We are here because we have hope. Gathered here is hope harboured by hundreds of thousands. Hope, imagination, cheek and humour.
These were the very words you, Marianne Birthler, called out to the crowds on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz in November 1989. Those words resonated in their hearts: Freedom, at last! This hope lifted people’s spirits, fuelling gatherings, environmental groups, prayers for peace and vigils, and demonstrations in the streets. It all culminated on the night of 9 November 1989, that night of all nights, when the people of the former GDR brought down the Berlin Wall. Everything changed over night in our country.
And the people of the former GDR had something else: courage – tremendous courage. The courage it took to protest peacefully in Dresden, Halle, Karl-Marx-Stadt and Magdeburg, in Plauen, Wismar, Stendal, Meiningen, Rostock, Potsdam, Schwerin and Leipzig [interjection] … and in Erfurt and many other cities that I did not mention. They could not possibly know, only a few months after the events of Tiananmen Square, how the regime would respond – a regime that had previously always suppressed protests and uprisings with brutal force and pursued its opponents with ruthlessness. And yet, Monday after Monday, week after week, they felt and experienced a sense of true power – a power that grew stronger and stronger until, eventually, fear would gradually change sides.
9 October in Leipzig, 4 November in Berlin and 9 November 1989 – these were the finest hours in the history of German democracy. Without them, the division of Germany – and indeed of Europe – would not have been overcome, our once divided and fractured country would not be looking back at 34 years of history since its reunification. Today, 35 years after the Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall, we remember with gratitude the courage, strength, humour, imagination and boldness of the people of that time – and we remember this wonderful gift they gave us. When I look around this gathering, I am pleased to see that not only a few, but indeed many who were involved then are here with us today. May I bid all of you a very warm welcome to Schloss Bellevue!
Today, as we look back – at the film footage from the weeks before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, at the posters you saw as you entered the hall – we can still feel some of the joy and spirit of optimism that defined those days. It is important that we are here today. We stand firm – in a time when liberal democracies are being challenged virtually across the globe – we stand firm in our commitment to freedom and to this democracy!
Transformation in our country would not have been possible had it not been for our eastern neighbours’ fight for freedom. In Poland, people had been fighting against dictatorship and oppression for many years. Mass protests, strikes, the founding of Solidarność, and the initiation of the Round Table talks – despite all the setbacks, which we have not forgotten, the march toward democratisation was unstoppable. And the hope for freedom and democracy spread to neighbouring countries, to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and to the GDR. Freedom triumphed over injustice and tyranny. I am delighted that today we are joined by guests from Poland who fought for that freedom. It is wonderful to have you here, Bogdan Michał Borusewicz, Grażyna Staniszewska, Bogdan Jerzy Lis, Jacek Taylor, Ewa Kulik-Bielińska!
Today, when we Germans look to our eastern neighbours, to our friends in the European Union, to Ukraine, which is fighting for its freedom and independence against the Russian army, we are reminded of one of the lessons we must draw from 1989: We stand with those who fight today for their freedom and against oppression!
We are in fact celebrating a double anniversary this year: the 75th anniversary of the adoption of our Basic Law, which we commemorated in May with an official ceremony in front of the Reichstag in Berlin, and the Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago. These two milestones are united by the hope that Marianne Birthler spoke of then – the hope of a life in freedom and democracy. A promise that was finally fulfilled for all people in our country after the Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. What a blessing this is!
Today, it is all too easy to say – though regrettably, many do – that mistakes were made in the process of reunification. After all, there were no international blueprints for the unification of two states, nor any ready-made plans waiting in the desks of political leaders - whether in the east or the west. Above all, one thing was missing: time. Reunification had to be achieved in less than a year – not only due to economic necessity, but also people’s desire for it to happen as quickly as possible, which was expressed both in the east and the west.
Yet it is also true that reunification has affected us in the west and in the east in unequal measure. People in the east endured the full weight of these changes: hard-earned qualifications were devalued, factories closed, and many lost their jobs. Older individuals had to start from scratch, while younger people moved away. Meanwhile, people in the west were largely able to continue their lives unaffected, with many believing that reunification would bring no changes at all. The differing experiences of those years continue to shape us visibly and profoundly to this day.
When I travel across our country – as many know I often do – I still hear people in the west accusing East Germans of not being grateful enough. And in the east I once again hear more and more that the former GDR was colonised by the west. Such distortions fail to capture the true complexity of the reunification process. Above all, they are unhelpful and do not serve to bring people together. However, it is true that East Germans are still under-represented in leadership roles across business, administration, higher education and the media. It is also true that people in the east have still not had the opportunity to acquire property, let alone wealth, across multiple generations within their families.
