>> John Haskell: Welcome
to the Library of Congress.
I'm John Haskell, Director
of the Kluge Center.
In today's program, I have, at
the end of the dais up here,
Hope Harrison, who is
a history professor
at George Washington
University, and the author
of After the Fall: Memory and
the Making of the New Germany,
1989 to the Present,
that just came out.
The recipient of
fellowships from Fulbright,
the Nobel Institute is Oslo,
the American Academy in Berlin,
Harvard, and the Wilson Center,
Dr. Harrison is also the author
of a praise winning book about
the building of the Berlin Wall,
Driving the Soviets Up the
Wall, which was released
to wide acclaim and received
a great deal of acclaim
in its German translation
as well.
In the sensible center here,
Constanze Stelzenmuller,
is currently the Library
of Congress Kissinger Chair
on Foreign Policy and
International Relations,
and a senior fellow in the
Center on the United States
and Europe at the
Brookings Institute.
She served as the inaugural
Robert Bosch senior fellow there
forum 2014 until this year.
Prior to working at Brookings,
she was a senior
transatlantic fellow
with the German Marshall Fund,
where she directed the
influential Transatlantic Trends
survey program.
Constanze's essays and articles
in both German and English,
have appeared in a wide
range of publications,
including; Foreign Affairs--
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller: You
don't have to list them all.
>> John Haskell: I'm not
going to list them all.
I just want to try
my pronunciation
on Internationale Politik,
is that even close?
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller: Yep.
>> John Haskell:
The Financial Times,
the International
New York Times,
and wait, Suddeutsche Zeitung.
That wasn't so good was it?
Okay, let's get to
the discussion.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
We'll practice this.
>> John Haskell: She's
in residence until April
so I have plenty of time to
do better than my one year
of German in college,
which clearly didn't take.
What's-- Let me, I want to pose
the first question to Hope;
tell us, just go to the
basics, what was the wall,
why did it fall, and
then maybe you can go
into what the process was.
Why did the focus
shift to unification?
That's a lot all in one, right?
>> Hope M. Harrison:
That's okay.
>> John Haskell: You know.
>> Hope M. Harrison: So glad to
be here in this beautiful space.
Thank you, John, so much.
And Constanze, for
letting me join you,
it's an honor to
be with you all.
And to continue to think
about the 30th anniversary
of this amazing event, the
peaceful, unexpected fall
of the Berlin Wall, which so
many people thought they would
not experience in
their lifetimes.
So the Berlin Wall stood
for 28 years, it was built
by the East Germans in
1961, to stop East Germans
from escaping the communist
regime, to go to the west,
to democracy and capitalism,
to freedom in the west.
The Berlin Wall was
never just one wall,
it was always two walls; an
outer wall and an inner wall,
and a whole deathly border strip
in between including
armed guards who were
to shoot anyone trying to
escape, guard dogs, towers,
trip wires, anti-tank
barriers, all sorts of obstacles
that surrounded 96 miles of
West Berlin, so that nobody
from East Berlin
or the surrounding east
German countryside,
could get into the democratic
capitalist city of West Berlin,
which was of course, luring
these people from communism,
both for the freedom; freedom
of expression, free press,
but also for all the
goods in the stores,
which they didn't
have in East Germany.
So, not surprisingly, the
East German regime wanted
to stop that mass exodus.
By the summer of 1961, over
1000 East Germans were leaving
every day.
So, after pushing for many years
for soviet approval to do this,
and the soviets had
resisted for a long time,
knowing this would not look
good, they said, you know,
what kind of regime are we
going to look like if we have
to wall our people in.
So they kept trying
to find another way
to prevent the East Germans from
leaving, but that didn't work.
So in 1961, the East
Germans built the Berlin Wall
and that stood for 28 years,
until November 9, 1989,
when it unexpectedly
and peacefully fell.
In the intervening 28 years,
about 140 people were
killed trying to escape
across the wall,
tens of thousands
of people were arrested and
put in East German prisons
for trying to escape or being
suspected of trying to escape.
So many people were very happy
when the wall fell in 1989.
And if fell, not by
policy, the building
of the wall had been carefully
thought out over many years,
but the fall of the
wall 30 years ago was,
in fact, a mistake.
It was a senior East
German official who went
to a live press conference,
unprepared.
I always point this out to my
students, why it's important
to be prepared when
you speak in public.
The East German regime
had been under pressure
from the soviets who, under
Gorbachev, were making reforms,
from neighboring Poland
which had thrown off
its communist regime,
replaced it with solidarity,
ultimately led by Lech Walesa,
so many East Germans wanted
these kinds of changes
and this kind of freedom.
And were taking to the streets
in droves, calling for change,
and some of them were escaping.
So on the night of
November 9th, 30 years ago,
the senior East German
official went to talk
about changes to border policy.
It was still going to
be necessary to apply
for permission to leave, as it
was in all communist countries,
but he didn't say that.
He basically said, oh
we're changing things
and the border will be open.
And someone said, what does
this mean about the Berlin Wall?
And he said, yeah, it
means the wall too.
And someone else said, well,
when is this going to happen?
And he looked confused
at his notes,
he looked over at his
assistants, and finally he said,
immediately, without
delay, on live television.
So, over the next several hours,
more and more East Germans
headed to the Berlin Wall
to find out what the
heck, is this real?
The soldiers guarding the wall,
of course had gotten
no instructions
because this wasn't
supposed to happen.
And finally, 4 1/2 hours after
the press conference had ended,
at 7:00 pm, at 11:30 that night,
Harald Jaeger, who was in charge
of one of those border crossing
points, at Bornholmer Strasse,
gave up and opened the border
to let East Germans cross.
That crossing point,
at Bornholmer Strasse,
20,000 East Germans
crossed there that night,
including the current chancellor
of Germany, Angela Merkel,
who herself was from
the east and living
in East Berlin right near
that border crossing.
So, those are the dramatic
developments that sort
of set the background
for us talking
about the 30th anniversary
of this day.
>> John Haskell: So Constanze
has a brilliant essay, 8000,
I think it's an 8000 word essay,
that is well-worth the read,
called German Lessons, which
is essentially the topic
of what we're doing today.
