The Fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years on

Authoritarianism seems fashionable these days, and liberalism rather on the back foot. So it’s good to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of a moment which seemed to offer real grounds for optimism: the fall of the Berlin wall.

The Berlin Wall with the death strip

Some years before, I travelled for the first time to Berlin, and spent most of the time in the East, which was then in a different country from the West. I kept a diary for the trip, and here’s what I wrote on my arrival on 3 July 1982.

I was in Tegel by about 7:00 and took the U-Bahn [the underground] through to Friedrichstrasse: there are 3 unused stops before Friedrichstrasse after one has passed under the border… the stations are dimly lit, deserted apart from a single armed guard who nods to the U-Bahn driver as he passes through.

East Germany felt far more foreign than anywhere else I’d visited. Even the Western half of Germany seemed much more like home. It was more silent, with streets more deserted, and more heavily policed than I’d ever seen elsewhere.

I felt alien and depressed in East Berlin… The buildings are imposing, rather too imposing – cold, unwelcoming, inhuman… I wandered down Unter den Linden: it’s magnificent… but the whole is empty at night, forlorn, lifeless. At the end is the Brandenburg Gate, flying the East German flag, while over to the right the West German banner flies above the old Reichstag. The wall runs along in between, and I didn’t dare approach too closely… the place was swarming with guards.

The visit became less painful when I had got to know a few people. On 17 July, a new friend, Friedrich, took me on a trip out of East Berlin to a concert in an old monastery in the countryside.

Off to Kloster Chorin in the morning – the S-Bahn [overground train] … passes at one point between the inner and outer walls, and one has a clear view of the Grenzgebiet [border zone] with the watch towers, tank traps and barbed wire.

As a Westerner myself, I was allowed out to West Berlin whenever I chose, a privilege only available to East Germans once they drew their pensions. On the far side of that wall, I saw the crosses to the people who’d made the attempt, and failed, to cross that death strip.

In the evening after the concert, Friedrich took me around to a flat where a group were enjoying a pleasant evening. The advantage of being in someone’s flat is that everyone could speak openly. One of the older people told me that he felt the lack of personal incentive in the East German economy was doing it terrible damage.

He also told me about a Russian friend who had served in the Soviet army in Berln at the end of the Second World War. It took a lot of effort with the bureaucracy, but in the end he was able to invite him to his place. But throughout his visit, the Russian and his wife spent their time glued to the TV, watching the western news, which Berliners could receive.

It’s fashionable today to decry the ‘mainstream media’ or ‘MSM’ in the West, but when you’ve had to live in a regime where nothing is broadcast other than propaganda, the ‘MSM’ is like a drink to a man dying of thirst.

There’s no doubt that the regime went in for some serious torturing and executing, but I naturally saw none of that. To me, what it seemed mostly to be was stultifying, stifling every creative or individualistic urge of its citizens. They had food, they had shelter, they had healthcare, they had education, but they longed for the freedom their TVs showed their fellow Germans just a few hundred metres away enjoying.

As I travelled home, I wrote up my general impressions of the country:

… if someone like Friedrich is at all typical, then the East German is learning to live with the regime, getting on as best he can within the rules, bending or twisting them as far as possible – ‘Trick’ is a catchword in the DDR. This, in a sense, is a form of reconciliation to the regime, but in another sense it shows that there is also no love of it, that the people distance themselves from it morally. There is no support for it. As Sprössig [a doctor I met] points out, if a free election could be held tomorrow, 80% would vote the SED [the ruling party] out of power. When asked, he reckoned much the same majority would vote for reunion with West Germany.

Neither of us could see it coming, but the process that would lead to reunification was just over seven years away. That was the fall of the ugliest symptom of the regime that I saw while I was there: the Berlin Wall. On 9 November 1989, 30 years ago today, it was finally breached. It had only lasted a little over 28. It’s been gone longer than it was in place.

That’s a matter for celebration. A reminder that we can put the autocrats back in their boxes. Something we badly need to do again today.

Why? Because no achievement for freedom is ever secure for all time. To protect it requires sustained, repeated effort.

Indeed, one comment I made on my visit has proved completely mistaken

… what an effect [German reunification] would have: Strauss [then leader of the CDU’s sister party, the CSU] and the CDU [Christian Democrats, the German Conservatives] in general would have nothing to cheer about, the newly absorbed people would vote very solidly for the SPD [the Social Democrats]

It seemed to me that a people that had got used to free comprehensive healthcare and education and the basic necessities of existence, would never line up with the right. How wrong I was. It’s in the old East Germany that the far right today is strongest. It seems that being a victim of oppression doesn’t necessarily mean that you refuse to join the oppressors yourself later.

