40 Time November 11, 2019
VIEWPOINT
In 1989, the worldchose peace; we needthat vision today
By Mikhail GorbachevWorld
Bernd Roth, a former major
in the feared Stasi, is
adamant he never claimed his
Begrüßungsgeld. “I was not a
beggar,” he says. Today Roth,
68, rejects the system that
he served, yet is unapologetic
about his own actions, which
led to the known arrests of
14 people, including a CIA spy.
“Why should we be pressured
to have a bad [conscience]?”
he asks. “We didn’t build
concentration camps.” His
love of music helped him
preserve his individuality,
he says. He thought nothing
of singing along to “Born
in the U.S.A.” at a Bruce
Springsteen concert in East
Berlin in 1988. “It was just
music!” he laughs. Roth
still lives in the same town
in Thuringia where he grew
up. The West has never held
any appeal for him, he says.
“I found it overwhelming
and oppressive. I think
oversaturated consumption
is harmful.” Was there really
nothing that he wanted there?
“I might have bought myself
some Grundig speakers,” he
admits. “That was really just
about being able to enjoy a
better sound.”Cornelia Guenther first
entered the West at Berlin’s
Checkpoint Charlie, the
infamous Cold War crossing
point. Then 29, and a
single mother working as
a translator, she gingerly
stepped across the border
in late-November 1989.
“I looked at my foot,” she
says, as she crossed the
military checkpoint that she
had overlooked every day
from her office window.
“I thought, ‘Now I’m walking on
West Berlin soil; how amazing
is this?’” Having collected
their 200 DM, she and her
son Christian, 6, bought
carefully selected spoils at the
KaDeWe: a backpack, some
Legos, a radio for the kitchen.
The rest of the cash they
put toward a trip to England
a few months later. “Buying
experience was much more
important to me than material
things,” says Guenther.
When the Wall fell, Gordon von
Godin was a 19-year-old newly
discharged from national
service in the East German
army. He put his welcome
money toward an Amiga
computer so he could play
Tetris and Formula 1 games.
Today, he is director of Berlin’s
DDR Museum of East German
history, and qualified to bust
some popular myths about
Begrüßungsgeld. Is it true,
for instance, that many people
bought ... bananas? “This
is really a cliché, 100%,” he
replies. “Because bananas
we knew. We didn’t know,
for example, kiwi fruit.” He
believes the money helped
establish a lasting hierarchy
between West and East in a
reunited Germany that still
endures today. “I learned in
school that in capitalism,
nothing is for free,” Von Godin
says. “You have to pay for
everything sooner or later.”NOTHING: “I WAS NOT A BEGGAR.”
LEGOS,
A RADIO
AND A TRIP
A COMPUTER,
AND A
FUTURE
The Berlin Wall, Which for decades had divided noT
just a city but a country, and all of Europe, fell in
November 1989, and history accelerated its march. Such
moments test the responsibility and wisdom of statesmen.
The long overdue changes in the countries of Central and
Eastern Europe had received a powerful impetus from the
democratic process already under way in the Soviet Union.
The demands of the people were getting increasingly ur-
gent and radical.
In the fall of 1989 the situation in East Germany—the
G.D.R.—became explosive. Large groups of people were leav-
ing the country; people were fleeing en masse through Hun-
gary and Czechoslovakia, which had opened their western
borders. In major cities, people took to the streets, protesting
peacefully, but violence with consequences beyond anyone’s
control could not be ruled out.
In October 1989, I attended the festivities in East Berlin
marking the 40th anniversary of the G.D.R. As I stood on the
rostrum, greeting the columns of participants in the parade, I
felt almost physically the people’s discontent. We knew that
they had been carefully pre-selected, which made their be-
havior even more striking. They were chanting: Perestroika!
Gorbachev, help!
Subsequent events confirmed that the G.D.R. regime
was rapidly losing ground. The protests and the political
demands —from freedom of emigration to freedom of speech
and the dissolution of government bodies to the reunification
of Germany—were gaining momentum.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was therefore not a surprise for
us. The fact that it happened on Nov. 9, 1989, was the result
of specific circumstances and the evolution of popular mood.
In those conditions, the Soviet leadership’s first step was
to rule out military force by the Soviet troops stationed in the
G.D.R. At the same time, we did our utmost to make sure that the
process moved along peaceful lines, without infringing on the
vital interests of our country or undermining peace in Europe.
That was extremely important, because after the fall of
the Wall the developments in the G.D.R. became increasingly
turbulent. Reunification of Germany was now on the agenda,
and this was bound to cause concern among Soviet citizens,
many of whom were alarmed.
Their concern was understandable, both historically and
psychologically. We had to reckon with the people’s memory
of the war, of its horrors and victims. Of course the Germans
had changed; they had learned the lessons of Hitler’s reign
and World War II. But there are things that cannot be erased
from history. I told Chancellor Kohl, it is important for the