The end ... or the beginning?

Today marks the 20th anniversary of German unity in 1990, and maybe the opportunity for a penultimate post on Holy Disorder. Just 361 days after the GDR marked its 40th anniversary, the GDR had become history - no longer a place, but an era. The 361 days between 7 October 1989 and 3 October 1990 marked not only the disappearance of the German communist half-state but reshaped Europe and the world. Did the unification of Germany mark the "end" of the autumn revolution of 1989? In summer 1990 I sat in a small church near the Polish-German border at which the pastor recalled the biblical story of Moses leading the Israelites out of the captivity of Egypt, and how they waited 40 years before arriving in the promised land of milk and honey. Many people, he said, saw the 40 years of the GDR as the lost time of the desert from which they were now being released into the promised land. But what, he said, if the events of 1989 and 1990 did not mark the arrival in the promised land, but rather only the flight from the captivity of Egypt that would be followed by 40 years in the desert? What do we say today, 20 years after the unification of Germany as a European state?

This blog began as a set of reflections on the Holy Disorder campaign of the Protestant Church in Central Germany. One of the first posts came from Leipzig, the scene of the "turning point" on 9 October when thousands of people took to the street to demand change, many of them coming from prayers for peace in the city's churches. It coincided with the 20th anniversary of the conclusion of the Ecumenical Assembly for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation, and which made unprecedented demands for change. To mark the 20th anniversary of German unity, we are posting the English (provisional) translation of an address by Heino Falcke, one of those at the forefront of the Ecumenical Assembly. The address was about how the Central Germany Kirchentag (a church congress that was part of the Holy Disorder campaign) in autumn 2009 should remember the events 20 years earlier. Were they events of the past to be discussed with historical distance, or are they events which still have a significance today?

1. How does a Kirchentag remember autumn 1989? There is one great difficulty about making a historical date the theme of a Kirchentag. A Kirchentag is part of the general remembrance of an event, but remembrance is always also fashioned by contemporary interests, that a Kirchentag needs to examine critically. But this is of interest only to a very limited proportion of potential participants. A Kirchentag is always focussed on contemporary challenges, issues, fears and hopes. If it addresses these issues, then the autumn revolution of 1989 appear more or less only a backdrop. There needs to be consideration therefore not only about the content of the sessions, but also their style. Against this background, the Kirchentag needs also to be certain that it has specific viewpoint through which the Christian community sees its history: It sees the events of 20 years ago as an event in our dealings with God and in the light of the biblical witness, looks back to discover what God has to say through these events to us today. Such a perspective therefore links yesterday, today and tomorrow. It avoids subjective-individualistic historical amnesia as well as an instrumentalization of history for self-legitimisation.

2. The political upheaval in the GDR and Eastern Europe is first of all a reason for gratitude and praise to God. Seen historically, autumn 1989 was a revolution, implosion and improvisation. The surprising nature of the events for all those who were involved (the "Wow!" factor), is a sign and a pointer (of course, not a proof) that we do not hold history in our hands and execute its laws (such as in "historical materialism "), but that our history is in the hands of God. The prayers for peace - as they were organized and understood by participants - were themselves a testimony to this truth of faith. This perspective does not prevents self-glory, a dispute of vanities and the instrumentalisation of the event for political interests. It also raises the question of how we as Christians and churches deal with history. We have to avoid subjectivist and individualistic historical amnesia as well as a presumption that we can sit "in judgement" over the globalized world.

3. What gratitude means is different for the individual, for our people and for the church. We can all offer gratitude:
- that the highly risky East-West conflict came to an end without violence, and that the revolutions in Eastern Europe mostly took place non-violently;
- that after the division that resulted from the war, we Germans were granted unification with the consent of all those nations that had been deeply affected by the German war guilt.
- that despite the failures of churches and Christians, and despite all tribulation and temptation, God's Spirit was active in the church, God's Spirit aroused faith, proved to be strength, guidance and consolation, and encouraged brave and faithful witness of life, true life in the midst of false - not only among Christians - and that it so became possible for Christian groups and communities to be part of the self-emancipation of the people in autumn 1989 from the very beginning.

4. In the Judeo-Christian perspective, gratitude includes accepting and confessing one's own failure. It is more difficult for us to be as one in this perspective than it is for us to be as one in our gratitude, but both are indispensable for the future of the church. So discussions about this issue are particularly important at the Kirchentag. We need to remember, for example, the conflicts between the socially-critical-groups and the church leadership, especially but not only in Thuringia, and over the East German experience of the process of accession to the Federal Republic, whose assessment ranges from "the meltdown of German unity" (Uwe Müller) to the apologetics of success (Richard Schroeder) .

