Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin. Alexandra Richie

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ were unsuccessful; the liberal historian Theodor Mommsen criticized Bismarck and Treitschke to no avail, and Jacob Burckhardt, who warned of the dire consequences of the blind pursuit of national power, eventually left Berlin for the relative freedom of Switzerland.⁵⁷ The ‘Borrussian’ view helped to stabilize Bismarck’s Reich, but it left a tainted legacy, and the promotion of the Machtstaat did not end with defeat in 1918. Imperial myths were quickly replaced by Weimar ones and then by carefully manufactured Nazi ones, which included the vicious lies that Germany had been ‘stabbed in the back’ in 1918, that Berlin was the home of the ‘November criminals’ and, quoting Treitschke in a context he had never intended, that ‘the Jews are our misfortune’.⁵⁸

      The overlap between history and politics has persisted in a unique manner in Germany and in Berlin.⁵⁹ Historiography during the Cold War was largely determined by politics. This was particularly true of the GDR, where German history, including the Second World War, was rewritten as propaganda to justify post-war Soviet policies.

      The GDR was created by Stalin in 1949 out of Soviet-occupied Germany. From the very beginning, and in marked contrast to the Federal Republic, it was an oppressive police state which suspended basic rights from free elections to free speech. When its citizens began to leave en masse the regime built a wall, transforming the state into a gigantic prison. East Germany became Moscow’s most obedient ally, retaining many of the worst aspects of Stalinism long after they had been abandoned elsewhere; it also spent a disproportionate amount of its resources on recruiting and spying on its own citizens and creating a falsified history to justify the repressive regime. I first visited the GDR in 1981 and travelled there frequently until its demise in 1989. Every aspect of life was shaped by its approach to the past: I was allowed to live there in 1985 because it was Johann Sebastian Bach’s 300th anniversary; the East Germans were keen to ‘claim’ the composer as their own and I was given permission to enter not as a ‘historian’, but because I could fortunately prove that I was also a musician. The attempt to claim ‘good Germans’ like Bach was typical; Beethoven was considered ‘East German’ even though he had been born in Bonn, while people like the SS leader Reinhard Heydrich was labelled a ‘West German’ although he had been born in Halle. I lived in East Berlin in 1987 in order to observe the 750th Anniversary celebrations. Again I was able to stay because I showed interest in an official event; I did not admit that my main reason for being there was to gather material for my Oxford D.Phil on the political manipulation of history – this would no doubt have led to my expulsion. The Wall fell in 1989, but it was obvious to anyone who had lived in East Germany that many young people clearly believed in at least some of the fabrications which they had been taught for so long. These ranged from the mundane – in which minor events were hailed as great milestones on the road to the inevitable creation of the ‘peasants’ and workers’ state’ – to the ludicrous – that the entire population of the GDR was made up of ‘Communist resistance fighters’ who had helped the Red Army to liberate Germany, that all Nazis had fled to the Federal Republic in 1945, and that individuals like Hitler had played a relatively unimportant role in the creation of the Third Reich.⁶⁰

      When the Wall fell there was an immediate sense that this poisonous heritage should be exposed. It was a time of great hope and optimism in Germany and in Berlin. Old history textbooks were thrown out, hard-line East German teachers were barred from schools, official museum displays were changed and the history of both Soviet and East German crimes against its citizens was investigated – in November 1990, for example, a library dedicated to the victims of Stalinism was opened on the Hausvogteiplatz with the support of prominent ex-GDR activists, including Bärbel Bohley, Lew Kopelew and Jürgen Fuchs. But the mood did not last. East Berlin was the very core of the old GDR. It was the centre of government, of the Stasi and of the party. Every seventh East Berliner had been employed by the state and around 100,000 people were members of the SED elite, ranging from high-ranking security personnel to top party functionaries. It was they who had profited from the old regime with their subsidized flats, their access to western goods and their exercise of power. Suddenly a number of eastern Germans began to reject the new western orientation and to hanker after lost days of prestige and influence in the cosy world of the SED or the Stasi. Self-examination has never been a strong feature of old, corrupt and criminal elites. Only two years after the collapse of the state some began to call for a return to the ‘values of the old GDR’ and the defunct state was presented as a wonderful place which had cared for its people and given them fulfilling lives. A growing number of ex-GDR citizens began to exhibit those destructive traits which have plagued Berlin in the past: self-pity, sentimentality and a tendency to gloss over the worst aspects of their history.

      The group which has led this movement was none other than the heir to the SED – the East German Communist Party – known as the Party of Democratic Socialism or PDS and headed by the East German lawyer Gregor Gysi. The PDS gained the support of much of the old GDR elite, in particular those who were unable to launch themselves in new western careers, but it also played on the alienation and bitterness felt by many ordinary citizens struggling to find a way in the capitalist world, exploiting this misery for its own political gain. It has been highly successful. Rather than hearing about the SED’s crimes and abuses of power a visitor to eastern Germany in the late 1990s might well be told about the wonderful Shangri-La that was East Berlin. Those westerners who question this version are told that they ‘could not know’ because they ‘had not lived in the GDR’. Those who did live in the GDR tend not to be so easily swayed, but it is troubling to meet so many people who now long for their ‘good old days’. This has also had political repercussions. In the 1994 elections an amazing one third of eastern Berliners voted for the PDS.⁶¹

      This so-called ‘Ostalgia’ – nostalgia for the east – has become the new scourge of Berlin, turning the city into a battleground over the history of the GDR. It has already had an effect on post-Wall planning and reconstruction: bitter arguments have erupted over what to do with that symbol of the old regime, the Palast der Republik on Unter den Linden.

      It is a plain rectangular structure with square, copper-coloured glass windows and white walls and lies in the midst of the few remaining old buildings in the heart of Berlin. It is a perfect symbol of the GDR, epitomizing the lack of creativity, the dearth of compassion and the insensitivity to the past which characterized the bankrupt regime; indeed it stands on the site of the former palace which was blown up for ideological reasons by Walter Ulbricht in 1950. The Palast also represented the powerlessness of East German citizens: it was built as a ‘people’s palace’ open to all ordinary citizens in order to show them that they were participants in the running of ‘their’ state. In reality, however, ordinary people had no access to power at all – indeed they rarely saw their leaders except on carefully staged ceremonial occasions, and political activity was forbidden unless specifically sanctioned by the SED. When the Wall fell it was understood that the Palast would be demolished and that some sort of building recapturing the proportions and facade of the old palace would go up on this historic spot; supporters of this idea had a life-sized mock-up of the old building painted on to vast canvas sheets and erected them at the site in 1993. But then Ostalgia struck. Suddenly the Palast der Republik was called a ‘monument’ to the people of the GDR; some easterners began to reminisce about how much they had enjoyed visits to concerts or speech days or exhibitions in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1995 the decision to remove this building was reversed.

      The question of what to do with the Palast der Republik is an aesthetic problem rather than a political one; East Berlin is filled with eyesores built by the former regime but nobody is suggesting that these should all be ripped down. The palace is controversial not so much because it is an ugly ex-GDR government building – there are plenty of those – but rather because of where it is; if it had been built far from the site of the historic palace few would question its right to stay. The debate is troubling only in that it demonstrates a lingering nostalgia for a regime which does not deserve the loyalty of its people. But Ostalgia is having an effect on other aspects of history.

      In 1989 it seemed that the destruction of the huge 63-foot-high statue of Lenin in the former СКАЧАТЬ