tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11678775287110903412024-03-13T16:01:57.909+01:00Holy Disorder1989-2009: The GDR's Peaceful RevolutionHoly-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.comBlogger153125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-82079059248754643652010-10-03T18:36:00.002+02:002010-10-03T19:07:02.497+02:00The 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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/10/60-years-of-gdr.html">40th anniversary</a>, 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 <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9008.html">reshaped Europe and the world</a>. 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?<br /><br />This blog <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/04/introducing-holy-disorder-looking-back.html">began as a set of reflections</a> on the Holy Disorder campaign of the Protestant Church in Central Germany. One of the <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/04/prayers-for-peace.html">first posts came from Leipzig</a>, 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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/04/conciliar-process-for-justice-peace-and.html">Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation</a>, and which made unprecedented demands for change. To mark the 20th anniversary of German unity, we are posting the English (provisional) <a href="http://www.friedlicherevolution.de/index.php?id=karte0&tx_comarevolution_pi10[contribid]=239">translation of an address</a> by <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/05/rebel-for-peace-against-raging-world.html">Heino Falcke</a>, 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?<br /><br /><blockquote>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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />3. What gratitude means is different for the individual, for our people and for the church. We can all offer gratitude: <br />- 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;<br />- 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. <br />- 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. <br /><br />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) . <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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? <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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".<br /><br />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:<br /><br />-World peace - through international terrorism and the foreign missions of the Bundeswehr. <br /><br />-The world economy - through increasing poverty even in rich countries, unemployment, crisis of the international financial market. <br /><br />-The world environmental problem - through climate change and resource depletion. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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." </blockquote>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-25636570291659055792010-03-19T21:49:00.002+01:002010-03-19T22:01:33.067+01:00The democratic GDR<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.bpb.de/cache/images/HQ0W3E_420x210.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 420px; height: 210px;" src="http://www.bpb.de/cache/images/HQ0W3E_420x210.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />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 <a href="http://www.bpb.de/files/95H6D2.pdf">here</a>. The individual essays are listed below:<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="420"><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" height="25" valign="top" width="380"><span class="headline_m" style="font-family:verdana,arial,geneva;font-size:85%;color:#961734;"><br /></span></td> <td height="25" width="40"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="40" /></td> </tr> <tr> <!--<td width="20"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" border="0" /></td>--> <td valign="top" width="7"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/bpb/aufzaehlung.gif" alt="" border="0" height="10" vspace="0" width="7" /></td> <td width="353"><a href="http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/Q56D9B,0,Editorial.html" title="Editorial"><span class="linkliste_m_ms" style="font-family:verdana,arial,geneva;font-size:85%;color:#808080;">Editorial (Hans-Georg Golz)</span></a></td> <td width="40"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="40" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="8" width="1" /></td> </tr> <tr> <!--<td width="20"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" border="0" /></td>--> <td valign="top" width="7"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/bpb/aufzaehlung.gif" alt="" border="0" height="10" vspace="0" width="7" /></td> <td width="353"><a href="http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/B9O5RL,0,Das_unselige_Ende_der_DDR_Essay.html" title="The unfortunate demise of the GDR - Essay"><span class="linkliste_m_ms" style="font-family:verdana,arial,geneva;font-size:85%;color:#808080;">The unhappy demise of the GDR - Essay (Wolfgang Templin)</span></a></td> <td width="40"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="40" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="8" width="1" /></td> </tr> <tr> <!--<td width="20"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" border="0" /></td>--> <td valign="top" width="7"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/bpb/aufzaehlung.gif" alt="" border="0" height="10" vspace="0" width="7" /></td> <td width="353"><a href="http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/MCFVIV,0,Der_vergessene_Dritte_Weg.html" title="The Forgotten Third Way"><span class="linkliste_m_ms" style="font-family:verdana,arial,geneva;font-size:85%;color:#808080;">The forgotten "third way" (Martin Sabrow)</span></a></td> <td width="40"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="40" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="8" width="1" /></td> </tr> <tr> <!--<td width="20"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" border="0" /></td>--> <td valign="top" width="7"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/bpb/aufzaehlung.gif" alt="" border="0" height="10" vspace="0" width="7" /></td> <td width="353"><a href="http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/E0Q0U5,0,Eine_demokratische_DDR_Das_Projekt_Moderner_Sozialismus.html" title="A democratic East Germany? The Project of Modern Socialism"><span class="linkliste_m_ms" style="font-family:verdana,arial,geneva;font-size:85%;color:#808080;">A democratic East Germany? The project "Modern Socialism" (Rainer Land)</span></a></td> <td width="40"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="40" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="8" width="1" /></td> </tr> <tr> <!--<td width="20"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" border="0" /></td>--> <td valign="top" width="7"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/bpb/aufzaehlung.gif" alt="" border="0" height="10" vspace="0" width="7" /></td> <td width="353"><a href="http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/8M75DB,0,Doppelte_Demokratisierung_und_deutsche_Einheit.html" title="Double democratization and German unity"><span class="linkliste_m_ms" style="font-family:verdana,arial,geneva;font-size:85%;color:#808080;">Double democratization and German Unity (Michael Richter)</span></a></td> <td width="40"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="40" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="8" width="1" /></td> </tr> <tr> <!--<td width="20"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" border="0" /></td>--> <td valign="top" width="7"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/bpb/aufzaehlung.gif" alt="" border="0" height="10" vspace="0" width="7" /></td> <td width="353"><a href="http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/QXVEJO,0,Die_demokratische_DDR_in_der_internationalen_Arena.html" title="The democratic GDR in the international arena"><span class="linkliste_m_ms" style="font-family:verdana,arial,geneva;font-size:85%;color:#808080;">The democratic GDR in the international arena (Jennifer A. Yoder)</span></a></td> <td width="40"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="40" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="8" width="1" /></td> </tr> <tr> <!