by Peter Löcke //
There are days that I will always remember. September 11, 2001, for example. It was a Tuesday. I came home from work, wanted to take a quick shower and then head off to a soccer match. And that's what I did. Schalke lost the CL game at home against Athens 1:0. The soccer games on Wednesday were canceled at short notice because of the attacks on the Twin Towers. In the weeks that followed, I watched the images of the terrorist attack on TV on a continuous loop. Again and again, whether I wanted to or not. The images of the airplanes crashing strangely silently into the skyscrapers. Instead, the shots were accompanied by "Only time", a heart-wrenching song by Enya. The song became the soundtrack to the tragedy. It took me 15 years to realize that the 3000 victims of 9/11 served as justification for a great power to wage wars, to justify thousands of victims and to install unprecedented surveillance laws. It was only 15 years later that I realized how great the manipulative power of images is.
October 3, 1990 is also one of those days that is etched in my mind. As a pubescent teenager, my hormones were more important to me than global politics, but I still remember this day very specifically. It was the day of German reunification. I remember the pictures of people cheering. People who were complete strangers hugged each other, sang, drank and celebrated together. And I remember my father sitting in front of the TV and crying with happiness. My father never used to cry.
This is the 34th anniversary of German Unity Day and people are still rejoicing. Well, yes. They are happy that any public holiday falls on a Thursday. In the best case scenario, this means a bridge day and therefore a long weekend. Otherwise, there is little sign of a united country. Unity consists mainly of political speech bubbles.
Germany is not divided. I sense a great deal of solidarity when I am out and about and talk to people in the country.
From Steinmeier to Scholz - I read these sentences over and over again and they will almost certainly be uttered again in 2024 in the speeches celebrating the Day of German Unity. They are bizarre sentences. Solidarity does not mean unity. Solidarity does not mean what the current political caste understands it to mean. Solidarity does not mean obediently submitting to a predetermined political dogma. And who seriously believes that Frank Spalter Steinmeier feels the pulse of ordinary citizens? The Federal President enjoys the beautiful view from his castle. Translated? Bellevue Palace.
The country is divided and it would be healthy to admit that. Insight is always the first step towards positivity. Moreover, many of the divisions of recent years were and are politically intentional. Divide and rule! Divide and rule! The ancient Romans already knew that. George W. Bush knew that shortly after 9/11 when he said "Anyone who is not for us is against us."
The power principle of division has also been skillfully applied by German politicians in recent years. Divide and rule! Divide the evil unvaccinated against the good vaccinated, the evil right against the good left, the evil Putin trolls against the good defenders of Western values, "follow the science" against deniers of all kinds.
New divisions are in the works. Examples? Young versus old or poor versus rich. You just have to listen carefully to which topics are increasingly being discussed politically and in the media on talk shows. It is advisable to be on the supposedly right and good side of all these issues. Then you are a solidary democrat. Otherwise, life will be so rocky that you will be defamatorily stoned as a non-democrat.
I long for an end to the division. I long for beautiful images, for real German unity. This unity doesn't look like always being of the same opinion. Quite the opposite. Unity begins in the smallest cell, even if the traffic lights do everything they can to divide even this cell. I'm talking about the family.
Imagine a big family reunion on October 3, 2024. Pensioners, workers, students and children, women and men are present. Every color of political opinion is represented at this meeting. Suddenly, a controversial topic comes up and the first person to speak takes the floor. Everyone is silent, everyone listens and everyone thinks:
But that's exciting. I have a completely different opinion on the subject. So I'm listening. Maybe I'll learn something new.
This image in my head may be boundlessly naive, but that would be my personal day of German unity in the fight against the days of German division. I need beautiful images in the now that I will remember in the future.
Transparency notice: The first version of this column mistakenly and embarrassingly referred to October 3, 1989. I would like to apologize for this. It was probably not due to my hormones or my lack of knowledge of history, but to the fact that, when writing the text this article about October 3, 1989 had opened.