It is important to consider what types of events at the Kirchentag are most appropriate for gratitude and for confessing sin and guilt. Should not it be forms of liturgy, that give space to recounting and lamentation, reconciliation of memories, celebrations of the liberation, Gloria and Kyrie? Remembering with gratitude and self-critical understanding before God sheds light on our path today.

5. How do we see the path the church is taking today against the background of autumn 1989? Are we, after the shock of realising that we are a minority, on the way to becoming a church that not only promotes mission, but is mission, as the churches in the GDR in the 1960s once learned from the ecumenical movement? Through its public witness the church became the focus of political life in autumn 1989, when it was a question of the wellbeing and woes of human beings. Where is the church today when it comes to the welfare and woes of the people, now that it has the possibility of exercising all sorts of public witness? How does the church, which once understood itself as a "church within socialism", and in the meantime has debated what was true and false about that idea, now live out its presence in the society of the united Germany.

What does the "critical solidarity" that the churches in the GDR tried to live out, mean for a church that sees itself as a "Church of Freedom"? How do Christians and churches that come from the "unitary society " of the "Socialist Unity Party" learn to live in a pluralistic, multicultural and multireligious society?

6. The autumn revolution of 1989 was - at least in its early stages - shaped by the self-emancipation of the people. The people shifted from being an object of politics to its subject. People overcame the division of their lives into a public, assimilated, part, and a private oppositional existence. They became whole people in their active participation, "We are the people!" was the first slogan of the eastern European citizens spring (T.G. Ash), and marked the burgeoning of the East European democracy out of civil society. This memory needs to provoke a discussion at the Kirchentag on the democratic culture of our society today and about which how to find an impetus to strengthen it in the "Citizens 'spring'" of autumn 1989.

7. The substance and objectives of the freedom unleashed in and through the initiatives and groups in the early autumn of 1989 corresponded to the themes of the groups: peace, environment, more democracy in the GDR and greater justice for the third world. The civic freedoms, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and of demonstrations were freedoms that we appropriated and that became controversial, they were not the substance over which one disputed.

After the political upheaval, the peace, environment and third world groups were subsumed under the term of "civil rights activists" and so caught in the opposition that placed "freedom versus socialism". The substantive policy objectives were repressed, or dismissed as politically irrelevant illusions or utopianism.

The way in which the Kirchentag remembers autumn 1989 must go back further and ask about the substance and objectives of the awakening of freedom. This is not only for historical but also for contemporary reasons. Freedom becomes a reality in life itself and as a socio-political reality as a freedom-from and freedom-for, and thus as a freedom which is linked to values, ethical standards, human criteria, political objectives.

8. The starting point for the Christian and church-motivated protagonists of the autumn revolution, who gathered in the "Ecumenical Assembly of Churches for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation" was a scenario of global crisis. The escalation of weapon systems, economic injustice and environmental degradation intensified into a crisis syndrome, which the Christian oikoumene answered in 1983 through the "Conciliar Process for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation".

The Christian oikoumene in the GDR, together with the socially-critical groups, confronted the brake on reforms in the GDR that increased in the 1980s, and placed this in the context of global problems and from this perspective formulated a programme for social change in the GDR. Those at the forefront of this programme were already aware of globalization as the context of political action. But this awareness was related only in an asynchronous fashion to the majority awareness of the GDR population. In the process of German unification, it was forced into the background, first by the happiness and still more by the stress of everyday life in unification. Only through the events of recent years, has public consciousness become aware of globalization as an issue that affects and challenges us:

-World peace - through international terrorism and the foreign missions of the Bundeswehr.

-The world economy - through increasing poverty even in rich countries, unemployment, crisis of the international financial market.

-The world environmental problem - through climate change and resource depletion.

The point of departure of the autumn revolution of 1989 had a more global perspective than the debate about unification that followed. The dispute between those who see the autumn revolution fulfilled in the status quo of German unification, and those who idealise the status quo ante in "socialist provincialism", falls short of the impetus of autumn 1989, which catapulted us into the globalized world with its great dangers and gave us the immense task of trying to shape it. For this task the three preferential options for the poor, for non-violence and for the preservation of creation, which were expressed the Ecumenical Assembly and were received by all East German churches are still of primary relevance.

It's not about some people saying self-righteously: we knew all that and said so at the time. Nor about others saying: what we have is not what we intended or wanted, it was so pleasant in socialist provincialism behind the Wall, let's try and go back to that.

