By Andrew Withers
Twenty six years ago, Olaf Schmidt drove through West Berlin for the first time in his life.
“It was mind blowing,” says Schmidt. “All the maps we had of East Berlin had the roads and the street names and the west borderline and then gray—just nothing.”
Schmidt, an assistant teaching professor of German Education in MU’s German and Russian Studies Department, was born in East Germany in 1965. Schmidt recalls growing up in a country that was the polar opposite of its walled-off counterpart.
“It was so different,” says Schmidt. “When you split up a country and have communist and capitalist governments for 40 years, and you put a wall in between them so there’s no real exchange, it makes you different.”
The Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961 to cut off West Berlin from East Berlin as well as Soviet-controlled East Germany as a whole. An enduring symbol of the Cold War, the wall stood for more than 20 years and prevented emigration and most forms of contact between the two countries.
While West Germany pursued a capitalist, market economy, East Germany employed a centrally planned economy. Unemployment ceased to exist, necessary goods were highly subsidized and education was provided at no cost. Reliable enforcement of price and quality standards made sure that everyone was getting the same deal.
Although essential goods were extremely cheap, unnecessary, luxury goods were very expensive because of limited production. As a result, a culture that focused less on materialism and more on intellectualism emerged.
“This was a really intellectual society that we were coming from,” says Schmidt of growing up in the east. “We were reading like hell. I was reading philosophy without having to. We were talking about these things.”
In keeping with the socialist ideals of the East German government, economic parity was almost absolute. This total control of the economy by the state fostered a nation of equals and, subsequently, trust.
“When people are equaled out, and no one makes more, what that creates is a community,” says Schmidt. “The attitude was completely different. 20 percent of the people I knew had no locks on their doors. When we tell them the most important thing we lost is the trust, they think we’re crazy.”
To many Westerners, the concept of trust in a country where choice was limited, free speech was often suppressed and travel was inhibited sounds absurd. But this control ensured that everyone received the same treatment. No one had any reason to mistrust anyone else because no one was better or worse off.
“Where the West challenged authority, the East relied on it,” says Schmidt.
These differences would be resolved when the wall opened and the two countries became one.
In October 1989, peaceful protests of Soviet leadership were gaining traction in East Germany. Massive public gatherings took place weekly in city squares; people demanded the right to travel and elect officials democratically.
Even as the numbers of protesters reached the hundreds of thousands, the police never engaged in armed suppression. The protests ended in early November at the Alexanderplatz, a large square in the central area of East Berlin. More than half a million people were present.
Just a few days later, on Nov. 9, 1989, the demonstrators would be rewarded. Mounting pressure to deal with an increasing number of refugees, combined with a breakdown in communication between party officials, led East Germans to begin gathering at checkpoints along the wall. They believed that a new policy had been announced, allowing them to cross over into West Berlin. Overwhelmed by the crowds, and without orders from their superiors on how to deal with them, border security allowed them to pass through.
“Politically, it didn’t mean much at that point, but emotionally, wow” says Schmidt.
But it quickly became apparent that unifying two countries would not be easy. Merging two societies accustomed to different economic and social systems was problematic enough, and stereotypes the two sides harbored about one another added to the problem. West Germans perceived East Germans, or Ossies, as lazy. East Germans perceived West Germans, or Wessies, as arrogant.
“The euphoria didn’t last long,” says Schmidt. “People wanted more—just to consume, buy buy buy—which you can’t blame people for, but it was meaningless after all that we’d been through.”
Eager to expand into under-served areas, West German businesses exploited people in the east who weren’t used to a free market system.
“These people came and sold insurances, ripping them off, day after day,” says Schmidt. “Used cars, for ten times the price they were worth. The person who comes toward you on the street is your enemy now. That’s the lesson we learned.”
Decades later, though the economic gap between the east and west had largely closed, the differences remained.
“They had no idea what it felt like to be equal to everyone else,” says Schmidt.
As the anniversary of the wall’s fall passes, it’s a time of reflection for many East Germans, including Schmidt.
“When you have something, you think it’s going to last forever,” says Schmidt. “But that’s life. If we had known it would be gone, we would’ve appreciated it more, maybe celebrated things that we had and not have been so miserable all the time. I want to go back and experience it—really experience it.”
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