And you talked a little
bit about, as a German,
where you were at that time
and what your response was,
so maybe you could capture
a little bit of that.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Sure, sure.
It's funny, I was asked to
do this on very short notice,
by Brookings, and I have
to say that I cursed loudly
when I was told this because--
>> John Haskell: But not this
event, it was the article.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
No, no, so the essay.
Because I, for a variety
of reasons, this is for me,
both personally and as a German
and as given what my trajectory
as an expert has been,
an enormous topic.
And I felt, I have to say, I
felt completely overwhelmed
by what was not a request, but
a, you have got to do this now,
so an order as it were.
And then, got down to writing
it with immense trepidation,
because it also became clear
to me that the only way
that I could write this credibly
was by writing about myself.
Because I'm not a
historian, unlike Hope,
who by the way has also just
written a second book called,
After the Berlin Wall,
which has just come
out in Cambridge University
Press, and is awesome,
which you should
all buy and read.
>> John Haskell: Which will
be available after the event.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Awesome.
>> John Haskell: Signed.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
I've just finished reading it
and there is actually, you
and I need to talk about this,
because there are some
people in there that I know
and that I crossed paths
with, it's very funny.
But the truth is
that at the time,
I was a 27 year old
graduate student,
working on the beginnings
of my German doctoral thesis
about American constitutional
law, at Harvard.
And I was sitting in, I had
been out of Germany for 2 years,
this was my third year.
And I was writing about direct
democracy in the United States,
and the reason why I was doing
that was because, of course,
so much was happening in Europe,
including in my own country,
and it seemed to me that civil
society was kind of coming
into its own and that maybe
direct democracy would be a
useful vehicle and involving
civil society in a sort
of organized, institutionalized
way, in the making
of politics and policy.
And that is a view which I have
since comprehensively
reneged on,
not least because of
writing this doctoral thesis,
but that's just a footnote.
And so on that day, I was
sitting at my desk, which is one
of these, you know,
we had as students,
like a door from Home Depot on,
you know, on wooden, you know,
on file cabinets,
and I was wearing,
I am almost certain I was
wearing my double layered
thermal underwear from L.L. Bean
because that was the only way
to survive a Massachusetts
winter.
I still got pneumonia
a couple times.
And this friend calls me
and says the wall's down.
And this friend is
pretty conservative,
I was sort of vaguely
left of center
and I said Angelica,
what the hell?
You know, you and your
stupid political jokes.
And she just said,
turn on the TV.
And I was sort of went to
the TV like I'm an automaton,
and it was one of these,
you know, I was living
with roommates and so we
had a communal living room
and there was this
enormous chest, you know,
or 1960's chest shaped TV with
grainy black and white images.
And I turned it on and I see
all these people dancing on top
of the wall, with sledgehammers
and champagne bottles,
and I was thunderstruck.
I was completely thunderstruck.
And the thing is,
the thing that I,
that then was worked completely
floored me, I burst into tears.
And I was sobbing, I'm literally
sobbing my eyes out, and I,
it's basically taken me the
last 30 years since then,
to process why I sobbed my
eyes out, because really,
I had no personal reason to be
affected by this in any way.
I was a foreign service brat,
we had no family behind the
Iron Curtain, as it was called,
to send packages to who might
have come and visited us,
and I was sort of in my
vaguely left of center way,
sort of thought, you know,
you can't keep 30
million East Germans just,
you know, with a wall.
And also, the people
who were on the right,
like my friend Angelica,
wanted parts of Poland back,
which I thought was a doesn't,
and you know, just
unconscionable.
And so one tended to think
that it couldn't be as bad
as the revisionists
made it out to be,
literally I had not paid
attention for most of my,
you know, young adult life.
I had however, started
paying attention that summer,
and that was because my mother
had become very I'll and we had,
I had been flying back and
forth, and despite the fact
that my mother was in
intensive care units
in Franklin University
for a variety of reasons,
she's had a brain tumor and then
had complications and so on.
My mother insisted on us reading
the news to her every morning
at 8:00 am, and it was
really through the reactions
of my parents, who were
absolutely mesmerized, thrilled,
completely captivated, by
what was going on in Poland
and in Hungary, and then the
tens of thousands marching
in East Germany, and the East
German police not shooting.
But nobody quite knowing
where this was heading.
And of course, we had all seen
the brutal bloody crackdown
in Tiananmen Square, so
everybody was terrified
that Tiananmen Square
would happen all
over again in East Berlin.
And so, that had all built up
inside me, I was perfectly,
although for me it didn't seem
personal, I was perfectly aware
that I was seeing world history.
I was also completely,
I completely understood
in that moment, that what was
happening had just changed my
adult life forever.
And I mean, as I write in this
essay, I had really sort of gone
to America thinking,
Jesus, if I can stay here,
this would be so great.
Because frankly, just Cold War
Europe and Cold War Germany,
was just, was horrible.
And so, in that moment, I
realized that I was going back.
That was a pretty big shift.
>> John Haskell: So,
Hope, you've written
about what [inaudible]
German leaders drew
from the history of the wall.
Could you, you know,
capture that for us,
summarize that for
us, I know that--
>> Hope M. Harrison: I will,
but I can't resist commenting
on the crazy reverse
situation we're in.
Because Constanze was a German
in the U.S. on November 9th.
I was an American
on a plane headed
to Berlin on November 9th.
I boarded the plane November
9th, when nothing had happened,
flew to Frankford where I
caught the commuter plane
from Frankford to West
Berlin, a long planned trip.
Get on the commuter flight
from Frankford to Berlin,
and everyone's reading
newspapers,
because now it's November 10th.
And the headlines,
huge headlines [foreign
phrase], the wall is open!
I too was a graduate
student, as you were,
I was writing my dissertation
at Columbia, on the Berlin Wall.
>> John Haskell: Nothing
to write about [inaudible]
>> Hope M. Harrison: And
suddenly, the pilot gets
on the intercom and says,
ladies and gentlemen,
in case you haven't heard, the
Berlin Wall fell last night
and we are flying into history.