Happy holidays to all our readers,
Peter Löcke
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
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16 Responses
This "chancellor", characterized by need-based dementia and corruption, and the useless, brass-band-wielding federal owl are the biggest fascists in our country
My family and I spent half the night of October 3rd in front of the TV in Hamburg to watch the Wall fall live. On Saturday, October 4, we drove to Lübeck early in the morning. Of course, there was no way through to any of the border crossings. On the banks of the Trave, there was a sea of Trabants in all colors on the meadows, which were used as makeshift parking spaces. We wandered through the streets and met thousands of citizens from East Germany. Some carried banana plants on their shoulders, many had exchanged their welcome money for other treasures. The Ossis were easy to recognize, their jeans were different from ours. We picked out a family with children the same age as ours and invited them to dinner at the "Schiffergesellschaft". It was a lively meal and a long conversation about life and the future. Addresses were exchanged and the thread never really broke. Our daughter once visited us in Hamburg and we sometimes spoke on the phone to Rostock. When I review the years that followed, the ten-day trip with an American colleague through the GDR in the summer of 1990 to explore business opportunities for a large American corporation and our private visits there in East Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Rostock, on the Darss and elsewhere, I never have the impression of a divided country. As always, the "division" exists in the social classes and in the political views. In my opinion, the word "division" is deliberately used by politicians to stigmatize the critical views of Easterners on the state of democracy in the West and to distinguish them from those in the West. However, it does not reflect the reality of Germany as a whole.
Reunification
Dear Mr. Löcke, your article brings back memories for me, thank you!
On 9.11. I was happy for my relatives from over there who wanted to see Italy again, the country of their parents and grandparents, and even the Pope had not been able to fulfill this great wish for them before.
In the morning of November 10, other relatives, a whole family of three generations, stood in front of our door; they wanted to stay because they didn't trust a permanent opening of the border. - What did they hope for here in the western part of Germany? - High salaries, good education for the children, travel and a house after about 10 years. - They couldn't keep 3 houses in the East. - At the same time, unemployment was rising here and salaries were falling, and this trend continued until at least 2010.
For example, German young adults from East and West met in England and Ireland, where they could still find work; united there by the lack of jobs in their own country? The young people got on splendidly within a third culture (GB, IR).
And the older ones? Did they listen to each other sympathetically? Did people from East and West try to share all their cultural, intellectual and still separate achievements with each other? Did people take each other seriously? In my opinion, there is still room for improvement. - Where do we find ourselves in common?
I still remember some good experiences when I visited my relatives in the still young GDR as a teenager.
In 2008, I walked through the Brandenburg Gate for the first time. I was moved to walk along Unter den Linden, the street my mother had walked along with her mother as a small child in 1920. - Many years before, I had only been allowed to take a look at it from an observation tower over The Wall.
The Same procedure as every year .
Yes, I saw and understood it exactly the same way. And I think it was Kohl who succeeded in restoring unity, naturally with his charm and political skill. With this result, he was able to govern for many more years.
But what would have happened if Björn Engholm, then Minister President of Schleswig Holstein, had not been overthrown in the drawer affair? In my opinion, he was too dangerous for Kohl.
I was at the Protestant service in Berlin Cathedral today. The topic: German unity.
It was truly with pain in my heart that I experienced a church service abused by political narratives, crowned by a sermon delivered not by a clergyman but by the chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the Thuringian state parliament. I don't need to go into the content here.
What a paradoxical image on the subject of unity.
Dear Mr. Löcke,
October 3, 1989 was a day like any other in my life.
I was 15 years old at the time and I think I remember it. On that day we were still a long way from unity, perhaps we still are today.
The unification was supposed to have been completed a year later. However, I have no particular memory of that day.
A day that was chosen at random, which to this day doesn't seem special to anyone I know.
Celebrations with speeches by our superiors on this day pass me by completely.
Nevertheless, have a nice day of German UNITY....
Best regards
NH
I wholeheartedly share the dream of German unity - because for me as an Austrian, living here since 1985, it has become my motherland
We have a Federal Chancellor who suffers from memory loss. We have a Minister of Economic Affairs who can't tell the difference between insolvency and regular opening hours. We have a Minister of the Interior who welcomes "stabbers". We have a health minister who was (is?) linked to the pharmaceutical industry. We have a foreign minister who denies her own culture (keyword: taking down the cross).