--<td width="20"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" border="0" /></td>--> <td valign="top" width="7"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/bpb/aufzaehlung.gif" alt="" border="0" height="10" vspace="0" width="7" /></td> <td width="353"><a href="http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/UY8DSJ,0,Die_gescheiterte_Wirtschaftsreform_in_der_DDR_19891990.html" title="The failure of economic reform in the GDR 1989/1990"><span class="linkliste_m_ms" style="font-family:verdana,arial,geneva;font-size:85%;color:#808080;">The failure of economic reform in the GDR 1989/1990 (Wolfgang Seibel)</span></a></td> <td width="40"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="40" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="8" width="1" /></td> </tr> <tr> <!--<td width="20"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" border="0" /></td>--> <td valign="top" width="7"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/bpb/aufzaehlung.gif" alt="" border="0" height="10" vspace="0" width="7" /></td> <td width="353"><a href="http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/729ST8,0,Abschied_von_WestBerlin.html" title="Farewell to West Berlin"><span class="linkliste_m_ms" style="font-family:verdana,arial,geneva;font-size:85%;color:#808080;">Farewell to West Berlin (Wilfried Rott)</span></a></td> <td width="40"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="40" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="8" width="1" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4"><img src="http://www1.bpb.de/tmpl/blank.gif" alt="" border="0" height="20" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table>Photo: <a href="http://www.bpb.de/themen/01MOVB,0,18_M%E4rz_1990%3A_Erste_freie_Volkskammerwahl.html">Bundesarchiv</a>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-57910322122961344672010-03-18T15:50:00.003+01:002010-03-18T16:55:19.130+01:00Election 1990 - Strangers in a foreign country<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1990-0312-021%2C_Berlin%2C_Volkskammerwahl%2C_Stimmzettel_Wahlkreis_I.jpg/443px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1990-0312-021%2C_Berlin%2C_Volkskammerwahl%2C_Stimmzettel_Wahlkreis_I.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; height: 400px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1990-0312-021%2C_Berlin%2C_Volkskammerwahl%2C_Stimmzettel_Wahlkreis_I.jpg/443px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1990-0312-021%2C_Berlin%2C_Volkskammerwahl%2C_Stimmzettel_Wahlkreis_I.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Today (18 march) marks the 20th anniversary of the first free elections in East Germany, less than six months after the <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/10/peaceful-revolution-should-have.html">mass demonstrations</a> that undermined the communist state, and less than five months after the <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/11/berlin-remembers-20-years.html">opening of the Berlin Wal</a><a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/11/berlin-remembers-20-years.html">l</a>. It was a curious mixture of old and new (the <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1990-0312-021,_Berlin,_Volkskammerwahl,_Stimmzettel_Wahlkreis_I.jpg&filetimestamp=20081209174300">picture</a> 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 <em>Demokratischer Aufbruch</em>, and the small German Social Union. Neues Forum, once the rallying cry of the peaceful revolution has become part of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_90">Bundnis 90</a> 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. <br /><br />It is election day, and Jane is preaching in Greppin, the small parish hall is packed on this Sunday:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Sisters and Brothers in Greppin<br /><br />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:<br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" ><span style="display: inline;" class="versetext" id="heb11-8"><span style="font-size:78%;"><span class="versenum">8</span> </span>By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance,<a name="1"></a> obeyed and went,<a name="2"></a> even though he did not know where he was going. </span><span style="display: inline;" class="versetext" id="heb11-9"><span style="font-size:78%;"><span class="versenum">9</span></span> By faith he made his home in the promised land<a name="3"></a> like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents,<a name="4"></a> as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.<a name="5"></a> </span><span style="display: inline;" class="versetext" id="heb11-10"><span style="font-size:78%;"><span class="versenum">10</span></span> For he was looking forward to the city<a name="6"></a> with foundations,<a name="7"></a> whose architect and builder is God.</span></span> <br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">... 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. </span><br /></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote>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 <a href="http://www.wahlrecht.de/ergebnisse/volkskammerwahl-1990.htm">election results</a> 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.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-41689940150203153092010-03-17T13:55:00.005+01:002010-03-18T17:05:58.065+01:00Selling Stasi documents in East Berlin<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:qz0ONcd-ACdjUM:http://www.chronikderwende.de/bilder/398_1Sachbuecher__Mitter__Armin_Wolle__Stefan__Hg____I.jpeg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 75px; height: 106px;" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:qz0ONcd-ACdjUM:http://www.chronikderwende.de/bilder/398_1Sachbuecher__Mitter__Armin_Wolle__Stefan__Hg____I.jpeg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">17 March 1990</span> - Tomorrow is election day in the GDR. Today, Stephen arrived back in Berlin from Seoul where he had been working at the <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2010/03/today-5-march-2010-marks-20th.html">World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation</a>. 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 <a href="http://openlibrary.org/b/OL1665283M/1._Tagung_der_Gemeinsamen_Synode_der_Evangelischen_Kirche_in_Berlin-Brandenburg_zugleich_Tagung_der_beiden_regionalen_Synoden_vom_16._bis_17._Ma%CC%88rz_1990">first joint session</a>. 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 <a href="http://www.amazon.de/liebe-Euch-Befehle-Lageberichte-Januar-November/dp/386163001X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1268927962&sr=1-4-spell">still available</a> 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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2010/03/living-next-to-chemical-works-at.html">Greppin</a>, in the middle of the Bitterfeld chemical works. I'm preaching tomorrow - election day.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-38405232165844637752010-03-11T20:17:00.001+01:002010-03-11T22:58:32.077+01:00A day of anniversaries11 March 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the GDR dissident <a href="http://www.gdw-berlin.de/bio/ausgabe_mit-e.php?id=416">Robert Havemann </a>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 <a href="http://www.gdw-berlin.de/ged/geschichte-e.php">German Resistance Memorial Centre</a>, 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.<br /><blockquote>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.<br /></blockquote>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 <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7NZPFRODOzIC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=havemann+eppelmann+1982%24&source=bl&ots=cL_sZoa2lE&sig=tgwTWQEEDs6Hs0K9w-6jx1xMyzk&hl=en&ei=MWGZS5bUBcmr4QaB0unMCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=havemann%20eppelmann%201982%24&f=false">launching the "Berlin Appeal"</a>. 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 <a href="http://www.rbb-online.de/stadt_land/beitraege/2010/robert_havemann.html">has a tribute</a> here.