Rather that the first group says. Now we understand the responsibility that we have now grown into through our own self-emancipation. When we cried, "We are the people", this included without us realising it, "We are citizens of the world." And the other group says: It's a good thing that we have the unity that we then wanted to postpone so that we could change the system instead of simply exchanging one system for another. A change of system is not possible in a dictatorship, but only in a democracy with free debate and discussion. A third group: Yes, unity had to come quickly, but we slid into neo-liberal globalization practices and other deficiencies. Can we in this way reconcile the memories of the those who then argued with each other?

9. There is one feature of the autumn revolution that is generally held up as an example: its non-violence. We now know that this was also made possible by the implosion and weakness of the SED regime. Nevertheless, alongside the examples of August 1968 in Prague and the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989 it is a clear signal whose contemporary significance needs to be remembered today. The Kirchentag needs to set up a working group to examine the experiences, conditions and opportunities for non-violence, in which the memory of autumn 1989 can be linked to contemporary information and exercises.

10. One of the most relevant and urgent questions for the Kirchentag is the "preferential option for the poor." The Kirchentag must face the basic question that many people are now asking with increasing urgency: did the autumn revolution of 1989 remove socialism as an economic concept and a political force in order ultimately to help globalized capital come to power? Is the modern history of freedom, whose capitalist deformation the socialist movement was an attempt to correct, in danger of falling back behind these corrections?

A Kirchentag, which addresses the memory of the autumn revolution of 1989, has to take a clear position on this question. The demand of "Fare shares instead of social division" is aimed at the Ecumenical Kirchentag in 2010, states, "We want an Ecumenical Kirchentag, that openly discusses clear demands for greater justice between rich and poor and for the integrity of creation - without a false regard for political and social balance, and the power structures of the church."

The democratic GDR

The democratic GDR that followed the Volkskammer election on 18 March lasted just six months, following the mass demonstrations in autumn 1989, the loss of power of the SED. To mark the anniversary the Federal Centre for Political Education has published a special edition of "Politics and Contemporary History". The issue (in German) can be downloaded here. The individual essays are listed below:

	Editorial (Hans-Georg Golz)
	The unhappy demise of the GDR - Essay (Wolfgang Templin)
	The forgotten "third way" (Martin Sabrow)
	A democratic East Germany? The project "Modern Socialism" (Rainer Land)
	Double democratization and German Unity (Michael Richter)
	The democratic GDR in the international arena (Jennifer A. Yoder)
	The failure of economic reform in the GDR 1989/1990 (Wolfgang Seibel)
	Farewell to West Berlin (Wilfried Rott)

Photo: Bundesarchiv

Election 1990 - Strangers in a foreign country

Today (18 march) marks the 20th anniversary of the first free elections in East Germany, less than six months after the mass demonstrations that undermined the communist state, and less than five months after the opening of the Berlin Wall. It was a curious mixture of old and new (the picture shows one of the ballot papers used in the election). The alliance of newly-founded citizens' movements and parties that had originally pledged to fight free elections on a common platform has fractured under the pressure of events: the Social Democratic Party of the GDR (founded by opposition activists) has joined forces with its opposite number in the Federal Republic. Helmut Kohl's (West German) Christian Democratic Union, looking for a partner of its own, has signed up with the East German CDU, for four decades a satellite of the communist SED. with revolutionary legitimacy provided through an "Alliance for Germany" with the Demokratischer Aufbruch, and the small German Social Union. Neues Forum, once the rallying cry of the peaceful revolution has become part of the Bundnis 90 grouping, along with Demokratie jetzt, and the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights. The election has become a battle between the proponents of a rapid and a less-rapid union with the Federal Republic.

It is election day, and Jane is preaching in Greppin, the small parish hall is packed on this Sunday:

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Greppin

As I prepared for my year in the GDR I never thought that I would experience free and open elections here. Maybe I should say that I grew up with politics, my father has been for many years either the mayor or the opposition leader in our town. When the elections took place, the children of course wanted to help, it was just something we took for granted. I can still remember that last year I thought that this at least was something I would not be doing in the GDR. But now there are free elections, a wonderful thing to be happening. Yet in many of the discussions I have had, I have noticed that the closer that election day comes, the greater the uncertainty about "what comes after". It's difficult to live with uncertainty, but it was also much more difficult when we knew exactly what would happen next. Our text today (Hebrews 11:8-10) is about Abraham and how he was ready to live with uncertainty:

8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

... I don't know about you, but I would not like to spend my life in a tent. Living in tents is a dangerous business. But how can we learn to live in tents in this time of anxiety before the election. How do we learn to live with uncertainty. There's no easy answer, no promise that things will get better. But one thing is sure, God does not want us to build walls to cut ourselves off. A tent is sensitive to wind and to rain. We must be sensitive, sensitive to other people, talk about our fears.

