The 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall
was celebrated at the majestic Palais Bellevue,
the seat of the German president.
Someone made a terrible mistake in choosing the guests. Instead of the usual platitudes, the writer Marko Martin devoted most of his speech not to the fall of the wall, but to solidarity and the slogan ‘For our freedom and yours’. He presented the Poles as a model of resistance against the background of the German passivity under communism. He demanded that our role be recognized and that we get away from the legend of ‘Gorbie’. And at the end, he scolded the host for prostituting himself with Putin, to the point where Steinmeier is said to have lost his temper. Today, the transcript of the speech has been hidden on the official channel.
Extensive extracts from the speech:
Dear Federal President, Ladies and Gentlemen – but above all, our distinguished Polish guests, including the heroes of the Solidarity revolution and the co-initiators of the Gdansk shipyard strike: without your courage, there would have been no “1989”. As you have obviously not been invited to the all-German panel that will follow today, I would like to say thank you, (in Polish) Thank you very much! (..)
He goes on to contrast and criticize the passivity of people in the GDR at the end of communism with today’s support for the AfD and Wagenknecht.
In Ukraine today, the question is whether 1989 really marked the beginning of a lasting history of freedom, or whether it was just a pause in world history. And yet it seems that too many people in both East and West Germany lack the insight and the will to recognize this fact – and to act accordingly. But was it any different before – in the 1980s and in relation to Poland, where almost the entire population actually rose up against the dictatorship with enormous courage?
Although the Polish resistance was inspiring to GDR civil rights activists, a very different view was heard among much of the population. Why, it was said at the time, not just half-heartedly, did the ‘Poles’ simply not go to work, instead of going on strike, constantly demanding freedom and upsetting ‘us’?
The writer then moved on to West Germany:
‘In 1982, for example, Egon Bahr (SLD politician, father of Ostpolitik) described Solidarity in the magazine Vorwärts as “a threat to world peace”. A disgrace that the poet Peter Rühmkorf, still widely revered today as a subversive intellectual, affirmed in the stern tone of the Nazi fathers’ generation: ‘No one in the world can impose anything more than work and discipline on the Polish people – but who has the courage to actually impose them?’
‘But what does this have to do with the 35th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR? Certainly, more than we would like. This distorted concept of peace, which asks no questions about permanence, stability, and justice, now flies back and forth between East and West like a weaving shuttle. And with my hand on my heart: is it really recognized in the collective memory that the first stone of the Berlin Wall was once cut off at the Lenin Shipyard in Danzig?
I think it says a lot about the German lack of historical awareness – both in the East and in the West – that all this is deliberately suppressed and instead continues to wallow in nostalgic memories of the ‘good Tsar Gorbie’, under whose rule the Kremlin did not send in tanks or shoot civilians. Only that on ‘Bloody Sunday in Vilnius’ on 13 January 1991, it did.
‘For our freedom and your freedom’ has been a Polish slogan since the 19th century, understood by civil rights activists in the GDR, by people in Eastern Europe in 1989, and later in 2004 and 2014 during the democratic revolutions in Kyiv. Meanwhile, it seems that the contempt masked as Realpolitik, which used to speak the words of Egon Bahr, still has influence in Germany.’
Finally, Martin leaves himself to plow on with his main listener, Steinmeier:
‘Gerhard Schröder, still the unpunished, boastful friend of the mass murderer in the Kremlin (and Steinmeier’s patron saint, my addition) is now assured by the new SPD general secretary that there will be a place for him in German Social Democracy. This, incidentally, sounds just as appalling as the words uttered in 2016 by the then foreign minister (Steinmeier!) that NATO maneuvers on the eastern flank to protect the democracies there were ‘saber waving and warmongering’.
Warmongering!
‘Dear Federal President, with all due respect: the Nord Stream project, which the SPD and the CDU clung to for so pitifully long against all legitimate criticism, was only a ‘bridge’ – Your words from spring 2022 – insofar as it further encouraged Putin’s aggression, namely the calculation that Germany, otherwise world champions of moralizing, would not let go of the lucrative deal, regardless of Ukraine. And again, with no small amount of arrogance, the clear warnings in Eastern Europe were ignored. And it is the threatened Eastern Europe that will have to suffer the consequences.’