We can enjoy the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the wall. But there are no laurels to rest on. Above all, we need to discover its spirit again.

Banning the Muslim veil to protect Western values

On 29 November, the lower house of the Dutch Parliament voted for a partial ban on the burka, the full-face covering veil worn by a minority of Muslim women. If the vote is confirmed by the upper house, the veil will be banned on public transport, in government buildings and in schools.

On 6 December, Angela Merkel, preparing her run for a fourth term as German Chancellor, told the conference of her party, the Christian Democrats, that she too favoured a partial ban.

“The full veil must be banned,” she declared, “wherever legally possible. Showing your face is part of our way of life. Our laws take precedence over honour codes, tribal customs and sharia.”

Angela Merkel at the CDU Conference

Holland used to enjoy a reputation as one of the most liberal countries on earth and, despite the irruption on the scene of a number of hard right-wing parties and individuals – none more so than Geert Wilders, now leading in opinion polls – it retains much of the structure of a highly liberal nation. Merkel has also emerged in the last few years as one of Europe’s most liberal leaders, most notably with her decision to allow a million refugees to enter the country – a decision, incidentally, which she now says will never be repeated.

France and Belgium have already banned the burka and even the niqab, the form of veil which leaves the eyes exposed. Such veils are, it seems, deeply disturbing to Western societies. We are used to seeing faces (part of our way of life, as Merkel says). A covered face is hostile or even sinister, marking the criminal covering his features to avoid identification and capture. During the Northern Ireland troubles, an icon on both sides was the man in the balaclava, the clothing of choice of killers in either camp. 

Faces hidden from sight make us uncomfortable. Discomfort is never easy to bear. It seems that even liberalism finds it difficult to withstand. The developments in Holland and Germany suggest it has a fatal tendency to give way when made uncomfortable. 

That, however, leads to the heart of the Muslim veil conundrum. If liberalism backs down as soon as it’s faced with a perturbing difficulty, what is liberalism worth? Or, putting it another way, it’s easy to tolerate things we’re comfortable with; it’s when we deal with things that make us uncomfortable that our tolerance is truly tested and we have to prove whether it’s genuine or not.

These matters all became personal to me a few weeks ago at a badminton club where we play most weeks. A new, beginner joined. And she came in a niquab.

She’s covered head to foot. Her sleeves are held in place by loops over her thumbs. Her leggings reach down to her shoes. Her only exposed flesh is on her hands and a strip around her eyes. 

Playing badminton with someone dressed that way was certainly a new experience. I suppose it initially felt odd. But it quickly became commonplace. We were all struck by her speed around the court, by her accuracy, by the strength in her wrists. She plays a great deal better than most people who’ve played as little as she has.

When we shake hands at the end of a game, as is the convention, she won’t shake mine or that of any other male player. So what? She smiles (a smile with the eyes is far more telling than one just with the lips). She repeats the usual compliments we all give each other – “good game”, “well played” (the latter always with the subtext, “not quite well enough for us”).

She is, in fact, one of us. If we feel uncomfortable about her dress, what gives us the right to inflict our feelings on her? Her dress codes does us no harm, and it doesn’t hold back her game. What on earth business is it of ours?

I’d go a step further. If we imposed a Muslim veil ban in Britain, she would no longer feel she could come out and join us. She’d be forced to stay at home and give up on a form of exercise which must do her good and which she evidently enjoys. While she’s with us, incidentally, her husband’s looking after the children. That’s a form of equality between the sexes that we, in the West, generally criticise Islam for not displaying enough.

In fact, banning the veil far from integrating our friend more closely into Western society and into an adoption of its values, would hold back her assimilation. In other words, it would produce precisely the opposite effect of what we claim to seek. I fully understand the need, for security reasons, to be able to demand that burka-clad people show their faces to suitably empowered authorities such as the police; I see no reason why Muslims should be forced to abandon the veil generally in public.

One right no constitution in any country guarantees, is the right not to be made uncomfortable. If learning to overcome some slight discomfort in ourselves protects important rights in others, and helps to assimilate different communities better into our society, why shouldn’t we make that effort?

It’s my feeling, and I have personal experience to back it up, that a Muslim veil ban would be a completely unnecessary, illiberal and intolerant measure that would undermine, rather than upholding, Western values.