After the service, Stephen and I go for a walk in the nearby countryside, the Dübner Heide. The GDR seems to have got used to this election, everywhere there are posters put up, torn down, posted over other posters. Then we drive to Leipzig to watch the election results with friends. the results come in. General astonishment when the results are declared: the CDU (which a year earlier had been part of the so-called "Democratic Bloc" with the SED) gets more than 40 percent, the SPD just over half that. 16 per cent for the Party of Democratic Socialism, which used to be the SED. Just 2.9 percent for the civic rights activists in Bündnis 90. Before the election, many commentators had treated an SPD victory as a foregone conclusion. I'm disappointed too, but I hadn't expected it to be different.

Selling Stasi documents in East Berlin

17 March 1990 - Tomorrow is election day in the GDR. Today, Stephen arrived back in Berlin from Seoul where he had been working at the World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. I go to meet him at the airport. Hiring a car (and getting his first ever GDR parking ticket for stopping to ask where he could park), we stopped off at the Gendarmenmarkt in East Berlin. Here the synods of the previously-divided Berlin-Brandenburg Protestant church were having their first joint session. Less than 100 metres away from the Französische Friedrichstadtkirche where the synod is taking place there is a queue outside an unprepossessing building, now called the House of Democracy, and home to the various civic and human rights groups. They are selling a printed volume of Stasi documents, showing how the state security ministry has systematically tried to undermine and subvert opposition activity in the GDR (second hand copies are still available on Amazon). People around the church where the synods are meeting are flicking through the slim volume - some of them to see whether they were the targets of the Stasi. Later on we head back down to Greppin, in the middle of the Bitterfeld chemical works. I'm preaching tomorrow - election day.

A day of anniversaries

11 March 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the GDR dissident Robert Havemann and the 25th anniversary of the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to power as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. According to the German Resistance Memorial Centre, Havemann, born in Munich in 1910, became involved during the Nazi period in the socialist resistance group Neu Beginnen. Together with Georg Groscurth, Robert Havemann, Paul Rentsch, and Herbert Richter, Havemann tried abortive attempts to make contacts with the Allies, and in the summer of 1943, Havemann, Groscurth, Richter and Rentsch wrote a number of programmatic texts, naming their group Europäische Union (European Union). Havemann was sentenced to death in Nazi Germany, but the sentence was not carried out because as a scientist he was judged to be undertaking important work for the war effort. One of his fellow prisoners in Brandenburg prison was Erich Honecker, who would take a leading role in the GDR after the Second World War and head the SED from 1971 to 1989.

Havemann was arrested on September 5, 1943 for his involvement in aiding victims of persecution and as the leading mind of the Europäische Union. He was sentenced to death on December 16, 1943. As his research work appeared indispensable for the Nazi arms industry, he received a stay of execution. Havemann was liberated from Brandenburg-Görden penitentiary by the Red Army in 1945. After the war, he joined the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED), but became critical of the regime in the wake of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. Expelled from the SED in 1964, Havemann lost his post in 1965. He was placed under house arrest from 1976 to 1978. Havemann was one of the most vocal critics of the German Democratic Republic up to his death in 1982.

Havemann had been sentenced to death in Nazi Germany, but the sentence was not carried out because as a scientist he was judged to be undertaking important work for the war effort. In 1982 he and Rainer Eppelmann were influential in launching the "Berlin Appeal". The text, which helped mobilise a peace movement transcending the East West divide, called for the Allies to withdraw from the two German states, to guarantee non interference in the affairs of the two states, and for the creation of a nuclear weapon free zone. Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg has a tribute here.

On 11 March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected general secretary of the CPSU. Within5 years, the Soviet Union ended its involvement in Afghanistan, and East Germany stood on the brink of free elections. Back in 2009, I posted on the "Gorbachev factor" (Archie Brown), noting how according to Brown (no relation), reform was not forced upon Gorbachev by pressure from outside or the dire economic situation inside the Soviet Union - ascribing a voluntarism to Gorbachev and a small circle of top policy makers:

As a result, decisions in Moscow not only played the decisive role in the spread of communism in Eastern Europe in the 1940s, they were just as crucial in facilitating the end of communist rule in Europe 40 years later.

Living next to the chemical works at Bitterfeld ....

From Jane's diary: 11 March 1990, 2am

It's two o'clock in the morning. I am supposed to preach in the morning, and I can't sleep.