So, while Constanze
was sitting at Harvard,
I was in the incredible
situation of being in Berlin,
and West Berlin and East Berlin,
for 10 days following
the opening,
watching them remove
sections of the wall
so East Germans could
come through.
Watching West Germans embrace
them and everyone crying,
me crying, you know, it was
so moving to see all of this.
Champagne being sold
on street corners.
I went to some of these
demonstrations in East Berlin,
to see what was going on.
I saw [foreign name]
speak at [foreign name],
about this amazing moment.
So, in some sense
that experience
of watching the immediate
aftermath of the opening
of the wall, was the beginning
of this book I have
just published,
After the Berlin Wall.
So, looking back,
your question John,
about lessons German leaders
have drawn about this;
these kinds of lessons have
changed over the past 30 years
and that's what I
really write about.
My book looks at how Germans
have grappled with this part
of their history over
the past 30 years.
As you may very well
know, Germany has grappled
with the Holocaust, really
significantly, in great detail,
they have come face to
face with that dark past,
and atoned for it in many
ways, and continue to do that.
So I was interested to see, what
about this more recent past?
What about the 40 years
of communist East Germany
and particularly the 298
years of the Berlin Wall,
how has Germany grappled
with that and how is
that process been connected
with how Germany has
handled the Holocaust past?
And those are things
I talk about.
So on the question of lessons
German leaders have drawn,
I'll give you sort
of two examples.
In 2009, for the 20th
anniversary of the fall
of the wall, which is a
huge celebration in Berlin,
and a picture of the celebration
at the Brandenburg Gate,
with fireworks going off,
if the cover of my book.
And for that anniversary,
10 years ago,
the Germans drew very
sort of positive lessons
about the history of the
wall, focusing on the fall
of the wall, saying look,
this was all peaceful, these,
we have to thank the brave
East German citizens who,
in the fall of 1989, took to
the streets demanding change,
not knowing whether they
were going to be faced
with a Tiananmen
Square type solution,
because the East German regime
made it clear they admired the
Chinese for how they had
cracked down in June of 1989.
So as things heated up in East
Germany in the fall of 1989,
every single person who decided
to go out onto the streets,
70,000 people in Leipzig, a
month before the wall fell.
Over 100,000 in East Berlin,
5 days before the wall fell.
Every single one of those
East Germans had to wonder,
am I going to get beaten up?
Might I be killed?
Might I be imprisoned?
And if any of those
things happen,
might they take my
children away from me?
That's what the East German
regime did sometimes with people
that were opponents to the
regime, if they put you
in prison, they sometimes
took your kids,
put them in orphanages, or
put them up for adoption
with reliable East
German citizens.
So, it was no small matter for
those East Germans to decide
to go out to the streets.
So for the 20th anniversary
in 2009,
the lessons the German
leaders focused
on were the brave East German
citizens wanting freedom
and democracy, and saying this
is the lesson of the wall,
Germans can be democrats,
Germans can be actively engaged
in peacefully calling
for change, for democracy
and for freedom, and
they are an inspiration.
That remains a lesson, but
the mood in Germany now,
30 years later, particularly
over the past 4 years
since the refugee
crisis, and the sense
of division Berlin Wall East and
West, the rise of the far right,
the rise of xenophobia,
they remember that but they,
for example, President
Steinmeier,
who gave a speech on, this
year on the 30th anniversary,
at the Brandenburg Gate,
he remembered those people,
but he also said, you know what,
we Germans now are
building walls.
They're not literal
wall, they're walls
between each other, including
between East and West,
between rich and poor, we're
not listening to each other.
Only with ourselves can
take down those walls.
And again, thinking of the
bad history of the wall,
sort of the violence,
and thinking
of sometimes the violence
in Germany against refugees.
So the wall has both a
very negative history,
the 28 years it stood, the
people that were killed,
the regime who decided
to build it.
But also, this wonderful sort of
happy ending positive side of,
it came down peacefully.
>> John Haskell: Constanze,
what, where are we today,
from your perspective,
commenting on what
Hope had to say.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Yeah, well,
it's true that for my generation
of Germans, and in fact,
sociologists have at some point
decided to call us the '89-ers,
because '89 was the
definitive event of our lives.
For us, and this is, I'm quoting
something I say in my essay,
'89 was a moment
of amazing grace.
And I mean that in a theological
sense, because it was a gift
who enormity we only were
slowly learning to understand
and one which, at
least our generation,
had done absolutely
nothing to deserve.
It was really, you know, it
was the Poles, the Hungarians,
the Czechs, the Polish
pope, it was Gorbachev,
it was the East Germans
marching,
it was some West Germans who
had smuggled printer's ink
or written letters to prison
directors, that did also happen,
that was a very much part
of the West German culture.
But it was by no
means, universal.
And for many of us, like
me, profoundly ignorant,
and only started realizing
over time, the enormity
of the political shift
that has just taken place.
And in some ways, I mean I
always felt it was like a gift
that I was trying to
live up to really.
But the, Hope is right that
this 30th anniversary has been
particularly glum.
And in some ways, I
will say that I think
that that is a good thing,
because being German,
I am slightly perhaps,
Hope is very polite,
I would be a little more
critical towards how Germans
interpreted the lessons
of 1989 because there was,
there has of course, always
been will the increasing German
awareness of the crimes of the
[inaudible] and of World War II,
there's also a sense of
mounting complacency.
You know, we've done the
whole atonement thing,
other people haven't.
And in 1989, it is not
unfair to say that a lot
of Germans concluded,
with a deep sense
of personal satisfaction,
even if they, like me,
had done absolutely nothing
to create the situation,
that really, from having been
behind everybody else in history
for a century, we were
suddenly out in front.
We were now the good
example for everybody
and everybody would
now become like us
and this included our
dear brothers and sisters
from the Eastern German
lender who are now proposing
to join us, of course on our
terms and under our rules
because what else
would it be, right?
I think the single thing that
the East Germans got to keep,
was the ability to
turn right on red.
And which, as far as I'm
concerned, is a good thing.
