Who Brought Down the Berlin Wall?
Qiu Geng
Student ID :S07517
Research Paper Supervisor :Dr. Sekou Conde
Minzhu University of China 2007-2008 Academic Year
Abstract:
In 1961 German Democratic Republic (GDR) built the Berlin Wall to curb its citizens to flee into the Federation of Republic of Germany (FRG).During the following 28 years the administrative efficiency of GDR had always been inferior to that of the counterpart .So the people in GDR expected to have the richer life the neighboring fellow brothers owning in FRG with the same cultural background. They were also frustrated in their political life as well as the status quo of the segmented German Empire .The urge of the people in GDR, to have a richer and free life, is bound to unleash under proper circumstance in some means. With the advent of an epoch of Neo-globalization and the end of strategic stalemate between the Soviet Union and America, the people in GDR greeted their favorable international climate for support and sympathy. These pressures from interior and exterior forced GDR to bulldoze the wall.
[Key words] Fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany, GDR, FRG
After the end of World War II in Europe, Germany had been divided into four occupation zones. The old capital of Berlin, as the seat of the Allied Control Council, was itself subdivided into the same four occupation zones. Although the intent was for the occupying powers to govern Germany together in the borders from 1947, the advent of Cold War tension caused the French, British and American zones to be formed into the Federal Republic of Germany (and West Berlin), (FRG), in 1949, excluding the Soviet zone which then formed the German Democratic Republic (including East Berlin), (GDR) the same year. 1From 1949 onwards, FRG developed into a western capitalist country with a social market economy and a democratic parliamentary government. Across the inner-German border, GDR established an authoritarian government with a Soviet-style command economy.
While GDR became the richest, most advanced country in the Eastern bloc, many of its citizens still looked to the West for political freedoms and economic prosperity. The flight of growing numbers of East Germans to non-communist countries via West Berlin led to East Germany erecting the GDR border system (of which the Berlin Wall was a part) in 1961 to prevent any further exodus.2
But on Dec. 9th, 1989 the Berlin Wall was demolished by GDR goverment.The fall of the Berlin wall shocked the world as much as when it was built. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for the reunification of Germany, changed the strategic pattern of Europe and the world, which was regarded as the end of cold war . In a word it is such a significant event that ever since then there had been many arguments on the reasons leading to the crumbling of the Berlin fall .According to Dialectical materialist's view that the outcome of the development of any is determined by the its internal causes and external causes, the former, the basis of its development and the prior one yoking its developmental trend ,and the latter, the condition of its development and the secondary one affecting its development but based on the former , and the same with the fall of Berlin Wall. This essay will explore what the external and internal reasons causing the fall of Berlin Wall were.
NO WALL for RICHER LIFE
Not long after these two Germanic countries began to reconstruct their social order and infrastructure, they had achieved a lot in many aspects, especially in economic area. However GDR’s economic achievement was too embarrassed when compared with that of FRG. From 1950 to 1960 FRG’s net average yearly growth rate of General National Output reached 8.6%, higher than any one of other developed industrialized countries. And in 1979 its value of Gross National Production per person reached 11,730 $, and 13,590 $ in 1980, topping the sixth in the world. At the same time GDR also witnessed its fast economic development after 1949. For a long time GDR’s net average yearly growth rate of General National Output had been
1Wikipedia http://en.wikilib.com/wiki/Germany
2Wikipedia http://en.wikilib.com/wiki/Berlin_Wall
above 4% .In 1980 its value of Gross National Production per person reached 7180 $ ,topping the twenty-eighth in the world and the highest level among all the Eastern European countries in the Soviet Union camp. 3 Obviously GDR’s economic data was too much lower than that of FRG. Under the awkward different economic background the quality of life in two Germanic part was quite contrast. Many necessaries to the people in FRG were the impossible luxury to their brothers in the other side of the Berlin Wall, for these goods were always short of supply in GDR. For example, if the people in GDR wanted to own a car, he should prepay the amount 10 years or over, even 20 years before the commodity arrived. And their telephone dream may be couldn’t be realized until the God beckoned to them. It was not strange that the people in GDR expected to live the same kind of life as the people in FRG did. But the wall was an insurmountable obstacle to them. As the urge for a richer life went stronger and stronger, the first demonstration for emigration to FRG broke out in Jan. 1988. By the end of Aug. 1988 the number of the emigration application had increased to 250,000. And it’s estimated the number of the prospective applicants ranged from 5,000,000 to 6,000,000, one third of the population of GDR.4 So it was the only way to satisfy the people’s intent demand for a easier life to open the wall if GDR couldn’t afford it.
NO WALL for FREE POLITICAL LIFE
Guided and aided by the Soviet OLD Brother, GDR ran its own government headed by the Socialist Unity Party (SED), originating from the former Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party in April 1946. Since then GDR was a centralized communist state with the structures of a single-party. Under the umbrella of SED democratic election, term, impeachment, dismissal and inspection had been empty slogans. And electoral participation was consistently high, with nearly unanimous candidate approval.5 To pursue such a universal result, all kinds of means of ballot-rigging SED used extremely. Egon Krenz, one of former leaders of the latter generation of GDR, in his memoir pointed out that for all the electorate election only means folding and putting into their vote the box and it turned out an emasculated election of socialism.6
Through this kind of election mechanism the unique bureaucratic system in GDR featured with lifelong term and personnel appointment by party commission ensured the power quite safely under the hands of SED. And as time went on, more and more carders and people’s representative in all levels master the golden rules guiding
3Li Hua, “What brought down the Berlin Wall?,” World Economics and International Politics , No.2 ,2003, p.66.
4Ibid., p.67
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
their promotion that they only had to be responsible for their senior bosses whose attitude and assessment concerning their performance affect their opportunity for a fast promotion. Under this circumstance pops up a typical bureaucratic scene where a carder bowed and smiled before his leader but swaggered and sworn before his inferior. Without the check and balance system these carders made wrong decisions, abused their power, alienated from the mass group and corrupted social morality. Whenever the civil in GDR met such kind of officers, what they could do was to keep silent anger in their heart. The grass-root not only lost their freedom and inalienable right in political election but also in their option for an outbound trip, the most urgent demand to be quenched if they had had a chance to improve the quality of their life. While the government of GDR was explaining the reasons for its restriction in outbound trip lay in the fact that its scant reservation of foreign currency , the wonderful experience of its higher officials’ tours to other lands were well publicized via its official media. Under this circumstance the common people in GDR felt they were fooled and cheated. One day someone shouted for free election, free outbound travel, real democracy, a GDR governed by legislation and end of the bound linkage between administration and SED. When the voice was deafened by cruel crackdowns, people in GDR began to choose to flee to FRG. It was estimated that in the 28 years after the construction of Berlin Wall 254 people lost their lives when they tried to transcend the fence to have a better future. In his memoir, Egon Krenz summarized all these problems made some of his countrymen unconscious of their citizenship of GDR. Krenz’s comments reflected the facts that his country men were striding for a real Germanic citizenship of free, fair, even against the rains of bullets when transcending the wall.7
NO WALL for NATIONALISM
It is a long history since Germanic people began to seek their identity. Their great poets exclaimed where the Germany it was, their philosophers mediated what the essence [...]
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