Berlin, the embodiment of a united Europe

‘All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’’ 

John F. Kennedy

In the eighties of last century I regularly stayed in Berlin. Back then the city was divided into sectors, as a result of the second World War. West Berlin was occupied by Western armies, East Berlin by the Soviet Union. A weird situation, agreed upon during the Yalta Conference in 1945, as the city was located within the German Democratic Republic (GDR), occupied by the Soviet Union. In 1961 the situation became even stranger, when the East German authorities ordered the construction of a wall between the eastern sector and the western sectors. West Berlin became an isolated city, an island amid communist eastern Europe, behind what was called the ‘iron curtain’. The wall prevented people living in the eastern sector going to the western sectors. Citizens of West Berlin and Western countries, however, were allowed to visit East Berlin if they had a visa.

I took the opportunity to visit East Berlin (or ‘the Capital of the GDR’ as they called it) multiple times. Crossing the wall for just one day was relatively easy. You could take the subway, on the way passing two dark stations with armed East German soldiers and their dogs, and get off at Friedrichstrasse station. There was a customs post where you could get a day visa on the spot.

On the surface, East Berlin was just a sad, gray and dreary city, with little to offer a tourist. However, behind this backdrop was a reality that fascinated me. The sadness was no coincidence, but the outcome of a post-war geopolitical power game. During the Yalta conference, February 1945, the Red Army had Berlin in sight, while the Western Allies still had to conquer a large part of Western Europe. The Soviet Union undeniably paid the heaviest price for fighting the Nazis. Stalin was in a position of power and he managed to expand his sphere of influence to all Eastern European countries, including East Germany, by establishing puppet regimes. The GDR became a dictatorial one-party state, obedient to Moscow. Unlike West Germany, which received US Marshall Plan aid and grew into Europe’s strongest economy after the war, the GDR was weakened as the Soviet Union dismantled their heavy industry and exploited the country economically for decades. During the forty-year rule of the communist party the population of the GDR remained poor. People stood in long lines in front of the shops, even though the shelves were often empty. Meat, vegetables and fruit were scarce. Their planned economy did not work and the contrast with the free market economy of West Germany became increasingly poignant. In Berlin that difference was magnified more than anywhere else. In the eighties, when I was walking around town in my twenties, the crossing from West to East Berlin and vice versa was unreal. Opulence and abundance versus poverty and scarcity. Over time the level of prosperity grew further and further apart.

During one of my visits I met a young woman of my age at the time, and we became friends. We talked about how her and my life were different. Me, living temporarily in West-Berlin and her, living in East-Berlin. Just a few kilometers apart, it was a world of difference. She offered me the chance to experience more of life in the GDR if I had the time, and I decided to visit East Berlin for a week. This required some preparation. I had to book a hotel through a travel agency and thus received a visa for the same period. It was a week in which I learned a lot about a dysfunctional economy, hidden unemployment and the suffocating consequences of a police state. At the end of the week, when I stood in line in front of the border office at Friedrichstrasse with my passport in hand, I had no idea how directly I would have to deal with that everyday reality. When I handed over my passport, the border guard looked at me intently. He looked back at the passport, and then back at me. This was repeated several times before he turned to me in a commanding tone asking: "where have you been?" I was shocked and all sorts of things went through my mind. “East Berlin” I said. “Capital of the GDR” he bellowed, “So, where?” I luckily remembered the name of the hotel, which I had not been to. “No, you weren't there,” he shouted back. I was completely surprised but realized that I would be putting my female friend in trouble if I told them where I had actually stayed. So, I repeated the name of the hotel a couple of times. Soon two police officers came to get me and locked me up in small room without any windows, where they ordered me to think hard about where I had been. After several hours, which seemed like an eternity, they questioned me again. I kept giving the same answer, not knowing what else to say. Finally, they sent me to a police station at Alexanderplatz: "Go and see if you can explain what happened and obtain the necessary stamps there. Otherwise, you can’t leave the GDR". Then it became clear to me how the system worked. The police visited the hotels Westerners booked to check if they were actually there. They stamped the confiscated passports every day. After a number of interrogations my passport was also stamped and I was allowed to go. I didn't know why and didn't dare to ask. Ironically, they didn't have to question me at all, the Stasi -as the secret police was called-, already knew everything. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, I received a message from my female friend. She had looked at the Stasi files that had been made public, and everything was in there. What time I arrived, where we went, who we met there, everything. The Stasi knew everything about everyone, even the most bizarre details were captured. The registration of all that covers 111 kilometers of files, since 2021 housed in the Federal Archives of Germany.

As much as I was impressed by what happened, it was of course only a minor incident compared to what the citizens of the GDR experienced on a daily basis. There was total control. Control of what you did and what you thought. The state arranged everything, personal initiative was undesirable. The lives of those who did not submit to the system were destroyed by bullying, exclusion and imprisonment. The secret police randomly used violence and practiced terror. Those who tried to flee to the West were shot without mercy by the border police. The system totally robbed people of their dignity. Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck released a film in 2006 that perfectly conveys this insane system: 'Das leben der Anderen' (The lives of the others). The film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007.

In 1989, almost unexpectedly, everything changed. Almost unexpectedly, because tension had been building for some time. GDR citizens traveled to Hungary, where authorities no longer acted against people crossing the border to the West. The regime in the GDR considered taking tough action, but Gorbachev, the smartest and most empathetic leader Russia has ever known, saw that it was pointless. On the night of November 9 to 10, 1989, the residents of Berlin literally tore down the wall. The Iron Curtain was lifted and on October 3, 1990, eleven months after the Fall of the Berlin wall, East and West Germany were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany.

Berlin experienced a true renaissance after the wall fell. The city has regained its metropolitan allure, after decades of enormous construction and renovation work. Checkpoint Charlie, the infamous passage between East and West Berlin during the Cold War, is all that remained as the symbol of the struggle for freedom and justice. Other than that, nothing but my memories remind me of the bleak no man's land between East and West.

After the reunification of Berlin and the whole of Germany, rapid expansion of the EU followed. Many former Russian satellite states, including Poland and Hungary, applied for EU and NATO membership. Since the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, the theory that NATO, the US and the EU have 'advanced' to Russia is circulating among radical right-wing populists. The source of this disinformation is anyone's guess, it is known that there are close ties between Russian nationalists and ultra-right populists. Historically and according to international law, this theory is total nonsense. International law teaches us that every nation is sovereign and has the right to self-determination. None of the Eastern European countries wanted to be part of the Russian sphere of influence, and none of these countries wants to be dominated by Russia now. But after the second World War it was a fait accompli, the outcome of the Yalta conference and the Cold War that lasted for decades after Germany was defeated. Citizens of Eastern Europe resisted the Soviet dominance many times; the popular uprising in Berlin in 1953, the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1963, to name the most known. The resistance was crushed with Russian tanks time after time. When the detente between the US and the Soviet Union accelerated under Gorbachev and the iron curtain was raised, the Eastern Europeans wholeheartedly chose Europe. The citizens of the former GDR and many other Eastern European countries are freed from autocratic leaders, oppression, coercion and arbitrariness. Joining the EU and NATO brought them protection against renewed Russian aggression and increasing prosperity. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, the citizens of the former Eastern European countries regained their dignity.

Ich bin ein Berliner! Living in the Netherlands, I am, as John F. Kennedy put it, a citizen of Berlin. Every time I revisit this great city, I realize Berlin is the true European capital, the embodiment of a united Europe.