Berkley Center

Construction began on the Berlin Wall, or as the Germans call it quite simply, die Mauer (The Wall), back in 1961 as a means to stop the brain drain of talented East Germans who were escaping the German Democratic Republic (DDR) for the perceived freedom of the West, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD). As the wall went up, many families were split as lines were arbitrarily drawn and concrete walls built right in front of the doors of houses, forcing people to escape through windows, back doors, and even underground tunnels.

Given the economic prominence of Germany, it is too easy to forget that this troubled past exists and carried on up to 1991 with the reunification of Germany. We often forget just how recent the Cold War was, and the revolutionary changes that occurred when it ended. But what we tend to perhaps purposefully ignore is not that this part of history occurred, but that differences between countries on each side of the former Iron Curtain continue to persist even today.

Arriving here in Berlin, its recent history is hard to discern at first sight; look carefully, however, and you’ll realize that the East-West split of Berlin (and the rest of Germany) remains. Not merely in the sense of architecture and infrastructure, which certainly cannot be easily changed, but also in the sense of attitudes, accents, and even the prevalence of street art.

The most evident signs of the persistence of this East-West split begin with the infrastructure. While many apartments in the eastern side of Berlin bear the mark of communism—plain gray buildings with small balconies and basic rectangular patterns—the buildings in the west are dominated by tall office buildings coated with glass and metal, shiny and modern. While the east is mainly serviced by street trams a la New Orleans or San Francisco, the west relies on buses which were deemed by the former West German government to be more efficient and reliable than street trams.

Behind these tangible differences, however, lie more nebulous differences in attitudes which are difficult to grasp for many outsiders like myself. The differences are starker among Berliners who grew up in a divided Germany, and become especially clear when one speaks to older professors and teachers who have a more articulated view of exactly what they found so difficult to cope with in the process of reunification. One of the more surprising views which we rarely hear of in the external media is the idea that the reunification was less of a coming together of two equals, than the West German takeover of East Germany; having done multiple interviews for a class project, I found that this view was actually rather prevalent among many former East Germans.

There was resentment on the part of professors who were outraged that under the terms of the reunification, the academic status of many of their former professors in the East were revoked and their doctor or professor titles rescinded. “Arrogance,” was how one of my professors described it, still unsettled after 23 years over the perceived hubris of West Germany.

It showed itself even in the debate over the rebuilding of a former Prussian palace in Berlin on the site where the former Palace of the Republic of the former East Germany stood. While many of my interviewees quoted the heavy cost on taxpayers as an argument against its rebuilding, some reminded me that the reconstruction of the former Prussian palace instead of the refurbishment of the existing Palace of the Republic seemed to be an intentional slight against the former East and a deliberate attempt to erase its past of communism. A professor of mine, barely able to conceal his bitterness, informed us that it was in that very building of the Palace of the Republic that the decision was made, and democratically too, to move towards reunification. Replacing it with a palace which stood for nothing more than a repressive monarchy which failed to protect the basic rights of its citizens was, for him, a grave mistake.

A week in Berlin and one may discover the differences in architecture and infrastructure, but one would have to dig even deeper to find the still bruised soul of a city which was once the microcosm of the wider Cold War. Frustration and discomfort persist in the seemingly successful reunification of the economic wonder of Germany, hidden until a raw nerve is hit or an ambiguous answer repeatedly questioned. And yet even then for me, after two months of inquiry and research, I somehow find that I am barely scratching the surface.