The time at Wittenberg came to an end in February. Stephen finally managed to be given a visa and has visited a couple of times. The prayers for renewal are continuing but with far fewer people as in the autumn. The atmosphere is very different now. The election campaign has started, posters are being put up everywhere, even in the shops. I make a speech on behalf of the SPD, the social democrats. It was quite fun, though I have to say even I am not quite convinced that they would get my vote in this situation.

One by one the other students left Wittenberg and went back to their parishes and congregations. It was strange to say goodbye and to know that this part of my life here had come to an end.

I am doing an internship with Axel and Gisela Noack in Wolfen (known for its photographic film factory ORWO, for Original Wolfen. It used to be Agfa until the Second World War). I've moved into the empty manse in Greppin, a small industrial village half way between Wolfen and Bitterfeld. On three sides the village is surrounded by the Bitterfeld Chemical Works. The people of Wolfen and Bitterfeld argue as to who has the most polluted town, but the people of Greppin don't have to argue, they just know that it very rarely doesn't stink here.

From my window I can look over the cemetery to a wonderful view of the factory chimneys. The one that's closest to us has a permanent plume of smoke. It's 2 o'clock in the morning, and I have to hold my first sermon in the morning, and I can't sleep. The air is terrible. The factory seems to pump out even more filth at night than during the days. The noise just carries on. Sometimes in the middle of the night I am a sit up, bolt awake, when the sirens go. I can't get the nightmare out of my mind - what would happen if the chemical works went up in smoke?

(The picture shows the manse in Greppin, from April 2009. The chemical works have gone now. More pictures from this disappeared past can be found here.)

Looking to transcend capitalism and communism in Seoul

Today - 5 March 2010 - marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (JPIC) . Planned as the culmination of the JPIC process - better known in the then two German states as the "Conciliar Process" - delegates from all parts of the world converged for a week's deliberations in the South Korean capital of Seoul. It was intended to express "the urgent call for authoritative witness by the churches" in the face of injustice, hunger and poverty; war and violence; and destruction of the environment, stemming from an initative at the WCC's 1983 assembly in Vancouver, which, in large part due to efforts of the delegates from the German Democratic Republic, called on the WCC "to engage member churches in a conciliar process of mutual commitment to justice, peace and the integrity of creation".

Here, a key role had been played by the GDR theologian Heino Falcke, both in the run-up to the Vancouver assembly and in subsequent elaboration of the Conciliar Process in the GDR and at the global level.

In the GDR, the high point of this conciliar process was an Ecumenical Assembly of Churches and Christians which met in three sessions in 1988 and 1989, and which, not least because of the involvement of peace, environmental and human rights groups, made unprecedented demands for the reform of the GDR and influenced the citizens' movements and political parties formed at the time of the peaceful revolution of autumn 1989. According to Heino Falcke:

The ecumenical assembly raised the floodgates enough to release the log-jam of change. It gave an ecumenical inspiration to the dynamic for change, which also in a way gave it legitimacy; and above all, it gave it a direction that was set by the gospel.

An ecumenical gathering was held in 1988 in the Federal Republic of Germany, and in May 1989, the first European Ecumenical Assembly, "Peace with Justice", took place in the Swiss city of Basel. By the time the Convocation met in Seoul, however, the world had experienced a change of momentous dimensions. The epochal shift can be seen not least in the chronology of the GDR itself. The Basel assembly took place just after the widespread rigging of already undemocratic municipal elections in the GDR that was one of the triggers for the "peaceful revolution" of autumn 1989. The world convocation the following year took place immediately before the elections of March 1990 in the GDR that led to the first freely-elected Volkskammer, the GDR parliament. Many of those - like Falcke - involved in the events that led to the "peaceful revolution" considered that they had taken part in a movement for liberation and a new more just, peaceful and sustainable world order.

Yet, for many of those in Seoul from the Global South, the events in Europe at the end of the 1980s were being regarded with suspicion. Certainly, in his address to the Seoul convocation, Frank Chikane, then general secretary of the South African Council of Churches - from a country where the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the African National Congress was also experiencing an epochal shift - described the changes in Europe as an opportunity to leave behind old models based on capitalism and communism and to replace them with new models "aimed at moving towards the Kingdom of God". However, he warned also that if the "First and Second World come together on the basis of the old system ... the remaining two-thirds of the world will be in trouble".

At the same time, the voices of Christians from the two German states (and especially the GDR), who had in many ways provided the motor for the conciliar process, were muted in Seoul. The specific conditions within the GDR which had given such force to the conciliar process disappeared with the autumn revolution. The conciliar process, whose origins lay in an initiative at a time of heightened East-West tension, was being overshadowed by the process of German unification. By the time the world convocation took place in Seoul, immediately before the GDR's free elections of March 1990, the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe and the accelerating process towards German unification had fundamentally shifted the terms of the debate.

