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Matthias Gehler is editor-in-chief of Thüringen's MDR radio and television. He was the spokesman for the government of Lothar de Maiziere, the prime minister of the only GDR government that emerged from free elections (12 April - 12 October 1990). In an interview with RFI, he recounts his years under the Iron Curtain, the turn of the year 1989 and the transition before reunification.
RFI: How do you see these commemorations of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall?
Matthias Gehler: I am particularly grateful that the Wall has fallen. I think the GDR, which I come from, was not going to last anyway, the regime was coming to an end. When I was the government spokesperson, I had a report every day about the state of the regime. Every day. He was very clear that it could not have gone further.
It was an economically out of breath diet and moreover people did not want it anymore. Of course, it totally surprised everyone that everything went so fast. But, I had seen this change coming. In the 80s, I was a journalist (Editor's note: in a religious newspaper, because Mathias Gehler was also a theologian) and I also moved here and there in the country, because I was also singer and songwriter, even if I have often been banned from performing.
I noticed that the churches and theaters where I performed were always full, and people were very interested in everything that was critical, in the way things could evolve. Inside the churches, we also talked a lot (Ed .: at a time when gatherings were forbidden) and we also, especially inside the churches, talked a lot about what democracy was. It is the pressure of the people that comes the fall of the wall.
What did people say in theaters and churches?
People were unhappy with the system. We could not travel to the west, we could not read what we wanted, we could not discuss everything freely: this is a dictatorship. And it can not work for the duration. One day or another, it crumbles.
I was personally confronted. I was banned from the stage, I could not sing where I wanted. There is also something very important, when one did not adhere to ideology, one could not study. There are many things that we could not do. The first concern was not what was not in the store, it was that we were surrounded on all sides, that we were not free.
After the fall of the wall, elections were very quickly organized. You were then recruited as a spokesperson for the first and last Free Government of the GDR to organize the transition. Looking back over this period, are there things you could have done better?
This is a question that is constantly asked. I can not say we could have done better, because we have to take into account all the parameters. In foreign policy, we had a very small "window of fire": Mikhail Gorbachev could be dismissed at any time, with France and Francois Mitterrand it was wait-and-see, and Margaret Thatcher was totally against reunification. At that time, George Bush Sr. who also supported us tremendously. It was a complex and exciting situation.
Helmut Kohl (editor's note: then Chancellor of the FRG) was particularly concerned with relations with France. Our role was with the Russians. As the government of the GDR, our first visit abroad was at the end of April in the Soviet Union. We came to thank Mikhail Gorbachev. It was not easy because the Soviets had always seen us as very dependent on them and Gorbachev was already facing serious internal difficulties at that time.
The internal pressure was strong too. Even after the fall of the wall, there were still a lot of people going from the East to the West, more than 100,000 people a month, sometimes much more! People wanted to be free and they showed it with their feet. We had a problem: if it continued, our eastern regions would be empty. We had to act quickly. It took 6 months while we thought it would take about 3 years.
How did you feel, personally, at this time?
We were not experienced. On a personal level, I had two drivers for my work, and they both worked overtime during that time, and I hardly slept.
At that time I almost went around the world on a state visit. Angela Merkel was my assistant and we shared the work. It was me who said to her, "Angela, you have to do this and that", hold a press conference or come on a trip abroad. She was not who she is today, she was still shy. It was very important to always have someone from the team remaining in Germany, because at every press conference, there were around 200 journalists from all over the world.
When I went on a state visit to the United States, something happened to me that was absolutely crazy! At the Press Club in Washington, I had to speak because Lothar de Maizière was a little late. I entered the room, everyone got up and applauded. They knew my face in the United States! They had seen me on TV! An American who is interested in foreign policy is rare. But German reunification aroused daily interest. All this, it had to be managed. It has been a short, intensive period, and I have learned a lot. I have trouble saying today that we should have done a lot of things differently, we did what we could.
How was your work with Angela Merkel?
At first she was not the one who handled the press conferences, but that was the case later.As we did two press conferences a week instead of one, we made a lot of decisions, we we had to explain them. Angela Merkel has done very quickly and very well. We worked very well together, really well, she became very professional and I admire her evolution. She was already pragmatic. Of course, she changed, but she already had that potential, this pragmatism, thinking upstream of all the consequences. She always had this way of thinking. She did not come in through the front door (Editor's note: in politics) and I think that the time she spent in Helmut Kohl's government is also an experience that has forged her.
