Another Brick in the Wall

 Spending a couple days in Berlin and Potsdam, driving over the former border to get there.  This has triggered quite a few conversations about the former DDR/GDR, crossing the border there before 1989.  I recall when we were children, on a tour of Germany with my family (in a Winnebago!) and we had to amend our route as it turned out that my parents inadvertently chose a route that would have crossed into Eastern Germany (this was the 1970’s).  They worried that they would not allow Dad either in or out of the country.  And the apparatus of the crossing is still there, deliberately to act as a reminder of what was.  Thomas and Johanna spoke of how the GDR would literally take the car apart looking for contraband.   They would take your passport and make you proceed through a long car passage and only let you in if they decided they agreed your face matched the image. Very stressful. 

Berlin today was also very thought provoking.  The last time I was there was in 1988, so there was still a wall.  Even crossed Checkpoint Charlie a few times over a couple stays.   Driving around today, across the where the wall was, into the former GDR to look at the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag.   And then we visited the Berlin Wall memorial.  There are a few areas in Berlin where the wall is visible as an educational piece or a memorial, but this area is more thorough with a small museum and overlook.  Part of the wall is just retained as standing rebar as part of the symbolism.  There is also a memorial there, to replace the church that was razed. Why?  In the 1980’s, the GDR was exerting increasing control over people who were trying to escape over the wall.   They needed a dead zone behind the wall to watch the wall and prevent potential escapees.   The overlook views the one section of the wall that is retained to show that that looks like, with guard towers, the Stalin’s Lawn which is a grid with iron nails of a sort so that people landing on it would be severely harmed.   It was very impactful and thought provoking.  One of the ironies was that the fall of the iron curtain really snowballed in Hungary, prior to the opening of the border in Germany and the dismantling of the wall.  That being its current leader, Victor Orban, and it’s anti-democratic policies.