<br /><br />On 11 March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/11/newsid_2538000/2538327.stm">elected general secretary of the CPSU</a>. Within5 years, the Soviet Union ended its involvement in Afghanistan, and East Germany stood on the brink of free elections. Back in 2009, I <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/05/sinatra-doctrine-and-its-consequences.html">posted on the "Gorbachev factor"</a> (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0192880527?ie=UTF8&tag=holydiso-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0192880527">Archie Brown</a>), 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:<br /><blockquote>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.</blockquote>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-46128284736756660762010-03-11T14:59:00.003+01:002010-03-11T15:31:09.475+01:00Living next to the chemical works at Bitterfeld ....<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lSwbicc_4QE/SfiCW7oshQI/AAAAAAAAADo/TKrtpnrxjJU/s320/IMG_0139.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lSwbicc_4QE/SfiCW7oshQI/AAAAAAAAADo/TKrtpnrxjJU/s320/IMG_0139.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a>From Jane's diary: 11 March 1990, 2am<br /><br />It's two o'clock in the morning. I am supposed to preach in the morning, and I can't sleep.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />(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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/04/pictures-from-disappeared-past.html">here</a>.)Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-53467225490345401582010-03-05T13:38:00.005+01:002010-03-05T15:07:48.360+01:00Looking to transcend capitalism and communism in Seoul<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/pictures/seoul.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 368px;" src="http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/pictures/seoul.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>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 <a href="http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/who/dictionary-article11.html">JPIC process</a> - better known in the then two German states as the "<a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/04/conciliar-process-for-justice-peace-and.html">Conciliar Process</a>" - 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".<br /><br />Here, a key role had been played by the GDR theologian <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2065/is_2_56/ai_n8693718/">Heino Falcke</a>, 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.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2065/is_2_56/ai_n8693720/?tag=content;col1">Heino Falcke</a>:<br /><blockquote>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. </blockquote>An ecumenical gathering was held in 1988 in the Federal Republic of Germany, and in May 1989, the first <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/05/remembering-basel.html">European Ecumenical Assembly, "Peace with Justice"</a>, 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Volkskammer</span>, 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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/11/dealing-with-past-looking-to-future.html">movement for liberation and a new more just, peaceful and sustainable world order</a>.<br /><br />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".<br /><br />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.<br /><br />In a <a href="http://www.via-regia.org/news/pdf/H.Falcke.pdf">recent paper</a>, 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.<br /><br />Falcke said that travelling to Seoul for the World Convocation had allowed him to gain a different perspective:<br /><blockquote>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. </blockquote><span style="font-size:78%;">[The photo shows the closing worship at the Seoul convocation. Souce: <a href="http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/hist-e.html">http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/hist-e.html</a>]</span>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-31987650229847994792010-02-13T08:44:00.003+01:002010-02-13T08:44:00.509+01:00Peace prayers still needed in DresdenToday 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 <a href="http://www.coventry.gov.uk/ccm/content/chief-executives-directorate/corporate-policy/international-team/dresden.en;jsessionid=b5GUMOsXNnL6">links with Coventry</a> 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<a href="http://www.jugendopposition.de/index.php?id=637"> silent march through Dresden</a> to mark the anniversary. Fearing trouble with the authorities, the Protestant church organized a peace forum at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreuzkirche">Kreuzkirche</a>, 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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Our_Lady,_Dresden">Frauenkirche</a> 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 <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2065/is_2_56/ai_n8693720/">Ecumenical Assembly for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. </a>The first session of the <a href="http://www.ekd.de/english/1652-4057.html">assembly</a> 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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/05/think-globally-act-locally-or-othe-way.html">April 1988 in Dresden</a> with a series of 12 texts calling for changes in the GDR and at the global level.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.epd.de/ost/ost_index_71724.html">human chain in Dresden</a> to counter right-wing extremism. Yesterday a <a href="http://www.ekmd.de/aktuellpresse/pm/kps/20041.html">German-wide association</a> "Church for democracy and against rightwing extremism" was founded stating that "racist, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic standpoints are not reconciliable with Christian faith".Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-35255653814076791812010-02-12T14:44:00.001+01:002010-02-12T14:44:55.700+01:00Normal service will soon be resumedHoly Disorder has had an enforced break for a few weeks but normal service should soon be resumed.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-35677627655537523602010-01-18T14:20:00.004+01:002010-01-18T14:20:00.613+01:001989 - Global Stories1989 - Global stories is the title of a<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/3835305573?ie=UTF8&tag=holydiso-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=3835305573"> publication</a> linked to a series of events in Berlin's <a href="http://www.hkw.de/en/index.php">House of the Cultures of the World</a> to mark 1989, that tried to see that year as one of global significance beyond Germany and Europe:<br /><blockquote>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 <a href="http://www.hkw.de/de/programm/2009/1989_globale_geschichten/veranstaltungen_29939/Veranstaltungsdetail_1_29956.php" class="textlink">massacre at Tianan'men Square in China,</a> the <a href="http://www.hkw.de/de/programm/2009/1989_globale_geschichten/veranstaltungen_29939/Veranstaltungsdetail_1_29952.php" class="textlink">death of Khomeini in Iran,</a> the <a href="http://www.hkw.de/de/programm/2009/1989_globale_geschichten/veranstaltungen_29939/Veranstaltungsdetail_1_29970.php" class="textlink">withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan</a> and its repercussions across Central Asia, the <a href="http://www.hkw.de/de/programm/2009/1989_globale_geschichten/veranstaltungen_29939/Veranstaltungsdetail_1_29961.php" class="textlink">end of the dictators and the enforcement of neoliberalism in Latin America,</a> the <a href="http://www.hkw.de/de/programm/2009/1989_globale_geschichten/veranstaltungen_29939/Veranstaltungsdetail_1_29966.php" class="textlink">withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola the independence of Namibia and the end of apartheid in South Africa</a> ... all these are events of 1989. The focus is also the <a href="http://www.hkw.de/de/programm/2009/1989_globale_geschichten/veranstaltungen_29939/Veranstaltungsdetail_1_29974.php" class="textlink">consequence</a> are <a href="http://www.hkw.de/de/programm/2009/1989_globale_geschichten/veranstaltungen_29939/Veranstaltungsdetail_1_29974.php" class="textlink">of the end of the Wall for migrants and their children in East or West Germany.