But, I was a junior
journalist in the early '90s,
I was doing a [inaudible]
internship at a daily paper
in West Berlin, Tagesspiegel,
and I as, you know, yelled here
and was out the door when,
if somebody said there was,
we needed to cover a
hunger strike in one
of the factories
being dismantled,
either in East Berlin
or on in Brandenburg,
the land that surrounds
it or further afield
and I also covered
some of the court cases
in which the border guards
and their commanding officers
were tried, and I have to say
that even in those early years,
I had very, very mixed feelings
about how we were doing this.
I mean it seemed
to me, very clear,
that the GBR really was an
[foreign word], in other words,
a state that treated the
majority of its citizens
in a way that we would, we
I think under most standards
of human rights, we would
consider illegitimate
and unlawful.
But at the same time,
it was clear that these,
that the ordinary, there
were also ordinary citizens
who had not been in any way
implicated in the system,
and who were paying
a huge personal price
for this transformation, in
ways that one, I felt one had
to empathize with and we
weren't doing as a society,
and particularly
as a West German,
as the West German half not
doing enough to empathize with.
And now of course,
you see in 2019,
we have a hard right party,
the alternative for Germany,
which has been campaigning
with the slogan,
full [inaudible] vendor,
complete the revolution.
On what is essentially
an anti-system ticket,
basically saying,
and all you have
to do is read their
party program,
it's translated not just
into Russian and Hungarian,
but also into English.
And it basically calls the
current constitutional order
of the United Federal
Republic, illegitimate.
If that's not enough for you,
I urge you to read their
military policy paper
that they published this summer,
which is absolutely hair raising
and I do military
and security policy.
This is a party that
wants to change the nature
of our constitutional order.
In much the same way that
say, you know, [inaudible],
or Viktor Orban, or certainly
Vladimir Putin, would recognize
as eminently, you know, in
tune with their preferences.
I have to say, I'm horrified
that we are even there.
I'm horrified that they
get 10% in the west
and up to 28% in the east.
And they have just held a party,
a general their annual party
conference, which to me,
demonstrated that they are
acting in a very strategic
and very disciplined way,
something that they weren't
doing in their early years.
And that, to me, is
as an anniversary,
as an anniversary
phenomenon, deeply troubling.
And I think that we Germans
in particularly we westerners,
have a great deal to answer
for in terms of the complacency
that we, I think that
we, that prevented us
from addressing some of
the legitimate concerns
of our new follow
East German citizens.
That's a really hard
thing to have to learn,
and that's a very somber lesson,
and it's one that is repeated
in different ways
throughout the transformation,
the transformed democracies
of Eastern Europe.
Because, let's not forget,
that what we're talking
about here was part of a much
larger, much larger phenomenon
of the toppling of
communist regimes all
across Eastern Europe, the
dissolution of the soviet union,
and this then in turn
became an example
for citizen movements trying
to topple authoritarian
governances, governments,
in Latin America and Asia, and
in Africa, South Korea, Chile,
Argentina, South
Africa of course.
And it seems to me that this
really calls into question
in the most fundamental way,
our ability to preserve the
representative democracy
and open societies,
that have to me,
is the great civilizational
achievement
of the post-World War II era.
>> John Haskell: So you, you
know Hope mentioned walls
within Germany, you've put
some flesh on that by talking
about the AFD and its platform.
You've written and
spoke about, Constanze,
the idea that while walls
are being built politically
throughout Europe, and some
countries are even, you know,
much further along, then AFD
gets 10%, you know, in the west
and quite a bit higher
in the east,
but still nowhere near
getting power yet.
The--
>> Hope M. Harrison:
Well they are the third,
they are the third--
>> John Haskell: Number,
they're number three, yeah.
>> Hope M. Harrison: --
biggest party in the--
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
They're the leaders
of the opposition in the--
>> John Haskell: I didn't mean
to belittle that accomplishment
so to speak, but you
have this, you've written
about the political divergence
that you're seeing throughout
Europe, at the same time
as the economies are
more and more integrated
and so there's this,
I mean there's,
is that just simply
an interesting irony
or what kind of--
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
No, I think what,
I mean there is obviously a
huge debate going on right now
about why western societies
appear to be succumbing
to this fear of complexity,
succumbing to authoritarian
temptations,
flirting with the
anti-democratic.
And there are a variety,
they're,
I mean every western
country, including this one,
is going through this moment.
All of us are going
through polarization,
political self-segregation,
and phenomena
that we would more associate
with Europe in the 1920's,
than with the outgoing, with the
beginning of the 21st century.
And it's certainly an object
lesson to all of those
who thought that history was
always going to be linear
and would always be progressive.
I think the biggest lesson
of all this is that democracy
and open societies
need to be defended,
they aren't self-repairing.
But, the, I think that that's
about as much generalization
as I'm willing to do.
It's, I think, really
quite important to look
at each political space
and analyze the sort
of culturally politically
specific reasons why
representative democracy is
being contested in this way.
And I would say that
there are some cultures
where there is clearly an
economic explanation for this,
and I would say that the
United States is one of them,
because it is, happens to be
true that the entry of China
into the global trade
system and the WTO,
literally really did a great
deal to syphon off jobs
from certain regions in America,
and that has had political
consequences, but I would add
to that, that was
probably helped by,
shall we say the deregulating,
not just of economic markets,
but also of political
institutions.
Things like gerrymandering,
money [inaudible]
Citizens United,
campaign finances,
et cetera, exactly.
Whereas I think, you
know, it is notable
that Germany has
full employment,
has had until quite
recently, a roaring economy
and that the living
standards of the east and west
in Germany have actually
been converging.
So the question there clearly
has more to do with the politics
of memory and the
politics of identity
than with actual economics.
And so on, we could take
this through other spaces
in Eastern Europe where I think
you have to be very careful
in examining and identifying
the precise reasons why this
is happening.
>> John Haskell: You want
an opportunity [inaudible]
because that's what you write
about is politics
of memory, Hope.
>> Hope M. Harrison: Yes,
and also specifically to sort
of follow on about what
Constanze's been telling,
but the situation in Germany
Berlin Wall east and west,
and the question of democracy.
You know, in a recent
survey asking is Germans,
is democracy the best
form of government;
77% of West Germans said, yes,
that's what they lived
with for 50 years.
Only 42% of the East
Germans now, in 2019,
agreed that democracy is
the best form of government.
