| by Marko Martin
The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989. Photo reproduction by Lear 21 at Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
The following speech was delivered at Bellevue Palace, the residence of the German President, on November 7, 2024, celebrating the 35th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. Marko Martin’s work deserves to be known more in English. His most recent publication, Und es geschieht jetzt: jüdisches Leben nach dem 7. Oktober, discusses Jewish life after the Hamas attack last year. Translated by Russell A. Berman, whose comments are here.
Dear Mr. Federal President, ladies and gentlemen,
But above all to you, distinguished Polish guests, including protagonists of the Solidarity revolution and the co-initiator of the strike on the Gdansk shipyard: Without your courage there would have been no “1989” at all. Since you are apparently not invited to the all-German panel later today, I would like to say a big thank you from here, Dziękuję bardzo!
Thirty-five years of the Peaceful Revolution and—one of the memory associations—that apt sentence from Wolf Biermann on his return after expatriation at the Leipzig concert in December 1989: “Oh, there were only a few of us—and many remained.”
In any case, millions of GDR citizens weren’t on the streets back then but were basically waiting behind the living room curtains—which, by the way, is not a value judgment, but rather just a supplementary fact-check that explains some of the mentalities that continue to have an impact.
If today—and now more importantly than ever—an East German civil society exists, it is above all thanks to the incredibly courageous demonstrators of autumn 1989, their children, and now often even grandchildren in the large and medium-sized cities of East Germany. (The continued loneliness and isolation of these emancipatory “89ers” and their heirs in the countless smaller places, sometimes even among their acquaintances and family circles, should also be spoken and written about.)
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by Russell A. Berman
German author Marko Martin delivered this speech at a celebration of the 35th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. Recall November 1989: the iconic symbol of the divided city, the divided country, and divided Europe suddenly lost its role as barrier and became a site of freedom. Surely this was an event that deserved celebration on its anniversary.
Yet since then, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has chipped away at European freedom and the system of sovereign nations. To be sure, there was initial widespread support for Ukraine, evidenced in the proliferation of blue and yellow flags. Yet Western governments, especially in Germany (the concern of Martin’s speech) but elsewhere too, including the United States, never gave Ukraine sufficient support to achieve its war goals through a decisive victory. And as the war has dragged on, frustration grew and with it opposition to providing continued support. Hence the rise of anti-war voices on the right and the left. Martin’s speech identifies the source of this reluctance to enable Ukraine to win. Raising this issue at the Berlin Wall celebration turned into a scandal.
The immediate scandal of the Bellevue speech was a matter of Martin attacking his host. He reminded the president of the Federal Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in whose home—Bellevue Palace—the address was delivered, as to how he, Steinmeier, had earlier decried NATO maneuvers in 2016 as a matter of “saber-rattling.” And Martin locates Steinmeier’s anti-NATO characterization in the history of Social Democratic “Ostpolitik,” the policy of non-confrontation—dare one say, appeasement—toward the Soviet Union and its empire. In contrast, Martin sides emphatically with the history of the real dissidents when he mentions Solidarność, the Polish workers’ movement, and German authors Wolf Biermann and Jürgen Fuchs. Meanwhile Martin treats Social Democratic politicians like Egon Bahr and Gerhard Schröder, who wanted to build bridges to Moscow, with disdain.
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