UNIFIED GERMANY: STABILIZING INFLUENCE OR THREAT?
525
now what?
It
was our landmark. Directions were confused. The left be–
came right, the right left. Which is forward, which reverse? The progres–
sive turned out to be retrograde, the conservative liberal. Where is up,
where is down? We were suspended in weightlessness and timelessness.
Sometimes I ask myself, "Is it possible that we are buried under the ruins
of this wall? Or that we are walled in like the mythical bride?"
A veritable Babel ensued. Words - heavy missiles aimed at the Wall's
embrasures - suddenly sunk into a void, without an echo, without a
reverberating sound. The words collided in the gaping hole and self–
destructed. Microphones mumed the political speeches in public forums .
Fundamental notions acquired their opposite meaning: the dialogue be–
came a duel with words, success meant failure, the past turned into fu–
ture, hope into despair, top to bottom, expectations into a tunnel
without an opening, harmony into discord, defeat into victory.
The Wall was a guarantee of our unity.
It
was our common enemy,
and it brought clarity. We attacked it head-on. And now we have hit an
unresponsive emptiness. We attack each other. We spat at the Wall, and
now we spit at each other. We kicked the Wall, and now we kick each
other.
It
seems as if we need a barrier, a garden scarecrow under our
nose, in order to breathe.
The Wall was the source of a useful dream. The darkness of our gray
existence was brightly illuminated by the lure of the world beyond it.
And then we burst into the hidden domain of longing, of dreams. With
trembling fingers, we touched freedom wrapped in gilt paper. With our
sharp gazes we broke the display windows, we stretched greedy hands to
touch the many-colored goodies, and became dizzy with the enormity
of choice. And somewhere amidst all this abundance - where exactly? -
we lost our dreams....
We lost something else too - our balance. Was the Wall our sup–
port? Is it possible that we two-legged creatures need a prison wall to
lean against, to shelter under, to feel its hard, cold touch to wake our
energy to resist? We immediately created walls between each other: eth–
nic, color, personal, religious, party, creative, language - a jungle of
walls. Above all, the wall of hatred, charged with high voltage. Woe to
the naif who wants to scale it.
Now the world bristled with insecurity, it faced the unknown,
standing on the edge of an abyss. Was it possible that the Wall had
ironically given it stability? The socialist countries' fugitives rushed
through the wide-open entrance toward desirable Europe. The Balkan
Peninsula brought back its centuries-old curse, to be the crossroads for
exiles from everywhere. The flood of migrating people was rising. What
might happen if, God forbid, the Chinese Wall fell?