Then when they were asked,
is United Germany a democracy
in terms of guaranteeing certain
basic rights, such as freedom
of speech, 2/3 of West
Germans said yes, but only half
of East Germans said yes.
Feeling sort of, you know,
they're supposed to be careful
with what they say in terms of
being critical of the system
or maybe having positive
things to say
about the East German system.
When asked is the legal system
independent of politics,
56% of West Germans say yes, and
only 39% of the East Germans.
On the question of how
united people feel,
when asked do you
feel more German
or do you feel more
Eastern or Western German?
Among East Germans,
47% feel East German
and only 44% feel German.
So, there is this identity
issuer happening with sort
of different views of what's
going on, different views
of democracy, different
views of the future,
different views of the past.
And on the question, because
I know we're going to get
to also the question of German
relations with the U.S.,
when asked you know, what
poses a danger to democracy
in Germany, people mentioned
right winning extremism
of course, they mention
left winning extremism,
they mention migrants, but they
also mention the U.S. You know,
seeing the U.S. now as
a danger to democracy.
So there are not only are there
these divisions within Germany,
but as we all know, from
reading the newspapers,
there are also important
divisions between the U.S.
and Germany, certainly at the
level of the leaders, but also,
you know, average citizens.
You know, looking at polls on
how average citizens in the U.S.
and Germany see those relations.
Germans are much
more optimistic,
I think 2/3 of Germans see
the relations as very good.
I mean, sorry, of Americans
see the relations as very good.
Whereas a much smaller
number of Germans
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Not so much.
>> John Haskell: Yeah, that's
really interesting data.
You want to comment on that?
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Yeah,
I would like to add
something to that,
I mean all of that is true.
But I have to say, having run
a survey myself for 2 years,
I'm always, I think sort of
you know, you have to be,
you sort of, you can use
surveys as a starting point,
and then you sort
of have to look
at other stuff that's
happening at the same time.
And it seems to me that one
of the most important things
that is happening right now,
and wasn't happening before,
and that echoes what happened in
West Germany, or began to happen
in the late '70s really,
when younger Germans started
interrogating their families
about what they, where they had
been during the Third Reich,
and what they had done.
And I think that the
conversation among the East
Germans about who had done
what under communist rule,
is really only just starting.
I think that that was
repressed for a very long time.
And speaking of repression,
it's important to keep in mind
that in, that many of these,
you're talking about a situation
where everybody did something
to somebody, very often.
The people who were in the
resistance or who were marching
in the streets, were a
minority of the citizenry.
At the height
of the demonstration you
had what, 70,000 in Leipzig?
The total population of
East Germany was 30 million.
And if you look at the work,
the outcome of the work
of the so-called [foreign name]
that the agency created
affair Germany was unified,
to look through the files
that the [inaudible] had kept
meticulously on its citizens
and to, and the, there
are some truly horrific,
tragic stories coming out
of that, of neighbors,
family members, and
even married couples,
spying and reporting
on each other.
And it is incredibly difficult
to have this kind of discussion
with your parents, it is a
little easier to have them
about your grandparents.
And I think that is
what is happening now.
You're seeing now, that's what
I found in writing my essay,
there is a whole new
burgeoning of literature about,
not just what happened in
1989, but the familial context
of families who had
been part of the system
in one way or another.
Where the grandfather
and the father had been
in either the Stasse or in
the military and the kids
and the grandkids came
out of this in 1989
and were suddenly confronted
with an entirely new system,
but at home faced family
members, older members,
you know, people whom they
loved and were close to,
who were not just, you know,
who were not just shall we say,
ambivalent about this,
but deeply, deeply,
hostile to these events.
And who, in some ways, had been,
had not just lost
their social status
but had been emasculated
by this.
And I will, there is a,
on Twitter there is a,
in German Twitter there is a new
hash tag called [foreign term],
baseball bat years,
and it was created
by a guy whom I've just talked
to and whom I have been reading,
a journalist who writes for
[inaudible] online, and he's,
and this is a motif
that has been, that more
and more people are coming
out and writing about now,
about being 10 year
olds in 1989, in rural
or suburban communities that
are essentially lawless zones,
where young neo Nazi thugs,
roam and are the forces of order
and the instrument that they use
to impose order is
baseball bats.
And I in fact, experienced
this myself.
I write this in the essay, there
was one, I had to cover a trial
of young neo Nazis, in
Frankford [inaudible] which is
on the Polish border, it's a
1 hour train trip from Berlin,
and I go there and I was already
pretty negatively impressed
by how these young guys were
sort of sitting there in front
of the judge, you know,
insolently indifferent
to what the judge and the
jury were saying, and then I,
you know, go out after
the court session is
over to file my report, and
I find myself in the middle
of a battle, of a battle,
between the supporters
of the neo Nazis,
and anti [inaudible],
all of them with baseball
bats, some of them
who had brought [inaudible]
with busses,
who were basically beating
each other around the head
in the bushes and the trees
around the courthouse,
and I literally sort of, you
know, jumped to safety somewhere
and then ran off to the train
station, and this was, I think,
far more virulent and far more
prevalent than people saw.
And I suspect that we
could tell similar stories
about other parts of Europe
that underwent these
[inaudible] processes.
In other words, the communist,
the [inaudible] state
had disappeared,
the enforcement state
had disappeared,
and the new state was either
not strong enough or basically
in denial about what
was happening to move in
and do something about this.
And I think that this has a,
plays a tremendous role in some
of the resentment that
we're seeing here.
And one final point is
if you read these
autobiographical reports
that are now being published,
there is a not insignificant
element of generational
and familial continuity between
support of the Nazis before 1945
and being members of the GDR
functional elites after 1945,
and that of course, is in direct
[inaudible] to the founding myth
of the GDR, which was that
all the Nazis had stayed
on the other side of the wall.
>> John Haskell: Normally
we're proud of baseball
as a cultural export, but
not in this particular case.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
In this case I would
say not so much.
>> John Haskell: So
let's, let's switch gears
for the last few minutes
before we take a few questions,
to the question of
U.S. /German relations
and how that's changed.