What impressed us all during this period was a kind of altruism from Prussian culture: we served without thinking of ourselves. Getting involved without thinking of herself first, that's Angela Merkel. She was able to do it at a time when Germany has gone through a particularly difficult period. I left politics right after that time, but she stayed there and she did tremendously well.
Today there are people who do not use the word reunification and who talk about annexation. Do you understand why?
Of course ! You have to measure that at that time a lot of people were at the SED (editor's note: the official party), almost one in two people. To those people, the system brought benefits. In the GDR there were people who wanted freedom and there were those who were well settled, and for these, the fall of the Wall was like a break in the course of their life. So they still talk about annexation today, because they depended on the system.
There are always angry people, but what would become of us without her? When looking at countries for which it has been harder than for Germany, we can be grateful to have had a strong partner who has helped us to get along as well.
But there are also real losers of reunification, people who simply lost their job and found nothing?
It's true, the generation that had the fifties at that time had big problems to find a job. All did not go well. But ask yourself why! I do not think that we need to look for the root of the problem in the first place in the Western system, but rather in the system of the former GDR. The industry was down. Companies in debt. Even those who still had good equipment were in debt, this has been confirmed. The problems are the GDR, which created them and maintained them for 40 years. It's hard to explain, and I would have liked more understanding from the West, but in the end, all of this brought a lot to East Germany. When we compare with the West, we are now much more flexible, there is much more potential here even if the headquarters of large companies remained in the west.
The work of Treuhand (the organization created in 1990 to carry out the privatization and industrial restructuring of the former GDR, 8000 companies and 4 million employees) has been very criticized what do you think ?
The original idea of the Treuhand was to make the factories to employees, to the people, to make state enterprises, anonymous companies that would give workers shares in the capital, and then to see what could do it. And then we realized that the idea was not working because all these companies were bankrupt. Finally, the Treuhand sorted out the companies that were viable, the ones that could be saved and the others. But it is clear that there have been abuses, that privatizations have been partly badly done, and that eastern companies have been shut down for the benefit of western companies.
This process was partly inevitable, but also partly too fast and sometimes, some take advantage. There are things that went wrong, but I can still ask the question today: how could we have done better in such a situation? Even today, I have no other solution. What happened was unique, exceptional.
Two political parties (first Die Linke followed by the AfD) asked for a parliamentary inquiry commission on Treuhand. What do you think ?
Obviously, you have to investigate what happened, but it also means that in fact, have looked in the rearview mirror. What do you want to build with all these stories? We must look to the future. I am a journalist, I am editor-in-chief in Thuringia. We are working today on what concerns our region. On the lack of manpower here. Luckily, we have a different situation than the very high unemployment rate we had years ago. We managed to clean up the situation. We built highways, we have trains that did not exist before, that must be realized.
Is there a connection between the consequences of reunification and the current political climate ?
Yes, we have been socialized differently than in West Germany, we come from a dictatorship, therefore, we have a more volatile electorate. People are becoming more receptive to simple ideas, there are more protest votes. This is happening faster in the new Länder than in an old system, established with parties for which citizens have always voted. Here the party system is different and the report to the vote too.
What are your priorities for the next few years ?
The most important priority is to recall the cardinal value of democracy, what value has this system, how we exchange and talk among ourselves. We must talk about the importance of Europe, the harmful history between Germany and France, and how valuable this relationship is.
These values, we must explain them again when we look at Britain with brexit. We must say and repeat that it is not just the past and not just the same currency that unites us. We must tell people: "we must live in a period when we must cherish and preserve these values of Europe and democracy". This is what we must fight today, Germany and France, which are at the heart of Europe, must work closely together.
Thirty years after the fall of the Wall, democracy is no longer necessarily perceived as a cardinal value. Are you disappointed?
No, I'm not disappointed. I am realistic. I think there are always times when you have to fight more. It's true that unfortunately we do not learn much from history, but we have to talk again and again together about what happened and protect our values. It does not matter if you live in France, in Germany, in Poland, or elsewhere, it is a duty.
[Audio] Thirty years since the fall of the Wall, listen to our live special edition of Berlin