</a> 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.</blockquote>There is a review (in German) <a href="http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/id=13062&count=1265&recno=1&type=rezbuecher&sort=datum&order=down&search=1989">here</a>:<br /><br /> ... 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.<br /><br />On a similar note, Zed Books has its "<a href="http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/books.asp?catid=280">Global history of the present</a>" - a series of books dealing with 1989 and its consequences in various national and regional contexts:<br /><blockquote> 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?<br /><br />In the <em>Global History of the Present series</em>, 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.</blockquote>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-33257221269948089922010-01-17T18:47:00.006+01:002010-01-17T22:34:36.609+01:00Which 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 <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2065/is_1-2_54/ai_87425985/pg_10/">Loccum Declaration</a> - 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.<br /><br />Coming when it did, this call was understood as <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cMQ3CcgmxpgC&pg=PA228&lpg=PA228&dq=%22loccumer+erkl%C3%A4rung%22+kunter&source=bl&ots=8cx9MPKviy&sig=xhtA5Tqoezm6IuUzMrY-oYnarMI&hl=en&ei=BVRTS4XgE5We4QavmciJCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false">an impulse towards German unity</a> (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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/04/conciliar-process-for-justice-peace-and.html">Conciliar Process</a> (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:<br /><blockquote>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. </blockquote>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-49662781632870662422010-01-15T08:00:00.003+01:002010-01-17T18:47:20.332+01:0020 years since the end of the Stasi<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/Emblema_Stasi.svg/125px-Emblema_Stasi.svg.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 125px; height: 187px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/Emblema_Stasi.svg/125px-Emblema_Stasi.svg.png" alt="" border="0" /></a>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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/12/round-table-that-was-square.html">Round Table</a> 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 <a href="http://www.evangelisch.de/themen/politik/sturm-auf-stasi-zentrale-beendete-ddr-spitzelei9935">evangelisch.de</a> 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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/12/dismantling-stasi.html">Erfurt were occupied in December</a>. 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 <a href="http://www.ghi-dc.org/publications/ghipubs/other/ipm/046.pdf">written about the debate here</a>.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-16351358340495238302010-01-10T23:00:00.003+01:002010-01-11T20:47:03.458+01:00Now off to Poland ...<span style="font-weight: bold;">Jane's diary, 10 January 1990, Wroclaw, Poland</span><br />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 <a href="http://www.krakow.pl/en/nowakultura/?inst_typ=12&id=191">Catholic Intelligentsia Club (KIK)</a>. 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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreisau_Circle">Kreisau Circle</a>, the name the Gestapo gave to a group of dissidents around Helmuth Graf von Moltke who gathered in his estate at Kreisau. The <a href="http://www.kik.archidiecezja.wroc.pl/">KIK in Wroclaw</a> 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!Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-40001518697073521282010-01-07T21:47:00.003+01:002010-01-07T22:01:39.493+01:00A cycle ride along the Iron Curtain<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://curtainrider.typepad.com/.a/6a010534a6d31b970c012875767037970c-pi"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://curtainrider.typepad.com/.a/6a010534a6d31b970c012875767037970c-pi" alt="" border="0" /></a>Paul Kaye (aka Curtainrider) has a <a href="http://curtainrider.typepad.com/">blog here</a> 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 <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8429885.stm">photo gallery</a>, there's also a <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/FRAGMENTS/197574066309?v=wall">Facebook page</a>, and a <a href="http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1061440">book of the trip</a>. Here's what the blurb says:<br /><blockquote>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.</blockquote>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-18495982073214263092010-01-07T08:29:00.003+01:002010-01-07T21:47:30.932+01:00Looking to a New YearFor 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 <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/kurtbarling/2009/11/and_then_the_wall_came_tumblin.html">account of being dispatched to Berlin</a> 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, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7402172.stm">Charles Wheeler</a>, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8347425.stm">Brian Hanrahan</a>, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8350830.stm">Olenka Frenkiel</a> 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 <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/search/label/Diary%20of%20a%20revolution">diary from autumn 1989</a> has captured something of that topsy-turvy world that moved from fear to hope and back again - and in reverse.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-72075334267052347722009-12-26T15:04:00.005+01:002009-12-26T15:24:18.409+01:00Is justice only for those who deserve mercy?One of the strongest images I remember from the revolutions that swept Eastern Europe 20 years ago was the television pictures of the bloodstained bodies of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife Elena after they were gunned down following a so-called trial in which they were sentenced to death. They were told they had 12 days to appeal but that the sentence would be carried out immediately. Of course they themsleves were responsible one way or another for the deaths of countless Romanians, but is this a reason for such a process devoid of humanity or justice? It was certainly a jolt back to reality after the dreams of the peaceful revoution in East Germany and the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia.<br /><br />Over on the BBC Web site, Nick Thorpe, a long-standing Budapest-based eastern Europe watcher has an <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8430213.stm">interview</a> with General Victor Stanculescu who says the executions were both "just and necessary": "If we had left it to the people of Bucharest, they would have lynched them in the street." Still 20 years later much remains unexplained about the events in Romania, one of the indicators being that the general himself has recently begun a 15-year prison sentence for aggravated manslaughter - charges he has always denied - after being found guilty of ordering troops to open fire on the crowds in the western Romanian city of Timisoara earlier in December and which was one of the events that led to the revolution later that month.<br /><br />The TimesOnline has an <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6967099.ece">interview</a> with one of the soldiers who carried out the killing of the Ceauşescus, but be warned, it makes for very grisly and unpleasant reading. The TimesOnline article also quotes the prosecutor against the Ceauşescus as saying: "I have been one of those who, as a lawyer, would have liked to oppose the death sentence, because it is inhuman. But we are not talking about people."Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-21882705945424572222009-12-19T06:17:00.002+01:002009-12-19T06:17:00.176+01:00Towards post-Cold War EuropeOn 19 and 20 December 1989, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl visited Dresden in East Germany, where he was greeted by tens of thousands of East Germans, chanting "Helmut, Helmut". Three weeks before, on 28 November in a speech to the Bundestag, Kohl had proposed what was billed as a "<a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Chapter1_Doc10.pdf">ten-point plan</a> to German unity". Looking at the text, however, unification itself was less the driving force than an ultimate aspiration, and the specific proposals for a "contractual community" between the two German states, its vision of a pan-European process, and placing the idea of confederation at the centre of the German unification discourse, in fact appeared to draw on ideas from Gorbachev and alternative security commissions (and evidence has emerged that like other developments from autumn 1989, the 10 point plan <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB296/index.htm">emerged as the result of a communication misunderstanding</a> between Moscow and Bonn). Irrespective of what the fine print said, however, the 10 point plan was in fact widely perceived as Bonn placing unification on the political agenda.<br /><br />On the other side of the damaged, but still existing Berlin Wall, an appeal published by intellectuals, artists and civic rights activists, "<a href="http://www.glasnost.de/hist/ddr/89appell.html">For our country</a>", urged support for the continued independent existence of the GDR, as a "socialist alternative" to the Federal Republic. the appeal is reported to have been signed by more than a million GDR citizens. Though initiated by civic rights activists, the propagating of the appeal by Egon Krenz and the SED fatallytaintedthe document, while by the beginning of December, the document's moral appeal for alternative ethical values based on the GDR was fatally undermined by the <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/12/things-keep-moving-on.html">revelations at the beginning of December</a> not only of widespread corruption but even more so by an apparently secret arms trade.<br /><br />Kohl's visit to Dresden in December marked a turning point. The reason for the hastily arranged visit appears to have had less to do with solidarity with East Germans than the fact that French President Francois Mitterrand had announced a state visit to the GDR for 20 December (the first state visit by one of the three Western powers responsible for Germany). Kohl avoided East Berlin for protocol reasons, instead visiting GDR Prime Minister Hans Modrow's power base of Dresden. For Kohl, his reception in Dresden appears to have convinced him to dump his step-by-step ten-point-plan and instead increase the pressure for unification.<br /><br />For its part, Mitterrand's state visit to the GDR has often been interpreted as an attempt to block unification by shoring up the GDR, but it's real purpose seems to have been more to try and influence the shape that German unity would take, while also serving as a reminder that the two German states were not sovereign in this regard. Taken together the visits of Kohl and Mitterrand also marked the turning point: no longer were they mere observers of what was happening in the GDR, but the time had come for the autumn revolution of the GDR to be subsumed into a wider struggle for the future of post-Cold War Europe.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-49455485010503164852009-12-17T10:05:00.001+01:002009-12-17T10:05:00.158+01:00Coming home ...<span style="font-weight: bold;">Jane's diary, 17 December 1989, dateline Brussels</span><br />The train was late leaving Cologne and arriving in Brussels, but Steve was there, we went back to his flat in St Josse, drank Champagne and went to bed. In the morning we woke up to hear that Andrei Sakharov had died, suddenly. Amazingly, things seem to be starting in Romania but what will happen ... unbelievable to think that a change might take place there too.<br /><br />In the evening we went to the Brussels Labour Party Christmas Party, very yummy food, and "terribly" nice and civilised. Full of journalists. It was strange to step back into middle-class British (Euro) culture. Steve in his Guardian sweatshirt was <span style="font-weight: bold;">not</span> dressed for the occasion, but it was fun. Then I gave him my diary to read and we stayed up talking about all that had happened in the GDR over the last three months while I was there.<br /><br />And finally the next day ... he baked me pizza, as I knew he would, it was <span style="font-style: italic;">good</span> and very much a coming home feel. We sat and chatted to his landlord, Jean Pierre and his partner Brigitte. It was hard to speak French, very hard work for me. After three months caught up in a whirl of change, it is strange to think that being here in Brussels is a reality as well.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-46372667827247406572009-12-16T22:00:00.003+01:002009-12-16T22:05:28.599+01:00The End of Holy Disorder?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.ekmd.de/thumbnails/bc1de5b0e9b111de9d48d5ec98367cc57cc5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 420px; height: 120px;" src="http://www.ekmd.de/thumbnails/bc1de5b0e9b111de9d48d5ec98367cc57cc5.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>The <a href="http://www.ekmd.de/">Evangelical Church in Central Germany</a> has <a href="http://www.ekmd.de/aktuellpresse/nachrichten/19669.html">officially closed</a> its 20th anniverary year Holy Disorder to mark the peaceful revolution of 1989, with the statement below. But this blog will continue:<br /><blockquote>The Protestant Church in East Germany still has a reason to be grateful for the peaceful revolution of autumn 1989 in the GDR. It is a sign of the workings of God's Spirit and about which we were surprised - surpassing all human reason and probability.<br /><br />In the autumn of 1989 people were drawn from the churches into the streets and squares. The prayers for peace contributed to make the revolution non-violent. Many people - Christians and non-Christians - saw a church that was alive. It created an open space. People were able to speak up and demand changes for their country.<br /><br />In many congregations and grassroots groups and individual Christians were engaged in the decade before the revolution and in the autumn of 1989 encouraged and organized prayers for peace. They stood up in an ecumenical community for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. They had to be prepared to be persecuted by the state,and many were persecuted. However, many did not allow themselves to be intimidated and deliberately violated state regulations. They drew attention to the dictatorial conditions.<br /><br />The Protestant Church in Central Germany praises the brave and consistent action by people in parishes and grassroots groups. This commitment invigorated both society and the church.<br /><br />This remembrance and gratitude means that we in our Protestant Church also critically reflect on our own role.<br /><br />On several occasions grassroots groups in the church has to confront church leaders. We recognise today that they were not always considered as a natural part of our church. At the same time we thank those in the church who supported these groups. The arguments about openness and political interference of the church repeatedly helped to determine the relationship of the church to the GDR state.<br /><br />In the Protestant church, in the synod, the ecumenical assemblies and grassroots groups, people realised that they were citizens. They lived out democracy. After autumn 1989, these experiences helped develop a democratic culture in state and society.<br /><br />We encourage all Christians and citizens even today to work for justice, peace and integrity of creation. The issues of life and survival today require a bold and consistent commitment. The experiences from autumn 1989 help this.<br /><br />We need to continue our critical reflection about autumn 1989 and the two decades that follows even after the anniversary year and the campaign 1989-2009 Holy Disorder. Before us is the path of our church in the conciliar process. We see many people inside and outside our church with unresolved frustrations and unanswered expectations. We hope that we can make a contribution that can lead to an open and healing discussion. From this can grown an encouragement to our commitment now. </blockquote>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-66626881613485850002009-12-14T09:23:00.002+01:002009-12-17T06:11:03.319+01:00Helplessness and resignation?