I guess we all get the sense,
although the NATO Summit may
have complicated it a little
bit, and we can go
there too if you want,
but we all get the sense that
there's more tensions now
in the last few years
between the U.S.
and Germany than there had been.
Why is that?
Either of you want
to kick it off.
Is that an easy answer or?
>> Hope M. Harrison: Well, I
mean there's no question part
of it is Trump, many,
many Germans,
I mean Germans really
loved Obama.
I think it was the country, I
think it was the country outside
of the U.S. where people most,
where he was most popular.
So, it's been a huge
change in that regard.
But there has been, there's
been increasing skepticism
by many Germans for a long time,
about the U.S. which pains me,
but I've watched it happen.
You know, in some ways
starting with George W. Bush
and the Iraq War,
Germans who, you know,
since World War II have become
most of them, very anti-military
and anti-war and you know, you
add that with sort of the people
in the east who were
always trained to sort of be
against the U.S.
and against NATO,
with a general German opposition
to use of military force,
and that, you know,
the war against Iraq
in 2003 was an important
beginning.
Obama, the National Security
Agency, ultimately finding
out that it had been listening
in on Angela Merkel's
cell phone.
Okay, they loved Obama, but
they sure did not like that.
And then with Trump attacking
Merkel and attacking the Germans
so much that, you know, to
me it's been very dismaying
because older generations
of West Germans
of course felt the
incredible importance
of the German/U.S.
alliance because of the U.S.
after World War II, the Marshall
Plan, the Berlin Airlift,
saving West Berlin when
Stalin blockaded it.
Then the U.S. role in
German unification;
after the wall fell,
Europeans were pretty worried.
Thatcher, [inaudible],
Gorbachev, the Poles,
were quite worried, remembering
what had happened the last time
Germany was united, you
know, with the Nazis
in World War II and
the Holocaust.
So, it was really only
George Bush Senior,
who supported the process,
actively supported,
and wasn't afraid
of that process.
So, that was of course a very
positive moment, but people,
older generations remember
what the U.S. has done,
including in unification, many
of them you know, remember,
fondly in some cases, the U.S.
forces, all the U.S. troops
and getting to know
them, American music,
all these different things.
And that has also been sort
of the basis of you know,
for a lot of Americans getting
to know Germany because,
you know, they were
stationed there
and there're many
fewer of those now.
There are 35 thousand active
duty U.S. soldiers in Germany
and actually a recent
survey shows that a majority
of Germans would actually
like to see them go.
So, you know, I think
there have been,
there's been a tendency growing,
a critical tendency in Germany,
of the U.S. which has only
become exacerbated under Trump,
and Constanze and
I both are parts
of transatlantic networks that,
you know, do all we possibly can
to keep fostering U.S.
/German relations and sort
of weathering this storm.
>> John Haskell: So I'll
give you the last word
so that we can have time
for a few questions
[inaudible] for that.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Yeah, I mean everything
that Hope says is correct, I
didn't think I'd see the day
when I'd be trolled by an
American ambassador to Germany
in Twitter, that has happened
to me and it's not pleasant.
And yes, you know, my dad
was a 16 year old POW,
and was just you know,
thrilled by the experience,
the Americans sent him
to translator school
in Leipzig in 1947.
My dad ended up,
you've heard this story,
as the set translator on
the Howard Hawks' movie,
I Was a Male War Bride, which
was filmed in [inaudible],
the region where my mother's
from, in [inaudible].
So if you ever see that movie,
it's Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan
in front of the camera, Howard
Hawks and my dad behind it.
Unfortunately, my
dad's first girlfriend,
who married [inaudible] in
Oregon, took the signed picture
with her to Oregon, it's
somewhere out there.
Anyway, I would really like to
get that picture back frankly.
But, but you know, yeah, when
I was a kid in [inaudible],
the then capital of
the federal republic,
there was an American
club where friends
of my parents were members and
there was really nothing greater
for us kids, as far as we were
concerned, than being invited
to the [foreign name],
on a Saturday afternoon,
hitting the swimming pool,
and then getting a hamburger
and an ice cream sundae.
As far as we were
concerned, I mean you know,
that made you know,
sort of helps vassals
of America for us forever.
The other thing frankly
that seduced me
at an impressionable age,
was in the [foreign name],
the American settlement around
the embassy, which I mean,
you have to, if any of you,
if you've never been there,
you have to imagine
German city, you know,
nice [inaudible] city among the
vineyards, and then you go off
to the left on the [inaudible]
in the direction of the south,
and you were suddenly in
a, you have American roads,
American sidewalks, and you
have this little green clearing
with a white clapboard, New
England church and a sort
of little sort of colonnade
of shops and a movie theatre.
And in the movie theatre, you
paid with either a douche mark
or a quarter, and my
mother had a friend,
an American who was married to
a German, who explained to her
that the birthright
of modern woman,
was Saturday afternoon off,
and the way that you did this
was packing your kids off
to the movies.
And my mother, who was very
sort of serious about culture,
had serious misgivings
because she felt
that American movies
were not culture.
But the prospect of getting
rid of us for several hours,
won over and so I was
shipped off together
with the friend's four
kids, and my little brother,
and I saw every single movie
ever made about the Korean War,
all the Disney movies,
I was carried screaming
out of Fantastic Voyage.
But you get, this is
the kind of thing,
I'm saying this only
half-jokingly,
that had an immense
influence on generations
of German [inaudible]
growing up,
and one of the saddest
things in my view,
is the Americans closing down
all of the [foreign name]
in German cities, because
those were really important
for building these bridges.
I mean, you were
right, the German,
right now German/American
political relations are
at an all-time low, and
I've been writing about this
for the last 25 years as a
journalist or as a think tanker,
I have never seen
anything like this.
And I will say also to
you, and I've written this,
that Trump has a point in some
of his critiques of Germany.
Our defense expenditures,
our trade surpluses,
I'd say guilty as charged.
Those things are problems
not just for America but also
for European neighbors starting
with the Poles, and others.
But the problem is that
this administration seems
to have a hostility to the
European Union and a nation
that Germany is some of
its puppet master in ways
that I find deeply disturbing.
And they go well beyond what
I would say is an ordinary
and reasonable sort of
political debate to be had.