No: I don't feel solidarity with these people. And certainly not united.
Why did certain forces in the Reichstag want to remove the "Dem deutschen Volke" (To the German People) pamphlet?
Bärbel Bohley, the "clairvoyant" who disappeared into oblivion, could certainly help to clarify this. She foresaw that these forces would continue to pursue the GDR system in a more refined form. As you can see, very successfully.
Dear Mr. Löcke,
It doesn't get any better than this.
That's how I remember it, and just like you, I would like to see the picture you paint at the end of your, as usual, very good article.
I wish you a wonderful holiday under - or despite - all circumstances.
Best regards
This day is a day that my Ossi consciousness has been avoiding for some time. The happiness I experienced and felt, the euphoria of the opening of the border - the reunification - seem surreal and suspicious to me today.
Where did the tears come from and what were they for?
Our projections to the West of "together" and "unity" are now proving to be very naive expectations.
There is still a great lack of interest in the East and even more so in the people who live there (unless they are Westerners).
The mere fact that, as it seems to me, many Wessis have now identified the East as the abortus of their "Nazi-guilt-lust" in the form of the AfD, concedes a certain needy necessity to "the East".
The rituals of the West are a cynical spectacle, and not just since the "hate & agitation" campaigns that seem to be waged against the AfD but refer to the rebellious East.
The Ossis are ungrateful - aren't they! And the West is....?
In my personal memory, the borders were only opened on November 9, 1989, when I had just come from swimming training and heard it on the news in disbelief. I will never forget that moment either. So the first day of German unity couldn't have been until 1990.
I can only agree with the rest of your comments, as always you get to the heart of the matter. I only hope that the majority of the population has also noticed how and in what patterns the division still exists.
It seems like a nightmare that everyone knows and yet those currently in power are allowed/able to carry on without any consequences for their actions. There is no sign of them having the decency to take responsibility for their actions and statements, to humbly come to terms with them, apologize and make amends. It really does seem as if we have returned to the politics of the GDR after 35 years.
That's how I remember it too!
Thank you.
Exactly! It was November 9, 1989. We were invited to a small birthday party in Hanover, somehow someone came up with the idea of turning on the TV, which seemed completely out of place to me - (I assume a soccer game was supposed to be broadcast) .... and then came the special broadcast: We were all excited, everyone stared at the screen for an hour, short comments were made, everyone had different ideas - and lots of hope!!!!
At that time, many people were not aware of the real eastern territories of Pomerania, Silesia, etc., but when the GDR radio station was renamed "Mittel(!)deutscher Rundfunk" (Central(!)German Radio), all reasonably educated people realized that we were still missing a very large part of unity!
Now I also notice that the reason to turn on the TV at noon on September 11, 2001 was also an "important" soccer broadcast.....na , such a coincidence?
Why was 9.11. eliminated from the collective memory as the opening of the border and 3.10. installed instead?
A good article that makes one thing clear to me: WHAT exactly does October 3 mean????
What is supposed to have happened on October 03, 1989?
acc. Wiki quote: "October 3 was designated a public holiday in Germany as the Day of German Unity in the 1990 Unification Treaty." The emphasis is on the last word: it was DETERMINED, i.e. determined by others. By whom, actually, and why?
Before that, the following was true, quote ibid: "From 1954 to 1990, June 17 was a public holiday in the Federal Republic of Germany to commemorate the popular uprising in the GDR in 1953, with the name Day of German Unity (with a small "d")." This point in German history was thus erased at the same time.
And nobody even talks about the day that might correspond to September 11: November 9, 1989 - the day the inner-German border was officially opened, and yes - in the middle of the night, "complete strangers" were lying in each other's arms.
There is a recommended book on the subject: "Yesterday's snow is today's deluge" by Daniela Dahn
October 3, 1990, 34th recurrence , otherwise everything else correct and desirable