Gerd Appenzeller on the European dimension of the fall of the Berlin Wall

The trend towards liberalisation in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic made the fall of the German Communist Party, or SED, possible in the first place, comments Gerd Appenzeller in the daily Der Tagesspiel: "The number of symposia, lectures and exhibitions is growing continuously in the twentieth year since that historic turning point – and with it the danger that memories focus solely on events in Germany. Politicians and historians who see things in a European context are trying to prevent this. … These initiatives [in Berlin] are aimed at pointing people's attention to the fact that without the reform processes in Poland, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia the power of the SED regime would not have been eroded. … It seems a bitter irony that certain reform states without the help of which the fall of the Berlin Wall would never have happened are today particularly hard hit by the global financial crisis. The cynics who call themselves pragmatics will now probably try to tell us that gratitude is not a category of political action. But there are reassuring indications that the German government is aware of its moral responsibility."

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