Germany Honorary hosts Berlin Wall anniversary panel discussion

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Germany Honorary hosts Berlin Wall anniversary panel discussion
Professors provide different perspectives on the Berlin Wall | Wikimedia Commons

When Associate Professor of German Fred Yaniga first saw the Berlin Wall as a college exchange student in 1986, he was devastated.

“It made me speechless. It was demoralizing,” he said. “You would have seen a big hockey player cry that day.”

The Delta Phi Alpha German honorary hosted a panel discussion on the fall of the Berlin Wall on Tuesday.

The discussion included history, commentary, and personal testimony from Yaniga, Assistant Professor of History James Strasburg, and Assistant Professor of French Anna Navrotskaya.

Strasburg began the discussion by talking about Berlin’s pivotal role in post-war Germany.

“Berlin was a highly coveted prize and an important chess piece,” Strasburg said. “It was a prized jewel for post-war settlement.”

Strasburg said the formation of East and West Germany came in two major phases: 1945-1952/53, when Stalin created the foundation of the two Germanys, and from 1953-1990, when the two powers were established.

By focusing on other things, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t quicken his advance to Berlin, allowing the Soviets to conquer Berlin, Strasburg said. After the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Germany was divided into four sections, including Berlin, even though it lay solely within the Soviet quadrant.

At first, there was talk of the possibility of unification, but the Soviets ultimately refused to compromise, Strasburg said. Eventually, the three Western sectors merged to form West Germany, which held out as a stronghold amidst the rising Soviet regime around it, Strasburg said.

“The West wanted to maintain the sovereignty of West Berlin in this emerging sea of red,” he said. 

When the U.S. established a currency there in 1948, migration from East to West Germany began. Strasburg said more than three million East Germans traveled to the West, beginning with lawyers, doctors, and other upper class people. 

“It was a question of survival to stop the so-called ‘brain drain’ of the East,” he said.

This caused the need for an east-west border in 1952, which stifled the hopes of unification.

By the 1960s, the Soviet government pressured the West to pull out of Germany, resulting in the establishment of the wall. But their mission would backfire, Strasburg said.

“Building the wall came back to haunt them,” he said.

Navrotskaya talked about Russian publications around the time of the building and destruction of the Berlin Wall. As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, she said the wall had a lasting effect on her people.

“It is still in our imagination as Soviets,” Navrotskaya said. “The building of the wall overnight made Germans feel cheated.”

The Soviets called the wall the “anti-fascist protection barrier,” while in the West it was known as the “Shameful Wall,” she said.

To the Soviets, she said, the wall was not a symbol of separation. They viewed it simply as a national border. West Berlin was an ally who lived better, but had a more restrictive kind of government.

She said Soviets viewed the fall of the Berlin Wall as hopeful, but sad.

“We had hoped for something greater, but it flew away,” she said.

Senior Alex Buchheit said he appreciated all three of the different outlooks on the Berlin Wall, especially Navrotskaya’s Soviet perspective.

“It was cool to have the other side represented,” Buchheit said.

Yaniga concluded by telling of events leading up to the fall of the wall in 1990. He said he spent time in Hamburg, Germany, during high school.

“I didn’t know anything politically, but I was about to find out,” he said.

On a trip to Berlin, he said he experienced the border close up.

“My heart sank into my stomach,” he said. “I couldn’t believe a country could separate a people like that.”

During his junior year of college, he was able to witness the fall of the wall. He said he didn’t believe it when he first heard the news. He and his friends made the trip to the wall and shed a few tears.

“We had a big party. I never hugged and kissed so many people,” he said. “It changed my life. I had to share this moment of freedom with others.”