<span style="font-weight: bold;">Jane's diary, 14 December 1989, written in the train from Cologne to Brussels<br /></span><br />What a crazy few days, writing Christmas post, washing, buying, packing ... 10 December was international human rights day, Friedrich Schorlemmer received the <em>Ossietzky</em> prize on behalf of Demokratischer Aufbruch. In Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party is now in a minority in the new government, Husak's final act as president was to swear in the new ministers, some who have been in jail until as little as a fortnight ago. Change seems even faster there than here in the GDR. Dubcek or Havel for president? All the shops were open in Wittenberg this afternoon, a Sunday, the 2nd advent, a cold clear day with yellow winter sunshine and a Father Christmas being driven in a horse and trap along the main street throwing out sweets to children.<br /><br />I was full of cold for my last few days in Wittenberg. On the Sunday I made it to church. The church was cold and the sermon somehow missed the mark but the BBC Radio 4 service was coming from the United States and I was back in time to hear Barbara Harris finishing her sermon and then celebrating the Eucharist, the first woman to be elected a bishop in the US Epsicopal Church. That was special.<br /><br />I got an exit visa in Wittenberg but when I got to the border in Berlin the border guards couldn't tell me whether or not my new entry visa was there. I crossed into the West with two of the other students who like me were in Berlin for a meeting with students from our sister seminary from West Germany, Soest. The other two went off to get their church Begrüssungsgeld from West Berlin (hard currencyto which otherwise East Germans had no legal access). The people there wanted to give me some too - quite seriously. Very odd!!! Then we set off on the 54 Bus for Spandau, which I knew very well from the gap year that I had spent working in a church-run children's home at the Johannesstift there. It was strange seeing the Christmas market in Spandau gain, just as it had been eight years ago, and the kitsch almost worse then the stuff in Wittenberg. Then out to an evening with the Soest lot at a Pizzeria at Savignyplatz in West Berlin where red wine was consumed. I stayed over in West Berlin.<br /><br />The next morning back to the border, where, amazingly a visa was waiting for me - and free of charge!! But the Polish visa office in East Berlin was closed - I needed to a get Polish visa for a trip our group was to make to Poland in the New Year. Then to the church headquarters in Augustrasse still a little worse for wear from the night before. I managed to make it back to the Soest meeting at the Auferstehungsgemeinde. I found myself in one group suddenly feeling like an easterner in a strange sort of way, chafing against the wishy-washy western liberalism. The crux of the question is not whether the we feel the "experiment" of socialism in the GDR should go on, but what are we willing to give up, we privileged Westerners and the answer is, "not a lot".<br /><br />Earlier in the day at the foreigner's registration office at the police in East Berlin, I interpreted for a very sweet but rather clueless Australian who kept trying to pay in the wrong currency. This then led the overworked woman behind the counter to extend my residence permit until June <span style="font-weight: bold;">1989</span> - in my hungover state I didn't notice, but later in the evening the border guards didn't seem to mind too much, "just make sure that you get round to registering properly"!<br /><br />Berlin was so wet and disgusting that I simply wanted out and away. On the train I thought back again to the German question, our sense of helplessness and resignation, no new ideas in the face of its inevitability and the lure of the Deutschmark. Whatever happened to "We're staying here!" On the train the guard noticed my ticket had been bought in GDR Marks in East Berlin and didn't ask me to pay the supplement for the InterCity train, it's strange being a token GDR citizen.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-59724152869073090682009-12-12T07:32:00.003+01:002009-12-12T07:32:00.612+01:00Ten years before the changes ..<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.machiavellicenter.net/dualtrackinrome/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/PST.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://www.machiavellicenter.net/dualtrackinrome/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/PST.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Today marks the 30th anniversary of the decision at the NATO meeting at which the western Alliance agreed its <a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1127">"dual track decision</a>" which <span class="bodytext">threatened the deployment of additional nuclear arms from 1983 onwards in the event that the stationing of SS-20 missiles had not stopped by that time. This was both a symptom and a cause of the tension between East and West. In the GDR this was reflected in the militarisation of education and that would find another episode later in December 1979 with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to prop up an unpopular government having difficulties in stemming an insurgency. To mark the anniversary, a conference has been held in Rome on “<a href="http://www.machiavellicenter.net/dualtrackinrome/">The Euromissiles Crisis and the End of the Cold War</a>". Among other things, the conference has attempted to:<br /></span><blockquote>explore the impact of the crisis on the evolution of the Cold War as a whole, and possibly on its winding down. Did the deployment of the missiles, as the so-called Reagan victory school has been arguing, really contribute to the Soviet strategic defeat and to the Western “victory”, thanks to its superior economic, political, and strategic cohesion? Did it facilitate the emergence of those factors which would help overcome the East-West division throughout all European societies, by promoting a new level of civic awareness, raising a new consciousness across Europe of the dangers of the Cold War, and indirectly linking for the first time Western peace activists with Eastern dissent? Or did it actually prolong the Cold War, as some other historians have argued, by forcing upon an already dying bipolar international system a new round of rearmament and military expenditures that actually helped –at least for a few years– the survival of the Soviet system by offering the Soviet leaders a pretext to mobilize its last resources and call its public opinion to arms to defend the motherland against this renewed imperialist challenge?</blockquote>In other words, <span class="bodytext">the Euromissiles crisis has to be seen in the wider context of the militarisation of East-West relations that followed the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. In the German Democratic Republic, this was reflected in an increasing internal militarisation of society through which the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) sought to reinforce control over public life, witnessed for example in the 1978 decision on pre-military education in schools. At the same time, the SED used the discourse of peace (understood as opposition to Western military policies such as the US plans for a Neutron Bomb) as an ideological justification for such internal militarisation.<br /><br />The effect of the twin-track decision of December 1979 could be seen, at one level, as creating a new justification for this dialectic of peace rhetoric and internal militarisation. Equally, if not more important, however, was that the decision spawned a new type of transnational social protest. This helped to promote a collective movement identity both ‘temporally’, by allowing individual protest events to be perceived as components of a longer lasting action, and ‘transversally’, by helping those who were engaged to feel linked ‘by ties of solidarity and ideal communion with protagonists of other analogous mobilisations’ (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1405102829?ie=UTF8&tag=holydiso-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1405102829">Della Porta/Diani 1999</a>: 8). This transnational social protest transcended narrowly political opposition to previous political campaigns for disarmament, reaching out to previously unmobilised sectors of society.