LONDON: Berlin was divided and since 1961 a wall had separated the east from the west in order to stop those in the German Democratic Republic, who didn’t want to live in a ‘communist paradise,’ from escaping to the west.
Thirty five years ago I witnessed something quite extraordinary. It was the 9th November 1989 and I had travelled to West Berlin for some talks with our German partners. Berlin was divided in those days and since 1961 a wall had separated the east from the west in order to stop those in the German Democratic Republic, who didn’t want to live in a “communist paradise,” from escaping to the west. Between the end of WWII and the building of the wall, some 3.5 million (20% of the population) had chosen to escape to the Federal Republic of Germany and you could understand why. On many visits to communist East Berlin I had witnessed drab and dreary lives led by its citizens, by comparison to those in the sparkling and wealthy West. In those days you could mount an observation stand on the western side of the wall (which was in fact two walls separated by what was known as the “death strip” – a wide area containing trenches, beds of nails, dogs and mines), and at night see the darkness and silence of the east, interrupted only by the squeals of tram wheels. Soviet propaganda risibly portrayed the wall as an “anti-fascist” protection for its people, which fooled nobody. Along with the separate and much longer inner German border, which demarcated the border between East and West Germany during the Cold War, the wall came to symbolise the “Iron Curtain” that separated the Western Bloc and the Soviet satellite states of the Eastern Bloc.
On that Thursday in November we were about to start talks when to everyone’s astonishment it was announced that the wall had come down. Not literally of course, but the checkpoint through which movement was controlled, known as Checkpoint Charlie, was now open for anyone to pass through on foot and by vehicle. It was a stunning and totally unexpected moment. The talks were immediately cancelled and I was free to use the two planned days in Berlin to witness in disbelief the scenes unfolding around me. Suddenly the roads became full of loud, slow and smoky Trabant cars alongside the shiny Mercedes of the FRG. The Trabant, in production in the east for more than 30 years, came to symbolise East Germany’s stagnant economy and the collapse of the GDR. Shops became full of people from the East, dressed in drab grey clothes looking with amazement at the fur coats and pearls of the wealthy West Berliners, and the variety and quality of goods for sale.
I can still recall the mother and father in the food department of KaDeWe, an upmarket department store, showing their children bananas which they stroked in amazement, having seen them only in pictures before.These memories came flooding back last weekend when the results of the elections in two eastern German states, Thuringia and Saxony, were announced. Before Germany was reunified after the fall of the Berlin Wall, both states were part of the old communist GDR. It was in Saxony’s capital, Dresden, that an unknown Vladimir Putin worked as a KGB officer from 1985 until the revolution swept over him and he escaped back to Russia. Thuringia, best known as the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach, Goethe and Schiller, is one of the poorest states in Germany, a legacy of 41 years of communist rule. Salaries are lower than average and it has few major employers outside the public sector. A brain drain to the more affluent west began when the wall came down and has not stopped since, despite enormous sums of cash being pumped into the former East Germany following reunification. Some $70 billion flowed annually from west to east under an aid package designed by former Chancellor Helmet Kohl to help reconstruct the former communist regions. “Solidarity” was the core principle of the 1993 roadmap, a notion that is enshrined in the Constitution which guarantees the uniformity of living standards for all Germans.
This money transfer lifted eastern regions out of the economic doldrums and helped cover the heavy social costs, such as pensions for millions of Germans who, under communism, neither had to worry about pensions nor contribute to a pension system. But they also created serious drawbacks over time. The funds fostered a culture of dependency and in most eastern rural regions failed to scale back unemployment, which is 2 percent higher than the west, or improve industrial productivity, stubbornly remaining at 80 percent of the west.
The feeling of being “left behind” was part reason for the huge success of the far-right “Alternative fur Deutschland” (AfD) party in Sunday’s state elections, which in Thuringia gained a clear victory with nearly 33 percent of the vote and 32 of the 88 seats. By comparison, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) share of the vote was 23.8 percent, which translated into just 23 seats. This was a historic result marking the first victory of a far-right party in a state parliament since 1949, a troubling post-war first for a party whose local leader had used banned Nazi slogans in speeches.
In the bordering and more populated state of Saxony the CDU, the party which has ruled Germany for more than 50 years, won just 42 of the 120 seats with the AfD a very close second with 41.So why the rising popularity of the far-right? In spite of the efforts of Germany’s mainstream leaders to stop the rise of AfD by calling it an “extremist organisation”, it appears to be turning into a “people’s party”. According to surveys, voters in both Thuringia and Saxony said the AfD is best placed to represent the interests of the people in eastern Germany and to pursue better asylum and refugee policies.
Immigration in Germany has become a massive issue since 2015, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to allow more than a million asylum seekers to cross the border into Germany. The AfD’s “anti-foreigner” stance was the cornerstone of its campaign. Perhaps even more challenging and confusing for Germany’s ruling coalition was the success in the elections of a new party, BSW, named after its charismatic founder Sahra Wagenknecht, a former member of East Germany’s communist party. Winning 16 percent of the vote in Thuringia and 12 percent in Saxony, the BSW is a left-wing splinter party that emerged only at the start of the year and which positions itself as the voice of common sense. BSW campaign posters demanded “diplomacy instead of warmongering” while Ms Wagenknecht, who has long been the face of the country’s far left, repeatedly blamed NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and accused Israel of pursuing a “war of annihilation in Gaza”.With such political turbulence in Europe’s most important economy, many are asking whether Sunday’s results are just a wake-up call for Germany’s centrist leaders or are they a message from the voters that presage a move to extremism. “Isolationism, extremism, and xenophobia are poison for German exports and jobs here in Germany”, said Siemens CEO Christian Bruch earlier this year, concerned about Germany’s failing economy, rated the worst performing developed economy by the International Monitory Fund last year “We must therefore not give space to fear-mongers and fall for their supposedly simple solutions,” he added.
The problem for Germany is that even though many centrist leaders and institutions have warned of the AfD’s and BSW’s extremism, many voters have simply stopped listening. A growing mistrust of centrists and a moribund economy has fomented anti-establishment fervour across a large swathe of the country. Does this mean that the days of steady centre-left or centre-right government of the EU’s most important economy are over? Does it mean that the stability sought by those people and their descendants who flooded across the Berlin wall all those years ago is now over? All eyes will be on how voters cast their ballots in the eastern state of Brandenburg on 22 September, where the AfD is currently head in the polls. But whatever happens, Germany’s far right is here—and it’s here to stay.
Finally a thought. Many German leaders are labelling the AfD a “Nazi” party and are even seeking to ban it, concerned about its dominance in Thuringia. Perhaps they recall that it was in Thuringia that Hitler’s Nazis first won power in a German state, before consolidating control in Berlin three years later in 1933. Should we be worried?
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.