Marcucci 1

Dante Marcucci

Professor Lori Bedell

CAS 137H 001

6 November 2017

Die Wende: Germany in Transition

“’When does it take effect?’

‘Ab sofort’” (Meyer).

With two simple words, the German world fundamentally changed. These two words

informed the world that the Berlin Wall, formerly an impossible obstacle, could be crossed

immediately, ab sofort. Now the people of Germany were confronted with a new hurdle,

bridging the gap that had formed between the east and the west. The Germans created a word for

the process of bridging that gap, die Wende. Die Wende implies more than just the transition

undergone by East Germany as they abandoned communism. It involves all of the changes that

accompany a transition in government, but also includes the upheaval facing citizens physically,

economically, and culturally. The Berlin Wall prevented the free movement of citizens within

Germany, and its fall created a new opportunity for the citizens of East Germany. The differing

economic systems of the two sides along with a miracle of sorts for West Germany created an

economic gap that Germany is still working to close to this day. The disparate situations

experienced by the two regions created two different cultures. The attitudes created by these

cultures not only impacted Berlin immediately after the fall of the wall, but also impacts

Germany to this day. Though the people of East and West Berlin, and Germany as a whole, have

physically reunited, there still exist economic and social separations between the two regions.
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The Berlin Wall did not always exist after the Second World War. Rather, on the twelfth

of August, 1961, Walter Ulbricht, the mayor of East Berlin, signed an order to erect a wall,

closing off the border between East Germany and West Berlin. Within two days, any way for the

citizens of East Germany to leave for West Berlin was thoroughly closed off (Carmichael). The

East boldly cut off any connection to West Berlin and the outside world.

The wall led to tensions between the East and West German governments. On October

27, 1961, the two sides played one of the most dangerous games of chicken in history. After

numerous miscommunications about the movement of government officials through a

checkpoint, each side brought tanks to Checkpoint Charlie. Only about one hundred yards from

each other, the tanks entered a standoff where one false movement could have possibly triggered

World War Three. Luckily for everyone involved, the two sides backed away peacefully.

The tension between the East and West persisted until the wall finally fell in 1989. The

wall, unlike what many may believe, did not physically collapse when it first “fell.” Rather, the

fall of the Berlin Wall resulted from a small announcement made by Günter Schabowski. “Mr.

Schabowski, an obscure functionary… changed the world in a most unlikely manner” (Meyer).

Schabowski, the new spokesman of the Communist Party, announced that the citizens of East

Germany would be able to attain passports and travel to different countries, even West Germany

(failing to mention the extensive regulations required to do so). When asked by a reporter about

the time that this announcement took effect, however, Schabowski assumed incorrectly that his

announcement took effect immediately. East Berlin citizens rushed to the wall and, after hours

without guidance from above, the soldiers let the people through. In possibly the most

underwhelming way possible, the citizens of East Germany gained their freedom to escape into

West Berlin and Germany.

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During the fall of the Berlin Wall, West Germans began breaking off large portions of the

Berlin Wall. These Mauerspechte, or wall woodpeckers, chipped away portions of the wall with

hammers and pick-axes (Dodds). Despite the work of the Mauerspechte, the Berlin Wall was

never completely demolished. In fact, many complete segments of the wall remain within

Germany and across the world. Los Angeles boasts the longest stretch in the world outside of

Berlin with ten connected segments (Byrnes). These segments all across the world serve as a

unyielding reminder of the physical division that attempted to tear Germany apart. Germany

proved to the world that it was too strong to be torn apart, though the two sides did regrow

economically at different rates.

Economically, East Germany and West Germany diverged due to the Berlin Wall and

everything that the wall brought. Controlled by Soviet Russia, East Germany was forced to live

under oppressive communist rule. The citizens did not choose communism, but rather they were

forced to operate under this economic system by the USSR. While the people generally did not

benefit from communism, the system did have occasional bright spots. The extensive

reconstruction of Berlin, which was required after the decimation left in the wake of World War

Two, was hastened by the communists’ plan: combine a simple, efficient design with a lot of

concrete. This shortsighted plan, however, did relatively little to stimulate the Eastern economy.

By not allowing the market to fuel the construction of buildings, the economy of the East did not

improve as quickly or as much as their Western counterparts.

