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A New Berlin
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17165 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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12 / 1990 |
3,008 Words |
| Author
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Frank Fox
Frank Fox is a professor of east European history who
specializes in the history and art of Poland in the twentieth
century.
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If you want to feel decades younger, come to Berlin. The city is a setting, perhaps more like a Hollywood facade, for the 1960s. (For another view of German reunification, see "The Germans Again, But Different," p.96-101.) There are signs inviting people to a "60s" party - for an admission price, of course. The store windows are full of Peter Max day-glo colors, and there is a "do your own thing" atmosphere all around. Posters advertise concerts by David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Tina Turner, and the Rolling Stones. It is Back to the Future, with a German flavor. When the young Germans celebrate, the sights and sounds are brashly and unabashedly American.
It is more than a year since the Berlin Wall came down, and the people are still cheering. Ask Berliners whether the city should be the future capital of a united Germany, and most of them will give you an unqualified "Jawohl." You may not get the same prompt answer from the people of Bonn, Cologne, or Munich. Regional mistrust, religious particularism, and memories of Berlin as the capital of the Third Reich still sound a discordant note in the current celebrations. The champagne and firecrackers of the unification party held October 3 banded most Germans in a surge of emotion. After the elections for an All-German Parliament on December 2, the question of Berlin as the capital of a united Germany will be resolved as a matter of practical politics.
For anyone who has been to Germany while the Wall still stood and the omnipresent guards searched vehicles for magazines from the West, visiting Berlin today has an unreal quality. It wasn't so long ago that even exceeding the speed limit when crossing into East German territory, or the slightest deviation from one's declared travel plans, brought a stiff fine if not an immediate expulsion. Forms had to be filed long in advance even when seeing one's immediate family. Baggage was carefully searched. If the talcum powder could not be shaken out, they would x-ray the container. It was only after the momentous events of November 1989 that a German could say jokingly to a border guard who asked him if he had any weapons: "Why, do I need any?" and get a smile rather than a fine. Checkpoint Charlie has been carted off to a museum, and there is no one at Checkpoint Bravo. Sheds that housed dozens of sharp-eyed guards are now empty and padlocked. To enter Berlin from Helmstedt in the West is to drive through its welcome gate as if to applause.
I have just returned from a long journey through Germany, a land no longer divided but not quite joined, a country that would love dearly to forget some of its past as it struggles to regain a
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