Yet do these questions truly justify the growing trend – observed both in the west and the east – toward an increasingly critical view of the reunification process? My hope is that we never lose sight of what a tremendous blessing German reunification was. It brought freedom and democracy to all Germans. And no one denies that there is indeed still much work to be done. But let us never, ever forget: it was for this very reason – for freedom and democracy – that people took to the streets during the Peaceful Revolution, risking everything – their health, their lives and their safety – to be free. Free from the truth dictated by the Unity Party; free to express themselves; free to play an active part in public life; and free to pursue their own visions of life. Today’s occasional unease about the course of day-to-day politics must not tempt us to trivialise a dictatorship through the lens of nostalgia. This was a dictatorship that harassed, persecuted and surveilled its opponents in every corner of their lives, robbing them of their freedom. I am reminded for instance of the cruel prisons of Bautzen and Hoheneck – the women’s prison where we opened a memorial only this year. What the imprisoned women in Hoheneck endured was but a glimpse of the terrible injustice that tens of thousands suffered. There is nothing here to trivialise and certainly nothing to gloss over.
Today, 35 years after the Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are quite a few young authors from eastern Germany who are revisiting and addressing the events of back then; in 1989, many of them were still very young or had not even been born. And I think their strength lies in both identifying and living with contradictions, in different ways and with a multitude of voices. Sabine Rennefanz comes to mind, who in her novel Kosakenberg speaks about the experience of losing one’s home – as well as about the pain, and the newfound freedom, that came with this. I also think of Anne Rabe, who writes unsparingly about violence experienced in families before and after the events of 1989. And I think of Lukas Rietzschel, whose books and plays constitute a rejection of any attempt to romanticise dictatorship. I mention only some of them here; there are many more. They all, I think, deserve to be read more broadly, in all parts of Germany.
Because what we actually need right now is a nuanced view – and not to blame others in an oversimplified and headline-grabbing way; I am convinced this would only set us back. To me, it is encouraging that at least a large majority of very young people in a recent survey stated that 9 November 1989 was the most joyful day in our history. That’s something not everyone would have expected. Despite everything that has not yet been accomplished, I remain convinced that we have come much further in our country than some people assert in public discussions.
That is why I believe it is irresponsible for anyone, for reasons of political advantage, to declare that reunification has failed, or that democracy is inept. Anyone who today boisterously claims that the events of 1989 are now due to come full circle, because we are supposedly once again living in a dictatorship – anyone who seeks to use such arguments to justify attacking the foundations of our democracy – is intentionally abusing the legacy of 1989.
When today we commemorate 9 November 1989, we must also be aware that, for us Germans, the 9th of November is and remains loaded with contradictions. This day stands for the highest peaks we have climbed in our history, the ones I have just spoken about – and for the darkest night. It is crucial that we also commemorate 9 November 1938 – the Night of the Pogrom; the day when Germany’s synagogues burned and thousands of Jews were mistreated, arrested and murdered.
Margot Friedländer celebrated her 103rd birthday the day before yesterday. How can we think of 9 November without also revisiting her story, which is representative of millions others’ – how can we not think of her story, and not take it to heart? How, as a young woman in 1938, she walked through the glass littering the streets of her home town of Berlin; how Germany turned on her and wanted her to die because she is a Jew. There can be no 9th of November without this memory. There can be no 9th of November without this admonishment. We must never let up in our fight against antisemitism and all forms of hatred.
Yet there is another dimension to 9 November. The date reminds us that our German history of freedom goes way back, deep into the 19th century. The long fight for freedom and democracy reached its culmination on 9 November 1918, the day that the first German Republic was proclaimed, the day that freedom and democracy triumphed over monarchy, militarism and nationalism.
1918 – 1938 – 1989: How we commemorate 9 November in all of its ambiguity is not an entirely trivial matter. Rather, it touches on how we truly view ourselves, our identity as Germans. For us Germans, 9 November is a day when we turn inward and indeed must turn inward in reflection, as we seek to determine over and over again what we want to be, what connects us and how we want to live together – especially in difficult times such as these.
This day makes us aware that, in our history, we Germans could bring forth great new dawns of democracy and freedom – this is symbolised by 1918 and 1989. Yet 9 November 1938 must also be, and must remain, an admonishment. This day stands as a reminder that it was Germans who were capable of committing the crime against humanity that was the Shoah. For us, this amounts to an abiding responsibility – the responsibility of "never again!"
I think we all can sense that the question of how we want to live together is more urgent today than it was for many years before. On a day like today, can we hope that freedom and democracy will prevail? Is the Basic Law still the compass that we trust to guide us? Or do we live in an age when, around the world, liberal democracy is losing its power of persuasion; in what may be an age marked by new nationalism and authoritarianism – in our country, in Europe and throughout the world?
9 November makes us aware of the fact that, in Germany, the history of liberal democracy never did progress in a straight line. Nor does it today. We therefore should all the more on 9 November recall that nothing is mapped out, nothing is preordained.
It is up to us to find the answer to this big question. This is as true today as it was back then, in 1989. We want to be empowered citizens
; Democracy – now or never
; Free elections now
; Freedom of travel
: All this and much more people called for back then, 35 years ago – some of the posters and banners are on display today in the adjacent rooms. In so doing, they learned something that is crucial if a democracy is to succeed: how incredibly strong people can be, and how much change they can bring about, when they passionately engage in struggle and wholeheartedly stand up for the truth, for democracy and freedom. It is this strength, it is this power that we must now enlist for the cause of our democracy. And I firmly believe we have that strength and power.