<br /><br />In the GDR, opposition to the internal militarisation of society had come not least from within churches, and not least because of the existence of a cadre of Protestant pastors with a strong anti-militarist attitude due to their personal refusal to carry arms in the National People's Army. The transnational social protest movement created by the 1979 "twin track" decision offered a wider framework within which campaigns against militarisation of GDR society could be placed, and for more thoroughgoing political demands. At the same time, this mobilisation represented an ideological challenge to the SED's use of the discourse of peace, and created a basis for links between opposition to militarisation and other forms of dissent. An important factor in this development of political dissent was the attempt by activists in the GDR to build links with movements in other European countries, both to the West, as with the "personal peace treaties" between GDR and Dutch peace activists, and to the East, as in the contacts between GDR peace activists and political dissent in Czechoslovakia.<br /><br />Far from the 1987 Treaty of Washington marking an end in the GDR of the political crisis unleashed by the twin-track decision, the period from January 1988 to October 1989 was marked by a new stage in political mobilisation in the GDR and attempts by the SED not seen in previous years to suppress such dissent. This culminated in the 1989 "peaceful revolution" which drew both on the protest repertoires developed in opposition to the militarisation f society and the political demands that grew out of the transnational social protest movement unleashed by the Euromissiles decision.<br /><br />Reference: Della Porta, D. and M. Diani 1999, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1405102829?ie=UTF8&tag=holydiso-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1405102829">Social Movements</a>, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-74988755882152865462009-12-11T07:51:00.004+01:002009-12-11T08:33:56.001+01:00A new broom for Gregor Gysi ...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lSwbicc_4QE/SyFfskNE21I/AAAAAAAAAMM/A0ylCc7CePA/s1600-h/gysi-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 328px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lSwbicc_4QE/SyFfskNE21I/AAAAAAAAAMM/A0ylCc7CePA/s400/gysi-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413713446313450322" border="0" /></a><br />This is the front page from 11 December 1989 of <span style="font-style: italic;">Neues Deutschland</span> - the central organ of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) - except that the special party congress has just decided that the party should not be called the SED any more. The new broom is for the newly-elected party chair Gregor Gysi to clean up what the newspaper calls the party's "Stalinist ideas and structures". The front page articles summarises Gregor Gysi, lawyer and son of the former GDR state secretary for church affairs - as appealing for hard work to save "our country and our party". The special congress was called as the collapse of the GDR continued amid ever new revelations of corruption. Gysi was elected by 95.32 percent of votes from delegates (a pretty respectable score for a "post-Stalinist" politician) who then continued to debate whether the as yet-without-a-name party should continue to exist or be dissolved. <span style="font-style: italic;">ND</span> reports:<br /><blockquote>Opposing resolutions proposing the continuance or the dissolution of the party led to the debates being suspended, meetings of the district delegations and the acting presidium, and then to the next session of the party congress being beld in closed session. In this fateful hour Hans Modrow [the GDR prime minister] appeals for the parts'y capacity to act to be maintained. Then - according to delegates - there were several votes ... The "Report about the discussion on the first days of the extraordinary party congress" was presented on behalf of the drafting committee by Lothar Bisky. In this document to be presented for discussion at the basis of the party, delegates stated it is their duty "in the name of the party to apologise profoundly to the people that the former leadership of the SED has brough out country to this crisis that threatens its very existence".</blockquote>The party congress was adjourned for a week to meet again in Berlin. But today's <a href="http://die-linke.de/politik/international/english_pages/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Die Linke</span></a> party is a direct descendant of that fateful decision in Berlin. Today <a href="http://www.linksfraktion.de/mdb_gysi.php">Gregor Gysi</a> is the chairperson of the parliamentary group of <span style="font-style: italic;">Die Linke, </span>and <a href="http://die-linke.de/partei/organe/parteivorstand/parteivorstand_20072008/mitglieder/bisky_lothar_parteivorsitzender/">Lothar Bisky</a> is chairperson of the party.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-865921941344868962009-12-09T10:41:00.002+01:002009-12-09T22:25:10.180+01:00Watergate in the GDR ...<span style="font-weight: bold;">Jane's diary, dateline Wittenberg, 9 December 1989</span><br />So much is happening, it's almost impossible to keep up. Honecker's under arrest, among many others. Krenz has gone - it was very obvious in Modrow's visit to Moscow and Gorbi - "oh yes, I almost forgot, I've brought the head of state with me". Stasi buildings all over the GDR are being stormed, most things seem to have been burned, shredded or otherwise disposed of.<br /><br />Schorlemmer was heckled for the first time at the prayers for renewal, speaking on the theme of the "Vaterland". In front of the masses it's almost impossible to speak of Zweistaatlichkeit, a two-state-solution. Friedrich ended with the Olof Palme idea of a demilitarised independent Germany. Unity not reunification. The consensus now seems to be that reunification will come, the major problem being the timetable.<br /><br />The SED extraordinary general party congress has decided to change the party's name and have elected Gregor Gysi as leader. No new name as yet, just not the old one. From 1 January, visa regulations and exchange regulations for West Germans and West Berliners are to be lifted - some are pushing for this to come into force from 23 December in time for Christmas.<br /><br />More and more corruption is coming to light. Schalk-Golodkowsi has given himself up in West Berlin. His lawyer Vogel has also been arrested but (I think) set free. Some seem to think he knows far too much to be prosecuted - he could cause other heads to roll and not just on this side of the border. It's like living through a much more lively version of Watergate.Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-20942100425297910002009-12-07T08:37:00.000+01:002009-12-07T08:37:00.306+01:00The round table that was square ...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.jugendopposition.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/Bilder/Folgeseite/f_MDA_FO_14819.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 336px; height: 251px;" src="http://www.jugendopposition.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/Bilder/Folgeseite/f_MDA_FO_14819.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>On 7 December representatives of the new citizens' movements and political parties - and the SED, the former block parties, and societal organizations converged on the Dietrich Bonhoeffer House for the first meeting of the GDR Round Table. An example of the implosion faced by the GDR was the resignation the previous day of Egon Krenz as chairperson of the Council of State of the GDR.