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German Reunification 20 years- page 1
20 years German reunification
The Wall came down in my hometown 20 years ago,but I will not be celebrating.
As the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall approaches,and the transcripts of Margaret Thatcher’s conversations with MikhailGorbachev become public, my mind travels back.When I was a child and teenager in West Berlin, before the Wallwas built and afterwards, the division of Germany was nothing specialsince we did not know any different. The world was simple then, theguys in the East were the baddies and the guys in the West were thegood ones. They were democratic, honest and decent. They would notsteal your land or other assets, like the East had done with my Grand-mother’s two properties.Why they put up red banners everywhere vilifying a Ruling Class,evil Capitalists and so forth was not really understandable to us children.We were told this is ‘propaganda’, stuff that is written and put out therewith the purpose to steer someone’s thinking and actions. The Nazis hadused the same methods to manipulate people. Not every book or pieceof propaganda had perished with Hitler in 1945 and since it was in ourlanguage we could access it direct.Nowadays we call these things spin, which also came over the EastBerlin radio, although we hardly ever tuned in. Our aunt in East Berlintried hard to give us presents for Christmas and birthdays which werepropaganda free. These were music books or Russian fairytales in Frenchwith lovely old fashioned pictures to boost our compulsory studies ofFrench.Spin – we learned to recognize it, read between the lines, ques-tioned and checked what came your way. My father’s critical brain addeda dimension for money matters with his phrase
‘that’s only meant to suck money from my pocket’ 
. We had a spin-filter.
The tentacles of politics in life
For the record, we need to mention what my father had said aboutHitler and the Nazis, who came to power when he was a 21 year olduniversity student in Berlin.
 
German Reunification 20 years- page 2
I remember his words as if he were standing right next to me,although in 2009 this is 56 years ago. Yes, you can pin me down on1953 when I was nine years old, because the bombed out part of ourfourth floor apartment had been restored for habitation that year. Westood at the window of my father’s room, looking over the empty spaceand rubble where apartment buildings had stood before Berlin wasbombed. My father had had an unusual childhood and talked to us twochildren as if we were adults. Surprisingly, the child, or just this child,absorbed the important bits.‘Look at it’, my father said, ‘what destruction, everything kaputt.When Hitler came to power in 33, I was not convinced he was oursalvation, our rescue from our many troubles. But everybody was soenthusiastic that the street fights would now cease; I stopped mention-ing it. Look where it got us, just look at it.’As a nine year old, I had no concept how politics grow tentaclesinto your life. 56 years later, it feels like I took in his words ‘to file awayfor further use’. I never thought of it again for decades.
1967 – End of postwar phase
In 1967 the post war period was over and West Germany changed.My generation developped a scene of ‘system opponents’. I could notunderstand that and stayed well away from what I perceived as Easternsteered troublemakers. That was not difficult as I had experienced aconsiderable degree of poverty in my youth which made me focus onsurvival and hopefully doing better than just that.The system opponents came from two directions and sometimesmerged. One direction was the death of a student during an anti-Shahdemonstration. The other direction came from the Hamburg magazinKonkret which was in the hands of journalist Ulrike Meinhof and herhusband. She later claimed to have seen so much corruption and collu-sion that she became disenchanted with the system. ‘Break what breaksyou’ was the slogan and to make a real point they caused a fire in theFrankfurt department store Kaufhof. This left me all a bit baffled, be-cause I found it weird that someone should spend his time demonstrat-ing against the Shah who was depicted as a CIA puppet. I could nothave cared less whose puppet the Shah of Iran may have or may nothave been.Konkret magazine we sometimes bought. I read it with my spin-
 
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filter activated: There was contents which I agreed to and some whichwas obviously written with a semi-communist mind which I did not takeseriously. Just like with the leftovers of Nazi literature, or what camefrom East Berlin, I read Konkret through my spin-filter.The system came down on the ‘system opponents’ like a ton ofbricks and thus the Baader-Meinhof gang was born. I read most of thenewspaper reports like you watch a whodunnit TV soap. The only practi-cal points, where these issues touched me were on Saturday shoppingtrips into the city of Frankfurt, where I had moved to in 1966. It annoyedme greatly, that my movements were impeded by demonstrations againsta never ending string of issues in other countries. Iran, Nicaragua, Chile,Yougoslavia, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, South Africa, and Vietnam are whatI remember but there were probably more. These people had obviouslytoo much time and money.If I had had a say, I would not have licensed these demonstrationsin the city. I would have moved them to the big football stadium at 6:00am. They could have made their point there without affecting the workingpopulation.I did not take all these people and movements seriously at all. Whatthey wrote about the ruling or colluding class in West Germany had nocredibility with me. I believed in the Free World and its system. Themany variations of shonkiness that we experienced in all segments ofour life were not nice but I put it down to my own inexperience in busi-ness or not being strong enough as a person. Looking back at it nowfrom my Australian vantage point, shonkiness and dishonesty were sowidespread that I regard them as symptomatic.
International links and preparing for reunification
We often worked in Britain in those days where it was quite clearthat the unions abused their power. The good idea of social responsibil-ity was taken too far. No wonder then, that I applauded the rise of MargaretThatcher in 1979. Some people do not see political developments as partof their life, but when you grow up in West Berlin like me, there is adifferent degree of awareness. After Margaret Thatcher took it all toofar, just like the union movement had done before, I shook my headabout the iron lady.I never gave her another thought until I read Brian Crozier’s book‘Free Agent’ and discovered that she had been a puppet of the CIA
of 00

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