That's where, that's what
I'm most worried about.
Not the security [inaudible]
although I will say
as a security expert,
that is enough
to give anybody nightmares.
The weaponization of
economic interdependence,
which I think is ultimately
deeply harmful to America.
But it's the culture war framing
that really freaks me out.
It's this nation that we are,
or that America is in some sort
of civilizational end of
days, you know, contest,
with the forces of
darkness and that the forces
of darkness are non-Christian,
have different skin color,
that's where it gets a
little edgy for my taste.
And I honestly and with
that this sort of you know,
the contempt for you know,
the nation of a rules
based international order,
the contempt for representative
democracy and open societies,
that is unfortunately picked up
upon by right winning movements,
not just in my country,
but elsewhere.
That's what makes me think
this is a very dangerous moment
and one where civil
societies can't reach
out to each other enough to
help us all get through this.
But ultimately, I think
all of us, what we share,
is I think a sense of concern
about our own political spaces.
But I think what unites us, is a
profound, a profound commitment
to values that ought to be able
to see us, help us, you know,
work our way through this
and I think, you know,
if we don't do it together,
you know the famous saying,
if we are not hanged together,
we will definitely
hang separately.
That is, I think, I worry that
that is a place we might end up
and I would find that very
sad, because I still believe
that we have much good
to find in each other.
>> John Haskell: Let's see if we
can, we have a couple questions
in the next few minutes.
Just signal, there's a
gentleman back there, Mike.
[ Ambient Noise ]
>> I was curious about
your reaction to,
when President Reagan gave his
speech and said, Mr. Gorbachev,
tear down this wall, emphasizing
that the Russians were
as much responsible for it and
responsible for Eastern Germany.
What kind of reaction
was there to that?
And how big a role did that play
in the wall being torn down?
>> John Haskell:
Interesting question.
>> Hope M. Harrison: Well, that
speech was in June of 1987,
so that was 2 1/2 years before
the wall fell, the West Germans
who were hosting Ronald
Reagan for that speech
in West Berlin right
at the wall,
right at the Brandenburg
Gate, West Germans
under Helmut Kohl were in fact,
really worried about that,
felt that that was
too aggressive,
because at that point in 1987,
no one remotely thought the
wall was going to come down.
The reason Reagan said that was
Gorbachev had just started some
major reforms, he's come to
power in '85, this was now '87,
and Reagan was saying,
if you are really serious
about all these reforms
you're making to communism,
then tear down the wall.
That's sort of where
it came from.
The West Germans felt
that this was sort
of rocking the boat too much,
they're at the front
line of the Cold War.
In fact, a few months
after that,
Helmut Kohl hosted the East
German leader, Erich Honecker,
in the capital of Bohne,
for full, you know,
I mean they were toasting
each other with champagne,
both flags were flying, they're
reviewing the troops together,
I mean there was no sense that
East Germany or communism,
you know, in East Germany,
were going away anytime soon.
So, you know, in terms of actual
impact on the fall of the wall,
I would argue Reagan's speech
had very, very little impact,
it was 2 1/2 years before,
I mean when you ask Germans,
you know what sort of led to
it and if you ask historians,
they will focus on Gorbechev's
reforms, Poland's reforms,
and you know, what was
going on in East Germany
with what they now call
the Peaceful Revolution,
of all the people
taking to the streets.
Yes, having a U.S. leader who
sort of kept saying, you know,
we don't accept communism
and this isn't good,
the people who most responded
to that were the people
who were imprisoned in
East Germany and elsewhere,
and you know, were strong
opponents to the regime
and really wanted external
pressure on the regime.
Many of those people were
really grateful sort of saying,
oh thank God, here I am
languishing in prison,
but at least somebody out
there realizes, you know,
what's really going on.
Yeah, so--
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Well, but you know,
I would say of course, and I
didn't think this at the time,
as a 27 year old, but of
course Reagan was right.
And I think that both Reagan's
and Pope John Paul the second,
and I'm a Lutheran, I'm
not a Catholic, but both,
so I'm not saying this
because I'm a Catholic,
I'm saying that both John
Paul the second and Reagan,
with their firm commitment to
ending communism as a system
of governance that was inimical
to human, to a descent way
of life, to a descent society
and a just domestic order,
were entirely in the right in
retrospect, I think they have
to be given their proper
place in the pantheon
of people whom we, at least I
as a German, feel grateful for.
>> John Haskell: So we've
got time for, what I'm going
to do is, there's three
people have signaled me,
and we don't have time
for more than that,
so we'll have all three of them,
there's two folks over here,
Andrew, which is
[inaudible] and Anna,
and then the gentleman
right in front of me here.
So why don't you each
ask a quick question
and then these two will
brilliantly bring them together.
Do you have the mic [inaudible]?
Go ahead.
>> Yeah, thanks for your talk
and just a really
quick question;
you spoke about your personal
like biographies, where you were
when the wall came down,
and spoke maybe in the level
of comparative politics, looking
at Germany, United States,
maybe the bilateral
relationship, but wondered
if you could take the level of
analysis up even more and look
at the long term ideological
and geopolitical consequences
of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
So if we think in the history
of the 20th century, you know,
fascism, communism, liberalism,
the war of the German
succession, capitalism
and communism, where is--
>> John Haskell: You're going to
have to do this in 30 seconds.
>> Where is the fall
of the Berlin Wall
in a much broader
kind of timeline?
>> John Haskell: And hand that
up, you can hand it off to--
oh, I thought you
did, I'm sorry.
Then the gentleman over here,
we'll just piggyback those two,
and then we'll let
these guys sort
out [inaudible] excellent
question.
>> Is it possible to talk about
what the Berlin Wall meant
to Berliners, the people
of Berlin, East Berlin,
West Berlin, and what Berliners
are doing today, and the role
of Berlin in Germany,
the political power
and what it means to the world?
>> John Haskell: Alright,
you each got 2 minutes
to bring together--
>> Hope M. Harrison: Okay, what
the wall meant to Berliners;
for many of them
it was devastating,
it divided families,
it divided friends,
some people had been going
to school on the other side,
they couldn't do that
anymore, they had been working
on the other side, they couldn't
do that anymore, you know,
I mean a massive,
massive change.
so heartbreaking for many.