While East Germany struggled economically in the years after World War II, the West

German economy surged. This rapid growth was dubbed the Wirtschaftswunder, which

translates to the Economic Wonder. Fierce debate remains even today about the cause of the

Wirtschaftswunder and whether the growth experienced by Germany was really a wonder or a
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natural byproduct of Germany’s situation. The two prevailing theories on the cause of the

Wirtschaftswunder owe the West German success either to the abundance of production capital

left over from the war or to sound economic policy implemented soon after the war. Some argue

that the economic boom was simply a consequence of reconstruction growth, and that the rate of

growth is not a miracle but would occur in any country in Germany’s situation (Reichel 427-30).

Regardless of the truth behind either of these debates, the West German economy expanded at an

unmatched rate. East Germany was fundamentally unable to match the West: The USSR took the

production capital from East Germany to fuel their Empire, and communism ensured the East

could not match the economic policy used by the West. Due to the partitioning of Germany, an

economic divide formed between Eastern and Western Germany that is still present and

noticeable to this day.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the eastern part of Germany is still behind the western

side in terms of economic power. “The former East German states have a per capita income

that is 84% of the West German states, according to KfW, the German development bank”

(Matthews). A growth imbalance mires the eastern part of Germany. What is the root of this

imbalance? While the easy answer may seem to be communism, not all of this difference in

production can be traced to communism. In fact, regional differences in production present

themselves in the United States and across the world (Matthews). Communism may have had

some effect on the East German economy and its slow improvement, but at the end of the day,

most of the differences between the east and west are natural regional differences that could exist

in any other country. Almost thirty years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the eastern and

western regions of Germany look to divergent economic futures: a prospering western Germany

at odds with a struggling eastern Germany.

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After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the communities of the East and West had become

foreign, so foreign that differences between the two groups are still visible to this day. The

differences between citizens of East and West Berlin went beyond geography and economics.

The cultures of these two regions had grown different over the period of more than twenty years.

The differing ideologies between East Germany, controlled by the communist USSR, and West

Germany, controlled by the democratic United States, United Kingdom, and France, fueled this

variation.

The USSR led their citizens with an iron fist, and East Germany, heavily influenced by

the Soviet Union, picked up this same vicious habit. Though the East German government

sought to control their citizens, the government failed in one big way: despite laws preventing

citizens from leaving the country, East Germans still managed to escape at an unsustainable rate

for the East’s economy. To slow the rate of escape, authorities built the Berlin Wall, which the

East German government called the Antifaschister Schutzwall or the Anti-Fascist Barrier.

Despite its name and claims that the wall was built to prevent fascist influence, the wall was built

to stop the escape of citizens. The East was so serious about keeping their citizens within their

borders that the Berlin Wall was constantly tinkered with and improved. Over the years, the East

Germans added barbed wire, smooth piping atop the wall, and a dead zone that no one was

allowed to cross. These defenses were rarely necessary, however, due to the armed guards

around the wall and in guard towers. The wall quickly became a symbol of oppression to East

Berliners, because it kept them away from freedom. The citizens of West Berlin used their

freedom to turn the wall from a symbol of oppression into a symbol of defiance.

In a show of disobedience, the citizens of West Berlin began defacing the Berlin Wall

with graffiti. The wall had become a graffiti hub by the end of the 1970s (Arms). The miles of
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wall had become the graffiti capital of the world, a wildly different perception from the symbol

of oppression that the Eastern Germans knew. Once the wall fell, “[a]s far as [the East Berliners]

could see, covering every inch of wall, was layer upon layer of zest, life and color” (Arms). One

can only imagine the complete shock experienced by those entering West Berlin. Immediately,

East Berlin became a playground for the artists of West Berlin, but the citizens of East Berlin

joined in on the fun in the same way. The East German artist “Tower” was one of the most

notable early artists, spraying his name on any structure that he could find. “Tower’s aim was to

reclaim the word as a symbol of strength and, in doing so, proclaim that the majority, not the

minority, should be shaping the public space” (Arms). Graffiti allowed the East Germans to

begin confronting and overcoming the struggles that they had faced during the oppressive rule of

communism, symbolized by the Berlin Wall. Art did not allow the German people to overcome

every difficulty that they faced, however.