In a recent paper, Falcke noted how East Germans themselves had little time after the opening of the Berlin wall on 9 November 1989 to reflect on the significance of the epoch-changing events. Instead, they were fully consumed by the "breathtaking processes" in their own country that led to the unification of Germany, 11 months later, in October 1990.

Falcke said that travelling to Seoul for the World Convocation had allowed him to gain a different perspective:

While I was there. I was often greeted with the joyful words, "The wall has been broken down!", but was made to feel very clear just how this process was seen from the perspective of other problems in the world and especially about the hopes and fears in Central America and Asia about the revolutions in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War.

[The photo shows the closing worship at the Seoul convocation. Souce: http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/hist-e.html]

Peace prayers still needed in Dresden

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden in the closing months of the Second World War. In the years that followed Dresden became a symbol of the horrors of war, but also a sign of reconciliation through its links with Coventry in Britain. In the 1980s in the GDR, the anniversary of the fire bombings became a focus for independent peace activists, with a tradition of peace prayers that began, at the time of the Swords into Ploughshares patch and the call for a civilian alternative to military service. In 1982, a group of peace activists called for a silent march through Dresden to mark the anniversary. Fearing trouble with the authorities, the Protestant church organized a peace forum at the Kreuzkirche, a once barock decorated church that was rebuilt after 1945 with no attempt to hide the scars of the bombing. More than 5000 people packed the church for the forum of and then walked to the ruins of the Frauenkirche to place burning candles amid the rubble of the destoryed church. In the years that followed, 13 February became a fixed date for peace prayers. In 1984, while a student in Berlin I attended the peace prayers which were addressed by Colin Semper, the then provost of Coventry Cathedral. Two years later, the anniversary of the fire bombing was the occasion for the Dresden ecumenical groups, the Stadtökumenekreis, to launch the idea of an Ecumenical Assembly for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. The first session of the assembly took place in Dresden to coincide with the anniversary at which more than 10000 submissions were received from throughout the GDR on issues of justice, peace and creation. The assembly culminated in April 1988 in Dresden with a series of 12 texts calling for changes in the GDR and at the global level.

In recent years, however, the 13 February anniversary in Dresden has become known for other - and less happy - reasons through Neo Nazi demonstrations. East German bishops have called for people to join peace prayers and a human chain in Dresden to counter right-wing extremism. Yesterday a German-wide association "Church for democracy and against rightwing extremism" was founded stating that "racist, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic standpoints are not reconciliable with Christian faith".

Normal service will soon be resumed

Holy Disorder has had an enforced break for a few weeks but normal service should soon be resumed.

1989 - Global Stories

1989 - Global stories is the title of a publication linked to a series of events in Berlin's House of the Cultures of the World to mark 1989, that tried to see that year as one of global significance beyond Germany and Europe:

1989 was a key year in the history of the 20th Century. Not only did the fall of the Berlin Wall became a turning point with global consequences - on all continents there were unpredictable upheavals whose effects reverberate to this day. Two decades later the House of World Cultures, founded in March 1989, is pointing to the global significance of these events and developments. The massacre at Tianan'men Square in China, the death of Khomeini in Iran, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and its repercussions across Central Asia, the end of the dictators and the enforcement of neoliberalism in Latin America, the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola the independence of Namibia and the end of apartheid in South Africa ... all these are events of 1989. The focus is also the consequence are of the end of the Wall for migrants and their children in East or West Germany. With six studies the house of cultures turns the attention from the centre of Europe and traces the linkages of events beyond national borders. The program invites you to hear the stories of 1989 in many different voices of those whose lives are inextricably linked to them: actors, dissidents, artists, writers, scientists.

There is a review (in German) here:

... historians may profit from the contributions that offer the first sketches of a global history of "1989" and after, and that are worth following up with academic research: globalization as the thrust of the early 1990s, the tension between a perceived triumphant American Modern and alternative perspectives for the future, the fundamental change in the regional and global migration flows, the emergence and problems of a global civil society, operating with Western normative concepts, the events of 1989 as moments that provided a sense of global community. More broadly, these are issues of global nature and global imagination in dynamic media systems. Taken together, the contributions create a catalog of several research desiderata that merit in-depth historical research.

