INVESTIGATION
On Saturday, Germany celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years later. But unlike the great official ceremony held ten years ago with many heads of state, the organizers have this time wanted to bring this memory of the people. Because the report is terrible. In Germany, the transmission of memory over this period has failed.
This fall, quite amazing surveys have been published. For example, 78% of East Germans say that the arbitrariness of the state is today more important than at the time of the communist regime, as if they had forgotten the reality of life at the time. period, under the permanent control of the Stasi, the famous political police, without free elections, without even having the right to travel or choose his profession. Today, only one in two high school students knows that the GDR was a dictatorship.
"They did not do anything at the time"
Example with teenagers met after their visit to a prison in the Stasi. "The date of the construction of the wall, or when it fell, I had no idea," admits a teenager. "A lot of my friends say it was not that bad in the GDR," says a comrade. "They say there was a wall, but not the Stasi, the political oppression, that we could come in and out as we wanted, they say that because that's what their parents tell them. can tell us what they want, they do not believe them. "
This poses the problem of teaching this period. In general, it is a theme that is flown in the school curriculum. We are talking about the fall of the Wall, the reunification, but not the reasons for the opposition and the motives of opponents of the regime, such as Reinhard Weißhuhn. "In the West, we do not do it because the East does not interest anyone there, and it has never been the case", plague this sexagenarian. "And in the East, we do not do it either because the majority of people do not want to hear this reality, it would confront them with their own conscience as parents, as teachers, because they did not do anything about it. 'time,' he points out.
The extreme right benefits
A omerta reminiscent of the one that followed the Second World War ... The concern is that if the opponents or the victims of the regime are always ready to speak, they are all unknown. There is no Lech Walesa or German Vaclav Havel. It is a movement without a face, without a flag bearer and also without a guardian of the temple to defend the historical reality.
And suddenly, all this benefits the extreme right, which has completely recovered this memory. The whole strategy of the AFD party in the East consists in particular of presenting oneself as the heir of the spirit of 1989. Example at a recent rally: "As in the past, today insubordinate citizens are taking to the streets to claiming their rights, "said extremist party leader Alexander Gauland," and again they are hunted down by regime men, defamed in the media and denounced in the workplace. "And even the slogan of 1989, the famous "Wir Sehen das Volk" ("We are the people"), is now the cry of meetings of the German far right.