<br /><br />In the meditation room of the Moravian community in Berlin, the representatives of the new and of the old political forces gathered around a set of square tables for a meeting being convened by representatives of the Federation of Protestant Churches, the Roman Catholic Church and the Council of Christian Churches (AGCK) - the impetus for such a round table however had come from the citizens' movements, especially from Demokratie Jetzt, which had maintained strong contacts to Poland and had observed how the Round Rable there had led to the first semi-free elections. The first meeting of the GDR Round Table<a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Chapter1_Doc13English.pdf"> </a><a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Chapter1_Doc13English.pdf">called</a><a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Chapter1_Doc13English.pdf"> for new elections, a new constitution and the disbandment of the Ministry of State Security</a> - the Stasi - renamed "Amt für Nationale Sicherheit" (or "Office for National Security"). Civic Rights activist Konrad Weiss <a href="http://www.bln.de/k.weiss/tx_tisch.htm">notes</a>:<br /><blockquote>The idea for a round table came from the citizens' movement <i>Democracy Now</i> some of whose founders had long-standing contact with the <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/06/solidarity-sweeps-board-in-poland.html">Polish Solidarity</a>. Ludwig Mehlhorn and Stefan Bickhardt knew of their concept of the round table and analysed it. Their proposal, to attempt something similar in the GDR, was picked up and accepted by <i>Democracy Now</i> and soon after by the other citizens' movements. The SED, that in the face of mass demonstrations and the increasing self-assurance of the East Germans had to accept that its power was waning, also accepted the proposal and was read to talk. <i>Neues Deutschland </i>tried to suggest to its readers that the "leading" party until then had also proposed the Round Table. But no one believed the "Central Organ" any more.<br /><br />When the Round Table met for the first time, despite the polite tone, it was basically bitter political rivals that were sitting opposite each other. On the one side, the comrades from the SED and from the allied block parties and organizations, which were increasingly seeking to distance themselves from the "leading" force. On the other side sat the civil rights activists and dissidents, and the newly formed Social Democratic Party. The round table was moderated by representatives of the churches. The motives why people took part may have been very different. But we were all united in wanting to avoid the process of change leading to bloodshed.</blockquote> Alongside the Central Round Table there were round tables set up at local and district level, often playing an important role in the transfer of power. The Central Round Table played a central role in preparing for the first democratic elections, that took place in March 1990, and in pressing for the dismantling of the Stasi. The idea of drawing up a new constitution for adoption by the GDR got overtaken by the moves after the March election for the rapid incorporation of the GDR into the Federal Republic. Nevertheless, the construction of the Round Table meant that the new political forces were not negotiating directly with the government or the parliament, but only indirectly. Weiss notes:<br /><blockquote>Our willingness to engage in dialogue - probably the most used and abused slogan of those days - led also to a number of serious mistakes ... Our all-important power, non-violence, was also our weakness. While we were at the round table struggling for reforms and the democratization of the GDR, the cadres with long experience out of site built up their new organizations, channeled money into safe places and formed enterprises with other comrades that now feeds their war chest. Particularly sensitive areas, such as the media were simply infiltrated. While we built up our organizations and our parties at the kitchen table, sometimes without a single phone, the PDS had all the access they needed to lines and computers. Many problems with which we wrestle in the reunified Germany, result from our former timidity.</blockquote>Nevertheless, the Round Table in Berlin and the many other round tables throughout the GDR achieved much:<br /><blockquote>They were genuine schools of democracy, as has often been said. People who until then had been told they should not express themselves and who had been punished for any democratic initiative, now took over responsibility and made suggestions for numerous ideas and proposals. For three monnths, the Round Table was both legislature and executive. It prepared many things that were then implemented as laws by the freely-elected Volkskammer. For example, in an amazingly short period of time a media law and an environmental protection law were drawn up. That was only possible because in the previous years opposition groups in the underground had envisioned and discussed many of these things. </blockquote>The German Broadcasting Archive has an <a href="http://www.dra.de/online/dokument/1999/november.html">extract from the press conference</a> after the forst meeting of the Round Table. More <a href="http://www.hdg.de/lemo/html/DieDeutscheEinheit/DerFallDerMauer/zentralerRunderTisch.html">here</a> from the House of German History.<br /><br />[Photo from <a href="http://www.jugendopposition.de/index.php?id=215">http://www.jugendopposition.de/index.php?id=215</a>]Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167877528711090341.post-68531815146721566102009-12-04T10:55:00.005+01:002009-12-04T10:55:00.047+01:00Dismantling the Stasi ...Today marks the 20th anniversary in Erfurt of the first occupation of a regional Stasi headquarters in the GDR. To <a href="http://www.ekmd.de/aktuellpresse/pm/tlk/19571.html">mark the anniversary</a> there is a time of remembrance at the former headquarters, a commemoration in the regional parliament, an academic symposium and a service of worship, under the theme, " ... and the truth shall set you free".<br /><br />In his new book, <a href="http://holy-disorder.blogspot.com/2009/11/dealing-with-past-looking-to-future.html">Wo bleibt die Freiheit</a>, Heino Falcke, then the Protestant dean of Erfirt, remembers the events of that day:<br /><blockquote>My wife belonged to the group, "Women for Change". The chair of the group, a doctor, phoned us on the morning of the 4 December, "There are containers being driven away from the Stasi on the Andreasstrasse and the chimney is pumping out black smoke. They are getting rid of the files. Get together who you can and block the gates." We phoned around and drove with our Wartburg to the Stasi. I blocked the entrance with the car and my wife went to the main door, where a number of women had already gathered. The group that quickly got bigger decided they should stop each of the cars. My wife, who had quickly been elected to be the spokesperson, managed to push her way through to the head of the Stasi, Major Josef Schwarz. She demanded that he end the destruction of the files. Meanwhile more and more people were pushing their way into the Stasi offices. The major demanded that my wife put a stop to this so that his people could carry on with their work. "But that's exactly what we want to stop," she replied. In the meantime the chair of the group, who had phoned us in the morning, arrived with three military attorneys , occupied the building under their supervision, and sealed the archives. This was the first occupation of a Stasi HQ and the risks were difficult to calculate ...<br /><br />I had in the meantime gone to a meeting, from which I thought that I should on no account be absent. Soon after our arrival at the Stasi offices a big truck from the city council had driven past, and the driver had asked me what we were doing. When I told him he said, "Move your car away, I can block the gates better than you." I walked over to my wife and asked her if she thought she would be alright. She said of course, so I drove on to my meeting. She was right, but I still shake my head when I think about what I did. This episode casts a light on the character of the revolution. One of the protagonists described it as a "revolution in free time" or a "after-work revolution", because business just carried on as usual.<br /></blockquote>Holy-Disorderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854256810641865071noreply@blogger.com1