On a similar note, Zed Books has its "Global history of the present" - a series of books dealing with 1989 and its consequences in various national and regional contexts:

In 1989, the United States declared victory in the Cold War and some commentators even predicted the ‘end of history’ as the world rushed to embrace American ideas and institutions. But in 2001, the September 11th attacks prompted American policymakers to embrace a rhetoric of global confrontation which seemed eerily reminiscent of the Cold War. Once again, a monolithic and evil force challenged freedom across the globe; and Americans had to confront ‘terror’ with all the resolve and resources they had previously directly against Communism. How did we move so suddenly from one global war to another? Does this essentially American view of the world cohere with the experience of countries beyond the United States?

In the Global History of the Present series, twelve historians respond to these questions by presenting the stories of a dozen countries or regions since 1989. These books explain how diverse nations have responded to the sweeping changes of the past two decades - including the fall of Soviet communism, the opportunities and pitfalls of globalization, and the ‘war on terror’. But the series also reveals the struggles and values that matter to ordinary people throughout the world, and suggests alternative ways of thinking about world history and the challenges of the present.

Which way for the church in one Germany?

From 15 to 17 January, representatives of the (West German) Evangelical Church in Germany and the Federation of Evangelical Churches (BEK) in the GDR met at the Evangelical Academy ostensibly for a long-planned event to mark 20 years of the "special fellowship" between the Protestant churches in East and West. What had been intended as an opportunity to look back and forward since the founding of the BEK ended up taking place in the middle of the turbulance of the peaceful revolution and the aftermath of the opening of the borders on 9 November. On 17 January, the meeting published what became known as the Loccum Declaration - this called for convergence between the two German states within the context of an all-European process, and taking seriously the concerns of European neighbours. But it also stated that whatever the political developments in Europe those in Loccum wanted to give "the special fellowship of the whole of Evangelical Christendom in Germany an organizationally appropriate expression in one church". Ideas that this might mean the creation of a new organizational structure for German Protestantism proved as illusory as the suggestion that German unification would be achieved through the negotiation, by the two German states, of a new constitution for the unified Germany.

Coming when it did, this call was understood as an impulse towards German unity (and provoked overwhelmingly negative reactions from within the Federation of Protestant Churches). As a reaction to the Loccum Declaration, four of those most active within the Conciliar Process (Konrad Raiser and Ulrich Duchrow from the West, and Heino Falcke and Joachim Garstecki from the East) published in February a counter-statement entitled the "Berlin Declaration" strongly critical of the Loccum declaration and of attempts to promote the rapid unification of Germany, in which they explicitly invoked the conciliar process to plead for an alternative to both capitalism and state socialism:

We must resist the misleading alternative of either capitalism or socialism that increasingly dominates the German-German talks. In the conciliar process for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation has become obvious that both systems are not in the position to provide answers to the question of the survival of humanity and the earth. The churches have the biblical mandate to be advocates of human beings and fellow creatures that have been sacrificed. The prising open of the encrusted German situation offers our churches and our societies the opportunity for a common "Umkehr" - repentance and renewal.

20 years since the end of the Stasi

Twenty years ago today the power of the Stasi in East Germany finally came to an end when its headquarters in Berlin were stormed and occupied by demonstrators - even as the ruling SED was disintegrating the Stasi had been renamed the Office for National Security (AfNS). At the end of 1989 the GDR government under pressure from the Round Table agreed to dissolve the AfNS, but then proposed two new bodies an office for the protection of the constitution, and a foreign intelligence service, but on 13 January the Round Table rejected also these proposals. Meanwhile there was concern that the Stasi officers were continuing to destroy the records and files of their activities. On 15 January a large crowd gathered outside the Stasi headquarters in Berlin-Lichtenberg and then stormed the building. There is an article (in German) on the evangelisch.de Web site about this. Much remains unclear about the events of that day, did the demonstrators include agents provocateurs, or Stasi personnel seeking to use the confusion to carry on their work of destruction, or even foreign intelligence agents seeking to grab the Stasi files for themselves? The occupation of the headquarters however marked the end of the Stasi as an institution, a process that began when its distruct headquarters in Erfurt were occupied in December. There now began a slow process of literally piecing together the files and documents that remained, and a political debate on what to do with the files. It was the first freely elected GDR parliament that agreed that the archives should be preserved and made available under certain conditions to victims of Stasi actions but also to researchers. So began a debate as to whether they should not be better kept under lock and key. Those in favour of access argued that only by having access to teh files would it be possible to deal openly and come to terms with the past. Martin Sabrow of the Institute for Contemporary History in Potsdam (now a professor at the Humboldt University), has written about the debate here.

Now off to Poland ...

