“Happy Reunification Day!”, my Canadian better half texted me last year when I was still living in Germany. My friends and I found it adorable, for the effort he had made. How could he, proud Canadian patriot that he is, know, that we don´t really do anything special at that day or exchange jubilant words of congratulations. Okay, some people, if they live in Berlin, gather for the festivities at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbolic place where it all began. Other bigger cities have some sort of official celebrations too. And, of course, everybody dwells a bit in memories, looking back to the events of those months that had caught us all pretty unaware. We even shed some tears while watching the repeats of now twenty-one and twenty-year old versions of the main news formats in TV: people dancing at and on the Berliner Mauer, the wall, a wall which nobody would have approached only weeks ago, aware of the sharp-shooters ready and willing to take those out that want to go to the other side. And there he is again, in his trade-mark clothes, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, as he steps out on that balcony in the German embassy in Prague, where East-German refugees have camped. And we here his famous words again: “I am here today”.... They were free, the borders between East and West still closed, but those who had taken the risk to leave everything behind, they were going to be free at last. We hear the crowd´s uproar, the screams of joy and victory and yes, that is the moment, when tissues are a really good thing to have at hand. No denial, it was one of our really great moments in time, the one we could and can look back to with pride, the turn or the change, as we call it. A change in many ways was this peaceful revolution that showed the world a new face of Germany.
Yes, we are proud for a second and touched and then we go back to daily business. Exchanging congratulations for the occasion, like a “Merry Christmas” or a “Happy Thanksgiving”, this never really occurred to anybody. I never gave that much thought, blamed two reasons for the lack of festive atmosphere that surrounds the day. The reunification, when it happened, started as a people´s movement but in the end it came down to head-butting between the powerful states of that time. We all remember Margaret Thatcher´s initially inhibitions against a united Germany. Too fresh were still the wounds in European souls that we had cut during the Second World War. And, although nobody said it aloud, the separation had been convenient. A united Germany in its full political and economic power would change the balance of power, a perspective neither Paris nor London really looked forward too. Rumours say that it was during these days that former chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed to give up the German super-strong currency, the Deutsche Mark, in favour of a European currency yet to come. The price to pay for the reunification. And still, like a miracle, the process could not be reversed and finally the day of reunification came. To not to fuel the negative emotions of the neighbour states, German officials dutifully kept their heads down instead of organizing a big party.
The other reason is much simpler. Traditions grow with time. Canadians have stuffed turkey for Christmas, Germans like their Rouladen or their sour-sweet roast on that occasion. Canadians share gifts at the 25th, all in pyjamas and sweatpants, we do it the night before, all dressed up in our best clothes. Soccer fans worldwide, when their teams win a game, have the somewhat odd tradition to get into their cars (drunk) and cruise the streets all night, honking and waving flags. But what should we do with a reunification day? His our flags in the backyard? Eat fish or fried Sausage from Thuringia? We really don´t know, and nobody told us.
Two days ago I read an interesting analysis in the New York Times. Germans do not celebrate, because Eastern Germans have no real reason to do so. Underdeveloped, poor, high rate of unemployment, brain-drain, dying cities and villages, that, so the article, is the reality in Germany´s East today. Undeniable, this description, but still, could it be the reason?
I consider myself a very open-minded person. I have traveled the world, I have been around my country millions of time, I met many, many people due to my work and my personal interests. I have friends in Israel, Palestine, the States, Canada, Cameroon, Turkey and who knows were. I have one, single friend from the East of Germany, too. He is by the way, the second person I consider a friend from “drüben” as we used to call it, from “there, the other side”. Two people in twenty years. And my friend and I would not even be friends if it were not for the fact that we are both members of the same political party because otherwise, we simply would never have met. There is not many people from “there” in my old home town, which is nothing less but Bonn, the former capital of the west of Germany.
It is not that I don´t want any contact with people from the east. The few I have met are really likable fellows, the women, even in my generation and younger are a feminist´s pride and I admire my friend for his down-to-earth way thinking and living. Dresden is a wonderful city, maybe the most beautiful in the country and I like the people from Saxony for their frankness. It is just that people from the east never seem to be, to live, to work, to socialize where I am. Maybe they don´t mingle with us, because they don´t like us, don´t like it when people from the west tell them occasionally that they are a burden for the country. That they still don´t understand the way things are (things = capitalism). I think they do understand capitalism quite good, but they still have this attitude: they believe in solidarity, in the state´s responsibility to care for its citizens, in people caring for people and this is way “the west” votes conservative and liberal and “the east” votes for the left-wing party, which makes it all so hard for conservative-liberal governments to get and stay into power. Germany is still deeply divided. It´s the mentality.
At Christmas and Thanksgiving, family and friends gather for a celebration of old traditions and beliefs and they gather out of love for each other. At the beginning of the process, people that have never met, just loved each other. At the Brandenburg Gate, the wall, people from “there” and ”here”, they hugged, they cried, they welcomed each other home. But maybe, along the way, like it happens in many relationships, the love got lost and was replaced by mutual agreement. Nothing bad, man, just nothing really worth celebrating.
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