After World War II, the two German nations had the difficult task of explaining and

repenting for the actions of the Nazis. West Germany remembered their painful mistakes and

acknowledged their crimes against the world and specifically the Jewish people. East Germany,

however, took a very different path: “[In East Germany], Nazism was seen as a particularly toxic

form of fascism, that is, an expression of capitalism's structural crisis. From this perspective, the

racial dimensions of Nazism did not seem central…” (Sheehan and Eshel). The Communist

ruling party of East Germany focused on the aspect of the Nazi reign that strengthened their

cause, the evils of fascism, rather than the aspects that did not strongly affect their cause, the

systemic oppression of an entire race. Even today, ignorance of the racial intent behind the Nazi

regime has led to a rise in neo-Nazis in eastern Germany (Lutz and Müller). By being ignorant of

this integral part of what made the Nazi regime so horrible, the systemic oppression of the
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Jewish people, some groups are unfortunately falling prey to the trap of anti-semitism and neo-

Nazism. Like the famous saying goes, those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

While the problem of neo-Nazis is not large relative to the entire German population, any neo-

Nazi presence is unacceptable, and the fact that the population of neo-Nazis is growing certainly

must frustrate sensible Germans across the country. The eastern and western regions of Germany

feel the influences of the Berlin Wall today much in the same way that they did immediately

after the war.

Though the two regions have reunited physically after the Berlin Wall, the people of

Germany still feel the economic and social impacts of the Berlin Wall. The cultures of East and

West Germany diverged because of the influences imposed by their respective governments, and

those forces impact the people of Germany even today, as shown by the vivid graffiti art scene in

Berlin and the unfortunate persistence of neo-Nazis in the eastern part of Germany. Just as the

cultures of the two halves of Germany diverged, so too did the economies of the two regions.

Because of the limitations imposed by communism and the Soviet Union, East Germany never

felt the economic boom that the West Germans felt, and the eastern part of the country still lags

behind the west in terms of economic power and status. The biggest part of Germany’s transition

has been the removal of the wall and the restrictions that it signified. Now, the Berlin Wall does

not divide the people of Berlin, but rather it unites them. After World War Two, the people of

Germany faced many trials and tribulations that worked to divide them, including a literal wall

built to divide Berlin, but Germany overcame these challenges. Rather than fall to pressure and

crumble, East and West Germany united together, and both regions have grown stronger because

of this reunification.
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Works Cited

Arms, Simon. “The Heritage of Berlin Street Art and Graffiti Scene.” Smashing Magazine, 13

July 2011, www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/07/the-heritage-of-berlin-street-art-and-

graffiti-scene/.

Byrnes, Mark. “The Berlin Wall Is Everywhere.” Citylab, 7 Nov. 2014,

www.citylab.com/equity/2014/11/the-berlin-wall-is-everywhere/382426/.

Carmichael, Neil C., Jr. “A Brief History of the Berlin Crisis of 1961.” A City Torn Apart:

Building of the Berlin Wall, Central Intelligence Agency, 27 Oct. 2011.

Dodds, Laurence. “Berlin Wall: How the Wall Came Down, as It Happened 25 Years Ago.” The

Telegraph, 09 Nov. 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/history/11219434/Berlin-Wall-How-the-

Wall-came-down-as-it-happened-25-years-ago-live.html.

Granieri, Ronald J. “The Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Power of Individuals, and the

Unpredictability of History.” Foreign Policy Research Institute, 22 Mar. 2013,

www.fpri.org/article/2013/03/the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-the-power-of-individuals-and-

the-unpredictability-of-history-1/.

Lutz, M., and U. Müller. “Neo-Nazis on the Rise across Eastern Germany.” Time, 4 July 2011,

content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2080919,00.html.

Matthews, Chris. “Poor Germany: Why the East Will Never Catch Up to the West.” Fortune, 9

Nov. 2014, fortune.com/2014/11/09/germany-east-west-economy/.

Meyer, Michael. “Günter Schabowski, the Man Who Opened the Wall.” The New York Times, 6

Nov. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/opinion/gnter-schabowski-the-man-who-

opened-the-wall.html.
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Reichel, Richard. “Germany’s Postwar Growth: Economic Miracle or Reconstruction Boom?”

Cato Journal, vol. 21, no. 3, 2002, pp. 427-30.

Sheehan, James, and Amir Eshel. “Berlin Wall and the Cold War.” Stanford University, 1 Nov.

2009, shc.stanford.edu/news/research/berlin-wall-and-cold-war.