So the fall of the wall, was
you know, this wonderful thing,
this moment of relief as
you know, as amazing grace.
They are remembering families
have been brought together,
they remember people who
were killed at the wall,
there is now a national
Berlin Wall Memorial
where you can go look
at what it looked like,
they have some pieces of it,
they have a display outside
in the former death strip,
it's a seven block long site
that tells the history the
wall, so yeah, a profound,
as people say gash through their
lives and through the city.
If you didn't live there, you
know, you weren't as affected,
West Berliners for a lot of
West Berliners, some of it was
in their backyard, they're
having a barbeque and, you know,
the wall happens to be there.
It just, a lot of West Berliners
and West Germans got used to it.
You know, more as background and
many of them went and painted
on the wall, on the
external side of the wall
which you certainly couldn't
do on the eastern side.
The big, big question,
well I mean,
partly Constanze has said this,
and German leaders always say
this, you know, that the fall
of the wall showed that freedom,
you can't stifle forever
the desire for freedom.
And you know, I mean that lesson
that sort of everybody drew
in 1989, which things have
backtracked since then,
but it's certainly in that
epic context of the Cold War
between communism and democracy,
communism and capitalism,
at the time it sure seemed
like, you know, democracy
and capitalism had won
out these, you know,
more hardline repressive
regimes had lost.
And you know, as
these regimes toppled
and then the Soviet Union
itself toppled 2 years later,
it sure seemed in the
grand scheme of things,
which is partly why Frances
Fukuyama wrote back then,
you know, about the
end of history.
It sure seemed like,
okay, they agree,
those people behind the Iron
Curtain, they want democracy
and all that comes with it,
or and capitalism,
or some combination.
But you know, what we've
learned, is that it's not
so easy, particularly we all
see even in this country,
the problems with capitalism,
the haves and have nots,
you know, that communism
didn't have that, there were,
there weren't these big,
big gaps, which is something
that the people in
east feel very much.
And also, democracy and sort
of civic activism, you know,
one of the lessons the German
leaders say about 1989,
you know, it shows the
importance of civil activism.
Well the only problem with that
is, that's also what the AFD,
that's what the far right
party is doing you know,
they're getting out
on the streets,
they're being civically active.
So you know, just because you're
being really active and wanting
to make your voice heard,
it's not always for democracy.
So, the legacy has become much
more complicated 30 years later,
than people thought
for a while after 1989.
>> John Haskell:
Quick last word.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Yep--
>> John Haskell: And then the
fun stuff, we have a reception,
books, and one other
thing to say.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Drinks.
>> John Haskell: Exactly.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Alcohol.
There is a cottage
industry right now,
suggesting that liberal
democracy
and a rules based international
order are essentially relics
of the 20th century.
And that the sort of modern
age of economic interdependence
and great power of competition
is at least as suited to
or maybe even more suited to,
shall we say authoritarian
constitutional
operating systems.
I think that that is
a defeatist narrative,
and one that essentially sort
of, you know, puts up its hands
when faced with the
complexities of the modern age,
and I think that my
personal inclination is,
and my urge to others, is
to fiercely resist that.
But what I do think that we have
underestimated is just how hard
freedom is.
And it becomes particularly
hard, when you're worried
about where your next
meal is going to come from
and whether you have
a shadow of a chance
at living a descent life
in a society that appears
to be fragmenting around you.
And I think the lesson from that
for us, is that you know, you,
I think really the lesson of the
20th century for all of us is,
particularly for western
societies but I suspect
for others as well, is that it
matters how we construct our
systems of governance.
I personally believe
that representative
democracy is not a flaw,
but a competitive advantage
of western societies,
but it doesn't repair itself,
it doesn't create itself.
And it is the product of a
very carefully calibrated
and designed architecture of
constitutional legislation
of laws and of institutions.
And if you let people
destroy these institutions,
and if people, if you let people
destroy the social contract,
then it should not come
as surprise to anybody
if people think that freedom
under those circumstances
is too hard.
So I think the challenge for all
of us is to look at what we have
and say, is this good enough
to weather what is
clearly a climate change,
not just in international
relations,
but also in domestic politics.
We are clearly looking
at a sort of,
I think climate change is
actually really good metaphor
for this.
Because of the, because
climate change if a product of,
I mean we all live
in an ecosystem,
and we are finding it
increasingly hard to regulate
and control that ecosystem.
And I think what we need to
look at is how to protect it,
and how to make it stronger
against these forces
that are buffeting us.
That's where we are, and I think
all of us can think of things
in our own systems that we
think could use some repairing.
And break this down into
things that can be done locally
or in a state level or
international level,
and be a part of that.
It's not that hard.
And if anything, it seems
to me, I thought after 1989,
that we were moving
into something
of a political consumer culture.
In other words, we were leaving
the hard work of democracy
to self-appointed
political elites,
and we were ordering
stuff from Amazon.
And as far as I'm concerned,
this is a moment when it's kind
of good to rediscover the
virtues of citizenship again.
And as far as I'm, you know,
I think that's a good thing.
>> John Haskell: So let me tell
you that I can't command enough
to you the recent writings
of Hope and Constanze,
and right now I'm
going to tell you how
to get your hands on them.
Hope's new book, After the Fall,
will be available back behind
the reception area and she'll,
I think she'll be nice enough
to sign a copy for you too.
>> Hope M. Harrison: Of course.
>> John Haskell: And--
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
But you have to pay for it.
>> John Haskell: Yeah,
you have to pay for it.
Constanze's essay that
I described before,
German Lessons, if you
google Stelzenmuller
and German lessons,
you'll find it.
And if you're like me, you
might miss a metro stop
as you're reading it and end
up at Eastern Market on the way
to work tomorrow,
if you work up here.
That happened to me.
Because it's really riveting
and we thank you both
so much for your--
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Thank you,
thank you for hosting us.
[ Applause ]
>> Hope M. Harrison:
Such a pleasure.
>> Constanze Stelzenmuller:
Thank you for doing this.
>> John Haskell: Very nice.