Jane's diary, 10 January 1990, Wroclaw, Poland
We Wittenberg students have travalled to Poland. Stephan Bickhardt organized the trip. It's his last week with the group, he will soon start work as the general secretary of Demokratie Jetzt (Democracy Now). It's my first visit to Poland, my grandmother was born in this city, when it was still the German city of Breslau. We are being hosted by the Catholic Intelligentsia Club (KIK). We have speant a lot of time talking with them and Solidarnosc about economic issues, but also increasing xenophobia between Germans and Poles. Our discussions have sometimes been very painful, and I realise just how I am affected when there are antisemitic remarks about Jews. But we have also experienced a wonderful and warm welcome. Today we went to Kreisau/Krzyżowa, known for the Kreisau Circle, the name the Gestapo gave to a group of dissidents around Helmuth Graf von Moltke who gathered in his estate at Kreisau. The KIK in Wroclaw is supporting attempts to make the estate a place for intercultural and international exchange and dialogue. As we are going there, I noticed just how poor the people on the land seem to be. The countryside and the mountains are wonderful but where we walked the little stream was a strange dark blue coulour and it smelled of chemicals. Yes, said the priest, today the nearby factory is dying jeans. We also met a wonderful Catholic priest who had a picture of Pope John XXIII in his office. Why John XXIII and not Pope John Paul II, we asked. He said, the church belongs to JohnPaul, but in his office he can chose the pope he wants!

A cycle ride along the Iron Curtain

Paul Kaye (aka Curtainrider) has a blog here about his cycle ride along the path of the old Iron Curtain, starting in Lübeck on the Baltic Sea, to Trieste on the Adriatic. My more modest aim in 2009 had been to walk around the whole of the Berlin Wall from Staaken in the West to the Brandenburg Gate in the East and back to Staaken - starting on 13 August. Unfortunately other commitments stopped that happening, so perhaps I will have to wait until 2011 and the 50th anniversary of the Wall being built - I am therefore even more impressed at Paul's achievement. The BBC Web site had a photo gallery, there's also a Facebook page, and a book of the trip. Here's what the blurb says:

For forty years Europe was divided into two opposing ideological blocks, participants in a global Cold War between communist East and capitalist West. Where these political enemies met, the eastern regimes built an elaborate Iron Curtain, outwardly aimed at protecting themselves from western invasion but in reality to keep their dissatisfied populations captive. Twenty years after revolution removed the communist rulers, what remains of the barriers they erected along Europe’s political faultline? Journalist and photographer Paul Kaye cycled 3,600 kilometres along the route of the Iron Curtain, from the Baltic to the Adriatic and around Berlin, to record the physical remnants of the divide and the thoughts of those that lived along it.

Looking to a New Year

For the GDR, 1990 began as though the country had a massive collective hangover after the events of the previous autumn. Looking back three months it seemed scarcely possible to assimilate the changes that had taken place. On 1 October, Honecker was still in power preparing for GDR anniversary celebrations to reinforce the message that policies would not change. The GDR had been leaking people to the West via Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and citizens were beginning to take to the streets not knowing whether the state's rulers would react with the Chinese solution. From there event followed event, each one more unimaginable and seemingly far fetched than the other. The amazement at the opening of the borders on 9 November. (BBC journalist Kurt Barling's account of being dispatched to Berlin the day after to film a documentary on the role of the Protestant church captures something of the crazy, almost dreamlike state in which not only the GDR but seasoned journalists in a berlin hotel bar found themselves, Charles Wheeler, Brian Hanrahan, Olenka Frenkiel among them exchanging stories of the bizarre things that had happened over the previous 48 hours.) The legalisation of new political parties was followed by the Round Table discussions to prepare the transition and free elections. Jane's diary from autumn 1989 has captured something of that topsy-turvy world that moved from fear to hope and back again - and in reverse.

The mood in January had changed, now it was a question of looking to the future and trying to make sense of what would happen next: would the old SED be able to reinvent itself and put itself at the vanguard of changes? Though in many districts the Stasi headquarters had been occupied, in Berlin the agency under the new name of the Office for National Security was continuing its work? What role would West Germany play? And what perspective would there be for convergence and eventual unity between the two German states? Would the GDR suffer an economic collapse, spurring even more people to cross the now open border to the West? Who would assume responsibility and how .... And what about Eastern Europe? From Warsaw and Berlin to Prague and Budapest, Bucharest and even Sofia, the eastern part of the continent had been reshaped. Was this an opportunity to find a new world order bringing in the Soviet Union, or would Moscow find pushed to the edge as the eastern part of the continent "came home" to Europe?

The first three months of 1990 were to prove decisive for the shaping of Europe and the new world order, and in this decisions taken in the GDR would play a key role.