump from vague descriptions of banal activities and social mores to even vaguer commentaries on non-events. At the Architect and his wife’s dinner parties “they all laugh and laugh, another beer, another glass of wine, oh yes, not for me, thank you, maybe just a glass of seltzer. In this way the architect and his wife pass the time on many evenings both for themselves and for their guests.”

Either Erpenbeck is guilty of ostentatiously obscure writing, or the translator, Susan Bernofsky, has done the prose some disservice. For example, the long strings of relative clauses (correct in German, but simply a run-on sentence in English) in this paragraph. They not only reflect brazenly strange writing, but also the translator’s decision to keep the German grammar: “Locks the toolshed, the golden spoon lure he once fished with dangling from the key, … rinses his hands in the bathroom, two hours from now he’ll be sitting in the S-Bahn to West Berlin, his fingernails still rimmed black with dirt, he draws the crank…” The use of repetition to weave the pieces of the story together also becomes stylistically self-defeating: “the chief mogul, who was really the chief consul.” What is the use of being told the same thing twice?

Yet, if you wade through what seems like the intentionally clunky prose of the first third, then you will discover the author connects the diffuse images and characters. You become intrigued by the erratic nature of the prose and some of the narrative begins to make sense.

One particular moment, which is indeed one of the first indicators of better prose to come, involves the first appearance of “The Girl.” This chapter illustrates how each paragraph in each chapter presents a different point in time. The randomness begins to assume order as we learn that this girl is Doris, the niece of Ludwig (the cloth manufacturer from an earlier chapter). It becomes clear that she is in a Nazi-occupied ghetto, where she is alone, hiding, and facing starvation.

It is here that Erpenbeck evokes the philosophical underpinning of the novel:

“None of the people who once knew who she was knows any longer that she is here. This is what makes the transition so insignificant. Step by step she has made her way to this place, almost to the end, in other words, her path must have a beginning, and at the point of this beginning she must have been separated from life by as insignificant a distance as now separates her from death.”

The emphasis on the insignificance of transience—and transition—underlies Visitation, which here powerfully conveys the purgatorial nature of many of its characters, who feel removed from life and death because those who knew them are either strangers, or are dead (a fact echoed when the narrator says toward the end that “Now, a lifetime too late, she is on her own”).

Capturing ordinary experience so eloquently, and glossing over quickly moments of death, even gruesome ones associated with the Holocaust, Erpenbeck exhibits a pastoral quality—not “elegiac,” as the blurb on the back cover would have it, but more akin to the modernist pastoral in Virginia Woolf’s novels (To the Lighthouse and Between the Acts in particular).

Rather than a family or whatever cluster of domestic relations, the house ends up being the story’s main character, and nature the prime mover. Accordingly, the house, the lake, and the woods are given the most descriptive passages.

Also, images concerning memory and ritual recur throughout the book, with a complexity that makes you want to re-read in order to retrace the treatments of, say, the ritual coin-collecting during a wedding procession, or the colored windows in the house overlooking the lake. Much of what seems odd at first eventually becomes clear in hindsight as the assortment of images eventually culminates in poignant scenes involving rape, murder, suicide, mental illness, political tumult, genocide, and foreign invasion.

The concluding infiltration targets the rotting house, which is summarily demolished after the “illegitimate owner” takes over the property. History seems to end once the house is torn down. Survival is found in the value of scattered bits of narrative centered on a speck of earth, where “Happiness grows out of disorder, just as infinity grows out of the finite lake.”